Just stuff...

January 21st

January 29th

Still haven't gotten around to posting Christmas pictures - maybe by Easter :)

Here are a few pictures from the past week...Grace is progressing in the food department. So far I've made all her "squishy" food...pear sauce, applesauce and sweet potatoes. The only pictures I've taken are of the sweet potatoes because it photographs so much better :) She's loving it. And she's a much happier baby with food of substance in her tummy. At her 4 month check up last week the doctor said she was perfect...she's gained almost 5 pounds since birth and grown a little over 4 inches. She rolled over (back to tummy) for the first time this past Saturday. She's full of smiles all the time...Nathaniel says that she ate up all of her smiles (this was said on a day no one could get a smile out of her)...so I guess now she's releasing them all. The smiles are surprising at times though...her front bottom teeth are getting very very close to the surface...did I mention she's not quite 4 1/2 months old!

Yummm...sweet potatoes!

My daddy is silly!

So is my big brother, Nathaniel!

Nathaniel is having fun with preschool. Unfortunately, his crazy parents gave him one heck of a name to spell...and we haven't even attempted his middle names, but he's doing pretty well with his first one! Today we did Fruit Loop math and he enjoyed it.

Joshua has started basketball at school 2 afternoons a week and really likes it. Little League sign-ups are next week...though they don't start actually playing until April I think. He's pretty excited about that as well. He got to babysit Grace one day last week - for about 10 minutes while she was sleeping. Nathaniel was sick (strep throat) and I had an appointment to take him to the clinic in town at 2pm...which is when Grandma has her lunch break. But she doesn't get home until a few minutes after 2 usually. It was raining and I really didn't want to deal with all 3 of them at the clinic...I'd done that a week before when I'd had all three of them checked for strep since Joshua was sick and it's going around the school (none had it then). So I left Grace sleeping in her crib and Joshua with strict orders to not take her out of the crib if she woke up, but to entertain her until Grandma got home. She didn't wake up and Joshua was a great babysitter...Nathaniel had left him with the parting words, "Joshua, you protect Grace because I'm not home to protect her!" I don't think we'll have to worry about her too much as she gets older if her brothers are already prepared to protect her at this age!

And that's about all for us right now...

Firsts...

I've had good intentions for the past 3 weeks to update the blog with pictures of Christmas, etc. but just haven't gotten to them. So I'm going to preempt those and post a few firsts...


Joshua's FIRST lost tooth - yes, finally at 7 years, 2 months (exactly) Joshua lost his first tooth. The adult tooth is coming in behind it...went to the dentist to have it pullled and the nice dentist freaked him out by telling Brian that it looked like things might be cramped so it might be best to pull all FOUR lower front teeth and then grind down the eye tooth a bit. Needless to say, he didn't get it pulled and he and Daddy worked on it for a few days and the evening of Dec. 30th out it came!

Nathaniel's firsts was his first official day as a Sunbeam in Primary at church. I have a hard time believing that he's old enough for it...so does he, he misses the Nursery way more than Joshua ever did, but he's enjoying singing with the big kids and having a class. He's the only one moving up this year...and they way they've divided the classes here, he's with kids that are turning 5 & 6 this year...big difference!

Grace's first has no picture...she started eating some rice cereal this week and is seeming to enjoy it. We're hoping it helps her to sleep better because our sweet little princess that was sleeping all night long for so long has suddenly, in the past week, decided that waking Mommy up every TWO hours or so to eat is fun. No, it's not, I can assure you. And here's a picture of her anyway because she's too darn cute to not put a new picture of her up!

Maybe in the next day or so, I'll get Christmas pictures up.

Our First Decade...

From just the two of us...

Then there were three...

Then four...

And now we're five...

Happy 10th Anniversary!

Random pictures of the kids in early December

JOSHUA!!!!

Night in Bethlehem

Great Grandma & Grace

Sleepy head

Cute brothers with new haircuts!!

Look at those blue eyes!

Mommy & Grace

Cheesy grin!

Just swinging around :)

This picture is for Aunt Carol :)

All ready for Church

Grandma, Grace & Nathaniel

Our smiley girl!!

The epitome of laziness

A happy face!! This was on the backside of an English Muffin...shoulda' put it on eBay!

Helping Mommy make peanut brittle

First Snow of the Season...

We had our first snow of the season yesterday...once I put Grace down for a nap, Nathaniel and I went out for a few minutes...

FANTASTIC!!

Fantastic is Nathaniel's word today...he's been saying it all afternoon...and it describes him quite well...he's FANTASTIC!!

He wasn't mad - and he wasn't caught where he shouldn't be...he was just trying out the baby seat...and was upset with me because I used the old camera, not the new camera!

On 10-23 it was Mole Day for Daddy's chemistry class and they had a potluck. We got to go (except Joshua, he had to go to school)...we got to see where Daddy has his classes and visit Grandpa in his office...afterwards, Nathaniel "read" a Curious George book to Grace.

Our football player...Joshua

I haven't had a chance to put up pictures of Joshua from flag football...or his Rockin' with Respect awards. He brings home a copy and a copy gets put up on the bulletin board in the hall at the school. His first one was for helping a teacher's aide learn how to navigate the accelerated reading program on the computer. His second one was for being considerate to a classmate that had gotten hurt on the playground.