Beautiful Day!

Having lunch on the backporch today!

It is noon and already 70 degrees outside. We are going to soak it up as much as possible because Sunday and Monday are promising to be cold and wintery. The kiddos decided early today that they wanted to go out and jump on the trampoline or "trampolen" as Ella likes to say. Before they could go out I told Ella that she needed to get some clothes on. She came back in the room matching, but with her shirt on backwards. I sang her praises as I am enjoying this new level of independence that she has discovered. On a side note, she has been practicing buttoning and dressing herself in her pajamas atleast 5 times a day. I don't know what the obsession is with the p.j.'s, but I'm about to go hide half of her stash. As you can see in the above picture, Ella has already changed from her pj's to clothes and now back into pj's. We're on a roll......on with the story. So, Ella then tells me that she wants to dress Bubba. I said okay because I wanted to keep her busy inside a little longer since it was still 49 degrees outside. Hayden comes running back into the room with nothing on and Ella following close behind with a new diaper. She then proceeded to bring me several outfits to choose from. None of which were seasonable. Finally we got an outfit together and I walked back into Hayden's room to get him some shoes. To my surprise, Ella not only removed Hayden's previously wet diaper, it was in fact a dirty diaper. There were wipes on the floor that had been used to clean Mr. Hayden up. Of course I then had to check Hayden out to make sure he was really clean and to my total surpise, He was!!! Forget calling the babysitter, Ella is doing just fine at taking care of her little brother. She never mentioned he was dirty and that could have been a total disaster. She has been asking me if she could help and so I guess she figured since I had not let her, she was going to take matters into her own hands. Now if I could only get her to potty train him. :) These kids sure are a mess some days, but today definitely reminds me of how funny and precious they are! Below are some pictures that I had considered for the Christmas card, but none really worked. Enjoy.

Mark wanted to use this one since the kids look like they're singing. He wanted little word bubbles coming from their mouths saying something. Only Mark.... :)