GiGi Jean & Papa John

My grandparents made a visit to Texas at the beginning of September and we had such a wonderful time!!  Little did they know when they made their tickets last spring that just about ALL of their grandchildren would be in the DFW area!!  They were able to visit my family, the von Goertz', my brother and Christy, Maddy AND, because it was family weekend at TCU, Marcia and Johnny were even in town.  It was quite the weekend filled with a TCU game and Emma's birthday celebration.  We were so lucky to have them!

Carter sure got some love!!!  Between all of the other crazy siblings and cousins, he still received so much attention and his own cuddle time!

The whole crew headed over to Fort Worth on Saturday and got to visit Andy and Christy's new apartment.  It was really cute and the kids had another chance to play with their new puppy, Scout!  Grandma and Grandpa spent the day with Andy and Christy while the rest of us went to the game.

 15 of us ate at Pot Belly before the game!  Now that was quite a sight and a LOT of purple!  (It was a white out game, so we tried to stick to wearing white, but it was hard for Josh not to wear PURPLE!)

 We also invaded Maddy's dorm room!

 The kids had a BLAST at the game!  We have great seats where they really can run around and play.  They took full advantage and danced to every song they heard!

 Rah Rah TCU!!

Cooper, Carter and I were able to take them to visit the Dallas Arboretum.  The fall exhibits weren't quite ready, but they were setting up ALL of the pumpkins while we were there.  It was just beautiful!

And of course it wouldn't be us if we didn't get some group pictures!  Let the party start!

 What a wonderful treat and great present to have these kids' GREAT grandparents here for a visit!  We all had such a great time and can't wait until they can come again!

3 year old Preschool!

And just like that, another one is off!  Cooper enjoyed a great first day of preschool at a new school this year.  He is attending Waterview Christian Preschool and is in Ms. Cheryl and Ms. Rosalyn's class.  He  is in the same class as his cousin Ellie and he loved every minute of it!  No tears from this boy!

Of course we got a picture next to the Noah's Ark and of course there are elephants on there!!  This made for one happy kid!

Our 3 year old big boy!!

Ice cream was definitely in order to end a great first day!!  

Lucky to still have one little guy at home with me!

I'm still working on creating some sort of routine!  Cooper's gone 2 days and Caroline's gone 5, but it seems we are busier than ever!  It seems as if I'm always shuttling someone around!  

And off she goes...

One day I have promised myself that I am going to go back and blog about every event that I have left off of this blog.  One day I am going to dump all of those thousands of pictures I have taken of my children and our lives and write about them.  One day I am going to do it even though they are just iPhone pictures and even though they aren't the best.  One day I hope… but today is not that day!  I feel like I remember so much of the past 5 years because of what I wrote about it and I just hate that I'm so far behind.  But, in hopes of starting somewhere, I decided to jump right in with the present and share Caroline's first day of KINDERGARTEN!!  We now are 4 days in and she seems to be loving it!

Caroline started school on August 25th at Mohawk elementary school.  This is such a sweet little school and has already turned out to be so great!  All of the moms and families are so kind and caring and very, very involved.  We had a popsicle picnic to meet all of the kindergarten teachers the week before, as well as a back to school night.  Caroline doesn't really know that many kids in the neighborhood, but we are excited to meet them!

Mrs. Henderson is Caroline's teacher and is new to the school this year.  She seems very sweet!

8:00am came quite a bit quicker than we imagined it to in the morning and we hurried to take pictures!  Lots of grand ideas, but not lots of time!

 How can she really be this big???  We are so delighted to be her parents!

 Cooper was still sleeping when we were about to leave and she insisted that he wake up and be in the pictures… hence the Hulk jammies!  There was no way Carter was waking up!

 It was so convenient that Grami was here helping move in the von Goertz's!  It worked out great that she was able to bring Ellie over and stay with the boys while we took Caroline in to school by herself.

We drove to the school, but ended up walking quite a ways.  We are not far from the school and maybe should have just walked...

