Colt is 7!

Happy Birthday to our oldest! This birthday in particular has been the one that most made me feel like time is flying by! I love this sweet boy and cherish the time we have with him. 

Colt is really growing into a big helper. I can put him in charge of Zoe for short periods of time (like 5 minutes… don't freak out, people). He will make snacks for everyone and likes helping in the kitchen, gets Zoe out of her bed when she wakes up, helps his siblings around the house and overall has been really cooperative lately. This is such a blessing to me (and to himself so he doesn't get redirected/disciplined as much!). 

Colt likes to make new Lego creations or things out of blocks/Lincoln logs/pegs. He loves making paper airplanes and forts. Water guns (or guns of any kind) are a big hit as well as remote controlled cars, planes, helicopters, etc. 

Colt is really thoughtful towards others. He usually asks questions that show he has been quietly thinking about something for a while. He likes giving food to the homeless and coming up with solutions (although they are generally unrealistic but totally cool in his 7-year-old brain) to solving world problems or just the problems we share with him of our friends/family.  He really hates injustice in any form, something we will try to nurture in him as he grows. He also loves to tell people about Jesus. Ty thinks he will be a preacher when he grows up :) He gave a Bible to our neighbors b/c they don't go to church and will yell out to total strangers at times, "God loves you!" While he is generally quiet and reserved outside of our home, he has no hesitation in telling people about his faith. What an example to us all! 

This year Colt participated in baseball, learned piano, and is learning swimming strokes. He is learning to read and we can't wait for him to read books independently (we can see this happening in a few short months!). His siblings love to sit on the couch with him and listen to him read his early reader books. 

Colt, you are such a great kid. You bring much joy to your mom and dad. I love that you still come to cuddle in bed with me in the mornings and will hold my hand when we are walking to school/stores/errands. You and Levi and Tatum are great friends (and I hope that friendship with continue to grow to include Zoe, even though she is so much younger than you). It's fun to watch you play with them and care for them and, yes, pester them. You are a smart kiddo and are learning so much each day. I can't wait to see how you grow this next year. 

I love you, Mom

Who are your closest friends? Scout and Garrett, Jonah, Jake, Wesley and Cole, Zoe

What are some talents you have? baseball- hitting the ball, golf - I'm going to start doing golf camp (this is news to his mother and father!) 

What activities do you like to do with your family? going to Chuck E. Cheese and Main Event and Starbucks

What makes you happy? giving Mommy and Daddy hugs (this makes us happy too!)

What makes you sad? when Mommy yells at me (this makes me sad too.) 

Favorite color? all the colors except for gray and white

Food? macaroni and cheese, hotdogs and pizza and cheeseburgers, oranges and mangos, watermelon, cantaloupe. 

Sport? baseball

Book? I don't read books… oh, I know…Doyle and Fossey Science Detectives. 

TV show? Pokemon

Movie? Despicable Me 2

Game on iPad: Batman

Song to sing? Jesus Loves Me

What do you like best about school? Going home b/c I get to go outside and play with my friends. In the classroom I like Rapid Recall and ELF (math).

Day of the week? Sunday and Saturday. Because those are the days Daddy stays home for a long time. 

What did you get for your birthday this year? Science experiment kit from Brady, Wooden tractor kit from Scout and Garrett, Remote controlled flying toys from Grandma and Grandad and Uncle Andrew and Aunt Amy. I liked ALL my gifts :) 

When I grow up I want to be a golf ball player. 

My goal for this year is watching television. (After more prompting)… learn to play chess. 

Something new I want to learn when I am 7 is golf. 

Anything else? No. (This is typical… a boy of few words.) 

June… another month in the books!

We have had such a blast so far this summer. Each week has been something different and we've enjoyed changing it up a bit. 

We are having some major plumbing issues at our house, so have gone out to Marble Falls a few times to escape it all. The kids have had a blast swimming at Aunt Pam's pool! 

The boys kicked off the summer at swim camp. This year they moved up to the Guppy group and learned some strokes. 

Eliza spent the night and the girls had so much fun playing together. They were in their princess dresses the entire time! 

Zoe has been loving riding with Ty when he mows the grass. It's too cute! 

