Welcome AnneMarie!

AnneMarie Elise Compton joined our family one month ago.  She is a little sweetheart and everyone in the family adores her. She is a great eater and doing really well sleeping at night. (I got four straight hours of sleep last night!!!)  She's a lot like Adelaide was for naps though. She only stays asleep as long as you're holding her....We're going to have to work on that.

Right out of the oven.... 8 lbs., 11 oz. She is the first of our kids to be born with any hair -- and it's dark brown. How'd that happen!?

She was born with a cephalohematoma --essentially a big bump--on her head. You can see it a bit in this picture taken a few days after we came home from the hospital.  Now a month later, it's totally gone (thankfully) and so is her nickname, "Lumpy". 

In the last month, we also celebrated the end of school.

Adelaide graduated preschool "with honors"

with friends Blaine

and Jackie.

Sadie and Michael enjoyed field immensely.

I enjoyed watching them for about 10 minutes....and then I had to home to enjoy my AC!  AnneMarie was born a week and a half later, so I was not in a condition to brave the heat.

Since the end of regular school, we have been doing a "home summer school." It's been a lot of fun so far.  Last week, we learned about archaeology, so of course the kids had to excavate an archaeological site in our back yard.

It was amazing how much they found.  The girls even went a step further and made a museum of all their "finds". They even gave me a personal tour!

Joseph loves keeping up with his older siblings, and is beginning to revel in the fact that he is now "one of the big kids" -- at least compared to AnneMarie.

At the bounce house...  

I was doing something on the computer one day, temporarily leaving the kids ti their own devices, when Joseph came in with his hair sticking straight up.  He had helped himself to some honey and then, finding it all over his hands, had used it to spike his hair.

Ahh, yes. And blackberry season is in full swing. With all the rain this year, our berries are especially plump and juicy!  They make very tasty cobblers.

Flooding and Other Spring Adventures

To celebrate our elementary school's 25th anniversary, we held a bike parade. Here is Michael with our guest judge, Miss Frizzle. Not shown was his awesome scooter expertly decorated for the event.  Poor Sadie was going to participate, but got sick. :(

Joseph's cure for every boo-boo is an ice pack. Apply for 5-20 seconds, until the chill factor outweighs the pain factor. Problem solved!

After an unusually dry, warm winter, we have had an unusually cool, wet spring. A week after Matt (and others from local congregations) helped out flood victims in East Texas, he was at it again in our very own neighborhood.  A bizarre storm hit the area and dumped 18 inches of rain in one night. The lightning struck every two seconds the whole night (that is not an exaggeration!), thunder boomed incessantly and there were several tornadoes close by. The river that flows near our house, Cypress Creek, overflowed like it never has before and lots of homes flooded.

 Above is a picture of the park at the south end of our neighborhood . It was totally covered in water. (For perspective, the normal banks of the river are nearly a half-mile from here. It went from a 30-foot-wide river to a 3,000-foot-wide river overnight.)  We had friends who were trapped in their homes for nearly a week. We were bringing food to them door to door in boats. School was cancelled for the week since there were lots of families trapped, lots of roads under water, and lots of people cleaning out flood-damaged homes. It was pretty crazy.  Thankfully, we were on the other, higher end of the neighborhood, so we didn't have any problems and were able to help others who weren't so fortunate.

This is a picture of the LDS temple near our house.  The grounds are adjacent to the flooded river, but miraculously, no water got inside the building. Like an island, it stood as a beacon of hope above the floodwaters.

One side effect of all the rain has been lots of mud in the back yard. I tried keeping the kids inside for a few days, then finally gave in and let them out. Children are washable, after all.

Since Michael turned eight, he has joined cub scouts and proudly wears his scout uniform to his weekly meetings.What a handsome guy!

Here we are at Michael's first cub scout pinewood derby.  Dad was out of town, so Poppie stepped in to help carve and paint the car, and Uncle Stephan came to help with last minute prep.

Michael's car, the black and white one at the end, had an excellent showing, coming in fourth place!  Good job, men!

And, of course, we had to celebrate by going out for ice cream.

Adelaide celebrated her preschool field day last week.

Also last week, Michael, along with all the other GT kids, presented his independent research project that he has been working on all year. Michael chose to study space and, specifically, the Mars Rover project. Here he is showing off his model of the Sojourner Rover and his power point presentation.

Sadie has finally learned to climb the "big tree" in the front, and she is very proud of herself.

Adelaide has learned to climb the "little tree" on the side of the house, and she is also very proud of herself.

And here I am, with six weeks to go before another little girl joins the family....I wonder if she will turn out to be half monkey like all her siblings.

And here are all four of our beautiful kiddos patiently posing for Mom. I love these sweet kids so much!!!

Spring Break and Easter

With the baby coming just before summer, we are not making any big plans for summer vacation. So, I thought it fair to do something for for spring break.  We reserved a little cabin at Sea Rim State Park, on the coast really close to the Louisiana boarder

I made the reservation simply because it was near the beach and available during spring break, little realizing it was also mostly swampland inhabited by mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, and lots of alligators, not to mention lots of dead jellyfish along the beach.....Maybe not the greatest place to take small children, but we had fun anyway. Mom and Dad just had to be a little more vigilant with our small brood.

Our cabin overlooked the boat dock and waterway that went back into the marshes. We had a friendly alligator hanging out right next to us and we could see him out the windows cruising around. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time outside around the cabin.

The only morning he wasn't in sight, we let the kids do some "fishing"

which consisted of lots of splashing in puddles,

lots of patient waiting,

and finally a big catch! ... Somehow a minnow managed to skewer itself on Matt's hook.  We turned it into bait.

We did, however, have lots of fun catching crabs!

Michael, especially, had fun with this.  You simply lower a turkey neck into the water and wait a few minutes until you see the bobber starting to move, then slowly reel it in.  The crabs are so greedy they refuse to let go until they are well out of the water. Then they fall, plop, back in. --You lower the turkey neck back in the water and the process endlessly repeats itself.

One morning, (to avoid too much time around Mr. Alligator), we loaded up the crew and headed into Beaumont. We had a great time visiting the Fire Museum there. They had lots of fun, interactive exhibits

and some really cool old fire equipment.  I was quite impressed. They fit a lot of history into that little building.

The giant fire hydrant in the front was also quite impressive.

We also stopped by Spindletop and Gladys City Museum. (You can read a quick summary of the history here: https://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/spindletop/spindletop.html ) We got to see a reenactment of the gusher, tour all the old buildings,

and play some fun "minute-to-win-it" games like fill the watering can with a sponge,

shave a balloon,

and, Joseph's favorite, the cow patty toss.

We did spend quite a bit of time on the beach swimming, building sandcastles, and beach combing ... but I wasn't thinking and didn't pack my phone/camera for the beach trips.  Oh, well.  The kids can't wait to go back .......but I think Mom is going to wait til the kids are bigger than bite-size.


Two weeks after Spring Break, we celebrated Easter!  We kept everything simple this year and had an Easter Egg hunt in our own back yard.  Of course, Nana and Popie and Uncle Stephan came over too.

A few days before, we hosted our playgroup to make Easter cupcakes

and, of course, we dyed eggs.