Four Year-old Birthday Parties, Playing Mom to Five and Sixth Grade Speeches

It's been a "busy" couple of weeks.  Busy in terms of being a stay at home mom for a five month old :)  Don't get me wrong, it is a lot of work taking care of a baby, it's just different than how I used to define busy.

Three weekends ago we had a little family party here for my nephew who just turned four.  We found Groupons to go play Monster Mini Golf.  It was glow in the dark and pretty fun although I think he was kind of scared of it.  Bailey slept through most of it.

It's kind of hard to make it out but those are people in the pictures.  I remembered how bad I am at mini golfing.  I don't think Nate and I have been since we were dating.  I took last place among the adults.  I might have been behind some of the kids too, although there is no guarantee they didn't cheat.

Then we headed back to our place for swimming, dinner and cake.

The water was way too cold for Bailey (or me) to go swimming yet so she got to hang out with Aunt Allison.

Nate braved the hot tub-although I heard rumors that he jumped in once I left...

Wesley requested a strawberry cake with chocolate frosting 

The next day I headed to Houston to watch my cousin's kids.  She just had baby number five and he was having some heart problems and so had to stay longer in the NICU than expected.  Her mom had to go home and there was going to be a three day gap before my aunt could get there so I went to help out with the kids while she was at the hospital.

Bailey got to experience what it was like to be the 5th child.  I can't say she loved every minute of it, but she did mostly love all of the attention that she got from the other kids.  The two year old was especially cute with her.

 He wanted to be wherever she was.  Baby tired?  Baby napping?  Baby need her meme (That's what he called his blankie that he tried to share with her over and over).  The cutest was one night when she was taking a bath in the sink (and it was metal so I think she was really cold and she was screaming of course) and he started crying and saying "Baby scared, baby scared."  So cute!

With five kids you don't have much time to take pictures but I did snap one of Bailey in the play thing they had.  She thought it was pretty fun, as long as I was in the room with her.

It was fun to get all of the kids to school, their various activities, and to play with them during the day.  Mothers of five are amazing!  It was exhausting!  I can't say that Bailey learned more patience but she did learn to sleep through lots of noise.  And minus one blow out at the park the three days went pretty smoothly.

Then last week Bailey and I went to Houston again to see my oldest nephew deliver his big sixth grade speech that he's been working on for the whole school year.

Don't they all look so handsome in their suits?  They each had to pick a hero to speak on and Mason chose George Washington.  I'm excited attend school events for my kids one day.