The Howell's

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Winter Updates...

I have been lax on the blogging. I have such great intentions! :) The big winter events are obviously birthdays!! We have so many special birthdays in the winter months! Clint, Grandma (90 this year!!), Jesus, Emerson, Cullen, Charlie and Lexie, and DREW, all in December and January alone!
Here are some of the highlights of Drew and Clint's birthdays, below:

Clint's THIRD birthday!
Poor buddy. Clint, Drew and I were ALL sick leading up to Clint's party. It is a really good thing I started planning it MONTHS before I should have because I was completely useless the days leading up to his party. I had to even sit down to frost his cake the day of his party! Despite not feeling great, and the non stop coughing, we had an awesome Paw Patrol party for the sweetest little boy I could ever imagine! He is always such a light, even not feeling well, coughing, anything.. he just loves to smile and to make other people smile! Paw Patrol is a show with dogs that all have different 'specialties'.. one fights fires, one works construction, etc... so we did masks for all of the kids along with construction hats, Home Depot aprons, fire hats, construction cones, etc... for our decorations! We also had dog themed food like graham cracker dog bones, food served in dog bowls, and 'pup'corn! Oh, and Clint got a drum set for his birthday gift.. cutest thing ever!

Clint is growing like a champion! At his 3 year check up he was 37 inches and 29 pounds! It is the 25th percentile, but that is really good for him! He took a while to even get into the double digits! He is perfect and precious!

Drew's FIFTH Birthday!
The continued tradition of drawing out the kids birthday's continued this year! Drew got some earrings for Christmas. Previously she had said that she thought the right time to get her ears pierced was age 7. However, suddenly she owned earrings of her very own and that is all she could think about! She said she wanted to get them pierced the day of her party, but we were worried that they would be sore and she wouldn't enjoy her party. Then she decided she wanted to get it done ON her birthday. Well, I had to be out of town on a business trip ON her birthday (insert heartbroken mom face here). So, I devised a plan. A couple of weeks before her party I told her that I thought we should go to the mall just to look at the earring choices that they had. I knew she wouldn't be able to leave without those earrings in her ears and I was right! LUCKY for ME! Jon met us there, and she was SO brave!
Before:

During:

After: (her eyes got red but there were no tears!)

The weekend before her actual birthday we had the most EPIC Frozen Party Ever! I MIGHT have gone a little overboard, but it is what I DO! :)
We had a food room, a tea party room, a hair/makeup/nails room and a dress up room with tons of dress up clothes, a 'stage' and a backdrop!! On top of all of that ANNA and ELSA CAME TO DREW's PARTY! She was a little nervous at first, and I was such a mess that I started crying when they walked in!!

Drew is continuing to grow! She is still in the 90th percentile in height and weight. (45 1/2 inches and 49 pounds) We have been putting off shots as long as we could, but yesterday it was inevitable! She had to get 2 shots before she could get into kindergarten so we went for it! There were 4 medicines in 2 shots, thankfully. She did great! She claims it didn't hurt as bad as getting her ears pierced but she sure cried more from the shots!

Drew also had her first field trip! Unfortunately for her, it was to Catch Air! ha! Fortunately, though, SHE GOT TO RIDE THE BUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Biggest.Deal.Ever for Drew!! The director was nice enough to take a picture for us so we could experience her freak out with her! Her class made a thank you card for Catch Air and Drew said that her favorite part of the day was "playing tag with my dad" which melted Jon's already soft and squishy heart!

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Our little fish...

Drew is a ROCKSTAR SWIMMER! She has really been doing great in her lessons and has been moving up to new classes super fast! The big thing to move up from her current class was that they told her she needed to get her arms out of the water, instead of doing more of a doggie paddle. Well, something must have just clicked last week and suddenly she has the most beautiful stroke! I was so proud watching this I wanted to burst into the pool room and pull her out to hug her!
Clint is doing amazing too, and I will try to get a video of him next week! :) His big thing is to keep his head down in the water; when he looks down, he swims GREAT, but when he looks up, he sort of sinks. Jon says he gets that from him because Jon says he sinks in the water, too! ha!

