Payton is 5!!!

On March 28th we celebrated the almost unbelievable birthday #5 of Payton Jayde Peevyhouse!  Here are some pics of the celebration.  We enjoyed a very small gathering of her sweet friends and family on Friday night and then spent the day Saturday going to Monsters vs. Aliens and then off to Purple Glaze for some painting and Pei Wei for lunch... meanwhile it was a blizzard outside and we received somewhere between 4-6 inches of snow!

Happy Birthday Sweet Baby Girl!

Refreshed, Renewed, I'M BACK!!!!

I am BACK!!!  I think with a weekend in the mountains of Arkansas, and well on my way in the second trimester (yes, I did say that...we are pregnant) I can finally get back to blogging.  So yes we have been busy and tired around here.  I feel like I am getting a grip on things again and can put my brain back into blogging this Simple Life that honestly in the past several months haven't felt so simple.  So we were invited on an annual trip with some of our dearest friends to a mountain cabin in AR this last weekend and we had such a wonderful time.  I got a new lens for the camera and of course I played and now I must share some of our moments.

Mountain man - Clay.  He was in heaven up there in the clouds.  On our second day, he and a couple of others hiked a trail on one of the bluffs.  It was approximately 6 miles long, and about 2000 feet above sea level.  It took them around 4 hours but I think he would have been fine to be gone for four days.

This was on the morning we left.  The fog in the mornings was just incredible.  When it lifted you could see for miles, but you would never know it in the early morning.

Our cabin name.

Our Cabin.

The road to our cabin...just beautiful!

We stopped at a little Elk museum in the city of Ponca, just down the mountain from us.  It was such a sweet little museum and very educational.  Homeschooling  dream for such a little place.  Payton learned all about Elk and now can even make Elk calf and Elk bull sounds!

Can you believe this is the best sister picture I got all weekend.  Eden is just on the move and won't hardly sit for anything.  You would never know I was a professional photographer when it comes to my own family.

This was on the old, young and pregnant hike. Eden just took to "Papa Brown" like he was her own.

This is wild flower called Bloodroot we saw on our hike.  They were beautiful!

This is the one and only photo of me the whole weekend.  Thanks Jan for taking this shot.

This is probably my favorite shot of Payton the entire trip.  It is in an old burned out tree.

This is our dear friend Jan.  She was a trooper and carried Eden on her back for about 3/4 of a 3 mile hike.  

"Papa Brown"  tore off a big hunk of cedar root from a fallen tree for Payton to smell.  It was incredible how fragrant it still was!

This was Payton's favorite pass time on the trip.  Coloring pictures and drawing for everyone.

Eden stealing my reading glasses.

The puzzle and the obsessed.

OH MY- Mark  this moment in time on your calendar folks.  Clayton Peevyhouse ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I have known my dear husband for 14 years now and he has always claimed to detest PB&J's and never has eaten one in front of me.  Well this weekend he was feeling adventurous and ate one.  His reply when asked how is it? "Pretty good."

Lunch and Play dough with Jan and Marcia!

Payton's Playdough bird.

Eden's play dough ice cream.

And with that I am out. I promise to blog again soon! Hope you all are doing well.

Grace and Peace.

Christmas, Crafts, New Haircut, Trolley Rides, and Trykes

Sorry for the delayed post...it has been busy around here.  I began this post a couple of weeks ago and just now finishing it.  We pray that all of your Christmas celebrations were delightful.  Ours were - all five of them!

In my last post I showed the guys in our lifeline group putting together amtrykes for special needs kids.  We gave them away to the kids on a Sunday at Church in the middle of December.  Wow what a special moment!!!  A couple of the kids didn't even know what they were there for until about 10 minutes before we gave them the bikes.  How fun!  In the  photo above is a little downs syndrome boy who does not speak, but looked at this huge crowd of people and signed "thank you".  What a tear jerker.

What is cool about this story is that we set a goal of buying one of these trykes with the change that mainly kids in our church collected at home and brought back with them.  When it was all said and done we purchased 4 new trykes and one of the girls receiving a tryke was passing down her old one to someone else.  In all five trykes were given away that Sunday.

A friend of ours, Mark Burt telling the story and showing a jar of change.

This is Payton's masterpiece for the week.  It is a portrait of my dad.  If you know my dad, it totally looks like him!  Ha !

One of my latest creations!

I made this gift for a dear young friend.  A friend of mine made one for me for my b-day and I loved it so much I copied it and made one to give away as well.

Model Kaytie Jo - I am going to have to start paying her for all of this modeling lately.

An odd picture.  Payton and Eden were getting kicks out of Clay wrapping them up like babies.  We laughed and laughed because Payton when wrapped up looks like a little baby with a REALLY big head.

Payton painting our cross ornaments!

Little Eden painting our annual ornaments that we give to the special people in our lives!

Eden learning to be a princess with her boa at a Christmas gathering!

Our gift to precious KTJO - a  carrier for her sweet mac laptop!  I made it! I made it!!!

Kaytie is so awesome she bought all of us a pair of "Tom's" shoes!  If you are not familiar with "Tom's" shoes.  For every pair of shoes you purchase they give a pair of shoes away to a child in a third world country who needs shoes.  She also embroidered all of us a pair of socks.  Mine said "grace", Clay's "peace", Eden's "Love" and Payton's "Joy".

Oh yeah, that is my new haircut.  It has grown out a bit since this photo and I am liking it more.  At this stage I was not a big fan. :)

My tea- towel gift for Kaytie Jo - since she watched me nearly make all of these dudes (all 20 of them) she got to pick her favorite!

Sew cute - from Kaytie Jo!

Kaytie Jo embroidered gloves for Eden Grace.

Eden's tiny socks to go with her Tiny "Tom's".

sweet socks Kaytie Jo made for Payton to go along with her "Tom's" shoes!

Clay and Eden Grace

Some dear friends of ours invited us to go Christmas light looking on a Trolley with them!  We had such a lovely time!!  The girls loved it as well.