Thinking Tongue, Ruffled Socks, Feeding Babies

Emma has been so excited to learn the piano since the beginning of this year. I have not been as great about teaching her but this past week we decided that I would work on piano with them before breakfast - because otherwise it just doesn't happen. Anyway, today was day four of practicing piano before breakfast and it has gone great. Initially it was just Emma who really wanted to learn piano, but Alice soon followed suit. I am amazed by their motivation and enthusiasm to learn. I wish it could say it came from me but honestly, if they did not ask and remind me everyday, it would not happen. Here is a pic of Emma playing. I have videos of her and Alice but they haven't downloaded yet, so hopefully I'll remember and add them later. 

I love that Emma sticks out her tongue when she is concentrating - just like me!

Here are Alice and Lucy getting ready to go run with me. Alice made sure her socks were on the outside of her pants so you could see the ruffles because "it's fun when you can see the ruffles, right, mom?"

And here are our sleeping angel babies. Somedays they are just perfect and fall asleep at the same time and sleep for like three hours. It def doesn't happen everyday, but it's pretty cool when it does. :)

Dallas taking Lucy and Alice on a "daddy-date" to pick up some baby food and pie making supplies at Food Lion. He is having a tough time deciding what kind of pie to make this week...maybe coconut or pear or blueberry...

Dallas has been counting down the days to when he can feed the babies real food and today was the day! Lucy was also super excited and of course, Emma and Alice wanted a chance to feed them too. But it was bed time so they will have tomorrow and plenty of other days to feed them.

Mabel: Aa! Olive! Are you actually eating that?!

Olive: Mm yes. This is finger-lickin' good.
Mabel: Um okay...I guess I'll try it?

Mabel: No, I can't bear to watch this. Wait a second...does that say peach? 

Mabel: Haha! It does! 
Olive meanwhile is chomping down the green beans like a champ

Lucy: Here Mabel, let me help you out.

Bedtime for these happy babes! After their scrumptious green bean and sweet potato meal, washed down by some mommy's milk, they were all smiles and giggles in their crib. Once again, super cute video that isn't downloadable yet so hopefully I'll remember to add it tomorrow :)

Sore, Violin, and Ten Kids

It's late and I don't remember the great ideas for what I was going to talk about today. But looking at these pictures reminds me that I felt super sore on my run today. I ran eight miles but I didn't even go fast and I generally do 4-7 miles a day and hopefully a 10 miler at some point in the week, so eight miles shouldn't be a big deal. I am pretty sure I am sore because Dallas and I have started to strength train. We have started out doing some pretty piddly stuff but for how sore I am, it is obvious I have zero muscles. 

Anyway, I got home from my run and stretched for the first time since high school...and I hardly stretched back then. Alice and Lucy thought it looked like fun so they joined me. Emma was inside practicing her violin with Dallas while we stretched. I love seeing the girls practice with Dallas. He is a patient and dedicated teacher.

Tonight we had ten kids under the age of eight! We do a little switch-a-roo with some friends so we can go on dates without breaking the bank for babysitters. Anyway, it might sound like a lot of little kids but it is actually easy peasy because they get together and are angel children. It was so quiet I kept thinking we were missing someone but they were all just playing happily. I took a video so you would believe me. If you look carefully you will count nine children - I am holding one of the twins so you can't see her.

 

Conference Thoughts

 Today while I was running I realized I didn't say anything about conference. Honestly, I don't have as many thoughts as I used to...but I don't think that's conference's fault. It's more like I am not paying as much attention as I used to. The times I got the most out of conference this time around was when I was outside pushing the babies in the stroller and listening to conference on my phone. 

Here's some pics from in between conference sessions when we went walking outside.

Alice ALWAYS gets dressed up for General Conference and Sundays :)

Anyway, one thought I had today while I was running was that I should make social, physical, intellectual, and spiritual goals like the church has encouraged the youth to do. Maybe my physical goal would be using fitness pal like Dallas has (food is usually my greatest weakness...I can get myself to run no problem, but being aware of what and how much I'm eating is definitely something I could work on - also drinking more water). Maybe my intellectual goal could be reading 15 min/day or I guess piano could be intellectual? I will probably stick to something basic like scripture study for my spiritual goal...or maybe daily devotionals. That might be better at helping me take time to think, ponder, pray, instead of just whipping through the scriptures really fast. And lastly, social. I so want to be someone who thinks about others and serves. It definitely does not come to me naturally. I think about myself and my children...and that's about it. But I would really like to change that. So maybe one service/day. That could be calling or visiting someone, taking food to people, or looking up some legit service on justserve.org or something like that. 

Well, I guess I still didn't really say a lot about conference. But those were some of my thoughts while I was running today and those thoughts CAME from watching conference, so that counts, right? Also, today I ran while pushing Alice and Lucy. They really love coming running with me and while the weather is nice and Dallas is home and able to watch the other girls, I feel like I should take advantage of this opportunity. When I am just running by myself, I usually listen to podcasts. Currently I mostly listen to American HistoryTellers. I started to listen to my podcast today and then thought, "What am I doing? I have my girls with me! I should be spending time with them!" So I turned off the podcast and we listened to music and talked and looked for bunnies and squirrels and red, pink, and yellow leaves. I really do love running with my girls. I could spend a lot of time talking about that and maybe I will in a different post later on. 

Here's some pics of my running buddies after we got home from running. They were teaching the babies how to play with princesses. Which was adorable. 

