Sweet Siblings

I have been wanting to write this post for a while, and I thought I might want to hurry up because I know things could change tomorrow. Over the last couple of months, Evan and Zoe have really started to play and their relationship is so sweet. Evan has always been good to her, and she's always been interested in him, but now she is old enough to follow his lead and participate. She wants to do EVERYTHING he does. She wants everything he has. Whoever wakes up first will almost always ask about the other. They hold hands in the car all the time (my favorite).

Of course, they have their moments...most often when Zoe is destroying something Evan built, or sitting in the middle of his field while he is trying to line up his football players. Overall, though they love each other right now. I know that we have many years of their friendship changing, and they won't always be this sweet, but right now I love it. I will keep all of these photos to show them both one day when they are fighting at 11 and 13!

For now, enjoy these sweet siblings!

Birthday Week

More on Evan's birthday...
We celebrated Evan for over a week, and he loved every minute of it. It started with his party which you saw in my previous post and then we kept going the next weekend, and onto his actual birthday. By the time we got to Tuesday, he was already convinced he was four long before then.

I also did a questionnaire with him that I had also done last year at 3. I'm hoping to keep up and see how his answers change over the years. You can already seen the change in his answers in just one year.

A few highlights about our special 4 year-old:
-He has had his biggest growth spurt in the last few months, than he has had in years
-David and I both agree that he not only has grown physically, but his confidence has also really developed this past year
-He developed a fondness for coloring, and has gotten really good at it
-He has turned into quite the physical child and loves to play hard
-Always climbing and trying to scale and jump onto and off of everything
-He is an amazing conversationalist and has turned into an extremely social child
-Starting to want to put letters and sounds together to make words
-Continues to be a rule follower and a great listener (doesn't always show his mommy and daddy the behavior that school gets)
-Loves school, has been asking to go since it finished last week
-Superhero crazy (LOVES them all)
-Has a fantastic imagination, always surprising us with his ideas

My 4 year-old, Evan
1. How old are you? 4
2. What is your favorite thing to do? play Batman
3. What is your favorite food? steak
4. What is your favorite color? blue
5. What do you like to do with Mommy and Daddy? hug
6. What do you like to do with Zoe? hold her hand
7. What do you want to be when you grow up? a football player
8. What makes you happy? when Zoe holds my hand
9. What makes you sad? when James doesn't play with me
10. What is your favorite TV show to watch? Team Umizoomi
11. What is your favorite book? Batman Book
12. What do you love to learn about? songs
13. Who is your best friend? James
14. What is your favorite treat? gummies
15. What do you think about before you fall asleep? getting a new bad guy
16. What are you scared of? ghosts
17. What is your favorite song? Noah's Ark
18. What is your favorite sport? karate and football
19. What is your favorite toy? Bouncy house
20. Where do you like to go? Aquarium (we were going that day)
21. What is the best thing about being 4? opening presents

My "Super E"

We haven't quite made it to his birthday yet, but we had a fantastic birthday party for my sweet "almost' 4-year-old. This has been the most fun birthday for Evan to date. He has been planning what he wanted for months now. He has been so excited about his birthday party! I think it was a success. I will have more to share and we continue to celebrate his birthday, but here is a start. Fun times!!

My View From the Backyard

I know...it's been forever. Everyone probably stopped reading and gave up thinking I would ever get past the holidays!! Well...these pictures from today were just too cute not to post.

We have been doing some clean-up in our backyard and the kids have loved every minute of hanging out outside all day long. Days like today really remind how much we love our new house and especially the yard. We spent the entire day cleaning up outside, and giving thanks for our two awesome trees that make life in the heat not so miserable!

We have been eliminating some flower beds and making room for some more grass, so the kids have a little bit more room to run around. We've had lots of help from PawPaw and DeDe and Michael! Jack even came to play today.

Today we saved some worms, fed them to birds, planted a pretend garden, took a fancy wheelbarrow, and FINALLY got Evan and Zoe's swing put up!! A great Mother's Day with my little rugrats!!

Happy Holidays!!