I rarely do this but one day we were out and needed to pick up lunch. When this usually happens, we swing through the drive-thu somewhere or I run in to pick up a to-go order. We've been eating gluten-free/real food lately and it's hard to find this kind of food on the fly. So, I braved taking all 4 kids to a restaurant by myself to grab a bite to eat. We lucked out (??) and ended up being the only ones in the entire restaurant! Turned out there was a reason for this… the food was really mediocre, but it make for a fun lunch! 

We have been going to UT for many years for the kids to participate in language research. It was finally Tatum's turn and she was so excited. She chose to wear her UT cheerleading outfit and was disappointed the staff didn't give her a Hook 'Em Horns hand sign when she left. Ha! She had a blast and was excited to show off her book she received as a thank you for her participation. (They are always nice and give a book to the siblings too.)

Tatum has been asking for several months to take gymnastics. Dad and Jennifer gave her some money for Christmas to take some lessons and the time finally coordinated with our schedule, so she has begun! She LOVES it. She hams it up but has a smile on her face the whole time and asks every day of the week how many more days until her next lesson :) 

We have 3 big steps from our back porch down to the yard. Zoe has been doing a great job of just standing at the top watching the other kids play, but we could tell she really wanted to be out there with them. We figured we should teach her to go down safely before she attempted it on her own, so with just a few tutorials, she has gotten it down! She loves the freedom of being able to go up and down as she pleases. 

Off to find some adventure at the swing set. 

Colt spent a week at baseball camp. He thought it was too hot (even though it was comparatively cool this June) and too long, but in the end, had fun. He asked me one day, "Mom, what is a money ball?" Apparently one of his coaches told him he hit one :) 

We had the privilege of watching Plamedi one day. She's the daughter of our friend, Innocente from church. Tatum LOVED getting to feed her the bottle. 

Zoe loved playing in Plamedi's car seat (and got very jealous when I held Miss P). 

The older 3 went to VBS for the first time this year at a church very close to our house. We all had fun at the Thursday night show where the kids sang us the songs the learned during the week. Tatum loves to perform!

Zoe loves to ride on Daddy's shoulders.

Tatum was on photo duty at Colt's b-day party :) 

We had a Dillman family party for Colt at our house one weekend. It was the first time we've all gotten together since Christmas and was lots of fun. The girls...

and the boys.

Colt is turning 7!! He wanted oreo cake :) 

Tatum has been asking to wear my makeup a lot. Grandma bought her a little bit of makeup so Tatum gave all the girls a makeover. Don't we look beautiful? 

Aunt Debbie receiving her beauty treatment :) 

We made this little number for Ty's office for Father's Day. He is such an great dad and an amazing husband. The kids love his stories, wrestling matches, baseball practice, date nights with Daddy, drinking his coffee, and driving in Daddy's truck among many other things. We love you more than words can express! 

Happy 1st Birthday, Zoe!

Gah… I love this girl!!

We threw a family b-day party for Zoe's first. Levi and Colt are perusing the spread.

Colt loves Pirates Booty.

Grant and Stephen were able to join us! 

Zoe loved some of her favorite foods: turkey, bell peppers, carrots and grapes.

This is one of the best cake pictures we got. She started off slow, then got to it!

This year has flown by! We have been busy with moving, homeschooling, church planting, and just life, but it seriously seems like all I did was blink and my baby turned ONE! 

Tatum and Eliza LOVED riding in the Jeep together. These girls are fun together :)

Bang Band and Hazel

Zoe loves holding my cell phone. It's getting hard to take pictures of her (or anyone else) with my phone b/c as soon as she sees it she freaks out/screams until the phone is in her hands. 

The big ONE!  

Zoe is a busy girl! She's fast too - takes off before you know it :) 

Zoe, 

You are our sweet, silly, smart, laid-back, tough, curious girl. We love everything about you. Before you were born, your dad and I went back and forth on what your middle name should be. One name we considered was Joy, but nixed it because it was short just like Zoe. Therefore, we went with Faith. While we still love the name Zoe Faith, you bring so much joy into our lives that I often wonder if we gave you the wrong middle name :) We love you to pieces! 

