Seven!

In the interest of spending every waking minute with my birthday girl tomorrow, I knew I'd better get a birthday post in a day early.  Towns told me yesterday that she's officially taken six trips around the sun and is about to start her seventh.  I've never thought about it like that!  I told her that was a pretty neat observation and she said, "well that's just what happens when you have Mrs. Propst for a teacher."  True...very true!

I'm going to try my hardest to spare you the reality of what I'm feeling, which is something along the lines of...

How in the world is it possible that my baby love is a few hours shy of being seven years old?!

Seven sounds so old to me.  I could handle six, but seven?  Wow.

She's the epitome of what I'd ever want in a daughter.  She's a precious, precious child who has the biggest heart.  And she's definitely got ours!

Because I'm feeling rather nostalgic, I looked back at pictures from her last six birthdays.
All smiles the morning of her 1st birthday...

 

Cupcakes first thing on the morning of her 2nd...

 

 Breakfast in bed when she turned 3...

A trip to the zoo on her 4th...

 

Showing her sassy side on her 5th...

 

Celebrating in kindergarten on her 6th...

 

And here we are...

I could squeeze her to pieces because I love her like crazy!

Happy 7th birthday, Snaggle Fraggle!

The Plague & Kite Flying

Have you ever seen the movie Contagion?  We've had the real live version here on a smaller scale (thank you Norovirus) and it wasn't pretty.  Kids were dropping like flies.  Parents eventually getting it.  One could have wondered if it was some sort of terrorist attack.  Kidding...sort of.  It was madness.  Absolute madness, I tell you.  Both thankfully and not thankfully (if that's even correct grammar), J flew to Orlando for business Friday morning at the crack of dawn and missed it.  I was glad he didn't come down with it, but I was wishing he was here when I was on what seemed like my death bed.  The girls both came down with it Wednesday which gave us a few bonus days prior to our Spring Break this week.  However, I'm not sure you would categorize those horrible days as a "bonus".  Surely not.  They were both pitiful.  I thought I escaped it, but Friday proved to be a different story.  We managed somehow, and by Sunday when J got home we were all feeling like new money.  I can laugh about it now, but if you would have seen the texts flying between my friend Ginny and me you'd think we'd gone loco.  It's kind of hilarious now that I think about it.  I'd get a "man down...so-and-so's been hit" message every other minute.  It was like we were living in a war zone.  I knew it was bad when I had to be interviewed by the health department to try to help them find the common source.  J was convinced it had to be in the water...I'm not so sure he wasn't on to something!

I can't move on without reporting on this...no pun intended.  At school Towns has been doing a unit called From Farm to Me.  To round it out, they each had to pick something to research, do a project on it, and then present it to the class.  Thank goodness Towns chose "from cotton to t-shirt" as opposed to "from pig to bacon" or something of that nature that a couple of boys in the class really found interesting.  Not so much us!  She had the idea to act like she was a news reporter and present it as a news story.  So she wrote her script and we headed to a local cotton field to tape her doing her thing.  It totally cracked us up because she sounds so country in it.  She couldn't quit giggling as the tape was rolling...
As always, Mrs. Propst had her take questions from her "audience"...

Little did we know that would be the last day of school for a while for her...bless her heart!

Since we were feeling more like ourselves Sunday, we ventured out of the house for the first time in five days.  The wind was blowing like crazy and flying kites sounded like a superb idea.
The girls were loving it...

And so was our new pooch Charlie...
She absolutely had a fit over Cate's kite!
And J almost had a fit of another kind trying to get the blasted thing to fly...

We finally gave up and Buggy carried it around pretending it was her pet.  She's got an imagination like you wouldn't believe.
Charlie even got a chance to fly Towns' kite which was the only that worked...
She's such a good girl...

And she's happiest when J is holding her like a baby...

