Welcome Little Emily

Okay.... so I really stink at blogging. I want to do better so thus I will try again.

We now have 5 children..... and yes I am crazy! I love the shock factor of saying that to strangers that see me out in public. :D "Oh how cute," they say to me as they look in the car seat at Emily. Laura of course is in the background (or not so background) flashing her darling dimples and talking to everyone we meet. "You have such cute girls!" I of course smile and say thank you. I am humble like that. "You just have the two?" they then ask me. Here comes my favorite part..... I hold up 5 fingers and watch their jaws drop. With "You are crazy!" plain to be seen in their eyes. Yes.... I have 5 children and I am crazy. At least a little bit. You have to be not to go totally insane in the chaos and confusion that usually follows me around. Not that I don't desire a non-crazy life. Oh it would be nice! But the time for that is coming. (At least I keep telling myself that.) :D

So here is a little bit of what has been happening in our family as of late.

Emily is now 2 months old and growing way too fast! She started out at 7 lbs. 8.8 oz. More than a full pound bigger than all of our other kids.

At her last appointment she weighed in at 11 lbs 9.5 oz. I am happy to report that she has cute fat little thighs and a double chin. So glad that they look cute on her. Her favorite thing to do is be strapped to me, asleep in her Moby. (Please disregard the toothpaste splatters all over the mirror. That issue is discussed below. :D )

I love the thing! Yeay for having two hands to do stuff with. I sort of feel pregnant in it. It is hard to do dishes, vacuum and sweep. And almost impossible to do laundry in but the good thing.... I can take it off and have my body back to do all the stuff that needs to be done with little to no pain. (Except for in my butt because as soon as it is done, I turn around and it is all there.... waiting for me to do it all over again. Ahh the joys of never ending housework.)

Emily's newest thing to do is smile. And they are a wonder to behold! She will smile at you and you forget everything going on around you and just enjoy it. I love the smiles she gives where she scrunches up her nose. Those are the best!!

That is all for now for Emily. I will keep taking pictures of the darling things she does and (hopefully) be better at posting on a regular basis! (Fingers and toes crossed!)

Okay, lets try this again

It has been a while since I last posted and since then we have (finally) found the battery charger for our camera. Yeay!!

The kids are growing like crazy. Scott is in 4th grade and doing really well. Amy is in 2nd grade and loves it. (She is still the tallest in the class. Which she loves.) Andrew is enjoying his time at home with me during the day. He turned five just the other day and is already excited to go to school. Oh and by the way, his next birthday is 360 something days away. He started asking when his next birthday was the day after. Silly boy! Laura is now 1 and still as cute as a button. She loves to say "HI" to anyone we walk past in the store. Of course they think that she is just the cutest thing and she eats it up, flashing her dimples. Such a cutie.

I will get some pictures posted soon. We love you all and miss you.

Hello Again

Hooray... Spring is here!!

Well we are getting settled into our new home. Glad to know we are here for a while now. (No moving for a while, yippee!!) I am still trying to get pictures of the house up so that everyone can see what it looks like. I keep thinking, "I will do that as soon as the pictures are up and it actually looks like a home." Well... I still haven't gotten the pictures up and there are boxes still sitting around. But don't worry.... one of these days I will get it all done and take some pictures. We do love it and it is nice to know that this home is ours. (Stop trying to put holes in the walls with chairs and toys, kids!!!)

We got some new bookcases for the front room as you can see in the back ground. They are really nice and holds a lot of books and then some, like our games. I am surprised at how many books we have. There is a lot more in the bookcases then I thought that we had. Makes it look nice though.... almost like a library. Now if we just had some comfy chairs to sit in...... :). Laura had such a good time "helping" me unpack the boxes. Her favorite was the one with toys. Lots of smaller, painful to step on toys. But her smile says it all!




Laura's new favorite thing is bubble baths. The bubbles are fun to slap and see fly. Generates many belly laughs! Besides they taste so yummy... see her little tongue?!?! The kids love to see her splash and so by the time bath time is over, the bathroom is a mess and everyone's sides hurt. Good times!


I just love this one. Her blue eyes are so beautiful!!

All the kids are doing good.

Amy loves her new teacher and loves first grade. She is reading really well and spelling too. She had Uncle Mikey fooled for a while in a chat. he he

Scott is struggling with the more advanced curriculum and keeping up with the kids that are used to the routines, rules and teacher. We are all trying to be patient with the struggles of a new school and getting things with his 504 plan where they need to be to help him with his concentration skills. But I know we will get it and that Scott will remember he loves school. Right?!?! Especially when it doesn't start until 9:30 in the morning. So nice to sleep in.... when Laura permits.

