We’ve had such little rain here in Atlanta this spring, that it’s been quite the fun celebration when it happens. Here are the girls enjoying an afternoon downpour! Charis was not yet walking, so she just crawled around in it.

We took a field trip with our homeschool group to a place called Noah’s Ark. It’s south of Atlanta, and is a place where they take in animals that have been rescued or abandoned. A few were brought into the US illegally, and ended up there because the owner was in a car wreck or something like that. Others were just not wanted anymore. There were peacocks roaming everywhere, and there were quite the variety of animals, from huge bison to birds to monkeys that put on quite the show for us.

The Saturday night before Easter, Morgan had a fever, so it pretty much cancelled our plans to go to church the next morning.  We still wanted to have the kids dressed up for some fun pictures, then we settled onto our couch to watch church online. :)  It’s getting hard to get all the kids to look and smile at the same time, but we got a couple cute ones from the bunch.

The funny part of this is that Charis is somewhat obsessed with hair.  She will go into the bathroom and find one in the hairbrush, or run her fingers through my hair for one.  Just one piece, and she holds it and plays with it and it occupies her pretty well.  So she had one for this picture.

A bit of a fake smile from Mackenzie, but still a cute one.

These pictures happened the following day, when Mackenzie was more than willing to share her lollipop with an eager Charis:

Morgan learned to ride her bike without training wheels.  She has a scooter so has had a lot of practice with balance - Gavin took her training wheels off and she took off!  Still working on turning around, but she’s doing great.

We had a number of visitors in the span of a week - both sets of parents as well as a rare visit from my sister Melissa, who was in town for a prosthetics conference. For some reason we are terrible at getting pictures with my parents and the kids - no one seems to remember! But we did get some of them with the others.

Mackenzie has always especially loved her Memere (Gavin’s mom).  They both fell asleep on the porch lounger.

Gavin’s parents with the kids.

Melissa with her nieces and nephew.  They absolutely loved having her here.

Wow, 7.  That just seems so old.  Amazing.  Jackson had his birthday on March 19, and this was the first birthday season that I had begun the ‘every-other-year-party’ rule.  It’s my way of keeping my sanity with back to back birthdays all through the winter.  So this year neither Jackson nor Morgan had a party (although Morgan had her special Disney trip).

So, for his birthday he got to choose a friend to go do something fun.  Jackson had his heart set on going to Monkey Joes, one of those inflatable bouncy-type places.  I thought he seemed to be getting old for that type of place but he and John John had a blast.  Morgan and Mackenzie went as well, and apparently they about had the place to themselves on that Monday afternoon (homeschooling benefit!!)

Afterwards they came back here where all the grandparents had come to celebrate - we grilled out, then had the requested football cake (see previous post about his football obsession).  It was a fun day celebrating him, and it was very low-stress for me as well.

Football cake.  As requested.

It was a white cake with buttercream.  Same as Mackenzie’s cake - it’s become our new favorite!

Checking out his gifts with John John

He got a Lego set he had been wanting

Happy Birthday to my sweet boy!

Jackson has been pretty obsessed with football for a little while now.  At park day on Fridays all the boys end up playing football, and so when I heard about this great flag football league, he wanted to do that instead of baseball this spring.  He’s on a team with 3 other friends, and so far they have had a great time.  I love it because the practice and game are back to back on Sundays, and it means that if Gavin is at camp he will be able to be home for the games.

They have had 3 weeks of practice and games now.  We have realized that Jackson’s team is by far the smallest - it’s age 7-9, and there is a big difference between a just-turned-7 year old and a 9 year old in terms of height and speed.  But he’s loving it, and it’s a great league that focuses on having fun and sportsmanship.

Everyone has to wear mouthguards.  That’s why his mouth looks odd in a lot of these pictures.

Height difference?  Nah.

He plays with one of his best buds, John John

The Firebirds!

Jackson and his three buddies.  They are all in our homeschool group.

Two years ago we decided to take Jackson on a 5 year old trip. We had heard of the idea from some other friends who did it with each of their boys, and thought it was a neat idea. I realize now that Jackson’s trip never ended up making it onto our blog, how sad! He and Gavin miraculously got tickets to see one of the last space shuttle launches (a dream of Gavin’s), so they drove down, spent all night at the space center at Cape Canaveral, and witnessed the launch at 6:30 am that day. They rested that day, then did a day at Disney before coming home. It was a great father/son time.

