Ashleigh's 5th Birthday

Am I still considered to be a blogger, even though my last post before this one was Ethan's birthday back in June? Funny that the time since then has really flown by! I do have good intentions to continue blogging, but the Facebook pull is just too easy to write one or two sentences and post a few pictures and call it good.

So as an update on the last 5 or so months of our crazy life... Tyler's first tooth came in just two weeks ago and I think he's working on 3 others at the same time (you can see the top two and the other bottom one trying to poke through). He's a little guy in just the 10th percentile for weight and height. Some say they walk early when they have siblings to watch, but I think he's content just watching and won't pull up or crawl or walk for a while. He does a little army crawl on his stomach to move forward, but is happy just rolling around on the floor.

Ethan and Ashleigh are doing well. I started educating Ashleigh at home this year and just jumped in with a kindergarten curriculum in August. I didn't do a lot of research on the different types or even attend a curriculum fair as I've heard that's overwhelming. We're using A Beka Book kindergarten along with some supplement Bible reading and scripture memorization and I'd say God just fills in the rest. I just read this on why to choose homeschooling for my friends that are still undecided on the subject.

http://guiltfreehomeschooling.org/blog/2009/05/why-choose-homeschooling.html

Ethan's 2nd Birthday

Is it possible my Ethan is already 2?!? Where does the time go? With traveling to Minnesota the weekend before Ethan's birthday, Rob and I decided to keep Ethan's birthday small and low-key compared to our usual, have 30 family and friends over to our house for lunch or dinner, cake, presents, and fun. To make it special, we decided two days before his birthday to go to Chuck E Cheese's, a suggestion that came from a certain 4-yr old who has undoubtedly been influenced by a commercial or two since she doesn't remember going there with mommy, daddy, Aunt Jen, and Uncle John when she was 2. It was a fun day though and the adults enjoyed the games more than the kids, I think! Rob even won the Skeeball jackpot and got 250 tickets from that one game alone. We got Ethan a toolkit with all our tickets, since it was his birthday, and had pizza, cupcakes, and lots of fun! Here are some pictures from the day.

Minnesota Adventures

For Tyler's first vacation, I flew with my sister and her husband to Minneapolis, MN, where we rented a car and drove the rest of the way to International Falls (a 6 hour drive straight north to within a mile of Canada). He did great on his first flight, crying only a little bit during take-off and sleeping for nearly the entire drive - a great traveler! Once we got to International Falls on Saturday afternoon, we met up with my mom and brother at my grandma's house and I got to take a little break from baby Tyler while he had some bonding time with the grandmas and my siblings and I drove into Canada for a little sightseeing. We were only there a few hours, but enough time to walk through a beautiful park on the lake and drive the causeway north of Ft. Francis. Coming back into the country, my brother-in-law had an expired passport, driving a rental car with Texas plates that wasn't supposed to leave the country, and carrying a baby stroller in the trunk without a baby in the car, so we were asked a few questions. Thankfully, they let us back in the country without much delay.

The seven of us went to dinner together at the Chocolate Moose then headed back to the hotel. On Sunday, I attended my mom's old church with her in the morning, then went to City Beach at Rainy Lake with Jennifer, John, and my mom. We went to the visitor's center at Voyager's National Park, stopped for a moment on the lake shore, then went back to grandma's house for a wonderful roast dinner, complete with ice cream and cookies (and she said before we came out she wasn't going to cook for us, but insisted!). She said Tyler is the first great grandchild she has gotten to hold and I hope when my kids are a little older and better travelers, that they will be able to meet her too as she's an amazing woman. 88 years old and still going strong! I hadn't seen her since my sister's wedding 7 years ago and she's definitely gotten older in that time, but is still living in her own house (that my grandpa designed and they built 60 years ago) with help with the housecleaning and meals being delivered. I hope I can say the same when I'm that age!

Exciting family news! My dear sister Jennifer is pregnant with her first child, a girl, due October 15th. Her name is Kaitlyn and she's the first cousin for our family! I've heard cousins are such sweet friends for your kids and I'm very excited for Jennifer and John and the wonderful ride of parenting they are about to start.

Happy Easter 2009!

For Tyler's first Easter, we attempted to go to an egg hunt in Parker, but were 15 minutes late and missed the whole egg hunt! Not that Tyler is old enough to hunt for eggs yet, but still a disappointment for mom and dad. There were crafts, bouncy castles, and the Easter Bunny for Ashleigh and Ethan though, and Tyler didn't even realize he was missing anything as he was too cold in the stroller to notice. We did enjoy dinner at our house with Rob's family and my family - 19 people if you count our growing family of 5!

We've had a lot of crazy snowy and rainy weather lately. It's been snowing non-stop for the last two days with a big storm that dumped 1 and 1/2 feet of snow! Rob wasn't thrilled to shovel all that heavy wet snow that'll be gone on Monday when we have 70 degree weather again, but the kids do enjoy playing in it. Ashleigh and Ethan just finished building a snow fort and snowman with Rob. Here are some fun snow pictures from today:






Wishing for Spring!

Tyler at 2 months!

Wow! I can't believe how quickly these two months have passed! My apologies for not posting more pictures, but here are some cute ones. He's been smiling at me all the time lately and I finally caught one on the camera! His first smile came right around 5 weeks old. He also recently slept through the night for a 10 hour stretch about a week ago, but hasn't repeated it since, so he's still typically waking up one or two times in the night.

Being snuggly before leaving him with Grandma Debbie for our first date night alone. We went out last Saturday night to a great wine bar in Parker and had a great night of munching on Tapas, sipping wine, and having uninterrupted conversation - priceless!

Ashleigh's First Poker Game

So we aren't corrupting our little daughter just yet. We don't play serious poker, and this wasn't even with real money, but we do have quite the Maverick on our hands as she actually won the last hand when Rob and I were already down and our two friends had two pairs they were comparing, when Ashleigh pipes in with look what I have - 3 Jacks! Unbelievable! She was not happy about winning though as it was bedtime and she was crying because she wanted to keep playing!