Also! Emma ran into a friend from school today! This was especially exciting since school is virtual and she has only seen her friends on the computer and today we realized one of them lives RIGHT NEXT TO US! Emma was SO excited and has been talking about it ever since and cannot WAIT to play with her tomorrow. It is fun to see Emma growing up and being excited about spending time with friends. Tonight, after we put the kids to bed we heard Emma singing, "Pop-si-co" to her sisters. She had Alice and Lucy singing it with her and it was super cute. I love that our girls are so sweet and love each other so much.

The girlies painted rocks that Hannah and Preston gave them. They have been asking to do this for several days and were so glad to finally paint them today!

Playing the Piano

Dallas is doing so great with all his goals lately and this Sunday he really helped us all nail down some goals during family council (another thing he has started doing consistently...I think it started the same week he started doing pies). Anyway, I told Dallas I would do everything he was doing except instead of Chinese, I would do piano and instead of Duolingo, I would read the scriptures. 

Playing the piano today was actually really fun. I said I would just do 15 minutes, but I ended up playing almost an hour and could have kept going but knew I should get other stuff done. I bought a FROZEN piano book when the twins were born because I figured the girls would be more excited about me practicing the piano if I was playing songs they loved. And if the girls were more excited, I would be more excited too. But I haven't really played it until now. Anyway, it was great and I am super excited to get these songs down perfectly so the girls can sing along with me and I hopefully won't miss a beat. :)

I don't have any pics of me playing the piano, but here's some more cute pics of the girls reading together this morning. 

And here are some pics of them reading together tonight. I loved hearing Emma read to the girls tonight and hearing Alice and Lucy read to the babies this morning. :)

 

Teeth, Shopping, Conference, Bike Ride

Emma lost her fourth tooth today! She stayed up late (til almost 9:30 - she's usually asleep by 8 or 8:30) last night wiggling it. She was so funny. I kept coming up there to check on her and each time she was still awake, wiggling her tooth. Then first thing this morning she ran in and told Dallas she'd lost her tooth! After that the girls and I went to our neighborhood yard sale. I had a hard time seeing anything because I didn't have my contacts and trying to see with a face mask and glasses is almost impossible - your glasses just keep getting all fogged up. But it was still fun to get out! We bought a christmas tree topper for a dollar and a board book for a quarter and four donuts for three bucks...wanted to end on a sweet note. :) 

Dallas made his crust last night and this morning he began working on the strawberry rhubarb filling. I thought I needed to go to Costco for my contacts and figured I'd pick up some other things while there. I planned to bring the babies with me, but then Lucy and Emma also wanted to come - so we all went! Minus Alice and Dallas - Dallas needed to finish his pie and Alice wanted to help. This is the picture I took right before we left.

We first stopped at Burlington Coat Factory - I was hoping I might find something great, but no luck. I mean, other than this unicorn that Emma insisted we NEEDED, but I didn't fall for it. :)

Then we hurried to Costco. I love this video of Lucy shaking her hair all over the place. She loves doing this. And the babies are generally pretty great sports about going shopping. I push them in the stroller and pull the cart behind me. We make a pretty sweet train. 

We had to hustle home in time for General Conference. We were a few minutes late. When we got inside, Alice and Dallas were downstairs watching it, with a delicious pie waiting for all of us upstairs. 

In between conference sessions, Dallas decided to go on his first and prob only bike ride of the season. As you can see from this video, it's been a while since he's ridden a bike. Hehehe.

For the second session of conference, I mostly pushed the babies around in the stroller while listening on the phone. That was awesome. I think I want to do that for all future sessions. It was beautiful outside, I got a bit of exercise/didn't fall asleep while listening to conference in our basement (we turn off all the lights to be able to watch on our projector and that is super conducive to putting me to sleep...), babies were happy, etc. I wanted to go on a legit walk - not just around in circles, but the girls really loved seeing me come around each time so I did loops and stuck close to home. 

After conference, it was pie time! I love this pic of Emma proudly displaying the pie as if she made it all by herself. :) And then I couldn't pick a favorite of all three...so here's a whole slew of photos of cute babes and a strawberry rhubarb pie.

This is a selfie Emma took while waiting for Dallas to come out so she could get a pic of him on his bike. I love when the kids take selfies. It just makes me laugh :)

Morning Routine, More Books, Happy Babies

I really love having a clean house before we go down to breakfast. Well, at least clean bedrooms. It is the one thing I have tried to stick to - morning jobs happen before breakfast (beds made, dressed, and bedrooms clean). On this day everyone was pretty happy and the babies were showing off their flipping to their tummy skills. Dallas threw a koosh ball in front of them to see which baby could get to it first. The girls thought this was pretty funny. :)

We have gotten a lot of new books lately and it has been so fun having something new to read. 

Dallas reading his kindle while chilling with the babies - he has been so good about reading over these last few months. 

Breakfast with all the babes. Olive and Mabel have started sitting in their bumbos in just the last week and that has been super fun. They also love to hold their own hands and we think it it so cute. 

Olive and Mabel are SO happy when they wake up. We all love it. 

And here they are holding hands with each other. I had just finished nursing them. 

 

Morning Reading

We have been blessed with babes that love waking up early...from the day they were born. All of them. It is actually pretty sweet. However, sometimes Dallas and I aren't quite ready to get up, so we have trained the girls to read books in our closet while they wait for us to wake up. 

Here is a picture of Emma, Alice, and Mabel reading books in our closet this morning. Lucy was taking care of Olive in her crib - which is also pretty sweet. However, we are trying to train Lucy not to jump into the cribs anymore. Just to be safe.  

Lucy LOVES taking care of the babies. Emma and Alice do too, but Lucy is especially always concerned and aware of the babies. She has two baby dolls that she also likes to carry around and she has named them Olive and Mabel.  Every time she hears the babies crying she runs to find them and says, "Baby crying!" We love all our girls and how much they love each other.