Posts, posts, posts!!

Well, between our work schedules, the boys schedules and having three children it doesn leave much time for posting anything, but a few new posts below (just for my record of our life really) 

PLUS, we JUST got back from Disney World!!!!

 We have tons of pictures from our trip so I wanted to make sure I got these out before posting anything on that.  But even before that, I have to brag on my husband for a minute...

 

Kyle has officially started his own commercial construction company!!!!! 

STEELHEAD BUILDING GROUP, LLC

He is very grateful for the time he had at his old job, but there was not much more he could do there and with the tremendous relationships he has created on his own, it was time for him to do his own thing.  He has a wonderful partner and they began in November.  They are both very hard workers and I have no doubt they will be hugely successful. 

While we are getting through these first few months (and maybe year), Kyle has the confidence, aggressivness but also kindness, work ethic, relationships, heart and honestly in all his does, grounded in his relationship with Christ that I know he has made the best decision for him and our family and we are so proud of him!

February

I just realized I never did a Christmas post...well, there are too many pictures from that anyway.   A new year, new posts right!  February flew by in our house.  I cannot seem to find all our pictures and just realized I never put up anything about sweet Ty in January, so here goes. 

8 months in January!!!!  He FINALLY slept through the night!  It is definitely not consistent but I know he can do it atleast.  He is trying to crawl and pull up on just about everything.  He still LOVES his bath, his Sophie giraffe (more teeth coming in for sure!)  and is still the happiest baby.  I just cannot say enough about how sweet and happy he is.  Dont get me wrong, juggling three is not easy, but he has made it about as easy as this transition could have been (aside from not sleeping very much) 

He loves to eat.  And he will eat ANYTHING!  He grabs at anything on the table or my plate so you have to watch out.  But he of course loves any baby food but will pick up food with his little pinchers and is good at it too!  Aside from baby food he loves turkey, chicken, pizza, spaghetti, cheese (any cheese, he has even tried and liked Feta and Blue Cheese), cottage cheese, yogurt, any beans, and really I could go on.  There is nothing he has tried that he hasn't loved!  He says, Mama, Dada, Baba and laughs when yo usay bye-bye and wave your hand.  This sweet little guy is just a little light in all our lives!

I love his little toofies (as we call his teeth)

Yes, poor guy ends up just staying in his jammies most days.  I just run out of time in the mornings usually before I have to get the boys to school and get to work, plus it has been so cold that these are warmest with a coat anyway. 

Here is trying to crawl...quite frankly I do not want him to and I know my life will get tremendously harder and the chance of him choking on something goes up dramatically, but he really really wants to get going! 

The boys and I went over to a friends house to play and the little girl there was so sweet and kept bringing Ty some of her toys to play with...

plus I think she enjoyed him because he is like a live babydoll:)

The look on his face is priceless, plus there is a lot of pink here which I am sure he has never seen before until now!

Valentines Day!

The boys helped me make a cake and we fixed pork tenderloin, twice baked potatoes, salad and dessert as a family.  We celebrated all together!

Both boys celebrated 100 days of school in February. 

Sadly I do not have a picture of Hunter's, though he had to bring in 100 pennies, 100 of a snack, 100 of anything else he wanted and it was a very very big deal at school.  I know his teachers are taking tons of pictures which we will get in a book at the end of the year so I am not too worried.  He did make a book at school and one of the questions in there was:

"What is something your mother says 100 times a day"

I was hoping he would say "I love you"

But no, apparently I say "Brush your teeth" 100 times a day! 

{maybe if he would do it the first time I asked I wouldn't have to say it so much}

The kindergarteners also paired up with a second grader and had to write the numbers 1-100, and count to 100 by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s.  It is quite impressive I must say. He is learning so much that most days I feel like he was just a baby and is too young to know the things he does.  But I suppose that is a part of life!

Drake had a Science Fair at school.  It was the CUTEST thing and I was so impressed with these pre-schoolers!  Drake's experiment was about air.

A real scientist came and had them demonstrate their experiement and...

Drakey got a gold star!  Sadly his partner, Frances, got sick and was not able to be there with him, but Drake manned his station just fine. 

