Glow is totally part of the crew. She is definitely still our baby, but she’s playing (and even sometimes fighting) with the big girls too. She’ll see something she wants and will try to get it, usually from Soul, and she always wants to be part of the action now. She still doesn’t talk, but she does a whole lot of baby babbling. We all love her to pieces!

Looking at these pictures, I still can’t believe I have four girls and Ben has five of us to deal with. Poor guy! That time of the month when these girls are older is going to be pretty crazy in our house. I will be the first to say that when that time of the month comes for me, that whole Pissed-off Mood Swing (PMS) comes in full force. Now times that by 4 more! Oye!

We’re slowly working our way out of the baby phase. The girls are getting older and making certain things easier and harder at the same time. Glow is getting so big that I find myself asking Ben if he’s sure we’re done and in my moment of amnesia, I say I want another. Then I remember how full our hands really are and then I’m like, yeah… we’re good. I’m thankful for how helpful True and Brave are and we have to be intentional in teaching Soul to be just as responsible. I think because she is in the transitional toddler to little girl stage and has two big sisters that will do things for her that I forget to teach her responsibility too. One thing she is pretty much in charge of is getting herself dressed and it’s pretty much the same thing everytime. If you look back at most pictures of her in recent months, it will be that Mexican embroidered dress (or her other one in red) tucked into her leggings.

It’s been pretty warm lately, in the high 80’s, and I can totally feel spring creeping up on us. As much as I love winter, I’m pretty excited to have longer days. Are you?

on me: sweater, thrifted. shirt, thrifted. jeans, forever 21. necklace, homako. boots, emerson fry. on true: dress, c/o winter water factory. leggings, gap. boots, gymboree. bag, diy here. on brave: dress, misha lulu. sweater, vintage. leggings, misha lulu. shoes, gap. on soul: dress, vintage. leggings, misha lulu. shoes, c/o freshly picked. on glow: dress, c/o winter water factory. shoes, old ones since true was a baby.

We didn’t really watch the Super Bowl, we actually spent it gardening. Normally, we do watch it together as a family, but this year we opted to all get outside and pull weeds from our vegetable garden. Those weeds were growing like crazy and we still have 3 vegetable beds to pull weeds from! The Super Bowl was on for us to listen to it, but we couldn’t really hear it from outside, though us girls did go back inside to watch the half time show.

We kind of wanted to be festive so we ordered a pizza and I was going to order wings from Buffalo Wild Wings, but it was so frustrating trying to find any nutritional information on their site. I finally did find a hint about it and their site stated that I needed to email them to get the nutritional info. That’s just so lame and no bueno! Seriously! They should have that information easily accessible to their customers considering they are a pretty big franchise. After that, I was definitely not going to give them any of my money. I did continue sleuthing and manage to find some info on their wings from other sites and 1200 calories for 10 wings, not including the bleu cheese I was probably going to dip them in (I love bleu cheese!), made me extra glad I didn’t order any. I think I’m going to have to come up with my own for baked spicy wings.

After the girls were in bed, Ben and I did manage to catch the last 5 minutes of the game. It was pretty exciting and Ben was really happy Baltimore won. He doesn’t have a particular football team he roots for, but he tends to have a soft spot for underdogs and the less arrogant of the teams, so to him, Baltimore was his pick. What were you doing yesterday? Was football a part of your Sunday?

The weekend started off great as the BFF and I had a dinner date then partied hard at the Oh, Hello Friend store opening party! Seriously, we consider live music, cupcakes, shopping, and staying out past 9pm partying hard, but boy once that clock hit 9 o’clock our bodies were already begging to be in bed. We’re such nerds I tell you. Anyways, this past week has been great and here we are now in February. This month is going to be amazing and crazy, I can just feel it already.

This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

Glow is really trying to interact and play with her older sisters more. It is so amazing to watch! She can get pretty feisty too when she’s fighting after a toy she wants.

True and Brave love free writing. They come up with the cutest little stories!

In love with this pillow that Ingrid made.

Thankful for my girls and their patience when sometimes I turn into a crazy mama.

Love this new sponsor. If you’re in the need for some pretty invitations, check her work out!

Soulie will only wear freshly-picked moccs. We went somewhere and she forgot to put shoes on, then I tried to put on some flip flops that were in the car and she threw a fit! She yelled and screamed her way through the grocery store because she didn’t have her moccs on. Oh that girl!

Emmy shared this “Yes-mom” post with me and I think it’s something I definitely need to work on.

I learned you don’t capitalize the seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall). I totally thought it was a proper noun that needed to be capitalized, but I guess it isn’t. Even I learn a lot in homeschooling too!

I like how this post phrased it, “Mothering under the gaze of God…” Another thing I need to work on.

Thankful for getting a night out with my best friend and then being able to hang out with more friends.

Thankful that I actually got to clean our bathrooms this week. It was getting pretty bad and filthy. No joke. It was pretty embarrassing, especially my bathroom.

I can’t believe it’s February already. I’m nervous about this month as we have a lot to do, but I’m really excited for March. We have lots of family things planned and as much as I love winter, I’m kind of getting excited for spring. What are some of your plans in February?