As Morgan’s 5 year old birthday approached this past December, we had to decide if Jackson’s trip would be just a one-time thing, or if we were going to make it a for sure thing for each kid. It’s not cheap, but we decided the memories are so worth it, and decided to take Morgan to Disney for a day. We were finally able to go the first week of March - I was wanting to go before spring breaks started and the park gets so crowded. We had been planning to go mid-Feb, but there was a high chance of storms the day we would be there, and I didn’t want to risk that with only one day at the park.

So, Wed March 7th we got in the car and drove the 6.5 hours to Orlando. Gavin pricelined us a hotel, and we got a nice hotel for a great rate. She was so excited to sleep in a hotel! The next morning we got up at 7 and started our day. I’ll let pictures tell most of the story:

Breakfast in the hotel.  She loved choosing what she got to have!

Our princess in the Magic Kingdom!  She was so excited to see the castle.  It was a beautiful day, although got quite warm later in the day - up to 85 degrees!

We started out on a couple of rides, but I soon realized that all she really wanted to do was see the characters, specifically the princesses and fairies.  So I changed our plans and made a beeline to Tinkerbell’s Nook before the line got too long.

She got to meet Tinkerbell and Rosetta.  She was a bit starstruck.  A friend got her the autograph book so they could sign her book, and we can put pictures of her on the opposite side.

We then headed to the princesses where she got to meet Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Belle, and Cinderella.

We then made a ‘quick’ stop to see Mickey and Minnie.  The wait time was not at all accurate, it was the most time we spent in line all day, and I was a bit nervous about not being done in time to use our fastpass for Buzz Lightyear.  She loved them though!

Next we waited to see Buzz.  I loved that his signature was a stamp.  Very classic.  We missed out on both Snow White and Pluto, because at the time she didn’t want to wait in line to see them - she realized quickly that you have to wait for everything!  Rapunzel is a 2 hour wait, so no way we were doing that in our one day. And we were about 30 seconds too late to get in line for Jasmine and Aladdin before they closed the line, which was a bummer.  But she loved meeting everyone she was able to, and got all their autographs.

Mid-afternoon when we were tired we went to get some gifts for Jackson and Mackenzie.  She picked out this fairy Minnie for her, which was the best of both worlds for her - fairies and Minnie Mouse!  Fairy Minnie rode the rest of the rides with us.  We actually did ride every ride that I wanted to take her on, and she really enjoyed most of them.  I was bummed that Dumbo was closed during our trip - that was my favorite as a kid.

We packed our own lunch, and splurged on hot dogs for dinner.  We got it just in time to get a decent spot for the parade.  By this point I was exhausted - Morgan got to ride in the stroller the whole time, lucky girl!

The parade was fun to watch, then we got herded into the masses for the fireworks show.  Morgan wasn’t sure about it because of the noise, but it was a fun end to the day.  I was very impressed with how little time it took us to get from here back to the hotel.  We were both exhausted, and with the crowds I thought it would be a good couple hours.  But less than an hour later, we were crashing into our beds.  I was very impressed with the way Disney moves people.

One exhausted princess.  But it was a magical day.

We drove back the next day.  It was a super fast trip, but so much fun - it is so rare I get concentrated time like that with one child, and 5 years is the absolute perfect age to take a little girl to Disney.  She absolutely loved it, and her favorite part still is meeting the princesses and fairies.  She now knows where they live, and no one can convince her that they are not real (believe me, Jackson has tried many times).  We were actually able to do the whole thing really inexpensive (aside from the tickets), and I’m already looking forward to Mackenzie going in 2 years!

Finally catching up on the blog, and have a few pictures from back in Jan/Feb.

What’s the best way to bathe a baby who was completely filthy after dinner?  In the sink!  This was from back in January, but I love this picture.  She was quite content.

Morgan has been learning to read this year, and she finished her first Hooked on Phonics workbook.  She was very proud of herself - here she is showing off all her stars on the path - each represents a story that she read.

Mackenzie also wanted her picture taken that same day, so here she is with a diaper!  But in VERY exciting news, she no longer uses diapers - finally!!!  One day I told her that her diapers were all gone during the day - she resisted as she always had, but I was determined to get her on the potty and be done with diapers for her.  Morgan was very excited to help out, and she basically potty trained Mackenzie on her own.  She sat in the bathroom with her for a good part of the day, waiting for her to go to the bathroom - something I just generally don’t have time for.  I’m super proud of Mackenzie - in the 3 weeks she has now been potty trained, she’s had 4 accidents, 3 of them in the first 2 days.  Like most young kids she *always has to go when we are in a public place, so we’ve visited our share of toilets.  But I’m so glad she’s done, and it was so easy.

I told Mackenzie that in 2 years she gets to potty train Charis.  She said to me ‘Not baby!  Baby fall in!”  Ha.