Anyway, it was all fine and good until J and I had another one of our great ideas that starts out sounding fun but usually ends up with someone hurt, crying, or both.  When flying the kites the normal way had become boring to them, we decided to let the kite go and see who could run the fastest to catch it.  We figured out the hard way that you need some weight on the end of it if the kids were going to run it down because the wind was blowing so hard and carrying it so fast.  All we had in J's car was a cheap orange  life jacket.  Perfect.  We had a trial run before we sent the kids after it...
Mind you, I've got a pretty massive zoom lens on my camera and they were a long way away.  All the way back they were getting instructions on what they needed to do...
They said they were ready.  So we let it go and off they went.  Right about then, the wind really picked up and they had to kick it up a notch.  They were literally trying to go faster than their little legs would possibly carry them.  I should have had my video camera...we could have won a cash prize on television.  Because they way they tangled up and did a face plant into the grass as the both tried to dive on it was almost more than I could take without tears rolling down my face.  All I could see was them hit the ground, Cate's legs straight in the hair, and then them scrambling to get up to blaze a trail again.  Only problem with that is that they weren't even close to catching it and all they could do is stand in the middle of the field and cry.  Not over the fact that they were covered in dirt and grass and their legs were beat up like crazy, but because the kite was a goner.  Meanwhile, this is what happened...
Please note the life jacket caught in the power lines on the left, and the kite flying high above the trees near the right.  It was so windy that the kite kept right on soaring even though it was hung up.  The kids were hysterical and telling us that we had the worst ideas ever.  That's when J grabbed a rod and reel (from when he took the girls fishing last week), hooked the life jacket and tried to reel it in.  Cue the cheers and them changing their tune to, "Daddy you're the best!"  It worked like a charm until the kite string broke, naturally.  Tears.  Again.

They went to buy a new kite today to try it all again.  J just called asking if I knew of anywhere they sold kites that would actually lift a kid off the ground.  I'm thinking it's time to intervene before it's not a life jacket, but one of our children caught up in the power lines!

Spring Break is in full effect here, and the fact that Towns' birthday is Thursday makes it even better.
I feel a fiesta coming on...

Fresh Beat Band Adventure

I feel that I have the civic duty to tell you this story
to make you feel really good about yourself at my expense...

The word "adventure" doesn't quite to do anything justice, actually.  Sunday's trip with my friend Lila to take our girls to see the Fresh Beat Band is one for the history books.  It probably would have been just fine had I not had the brilliant idea to put the girls' tickets in their stockings Christmas morning.  Because after that point in time, it's a mystery to me as to where they went.  And being that the show was months away and Christmas morning is always such a whirlwind, any thoughts about those tickets ended right there.  I realize that I'm the only person in America who would do such a ridiculous thing and that if I had my act together I would have immediately put them away in a safe spot.  But I didn't.  I'd sort of even forgotten about the concert until one day last week when Lila called and asked me if I remembered that it was coming up.  We worked out the details of who was driving, what time we'd meet, if we needed to eat dinner before or after, etc.  But never once did it hit me that I had no idea where I'd put our tickets.  Until Sunday afternoon at 1:55 (five minutes before she would be here to pick us up) when I put my hands on the FedEx envelope where I thought they were, opened it, and proceeded with a nervous breakdown at the sight of only seeing Lila's three tickets.  Our three tickets were missing.  Of course they were...I'd gotten them out at Christmas.

Typical.  So typical. 

