WEEKEND IN PICTURES

I have quite a few pictures from this past weekend so this will mainly be pictures. It was really a great weekend full of spending quality time with all my kiddos + 1. Bethany brought her friend Madeline to share the weekend with us. She is such a sweetheart, and I'm so glad Bethany has found a good friend. Country Girl (Mad's nickname) has three younger brothers just like B so naturally she was great with the boys. They fell in love with her the minute they met her. I knew when she came downstairs in her sleepy pants and a Browning shirt we were going to get along really well. :)

B and Country Girl:

We let the girls sleep in a bit Saturday morning, and boy was it a daunting task keeping the boys from going upstairs to wake the girls. The other day Tara reminded me of these (I remember loving these as a kid and can't believe I haven't thought about doing them before now), so this is how I kept them busy:

They had just gotten up. I love their sleepy faces!

Except Reid who got up with the chickens. :)

Shrinky Dinks - what can I say. They amazed the boys and still amaze me!

When the girls got up we decided to head to the mall so we could take the boys to Build-A-Bear since they've never been, and the girls needed to make a stop at the MAC counter. Once we got to Build-A-Bear the girls decided they wanted one too. :) I absolutely loved the fact that in the course of a weekend Bethany acted more like a teenager than ever - listening to music, taking way too long to get ready, talks of boy drama the whole weekend, etc. (all of which I LOVED and thankfully am still a part of) - yet she and Country Girl both seemed to enjoy building their bears and were more excited about the whole process than the boys. Precious and priceless!

Picking out our bears:

They had a camo bear - PERFECT!

Mac originally picked this out but switched at the last minute when he realized Country Girl was getting a camo bear too :)

Hmmm... so many choices. What. To. Pick?

Then it was time to pick out a heart, give it magic and make it strong (yep, the girlies even participated in this part):

Make a wish:

Meet our bears.

There's Louie:

And Levi:

And William:

And Bear (leave the originality to Mac!) :)

And last but not least, Monkey (and no, it's not a monkey but a bear named Monkey):

After pizza and the girls making one last visit to MAC, we rounded out the trip to the mall with - what else but a carousel ride!

Reid blowing me a kiss:

Saturday was a cold, dreary, drizzling rain kind of afternoon so we built and fire and thought it would be the perfect time to roast some marshmallows and make some of these:

The only pictures of Mac you see are of him eating. He caught his marshmallow completely on fire, and it scared him half to death.

And this one was just funny:

What a wonderful weekend it was!

AND ONE LAST THING.

Chris, there's something I need to tell you...

HA HA! If C's employees were to ever read this they would get a kick out of it. They always joked when I was pregnant with the boys that one of them was bound to come out with a sombrero on their head since our Muncle (a/k/a Mexican Uncle), Mondo is around so much. Mondo is family. Everyone needs a Mondo. Anyhoo, I have a sweet sweet mother/daughter team who come twice a month to help me with the major house cleaning (floors, bathrooms, dusting, etc.). They've been helping out since Grant was a baby so we've come to know each other quite well despite the language barrier where Mama is concerned. The daughter just had a baby in October and asked if she could bring him with her yesterday as she didn't have a babysitter. Oh my ovaries! (If only I still had them). ;) I spent part of my morning feeding, changing, kissing, loving just enjoying this sweet chunk of Mexican love!

But the best part of all that lovin' and cuddling, I got to give him back to his mama! :)