march randoms

Some of Ellie's favorites: lots of accessories, naps on the couch, making pizza, and shopping at Target (especially with a cake pop from Starbucks!).

March School Stuff: Ben and Lexie both celebrated Read Across America week with reading parties in their classes.

Nick gave a Tedx Talk on incorporating Minecraft into the curriculum at his school and tennis season started back up for Christopher.

While Grandma was here, we went to one of Christopher's away tennis matches and introduced her to City Barbeque for dinner!

We celebrated Pi Day with pizza for lunch at Ghostface Brewery and individual pies à la mode for dessert.

While Grandma was in town, we took a trip to Black Mountain to check it out and started our day at the Blue Ridge Biscuit Company for brunch.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the streets of Black Mountain with its cute little shops.  Ellie helped stock the shelves at the book store and was excited to find a little library outside.

Grandma's trip was timed perfectly to see Lexie's first soccer game-- and she made two goals!!

Since Christopher works at Chick-fil-A on Saturday mornings it has become a tradition to drop him off and grab breakfast before heading to the soccer fields.

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february randoms

The weather was great this month and all of the kids took advantage of it by playing outside!

We love making homemade pizza!  And I love that the girls do most of the work!

February is cookie booth time here so our weekends are full of booths at different places around town.

After her teacher said that she was squinting at the board, Miss Lexie got glasses-- they make her look so grown up!

Ben's request for a Super Bowl snack was cheesy piccolis-- Easy Cheese on top of pickle chips.  Bleh!!  The kids (and Jacob) all thought they were fabulous!

Chick-fil-A is one of our favorite lunch stops-- especially now that I know you can get just strawberries in the fruit cup!!  Though Ellie has been to the dentist at least six times, this was the first visit with no tears, and she's even excited to go back again in six months for pictures of her teeth!!

One of our favorite things to do is try out new restaurants in the area so we were super excited to attend the soft opening of the new Famous Toastery in Downtown Mooresville.  Such a great location and delicious food!!

Ben loves playing basketball and we love cheering him on!

Miss Ellie was so excited to get dressed up for her daddy-daughter dance at preschool!

- The Dad and the Daughter -

We love Chick-fil-A!

Ellie loves going to pick up Christopher from tennis practice because it means she can play at the playground until he's ready to go!

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fun with hannah

One of my favorite things about my sister and her fam living in NC is that we get to see them WAY more often!  Auntie Janne and Miss Hannah came out to our house for a weekend of fun-- which clearly includes lunch at Chick-fil-A!

We always go wander around Target when they're in town-- the girls have so much fun looking at clothes and accessories.

We celebrated Auntie Janne's birthday while they were here and the girls helped me make her birthday cupcakes.

They had fun pouring and mixing but their favorite part was definitely licking the beaters!! 

Happy birthday, Auntie Janne!!

Such a sweet and silly girl!

These two play hard and fight hard and I'm so glad that they're growing up close to each other.  Cousins really are your first best friends!

Hannah (3) and Ellie (4)-- these two always make me smile!

end of the year

My sister and her family weren't able to be here on Christmas, but they came out a couple of days later to do Christmas with us.  The kids were excited to see Miss Hannah and for more presents and it was so fun being able to watch Hannah enjoy the fun of a big family Christmas!

While they were here, the girls had their very first slumber party-- they did surprisingly well!!  And we obviously went to Target.

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A before they headed back home so that we could see Christopher in action and have a delicious lunch.  The little girls were excited to play in the play area after they finished their lunch.

Ellie often has sleepovers with Chris but really wanted to have one with Nick, too.  He did a great job and let her pick out a movie to watch but as soon as it was over, she ditched him and slept in her own room.  At least Nick was a good sport about it!

Her favorite song from her school's Christmas program.

Her all-time favorite song, the Preamble.

christmas traditions

Ellie is the little helper in our house and loves to help with anything and everything!  She helped decorate our Christmas card envelopes and put all of the stamps on, she helps make dinner, and this year, she helped wrap Christmas presents.

Both Lexie and Ellie love to help out in the kitchen and anytime I need to bake something, I know that they're going to want to pour and scoop and mix.

Christmas cookies are their absolute favorite thing to help with-- especially the Hershey Kiss unwrapping, the rolling and the eating!

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is getting Chick-fil-A peppermint shakes and driving around to look at Christmas lights.  This year, we did it after Christopher's first official day of work at Chick-fil-A!

road trip day thirty one: cow appreciation, swimming, and 7/11

We're all about getting free food so when Chick-fil-A announced their cow appreciation day, we set to work making costumes.

Nick and Ben didn't want to dress up so they stayed home, but the rest of us enjoyed our free Chick-fil-A for lunch!

I love that Chick-fil-A offers promotions like this-- it was something fun and different for us to do!

Such sweet little cows.

After lunch we went home to get the other two kiddos and then went down the street to the White's house to swim.  As a child, we often went down to the White's to swim (or they came to our house), so it was fun seeing my kids swim with their grandkids.

Fun in the pool!

After an afternoon of swimming, and then showers, we went to 7/11 for slurpees.  Again, all about the free stuff-- free slurpees at 7/11 on 7/11!!

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