Today I decided to set my son up with his own email account.  I have thought about this for a while and after weighing the pros and cons decided to go ahead and let him do it.  I figured it's better now, when the kid is young and has nothing to hide, to teach him to be open about his internet use, then wait until he's a teenager and everything's all secretive.  He was also told that in order to be allowed to use email, mommy and daddy have to know his password at all times and can look at his account whenever we wanted.  I even have it linked to mine so that in case he decided to change something, I can override it.

Hello there friends!  Don't mind me, I'm just enjoying some tummy time with my big brother!  Have a good day!

In April, husband decided to build the kids a swing set, they've really missed being able to swing since the move last summer.  They really love having it, so does everyone else...

So glad the Hubby built a new swing set for the KIDS to enjoy... :)
(sorry for the poor picture quality, this was taken through the window with a screen in it)

My sweet little girl isn't much of a little girl any more :(  It seems every day she says or does something that screams "She's not a baby any more!"  If I didn't just have a baby, I'm pretty sure I'd be thinking "I need a baby RIGHT NOW!"

A few weeks ago, little miss lost her FIRST TOOTH!  She is excited beyond belief!  She tells every person she comes in contact with that she lost her first tooth.  She even yelled it at the starbucks window.  When people ask her what she's going to do with that tooth (implying tooth fairy) she responds..."Put it in a jar and keep it forever" and they give her a strange look...and I just smile.  

If losing her first tooth wasn't enough of a blow to me accepting that she's growing up, this past Monday she learned how to tie her shoes!  It was very spur of the moment...
"Mommy, teach me how to tie my shoes"
"Ok, make an x, tuck one under, pull it tight, make a bunny ear, travel the string around the ear and tuck it under, now  pull on both bunny ears and there ya go!"
"Ok, like this?"
And that about sums up her 5 minute mastery of tying her shoes...

She can also breeze through the Bob books like it's the simplest thing in the world to read.
She's awesome! 

 I can't wait to watch her succeed in school!
Speaking of school, she starts Kindergarten in -2 1/2 months-!  I'M NOT READY!  But girlfriend certainly is!

Hi guys! Long time no see!  It has become incredibly difficult to blog anything these days...lack of motivation, time, new baby, inability to formulate thoughts, sleep deprivation, colds and viruses one after another...all viable contributors for web silence lately.  So I thought I'd make this short and sweet and get something posted before I get side-tracked and send another post to the drafts department....
Last month we had our circuit assembly.  We stayed with B's bro and our sis in law who are expecting their first little lovely in the summer!
We got great news, the new assembly hall in SC is finally done so this was to be our last visit in the sports arena!  Yes, there was a loud roar of applause!  Our spoiled butts can't wait to get back to Salisbury!  We're also the first Circuit in the rotation so we'll be going to our next CA in the beginning of September!  Woohoo!
Baby turned 2 mo old while we were there and she was so wonderful!  I was actually able to get something out of it!  I have a feeling the convention this summer will be a different story with a wiggly 6 mo old...

I didn't get a shot of the entire family together...hopefully soon I'll think to do that!...mommy brain stinks!

I'm the absolute worst at keeping my kids updated with a yearly photo.  Now don't get me wrong, generally I'm pretty good at snapping the random daily photos, but when it comes to a yearly photo session, one devoted to getting an actual "good shot" I'm pretty terrible.  I finally ordered E's school picture the day before they expired.  And as I'm looking at them and deciding who we will send them to, I realized that Kennakat hasn't had a photo to send out in years!  Seriously, she was 17 months old at her last photo session by herself.  And even when we had our awesome photo session with Faces in Focus, now Silver Feather, I never ordered wallets of her to handout to family and friends- tell me what was I thinking?!.  So today, as the sun was shining, I thought I'd take a few minutes and snap some shots of my little miss sunshine.  And of course I love sharing, so I hope you enjoy!  I also tried to get a few of our newest little bundle of sweetness, but she was hungry, naked, cold -not happy with mommy, so we'll have to try again later...

Boy do I love her!

Tent time just us girls!

Thursday, February 14th at 5:26 pm my little cuddlebug was born!  All 9ib 21in of her!  She is such a wonderful, well natured, sweet baby!  Labor and delivery was absolutely crazy!   But we'll save those details for another day.  Today I'm just sharing a "few" pictures from our time at the hospital.  It's been hard to do anything but snuggle her every chance I get, but here they are, just a glimpse of our newest addition.  ( I typo-ed and spelled addiction -guess that's true cause I'm  completely addicted, hooked, in love!)

This weekend we got showered with so much love from our friends and family!
We made it through back-to-back baby showers, saw friends that we don't get to see every day, had lots of laughs (I almost peed my pants more than once) and heard exciting news.  My heart is overloaded with love, and that's the best feeling in the world!