We planned to leave three hours before the 5:00 show just to be on the safe side.  After sitting at the computer with Bethany and Lila standing over my shoulder trying to help me figure something out, an hour had passed.  I was a certified wreck.  We sent the girls to the backyard to play so they wouldn't get the idea that our big plans were pretty much ruined.  Disaster, let me tell you.  After being outside for an hour they were all hot, sweaty, dirty, and had put really dark, really permanent makeup on each other.  Finally, we realized that there was nothing I could accomplish by staring at the computer screen, so we told the kids we were leaving and both prayed we'd figure it out before we got to Nashville.  Before we pulled off J told me to calm down and that it wasn't a big deal - we could just buy more tickets when we got there.  Ticket scalpers?  At a Fresh Beat Band concert?!  Lord help us.  It only gets better.  Any time the two of us are together my side hurts from laughing so much and it's sure to end up being a good story.  It was no different on this little trip of ours.  Between Decatur and Nashville, I'd left three messages for a guy in New Jersey who I bought some of our tickets from (two separate transactions thanks to only being allowed to buy four at a time), emailed him five times, burned up a lot of minutes trying to talk Ticketmaster into working some sort of magic, and desperately tried to use hushed tones so the children wouldn't have any clue what was going on.  When New Jersey guy called me back I didn't answer with a "hello".  It went something like this, "hey listen, I know you think I'm psycho but I need your....hello?  Are you there?  Hellooooo?"  I think he all but thought I really was a psychopath and finally said, "um, yeah, I'm here."  He helped me...reluctantly.  I'm sure I would be a little reluctant if I had me on the other end of the line, too.  All the while Lila is in tears from laughing so hard.  After stopping at a Holiday Inn Express just inside the Nashville city limits, running in exclaiming that I had an emergency and needed to use a computer and printer stat, and making a total fool of myself (what else is new?), we had our tickets in hand and could breathe.  Finally.
If you know me, you're probably not surprised by any of this.

We found parking and booked it to get to the Ryman just in time...
The poor children were breaking a sweat seeing as how we had them running so hard.  Cate had on high heels because at the point in the day when she asked if she could wear them, it sounded like an ok idea.
Bless her...

It's sort of hard to run in high heels when you're four, but she handled it like a champ!

The irony of it all is that when we got to the door and handed over our handful of tickets, the 85 year old greeter didn't even bother to count how many of us were going in.  I could have handed him the three we started with and he would never have known the difference.  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.  Technically it wouldn't have been dishonest since I really had paid for all six of us to get in...right?! :)

It probably sounds as if we'd heaped child abuse and torture on the girls thus far.  I assure you that they were having a blast.  We could have simply driven them a few miles down the road, turned around and come home and they would have been happy.  They watched movies, made up songs, and giggled their little heads off all the way up I-65.  But nothing compares to finally being in our seats and watching them having so much fun with the Fresh Beat Band!  It was priceless...

Everything was so colorful and happy...pretty exciting stuff to four little girls (ok, ok...and their mamas, too)!
When they pulled this little move out of their hats I was wishing I was on stage with them...
I really think I missed my calling...back-up dancing surely should have been a degree at Auburn.

Throughout the whole ridiculous ordeal Lila kept saying that something amazing was going to come out of all this - like we'd end up getting front row seats or something fun like that.  Low and behold, right when we sat down she turned my attention two rows in front of us to Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.  I was a little starstruck, I'm not going to try to pretend I wasn't.  I immediately texted J and Bebs.  Of course B was totally intrigued while J asked me what the big deal about that was.  Men!  I was one of those people.  The kind who discreetly snaps iPhone pictures.  Lila put me in charge of that since I was closer.  I'm totally embarrassed by this now and refuse to show anyone the pictures I took of the two of them just trying to enjoy a concert with their daughter.  The nerve of people like me...

 We sang, we danced, and we had a ball...

It was so much fun to hear all of our favorite Fresh Beat songs in person...the girls couldn't believe that they were actually seeing the people that are "in the TV".  Cate has decided that she and Ella will be on TV with them soon.  She's pretty serious about it.  I think she'll be our child who moves to LA in hopes of making it one day...

When it was over (which was much too soon for us), we made our necessary purchases and took a quick group shot...
And since we didn't want the fun to end, we ventured down to Broadway and hopped in a carriage for a ride...
That picture tells the story of three girls who have been through the ringer.  I don't think I had a stitch of makeup left on my face, while I couldn't scrub my children's faces hard enough with baby wipes to get theirs off.  It wouldn't budge.  By the time we made it home at 10 o'clock Sunday night, they were in tears from being so tired and had mascara running down their sweet cheeks.
All four of them agreed that they'd had the best day ever.
Mission accomplished...in a round about way!
Sometimes I have to stop and wonder if I'd be bored out of my mind if I didn't get myself into messes like I did that day.  At any given moment there are a hundred different things I'm trying to keep up with, so I suppose it's par for the course!
One thing I do know for certain?  It's always an adventure.
And the truth is, I wouldn't really want it any other way.

