Birthdays, school and all that good stuff!

The busiest month of the year has past for us, thank god!!! Don't get me wrong, I love birthdays as much as the next mom but having 2 in a week and starting back to school the very same week is a crazy hectic time!!!

We spend the actual day of Carsons birthday at the lake with my parents and siblings and Carson got the gift he had been waiting for all year.... a DS!! He was so excited, it was adorable!

We had a party the next weekend for both boys with all the family and lots of friends.

The boys were spoiled rotten as always! They are some lucky kids and have lots of folks that love them :) The party was super fun for everyone I think. The kids loved the moonwalk and slip and slide and just had a blast running around outside. Here are some of my very favorite pictures from the party. Thanks to Katie and her amazing camera for these!!

School is going really well for Carson. If I doubted before that holding him back was the right thing to do, I know now that it was one of the best decisions we have made as parents. He has gotten in trouble only twice since school began over a month ago! I am so proud of him! He would get conduct marks for things like not listening or paying attention and not following directions and lots of talking but none of that this year! I just hope he keeps it up, which I know he can. He is such a smart little man and amazes me everyday when he tells me what he learned at school. He really enjoys being there and seems to be picking everything up really well. I know right now is mainly review and we still have to hold our breaths for the tougher 2nd semester but I have faith in him and see the rest of the year continuing this way!

Soon enough it will be time for baby girl to have a party and mommy will cry :( I can not believe that I will have a 3 year old litte girl!! I know I say it all the time but where the heck did the time go? She is so big and grown up and just beautiful! Not that I am biased or anything but she is a gorgeous little princess and is so sweet too. I only wish she would stop growing so dang fast!!!

And not to leave out our monster of a middle child, here he is walking in my room now, up from bed for the 10th time tonight! LOL He is such a mess!! Bless his little heart!We went clothes shopping the other day and they both had to show off thier new clothes and begged mommy to take pictures! LOL

A new look

We spent all day going down the checklist for back to school time. Clothes and supply shopping, last minute paperwork at school, doc visit, and a first.... the eye doctor. After a hellish 3 hours at this really nice office (try taking 3 kids under the age of 7 to the EYE doctor and give me a better word than hellish), the verdict is that Carson needs glasses. He is actually excited about them too. I was bracing myself for a meltdown as Carson is all about being "cool" but he was a total trooper and said "I just wanna see better." How grown up does that sound?!?!!
So we are gonna be picking some out in the next few weeks, just as soon as Daddy has some time to go with us. Carson says I would pick lame ones and he needs Daddy to come! LOL I will be sure to post some pictures as soon as we pick up some "non lame" ones :)

Total Slacker

I am the worst blogger ever I do believe! Have I really not been on since September?? Geez, where does the time go?? As you can imagine, much has changed as it usually does in our house.

We moved, yes AGAIN, to a beautiful home in Alabaster. While the apartment was really nice and in a wonderful area, it just wasn't working. And we happened upon this house with a great budget friendly price and a HUGE backyard! I mean it goes on forever and takes hours to cut! LOL We love it out here. The street is a dead end and filled with kids. Carson has spend most of the summer outside, playing and making new friends. We bought a little pool and spend most of our days out back in it and the sprinkler.

Travis has gone through all 3 shifts already this year! He started on evenings, took a spot on days and went back to midnights about 2 weeks ago. Day shift was just awful. Since it's been years since he had to wake up early in the mornings, I guess we both forgot how much he hates it. And as you can imagine, he was miserable in the heat! With all that gear on, geez I don't know how they do it!! So he was able to get his spot on morning shift back which is 11pm til 7am and we are all much happier. Believe it or not, we see him a lot more this way. So he is happy and so are we :)

Carson is doing great, growing another foot a day it seems. I am dreading the day that he is taller than me but I see it rapidly approaching. I can imagine it's hard to discipline a child that towers over you! He has made so many new friends in the neighborhood and I am sooo grateful for that. He was born with ants in his pants and has to stay busy so having a whole neighborhood to run around in is such a blessing. He will be starting school in just a few weeks and he is actually excited. He will be going to a new school since we moved and that's probably for the best as we decided to hold him back in 2nd grade. He started kindergarten on his 5th birthday and I knew from day one that it was going to be tough. Most of the kids were already 6 or about to be. He is such a smart little boy but somethings just weren't making sense to him. We had a difficult time with homework and his teachers began have more and more complaints about his behavior. He was giving up quickly on things he did not understand and would play or talk to others. We had testing done at school and they were quick to say ADD or ADHD. I am not a big fan of giving medication for everything so I haven't gone that route yet. It has always been in the back of my mind too but I am still not convinced that this is the problem. We have talked to the pediatrician and plan to wait a few months before going over that option again. I am really confident that repeating will be good for him. I can imagine how good he will feel when he starts to get things and the light bulb goes off. School is so very important to me and I want him to love it like I did. Keep him in your prayers and thoughts if you would. I will be sure to update once school starts.

Trent is a mess like always! He is such a sweet little guy, so full of questions and comments. He can speak remarkably well and sounds so grown up for a 3 year old. We have even had strangers comment! I am so proud of him. He is such a wonderful little guy to be around. He makes me laugh every single day :) My mom always says I should get him into acting! He would make a great actor I'm sure, as he will dance or sing on cue everytime and will come up with perfect dances to fit certain songs. I'm just waiting for him to be discovered ;)

And baby girl Bella....or should I say Princess Bella! She has become quite the little diva and I would be lying if I said I didn't love it ;) The moment she wakes up, she asked for her dress. And once she is dressed, right down to the matching bloomers, she picks out the perfect bow. While it doesn't always match, she does a pretty good job. She is so cute! And she is doing so good in her big girl panties!! We have been potty training for about a month now and she has a few mishapes every now and again but she doesn't wear diapers at all. Yippee!!! Nice for the budget!! Though it does make me a bit sad every now and again. Cause that's it...no more babies for us. I know we made that decision quite some time ago, but they are growing fast. And everyday my memories of them as babies grow less and less, its just so hard to look at these grown children and remember them as infants. Ohhhh, but enough of that before I get all teary eyed :(

And as for me, well all of the above keeps me pretty busy. I still am working part time on Monday and Friday and love it. Keeps a little extra mommy money and gets me some adult time too!

I recently got my dear hubby to start reading with me, if you can believe that!! Anyone that knows Travis knows that the last thing he would be caught doing is sitting with his nose in a book. But after seeing me so engrossed in the Twilight series and than watching me reread them all for the 5th time, he finally asked what was so great about them. Well as any Twilighter would do, I popped the DVD in and made him watch. I think it was the first non violent, actiony (?) movie he sat through without complaining!!! And than he said he wanted to read them!! I about passed out! He is halfway through eclipse right now and counting down the days til the movie comes out!! I think it's adorable and it's a lot of fun to be able to share this with him. Though he would kill me if he knew I told anyone ;)

On that note, I think its time to crawl into bed with my book :) I will do better updating. I really do hate that this is the way friends have to stay in touch this days but I guess this is better than nothing, right???

Here's a few pics of the last few months