News

I haven't "blogged" in a while. I am thinking to myself right now, do I really call it "blogging" or is it more like "bragging" about my kids. I mean bragging in the best possible way. I love to talk well of my kids to people. Not only do my kids hear me talking about the positive things in there life. It also reminds me that things are going well, that I am doing my best! My kids are growing and learning and thriving. So much of the time I am upset about discipline or whining etc, it is a good stress reliever just to remember the good things about this time.

I have officially made it out of the terrible "2s", but I have learned that doesn't mean no more whining, fighting or throwing fits. I guess it just means that they will be lessening. I have been doing some "school" at home with the kids, since we haven't started preschool anywhere yet. They are doing well and really enjoy playing games and doing crafts. Some days I can't keep up with the glue and stickers. It is getting much more fun with these girls. I feel like I am going to cherish the next couple years with them home with me all the time.

Another fun outlet has been being on the leadership team for the Mops group at our church. It has been a lot of fun and great to have some good conversations with other moms. The kids love it too. We recently had a panel of nurses at one of our meetings and I feel like I should have paid a copay or something, cause I asked a lot of questions. I think the other moms must have thought my kids "get everything", like bloody noses, bee stings, bumps on the heads etc. Seriously, those are pretty common with my girls. Then again I have three toddlers, most people just spread all those injuries out over several years. At our house something happens to someone often!

I am really excited to have a trip to look forward to over the long winter. My sister is getting married in February. What a great time to have a mini vacation, even if it is to Michigan. We will get to fly too. The girls will love it, at least I know I will. Just to be home again and get there in just one morning, will be great. So can't wait to see the whole family again and have fun celebrating the wedding the whole time!

Well that bout wraps things up for now. I will try to update sooner than once a year.

Birthdays

It has been a while since I wrote here. Since then, Rachel has turned three and is potty trained, finally! And the twins have turned 2! They are soon to be moving into big girl beds. It is hard to believe they are toddlers. When our twins were first born, we could look ahead and think about what it would be like to have a three year old and two 2 year olds. Now we are experiencing it. With all the tantrums, there does come some ease in the fact that they do all play together a bit. So as much as they fight, they also do play together. It is great to see them interact and care about each other. Whenever Elizabeth and Lauren wake up from their naps, they always ask for Rachel wondering if she is up too. They do love to be together.

Rachel was able to have her birthday party in Michigan and celebrate with her cousins. She had a princess party and got her first princess dress. She has entered the dress up and performance stage. She loves to sing songs, ones she knows and ones she makes up. Recently, she learned some of "O, Christmas Tree" and "Jingle Bells". Those are her newest songs in addition to Jesus Loves me, and the classic nursery rhyme songs. She is starting to be able to tell me the first letters of different words. Like Bear starts with a "B" and Dog starts with a "D". It is just so fun to see her learning new things all the time. She is growing so much, except not fast enough since her little sister, Elizabeth is almost as tall as Rachel and weighs just a bit more than her. I think Elizabeth may be the tallest of the bunch.

Lauren and Elizabeth had a friend birthday party at the pumpkin patch. It was a little chilly, but the sun was out. Everyone had a great time seeing the farm animals, and playing in the hay bale maze. The girls have such good little friends.
Lauren is really talking all the time. She will repeat anything that anyone says. She even will repeat it a million times too. She is starting to learn her shapes and letters, but still haven't quite gotten it yet. Lauren really enjoys to play with play doh and also to color. Both of the girls have enjoyed playing dress up too now that they have little skirts and tops of disney princesses too. I think that is what they will be for halloween.

Elizabeth is such a sweet girl. She loves to be tickled and loves one on one attention. That is when she really thrives. She is pretty quiet when it comes to talking but is starting to communicate more that way. Elizabeth loves to run. She just enjoys being chased and running in the yard. Lizzy really loves doggies a lot. All the stuffed animals she likes best are the doggies. I am sure one day we will have to get a real dog. But I am a little unsure about that :)

Dana and I are doing well too. We celebrated our 6th anniversary this summer. We keep even more busy by doing house projects, the basement bathroom remodel right now, and other small touch-ups around the house. Dana has been working the day shift this year, but will go back to early swing shift next year. We both think he will enjoy that shift a little more. It should work out with the kids too since they will see their dad a couple more hours in the mornings. Our small group is going well. We have a great group of couples joining us each week.

Yellowstone and summer time

It has been so long since I posted. I guess I must just get on facebook and just put in little updates, but that isn't enough I think. We have been busy the past 2 weeks doing all sorts of fun things with my parents. They were here with us for 2 weeks and we packed in the fun. I think they definitely need a vacation from their vacation. We went to Yellowstone for several days and got to see all sorts of wildlife. We saw 2 black bears, a grizzly bear, elk, moose, buffalo of course, and bighorn sheep. The kids loved Old Faithful. It was so fun to watch them see it. One cute thing was that I told Rachel that God makes the water come up out of the ground. She saw the steam coming out as it started to shoot up. She turned to me and said, "God's gonna come?" I thought it was so cute. She totally misunderstood me, but such a tenderheart :)
The twins loved just playing in the nature and picking up sticks and climbing over logs. So they had a great time. We stopped over in Lander to visit Dana's hometown and get a game of golf in. Dana's parents were great hosts and helped make our trip so nice.