Snag!

Towns has had a wiggly front tooth for a while.  Not wiggly enough according to her, though.  She wanted that thing out...and her lack of patience got the best of her Saturday when we were sitting on the front porch swing discussing it.  Little did I know this would be the last time I'd see her with her two front teeth...

 

Then she had an idea...

She just knew dental floss would do the trick.

That sounded better than my (sarcastic) suggestion of tying one end of a string to the door knob, the other to her tooth, and slamming the door shut like I tried when I was a kid.

So she got her daddy to see if he could loosen it up a little more for her...

His determination is like no other, and he managed to get it out while surprisingly leaving her jaw bone in tact...

His reasoning was that you can't halfway do it when you're pulling a tooth.

She said it didn't hurt at all, but I know I was cringing the entire time!

She was one proud little love...

We celebrated the tooth victory with a dip in the pool at a friend's birthday party...
Cate hung with Mary Reese...

I have to do a double take every time she flashes that snaggle tooth smile...

Sunday morning she came to my bedside crying because she said the tooth fairy took her tooth but didn't leave her anything.  After a little searching, we found her loot.  She must be a wild sleeper because her $10 bill had fallen behind her headboard.  She was all smiles after that.  One big toothless smile!

Finally a Little Monster!

After years of sitting at gymnastics watching Towns do her thing and wondering when it would be her turn, Cate finally got to start a gymnastics class of her own.  Cue the excitement!  She thought she was hot stuff.  That actually might be the understatement of the year, though!  And she only asked if it was time for her class, oh, maybe every five minutes for a solid week leading up to yesterday afternoon.  She was over the moon that we made it a family affair and all went to watch her.  That sweet baby had been waiting for that for a good, long time!

Such a momentous occasion had to be documented, naturally...

 Towns was playing the big sister part and showing her the ropes the whole time...

The first order of business was having fun in the foam pit before class started...

Usually you have to drag her out kicking and screaming, but when she heard it was time to warm up she was out in a flash...
She looked up at us constantly to make sure we saw every move she made!
And when we'd make eye contact, we'd get a huge grin and a wave...
We told her that she needed to play close attention to her teacher and follow directions.  Goodness, the girl was all business!  She hung onto every word the teacher said...
I'm not sure she even blinked for fear of missing something!
She nailed her front rolls...
Our homework is to work on cartwheels and handstands.  Towns tries so hard to help her.  She'll say, "look Cate, you just do this." Sounds easy enough, but the execution is the tricky part!

I have to stoop to bribery to get her to go to dance every week, but I have no doubt there will be no twisting her arm to get her to gymnastics.  I think we might have created a monster...no pun intended!

For the Love of Easter!

How many ways can you celebrate Easter?  I have 385 pictures on my camera if that's any indication!  There were Easter egg hunts galore, that's for sure.  Cate kicked it off with her Easter party at school last Wednesday...

Cate and Brock are two peas in a pod...

 

They stick together most of the time.  He's as sweet as they come, and they love each other like crazy.

This year she definitely had egg hunting down to a science.  She wasted no time getting on with it...

 

Last year she took her dear, sweet time and it made no difference to her if she didn't have the first egg in her basket. It was full speed ahead this time around, though...

 

 Jackpot!

From that day forward, it was nothing but an Easter blur...and we enjoyed every minute of it!

Towns had her class egg hunt on Thursday...

Mary Bibb, Emma and Towns waiting for "ready, set, go"...

Everyone in the class went in one direction, and Towns went in another...