They are both also doing great in gymnastics. Clint got moved up to the 3 year old class and Drew started on Tiny Team, despite my hesitations. :) We shall see how it goes! :) This gymnastics place does a Ninja class and I can't wait for Clint to be old enough to do that class! It looks like so much fun!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

ALS Ice Water Challenge

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Summer 2014-Big things are happening!!!

I haven't updated the blog in so long. The more things that you have going on, the more I want to share, but the less time I have to do so! It is a horrible cycle!
So far this summer, some of the big things that have happened are:
1. We got kittens!!!! Camille Paisley and Joey Jo Jo!
This one is Joey, Clinton's kitten. How adorable is this cuddle?!

Here are Drew and Camille. Adorbs!!

Here are the sisters together! They are a little stinky. Mostly Joey. "She has poopy issues" as Drew and Clint like to tell people! They are getting along with the dogs and we are so lucky to have them!

2. "People helping people" is sort of our summer theme. That's what it is all about. I get frustrated with Drew because she is so "into" her "things". If someone borrows a shirt, the FIRST thing she will say is, 'but she isn't going to keep it, right?'. If someone is over and is using a sippy cup, the same thing. Pretty much every scenario you can think of "they aren't going to keep it, right?" I feel like Drew has SUCH a big heart which is why I get so frustrated. At Christmas, she buys toys to donate, and she has NO problem donating her own money out of her own piggy bank, but she LOVES her THINGS and wants to keep them ALL FOREVER. So, I realized that she is 4, and it is silly of me to push it at this point. She shows so much compassion, and is so giving, I need to focus on that. It all started with some neighbors who are adopting from Ethiopia. Their biological children decided to sell some of their toys/ stuffed animals to raise money for the orphanage. Drew made it VERY clear that she didn't want to sell her toys. However, she was thinking that maybe we could sell some of our food. She grabbed a 1/2 empty jar of peanut butter and said, "let's sell it for a little more than we paid for it!" Genius. However, I said, I don't think people will want our 1/2 eaten food. Thus was born, the idea of a neighborhood bake sale. Long story short.. I am SO proud of Drew for thinking of ways she could help others... it didn't matter that she didn't want to sell her toys. What matters is that she thought of another way to make money, and boy did she make money! We sat at the entrance to our sub for a little over an hour, and then Drew asked if we could move the "garage sale" to our drive way, so we did. I had been selling cookies for 25 cents, or whatever anyone wanted to donate. Not Drew... when someone asked her how much the cookies were, she said 1 dollar! She made 35 dollars on her own after I had gone inside for the night! Not only did we make around 200 dollars from our baked goods.. someone saw what Drew was doing, raising this money, and that family donated 500 DOLLARS to the orphanage!! Drew's idea to sell our peanut butter turned into 700 dollars worth of donations! WOW.. one child really CAN make a difference! Not only that, but the kids chose a new family member.. his name is Bersukal and he is the boy we are now sponsoring through Compassion International. To quote one of my favorite new charities... Give a little, CHANGE a lot!

3. The next big thing is that Clinton did a triathlon! We had originally signed Drew up for it and thought Clint was too young, but Drew decided she was too nervous to do it (we think it was left over anxiety from the 1K she did in May!). We figured that since we had paid, we might as well go see what happened! Clint did awesome! First, the swim.

Then, the bike ride. Clint's favorite part!

Then the run...The ENTIRE time he was saying "But we left my BIKE!! I want to go get my BIKE!"

And finally, his big finish!

So proud of our little buddy! He was all heart!

4. Our baby Drew Bug is SOOO GROWN UP... she ditched her training wheels and decided she was ready to ride without them! There was no magical moment that Jon and I had anticipated, where we would run behind her and let go, only to see her ride off into the distance. Of course not. Our little lady can never do things ordinary! Instead, she told us that she thought she was ready and could do it. She walked up to a neighbor boy's bike, asked me to help her by holding it so she could get her feet on the pedals, and the she just took off!! WHAT?! The next day (today), we got her a smaller bike. Hers is 18 inches and entirely too big for her. She has so much more confidence on a smaller bike so we found a 5 dollar Dora bike on craigslist. Jon brought it home, she hopped on and rode off! She didn't even need me to hold it for her to get her feet on the pedals! I love seeing her so proud of herself. She should be!

Coming up yet this summer, we have Benji's birthday party, a Shashaguay family reunion, and a trip to Jackson and Georgia! Still so much fun to be had!