Dressed-Up, Lucy's First Violin Lesson, Turkey

Sunday! As you know, that means the girlies are going to get dressed-up. But this Sunday, for the first time in almost NINE months, we got dressed up and went to church! It was good, but I think I have come to really like home church. I feel like the girls probably get more from it, but maybe that's just because I make a better and more concerted effort to teach them when I know it's all on me. And yes, I know, I should be teaching them like that whether or not we have church to go to. 

But before church, we went to our neighbors and fed their cat! Oh boy, oh boy. The girlies loved the cat and are so looking forward to when Emma is twelve years old. We told Emma that when she was 12 we could think about getting a pet. We also told her it would probably be something like a fish. Just don't want her getting her hopes too high. 

Here's our after-church picture. It was the babies' first time to get dressed up and have anybody other than us see them!

Me and the happy babes.

I like this shot Dallas got of Mabel. 

Here's both baby girlies!

They kept rolling over so we decided we would bag the back and just get them on their tummies. :)

ALL the girls playing the violin. It's a little chaotic because Lucy just runs her bow back and forth on her violin. I've been asking Dallas when he would start Lucy on the violin and he keeps saying he doesn't think she is ready. I push back because Dallas started with Alice when she was younger than Lucy currently is and also because Lucy always wants to play like she sees her sisters playing. Dallas points out that Lucy wants to play but she doesn't want to listen to Dallas. Anyway, today he asked her if she wanted to actually start lessons and she said, "yes". 

We made it official and got out the foot chart and Dallas started teaching her about how to hold the bow. It might be tougher for Lucy because she sees her sisters already playing so she wants to play (and Alice keeps trying to teach her songs) but we keep reminding the girls that it takes a LONG time before you are ready to play songs. Emma and Alice don't remember but they spent a LOT of time learning how to stand, how to hold the bow, clapping rhythms, etc. before they even got close to playing songs. 

After violin practice, we made turkeys! That was a goal we'd made this week - to do ONE craft. I love the idea of doing crafts with my kids, but I rarely rarely rarely rarely RARELY make it happen. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've done a craft with them. Anyway, their friend made a turkey craft this past week and we figured that would be fun and do-able. So here we are crafting away.

As you can see, our fridge is filling up. All the things you see on here are things Emma and Alice have either done at school or crafts that friends have helped us with.

Sometimes I think we aren't using these swings very much and that maybe we can get rid of them. But then I look through our pictures and realize the babies use these way more than I thought! So, we are grateful for the swings. But I am also excited for when I can pass some of this baby stuff on :)

Lucy is such a good mommy to all her baby dolls (she is also super good with the real babies :). Here she is after "nursing" her baby. Sometimes I'll be doing something and she'll bring me one of her baby dolls to hold and take care of so she can go and get something else done. Haha. It's especially funny when I'm already holding the twins and then Lucy passes me her plethora of babies to care for as well.

Selfie of me and Olive. Mabel must have been sleeping or hanging out with Dallas. Probably sleeping though. Right now the babes are rocking the sleep at different times.

The finished product! The picture isn't close enough, but if you could get right up next to their turkeys, you will see that they made them "girl" turkeys. Alice did it first - by coloring long yellow hair on her turkeys head and then adding eyelashes and necklaces. Emma tells Alice she makes everything a girl. Which is true :)