Thursday, December 15, 2011

Seven Months Old!

Meredith now rolls over both directions to get to where she wants. She tries to attempt to crawl but at this point only manages in pushing herself backward. We have decided she is the "world's best backward driver", Tow Mater would be proud :) We are trying to teach her to clap. Meredith starts to get it but once her hands touch she clasps them together and then won't let go. She still has an easy smile and laughs a lot! So far everything we have given her to try foodwise she loves, except peas. Those actually made her gag, it was pretty funny. I don't blame her the smell alone made ME want to gag, but have to try everything once, right? She has figured out how to blow raspberries and does it all the time.




Just love this girl!!!

Not sure why her hair looks so red in the other photos because she is not at all. This one is more her true color, she's going to be blond for now :)

Monday, December 5, 2011

Christmas Trees!

We got our trees up earlier this year than last year, feeling pretty good about that. I opted to get a fake white tree for the downstairs since it shows off all my purple and silver ornaments better. We got our tree for upstairs at a U-cut off of 209th. Wow, that tree sure smells good!! I don't think we've ever gotten a tree that has had such a wonderful scent. I love it!
We spent time last night getting the ornaments up. The tradition is each person gets to pick a Hallmark ornament for themselves every year. So the tree is starting to get loaded down :) The kids have stuck to a theme most years. Nathaniel gets Scooby Doo, Jonathan gets Spiderman, Elizabeth picks out a princess, Seth started getting Disney characters and who knows what Meredith will end up with. We had fun, the trees look great. Just need to finish getting the rest of the decorations up and we'll be set!





Meredith just played and looked cute while we all decorated.
Jonathan loves this set he got when he was little.


First ornament, went straight into the mouth as soon as we handed it to her!



And...looks better in real life :)

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Aloha's First Tree Lighting

My Dad had heard that Aloha was going to have it's first ever tree lighting ceremony today so we decided to go check it out. We think it was well attended. Santa showed up on a fire truck, they had live music going on, and they did a raffle. An hour into it Santa came up and turned on the tree lights.
The best part was the raffle. My brother won a turkey. He's a vegetarian. Shane had just been telling me how he never wins anything in a raffle. As soon as they mentioned they were giving away turkeys he knew he would win. Sure enough, they called his number. The turkey is now in our freezer :)



Someone looks just a little hyper!

My brother, Shane. So sad, such a great picture of him and it came out a little blurry.

The grils all bundled up nice and warm!

Nathaniel and Jonathan and a friend from school.

Warming up at DQ afterwards with a cup of hot chocolate. Yum!!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Six months!


Meredith even got her shots yesterday a few hours BEFORE these photos were taken. She let out a couple really mad screams when she got poked, cried for about a minute than was all smiles at the nurse by the time the nurse was leaving the room :) This "little" girl now weighs 20 pounds and is 28 inches long! 20 pounds! I figured she'd only be around 18 or so. It's all those solids she's been eating. She loves her food :)
I still have yet to see Meredith roll over. She is working on sitting up all by herself. Her only problem is she gets excited and tries to kick her legs out which throws her backward. So, I just make sure I'm sitting behind her to catch her so she doesn't hit her head on the floor. She will spend more time on her tummy now. The great thing is she's moving and doesn't even realize it. The only thing is it's backward. She pushes herself up on her hands so much she ends up pushing her body back away from where I set her. Too funny.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A Late Happy Birthday to Elizabeth!

My "little" girl turned 9 last month. NINE! Wow, where has the time gone? She's growing up too fast. She got to celebrate by having one of her best friends come stay the night. The following day we picked up one of her other best friends and we all went to a Halloween Carnival at Jenkins Estate. The three girls had a really good time.
This past year has been a good one for her health-wise. So good we forgot at one point to make one of her CF appointments. Oops. Last year we were in there so much that they all blurred together. This year she's only had to go for her quarterly visits. Her sinuses are even doing well and for once we aren't looking at a surgery within a year of the last. Nov 30 will be one year since her last and at her last check-up (Oct I think) she was totally clear still! Yay!! Hopefully she will have another year of great health.
We are still doing school at home. Elizabeth is like a little sponge, she's doing great. Her writing has improved quite a bit. I had hired a yound lady over the summer to help with light housework and found out that she was also tutoring another child in writing so I asked if she'd tutor Elizabeth. That helped so much and Elizabeth remembers what she learned with Rachelle. So grateful for that cause I personally hated writing and trying to teach my kids to love it has been a huge struggle.
Elizabeth is very much enjoying being a big sister to Meredith. She's very cute with her and is always asking to hold her, which helps me out when I'm trying to get things done.
She is now taking piano lessons. My friend recommended Kristine Parker. She teaches in a very different way. Her students don't even learn the actual notes until year three yet Elizabeth is already playing very simple songs on the piano. She's loving it. Miss Kristine gave her students a challenge. They need to learn 15 songs by ear. It can be any 15 songs they want. The first person to 15 wins the big prize and then each student who finishes after gets a smaller prize. Pretty sure Elizabeth today will be the first. The assignment was given two weeks ago and the very next day she sat down and taught herself 5 songs. Within the week she had learned 10 all together. This past week she learned another 5. I'm glad to see she enjoys it so much and look forward to seeing/hearing her progress.

