No Naps

This is a picture of what happens when Miller does not take a nap.  They both get a little carried away.  It is hard to really see the extent of the mess because I figured I could not really get them to believe me that this situation was not ok if I kept laughing and taking pictures.  What you cannot tell in this picture is right before they spilled the popcorn, Ella and Miller crushed all the popcorn into tiny pieces.  As they were in the kitchen crushing the popcorn, I knew it was a bad idea, but they were having so much fun together that I did not have the heart to stop them. During the 20 minutes it took me to clean it all up I was really regretting my decision not to stop them.  

Teddy Bear Picnic, Yard Work and Soccer

Not a great post title, but that best sums up our last two days.  And a great two days they have been!  Yesterday was Miller's school program.  If you remember Miller's fall program, he sang as loud as he could/yelled all the songs (he was the only one yelling).  So, we did not know what to expect.  He has been very excited about his program.  He had to take his teddy bear to school a couple of weeks ago to practice with and I don't know if he was excited that we were coming to his program or that he finally got to bring Cooper home.  We held our breath as Miller started, wondering what Miller would do.  There was no yelling this time.  However he did keep us in stitches.  He started out so sweet, singing all the words and doing all the motions.

However, this is how he spent the majority of his performance, finger up his nose, digging away.  The digging (and flicking) did not hinder his singing though, he sang every word to every song.

 Here is how Sara Wells passed the time during the performance.

After the program we had our own picnic.  Miller was so excited to have Mommy and Daddy eat lunch with him at school and felt so proud that Ella came to his performance.

One thing that is true about the Lee Household is that there are always projects to be complete.  And the Lee kids are always ready to help!  Today is the first time Sara Wells helped in the project.  She was right there with Miller and Ella all morning (2 hours!).  The Lee kids love to help their Daddy work outside.  Today's project was to backfill the brick wall by the fire pit.  Miller, especially, loved digging with the big shovel just like Daddy.

And big news for Ella, today was her first Soccer game!  I was really afraid that it was going to get canceled because of the rain, but the rain held off until right after Ella's game.  Ella has been waiting for this day for weeks.

Here is Ella at her first team meeting.  She did great for her first time ever playing.  Murray had to remind me that I am not her coach as I was yelling out pointers from the sidelines.  We spent most of the time dying laughing.  Every now and then a star (always a boy) would emerge from the herd with the soccer ball and run down the field and score.  But most of the game was a big group of kids running up and down the field not really sure of what they were doing or why.  Looking back at my pictures, I did not capture the game very well.  Hopefully next week I will do better.  A mental picture I will always have is Ella running up the field looking at Murray and me with the biggest smile on her face.  She was so proud of herself and so happy to be playing.  As we were watching Ella play, we realized that we had entered into a new phase of life.  Our weekends are no longer our own, we will now be making our plans around game schedules.

Sneak Peak

I have been sewing some, not nearly as much as I need to and definitely not the things I need to be sewing.  I really need to be making Miller shorts because he has been wearing his shorts from last summer and he looks like a fraternity boy with short shorts.  Anyways, here are a few fun things I have made.

This first outfit I actually made a few weeks ago before it got warm and I did not feel the urgency to sew for Miller.  I made this for Sara Well's best friend Baby B.  I have to admit it was very hard to give away.  I think this may be one of my favorite things I have made.  Hopefully I will get around to making one for Sara Wells (doubtful, but maybe).

I just made this outfit for Ella the other day.  I should have been doing something else, but I have been wanting to make this skirt since last summer and I found the perfect fabric on my most recent trip to Joann's.  The skirt is from the Oliver & S blog (if you don't know about Oliver & S patterns you must visit this site, the patterns are the sweet, simple and so cute!).  Here is the FREE pattern for the Lazy Days Skirt.  It is so easy!  Selvage to Selvage.  And so cute!  And since Ella's proclamation that she does not want to wear a plain white t-shirt, it has to have something on it, I knew I needed to make her a t-shirt to go with the skirt if I actually wanted her to wear the skirt.  I used the same ribbon that I used for the hem of the skirt to make the flowers and just gathered the ribbon just like you would gather fabric.

Confessions

1.  I LOVE cars where the kids cannot touch.  We made our first trip to the lake since Thanksgiving for the second half of spring break.  When we go to the lake we have to take Murray's truck so that Sage does not stink us out of my car.  And this is how we travel.  They look thrilled don't they?  Right now they look so calm.  Don't be fooled.  There is usually lots of touching that usually leads to fighting.  At least the lake is only  1 1/2 hours away!

 2.  We had a great time at the lake, but I was very lazy and did not take my camera out until Friday.  So sad, not many pictures.   But we had a great time!  Lots of golf cart rides, fishing, ice cream and chocolate cake!

