Family Picture

I know that all you mom's out there can sympathize with me about how hard it is to get a decent family picture. We took this one before church on Sunday morning, and it (miraculously) only took three tries to get. :) Victory!

My babies :)

Love these little monkeys :)

Rotten boy :)

Gabe, you certainly do keep your momma on her toes! Thursday morning I got Hannah out of her bath and went into her room to help her get her clothes picked out. Her room is right accross from the bathroom, so when I heard a splash, I went to investigate :) This is what I found...




Silly, rotten boy :)

Hannah and the book :)

Part of what we are working on in "school" right now with Hannah is sounding out words. She does pretty well, and last week we started working on these little books that are part of our cirriculum. The super nerdy part of me was really excited for this week to come, and I have to say, it was not a let down. Hannah did really well, and can now officially read her first book!! It may only have 5 words in it, but I still think it counts :)


Page 1

Page 2-3

Page 4

I am super proud of my little girl, and I truly hope that she grows to enjoy reading as much as her daddy and I do!

The Oatmeal Hypothesis

As I mentioned in the previous post, this past week has been a bit on the "poopy" side :) So in order to cope I resorted to chocolate :) Hannah and I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to help mommy destress :) Which brings me to my oatmeal hypothesis...cookies made with oatmeal are only half as bad for you as regular chocolate chip cookies. And because they are only half as unhealthy, then you can eat twice as many :) What do you think?

I did use raw sugar and wheat flour when baking these, so maybe that means I can eat 3 times as many... :) *

This guy...

Is coming home today, and I am so glad! The hubby has been traveling for work all week, and it has been a rough week. Normally when he is gone, things carry on in the normal manner, but this week...not so much. The kids slept like poo all week. Gabe and Hannah each pooped in the tub at one point. The dog pooped in the house twice. Gabe pooped on the floor and the dog ate it. (Anyone sensing a theme here... :) ) Gabe threw my wallet in the tub and ruined. And those were just the big things :) There were more temper tantrums than normal, and a lot less sleep than normal. So in light of all the poo, I am so glad that Nick will be home this evening. It's not that I can't do this mommy thing without him, I just really really don't want to :) Love you honey!

Parade :)

Flying

Lately Hannah has been super into jumping off of things, or "flying." Her lastest trick is running and jumping off the coffee table, and seeing how far she can go. :) And I let her, because we only paid $15.00 for our coffee table, and it's just a silly old coffe table. I hope that when she is all grown up someday she remembers the fun she had jumping off of our old coffee table :)

Caught in the Act

Love the expression on his face :)

The many faces of Hannah :)

Silly/Gross


Cute :)



Rotten!

Hannah's Birthday Party

We had Hannah's birthday party this past weekend! It was so much fun! The theme was pink and brown hearts :) Nick and I got her a big girl bike (with training wheels). She was so suprised and excited, it was by far my favorite moment form the party. :) My sister and neice came in for PA, which was so nice! Overall it was a really fun party celebrating our little girl with family!

Pictures in no particular order :)


Look of shock/surprise on her hace when she saw the bike :)

Modeling her birthday outfit!


Blowing out her candle.



Cheesy face!

Loving her new bike!



Birthday cake!!

In my fridge this morning....

Heeheehee :) Thought you all might get a kick out of this :)

Happy Birthday Hannah-Lou!!

My sweet little Hannah,

I can hardly beleive that you are turning four years old today! You are getting so big! I am so proud you my sweet girl :) You are such a smart little stinker...sometimes a little to smart for your own good. I love that you love to learn, and I cherish our one on one times during school each morning. I can't believe you have already memorized six verses, can write and spell your name all by yourself, and are starting to work on learning words! I love your sweet spirit and that you genuinely care about others. It makes mommy so happy when you share with your brother without being asked, or give me hugs and kisses just because :) You are such a precious gift my little monkey and your mommy loves you more than you could ever know! Thank you for being the best girl that you mommy could ever ask for. Love you always and forever,

Mommy :)

My little bookworm

Hannah is my little book worm. This girl LOVES to look at books and "read" books. She can littlerally sit for hours and be entertained by a pile of books. She is like both her daddy and her mommy that way :) I love that she enjoys books and I am looking forward to the day when she is able to read on her own! What a wonderful world will be opened up to her when she is able to read....I can't wait!

Gabe and the spoon

Lately Gabe had become mr. independent when it comes to his meals. Most of the time he does NOT want to be fed, but wants to do it himself. He is starting to learn how to use a spoon and it is soo funny :) I snapped a couple of pictures the other day so you could all enjoy the cuteness :)

Good try buddy, but you have got the wrong end :)


Such focus!