Here I am at 38 weeks and 1 day.  At baby shower no. 1.  Feeling like I'm going to pop!  Photo courtesy of Tricia Jane.  I'm completely uncomfortable most of the time and it's hard remembering that I can't squeeze in and out of crowds as easily as I used to :-D

Up until the showers I was overwhelmed with the thinking "I can't have this baby yet!  I'm..Not..Ready!!!"  So now that the weekend is over and the exhaustion is slowly fading away, I'm thinking more and more like "yeah, I got this, Bring it baby!!"  I still feel that she needs to wait a few more days though.  I'm frantically working to get our room and baby/KennaKat's room finished.  Thank you nesting urges!  As KennaKat's room is smaller and they will be sharing spaces, I've decided to switch our rooms.  We don't need a lot of stuff in our room, so why not?  But along with the switching, I'm busy trying to get things to finish up our own space.  There's no time till you're less than 2 weeks to due date to decide that you need to finally change everything in your room! (I guess I've been sick of looking at the clutter for so long, I figure if I don't do it before the baby comes, I will have to stare at that same clutter for an even longer amount of time.  I'm not talking about room accessories either, I'm talking mattress, bed, desk -the whole majority of the things in our room.  So it has been fun searching endlessly on the net looking for sweet deals.  Tuesday evening, after searching for weeks for the sleigh bed that I wanted, I finally found one on Craigslist!  But it was an hour away and not really what I wanted to spend a good portion of time doing.  So I asked the guy "where could we meet?"  and we decided on 20 minutes down the road!  And then Hubby ended up meeting them at 8 at night!  So I didn't have to do any of the driving and my bed arrived the same day I found it for a great buy!  I'm so happy!  Our memory foam mattress finally got marked down last week so I quickly rushed out and purchased that from Costco before they sold out.  So things are working out quite well!  We still need a queen box spring so we'll hopefully pick one up today from the mattress place.  Then the bed can be set up and I can check it off the list!  Woohoo!  I can't wait until everything is done!  

Yesterday I spent a good amount of time moving hubby's clothes out of his dresser and all of baby 3's stuff into it.  It was so fun going through baby clothes, blankets, shoes, etc and finally putting them away.  That big pile of baby stuff in the living room is nicely shrinking!

In other news, I had my weekly check-up yesterday.  2 weeks ago I was dilated 1 cm, as of yesterday I am still dilated -1cm-.  Not really good news in the "baby can be here any day" fan club.  But the dr explained that if you've had kids before, your cervix can be thinning on the inside and the dilating on the outside is the last thing to change.  So here's hoping!  And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a nice visual guide...  Next week I have another ultrasound to find out how large she really is.  Estimated size at due date is 10ibs.  Ugh.

Bri came down on Friday with the girls and gave me a pedicure.  It will be nice to be able to look at my feet during delivery and not want to barf at their unsightliness!  I have had no swelling (except with the incident at the assembly a few months back) and as of Monday, my feet have officially turned into fat sausages, no matter what I do (besides stopping and putting my feet up...who has time for that??)  They wont go down.  Not cool.  It is making this remodeling job quite a pain.  My progress is puttering along at a very slow pace.  Fortunately the kids are great for fetching things up and down stairs all day!

I packed my hospital bag yesterday.  I actually packed a hospital bag!  I've never done that before.  With no.1 I think we threw a shirt into the baby bag as we headed out the door.  And the next 2 days we were constantly calling family to bring things up with them.  Tooth brush, shampoo, etc.  With no.2, we waited till the night before the scheduled induction (2 weeks after due date) and threw a small amount of stuff into a bag -shirt for me, pj pants for hubby, and a toothbrush!  But this time, I'm ready!   I even have hospital gifts for the kids.  Toiletries are packed so I wont smell and I even for the first time in 3 kids, purchased nursing pajamas!  Woohoo!  I think maybe I'm becoming a grown up, but I'm sure that feeling will pass soon enough.  I'll actually wear my own clothes in the hospital instead of those ugly, butt peaking, duckling printed gowns.  First of all, it took many years to learn that you were even allowed to do something like that in a hospital, and a few more years to decide if I cared or not.  So yes, clothes for me are packed!  can I get a "whoop-whoop!"?

For a week or so now, I've been waking up super early.  It started with 6am and slowly through the week moved back to 3 am.  Really not cool when you can't even fall asleep until after midnight.  I've been so exhausted it's nearly brought me to tears.  Today I woke up at 5.  That's way better than 3, but still, if the alarm doesn't wake me, it's too early.  The kids have caught on to something too because every night/morning, they come in to cuddle.  Something tells me they know that soon the majority of their attention from mommy will be lost for a long time. :-(  Which makes me so sad to even think about.

As I type this, the first cuddler has just entered my room.  So I will end this long rambling, get in some quick cuddles before our day begins, and share shower pictures later.

My apologies for being so incredibly sporadic and amiss with my blogging for a really long time now.  I'd like to have a good excuse, but mainly it's hard to feel like it.  I'm busy, tired, and feel so large and uncomfortable all.the.time.  As I've said before, I hate being pregnant!  Love the baby, hate the wait and pain associated with it.  I've got 6 weeks to go.  Husband teases me and says 8 -oh boy, I think I can not bear it.

So I have something pretty amazing to share, that I am very disappointed in myself for waiting so long... My boy gave his first talk last Thursday!!!  Yes, call me one incredibly proud mama!  The video I took is sooo terrible!  And I can't upload videos onto my blog, but I will share some pictures of our night.

He did so wonderful!  and yes, I cried!  I did really well holding it in until the last paragraph and then the tears started flowing.  He told someone else that he could see me crying the whole time...I don't know about that!   When he finished, I thought I couldn't bare it any more.  I was jealous that he was going to go back to his seat at the front instead of coming back to me who wanted to hug him and tell him what a great job he did.  But as soon as he got done, he quickly walked back to me and into my arms.  How happy I was!  And of course more tears rolled down!  Husband also had a talk that night.  Yes I was proud of my guys!  It's funny because originally husband was assigned to the #3 school, I told him that he needed to ask to be switched, but he said he would just go back once E was done with his part.  I warned that I would tell everyone that they needed to follow him back.  But the day before the meeting, the school overseer called him and told him that he was switching him to the front because of E having a talk up there too. Ha!  Take that husband :-P  So he was nervous to have everyone there.  The family all came and some much loved friends.  It helped make our night so much more memorable!