I am excited to be back to having summer like weather. For the month of June it rained just about every day. It did cool things off and the grass is green, but I am ready for full time summer. Two of the nicest days we did some fun outings. We went to the nations largest water park, Water World, and had a blast. And we also got to take in a Rockies baseball game, and go to the zoo. I still can't believe that we did all these things. It was a great time with lots of memories :)

Now that is just about July, we are thinking about our anniversary. We will be married for 6 years the 26th. It has gone by so quickly. And I am so thankful for Dana being such an amazing husband and dad to our girls.

I am going to be back at Hope House a little bit. I will be volunteering as a staff member for a while. It will be good to be involved again and getting out of the house a bit. I hope it all works out well.

Guess I better end here. Hopefully I will post again sooner than later.

New stuff

Well it has been a while again since I last posted. There are things daily that happen with the kids that I think I should be posting on here. But I always forget to write, or simply just run out of time in a day. Today, I am letting the kids play downstairs by themselves a little bit. I just keep checking on them every little bit. I am loving this! They are doing pretty well too. Not too much fighting. I think they realize that I am not their to break things up.

Today I took the kids to a story time at the library. They all did pretty well, but it seemed that Lizzy got a little bored. She actually started pulling her pants down, and then up again, and then down again. Thankfully she had a onesie on, so she wasn't flashing anyone that little diaper :) It was a crack up.

Lauren is so talkative lately. She has been attached to a backpack. She puts toys in and keeps stuffing them in until the bag is almost too heavy for her to lift. She also can say the word "backpack". She shouts it out loud when she wants it or sees one. It is pretty cute. Lizzy likes them too, but is drawn a little more to purses. One day, she was carrying around a tank top by the straps as if it were a purse. She had it on her arm all day. I was waiting for her to start putting things in it and have them slip out the bottom. I was cracking up watching her carry it around the park even.

Lizzy has started to say a few more words too. She says hat really well now. But mostly it is Lauren who does most of the talking. Lizzy and Rachel have begun really wrestling. They roll all over each other when they are playing in the basement. They just get laughing. It is funny cause when Lizzy is on top of Rachel, Rachel can only kick her legs and arms, cause Lizzy is too heavy for her to get out. It is so fun to watch them playing and laughing together.

Rachel is often found singing the ABC's and coloring. Every day she asks to color and for us to color with her. She is getting pretty good at coloring pages that we print off the computer. Sometimes she amazes me at how good she is getting.

We had a stretch of a couple weeks with really warm weather. We got out our summer clothes and went to the zoo with a friend one day. And have played at the park a ton and out in the back yard too. I cannot wait for the summer. I think we will be in our swimming suits all summer :)

Here are a few pictures I thought I would post:

Kitchen cabinets

Well we got our kitchen cabinets in. We still have to do the finishing touches, like hardware and some caulking, but overall they are in and we are using them. Amazingly I haven't filled them all up yet. I was figuring the moment you make some storage space you immediately fill it up, but thankfully that hasn't happened. So now my kitchen has room for everything and some room to grow. And this week I had to buy more plates and bowls since the twins are enjoying having their own dishes for meal time. So even though it bugs me when they throw their bowls on the floor, I know they are learning how to use them. (and getting a lot of time outs :)

We haven't been super busy, but we made sure to file our taxes, it is always exciting when you know you will get a return. So we are starting to pick a biggie to buy and I think we are going to try to get a used treadmill. Well I am sure it will be practically new because most people only use them like 20 times before they quit and then it sits for a year collecting dust. So we figure we can get a good one for cheaper, and then if we let it sit we won't be out too much money. I have convinced dana to get rid of the weight machine in our basement so we can put in a treadmill. He was all for it cause I think he enjoys a more cardio work out anyway. And we got rid of the toilet plant potter in the back yard. Both are things that I have to say no to the kids about all the time. So I am sure they will just find something else to get into, but for now that will help.

I have joined a mops group in a local church near us and I am so excited to go every meeting (at least when the kids aren't sick) and it gives me such a break having the nursery there. And I am getting to socialize with other moms. This is why men aren't typically stay at home dads, because they would never be able to organize something like this. Seriously those women who run this do a ton of work!! I am thankful to have joined. And now that I am not working on Thursdays anymore, I am taking the kids to story time at the library. It was so fun to watch Rachel last week sit on the mat with the other kids and listen to the stories and sing the songs. Then afterward we all did a craft. It was so cool and it was free to us. We saw another mom from our neighborhood there with her kids too so Rachel enjoyed seeing them too. Afterward all the kids played on the playground they have outside. I noticed that there are water fountains that must run in the summer for the kids to run through. That should be fun this summer. I will have to have them wear their suits to story time.

