Soccer Time

The boys both enjoyed AYSO soccer this fall - Miles was lucky enough to have Grandpa and Courtnie as his coaches. My arms were full with babies this year - so instead of action shots I just posted the professional pictures. Maybe next year . . . .

Duet Recital

Miles and Ethan are playing a duet in a piano festival this weekend. My mom had a recital that we used for dress rehearsal. The boys have had a very hard time sitting on the same bench - I don't know that we will do duets again, so I had to post this in case it is a first and last. They played two songs, but I only got the last one. Here is my attempt at a video - sorry about the motion, I had a baby in my arm and didn't realize I was rocking back and forth.

Babies Blessings

I really want to be better at this blogging thing, but it seems like days just get away from me. I am trying to use this as my journal, since I have been hit and miss with that as well, so I am going to play catch up and show you what we have been up to the last couple of weeks. Paige and Piper were blessed in church on Labor Day Sunday. They were perfect angels during the meeting, but as you can see from the pictures, there were a few meltdowns before church (in this picture Paige, later on Abby).
The pictures never seem to turn out the way I have them in my head - but I guess when you have 5 kids in a picture, chances are that they are not all going to be looking (or happy for that matter).

Piper is on the left, Paige is on the right. My mom made both the dresses that the girls were wearing. Piper is wearing the dress that I wore when I was blessed, Abby also wore that dress. My mom made the other dress for my sister's girls to wear, so Paige is wearing the same dress that Lainey, Katie and Shawni wore.

I wasn't planning on making a big deal about the blessings, but we had family come from all over the state. It meant a lot to me that family came to support us for this day. Here is Grandma Gilmore with all 10 of her grandchildren (yep, count them - there really are 10). She and Heather (Frank's sister) drove down with the 5 cousins from Salt Lake early that morning and went back after dinner that night. They deserve a medal for that trip!

My Grandma also drove over that morning with my aunt and uncle from Escalante. Here is a four generation photo - by the way, my Grandma is a twin herself, so these great-grandbabies are pretty special to her.

Abby

I haven't had Abby's pictures professionally taken for a really long time (like since she was 3 months old) - so we went to Walmart yesterday and this is what we came home with!

A lot of these poses she came up with herself - she is a natural! I am very proud of myself for actually getting to this appointment - Paige and Piper took turns screaming at me while I was trying to do Abby's hair - so I was going back and forth between kids, calming one child down then rushing back to try to find Abby to curl another section of her hair before the next baby would fuss. By the time we got in the car with Piper (I only could manage one of the babies for this outing, so Grandma got to watch Paige for an hour), I realized that Miles was still home - I had sent him to scouts 10 minutes earlier, so I found his shoes and got him in the car. By then, Abby was crying because we "forgot" Paige. I got Abby calmed down by giving her lip gloss and dropped Miles off at scouts. By the time we got to Walmart after waiting in traffic - yes, traffic in Cedar (there was a fire so lanes were closed) - we were 15 minutes late for our 30 minute appointment. I was completely frazzled, but the pictures turned out great! I am not so sure that I will ever adjust to 5 kids though - I had just got to the point that 3 was manageable. Oh well. . .

Sacrifice?

Well - I have just realized that Piper doesn't like it when I eat chocolate. She gets very gassy and the only thing that will calm her down is to feed her again. So for the sake of my sleep - I have now given up chocolate (yes - I value sleep more than chocolate). I did cheat the other day - just because I can't believe that one food would affect her so much - and had some zucchini bread with chocolate chips, but even the 3-4 chocolate chips that I ate got her quite upset with me. At least she doesn't mind peanut butter!