Only a month late! Not bad for my updating. I must admit, I'm almost proud of myself!! Christmas this year was my favorite Christmas to date as a mommy. This year was such a magical experience for Evan, the first year that he really got into the spirit and was just as excited as we were. I always look forward to the holidays. David and I usually take off quite a bit, and it is one of those rare times where we get to spend two straight weeks with our little munchkins. I'm warning you ahead of time that this post is going to be lengthy, but at this point I might as well lump it all into one!!

We started out by paying a visit to Santa Claus. David's work had a family holiday party and it was the perfect opportunity to visit with Santa. I wasn't so sure how Evan would do, and I was certain Zoe would cry; but we were going to give it a shot anyway. After watching a few other kids go first, Evan climbed right up and told Santa EXACTLY what he wanted: Batman, Batman cave, and a Batman car. He was very specific. Zoe cried...but we got a cute picture!! They had lots of activities, and the kids had a lot of fun. Evan made special reindeer food for us to sprinkle on the lawn on Christmas Eve.

 Before we left for Dallas, Evan and Zoe both had Christmas parties at school and Evan participated in a Christmas program at school. He sang the whole time and did such a great job. Much to my surprise he even volunteered to be part of the Christmas Eve Children's pageant at Ascension. He was the cutest goat up there!!

We headed to Dallas for a fast and furious trip to visit everyone. We made our many stops and even fit a trip to the museum in. We had a great time visiting with everyone, playing with Elijah and Clark, and Zoe even managed to chip her front tooth!!

Evan had an elf on the shelf that he named "Alvin" that he enjoyed the whole month of December. He looked forward to each morning to see what Alvin was up to. Zoe even got into it and would point at him and yell "Alvin" when she saw him! It was so much fun watching him ask questions and get so excited about his "elf" and Santa.

We headed home for Christmas Eve and had a great evening waiting for Santa Claus. Marty and Sarah even came to visit. Evan and Zoe both were so cute on Christmas morning. Evan of course ran to his Batman cave and Zoe went for her baby doll stroller first.

 

On Christmas Day, we went to Hungerford to have Christmas there. DeDe and PawPaw had lots of goodies waiting for us, and we got to spend Jack's 1st Christmas with him as well! It's always a fun time!

We completed our Christmas craziness with our final Christmas with the Patterson's. It is always a fun time mixed with a lot of chaos. We are so blessed to still have my 90 year old grandmother with us (doesn't she look wonderful), and it is amazing to me that we are able to find a time to get all of us together year after year!

Crazy long post, but I got it all in!!

Oh, What a Year!

Oh, what a year is right. You can tell by the fact that I'm posting this 12 month blog in December that it has been a little crazy. The ironic thing is it perfectly describes the life of my little girl as well. She is such a joy, a ton of fun, and nothing short of a true busy body!

The year with Zoe flew by. With Evan I felt like he was a baby forever, and it the time it took to get to his 1st birthday was quite a while. Totally different with Zoe. She has been a big girl since the time she could smile. I'm sure part of this is the fact that she is a second child, but when you combine that with her independent personality, she has grown entirely too fast for this mama! 

We can't wait to see how this little girl continues to steal our hearts. She makes me smile everyday, and has such a sweet spirit. Zoe is so smiley, such an explorer, and is completely in love with her brother.  Evan and Zoe have really started to play together and interact and nothing is sweeter than seeing the love between these two. They have so much fun together!

I know that I'm WAY late on posting about my 1 year old, but this blog wouldn't be complete without the highlights from her birthday!!

Fall Fun!

Fall brought fun times for the Candler family. We finally moved into our house, had Zoe's first birthday, Halloween trick-or-treating, and a great time in Terrell for Thanksgiving.

Our Peter Pan and Tinkerbell had a ton of fun trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood. Parker and Weston came with us and he and Evan were so cute going from house to house. David and Evan carved a pumpkin, and Evan being the "bat" lover that he is chose that for the design.

We were fortunate to have 4 days off around Thanksgiving to allow us to spend quite a bit of time in Terrell. Our visits are always too short, but it was nice to have almost a week to visit and relax. Evan and Zoe had a lot of fun with Anya and Papa, and we loved that Elijah and Clark got to hang out with us too! Elijah and Evan played and played, they are going to be great buddies.

Thanksgiving in Terrell