December Happenings, in pictures

Here are some pictures from our December. Enjoy!
By the way, the answers to the last post were: Liam, me! (Sheri), Elijah, Evan.

It's Been Awhile, and Another Who's-Who

Apparently life has been really busy lately! I have been so busy taking care of these kiddos, decorating our new house, and planning Christmas early to be blogging. I thought it was time to make a come back though. Just to get myself warmed-up again, how about another who's-who. The last one was way too easy for all of you so I decided to make it a little more difficult! If you all get this right away, then I give up!

Let me know in the comments who you think is in each picture!

(sorry this one is so small. I was having editing issues on my limited software and I gave up!)

Wait! Why are there four pictures????
Muwahahaha!
Tricky, tricky . . . . .

. . . . . . . as I post these, I am already thinking this is too easy! Oh well, have fun!

Happy Birthday Elijah!

Our firstborn turned four on Sunday! I cannot believe how old he is getting! To celebrate we had a few small parties for him. He has been asking for months to ride the rides at the MOA so we decided to head over there on Saturday with the Dacks. Turns out that the mall is as packed as ever on Saturdays, so the lines were a little long, but we still had fun. Nickolodeon Universe also has a coupon for a free unlimited ride wristband on a child's birthday, so that really helped save on money. This was Evan's first time riding the rides and he had a lot of funny!

Elijah, Nicole, Sheri and Evan on the Carousel

Elijah and Jon on Diego's Rescue Bus, Elijah's favorite ride.
(Evan and Kim were sitting behind them, but I couldn't get a good pic)

Elijah had a lot of fun on this Rescue Pet hopping ride (it may be a new favorite)

A quick visit with Dora and Diego. I'm not sure what he thought of that :)

Birthday cake #1, a yummy banana split ice cream cake!

Party #2 was a BBQ swim party at the Rickabaugh's
Evan, Elijah, and Lilly are ready to eat!

Elijah got a Buzz Lightyear Rocket launch sprinkler for a gift. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't more like a sprinkler, but Eli and Lilly had fun launching it

Evan and Eli swimming

Malachi enjoyed the water too!

They didn't quite understand the slip 'n slide on flat ground so Drew and Jon took turns launching them down.

Liam had fun too :)

Elijah and cake #2, Little Einstein's Rocket (with a candle whole in front)
Elijah loved how it looked, but then he didn't eat very much cake. I asked him later if he liked the cake and it turns out that he likes chocolate frosting better that dyed vanilla butter-cream. I will have to remeber that for next year.
All in all it was a great birthday for Elijah! thanks to all you who helped make it special!

By the way, the I think most of you knew the answer to the last post, but in case you missed it the answer was Evan, Liam, Elijah. Sorry it took so long, we have had a very busy summer!

Who's Who?

Can you guess which baby boy is which? It's easy for me, is it for you? These pictures were all taken at roughly the same age.
If I knew I was going to have three boys that all looked alike I would have posed them the same way in the same outfit to make this more difficult!
I will post the answers later . . . Happy guessing!

Baby Liam!

Liam has been spending his first few days in the NICU. He has some fluid in his lungs and had trouble breathing at birth so they have been watching him closely and giving him antibiotics. He has been doing really well and Jon and I are able to hold him and I am feeding him around the clock. He is almost well enough to step down, but they want to wait until all the fluid is gone. We are hopeful that he will get to leave the NICU tomorrow and room-in with us tomorrow night and be discharged on Monday. We have to just wait day to day to know for sure though.

Photo album customized with Smilebox

Here Comes Baby!

39 weeks and 2 days
We have our c-section tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning. We will very soon be meeting our newest little boy!!!

New Bed

Elijah has been enjoying a new bunk bed for the last few months. We were going to wait until he was 4 to get one, but we had a sneaking suspicion that a bunk bed would solve all our problems of getting the boys to sleep in the same room. Turns out we were right and we have had very few problems with the two of them. Elijah is so proud of his new bed and loves being on the top bunk!

The bottom bunk is reserved for Evan, but probably not until closer to his second birthday. Evan loves to climb up into his future bed and read books, almost as if he knows it is his.

For the time being Evan will have to remain in his crib. We definitely do not need to rush having Evan free-to-roam the house at night!

Mommy's Day

Friday was a Mommy's Tea Party at preschool. Elijah and I enjoyed lemon cakes, juice and iced tea. He gave me a cute little flower pot that he had made along with a portrait of me that he had drawn. I was pleasantly surprised that I actually looked like a person and not a bunch of circle scribbles since that is what he usually draws. Art is not his favorite :) Check out his interpretation of my "favorites". We then had a good time reading books and playing some special games.

I had quite an enjoyable Mother's Day. Went spent the morning at church and then had a spontaneous drive down to Mankato where we ate at the Olive Garden for a late lunch. I got to treat myself to Caribou earlier in the day and after the kids were in bed Jon and I got The Blind Side from redbox and enjoyed some MckFlurries. Yummmm! Both of the kids were well behaved the whole day which made it that much better for me!

Springtime

Jon built a sand table for Elijah and Evan to play in. This was a prototype for some sensory tables he is going to be making for the preschool room at church.
Elijah bought, with his own money!, a Diego sand set at a garage sale. He was pretty excited to play with it at home instead of having to wait for the beach.

Elijah was begging to plant some flowers so we planted some flower seeds and some bean seeds. Elijah found rocks to put in the bottom of the pots and then scooped all the dirt into the pots. Then he made all the holes and put the seeds in. Evan helped too. He took all the rocks out of the bottom of a pot and put them on top of the ones with dirt in them. What a helper!

The flowers all have little sprouts, but we are still waiting for the beans to come up.

Meanwhile they both have been enjoying some "outside" time everyday.
Evan is the goofiest kid. He is always coming up with silly things to make us laugh. Recently he put a bucket on his head and walked around the house running into walls.

Elijah is still enjoying the sand table. Here he spent a good deal of time burying all the Diego pieces, only to have Evan come along and mess it up. Brothers!

On another note, for some reason pajamas are a hot commodity around here. I like to buy clothes for the boys in advance so I can get them on clearance before they need them. I can never seem to find clearance pajamas and used ones are usually pretty worn. I just had some luck and found two pairs for Elijah at Once Upon A Child that were cheap and in almost-new condition. Even better, one of the pairs matched a set Evan already had. Since I love matching the boys I had to get a picture:

I resorted to sticking them in the crib to keep Evan from squirming away from the picture.

A goodnight kiss for Evan!