Open wide!!

Success! :)

My kids...from far away :)

One of my favorite things about our house is that we have a really nice back yard. We have wonderful neighbors on three sides, and in the back of the house there is a huge field behind our yard. We have several tall trees that provide fantastic shade and are perfect for little girls and boys to play under on sunny summer days.


Sometimes when we go outside to play I like to let the kids do their own thing. I sit on the deck and supervise, but I think it is fun to see what they like to do when I am not actively playing with them. Yesterday I snuck out with the camera to take some pictures when they weren't looking. (I didn't have my zoom lense on the camera, so that is why they look so far away.)


Gabe had trotted off to sit under one of the big trees and was busy throwing rocks and sticks and crumpling leaves, when his big sister decided to join him :)






Then she decided to smother him..

Then they caught my laughing :)


Silly kidders :)

Hannah at Indian Bear

Hannah is my little fish. She loves the water and loves to swim. At Indian Bear, even when we were in the pond, she was not afraid at all...she would swim away from Nick and wanted him to take her out to the raft in the middle of the pond. She wasn't even bothered by the fish in the pond (I am a bit traumatized by them :)) No fear for this little girl!

Gabe at Indian Bear

Every year Nick's side of the family does four day weekend at a lodge close to where we live. It is a really nice place with a big air-conditioned lodge that we all stay in, and a nice pond for fishing and swimming in :) It can be a bit crazy at times, there are 38 of us now, but it is also lots of fun! Here are some pictures of Gabe from the weekend!

Being cute wearing daddy's hat :)
Pweeeeese pick me up mommy!!!
Seriously mom, I cannot beleive you have that camera in my face AGAIN!

First Day of School

Something that Nick and I have been talking about/praying about/thinking about over the past 6 months to year is how we want our kids to be educated. Hannah is going to be four and September (YIKES!!) and the inevitable school decision is right around the corner. A lot of Hannah's buddies are going to be starting pre-school this year, and while we know that pre-school is not something that is right for our family, Hannah has show a lot of interest in learning and has on several occasions over the summer asked me to teach her to read. :) Nick and I are both avid readers, so this made me really excited :) So after much talking/thinking/praying we have decided to home school for pre-school. I am really really excited about it, and Hannah is too! :)

I did a good bit of research over the past month or so and we settled on using the Sonlight P4/5 cirriculum. I really liked the emphasis on reading, as well as the emphasis on other cultures. I spent a couple of day looking on home school re-sale board, ebay, and half.com, and was able to piece together the cirriculum for about half of what it costs to buy it from Sonlight. (Besides being an avid reader, I am also quite cheap...hee hee :)) Hannah was so excited to get her books in the mail! Every time one would come, she would would say it was the best book ever :)


Here is a picture of our school book shelf :)

Today was our first day, and we worked on the letter F. We also practiced writing our name, read about baby animals, starting learning about seasons and months, and practiced our bible verse for the week. I had a ton of fun, and I am pretty sure Hannah did too :)

In which I show off my accomplishments...

Feeble as they may be :) For some reason, I have been bitten by the organizational bug these past few days. Rather than try and figure out why, I have just gone with it... I've learned in the past not to question these things, rather to simply take advantage of them on the rare occasion that they do happen.

So first in line...the junk closet. You know that space in your house where you just throw things that you aren't sure what to do with, and you tell yourself that you will take care of it later when you have more "time." But then you never have the time/motivation to take care of it, so it ends up being a big, gigantic disaster. Well, that is pretty much the story of our junk closet :) It has been bugging me lately so I decided to tackle it today while Gabe was taking his morning nap. I didn't take a before picture, so you will just have to trust me when I say it was a huge freaking MESS!! However, after two hours of sorting and pitching, two trash bags full of junk and two big boxes of junk, our closet now looks like this....and I must say, I am quite proud of myself :)



My second big accomplishment for today falls into the decorating category. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am NOT gifted in this area...at all... :) Well my mom got me these picture frames a couple of months ago, and I finally decided what to do with them. These are pictures of Hannah, Gabe, my niece Sera, and one of the three of them together. I really like how it turned out :)




All in all I would say it was a pretty accomplished day. :) I also scrubbed out the fridge today, but I will spare you the torture of looking at my fridge :)

Sisterly visit :)

I went to see my sister for a couple of days this week. So much fun! Nothing like a little sister time :) Lots more pictures to come, but here is my favorite of our three little monkeys :)

I can't resist...

...this sweet little face :) Can you?