The following is her first recital piece. Had to laugh as it's so short but she'd only been taking lessons a few weeks at this point. She sat down and started so fast I didn't get the first few notes.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Five Months Old...

And two days. Can never seem to get the picture and the post made on the month mark. So here she is again-Miss Meredith! At five months she's almost rolling over. She tries so hard to get to her tummy but at the last second arches her back. This brings her back to the starting point again. She did roll over this morning from tummy to back but no one saw it. I put her down for some tummy time, turned around to help Elizabeth with something and when I turned back around she was on her back again! She has finally started laughing quite a bit. For someone who is so smiley it took her a long time to really start laughing. This morning she was cracking up over a stuffed animal of Elizabeth's, a little white lamb. I'd hold it over her and she'd laugh and laugh!! Meredith is getting better at grabbing things. We now have to be careful if we are eating something and holding her at the same time. She LOVES to eat solids! She will reach out her hands and try to grab your hand to get it in her mouth faster. While doing that her whole body will quiver, seriously, in anticipation of the next bite. It's hularious! Maybe, just maybe, I'll get one kid who will eat anything.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Happy Birthday, Nathaniel!!


This handsome young man is 14 today!! I can't believe he is 14 now and a freshman in high school. Nathaniel is such a neat young man. I love his sense of humor. He fires off the most random comments sometimes and I can't help but laugh. He loves to learn and has always done well in school. Nathaniel is very sweet with Meredith and it's so fun to watch them interact. He tries hard to be honest and is a loyal friend. He will be leaving his deacon group at church and will be ordained to the office of teacher today. I'm a little sad about that as it's been nice to have had both boys in deacons for the last little bit, they seem to have had a good time together. But it will happen again in 2 years, both boys will be teachers together for a bit when Jonathan turns 14.

To celebrate his birthday this year we told him he could do something with a couple of his friends. We sat down and marked off the normal stuff, go bowling, lazer tag, hit an arcade. He and Rob finally came up with a party that involved setting up all the computers in our house with a game called Minecraft and borrowing Grandpa's xbox to play Portal. Can I just say geeky? LOL! I just looked at them and shook my head and told them have fun I was staying out of this one :) So that's what he did, had several of his friends over last night and they played games for 3 hours. We bought them pizza and snacks and let them go at it. We are pretty sure everyone had a good time as we heard lots of laughing. And best of all we, the parents, really didn't have to do much of anything!

Happy Birthday, Nathaniel! We love you!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Pictures!

We had a photo shoot done of the kids at the end of August. We received the disk recently with all the photos so I thought I'd get some of my favorites up. Julia Shinkle took the photos. They turned out GREAT and we had such a fun time! I love how she is able to capture the eyes of her clients, that's what drew me to her.



One of the few where Meredith was smiling. Unbelievably we couldn"t get her to smile. Too much for her to look at.








Me? I'm not up to something!





LOVE the eyes!





Friday, September 16, 2011

4 Months Old!

Meredith loves this bumbo my friend
lent to us. She loves to be up and looking
around.

Four months? Really? Can't believe she is four months old already! Meredith is growing so fast! I took her into the doctor yesterday and she weighed in at 16 lbs 8 oz and 26.5 inches tall! Dang, she keeps going and she may beat Nathaniel in height :)
Seth and I messing around with her hat :) I love the look on her face here!


















