Nora Kate is Four AND A HALF

Our darling girl is FOUR AND A HALF as of Valentine's Day!

We had some beautiful snowfall right before her official 4.5 day so I took this opportunity to get pictures of our girl outside in the snowfall in this adorable coat and hat.

We could not love our sweet Nora Kate anymore!  She is so fun.  I love her sweet, silly, sassy, fun-loving personality.  I watch her play and run around without a care and thing that she's totally our free spirited child, but then I watch her meticulously line up her Barbie dolls or arrange her room just the neat and tidy way she likes it and I realize that she may be a free spirit, but she also knows the exact way she wants things done...and she's not afraid to put her big brothers in their place if they're not doing something "right" by her standards.

Nora Kate continues to do well in her preschool which is two mornings a week for 3 hours both days.  She seems to make friends easily and is always excited to tell me what she has learned or done at school.  If they do any type of artwork, then it's always a great day for her.  This girl loves her art!

Nora Kate also loves playing with her Barbie dolls in the new Barbie house she got for Christmas.  She also loves playing using her imagination.  She and Carter come up with the most imaginative games and pretend play together...sometimes I can't follow their silly storylines, and they love that even more.  Their favorite imaginary play together is something they made up called ostrich...somehow it involves dumping a mix of all kinds of toys in a corner of the playroom (this is, obviously, the ostrich cage) one of them (usually Carter-since NK obviously takes the role of "boss") is the ostrich and the other tells the ostrich what to do, feeds it, and then tries to catch it when it gets loose.  I'm not really sure what is so fun about this game, but it's pretty funny to watch!

Clayton always loves it when Nora Kate will stop and play with him, and she does this a lot!  She's a really good big sister.  She still loves to call him Mr. Baby, and she's constantly talking to him, showing him things, or building things for him (although she doesn't always love how he loves to knock down her creations).  Nora Kate also has a sweet relationship with Dawson.  She looks up to him and will usually do things the way Dawson suggests when they're playing a game.  

Nora Kate is a Daddy's girl, and would be with him every minute if given the choice.  During church she will still always go do John and ask him to pick her up when we are standing and singing.  It's so funny how different girls are because at 4.5 years old neither of the boys would have asked us to pick them up and hold them.  Sweet girl.

Although Nora Kate is a total Daddy's girl, she also loves doing anything fancy or "girlish" (as she calls it) with me.  Instead of Mommy (like the boys have always called me) Nora Kate still calls me Momma.  I love that she named me herself, and of course her "Momma" is much like how she says "Carter"...very southern sounding.  One time Grandad called Nora Kate a "Southern Lady" (the boys always tell me this), and I think that's just about perfect for Nora Kate...she says words and names so Southern sounding sometimes, she's feisty and sassy, can hold her own with her brothers, catches bugs and grasshoppers and crickets outside in the yard with the boys for fun, but also loves everything fancy-jewlery, dresses, fancy hair, ballet, nail polish, etc.  I love Nora Kate's personality.  I love that she knows what she wants (unless she wants something different from me-HAH!).  I think that her strong personality and being used to standing up to two big brothers all the time will hopefully make her strong and confident and she gets older and comes in contact other kids as she gets older.

Nora Kate has been doing great in ballet this  year.  She really loves ballet.  One of her best friends, Finley, is in her ballet class so she is always thrilled to see Finley there too.

Nora Kate has been doing a great job singing in church choir for the past month.  She wasn't old enough to be in choir before Christmas, but now she is and she's SO excited to be a part of it like the boys.

Last week Nora Kate had her very first hair cut of her life!  The boys couldn't believe that she had never had a haircut before, but I've never wanted to cut her curls.  She had the tiniest trim off the bottom of her curls just to clip the baby fuzz/hair off the ends so the ends didn't tangle now that her hair has gotten so long.  She went to Kelli who cuts my hair, and she thought she was such a big girl getting a hair cut.  So sweet!

I could go on and on about our girly girl 4.5 year old Nora Kate and how she loves to bake, polish her nails, do art, teach Clayton things, and play with her big brothers, but I'll end with these adorable pictures of my four and a half year old in the snow!

January 2018

It seems impossible that the first month of 2018 has already come and gone, but thankfully that just means we are one month closer to warmer weather!  This January has been VERY cold!  You'll notice most all of our activities (other than playing in the snow) have been indoor activities-other than just a very few!

Clayton is the 4th child to sleep in this crib converted to a toddler bed.  I remember when Dawson put teeth marks in it as a baby, and I was mortified!  Fast forward 8 years and I hear a loud noise from Clayton's room one morning in early January.  I go running in to see Clayton laying on his bed and the toddler rail broken off!  All I could do is laugh.  Oh Clayton!

The beginning of January was COLD and so we enjoyed warm pajamas and fires!

One of Nora Kate's Christmas presents was a Baking Box.  We got her a dessert cook book, her own purple mixing utensils, and ingredients to bake several different recipes in the book.  She LOVED this gift.  These are the first cookies she chose to bake out of the cookbook.  That's white chocolate drops in the middle of these red velvet cookies.  She had so much fun!

January meant Basketball Games started for both big boys.

This is Carter's first year playing, and he invited his awesome kindergarten teacher to come to his first game-and she came!

