Welcome to our World

According to my Facebook newsfeed, purple seemed to be the color of the year for Easter dresses.  Either that or all my friends shop at Costco like we do.  We enjoyed our first Easter in our new home.  Dan took this picture in front of the ornamental purple crabapple we had planted last year and used the bar stools we purchased for the island.  Yay! The FHE before we made palm tree branches by tracing the children's hands and had a little procession.  My super nice husband played the donkey and I figured it was the least sacrilegious to put the baby in as the role of Jesus.  She, however, decided that she wanted to wave palm branches instead, and soon the role was shared by M & D too. When I set up the co-op preschool calendar this year I made sure to put the letter E in the week before Easter.  The children's favorite activity was going on an Easter egg hunt.  They didn't mind at all that there were pictures of things that began wit...

Has it really been 5 weeks since I wrote anything down?  Here we go again: All went well at N's one year check-up.  Well, she would argue that it was fun until they shot her in the legs!  N is tall and skinny like her Daddy -- no big surprise there.  I notice every time I bathe her or change her clothes.  The doctor encouraged me to move N out of our room to help her sleep better. We did so -- she's sleeping every night in M's room now.  At first she couldn't sleep without the doll she picked out at IKEA for her birthday.  I love finding her in different positions.  The new arrangement doesn't seem to help her sleep any better but we can blame that on her trying to cut her 2nd upper front tooth.  She has the hardest time teething out of all of our children!  N also took her fist steps right after having her birthday, but she chooses not to use that option very often.  Usually she can get mom or dad or K or D or the neighbors to ca...

Let's continue with the report on birthday parties even though it will knock things out of chronological order, shall we?  I can't believe it, but the time has come for N's first birthday.  Typing that just hurt my heart.  I get actual, physical pain every time I allow myself to think about it.  The year has just gone by too fast and I'm not ready to say farewell to my last baby.  What a joy this surprise baby has been.  I am so grateful I get to be her mommy.  She is sassy like K, active like D and sweet like M.  Don't know how she could be a perfect mix of the other 3 to tie them together, but she is.  At her check up this morning she was in the 91st percentile for height and 38th for weight.  Tall and skinny like her daddy, just as I suspected.  She has 3 teeth, can wave bye bye and says words like Mama, Dada, Hi, and Owie.  That last one came in handy after receiving 3 shots today.  Poor thing.  Way better than...

 M decided to have her first ever birthday party with friends this year since her brother D had his first friend party when he turned 4 last summer.  Tinkerbell is a super fun theme to work with and she only had 4 people to invite:  every girl from her preschool (K & E.R.), every girl from her Sunbeams class (E.F.), and every girl neighbor that was 4 already (N).  lol.  Made things easy for me.  And D only got to be there because he promised to wear either his Peter Pan or his Jake and the Neverland Pirates costume.  He was Jake the entire 3 hours of the party & didn't complain a bit.  Bless his heart!  I happened to see an adult Wendy costume at a consignment sale and grabbed it and had our Natalie wear M's old Tinkerbell costume that is still way too big so we just threw it on top of her jammies.  My partner in planning crime was my dear mom and she was also the cake maker, as is tradition.  I scored exactly wha...

Is the month of March always this busy?  It has come and gone in the blink of an eye.  On the first of the month we got to celebrate Mary's first birthday since Natalie is just a month behind her in age and I feel like the entire month was a party.  I invited people I visit teach over to celebrate Dr. Suess's birthday, the YW had a combined birthday party for the entire year, Kaelah began taking piano lessons, my mom and I took Danny and Michelle to Discovery Days more than once, we started trying to meet friends at the park but the weather didn't always cooperate, so Marie & Tanya brought their children to our new house for the first time and Dan took Kaelah skiing.  Somehow we managed to fit in a trip to Ikea (to purchase porch furniture) and the zoo and the lake were Meigo can swim and sledding near by.  We also managed to scare D & M by using food coloring to change the toilet water and the milk green on St. Patrick's Day.  The idea that leprech...