golf lessons

bye bye butterflies

In case you have been wondering what happened to our caterpillars, here is the update. All of them transformed into cocoons. We transferred the cocoons into the butterfly pavilion and patiently waited for them to change.

Finally, butterflies began to break out of their shells. We watched them closely - hoping to catch a glimpse of it happening but no luck. It seemed to happen every time we would walk away. Finally, ten butterflies were living our our butterfly pavillion. Each day, Addelyn would check her butterflies and then we would feed them. This included flowers or shredded kleenex with sugar water and orange slices. We would watch their little tongues come out and eat. It was a very cool process for Addelyn to watch and was a great learning tool for her.

Time to say goodbye! Butterflies live for around 10-14 days. We decided today was a great day to say goodbye. It is nice out and we decided we would much rather say goodbye this way than to wake up one morning and to find dead butterflies.



I would definitely suggest getting a butterfly pavilion and growing some butterflies! It was fun and interesting for Addelyn- it was really a great age to do this.

Mommas

Check out these Mommas! This is my small group of women- aren't they beautiful? All of us have been pregnant at the same time this past year at some point. Notice one of the babies has been birthed (sweet little Tobias on the end). Now the rest of us will be delivering (anytime from the upcoming days to week- I can only hope!) through September, when the last little baby will be born. We have a variety of boys and girls too....from the left to the right we go- Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl, Boy! We didn't even try to line that one up.
Gotta love it, how life can change in a matter of one year! YEAH for babies!!!

SURPRISE!

Addelyn and I were coloring at the island in our kitchen. (Okay, Addelyn was coloring and I was working on my "to do before baby list.") She said, "Mommy, I have a surprise for you."
She got down from her chair and went under our island. I was expecting her to come out with a pretty picture or maybe she would show me that she found some piece of old food under the counter. In a minute or so she jumped back up into her chair- completely naked! "Surprise!" she said, "I'm coloring naked!"

piece of work!

Tonight Mark was in the living room and he made a loud, funny comment that I responded to with a lecturing sounding, "Mark!" (basically meaning don't make comments like that in front of Addelyn).

Addelyn was sitting at the island in our kitchen, having a snack. She looked at me and smiled and said, "Oh Daddy, you are a piece of work."

letters to my babies....

A letter to each of you before life REALLY changes.................(Someday you will hopefully read and understand these moments and thoughts.)

Dear Baby Boy,

Hard to believe that you will be coming soon! We are counting down the days! I'm so excited to meet you and to see who you are. I can't wait to see what you look like and what your personality is like. Will you look like Addelyn when she was born? Will you weight LOTS more than her because your momma is growing bigger by the minute!? I am craving the moment where I get to hold you in my arms. Your dad and sister and I are all excited to add a little boy to our house and to get to know you!

We know you will change the whole dynamic of the way things roll at our house but I think it will be a great change- one we are ready for! We have prayed for you before you were even made and I love that you will be fufilling a spot in our family that has been waiting to be filled by only you.

Okay, Baby Boy, we love you already!!! Come out to see us soon!

Love, Your Momma

Dear Addelyn,

Well, Sweetie, life is about to change for us. We will go from having you as our only little one to having another kiddo around the house. You have had our centered attention for the last three and a half years so I know this will be a life change for you. I know you will do great though. You are one of the most caring, nurturing little girls I know. You will be an amazing big sister.

The last three years, you have taught us so much. Through your life, I have seen a miracle- not just a random accident. Through your life, I have learned thankfulness. I have learned to change my priorities. I have learned more about your Daddy- what an amazing guy and father he is. I have learned patience. I have learned more about myself in so many ways! Thanks for all you have taught me. Oh and all you have yet to teach me!

Even though you won't be our only child anymore, you will always have a special place in my heart, my first little one. You will always be my baby girl. I'm sad to say goodbye to this time of life- this season- but excited because I know your brother will bring so much joy to our family and especially to you.

We love you Addelyn. You are very special.

Love you, Your Mommy

wow.

I cannot help but laugh at the things that come from my daughter's mouth.

"Wow" is one I hear often these days. "Wow, Mom. Wow," she'll say about anything that she is surprised or interested in.

The other day she was playing with her baby (surprise, surprise!) and let me tell you, listening to her talk to her baby is the best! She has quite the imagination. Her and baby have great conversations.
"Are you kidding me, Baby?" she said. "I cannot believe you pooped! It smells terrible. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

you heard me!!!

