Blog, kids, spring, Videos, Vlog

Spring is here!!


Finally!! My favorite season. I always say it’s my reward for surviving winter (my least favorite season.) And I feel like it’s especially true this year. I think I’ve mentioned this before but we have had back to back sicknesses since the last week of 2016. 3 solid months of having sickness in our house, with only a few breaks (each break only lasting a week, at most.) We have been fever free for one week now! And I’m just hoping that the way I’m feeling right now doesn’t lead to another sickness because I will probably cry.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop over here and just give a little update on our lives because I haven’t had too much of a chance (or the energy/motivation) to keep up with my blog lately. Last week, on the first day of spring, (when these pictures were taken) we had a beautiful 86 degree day! Last year at this time I was pregnant and we really didn’t spend too much time outdoors. But this year will be different. We try to get out there as much as we can. We live on a pretty quiet street. So even though we don’t have much of a backyard, we spend quite a bit of time in the front yard and taking walks up and down the sidewalks. Everyone is much happier and kinder to one another when we aren’t stuck inside. And I’m less stressed because I don’t see messes that need to be cleaned up 😉

Clementine gets so much attention in our family. Everyone is obsessed with her. It’s so special to watch each of their relationships with her. It makes me wonder if they’ll always treat her this way. For the most part, the boys still treat Evangeline like royalty so I’m hoping the same will be true for Clem.

These smiles!! Every time I set the camera down, someone else would ask me to take a picture of them…just because they thought it was hilarious to smile every time I said “don’t smile.” I always have mixed feelings about that little game because I wonder if they’ll start to think they can turn disobeying into a game. But so far they’ve figured out when it’s “okay” to disobey and when it’s not. And I end up with these beautiful smiles. So I think i’m okay with it for now.

Kai had a fever this day and started dealing with daily headaches for a while too. He would complain about it being too bright. Of course my brain has two settings. 1) way too laid back. 2) panic and google every symptom. In this situation, I started to panic. With my history, my brain always makes me assume cancer. Thankfully that worry slipped away as soon as it came into my mind. I also worried about migraines or the need for glasses, but thankfully it must have been some weird little virus because after one week, the headaches stopped!

Clem’s obsession—grabbing onto her feet! It’s totally adorable! And because I’ve been asked before, her bracelet was a gift from my mother-in-law from June and Penny. 

Also, this camera? It’s one of the kids’ favorites! I had a blog post in mind to share some of their (well, mainly Clementine’s) favorite toys right now. But sick kids have prevailed lately. The blog post was going to be “Clementine’s favorite toys at 5 months.” She will be 6 months old next Tuesday. So I’ll have to rename the blog post but she still has the same “favorite toys.” So it works 😉

We have been coming up with some scavenger hunts to do along our walks. Nothing that creative. But if anyone has some fun outdoor spring activities to suggest (that don’t require a lot of prep or money) send them my way because I trust my readers more than a pinterest board!

Also!! We entered a video contest to win $10k. The top 10 videos will go to the judges who will decide who the winner is. Thank you to everyone who has already voted for us or shared our video. This would be an amazing blessing for our family to win. You do have to have a facebook account to enter but voting only takes like 30 seconds and you don’t have to register for anything!

Vote HERE!!!

So anyway, that sums up what has been going on with us! Now that spring is here, I hope to have a lot more to add to this space and hopefully Don
can get back to vlogging. Here’s his most recent upload for anyone interested. Thank you for reading along!!

March 29, 2017
Blog, st. louis

Picnic at Forest Park


Two weeks ago we went out to have a picnic in Forest Park in the city so we could enjoy the warm February day. As we were driving home that evening, I told Don “I think that after the kids go to bed, I’ll go through our pictures from today and put them up on my blog. That will probably be the fastest I’ve been able to get a blog post out for a long time.” Well I didn’t get to it that night and then the next morning is when Don woke up with the flu. And it has slowly been making its rounds through our family for the past 2 weeks. In the middle of the night last night, I officially became the last victim of this nasty flu. Moms should not be allowed to get sick.

Getting out of the house as a family of 8 isn’t always easy. Sometimes we can get out of our house without a hitch but most times ends up with a stressed out mom who is telling everybody to hurry, hurry, hurry. Then we get to the gas station down the street where a little 3 year old girl says “mommy, I need to go potty!” Whoops! So we turn around to go home and repeat the process, go pick up a sandwich, and head to the park for a late 1:45 lunch.

We picked a little spot that had hay bales separating us from the water and let the kids run free. Being stuck in our house for the past couple of weeks with sick kids makes me wish for this again. With tomorrow’s highs in the mid 70s, I may try to force myself to get outside with the kids for a bit.

Desmond spilled half full bags of pretzels (and later some chips) on the ground multiple times. And then my children swarmed around like a flock of birds to eat them off of the ground. I was going to make a joke about it building up their immune systems but, you know, we’ve only been sick all of 2017.

And look at that little round head and the smile that makes you melt. This poor girl gave us quite the scare when her temperature soared to 104.7 the other night. With lots of prayers, we made it through the night and her fever went down. She still keeps going back and forth between fever and no fever. We’re just praying that she doesn’t develop pneumonia. Nothing breaks your heart quite like watching your baby suffer.

Sometimes group shots are a win, and sometimes they look like this…

Did I mention that we had the beautiful Art Museum in the background? The kids spent a good amount of time running down Art Hill over and over again. Can I please just have an ounce of their energy?!

I love this picture of Desmond, looking so confident in his stride.


I’m really looking forward to spring this year. First of all, I really hope that spring brings us health. But also, I’m looking forward to all the adventures that we will be able to go on, especially with Don on the day schedule. Thank you all for reading along and thank you so much to everyone who has been praying for us or reached out to us. (And a huge thank you to my dad and Eileen for bringing us a couple of meals this past week!)

Hope you have a great rest of the week!

March 8, 2017