A Little of this and a little of that!

Warning: This post might be a little all over the place as I attempt to catch you up on the last few weeks of happenings around here!

First, all of our boys are growing!! We are amazed at the amount of food they are beginning to pack away...literally, more than I eat most meals! These are some pictures of a recent Sunday afternoon when we opened our kitchen ice cream shoppe! :)

Zachary

Justin

Aaron

Caleb

We get comments all the time when we are out and about regarding the size of our family and the ages of the kids. One of the most frequent comments is how much the boys are like little stair steps. Well, we measured them yesterday, and there is a reason they look like little stair steps - because they are! Would you believe, each of the boys is exactly six inches shorter than his next oldest brother??!! In descending order, our children are 48" (Zachary), 42" (Justin), 36" (Aaron) and 30" (Caleb). How fun is that??!

Sweetly sleeping!

Rebekah did not have the greatest news at her weight check today. We will be meeting with a gastroenterologist (GI doctor) sometime in the next two weeks to decide on a new feeding plan. You can read all the details on Rebekah's blog here.

Yes, Caleb is in my pantry sorting and eating my potatoes!

Do any of your kids like to eat potatoes...raw? Apparently Caleb does! If we forget to latch the pantry door, this is what we inevitably find....a small pile of neatly sorted potatoes with a nibble or two taken from most of them. Last week, Drew even woke up to find a potato in our bed! We are still trying to figure out when and how Caleb got it there.

Yes, that is Caleb, and yes, he is in Rebekah's swing....

Along with potato-loving, Caleb loves his sister. And more than he loves his sister, he loves his sister's toys! We frequently find Caleb in the swing, in the bouncy chair, lying on her floor mat and in Rebekah's car seat. You know, when we don't find him in the pantry!

Eating breakfast on Zachary's first day of second grade.

The saying goes all good things must come to an end and that is exactly what this summer did! Today was Zachary's first day at Brushy Creek Elementary, and we were all up early to take him to school. Zachary's teacher is Mrs. Lewis, and we have been really impressed with her classroom management and organization. Zachary thrives on a schedule and routine, so we were very pleased about his placement in Mrs. Lewis' room. He had a good day overall and is looking forward to getting more books and learning something tomorrow.

Zachary is ready to learn!

At some point during the school day each of the students in Zachary's class had to give a brief "About Me" speech to the class. Zachary (who is never at a loss for words!) told me this afternoon that he told his class all about Rebekah and his brothers. He is such a sweet big brother! :)

I'm off to finish up a few chores and get ready for tomorrow. The alarm rings too early for our new school schedule!

Nancy

Interview

We have a busy week ahead.  The boys are back to school and hoping to finish up for the summer soon.  We get a chance to go see Miss Rebekah on the ultrasound tomorrow.  I have an interview with a local custom builder on Thursday morning at 9:30.  We are praying and trusting the Lord will lead us to the right place of permanent employment.  This will be a exciting week to see the Lord's leading and direction both in our work situation and with the continuing situation with Rebekah.  

- Drew

Random Picture Challenge

Doesn't seem like a year ago! This week's challenge was the 33rd picture in February 2008 folder.  If you would like to play along, click over to Brittany's blog and join in! Here it is.......

Justin's class did a farm animal unit at school, and they made sheep ears. He was (and is!) SO cute!! :)

Nancy

Catching Up!

I know it's been a few days since my last post, so this post will probably be all over the place catching up on what has happened. 

Sunday, we all made it to church in the morning, but Caleb refused to willingly stay with the nursery workers (without screaming loudly enough to be heard through half of the building!), so I ended up spending Sunday school and church time in the nursery with him.  He never did take a morning nap, which only compounded his grumpiness!  When he finally did fall asleep at 2:30 in the afternoon, I also took a nap.  Drew realized how tired Caleb and I were and decided to let us sleep through evening church.  Justin also wasn't acting like himself, so Drew stayed home to watch the bigger boys and let me sleep.  Good thing, because by late afternoon on Monday, Justin was complaining of a bad headache, a bad sore throat, and had a 101.5 temp.  When we got into the doctor on Tuesday morning, my suspicion of strep throat was confirmed.  :(  Since being on antibiotics, he is doing much better, although I can tell he is dragging a bit by the end of the day.

Yesterday was Drew's birthday (Happy Birthday!!), and Zachary decided that Drew wanted a carrot cake.  So, the boys helped make a yummy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  Mmmm!  We also (finally!) finished packing away the remaining Christmas things yesterday and are ready this weekend to set up the office for home schooling.

This morning, Justin was well enough to go back to school, which he was very excited about.  He said that he had a great time and that at playtime he and Sara Kate and Austin and RJ played football.

After dropping Justin off at school, we headed back to the pediatrician for the second time this week.  Today was Aaron's 3 year check-up.  He was a very big boy and only cried for just a second when his finger was pricked to draw blood.  Everything else checked out just great.  Aaron was born with two heart murmurs, and today the pediatrician said he faintly heard one, but the other is gone altogether!  He is recommending that we don't even need to return to the cardiologist for a follow-up visit!!!  :) Good news when you don't have insurance!  Both murmurs are described as benign, which means that they do not indicate any abnormalities in the heart.  So, the are "normal" murmurs, if there is such a thing.  :)  Aaron is 24.2 pounds and 34.75 inches tall.  We are slowly but steadily climbing up the growth chart!  Zachary on the other hand, is a back-breaking 46.6 pounds!!!!  No wonder I am struggling to fit him into my lap!! :)  Caleb topped the scales at a healthy 18.10 pounds.  He's going to surpass Aaron by his first birthday if he keeps growing at this rate! :)  No kidding, Caleb is wearing clothes that Aaron did not wear until close to his second birthday.