In his experiment he stuck a paper towel up into a plastic cup and showed that when you turn the cup upside down into a bowl of water and bring it back out, the paper towel stays dry!  Way to go Air!

It really was neat as they had to write out the steps and they wrote down what their guess would be and then what actually happened. 

There were about 16 stations set up in the room with 2 children per experiment.  It was fun walking around and looking at everyone's.  Ty was having fun at the "gravity" station.

Ty got to ride in the grocery cart with his big brother for the first time in February.  He was LOVING it!

The big boys entertain us with some dress ups every now and then.  We had some friends over for dinner a few weeks ago and they kept parading downstairs in different outfits. 

It was kind of like "dinner and a show!"  These pictures are not from that night, just a random night about 2 weeks ago.  They get so tickled

Tyty eating some turkey, cheese and peas

And like I said, he looooves his bath and looks forward to it every single night!

Both boys played basketball this season so I need to put up some pictures of that too.  We dont slow down in this house!!!

January

Well things have been super busy around here in 2013!  Hunter lost his first tooth on January 8th.  

Ms. Roxie in the school office pulled his first tooth, and she is the same lady who pulled several of my teeth when I was in elementary school.  She is one of the sweetest ladies on earth and I love that she is still there and Hunter and I can share some of the same memories.

Hunter had bootcamp during P.E. in the fall and so we now use some of those same exercises as punishment these days.  And believe me, we have to use them a lot!!!  Here they are doing wall sits. {**I highly recommend this type of punishment for boys.  Most of the time they get into trouble because they have so much energy they need to expend that is gets used in the wrong way.  So with this, they get a consequence AND burn energy:} These boys are a HANDFULL, and that might be putting it mildly.

We got one little snow this winter.  Not enough to stick all day, but enough to coat the ground for the morning.  Bella never knows what to do with it.  She tries to play with it, eat it, sniff it...she is trying to figure out what in the world to do with it! 

The boys love playing in our woods behind our house.  And I think it is great for the two of them when they go back there.  But what never dawned on me was to make sure they didnt open our neighbors gate and let their DOGS OUT!!!!!   Why on earth would Drake do that?  It is things like that, that you dont think you have to tell them NOT to do.    He casually mentioned it while we were eating dinner that night.  Needless to say we called our neighbors to make sure they had their dogs and to let them know it wasn't a robber...just our 5 year old.  Luckily our neighbors are very nice.

SO Drakey wrote them this note.  

**Another good consequence for my boys.  Writing it out means taking time out to apologize and really think about what they did was wrong (and hopefully never do it again). 

 Plus they can work on handwriting:!**  Believe me, we have tried every punishment in the book so if you are ever in need of any ideas, we have plenty as we have to use them very FREQUENTLY with these two. 

Part 1: Baptism, Christmas, December Oh My!

So much to catch up on from the past 2 months!  It is hard to believe it is already 2013 so I guess I owe everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Now for some backtracking...

Little Ty has reached his 6 month mark on 12/11:
He has gotten 2 teeth on the bottom
He has gotten a cold and his first ear infection
He was 18.11# (75%)
And I cannot remember the length but he dropped to 75% in that as well.
He is sitting up on his own and grabbing at everything in sight (which then goes straight to his mouth making me terrified of all the tiny legos we have around!)

He is LOVING solid foods: carrots, peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, pears, apples, bananas, prunes, peaches and Mum mums!
I also give him mushed up pieces of my food (dont tell!!!)  and he loves whatever it is.  He just loves to eat!
He slept through the night about 4 times and then has gone all helter skelter again....I think his top 2 teeth are about to break through now so I am not sure there is an end in sight to my sleepless nights.
He is still nursing but like I said, he will eat anything in sight
He LOVES his big brother and they keep him laughing.  I love hearing his big belly laughs and he truly seems to miss them when they are not around.  Mommy is not quite as entertaining as they are!
He says "mom mom mom mom" and has started this high pitched squealing which is cute at first but then can be quite ear piercing.   But he loves to make all kinds of noises.
He also got Baptised on the 9th and we had a wonderful weekend having Grammie and Pop in town for that.

