6 month checkup

Real quick....Abby had her 6 month checkup today. She has really put on the pounds in the last few months! She now weighs 15 lbs 13 oz, which is a 3 lb gain in 2 months! At 4 months she was the smallest of the three girls, but now she is the biggest! At 6 months, Sammi weighed 14 lb. 8oz and Maddie was 15 lb. 10 oz.

I guess it's no wonder when you look at those thunder thighs she's got! She is right on target developmentally and her doctor said if she is already sitting on her own, then she could potentially be another early walker. (Sammi walked at 9 months, Maddie walked at 10). I would prefer she didn't, but we'll see!

And I think she is looking more like her own person and less like Sammi. She is really a good mix of everyone! For fun, here are pictures of each of the girls at 6 months.

Memorial Day Weekend!

Well, we took a very nice break from packing and boxes and headed up on Friday to Renovo, PA where Brandon's parents have a cabin. We've been there a few times now and the girls always have such a blast. Aunt Mandy and Lily joined us this time too! Lily has grown and changed so much since the last time we saw her! She was so friendly and gave us all lots of hugs and she loved being silly with Sammi and Maddie.

Saturday we spent the day at Howard Lake! We had a picnic first and Lily was so cute eating her first big apple. She couldn't get enough of it!

And Abby did really well sitting up on her own. She just loved being outside.

And the girls had a blast, as always, with Nate's girlfriend Norma!

Pap Pap also took Sammi fishing on the boat. I think overall, everyone caught over 50 fish!! It was crazy! Every time someone put a rod in it, a fish would get hooked. Sammi caught 5 herself and we ended up taking home 24!

We also went over the to beach for a while. The water was pretty cold, but that didn't stop the girls! They loved it and had so much fun playing in the sand and water.

Abby enjoyed herself too! She was so so cute in her little bathing suit :)

I love this picture of me and her!

We of course did all the other usual camp things like make s'mores and the guys (and Norma!) got REALLY muddy when they went 4 wheeling!

Finally, here our some group shots of our time up at the cabin! Here are all the ladies.

And all the guys

And the cutest grandaughters :)

Hopefully, the next time I post will be from our new house! Which by the way will have Fios for less than what we pay now! So it should be super fast to upload! We load up what we can into the truck Thurs. night, close on both houses on Friday and finish moving/unloading Friday evening. Brandon's parents are coming to help and we have a lot of friends to thank as well for helping us and watching the girls! I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of our new place! Pray it all goes well!

School's Out for Summer!

Sammi's last day of preschool and class picnic was on Monday. However, she was very sick for 3 days and had to miss it! She had a croupy cough and fever since Saturday and although her fever seemed to be gone Sunday, it came back fiercely Monday morning and the poor thing just laid in bed all day! Thankfully, she started to feel better yesterday and is pretty much back to normal today. Anyways, these are the things the kids got at the picnic.

A yearbook with a page that each of the kids in the class made.


This is Sammi's page! I guess she wants to be a librarian when she grows up, although later on she asked me what a librarian does! ha! And she was definitely not the only girl in the class that said they like to play princess!


There was also a book with a piece of artwork that Sammi did from each month. This one shows her with her building that she built! The drawing is her "blueprint". And she said the building is a restaurant with a garden on top of the roof! How creative!


Her teacher also gave me some pictures they took of Sammi. This one is when the kids pretended to be Mimes! Sammi was really excited when they did that!

And finally, here she is at home with her Special Person Award. You can see in the background what our dining room is looking like these days!

Anyways, Sammi loved her time at preschool this year! I've mentioned before that next year she will be going to the Ferguson Center instead of McKnight since it is much closer to our new house. It is still St. Paul's preschool though and I think some of the teachers are the same. And I'm very happy that she is not going to kindergarten yet! I'm not ready for that!!

Happy Mother's Day!

So far I've had a wonderful Mother's Day. Having 3 kids this year makes it even more special!

These are all the gifts I got!

The girls first helped Brandon make me breakfast, including crepes with fruit on top! Yum!

And Saturday, they worked on making these paper flowers and cards. Who knew Brandon could be so crafty and creative! He even sprayed them with some Febreeze so they smelled nice!