Love, Mom

May

Ty and I headed to Dallas for the Catalyst conference this year. Our childcare ended up falling through. Zoe came down with hand, foot and mouth so we were taking her with us to the conference as to keep her from sharing her germs with our nephew, Axel, who was also being watched by my parents. Then Jennifer ended up sick in the middle of the night with a stomach bug, so I missed Friday morning of the conference to watch the kids while my dad was at the hospital with her. I made the afternoon/evening of the conference. Then, my dad got sick in the middle of the next night, so Saturday morning I came to pick up the kids. We decided to bring them to Catalyst with us! Thought they'd love the music… but it ended up being too loud for them to enjoy :( Fortunately, they had lots of fun games set up outside, so the boys raced the hamster balls over and over again during our lunch break. Fun times! Dad and Jennifer, thanks again SO much for watching our kids for us. Even thought it didn't go as planned, they had fun with you while they were there. There's always next year! ;-)

Tatum has been into makeup lately. I think this has been spurred on by our neighbor who has her own kid makeup that they play with quite often. Anyway, one day I discovered this stinker putting on my lip gloss in the car. Earlier in the day she had put lip stuff all over her eyelids, so at least this time she kept in on her lips :) 

Tatum and I also attended the Mother Daughter Tea at Westover. It was fun to color our own tea cups and eat some fancy food. She loved having all the attention to herself and talked the whole car ride there. 

Ugh! This was outside our bedroom patio door the other day. I could live without these being so prevalent around my house.

Ty and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary! We didn't get a sitter on our actual anniversary (we celebrated the next day with a delicious sushi dinner. Random story- also eating at Uchi with us was an actress we watch on tv quite often, Robin Tunney aka: Theresa Lisbon from the show The Mentalist. She sat 2 seats down from us at the sushi bar. It was fun to star watch as we ate!). Anyway, I thought it would be fun to celebrate our marriage in an extravagant way with the kids. It's never to early to teach them to celebrate love and marriage! So, we set the table with our finest and busted out the nice glasses. The kids had fun drinking apple juice (a delicacy in our house) in their wine glasses. 

They also had fun blowing out the candles over and over again :) 

Colt was trying to master the art of extinguishing the flame with wind created by his fingers. This is one of Ty's specialties that the kids try to imitate.

Tatum continues to sport her Elsa braid daily… though I've changed it up to add her bangs into the braid now so she has less whispys throughout the day.

More baseball! Go Colt!

Having fun in the dugout.

I love how the boys are so close in age that they can be on the same team some years. The team was very young and lost most of their games, but they all had fun and learned a lot! I should also mention that Ty was their assistant coach this year. I think both Ty and the boys had fun spending all that time together at the games and practices. You are a great dad, Ty! 

Thought this was cute! Zoe is a trooper and is so go with the flow (I guess most 4th kids have to be). She was so cute sleeping in the car after church this day. Guess we didn't get home fast enough for her. 

Sweet cheeks

Colt's kindergarten class at Veritas. I'm not really sure why kindergarten graduation is a thing now, but it is, so we went to show our kid how proud we are of him. 

Here's Colt's class. They all received rocks with a character trait written on it that exemplifies the student. Colt's rock said, "thoughtful." 

My thoughtful boy

A family snapshot in Colt's classroom

That same afternoon, we headed over to Levi's preschool as he graduated from Pre-K! (He's on the right end, blue shirt.)

Here he is with his teachers, Ms. Kristi (left) and Ms. Tina. He loved school this year and is ready to rock Kinder next year! 

Tatum with her teachers, Ms. Karin (left) and Ms. Stacey. Her teachers were so perfect for her and so much fun. She is REALLY going to miss them this summer! 

I got my phone out to take a pic of the kids playing on the porch one day and you-know-who noticed. Here she is reaching for the phone. 

And now she's crying b/c I wouldn't give it to her. I sure do hope her propensity for my phone doesn't mean she will like expensive things her whole life ;-) I'm always so worried she's going to drop and break my phone.

A few selfies with my baby… still reaching for the phone.

She's been curling her tongue like this A LOT. 

I love kissing this cutie! 

On our way to the boy's end of season t-ball party, Colt decided to wear all of his baseball hats from each team he's ever been on. 

We hit up The Thinkery (Austin's new children's museum) before schools get out next week. Tatum really enjoyed this plexiglass that she could paint and squeegee. 

Levi enjoyed it too… He got paint all over him :) 

Aunt Ashley was awesome enough to join us (it was so nice to have an extra pair of eyes to watch the kids!). She was able to show Colt lots of cool things with her super arty eye. Check out her work at Morning Lion Art.

Zoe is as excited as I am that this blog is officially up-to-date. Now maybe I will start posting in real time!!