The truth is...

I have fallen off the blogosphere for many reasons...These four being my best and most fun reasons!  :) 

So for those of you who check this blog and have been coming back repeatedly to "December 2013"... a catch-up post of that month with five Stotts people excitedly awaiting Baby Girl Stotts to be born... I am here to tell you that this blog will soon have life again!  :)  After falling behind and then feeling like I was too behind to catch up (with this blog, weeding the garden-which you can see in the picture above was not a deal-breaker with what we have and are harvesting, hanging pictures in our new home, and a few other things here and there), I have jumped back on the horse and decided we are going to do this!  :) So in the next few weeks, I hope to get our blog caught back up to current-day with a Kindergartener (yes!) and Preschooler (yes!) and everything else that happens here at the Stotts House!

One thing I love about technology is that I can set the dates on my posts for months past (which I'm definitely going to do!)... so when I go back and look at this blog in a few years, I might not know any of this happened.  :)

I am typing this in a quiet house this morning... Baby Evie is napping, Roman is at Kindergarten, and Josiah and Benjamin are doing a rain dance outside (in the rain) -- so I'm hitting "Publish", grabbing dry clothes and getting a warm shower ready for my fellas.  Hope you are having a wonderful day!!

PS -- Take a quick listen when you have four minutes and need a little boost! JOY by Rend Collective

January... lots of "new" coming soon!

Welcome to the new year!  Unfortunately, this is *once again* a catch-up post... January and February turned out to be whirlwind-style living for us, but hey, it all turned out great and life is good!  :-)  New things in January and February...

January 15 - House on Crane Avenue went on the market!  What a crazy thing, to get a house ready to sell -- put your personal things/memories into storage so that they don't look cluttery, so that your potential buyers can imagine themselves settling into your sweet home and making it their own.  Oh, and keep the house picked up, so that at any moment's notice, you can pile the boys into the van, start the movie for them, and then run back into the house with a laundry basket to scoop up any random things that you don't have time to put away!  We spent several hours in our van, sitting in the Hy-Vee parking lot, watching a movie while we ate our picnic supper -- fun memories!  :-)

January 22 - So after eight showings in six days, we accepted an offer!  Slated date to move - February 28!  Bittersweet feelings - have loved our home in Ames, but excited to be moving to an acreage outside of Ogden!  That community seems to be a great fit for us - close to Jake's work, a smaller school district, and LOTS of space to run/explore/etc at home!

In the midst of busyness cleaning, nesting for Baby Girl's arrival (January 27) and other stuff... we scooped/ played outside, played inside, and just kept keeping on!

... and still patiently waiting to meet little sister!

we are still here!

Yes, we are still here and life is still fun and busy and exciting and crazy and good!!  :-)  I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted anything - seriously, I think the last post was November!  Yikes!!  So I'm going to play some catch-up to get us up to speed and hopefully get on a better/more frequent schedule again!!

So, way back in December...

We pulled out the Christmas decorations...

and ate popcorn as we strung it for the tree...

and then topped it off with a star!

After wrestling with our Christmas tree lights and putting the outdoor 
icicle lights on the tree, we realized that it looked 
funny/bad because the cords were white... 
so after the tree was fully decorated, we took the first 
set of lights off and replaced with some 
green-cord lights that looked much better!  :-)

We decorated Christmas cookies... lots of fun!

We decorated a ginger bread house at home.  Josiah got to be 
Roman's guest at his school party, where they 
also decorated ginger bread houses... 
so we pretty much became experts this year!

Santa (daddy!) came to visit us at home!  Jake was asked to 
be Santa for one of his boss' family Christmas.  Roman 
and Josiah were very excited to have Santa at home!

Benjamin was less than thrilled to have Santa at our house, 
even though Santa took off his beard and became "daddy" 
very quickly. :-(  Benjamin still says "Ho, ho, ho, Daddy" whenever 
he sees a picture of Santa OR anyone with a long, white beard
 (ie Santa or Abraham or most men in a children's bible).

We have four shovels in our garage, so all four of the 
Stotts men got to help scoop/shovel when it was time!  

A merry Christmas family picture...
one of our last family pics as a family of five!

... and that was our December, went by in a flash! 

and then there was november...

and it's already passed us by!?!  seriously. it's no joke when people say that time flies when you're having fun and/or when you're having kids.  here we are, enjoying our November!!

soooo many leaves!!

look closely... there are THREE stotts boys in this pic!

