Wishing You A Merry Christmas

Happy Belated Anniversary

This post is long overdue, but better late than never I suppose.  On December 13th, the hubby and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary.  Thanks babe for being a wonderful husband and father.  You're more than I could have ever asked for.  You do so much for our family.  You are an excellent father and our children adore you.  Thanks for all you do to provide for and support our family.  I love you!!!

Happy Happy Birthday Ella Dear... Happy Days Will Come To You All Year

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!  I can't believe you're three years old already.  It doesn't seem like that long ago we were bringing you home from the hospital.  You are such a sweet girl, although you can definitely be a little sassy too, but you come by it honestly I suppose.  Your daddy and I love you so much and are so proud of the big girl you are becoming.  You are such a good big sister.  You love your brother and sister so much and are such a good example to them.  You love to read and are so excited to start preschool next year.  You love going to nursery at church and are super excited to be a Sunbeam next year.  You love playing with friends and are such a little social butterfly around those you know.  Fortunately, you are a little more reserved with those you don't know, but not nearly as shy as I was when I was little.  I guess you got a good balance of your daddy's and my personalities.  You have become very empathetic to others and you express a lot of concern over others pain.

I'm so grateful to have been blessed with such a sweet little girl and am so grateful to have you in our family.  Happy Birthday baby girl!

Our Newest Addition

I haven't been avoiding this blog, I've just been really busy the last month.  We were busy getting ready for the arrival of our newest family member, which of course involves all sorts of house projects and then we also hosted my family for Thanksgiving this year.  So needless to say, way too much going on.  But life is slowing down a little now and we're getting ready for Christmas so hopefully I'll have a little more time to blog now.  I have so much to show you and I've been taking pictures and meaning to post, but by the time evening rolls around and the munchkins are in bed I'm just too exhausted to even attempt being creative.  So for now those posts will have to wait.  Maybe after the New Year I'll be a little more on the ball with posting.  Hopefully I'll get used to sleep deprivation quickly.  I guess we'll see.

Anyways, let me introduce you to our newest family member.  On December 1st we welcomed the newest member of our family, Ashlynn Rose...

Ashlynn Rose

7 lb 13 oz

19.5 in

Isn't she a doll?  I'm a little biased of course.  She has been such a good baby and eats like a champ.  Now if only we could get the days and nights worked out.  Our other munchkins are in love with her too (a little too much actually).  They love to "share" with her and hold her and give her lots of hugs and kisses.  For now we are just trying to get settled and adjust to our new life.  

Halloween Happenings

We're not huge Halloween fans and so we keep it pretty low key around here, but since we have munchkins now we figure we've got to do something for them.  The Wednesday before Halloween one of our friends from our neighborhood had a little Halloween party for all the little kids.  We woke up that morning to 7" of snow and no power, which was interesting... I'm certainly grateful for electricity.  We had a lot of fun playing with friends and all those bodies running around helped us to not even notice that there was no heat.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures.  Oops.
This year we decided to take the munchkins trick-or-treating.  Of course the weather didn't really want to cooperate.  It was really cold and pouring rain, but fortunately we were able to get a little break in the rain and go out with friends for about an hour.  Ella had so much fun trick or treating with her friends.  But before we met up with friends we stopped at a few of our neighbors homes.  We couldn't get her to even talk to the neighbors, but as soon as she was with friends she didn't even need us to go to the door with her.  She was a pro.  Cameron did really well wearing his costume (which I was worried about since he got angry just looking at it) and he rode in the stroller the whole time we were out without giving us grief. He even got to go up to the door a few times with his big sister and thought that was pretty cool.  Anyways, we had a lot of fun despite the really cold and wet weather.  Ella keeps talking about trick-or-treating next year already.

This was the best pic I could get of the two munchkins before the Halloween party.

The remains of our 7" of snow in late afternoon.

Doesn't she look so happy to be mowing the snow...

Halloween night... all day she kept asking to go trick or treating.

Doesn't he look happy to be getting dressed up.

Ella insisted that we take a picture with Roxy... 

(please ignore the disgustingly dirty wall... I promise I do clean the walls, but that dog is so good about getting them dirty again)

There's our happy little lion

Feeling not so sure, but going along with things... for now

All ready to go

Of course, I forgot the camera, but here's a pic of Ella raiding her loot once we got home.

Cameron liked the candy too... just a little

The Great Pumpkin

This last month we've just been so busy that we didn't really do much for Halloween.  We did however manage to eventually make it to the pumpkin patch with the kids.  Every time we planned on going, something happened that prevented us from going (i.e. Andrew worked late a couple nights, we all got a 24 hour bug, etc).  Anyways, we finally made it and of course the munchkins loved every minute of it.

Cameron knew what pumpkin he wanted as soon as we got there

This is the best I could get of the two of them... my little man won't hold still for anything

They had too much fun running around and looking at all the pumpkins

Ella couldn't make up her mind... she went through several pumpkins before deciding on the "one"

Ella managed to get Cameron to share his pumpkin for a few seconds at least

Silly Andrew

After the pumpkin patch we went home and had chocolate cake for my birthday.  I was actually sick on my birthday so we celebrated a day late.

Of course Cameron loved the cake

So stinkin' cute!

Of course Ella loved it as well... she is just a lot cleaner about it

We opted to keep it simple this year and only carve one pumpkin.  We actually started with this pumpkin, but once it was open we discovered a whole lotta nasty mold inside.  So Ella's pumpkin got carved instead.

He carried this pumpkin around for days... it was only after Halloween when he threw it on the ground for the umpteenth time that it finally cracked and I threw it away.

Oh my goodness!  Look at this little boy.  Where did my baby go!?!

They both had a lot of fun cleaning out the guts

Ella even made some "pumpkin cookies" for us

Ella really enjoyed the whole process.  Next year she can have her own pumpkin to carve.

She even got to help her daddy with the cutting

The Great Pumpkin... Good job munchkins!