 3.  This little boy just melts my heart!

 4.  Ella might become the next ultimate frisbee champ.   It definitely will not be long before she has better accuracy than me (not saying too much).

 5.  I have a love hate relationship with day light savings.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that it stays light longer.  We have the best afternoons playing outside.  I hate that I have to leave the fun and go inside to fix dinner.  Sometimes I just don't go in.  Like tonight for example, I did not really know what time it was, however I knew I should be going in to at least see if we had anything to eat.  But I did not.  I don't really know what time I came in.  I do know that I did not put the chicken in the oven until 6:24 and we did not sit down to eat until 7:00!  Somehow the kids made it (7:00 is when Sara Wells goes to bed).  I am definitely going to have to get better at time management.  Here are Miller and Sara Wells almost losing it while I am getting dinner to the table.

Weekend Fun

I must apologize.  I have not been the best blogger lately.  I have entered into sewing season and on top of that, I decided to smock the girl's Easter dresses.  I do hope to be better, but for the next few weeks, I will be pretty busy and any free/blogging time will be spent smocking!  With that said, we have had a great weekend!  Friday morning our weekend started out with no plans.  Murray found out that Wellon and Stephen were planning on being in Birmingham heading out of town for the beach Saturday morning.  EG and Papa might be holding a little bit of a grudge against us, because Wellon, Stephen, Chloe and Fitz spent the night with us!  Murray and I loved it because we have not gotten that much concentrated time with Chloe and Fitz since last summer (when they were tiny and taking naps every thirty minutes).  And no surprise, Ella and Miller were thrilled about the impromptu spend the night party with their cousins. 

Friday night EG and Papa came over and we all had dinner together.  To say that EG loves chocolate is and understatement.  True test of a choc-aholic: you run over your brownies with your car and still eat them for dessert (in her defense, the aluminum foil did not even crack, and the brownies were very good!).

A couple of weeks ago I briefly mentioned that Ella is going to play soccer.  Sadly her first game was canceled because of the weather.   Well, yesterday our beautiful spring weather returned.  At the end of one of the streets in our neighbor is a huge new soccer/lacrose complex.  Since we moved in we have talked about how great it will be when we can take our kids there to run around and play.  With the return of beautiful weather, we thought today would be the perfect day to take the kids to the field and let Ella practice soccer since she has been so excited about playing.  The minute we told her we were leaving to go play soccer, she went into her bedroom and put on her entire soccer uniform (except the socks bc they are too big for me!  Hopefully Academy sells bright orange soccer socks).  Well, when Ella put on her soccer jersey, Miller was determined to put on his jersey too.  This is the outfit that Miller decided would be perfect for practicing soccer.  Cowboy Hat, Superman Cape, Spiderman Gloves and Heisman Trophy Winner Jersey.  Who wouldn't want all that superpower when playing sports?  Makes perfect sense to me:)

Ella in her uniform

Miller in his uniform

Even Sara Wells had a blast at the soccer field.  I love this picture because you can see her big belly poking out.  

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

Happenings

After waiting and waiting for all of Ella's hair to grow out and get the same length, I made the decision if we had another girl, I would cut her hair earlier so that it would not take sooo long to get it all the same length.  That decision was much easier to make than to carry out.  I don't know why the first hair cut is so hard, but it is.  Sara Wells has been sporting a nice mullet for some time now.  The day came where I finally carried out my decision.  Sara Wells loved it because it was her first sucker.  I barely cut any off, but I just wanted to start out the evening up process.

Look at the drool on that big ole belly!

The finished product:  I think she likes it:)

In other happenings, all the sudden it got COLD!  Sunday afternoon when we got home from church I just could not get warm.  Any time I get chilled to the bone, I can only think of hot chocolate.  I knew we did not have any hot chocolate mix in the pantry, but we did have cocoa!  We had a few friends over and I guess the cold brought everyone's inner child out.  I started out making one cup of hot chocolate and ended up making 9 cups!  I love this picture of Ella, she is amazed at how the cocoa instantly turned the milk into chocolate.  As you might guess, Ella loved making, passing out and drinking the hot chocolate!

I know I have said it before, the Lee children love TV!  I think they would watch tv all day long if I would let them.  I tend to take advantage of their tv obsession around meal times when I can take the whining no longer.  Sara Wells, however, has not yet discovered her love for television (she is a Lee, I know it is coming).  It would be especially helpful if she would at least watch Barney while I got dinner ready.  So tonight when I saw this I was thrilled!  And then I realized just how sweet this moment was.  Can you tell they are sisters?

Mission Conference

Ella has been coming to Big Church with me for almost a year now.  If you sit close to us, it might be hard to tell that she has been doing it for almost a year because she has not yet learned how to sit quietly.   Almost every week Ella has at least one good one-liner that she says loud enough for the people around us to hear.  Last week as one of the other pastors prayed for Murray as he was about to preach, Ella turned to me and said, "but Mommy, I want you to preach."  The people around us definitely got a big kick out of that!

