Happy Birthday Claire!

This cute girl turned SIX years old yesterday.

My, oh my, how I adore Claire.  She is so sweet and kind.  I had a primary teacher tell me that in primary the other day, Brielle was called up to help with something.  This teacher happened to see Claire at that moment, and Claire was BEAMING and clapping her hands mouthing "That's my sister!  Yeah Brielle!".  She said it was so incredibly sweet to her that Claire was so excited for her sister.

That is just so Claire.  She has the biggest heart.

 She also has a really big personality and makes the best faces. 

We celebrated Claire's birthday with family having cake and ice cream.

The kids rode the wiggle cars down a hill, across the basketball court and down another hill in my parent's yard.

Then jammed out with a karaoke party on Claire's new karaoke machine.

It was a great day celebrating a great girl.

We are beyond blessed to have her in our family!

Happy Birthday Claire!

Made up memory: Off the Baby!

 For 3 1/2 years, Aspen and Ben were in sibling bliss.  They had mom and dad wrapped around their fingers, and were living a full and beautiful life.  They had formed an unbreakable bond, and were the very best of friends.  There was no room for another person in their lives.

Then I arrived.

And as cute as I was, Ben was not amused.

In his mind, I was here to compete for the attention of our parents, as well as possibly weaseling into his perfect friendship with Aspen.  He did not want to be left watching from the sidelines.

I believe Ben and Aspen quickly began plotting how to get rid of this new baby in their lives.  You can see in the picture below that the wheels in their heads are spinning, trying to come up with ideas of how they were going to finally be free of this new offspring. 

"Hmm...what happens if I poke her in the head like this?" Aspen says.  "Yeah, try it!" Ben agrees.

Some of the things I KNOW they tried included:

-Feeding me a booger

-Smashing my finger in a door
-Putting me on top of a big tractor tire in the back yard, hoping I would fall to my demise

After almost 2 years of doing all I could to win them over, I think they finally accepted me.

Then Emily came into the scene.
Our only option then, was to try and run away...

We didn't get very far.

And eventually Emily wiggled her way into our stone cold hearts as well.

But not before Aspen and Ben tried offing her too...with possibly a little help from me.

But nobody can prove it.

Ready for school

Molly recently discovered wearing a backpack.

One morning as the older girls were getting ready for school, Molly found an extra backpack and had me put it on her.  She then carried Brielle's lunchbox with her and stood at the front door looking out the windows as her sisters left.  She walked around jabbering by the door for a good 15 minutes, all ready to go to school with the girls.

She is so dang cute!

(If I do say so myself.)

Giving herself kisses

There is a picture of me from when we got married where I'm looking out a window, quite similar to this.  If only it weren't in storage I'd do a side by side comparison...:)

This girl just brings so much joy into our lives.  Such a happy, smiley, sweet baby girl.  We're definitely lucky to have her!

Made up memory: The lone brother

Ben, me, Aspen

I'm sure being the only boy with three sisters had it's good and bad moments.

Some times it really worked to his advantage.  He was the king of the castle and our one and only brother, the boy that was sent to our family to try and keep us girls under control.  But I also imagine at times he probably felt like fitting in was a little hard.

He would suggest playing cowboys and Indians  rolling in the mud, climbing the trees and throwing snow balls at passing cars.

We would refuse and instead tell him we wanted to play Barbies, or house and that he had to be the dad, the horse or the dog.

But Ben never played along begrudgingly, he always jumped right into our fun, taking it to the next level.  While we were playing merry homemaker, he was the bad cowboy coming to steal our babies and eat our pies.  While we were playing fancy dress up Barbies, he was the local wagon builder using his constructs to make covered wagons to help our fashion star Barbies cross the plains, as well as the local horse trainer and wagon driver who would then help get us safely to our destination.  Where we wanted to pretend to be pioneers in the back yard, he got out the saw horses, threw blankets and ropes on them and turned them into our REAL horses.  When we would pretend a giant boulder was our tree house, Ben found scrap wood, nails and a hammer and went to work making a REAL tree house for us.

Ben made our lives full of fun and laughter (and a huge amount of teasing).  

He loved high adventure and let us tag along.

He never once complained about having all sisters (that I heard) or wished he had a brother.

And really, looking back, why would he?  

He had it made.