Here we are about to get Ty dressed in the parlor...and Drake, of course, cannot keep his hands off!  But Ty doesn't mind!

Getting ready to go in!

And his sweet little wet head afterwards! 

 I wish so badly we were allowed to take pictures during the service because Ty did so well!  The church was gorgeous for Christmas and Advent, but also, he did not make one peep and looked at everyone in the church.  Hunter and Drake were so stoic in front of the congregation...I think they might have been overwhelmed by all the people looking at them.  Which is quite ironic because normally they want all the attention they can get!  But never-the-less, it went perfectly.  I couldn't help myself but cry this time.  It was beautiful.

Ty was wearing the Baptism Gown that I wore when I got Baptised.  It was also worn by my great great grandfather and is literally over 100 years old.  It should NOT ever be worn again!  It is so delicate and thin that from now on I think it should only be looked at!  Ty ripped a hole in the side after having it on for less than a minute.   But it was so sentimental and sweet.

Also, for the record, Hunter says he likes it when Ty pulls his hair.  He actually said he prefers to stand in front of him so that he will pull his hair.   Dont ask because I can't explain the weirdness sometimes.  He got his prayers answered here.  

And then home with family for a beautiful lunch my mom arranged.  It was all delicious!

Quiche Lorraine, Spinach and Mushroom Quiche, Salmon, Ham and Rolls, Fruit, Salad, and a delicious Leland Riggan Cake.

Punch

Leland Riggan Cake...it was vanilla cream with a caramel layer filling and the icing had a slight layer of salt...it was DIVINE!

Oh!  This was a sticker of Baby Jesus that Hunter put on Ty's arm after the Baptism...he thought he needed a tattoo at the ripe age of 6 months.  

Ty loves his Grammie!!

The big boys got a huge kick watching Ty's Gown balloon out on his way down.  I don't know how many times Kyle did this...but it never got old!

With all the grandparents

Grammie and Pop

Mimi and Da

And having our little buddy Ryan there to celebrate with us...he is going to be a good buddy for Ty

But before the Baptism one of the highlights for the boys was getting the Christmas decorations down....or so I thought.  They could not WAIT to get the Nativity Set down and I thought it was so sweet they were so excited about that.

They carefully pulled it out of the box.  

They carefully set the figures in place.

They took turns so nicely

And as I go back upstairs to happily get more decorations I come back down and this is what I hear:

"Weeeoooo Weeeooo Emergency Emergency!  Baby Jesus Emergency!  Weeeoooo!"
And lo and behold Jesus is on the fire engine, Joseph is driving it and our nativity has quickly become a playhouse.  Now I am seeing more whay they wanted to get it out...BOYS!

The next week the boys had their Christmas Programs.  I got NO pictures of Hunter's...I cannot believe it!   But Drake woke the morning of H's program with a high fever so I was so frazzled not having him in school and trying to find someone to watch him so I could run to Hunter's program....knowing I would make someone unhappy.  If I didn't go to Hunter's program it would upset him but if I left Drake with Ty's babysitter it would upset him.  So my poor mom ended up having to leave Oak Hill and miss the program so she could sit with Drake so I could run there and watch it.  Anyway, all that does not matter, but why I am excusing myself for not getting any pictures.

But Drake's program was adorable and he was a shepherd just like Hunter was the year before.  They really do a great job of telling the Christmas Story, the birth of Jesus, and really getting you in the Christmas spirit.

Ty, of course, fell asleep before it started and drooled all over Da's jacket.  Be he of course didnt mind!

Drakey is the far left shepherd in the yellow

marching across stage for their number

And what was even funnier was of all my children, Drake I thought would eat this up...but I think either he wasn't feeling well still, or he got stagefright!  He kept his head down most of the time acting so coy and shy....it was kind of funny and cute to watch...but also so unlike him!

But I also wish I put the video on here because they group of the shephers was hilarious...I will just leave it at that!  (Drake is the back left)

And after the program they had a class party in their room.  And Aunt Smell came to watch!

Drake didnt get out of school until the 21st so once his program was over, Christmas was here in a blink!  Part 2 coming up!