From the doctor's office, we headed to BJES (Zac's school) to pick up his books from first semester.  I was kind of bummed because they did not let us keep all of his reading books, and I argued that we paid for all the books at the beginning of the school year, so we should get them all.  But, the didn't budge, so now I have to buy the complete set of six to get the last 3 books that we need.  Grrrr.  They also did not have a math book or phonics workbook to give us because the teacher tears the pages out of each of them at the beginning of the year, and they said they did not have any others we could have.  SO, on to the resource center to purchase the books we did not have.....I was able to get almost everything we need (I think!) except for the set of reading books.  That will just have to wait as it is almost half of the cost of all the other books combined!  The bright side is that if I do homeschool Justin in first grade, I will have about half of the books that I can re-use from Zac.  If I am able to do quite a bit of planning over the next few evenings and this weekend, I would like to start school this coming week.  Hopefully it will work out that way.

While we were driving around town this morning, I was playing "what if" with Zachary and Aaron.  It's something we do once in a while and something we have fun with.  Sometimes it's "What if you were a bird, what would you do, where would you live, what would you eat, etc.?" But this morning, I decided to check with Aaron to see if he remembered what he should do if he were to get lost.  Nope!  I first asked him what Mommy and Daddy's names were so he could tell an adult if he was lost.  He remembered that Daddy was Drew, but I am just Mommy!  :)  Then I asked him what he would tell an adult if he was lost and couldn't find Mommy and Daddy (thinking he would say, "I'm lost" or "I can't find my Mommy" or something like that).  Nope, again!  Any guesses?  Well, you wouldn't have guessed it anyway.  The most important thing to tell an adult if you can't find your mommy or daddy is "I need to tell them I am scared of monsters!"  :)

What can I say?  He must be his daddy's child!  :)

Nancy

Catch-Up

Okay, so it's been a while since I last posted.  A thousand pardons......but there has been a lot going on lately!

To start with, Zachary had a red letter day at school today!  His day started off with a smiley face this morning for doing his papers correctly last Tuesday.  Yeah for Zac!!  But the very exciting thing is that he was moved up to the red reading group (the middle group)!!!!  We are so proud of Zachary working hard on his reading and showing so much improvement since the beginning of the year.  Here's Zachary's quote for the day (said while he, Justin and Aaron were cleaning up their balls in the living room), "Justin, don't pick up the balls you can see; pick up the balls that you can't see!!"

Justin also had quite a start to his day.  We were the second car in car line this morning, and as the car in front of us exited the line, I started to move slowly forward.  Well, Justin caught sight of Sara Kate and opened the car door to jump out while the car was moving!!!!!  I snagged the back of his jacket as I hit the brakes and we managed to avert any potential disaster.  Needless to say, I think he missed Sara Kate over Thanksgiving break!  He said they had a fun day at school and played together at play time.

Aaron has been his cute little self today.  In fact, I told him this evening that if he got any cuter I'd have to send him back.  He told me "You don't send me back.  I Aaron; I stay here."  :)  According to Aaron, our dinner was "some getti" (anyone want to guess?), and he ate lots of it!  Aaron also spread his pants out on the floor to put them on and told me "It's [the pants] like a swimming pool!"  When I asked him why, he replied "You just dive in!"  Too much!

Caleb has been crawling and exploring all over the house.  Unlike the other boys, he seems to like having something in his mouth constantly.  He spent the better part of the evening crawling around the kitchen with a washcloth hanging from his mouth.  He was perfectly happy - snorting and giggling.  Other objects that he enjoys carrying in his mouth are his small stuffed squeaky frog and pieces of plastic food from the play kitchen.  It is really cute to watch; I guess when we took the pacifier away, he came up with his own versions!

And for the last piece of news, for those of you who may not know, we are excited to announce that we are expecting Baby #5 in July!  It will be a while before we find out this baby's gender (or in other words, confirm that he is a boy! :), but we are eagerly anticipating this little one's arrival.  It will add a very new dimension to our household since Caleb and Baby will be only 15 months apart.  We were VERY surprised since we were not even thinking about thinking about trying to get pregnant, and in fact were trying NOT to get pregnant, so this one truly is God's timing!  We'll keep you posted on how things are going for Mommy and Baby!  :)

Nancy

Justin's First Day of School

Today was Justin's first day in K-4. Mrs. Butler is his teacher (she was also Zac's K-4 teacher). Justin's best friend from K-3, Sara Kate, is also in his class. Justin had a terrific day. He was able to play on BOTH playgrounds today, and he thought that was the best! He also said that he got to "marker" his name (write his name with a marker). Justin was excited about calendar time and learning about putting the date on the calendar. He said that he played with Sara Kate and RJ, building blocks, playing with Legos and playing in the kitchen center. All in all, he had a great day!