Teddy Bear Picnic Birthday

Since Gracie's birthday happened to fall on Thanksgiving this year, we only celebrated a tiny bit the day of, and finished our celebrating on Saturday.

Jeff's parents were able to come celebrate Thanksgiving and Gracie's birthday!
So for Gracie's actual birthday, she woke up to help Grandpa with one of the kids all-time- favorite activities, helping deflate the air mattress when they visit!


For Gracie's birthday breakfast we had doughnut holes and hot chocolate with colored marshmallows!

Gracie was allowed to open one of her presents on her actual birthday. Gracie loves buckles, almost as much as she loves puzzles! :) So, I found a "Buckle Monkey" that has several buckles for her little hands to keep busy. She loves it!


Jacob also loves the buckle monkey. He tries to chew on the tail when Gracie is not looking! :)

Since Daddy had to work on Thanksgiving (mostly doing crowd control for those crazy early Black Friday shoppers!!!), we had an early Thanksgiving lunch. We finished out the day reading books and playing games with Grandma and Grandpa.


I did get a chance to take our baby girl and my camera out for a few two year old shots. Here are a few of my favorites! :)





For Gracie's birthday on Saturday we decided to have a Teddy Bear Picnic! Complete with a picnic basket full of presents, make-your-own subs, and eating on a picnic blanket on the floor!


Here are the paw-print cupcakes to go with her Teddy Bear cake. (I have never made a design birthday cake before, but I am determined to learn! Gracie's was my first attempt. Ben's birthday is in February for my next try!)

Here the birthday girl is sneaking some chips before the party starts! :)


We all enjoyed our dinner, picnic style, on a blanket on the floor. We even brought Jacob's high chair down so he could join in with his teddy bear bib!


Our good friends and surrogate family, Andy and Emily are always such good sports to join in with our birthday fun!


Gracie loved all her presents and cards. It was such fun to share her birthday even with family far away. Her favorite card was a singing card. She thought it was the funniest thing!


Gracie got lots of new puzzles and a wire rack to help store them all from Grandma and Grandpa! That should keep her busy for about a week!


My Mom had sent my two favorite teddy bear's from my childhood to join our picnic party. It was fun to see them again and watch my daughter enjoy them.

I just love this next picture! Gracie (ie. Hollywood) got several new play bracelets from Grammy and Papa in Arizona. Can you tell who also loves the bracelets as chew toys??? :)

Last year, I made the mistake of making Gracie strawberry cupcakes. Well, we all now know how much Gracie loves chocolate :) so her Teddy Bear cake was most definitely chocolate!!

Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Our little girl is TWO!!!!

Today our little girl turned two! Yes, Gracie's birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year! It is hard to believe that just two years ago we were watching in awe our little girl's first moments in our arms. From that moment until now, Gracie has been a source of unending joy and smiles. Thank you Lord for the sweet baby girl you brought into our lives two years ago!

Gracie continues to be quite the ham. She knows how to charm everyone with her smile. She also is doing a pretty good job keeping her three brothers in line! She is not talking in sentences, but in soliloquies! Her expansive vocabulary, and more importantly ability to correctly use her vocabulary is phenomenal. In the car a few weeks ago, I mentioned to her that her birthday was coming up and that she would be two. Gracie answered "Are you KIDDING me??" The other day Jeff asked her if she was ever going to go back to using the potty (she did for awhile but avoids it like the plague now). Gracie answered him "no, not today, maybe Monday or Tuesday!" She is so quick witted and clever.....but she is pretty stubborn as well, and gives us a run for our money in discipline!

She often forgets that she is not as old as her brothers, and attempts to do EVERYTHING they do, which is pretty scary on a playground setting! She can play trucks and be goofy with her brothers, and yet she can glam it up with the sunglasses and array of accessories like the most frilly of girls. She is spunky and doesn't let her brothers get away with a thing. Yet, she is tenderhearted and so helpful "mothering" her "Jakey Jake" as she calls him. As you can tell in the pictures, she is most definitely a Daddy's girl!

Thank you Lord for this little girl who is full of life! Thank you for allowing us to love and raise her to grow to know and love you!

Here is a video recap of Gracie's second year. The song is her favorite song ever! If you have been around Gracie at all, you know her favorite phrase is "Hold Me!" So, when she first heard this song she lit up, and to this day occasionally goes around the house singing "love-a, love-a, love-a hold me"

Happy Birthday sweet Grace!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours! We are so grateful for the four biggest gifts in our lives: Luke, Ben, Grace and Jacob!

Jacob is 8 months!

