Team Spirit Day at School

This week has been a celebration of how well Auxvasse Elementary did on their state testing scores.
Monday was pajama day.
Tuesday was crazy socks day.
Wednesday was hat day.
Thursday was camo day (yes, the majority of the school has camo - Emma even wore camo).
 Friday is team spirit day and you get to wear you favorite team gear.  You can guess what my girls are....CHEERLEADERS!  Emma is participating today as well.

Emma wasn't that happy because I made Abby hold her because she kept crawling out of the picture.
Had to put on some pants though - it was snowing this morning!  Just flurries for a little while, but not what we expected to see.
Happy Friday!

Sometimes the kids are just too cute.....

We had a long evening out on the farm and they ran and played with neighbors while we got some tasks done.  Emma had to survive in the stroller:

and just watch us plant trees and work on a compressor.  Thankfully she loves the outdoors and the day was warm and lovely.  We are very lucky to have these 3 kiddos!

Emma is 9 Months

Ms. Emma is now 9 months and is into everything!  But it's a good thing as it's forcing us to baby proof a little bit more and for her sisters to clean up after themselves or she will get into their stuff.  I'll admit - I am secretly a little happy when Emma destroys something and I get to throw it away and it's a "lesson learned".

So on to our milestones from last month:

• CRAWLING FORWARDS is our biggest change from last month.  Not that she couldn't get everywhere, now she doesn't get stuck underneath things (as much).  
• Hits her head on things more since she is crawling forwards - not sure how she doesn't see these things coming.
• Looks for an audience before she starts to cry if she falls over now
• Has started pulling up to her knees a couple of times on her activity table
• Still just 8 teeth but I think we are close for some molars this month, she is chewing on everything
• Gives open mouthed/slobbery kisses if you pucker up for her
• Waves at you a little bit if you wave to her
• Hair puller!
• Still not a big fan of bananas.  
• Has tried chicken, working on some new meats to add in to the mix.
• Lowered her crib so she is now in "baby jail" as the girls call it.
• Still eats, naps, and sleeps like a champ.
• Is still very content to play and sit on her own, looking for more interaction from her sisters
• Went (halfway) down a slide at the park for the first time
• Lots of babbling, but still no "Mama" even though I say it to her all the time, still determined that will be her first word.
• Got "promoted" into the big kid room at daycare so she can play with the other kids.  So far so good.

That's about all I can think of for now.  She is a wonderful baby and we can't get enough of her.

Happy Easter

The Schmidt Easter celebration was pretty laid back this year.  We did not travel, and no one traveled to us - I know, a first!  We decided to just relax (we tried) and just enjoy the weekend.  Then we had a faucet explode on Saturday.  Seriously, the cold faucet handle burst up and water came shooting up out of it, just like in the movies....it can really happen!  Another bathroom faucet was in need of repair due to the stopper breaking as well.  So Tim got to replace 3 bathroom faucets on Saturday/Sunday, 2 due to necessity, and 1 just because he couldn't handle them not matching.  Thankfully we had 2 faucets (a project from 5 years ago that never happened) so we only had to buy one for the girls bathroom.  As our home is a little over 10 years old now we are experiencing some new surprises.....

So beyond our plumbing experiences we had a nice Easter.  The Easter Bunny found our house and delivered a couple movies and of course there was an Easter egg hunt, and all eggs are accounted for.  All girls were happy, that was until we made them get up this morning.

The Great Baby Comparison

Many people have given their opinion on which sister looks like which sister so here are the results from our latest photo update.

Emma and Abby definitely have the same Schmidt ears although Abby's face is a little rounder.  All three have the same cowlick that I have, but I think Emma and Abby will have the same hair color.  Megan will be our only bleach blonde. The Papke nose is on all 3 of them as well.  There is no doubt that they are all my daughters.

St. Pat's Survived

This past weekend was our annual St. Pat's party.  We are officially outnumbered by children now with everyone who stays at our house.  It's loud, it's messy - and that's just Pollard....but the kids overall did very good and played downstairs most of the time.  I still need to put it all back together but since it's downstairs - I don't see the mess so it doesn't bother me as much.  We also had spring break that week so I got some quality time with the kids and we tried a few projects and ran a lot of errands.

Every post should start with Emma's cuteness and her great smile.  We got her picture taken so I'm waiting for those to be ready.  She is the best baby for photos in terms of getting a smile out of her.  Our photos were done and paid for in less than 15 minutes.

Emma was due for some meat in her diet so I put together a little chicken, sweet potatoes, and apples for her.

It was pretty simple and quick to put together.

You just saute the chicken a little in some butter (non salted of course) then add the apples and sweet potatoes.  The recipe says to add a chicken stock (if you ever had time to make one) but I just went with a cup of plain water.  Bring it to a boil and then let simmer for 15 minutes.  I was a little concerned that the chicken wouldn't blend well but it was just fine.  Has the same consistency of sweet potatoes, but you can smell the chicken for sure.  The apples I think really just added some more liquid to it.  Emma likes it though.  I have more to work on this weekend as our frozen stashes are running low.

So the next thing was something I saw on Pinterest that I thought would be so cute for St. Pat's.....

Basically you make shamrocks out of pretzels and coat them with melted candiquik that you have dyed green and added a peppermint flavoring too.......and I have never used Candiquik before.

So I had the girls lay out the shamrocks with the pretzels.  At this time I think it's all going well and they will turn out so cute.

And there was some pretzel eating of course too.  We actually ran out of pretzels....but little did I know I would not need them all.

So - Candiquik - if you have not used it ever before I recommend just melting one block at a time.  Once you have over cooked it, it's a done deal.  Microwaving it for even longer does not melt it.  I ended up wasting a block and a half before I finally figured it all out.

And this was our sad attempt at the shamrocks.  I used a frosting dispenser I had but didn't know the spring was broken so we had some issues controlling the Candiquik coming out.  It still tasted good though which was nice. Maybe next year we will try again.  I at least understand the Candiquik a little bit better now and would probably invest in a pastry bag as was recommended.  We had fun trying though.

Overall St. Pat's was pretty laid back.  Late nights and early mornings make for laid back parents for most of the day. 

A little bit of catch up.....

Well the Schmidt family has been busy with travel and spring break.  Mostly me traveling and getting to spend time with the kiddos for spring break.  We did actually get quite a bit done during spring break despite being outnumbered 3 to 1 and still needing to do homework for my class.

Emma has discovered her activity table and as you can see has a lot of help with learning to stand.
She is still only crawling backwards but is very effective at it at least.  We hope she shifts into first gear and starts going forwards soon.

We survived another St. Pat's with minimal sleep and minimal damages so that is good.  More photos to come on that later......