A 2nd grader or a 2nd mother? I'll take them both!

Savannah has become my "right hand man" and more like a second set of hands. How was I ever a mom without this helpful 7 yr old?!

She has been sick the last 2 days. It has been nice to have her home even though she wasn't feeling well. I have also realized how much she helps me out everyday!

There are so many times, she see a need and just takes over. She has been known to help get everyone in there coats and car seats for me! The moms out there know what a task that is! She will rock Read to sleep or help Christina make her bed. She is going to be a great mom one day. There is great joy in seeing your children be more then siblings but friends too!

Trying to Keep up

The following are some random silly pictures over the last month that have made us smile and brought us joy. Christina is such an observant child. She will follow am example to the tee. Hopefully, putting on Mom's hat and shoes is the only thing she is mimicking here! :)
The girls have been very kind to there brother. A necklace here or there and a crown have been the worst of their abuse---so far! Good thing he does not mind. I had to include one picture of Fall. We have leaves to spare and now they are under snow that isn't forecasted to melt before our last Leaf Pickup. I need to find the picture that shows one of our mountain piles of leaves from our 80 + trees.

This is not the first time I have seem this Halloween basket on a child's head. I love my cute pumpkinhead children.

Christina loves to see Savannah off on the bus every morning. She gets rather upset if she misses the opportunity to say goodbye to her and the bus. Here it is the coldest morning of the season and she goes out in a sundress that is on backwards and her cowboy boots. The bus driver asked, "isn't your sister cold?" Ah, she is a true Michigander and would sacrifice what ever to say her goodbyes. That is a true friend.

Sadie here is showing her true Texan blood. She created this outfit on her own. Her belt and belt buckle are made from robe ties! Howdy y'all!

Halloween: Finally documented before the next holiday

Here is our spirited broad! Halloween was a lot of fun. The girls were easy to convince that cheerleaders is what they wanted to be. If you asked Sadie what she was, she would tell you, "A BYU cheerleader"! That works too. Read was a great football. Dad didn't fumble him once!

Our little football after a long scrimmage!Here are some fun treats we made for Savannah's class. Spiders and eyeballs.

Here's what I have been working on

Just last week, he started sitting up really well. He is just so proud!

This video was taking on Monday. Wednesday, he stepped things up a notch. He moved from inchworm to army crawler. He can now make his way across the room. I still need to capture that on video. I need to do it when Savannah or David is home. I obviously am not a very good "videographer". He has been rocking on his knees for a month. 3 weeks ago he learned to lunge forward. It has been fun to see progress. He is too young to be doing this but there is no stopping him. He wants to be on the move all the time. He loves to jump too. That's our boy!

Growing up!

I knew this would be a big year for Sadie. The year before they enter kindergarten, children just seem to blossom. We are 2 months into the school year and I am just amazed!

She is more resistant to change and has been more of a home body. She enjoys smaller groups. If someone had told me she would walk into preschool without even looking back, I would not have believed them. CHUMS preschool have been a wonderful choice for her. Her teacher is phenomenal! I could not have picked a better teacher for her.

Sadie loves structure and thrives off it. When I get to work in the classroom, I have noticed how diligent and careful she is to follow the rules and routines.

One thing I didn't expect was for a boy to have a little crush on her. You ask her about "E" and she gets a big smile on her face. CRAZY.

Sadie, our little Sweetie, has been a wonderful big sister. With Savannah gone all day, she has taken on more responsibility. She is really helpful especially with her little brother. Sadie Lou with eyes of blue, we love you!

Making the goal!

Savannah has been quite the super star this soccer season. Several seasons ago we started to motivate her to be more aggressive. For every goal, we would take her to get ice cream. It was 1 goal the 1st season and several last season. This season she scored every game but one!! WAHOO! She got the 1st 2 goals we had to switch up the rewards and be more creative! It is great to see her improvement and to enjoy playing the game.

Making Leaps and Bounds

The last 2 months have been big ones for Christina. We asked to have her hearing tested because the clarity of her speech. The Ear, Nose and Throat specialist was not able to perform the test because she had so much ear wax build up. Poor girl, she really couldn't hear. Everything sounded like she had ear plugs in. After we softened the wax and got it removed, her speech improved a lot. One example is Baba became Baby. Unfortunately, they also discovered that she had fluid in her ears. So everything also sounded like it was under water. With only having had one ear infection in her life, they decided she needed tubes put in her ears and her adenoids taken out! Thankfully, these are common surgeries. There is something nerve racking about having your child go under.

They kept saying she would be bouncing off the walls after the surgery. I can handle that. They failed to mention that she would flip out at the idea of having to take off her Dora PJs to put on the hospital gown! They failed to mention the drink to make her loopy would taste gross and my great medicine taker would not wan to drink it. They also failed to mention that when she came out of surgery she would be screaming and crying for them to take the IV out of her hand. They could only take the IV out after she drank something and Christina did not want to drink anything. I was not prepared for these little scenes of trauma! But as soon as she got home in front of a movie she was great! And she did try bouncing off the walls later that day!

Her language and speech have been improving so much now that she can actually hear! It has been fun to see the improvement everyday! It is funny to see her plug her ears and talk. I wonder if she is remembering how everything use to sound!

In between all of this, Christina decided to be potty trained! That has been both wonderful and hard. I am glad it was her idea. I am glad she is doing so well. Other times I would rather be nursing on the couch instead of in the bathroom. Or sometime I wish that she wouldn't have the urge to poop 20 times before she will actually go but it is better than cleaning the underwear or changing the diaper! Yeah for only buying one set of diapers!

Read at 4 months

Read turned 4 months old last week. He is such a great baby. He so kick back, go with the flow kind of guy. He rolled over the first time from his tummy to his back on Sept 2, the first day of school. He use to growl on cue. He use to be so quiet but has found his voice as of late. He is still a thumb sucker but we are pushing the binky. He wants to be sitting up observing the action all around him. He will throw himself forward if we have not propped him up enough.


He has dropped from the 95% to the 90%. Hopefully that will no affect is chances in football! He is 16 lb 10 oz and is 26 1/4 in long. "Tank", as his loving uncle refers to him, is trying to hold his own against his 3 older sisters. One seems to use him as a pillow or a bed or whatever else she can think of. So is Tank a reference to his size or what he can endure?



Is this more effective or less? Notice the thumb in the binky! Is that twice the sucking power?

Notice the thumb is in the binky!

It is now or never

I have toyed with the idea of a blog for some time. David even created a blog years ago when they first came out. Email seems to be old school and if I want to stay in touch with family and friends, this seems to be the way to go. So here is my journal, my family history and an outlet.