This past weekend was the Cahaba Park's Mission Conference.  I love to attend Mission Conferences because I feel like I get a little glimpse of what God is doing around the world.  I can get so caught up in my everyday life and the petty worries (that often turn into huge worries and should not!) that I tend to forget what is really going on in this world.  We really are in a battle fighting for Our Lord.  These Mission Conferences help remind me of the big picture of how God is at work here in the world.  Every time I attend a Mission Conference I always feel like I should be doing more or like I should go out there with the missionaries on the field (although, I am confident that as of now that is not where the Lord has called us).  Near the beginning of the service Murray asked that all of the missionaries come forward as he called their name.  As Murray began this process, Ella looked at me so excited and said, "Mommy, you are a missionary, you tell people about God."  My first instinct was to tell her to be quiet, but her sweet excitement really stuck with me.  We are all missionaries.  God may not have called us to Africa or Ireland, but God has called us all to be his ambassador where we are.  He has called all believers to spread the message of His love for us, that He loved us so much that He sent His ONLY son to die for my sins so that I could spend eternity in heaven with Him.  Here in the states, overall life is pretty easy and it is pretty easy to be a Christian.  Because of that we tend to forget the urgency of the Gospel.  But, every believer has been called to be a missionary.  We are all on the battle field for Christ!  I definitely need to remind myself this daily and live in light of this.

One of Those Days

Have you ever had just "one of those days?"  Well, my past two days have been that way.  It started out showing up to Wal-mart with Miller and Sara Wells realizing I left my grocery list on the kitchen counter.  Surprising enough, I did pretty good getting almost everything on my list EXCEPT for a few key ingredients for a cake that I was making.  When I am baking (especially with little helpers) I try to pull out all of the ingredients before I get started.  I pulled out the sugar and continued to hold it instead of putting it on the counter to check the next ingredient I needed to pull out.  As I was standing there I felt something funny on my foot.  Looking down, I realized the bag of sugar had a hole in it and it was pouring out (literally, there was a mound beside my foot).  As I looked back where I had walked, there was a huge trail of sugar.  As I mentioned, because I forgot my grocery list, I had to make a few substitutions for my cake, instead of buttermilk I had to use whole milk.  And instead of shortening, I used butter.  I still felt like it would be ok.  When I pulled the cakes out my confidence starting slipping, but I kept my fingers crossed.  When we took the first bite, I knew there was something major wrong besides the substitutions.  Thinking back, I realized I left out the Baking Soda!  I tell you what, baking soda makes a big difference.  Thank goodness the kids did not mind.  It was VERY indicative of my day.  I woke up the next morning feeling confident that my "bad day" was over.  I realized it might not be the case when I stood up and felt the tie of my shirt dripping from toilet!  It just kept on and on!

THANK GOODNESS today was better!  I cannot think of anything major that went wrong today.  As many of you know, our house has been major project after major project.  The one thing that we just have not gotten to was our mailbox.  It was absolutely horrible!  Rotten wood, faded (almost all gray) and leaning.  I got inspired to finally do something about it when I saw my friend Sara's post about spray painting her mailbox (A Walk Through ).  We have spent the last two afternoons working on it.  No final pictures yet, the cement is still drying and Murray is trying to convince me to paint the posts.  We will see...

Of course the kids loved helping Daddy!

This is trust, holding the chisel while Daddy hammers.  I don't know that I could even do that without squeezing my eyes very tight.

I tried and tried to get a good picture of Sara Wells.  She was loving being outside today.  Running (well, not quite but running for her) laughing and loving it!  But she would not let me get a picture.

I just cannot get over how cute she looks in that little short dress!  And yes, Ella is in soccer cleats.  Ella's first soccer game is on Saturday.  Yesterday we got her cleats and shin guards.  She kept them both on all day yesterday.  She really really wanted to wear her cleats to school today, but I would not let her.  The first thing she did when we got home was take off her boots and put on her soccer cleats.    Her  cleats are very broken in for her first game.  

And for those of you out there having "one of those days," here is a easy crock pot recipe that the kids will love.  It is not gourmet, but who can do gourmet every night?  Sometimes we just need something easy where we don't have to think!

Creamy Crock Pot Chicken

4-6 chicken breast

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 package cream cheese (8 oz)

1 cup white wine

1 package of Zesty Italian Dressing mix

Salt and Pepper the chicken.  Place chicken in crock pot.  Whisk together the rest of the ingredients (warm up cream cheese in microwave).  You will not get all the lumps out, but try to get the big ones out.  Pour over chicken.  Cook on low for 6 hours.  Serve over rice.  Good, quick weeknight meal.