And I was really impressed with Sammi's card and all the writing she did on it. Brandon said she did it all by herself. I know the years of homemade flowers and cards will be short-lived, so I am enjoying every second of Mother's Day this year.

They also got me real flowers. Sammi painted the pot at preschool and planted some kind of flowers in it. When I asked her what kind of flowers they would be, she said Dandelions! ha! I'm pretty sure that is not what they will be, but it will be kind of exciting to see what they grown into! And they also got me the rose plant. When we moved in here 4 years ago, Brandon got me a rose plant which has since grown into a beautiful, full rose bush that we planted out front. I commented a few times about how I was going to miss the rose bush, so he was sweet and bought me a new one to plant at the new house!


And he is planning on buying us a new picnic table for the new house once we move in! So I am very excited about that :)

The girls were so sweet all morning, especially Sammi since she understands what the day is about. She told me "Today is a day to tell our Mother's how much we love them!". What a sweetie! Then of course, they all managed to have a mini-meltdown at the end of church at the same time. But, I just tried to laugh it off and figure that it's all just a part of motherhood. And I wouldn't trade it for anything :)

Discovery Day - Animation

Sammi had her last day of Discovery Day today. This time the theme was "animation". They have been learning all about animation and movie making for the past 6 weeks. So, today they showed us the movie that they made! The first part of the movie was 3 short animations that the kids did. They would move each piece a little bit and film it and then move it some more and film it, until they had an entire short movie put together. For example, one of them was a cut-out doll putting together a snow man. And another was someone building blocks to make a house. It was all very cute and it looked like it took a lot of time for them to do. Then, they filmed 3 short movies, where all the kids had a special role. They did "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed", "Goldilocks and the 3 Bears" and one called "The Door Bell Rang". Sammi played the Grandma who brings all the cookies in "The Door Bell Rang". All the kids were so cute, and you could tell they were having a great time. Sammi was an adorable Grandma :). And it was obvious that their teacher really put a lot of time and effort into making the movie for us. And thankfully one of the parents agreed to make copies for us.

For the start of the show, they had all the kids walk through the movie "Walk of Fame". They each made one of these star pictures for the "sidewalk". Sammi was the last to go through the tunnel b/c she was kind of shy and not sure she wanted to do it. She told me later that she didn't want to wave or spin like some of the other kids did. But, as you can see in the video, our movie star finally did make it through the tunnel!

Free!

Well, I guess I haven't blogged in a few weeks! We have been quite busy with all the packing and everything. We won't find out about Brandon's test for a few months, but at least it is over with and he at least had an answer for every question! He really has no clue how he did. He thought the morning session was pretty easy, but the afternoon really hard. So we just wait and see!

In other exciting news, we just made our final payment to our last credit card!!! I blogged way back in Nov. of 2007 about paying off our car and how that was our first step towards becoming "debt" free. Our goal was to be done by spring of 2009 and here we are and we did it!! It just amazes me that we actually pulled it off. I give all thanks to God and his provision. So the only "debt" we have now is our mortgage and student loans. It would be nice to not have a mortgage, but that is pretty unrealistic for our family right now. And I consider that to be more of an investment than debt. And our student loans only have a interest rate of 1%, so I don't feel burdened by them. If you consider the rate of inflation, PHEAA won't be making any money off of us even if we just continue to make monthly payments. So I feel good about that for now. Anyways, it is so incredibly freeing to not have credit card or vehicle payments. I feel like they were such a waste of money and it made me sick how much we had to pay towards them each month. But now we are free! And we are excited that we can now tithe the way we want to and also afford to move into a better home for our family, plus put some money into savings and pay for Brandon's grad school. We are hoping to save enough so that by the time we need another vehicle, we can pay for it with cash or at least most of it. And hopefully we have learned our lesson and will be able to stay debt free!

In other news, Abby can now also roll from back to front! She is also getting close to being able to sit on her own. She can pretty much do it, but she still needs a spot b/c she will all of a sudden lunge herself forward or backwards! I know the week we move is when she will figure out how to roll across the room!

Here she is rolling over! (Sammi put the Super Star sticker on her butt!)

"I made it to my tummy...

Now to get that arm out!

phew, that was tiring work!

But I'm so proud for doing it!"