Meredith is a non-stop smiler! Everywhere we go people are drawn to her little smile, we get comments on it all the time. She is extremely happy and so laid back. We have finally figured out a nap routine which involves actual naps in her crib so thrilled about that. I was very nervous about starting school back up with Elizabeth because Meredith wasn't taking any real naps during the day. But she has finally settled into a bit of a routine and it helps a lot! We all just love having her here with us!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Tree 2 Tree

My Dad bought Rob a gift certificate to Tree to Tree this year. It's a fun little place out by Hagg Lake that consists of an obstacle course up in the trees. We decided to go on Sept 2nd before school started. Rob LOVED it!! Zip lines, rock walls you have to climb up and across while 20 ft or so up in the air, crossing over on nothing more than a cable and not much else to hold onto at some points. What isn't there to love? Haha! No thanks, I'll keep my feet firmly planted on the ground :) But Rob loved it and that's all that mattered. He took Jonathan and Nathaniel up with him. Shane was able to join the fun up in the trees while my dad and I sat it out below with the younger kids and took pictures. I was pretty impressed all four were able to complete all four levels, each getting progressively harder and higher off the ground.
I gave Elizabeth a camera and let her follow the guys around since I had to run back and forth between them and Meredith. She did pretty good :) Because the two of us took a ton of photos I just put them all into an album. Sorry lots of pics of behinds but we couldn't seem to ever get in a better position to get the other side of them :)

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Nooooo!!!! It's too soon!!

This little turkey rolled over just a few minutes ago!


I flipped her back over on her back and she went right back to trying to get over again!
So much for being able to leave her in the room on her back. Won't be long now and
she'll be rolling all over the place, and then crawling, and then walking!! AAAaahhhhh!!!

Friday, August 19, 2011

Frustrated

I got to start my day bright and early with a phone call to K12, the curriculum we use for Elizabeth to school at home. I love K12. I love the independent study courses we have chosen to do. I love not having a set schedule and we are only responsible to ourselves. BUT, someone screwed up somewhere last year when I ordered her 4th grade materials. We thought it had been taken care of last year, than again in Janurary. It's a long story I have had to repeat several times to several different people at K12 so not going to get into it. But essentially I logged on this week and found that my calendar would not be accessible after the 17th. I called, Rob called, 3 different people assured us that they could see in their system that we are good to go until Nov. 30 (I know seems a bit random but it's the date we started with them back in '09). The last person told me to just wait until the 18th, log on, and I should still see all my materials and everything should be fine. HA! I knew in my gut he was just trying to make us all feel better but I complied. Sure enough, yesterday all her courses were gone and I still couldn't access the calendar. So, another phone call this morning. I was on the phone for 40 mins with two different people neither of which could solve the problem. The first person couldn't even find Elizabeth. Great. She sent me to sales and after 30 mins she told me she had someone working on it but she'd have to call me back. I hate dealing with other peoples mistakes. None of this would have happened if the very first person I talked to back in August of last year had done her job right. The great thing is I can't get anyone to understand the true nature of the problem. I have tried explaining it a couple different ways but I'm sure I'm getting blank stares or maybe even rolled eyes on the other end of the phone. So, now sitting around waiting for the phone call that will tell me they couldn't fix the problem. At which point they are going to have to deal with Rob again and that's probably not going to be pretty. For their sake, when they call back, I hope it's good news.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Three Months Old!

Meredith is 3 months old (yesterday)! Can't believe it. We will be doing her 3 month pictures on Saturday, can't wait. I always get their pictures done at 3, 7, and 12 months.


If you look back at other photos of her in this chair you can see how she has grown by where her head is resting :)

 A few days ago Meredith found her hands, and she is FASCINATED with them! Makes me laugh. She'll get this look of total concentration on her face as she tries to bring them together and then just stares at them once they are clasped. We bought her one one of those little floor gym things and she spends a good amount of time trying to grab the little toys hanging down. Very fun to watch.


We went to the Garlic Festival in North Plains on Saturday. It was fun, a reason to get out of the house for a few hours. I've never seen elephant garlic before. One clove is just HUGE! We got a couple and are going to plant them and see what we get. We walked around the vendors and looked at all the fun things to buy. My dad bought me this cool little dish ( purple of course) that is all spiky in the middle.

You rub the garlic over it and it grates it up. Then you pour olive oil and other spices into it and can make some yummy dip for bread. We tried it last night with one of our giant cloves of garlic. It was delicious!


We discovered a rock climbing wall and all the kids had to try it out. Nathaniel was not with us as he was off on a bike ride with the scouts. Jonathan made it all the way to the top. Elizabeth made it about 1/2 way, I was honestly very surprised. Seth got about 8 feet up, he did pretty good too. On our way out we grabbed some fair food for lunch. Jonathan got some garlic ice cream so we could all try it. Not something I'll ever need to try again :) One lick was enough for me. He did eat the whole thing. It's worth going out at least once to check it out. Like I said a fun reason to get out of the house one weekend in August.