The kids are growing so much. Rachel had her first nightmare last night. She woke up just screaming. I went in and she was kind of talking in her sleep to me and said that the scary fish (shark form Finding Nemo) said "hi" to her. That cracked me up.

Lauren is saying so many words it is amazing. Practically every day she tries to say a new word. Mostly she gets the first sound of each word out. Elizabeth doesn't say too many words yet, but enough and I am sure one day she will just start talking perfectly. At night time the twins new routine is to brush their teeth and then give everyone a night night kiss. Rachel loves to give each of them a kiss good night and the twins kiss each other too. I am sure it isn't sanitary or anything.

It seems that Rachel and I have been doing some baking together. We did cupcakes for Dana's birthday and then soon after that we made cookies (rolling pin and all) and cut them out for Valentine's day. I couldn't let her do the frosting though, it was messy enough for just me. Now I feel like each week I need to come up with something to bake with her. We will see.

Well I will post some pictures now and call it good.

Well I was worried I wouldn't be able to post today, since the kids were all crying in the middle of nap time. Man some days it is really scary whether or not they will take a nap. It is my goal to keep Rachel napping in the afternoon. And then let her stay up a little later to see her daddy after work. And the twins are down to just taking an afternoon nap too now, so I have to time it just right when they are tired to put them down. And then hope they don't wake up. I just feel like I need that break to get myself together for the rest of the day. Thankfully, it has been going better the past two days. A few days before that, the twins were having a hard time adjusting to the one nap, although they were ready for it. Mostly Lizzy was ready for it. Lauren would still nap during the mornings I think, but I kind of have to keep them together on this one. It should be fine.

This weekend is Dana's birthday. It is fun to have something to celebrate during the long winter months after the holidays. Dana's parents are coming for a visit and to celebrate Christmas together a little belated as well. We are going to try to all go out for dinner to celebrate, that should be fun. Dana and his dad are going to do a little house project too. They are going to install some of our kitchen cabinets. We will gets some extra storage space and some much needed counterspace. That will totally change the look of part of our kitchen. There is still much to do on our house, but this will be so great and a good weekend project for them to do together. Plus with Marsha there to help me keep the kids from underfoot, Dana won't feel like he can't get anything done.

Well I hear Lauren waking up a second time, grr. Thankfully Lizzy and Rachel are still sleeping. That should be a help at least.

More later

Happy New Year

Well we are officially into the New Year now. Crazy how time flies so fast. January is half over already. I can't believe it. So we had a great end to 2008, Missy came to visit us and spend the New Year. We had such a great time together and it was so great to have her here to see the kids. I am so glad my girls got to spend that time with their Yima. Rachel still talks about Yima every once in a while. And when she makes "phone calls" on her pretend phone, she calls her Yima. So cute.
The twins recently had their 15 month check up and they are both doing great right on track with their language development, each saying three words and actually now Lauren is saying even more. Some of her favorites are "Hi, momma, daddy, ball, shoes and peak a boo" I am not sure how many others would understand all of those, but I certainly do. It is so great to watch them learn new things. Elizabeth is saying "Hi, momma, daddy, and gink for drink" Both girls have learned to sign please and drink. I am thankful for that. They also love to go to time out now, so crazy, but they immediately sit in their time out spot and love to get a hug afterward and say sorry. In fact, it turns into everyone giving everyone else a hug everytime. Hey at least they do their time outs I guess.
Rachel is growing so great too. She is still a light weight, weighing only 4 pounds more than Elizabeth. Rachel has full comversations with me now. She is practically my best friend some days :) She totally picks up everything I say (including tone which sometimes I am not proud of) But the cutest thing is the way she cares for her sisters. Just today Lauren was sad and crying in her stroller so Rachel came up to her and said "I know, I know...hold my hand" and the proceeded to make her hold her hand. It was so sweet. She was genuinely trying to care for her. I love those moments.
Other moments going on as the girls are getting older. One is the discontinuance of the pacifier. I thought I would need to be dependent on them for a while yet, but Dana and I decided it was too difficult just to keep track of them, so we threw them away this morning. Last night was the girls first night without paci's and all day today. For the most part they didn't really miss it too much. Hopefully, I will make it through the day tomorrow without them :)
Rachel is so ready to potty train, but sometimes I think I am not ready. What an undertaking it is...so intimidating. I sometimes think, "how is Rachel supposed to remember to go to the bathroom, when I can't remember to get her there!?" Anyway, I am sure it will come in time. She is definetly ready and we are getting started I guess. But I am not ready quite yet! I think I need to get through the paciless phase first :)
Anyway, that is as much of our life as I acan post here now. Catch ya later.