Addelyn took off with the camera the other night and was taking pictures. She ran upstairs and I gave her a warning that she needed to return the camera back to me OR ELSE! She pushes every button possible and I'm nervous that she'll break our camera or really mess it up. I loved what I found later when I sat down to put my pics on the computer. Ohhhhh Addelyn.

helmet at dinner time

Our little miss has a bike with training wheels. Today I bought her a helmet and she had to wear it during dinner because she was so excited about it! As I watched her outside, riding around....all I could think about is how OLD she looked. My little girl is riding a bike!

wedding day

A month ago or so, Addelyn and I watched our wedding video from the big day five years ago. It is a great video and has amazing memories captured on it. As we watched it, I sat and cried (happy tears of course). Addelyn kept looking over at me and before I knew it, she had tears running down her face too. I said, "Oh, honey, why are you crying?" She answered, "I don't like the music....."

Last night as we drove home from her babysitter's house, out of the blue, she said, "Mommy, remember when you got married to Daddy? And I watched the video? Well, I'm sad because you didn't invite me!"

metamorphosis

We are in the midst of growing some butterflies. Our ten caterpillars arrived in the mail last week. Addelyn was excited about the little crawlers. She named a few of them- "Worm, Crawler, and Poops A Lot." She likes to check on them each day and the things she has noticed so far is that they like to sleep, crawl, and poop. They are starting to spin silk and hang themselves from the tops of the jars so we will be watching as they build their cocoons. From there we transfer them to the Butterfly Pavillion and will get to see ten beautiful butterflies hatch (so we hope!) To be continued.....

easter

Our pictures can't do justice for how we spent time celebrating and thinking about Easter this year. Addelyn actually is starting to understand some of the stories and truth so it has been a fun year of talking through the Easter story. We spent time each night at dinner, sharing about the last week of Jesus' life.
Of course, we also have spent time doing the other fun Easter traditions- coloring eggs being one of them.

We also went to Heartland Vineyard for an Easter Eggstravagansa which was inside because of bad weather. Addelyn picked up lots of eggs but I think was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of people there that day. I was a bit overstimulated myself!

We hung out with our buddy Jack at the Easter egg hunt too!

minivan momma

Yes, it is true! We finally broke down and ended our one car streak. We made it eight months with one car. Thanks to our friends and also our choices/organization/planning every day- we made it happen. Now we've entered a new stage as baby number two arrives in a few weeks- our first ever MINIVAN!

minnesota family fun weekend

I would say it is a new tradition to try to do a family weekend with the Hoskinson crew at least once a year- going somewhere fun together. All of us have jobs that call for working on weekends so it takes a lot of work to get something set up. We finally made it happen for the beginning of April. We headed to Minnesota this year and had a great time. One of our first stops was IKEA, gotta love that place!

Addelyn and her Uncle Matt have a very special bond!

We spent some time on Saturday playing at the Indoor Park in Edina. It is a blast- the kids loved it (all of the kids, even the big ones!)


Addelyn absolutely LOVES her cousins Ty and Trae. After the weekend together, she couldn't stop talking about when would be the next time to see them!


Blanket Monster game- yeah, I'm not really sure about this game. It is a game that Mark played when he was little. I think the tradition has been carried on!

Addelyn being her crazy self! By the way, we stayed at the Radisson Hotel and there is where the Water Park of America is located. It was a blast. The rooms were awesome and so was the pool. I would definitely suggest it for a family weekend. The rooms we stayed in had small bunk rooms which worked great for the kiddos (and Mark and I, we were the kiddos this year too!!!)

The kids had a blast playing in the top bunks. Who needs toys when there are cousins and bunk beds?

What a great weekend of great memories made!

jiva

This morning I was out of the shower and getting dressed and Addelyn asked if she could put lotion on my feet. I was confused at first and she said, "Well, Mommy, sit down. My name is Jiva and I'm here to lotion your feet. I'm a foot lotion lady."

Who can argue with a three year old who wants to rub this big momma's feet with lotion (the feet I'm barely reaching well these days!)

She was so cute as she put lotion on my feet and smiled at me and said, "How is your day going? Are you going to get your hair cut?"

*Jiva is a salon here in CF. Addelyn has gotten her haircut there but no pedicures! Not sure where that came from but I love the way her mind works!

bad dreams

Last night we were awakened by a terrible scream. I don't think I have ever heard Addelyn scream like this before! It scared both Mark and I. He ran into her room and ended up carrying her into our bed, where she spent the rest of the night cuddled close to me.

The best thing was that she tried to start conversation with me at 3 a.m. "Mommy, what were you doing in the kitchen last night after I was in bed? Were you eating? What were you eating? Did you get on the computer?" After I discouraged conversation, she finally fell back asleep, thankfully!

This morning, the first thing she asked me was, "Where do all the bad foxes live? Or the bad wolves?" She said a bad fox or wolf was in her room last night.

These are the days I absolutely love to watch her wild imagination - however, I'm a little nervous that wild imagination will lead to wild dreams at night!

I found out later she read the story "The Three Little Pigs" for the first time at her babysitter's yesterday so that could be where the bad wolf came in!