 Such a big girl with her own locker!

 Class of 2027, here we come!!!

 Hooray for a successful day and to a successful year!!

He's HERE! He's HERE!!

We welcomed Carter Robert Botts into this world on April 22, 2014!  He arrived quickly at 1:44 pm weighing in at 6 lbs. 8 oz. and 19 inches long.  We were so thrilled to have a safe, quick and easy labor and were so excited to finally meet our Carter!

 Although he does have hair, it was surprising to see just how different he looks from his brother and sister!  They both had VERY black hair and his is quite a bit lighter and quite a bit less!  He also has blonde eyebrows and eyelashes.  For now, his eyes are blue.  We will see what color they turn out to be as he gets older.  Caroline's were blue until after she was 1 and now they are very brown.  You never know!  But I'm sure ready for 1 kid to look like me…  :)

Things were quite a bit different this go round!  Josh and I didn't have to be at the hospital until 6am that morning and everything got started a little after that.  It involved a lot of waiting and just really hanging out.  I was already a little dilated so they gave me the epideral early and I really didn't feel much until it was time to push.  

Grami and Pop Pop stayed with the kids while we were at the hospital and they were right there to greet Mr. Carter!  Caroline and Cooper had been counting down the days and were so excited that TODAY was finally the day!

This picture completely sums up our family!  Little Carter IS in there somewhere and everyone is focused on different things!

Grandmother and DJ also came were right there to meet our little man!  Later that night we had a few more visitors, but it was pretty quiet and Josh and I really got to enjoy our third little bundle of joy!

We love you little guy!

"THE" Pink Elephant

Every night after dinner we ask the kids if they want to help us do dishes.  One washes the dishes at the sink and one clears the table and then we switch every other night.  They're actually getting pretty good at it and usually seem to enjoy doing it!  It's only a couple times that Caroline asks for a "fast" night and just lets Mommy and Daddy do it.  In exchange for them helping, they each receive a quarter.  They have piggy banks set up near the kitchen and every so often we count how much money is in there.  It started out that we would let the kids ride the merry-go-round at the zoo.  This is $2 and definitely fun for them to pay for themselves.  We then told Caroline that she didn't have to spend her money every time and could save it for something even better!!  She saw this pink elephant on a leash at the zoo gift shop and was determined to buy it!  She had to sit out several times while Cooper rode the merry-go-round and just watch in order to keep her money.  We wanted to keep the goal attainable, so instead of making her save the $16.99 in which it cost, we told her she needed $10 to buy it.  Well she was getting really close the last time we went to the zoo and while Daddy and Cooper rode the merry-go-round, Caroline and I went to check on "her" elephant.  Wouldn't you know… there were NO pink elephants to be found!!  She was crushed and pretty upset.  We told her that she didn't quite have enough money yet anyways, so next time there would probably be the perfect one for her.  Of course nothing else would work!

I dropped the idea, kind of googled other pink elephants but really had no luck finding much.  My amazing {and somewhat frustratingly focused} husband however, did not stop until he found this particular elephant!  He called the zoo and found out the manufacturer, called them and begged the wholesaler to just sell him 1 elephant and ship it to our house.  Yes, this was not super cheap and increased the price by about $20, but we decided it was worth it to teach her a lesson and not let her lose her enthusiasm for saving money!

So the morning we were planning on going to the zoo, we decided to take 2 cars.  We needed to renew our membership anyways, so Josh went early and after doing that, took our pink elephant to the gift shop.  The workers were happy to play along and said they only had 1 pink elephant left and Caroline could have it!!  She was pretty excited!

They even pretended to ring her up and had her check out with her bag full of quarters!

"Pinkie" went everywhere with us that day!

(This time Grami paid for the merry-go-round and let them keep their quarters.  Spoiled kids!)

What a great lesson and what a great dad!  We are now on our way to earning enough money to go and see Charlotte's Web at a local children's theater.  She's pretty determined!