...and now four stotts boys!

man, do we LOVE puzzles. and dinosaurs. so this one is a fave!

en route to indiana, to celebrate my Grandpa and
Grandma Yutzy's 60th wedding anniversay!  a fun
weekend with something very special to celebrate!  

benjamin was jake's super-helper while he made some
updates to our bathroom. sadly, i'm just now realizing that i
think benjamin is holding my toothbrush, but I think it's 
still in the package. whew.  :-(

roman standing by our "thankful tree" - we listed out several things
that we're thankful for this month, including LOTS
of people in our lives, school and giant bats. yep. 

the stotts boys and uncle david cutting down our tree!  

the boys, helping drag the tree up to the tree-shaker, so
they can wrap and then rope it to the top of our van!  

Excited to get our tree home and decorate for Christmas!

And we're already into December... hope to post again sooner than later!  

october fun!

oh dear.  i started this post and called it "october fun", because it was october... and fun... and now we're already half way through november!  time is flying.  whoa.  so that i can keep my head straight on what happened when, i'm going to keep this as an october post -- and will post november fun soon after!  

the boys are all doing well -- roman loves school, i think all aspects, thankfully; josiah is fully riding the potty train, as he calls it (oh yeah! doing a dance of joy on this one!); and benjamin is moving SO much these days, that he out-eats his brothers, hands down.  (i do think he's burning more calories every day than any of us, just because he's eager to be moving and happy about it!)  really can't complain about anything!  :-)  here are some highlights from our month...

roman and jake working on biking without training wheels...
coming right along!!  :)

benjamin admiring his breakfast smoothie - this is not a daily thing,
but i'm glad that it's an option if we want it!  

haircut time!  we don't usually buzz roman, but his locks
were LONG and needed some help!

we carved our happy pumpkins WAY too early this year --
unfortunately, they had saggy smiles about a week before
trick-or-treat night, so they went in the trash early. but
we did enjoy them when we had them! 

jake and the boys, ready to go out and do some
trick-or-treating!! 

our explorer...

our pirate...

...and our happy frog.
(this is the 3rd frog that we've had -- thinking it could be the last!)

we handed out candy at our house for about 20 minutes, and then decided
to go out and knock on some doors.  just as we were leaving, about
15 people came walking up the street toward our house!
(josiah was noticing the crowd while i was trying to take this picture!)

On October 25th, we got to go to Wayland to meet our newest niece, Daphne!  She is a sweet little thing!  :-)  While there, we spent some time playing and just hanging around!!  

Baby is still growing well.  Was supposed to find out gender at our 23-week ultrasound (Oct 10) but baby decided to be very chill and not move a lot. All other measurements were great, but the ultrasound tech wanted a better read on baby's spine, so another ultrasound will take place Nov 6... until next time! ...

Fall Fun

It's been almost a month since my last post - oops!  We've been outside lots, loving this fall weather!  (This is by far my favorite season... love the weather, love the comfy/cozy clothes, love it all!!)  :-)  And now that Benjamin is more mobile on his legs, he's way excited to go outside, too!  

We spent some time over Labor Day weekend at Ledges State Park - really fun place to take kids or could go just adults!  (Creeks to stomp/play in and trails upon trails!)  Here's some of the fun that we had... didn't make it much past the creek!

water was cold at first, but everyone quickly got used to it!

not sure what josiah found in that rock, but
apparently he needed to look at it closely!

looking for minnows... kinda creepy, but we could
see them swimming around our legs!?!

everyone needs a good, sturdy stick to hold while out in nature, right?! 

made some new friends, who were building a dam -
so we jumped right in and started hauling sand and piling it up!

This weekend, we got to meet up with my Iowa family (missed you, Trav and Lindsay!) to celebrate mom's bday at Bloomsbury Farm - a super-fun pumpkin patch!  Lots of fun things to do... a jumping pillow, animals to feed and stare at, tether ball for the non-kids, pedal tractors, a pumpkin-shooter, mini-train, corn maze, tile slides, corn pool and a hayride!  Oh, a big pile of pumpkins, too!  It was lots of fun - could have probably made three laps and done everything a few times.  I think we were all starving when we got out of there and then all slept well last night!  Whew!  

mid-jump on the jumping pillow!  Josiah was very
cautious at first (surprising, since he's my climber!) 

Dad vs. Conrad, serious tether-ball action.

josiah and ada, checking out the goats!

barrel train fun!

Gpa Mark and Benjamin on the tile slide... weeeeee!

corn pool!

five faces... almost all are happy.  benjamin wanted to keep
swimming and wasn't happy when i set him in the "line-up".   

*love* getting to drive!

love being outside in the sunshine... looking forward to lots more fall fun in the months to come!!