Instagram is really such a fun app. When I first joined a little over a year or so ago, I would just use it periodically when I was with Ben because he was the one with the iphone. I’m not really too picky about smart phones, so I was content with my old school flip phone. Then, I got an ipad over the summer and I was able to instagram that way, but Ben finally upgraded his iphone 4 to a 5 back in December and I was the lucky recipient of his 4 and boy was I ecstatic. Actually, I think I was most excited about picking out a case (and I chose one with a llama). Since I have a phone, I love being able to instagram from that too!

I’m always totally late in joining social media stuff and I’m not always so good at promoting it either (did you even know there’s a facebook page for Cakies?). When I finally joined instagram and twitter, and saw all my online friends on, I felt like there were all having these conversations without me and then I finally got to join in the fun! It can be overwhelming and I never know who to follow and how to start searching for people to follow. And don’t even get me started on the vine app, which I actually joined early, but that app is a whole other level of fun! 6 second videos are just so cool! True and Brave keep asking me to let them make another.

So tell me, who are your favorite instagrammers? Do they also happen to be your favorite bloggers if they have a blog? I would love to discover some new, inspiring feeds to follow. If you want to follow along on mine, search @rubyellenbratcher on instagram and vine!

See Never Land like never before in the Peter Pan Diamond Edition , coming to Blu-ray™ and HD Digital February 5! Thank you for your continuous support of me and my sponsors!

These girls of mine love to play dress up. They pile on the layers in a crazy fashion and then they put on a show. Last week, they did a magic show and True kept making everyone disappear, well, more like run to the other room and then run back. It’s so silly the things these kids do. I totally remember I used to be so hardcore about playing dress up as a kid and putting on shows, especially the show part. I’m the oldest of 4, so I would plan these elaborately choreographed dances and make my brother and sisters practice and practice. Then, in the front entrance of my parents’ house, we would perform them (that area seemed so big then!). We’ve done everything from Sound of Music to Grease to songs by the Cool Cats (or something like that). I was totally so serious about all of it too. If you saw our home videos, I would have you rolling in laughter. I thought I was such a bomb dancer. I guess I must have totally been the inspiration for baby sister becoming a dancer.

Anyways, seeing these girls of mine do the same thing makes me smile. They haven’t quite gotten to choreographing shows just yet, but I’m sure those days aren’t too far from now. Just watching them be completely silly and lose themselves in their imagination is just fun and amazing. Playing, dancing, and singing with them really brings back that kid in me. They get such a kick when I put on their costumes, especially that pink hair! It’s just a blast to still be able to let loose and be silly. Kids love to see their parents acting goofy! They love seeing their parents act like kids. You can see the joy in their faces when they watch us acting funny and crazy. It’s one of the parenting moments that you just want to freeze.

True’s the ring leader when it comes to the shows and Brave just dances and dances. Dancing is her thing. Soul, sometimes she’s all for it and sometimes she’s a snoot about it. With her, sometimes you never know what you’re going to get. I guess you can say Soul is kind of like a box of chocolates. Glow just follows along. Playing with your kids is so vital. I think it does kids good to see their parents act silly and be funny. It’s important to show them no matter what age we are, we can still have fun and be young at heart.

Yes, we teach our kids a lot everyday, but we also learn a lot from them too, so we need to not be afraid to get plain silly with them. In this time of to-do list and adult responsibilities, playing and enjoying our kids helps keep our lives young and colorful! Don’t you think? I vote for everyone to work on playing with their kids a little bit more today! Let’s show our kids that even though we’re “grown-up”, sometimes we never really grow up and can still be just as silly as them! I think everyone could use a good dose of silly.

For Christmas (yeah, so late in sharing!), Ben and I had no Christmas present requests. Well, I wanted sweats and he wanted his orchard and so he got me sweats and he got himself his orchard (it’s a work in progress that we will all benefit from one day). He’s such a hard guy to gift because he doesn’t ever really want anything frivolous. He’s so practical that his idea of a gift for himself is something for the kitchen, gardening, or something for us girls. Well, I decided to make him a poster that could go in our bedroom. I remembered this post by Jordan Ferney and fell in love with the giant galaxy poster from the hubble site. The best thing about this site is that they offer all the images for free downloads, so I downloaded the one I wanted, added my own writing in photoshop (inspired by this book cover) and voila! I had a sweet, little (well, it’s kind of big at  36″ x 36″) message for Ben. We’ve been in talks to redo some things in our bedroom, so this poster was a good start. I had it printed matte in wide format at Staples and it did cost a bit to get it so large (about $70) for this galaxy one and about ($45) for this poster, but it prints beautifully on nice, thick paper.

Now, funnily enough, after I gave Ben his poster on Christmas morning, he goes in the garage to get me this long tube and out of it, I pulled out my own poster that he had made. I had repinned this poster (originally from here) a few days before Christmas because the sentiment on it was something that really resonated with me regarding pretty much everyday of my life lately. I showed Ben and told him that was totally my motto and would love my own to hang, and so he made me one!

We both chuckled that we happened to both give each other a poster with a saying of sorts. Seriously, we think alike most times. I tell people I’m the girl version of him and he’s the boy version of me. We really are so much the same that in all of our 3 years of dating, we only had 1 fight. I think it’s because we think so similarly, so we find it easier to be in sync with each other. Don’t worry though, we’re still definitely normal. We fight much more now that we’re married, but for the most part, we still think pretty similarly (just with a little bit more arguing thrown in for good measure).

p.s. totally has nothing to do with posters, but this weekend there is a cool vintage pop-up shop going on here and don’t forget Danni’s grand opening too!