Andrew loves having time at home with just mom (and Laura). We love to read stories and make cookies, watch movies, do laundry, sweep and vacuum to name a few. He is such a good little helper. He is getting good at telling me what letters and numbers he sees and he is starting to learn certain small words by sight and can spell them to me. He is just so smart. Too smart sometimes..."When I say N O, I mean NO mom and when I say Y E S, I mean Yes." Okay, so which is it going to be, Andrew? "N O, mom. Okay!!" Little smarty pants.

Laura is just about to crawl. She has the army crawl down to a fast science. She is getting up on her hands and knees a lot more now and it won't be long until we will have to be teaching her the art of stair climbing and descending. (New experience with that. Never had stairs before.) She can sit up now and has strong legs for jumping. She really likes her Cheerios, chicken nuggets and bananas and of course... chocolate. She is after all her mommy's girl!!

Finally another post!

I am finally getting around to posting again. Life has been a little crazy. So here are the updates.

Laura now has two teeth and knows what to do with them. She got the first one about two weeks ago. She is coming up on 7 months old and weighed 14 pounds at her last doctor appointment. She is rolling all over the place now and likes the freedom although I now have to be a lot better about making sure the floors are picked up. (Dang Lego's) :D She loves Cheerios and bananas and thinks she is big stuff when she is sitting up by herself. Cutie Pie!!

Andrew is doing good. Today at church we were standing by the primary bulletin and he started telling us all the individual letters. Pretty impressive little kiddo. He gave a talk in primary and did a really good job.

Amy is doing great on her reading. She is in a higher reading level than most of her class and we are all really proud of her. She is working on telling time, writing and addition. I am getting really good at reading phonetically. :)

Scott is loving reading and doing good in school. He is getting excited to get a new bike and start training with Jeff. I don't know what they will be training for but getting exercise will be good.

Okay, so we are moving. Hopefully closing this week. Still don't know. Kinda frustrating but.... well, you do what you can. We are busy packing. That is when I am not entertaining children, getting them out of stuff they shouldn't be in, ect. Feeling the stress of having to de-junk, pack, and still run a functioning household. Ha ha ha Stress is the understatement of the year on that sentence. De-junking is a good feeling though! Haven't done that for a long time.

I will do my best to keep everybody posted on our house and if we will indeed be moving in on Valentines.

Let It Snow.. Let It Snow... Let It Snow

Yes.... let it snow.... and it definately has. Over the last 5 days we have gotten a "little snow." On Saturday we put a ruler on top of the van and we were at 12" then. Saturday night we had about a half inch of freezing rain that compacted the snow a little. Then we got another 12 + inches over the next couple of days.


Can you spot our van with a ruler standing up straight on top of the windshield? I had Jeff take a picture of me standing in front of the van (thus the tracks in the snow) and the snow came up above my knees. The kids have had so much fun playing in the snow cause it is actually dry snow. We usually get a heavy wet snow. Good times were had by all.


It was so cold that the snow wasn't melting anywhere but on top of the house cause of the heating. And we were freezing so it was up higher. It did result in some cool icicles. This one was hanging in thin air. Pretty cool!!


I didn't know that spider webs were this strong. It was fun taking pictures and watching water run down the web and over the icicle. It was really cool while it lasted and was gone in a few hours.


I took some videos of the kids sledding. I will get those posted soon. I know that this is a little late. Things have been a little busy with kids out of school for so long. But I thought you would like to see the snow that we had. It is all gone now (thank goodness) and I am able to get out and do stuff.

December Alreadly!

I can hardly believe that it is December and Christmas is just around the corner. I have managed to do a little decorating. More because the kids won't let me put it off. :) I will get some pictures posted soon of the tree. We had a good time as a family going to our usual U-cut place, picking out our tree and cutting it down. I think the kids just love the part about running around in all the trees hiding from and seeking for each other. Laura slept through the whole thing. She does love to lay under the tree and look at all the lights. She is getting pretty good at getting to the lights and the ornaments which to her are fun stuff to play with.

Laura has started eating cereal now and when she is hungry actually enjoys swallowing it. If she isn't hungry... well lets just say she thinks it is funny to make a mess of it. (And so do the other kids.)



Thanksgiving was fun. We went to the McLauchlin's and had a wonderful time. We ate a lot of food, watched some movies and of course, riding the 4-wheelers. Andrew thought it was so much fun to ride around on Grandpa's big one in the little seat in the back. Scott loved being on his own and Amy thought it was really neat that they went a whole 9 miles up a road and saw so much stuff. She was really impressed about the 9 miles for some reason. I was taking a nap at the time with Laura and didn't get any pictures of Amy on the 4-wheelers. But I know she had a good time driving her own too.