Baby Snuggles

This blog entry is long, long overdue! But I left my camera card in my mom’s computer and just got it back this week.

Back in early January the Modlin’s headed east to meet the newest member of our family! A handsome little guy named after my dad and my brother….a true gift from God and just what our family needed.  I was so excited to meet him that upon arrival in Beaufort, we basically threw the kids out of the car and into my mom’s arms and went to my brother’s house. I wanted some 1 on 1 time with the little guy and I knew having the kids around would be a little stressful for me. Plus, everyone was really worried about how Avery would react to the baby….we all thought she would be very jealous.

I didn’t get any pictures on Friday night, but Saturday afternoon Matt and Cecily brought the baby to mom’s house so the kids could meet him and we all had dinner.  Avery, Sunshine and Isabelle are all decked out in their matching outfits.

We were able to catch some cute pictures of the kids seeing him for the first time. I love the expressions on their faces!

Of course everyone had to take a turn holding him.  Avery went first and only held him for about a minute. She was more content to hang around while everyone else held him.

Will’s turn! While he looked terribly uncomfortable, he enjoyed it. Until the baby cried a little bit and Will is still upset that maybe the baby doesn’t like him. Poor guy!

 

 

My turn! He really liked snuggling up into my blardigan! #ptmt

We also had lots of tea parties. This is a favorite past time of Avery’s while we are in Beaufort!

Bubba spent the tea party time putting together a puzzle he got for Christmas.

Now we are all ready for warmer weather for Beaufort visits! My toes miss the sand.

I almost really lost my Marbles…

Last week I chaperoned Avery’s class field trip to Marbles. I did the same with Will a few years ago and you can read about it here.  There was a big difference between the 2 as on Will’s field trip I believe I was only in charge of 2 little boys, including Will. On Avery’s I had 5!!!  Long story short, we were one adult chaperone down due to illness so I had my hands full!! Marbles is an insane place to begin with and I have enough trouble keeping up with my own 2 children when both Matt and I take them.  Five by myself was RUFF.

But, I turned 5 kids back into the teacher that afternoon. And guess what, it was the right 5 kids!! Ha!

Adding to the drama, a student in the other class that went with us started projectile vomiting everywhere. Yeah, so that was fun too!

But back to the field trip! Avery and her friends had so much fun and I must admit all 5 of my little charges were extremely polite and well-behaved.  I couldn’t have asked for a better group of children. Just maybe a smaller group!!

Fun around the museum…..

Playing in the ambulance.

Playing in the vet center. This was kinda sorta  pug!! Avery was over the moon as her career aspirations right now include being a vet.

Puppet show! Bad action shot, I know.

Surf’s up!

And then I had to include these pics from many moons ago of Avery & Will on the same surfboard! These pics circa February 2011.

Catch of the Week

I am proud to report that Sir William was “Catch of the Week” in his classroom last week. This is a huge accomplishment for him and we couldn’t be more proud!

Friday night when he came home with his award, we let him pick the restaurant for dinner. He chose Chick-fil-a. Ha.

Being “Catch of the Week” comes with a lot of work!  He had to fill out a sheet about this family:

 

Write a story about his family:

 

It was definitely a non-fiction work because we made him erase some stuff about Daddy!!

 

I love the pic of Avery he drew….she’s wearing her fave skull t-shirt, holding the iPad in one hand and a lollipop in the other. Because as Will points out in his narrative, she “craves technology and candy.” Ha!!

 

This high honor has been a lot of work on me too as we had to get pictures printed to bring in to class, send in a treat for the class via the “estimation jar” and just make sure Will has done all the work and brought in all the right things for each day of this week. Such is life!

Super proud of our boy!

Customized Closet

In an effort to record more than just what our little family does on holidays and for vacation, I want to make sure I capture some of the day to day life around here.

Like this past weekend when Avery wanted to add a little pizzazz to Sunshine and Isabelle’s closet. You see, a few weeks ago we decided something had to be done about this:

 

So we went to the flea market one afternoon hoping to find a piece of furniture Daddy could turn into a wardrobe for the dolls, thanks to plenty of ideas Mommy had seen on Pinterest. But we stumbled up something already made for that task and Daddy was totally on board (ha) and so we came home with this:

 

Avery thought it was a little plain so we added some personal touches to it. She came up with the idea of attaching this cute little coat hanger to the front. I loved that idea so I got out my needle and thread.  And then she wanted to add some glittery designs she had gotten for Christmas from Aunt J. 

And then we also used some markers. Wow, it’s quite fancy!I actually don’t have a picture of the finished product with the markers…believe me, it’s “beautiful”.

Sunshine and Isabelle love it!

Lindy Sheds

I got a good chuckle as I was looking over some of Will’s math homework this week.

Obviously he doesn’t sweep up much. Or look down at his pants. I guarantee you right now there are more than 36 dog hairs on his pants just from this morning!

But he sure does love his Lindy!

1 – 1 – 2015

I love our little traditions…..like always spending New Year’s Day with one of my bestie’s from college who also happens to be Will’s godmother. It was her turn to host this year so we headed over to Aunt J’s gorgeous house in Apex mid-afternoon on the 1^st.

I really did an awful job taking pics. I am especially sorry I didn’t get one of me and her. L

But I managed to snap a few of the kids. Ages range from 8 to almost 2, but they get along so well. Will is a great big brother/”cousin”.

Uncle K tries his best to photo bomb the pics!!

The best part of 1-1-2015 was that my first “real” nephew was born! Walter Matthew made his entrance into the world late in the morning on the 1^st. He’s a real cutie and I can’t wait to see him in person soon!

NYE Celebrations!

The final post on 2014…hard to believe the year is over and we’re basically a week into 2015.

As has been our tradition the last 3 years, we closed out the year by attending The Avett Brothers concert. They are only my favorite. band. ever.

But before we headed to the concert, we had a mediocre pot roast dinner with the children and Mimi. The roast was mediocre, not the company! Then Jon and Elizabeth stopped by and we all headed out to meet Jon’s brother and his wife, Jeff and Anna, at a local restaurant. They all had dinner while Matt and I enjoyed appetizers and drinks. At this point, I’ve had way too much food!!

Our “family”….

We had AWESOME seats this year, which was very redeeming after last year’s bad seats and bad seat neighbors! We were on the 4^th row on the side and had a great view. Get this, the band members entered the stage via the crowd this year. Joe Kwon came down to the floor on the aisle like 6 seats away from me. Even better, Seth entered on the floor 4 rows in front of us!!!!! Elizabeth and I shrieked like pre-teenagers who had just seen Justin Bieber. Wait, is he even still popular?

I didn’t have my phone out but Elizabeth did capture this pic of Seth as he walked by.

A few shots during the show.

What was awesome about this year is we had good enough seats that we got to play with all the balloons during the midnight balloon drop!!

We met a couple in front us while waiting for the show to start. They were a little older than us…I think they had kids in their 20’s. Anyway, they called this their “mid-life rock and roll crisis” as this was their 22^nd TAB show in a fairly small window of time. They had traveled from Ohio for the show and they were just as nice as they could be. I also ended up sitting behind a former colleague and a few rows in front of an old college friend. Evidently we were also sitting in front of Elizabeth’s cousin’s friends because we were in the background of their Facebook photos! Small world!!

Not sure where TAB will be on 12/31/15 but I can promise you this guy and I will try our hardest to be there with them!