Our sweet boy is 8 months old! He is growing and developing so fast! He is sitting up and working on moving from sitting to lying down and back. He is a roller, just like his big sister was. In order to keep up with his siblings he gets frustrated with trying to "crawl" so he rolls all over the place!
He has four full teeth and is teething like crazy. He loves playing peek-a-boo, and trying to eat anything his older siblings happen to be playing with. He lights up a room with his sweet grin and giggle. Pure joy! He survived his first cold this month, with his usual sweet demeanor even when miserable. Happy 8 months Jacob!

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Hollywood

Lately we have started to call Gracie, "Hollywood." The following pictures will explain better than words why she is lovingly called this nickname! Her two favorite items lately are her sunglasses and her boots! She wears them both all the time, even with PJs! One funny part is that she prefers the sunglasses upside down!

End of October

Since we have been without a computer for over a week, my last October post is a bit delayed! In fact, the computer crashed and burned on Halloween night!

So here are a few final fun fall October moments in the Morgan household!

We were able to go to a fall festival put on by our church this year. It was a bit of a last minute choice to attend, so the kids did not have costumes, but they didn't seem to mind a bit.

Our church had all kinds of food, games, and goodies for the kids. The favorites by far were:

The huge slide....

And the cotton candy!!



Mommy and Jacob just watched Daddy go down the slide with Gracie, Luke and Ben. (Can you tell in the picture how disappointed he was? Maybe next year Jacob!)




We also carved our biggest pumpkin on Halloween night.

Here is our family of pumpkins.



Luke, Ben and Gracie all had to give hugs to our pumpkin before we carved it.




We also had to test to make sure it floated like the rest, (it did!)



The oldest three all enjoyed getting messy with pumpkin seeds.





And our finished product (Daddy did all the hard work!!)

Computer Crash!!!

Do you ever have one of those weeks where everything seems to break? Well, in the last two weeks we have had both our computer and microwave melt down on us (pun intended). So we are now in the market for a new microwave and I am currently typing on the newest electronic addition to our family!!

So, with that being said.....if you follow our blog and have our e-mail address, can you please send us a quick "hello" email? We had our hard drive backed up (and thankfully did not loose any of our pictures and documents) but we did loose all our e-mail addresses and saved emails.

Thanks for helping us stay connected with you!

October School

Here is a quick review of the rest of our school month that was not fall related!

Puzzles, puzzles and more puzzles. I wish there was a library for puzzles, our children devour them and are ready for some new ones, but we don't have the room or money to quench their puzzle drives.


I never learned to really love poetry. I am now growing to love it along with my children. Occasionally for a treat we have what we call "Popcorn and poems". We snuggle up with a snack and read poems together. Our favorite collections so far are A.A Milne "When We Were Very Young", and Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses." In the previous post I shared that we worked on some patterns with candy corns and marshmallow creme pumpkins. Well, occasionally the kids ask if we can have "pumpkins, patterns, and poems" time as well. I have found it to be a great way to introduce poetry and really make it special and fun.


When my Mom sent us the box last month of home school items, she sent several items to study bugs. Well one set has some pretty real life-like bugs. The boys have a blast studying them! (I make sure they count all twelve every time the finish with this activity. I don't want it to be late at night when Daddy is at work when I find a stray bug.....!)


More mixing colors with paint.



We have been practicing a lot of soccer around here as well for PE. In fact Luke scored his first goal at a game recently!




I have discovered that of all our ways to practice writing, a simple whiteboard is the all time favorite method. In fact, it is also a fantastic way to keep Gracie busy during school time. She just doodles away like crazy!




A little home-ec, playing a game matching socks. Despite the look on Luke's face the socks are indeed clean.



The boys have also both learned to help me feed Jacob this month.




As bedtime stories we have been reading the original Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy stories by John Gruelle. The boys love these stories. They asked Gracie if they could pull out the Raggedy Ann and Andy that she got for her birthday last year. Every morning they come downstairs to see if the dolls have changed the position they left them in! :)



Some strength training at home :)




Gracie LOVES when her big brothers pick her up, it is her favorite activity lately, and they willingly oblige her.



Luke has just taken off with his reading. He is plowing through the Bob books. At the back of each book we put a sticker and the date he first read it by himself. He has found another willing ear to listen to him read in Jacob.



This month reading has also taken off for Ben!!! He is picking out words everywhere we go and sounding out and writing words on all his coloring books. Prior to this he has read parts of the Bob books, but he has done a great job reading them on his own this month! I had hesitated starting school with both boys, but Ben is thriving learning alongside Luke. We are calling it Kindergarten for Luke and PreK for Ben, but on almost all accounts Ben is doing everything right alongside Luke.

Here is our proud reader #2!



It is such a joy to be able to tailor our studies and learning to Luke and Ben's individual talents and needs. I LOVE being their teacher and getting to share the joy of learning with them. Despite the often difficult moments of being overwhelmed with the immensity of it all, I wouldn't share this with a public teacher for anything!