 

The little sisters handled it all really well given the fact they weren't the ones hunting...
Cate mostly just told everyone where the eggs were that she'd helped hide...
Towns was proud of her basket full, but of course they bartered and traded with each other and divided them all out...

Someone in the class brought eggs that were bright colors and covered in peace signs.  Genius.  They were a hot commodity, and Cate was majorly pouting about her sister giving her a polka dot egg instead of the desired peace sign egg...

We had to snap out of that really quick before we made a trip to the car for a little chat.  One of the boys in the class ended up trading her for the one she wanted, so it was all fine in the end.  It was my job to make it clear that pouting wasn't the way to get what she wanted, though!
Precious friends...
Towns and Mrs. Propst...

Blondie loves that sweet lady!

We were out of school the next day for Good Friday.  I've always felt it odd that the day Jesus died on the cross is called "good".  The girls asked that very question Friday as we were talking about it.  I explained that the beauty of it is that what happened on Good Friday and then on Easter Sunday is nothing but good for sinners like us.  Amazing to think about!

Saturday was filled with fun and fellowship at the First Baptist Hide & Hunt.  We were there bright and early that morning to help set up for it, which was perfect for two little girls who love to run around and play at Mallard Stables.  They had a ball for a few hours and we probably could have called it a day after that.  But after a quick rest and wardrobe change, we headed back for the main event.  Cate was beyond thrilled that Ella was there...

They're so close, and they truly love each other to pieces!

When it was time for the egg hunt for their age group, they were hand in hand most of the time.  And when they'd bend down to pick up an egg, they'd give it to the other one to put in her basket...

While they hunted eggs, Towns' group had relay races...

She was glued to Madelyn the entire time...

This is when it would be fabulous to be able to be in two places at once.  J hung with Towns and I stayed with Cate so I have no more pictures of Towns.  Sad!  The little ones had story time with Miss Sara where she told the Easter story with a butterfly illustration.  Each color on the butterfly had a different meaning...

While they were listening to their story, Mrs. Kristy was telling the same one to the older kids.  When they were done, everyone got real butterflies to release at the same time.  A symbol of new life and a new beginning...

Although Buggy wasn't too sure that her butterfly was still living.  She was right.  But we traded it in for one that was alive and then she was good to go!
After that, we had fun on the zip line until it was time to wrap it up...

We'd been letting her all but fly down at mock speed until we sort of got in trouble and they sent a member of the youth group over to supervise us adults.  She walked with the kids the whole way down instead of letting them go fast, and you can see on Cate's face that she wasn't thrilled about it...

She doesn't hide her emotions very well!
After a family photo op, the girls went with the Tourneys to another egg hunt and came home as happy as two kids could possibly be...
They were exhausted that night and ever so ready for Easter morning, so getting them to bed was a breeze!

They had baskets full of fun goodies waiting on them Sunday morning...
You can't see it in the picture, but the Easter Bunny left a trail of paw prints.  Towns is always so excited about that, but Cate paused for .5 seconds before she said, "hmmm, looks like sidewalk chalk to me."  Nice.  Can't fool the four year old!
The only thing missing from all this is Bethany.  Of course she had a basket waiting on her when she got home from her mom's that night, but she flies through it so fast there's hardly any room for pictures...
I wish I could Photoshop her in all the rest of these!

The girls were dying to get to the front door that morning.  It's always fun watching them figure out which basket is theirs...



We were dressed and ready for church early (which never happens), so you can only imagine what was on the agenda...
 

Naturally...


Buggy took her princess skates out of their bag, replaced them with a recipe box, and she was ready to roll...

And I didn't even try to stop her.
Putting flowers on the cross in front of our church is one of our favorite Easter traditions...


We found our friend Ridge while we were there...

Sweet girls...







The rest of the afternoon was spent in the backyard under an oak tree...

 

It just doesn't get much better than that!  It was the perfect way to end a wonderful Easter Sunday.

"Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.  This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time."

1st Peter 1:3-6

The Lord is risen, He is risen indeed!