John is super-Daddy and coaching BOTH basketball teams!

After I wanted a picture of the basketball boys and Coach Daddy for their first game...Nora Kate and Clayton decided they needed a picture with Daddy too.

Sometimes you just need to go to Claire's and try on tiaras!

The kids went to our neighbor, Lane's birthday party on Sunday afternoon in January.  They got their faces painted.  Nora Kate requested a unicorn!

Carter wanted a rainbow.

I've been cleaning out and organizing this month.  Clayton discovered that this cabinet now has enough room for him to play inside it.  Haha! Look at that face!

After too many cold days, we were thrilled to see the sunshine and a little warmth!  Nora Kate wanted to run while Clayton chilled in the stroller on our walk around the neighborhood.

More baking with this sweet girl.

Nora Kate loves her Barbie house....and it appears that Clayton is equally interested in playing Barbies.

Dawson got invited to his school friend, Dylan's birthday party at Laser Tag.  He had a blast!

After a dusting of snow one Sunday afternoon, we decided to visit Cades Cove.

We saw several deer (you can see two in this picture above), a coyote, and turkey.

We had to check out the icicles!

yThis month was One Book Blitz at the boys' school.  The book the entire county and city read this year was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Here we are on the treasure hunt for The Golden Ticket around Maryville.

Dawson lost a tooth and scored a Gold Dollar from the tooth fairy!

SNOW DAY!

One day the kids' school was canceled for ice, the following week they were out two days for snow!  They loved all this extra time home and out of school.

They also enjoyed lots of playtime in the snow!  We made snow angels, sledded, went on a snow walk, made snowballs, made snow cream (they're eating it in the picture below), and played with friends (including some neighbors who had a snowboard and let the kids try it out-they loved it).

We have enjoyed watching many birds at our feeder through all this cold weather. The kids kept saying this cardinal was looking in the window-and every time I looked, he really seemed to be!  Nora Kate requested I take a picture.

More baking with this sassy baker!

yI asked Nora Kate to go get ready for Dawson's basketball scrimmage.  She comes back with a purse, many bracelets, rings, and necklaces...yup, she's ready! Haha!

yCarter wrote me the sweetest note:  Mommy You are a wonderful Mommy.  I love you.

yFinally it warmed up a little bit (mid 40's), so I could get in a long run.  8 miles!  It felt great!  I'm hoping/planning to run the Knoxville Half Marathon in March (we will see!).  The run felt great, but unfortunately about 2 hours after my run, I quickly came down with the flu....along with Nora Kate and Clayton.

The tooth fairy has been busy-now Carter lost a tooth!  It was his 2nd!

yCarter loves writing.  He made this sweet list I found.

What I like:

Bottlecaps, art, legos, laser tag, football, climbing trees, soccer, switch, family, fishing, candy, snow, exploring, lovie, blankey, beach, park, donuts, games, fireworks.

Class picture day...so I made the boys new bowties to wear.

As I mentioned, Clayton, NK, and I had the flu.  Yuck...I hadn't felt this bad in a long time.  They were pretty pitiful too.  Nora Kate ended up developing bronchitis on top of it, and then Clayton got an ear infection.

yNora Kate has been requesting french braids some and she always wants me to take a picture so she can see the back and side.

It's not easy braiding her curls, but I think I'm getting better with all the practice I've had lately-thanks to numerous requests.

This month the boys' school celebrated their 100th day!

yWhen Nora Kate was sick with the flu, I asked her one day what could make her feel better.  She quickly answered, "Braids and decorating for Valentine's Day."  So I braided her hair, and then we decorated.

yClayton NEVER, I mean NEVER, falls asleep with us holding him anymore.  But one Saturday morning at the boys' basketball games after we were in our 3rd hour of being at the games, Grandad was snuggling Clayton, and Mr. Baby fell asleep.  So sweet!

The last weekend of January we took the kids hiking.  We hiked right at 2 miles roundtrip.  We hiked the Metcalf Bottoms Trail from Metcalf Bottoms to the Little Greenbriar School.  Even thought you can see gravel paths in this picture it was all gravel.  There were a couple of steeper parts, but it was not bad at all-the kids did great!

In front of the old school.

Their favorite part of this hike were the 3 bridges.

yJohn surprised us when we were getting packed up to leave our house for the hike, and said we should packup to spend the night at one of our favorite places in Gatlinburg-the Park Vista.  So after hiking we headed on to Gatlinburg.  When we checked in we got 814 which is also our favorite room/view there.  Here's the view from our room!

The kids love their room because it has two bunkbeds.

They're in their swimsuits here because we are about to go to the pools.

yAfter hours spent playing in the water...Clayton was exhausted.  He didn't sleep here, but he laid here while I was getting everyone's beds ready and was so exhausted he didn't even move.

We had so much fun on our surprise weekend getaway as an early Valentine's present.  The kids LOVE the pools and water slides, elevator, mountains, and everything here.

Here we are loaded up to head back home after a super fun weekend!

Saturday was 2 basketball games, a hike, then hours in the pool and waterslides.  Sunday we got a late checkout and spent a few hours in the pool and waterslides before loading up to leave.  It's safe to say everyone had a great time and was exhausted-if you can't tell from this picture!

These are out of order-but they're from the snow days earlier in January!