Shirley!

Shirley turned four months old yesterday.  My how time flies.  I can't believe he is almost rolling over all ready.  He smiles and laughs a lot.  He is such a happy baby.  He is so blessed to have his two older brothers and older sister.  They all love him.  Even Rilla, though she ignores him for the most part because she is too busy in her own happy little world (which is much better than her being jealous).  She has never purposely been mean to him.  He is around 17 pounds already and wearing 6-9 month clothes or larger.  he is pretty tall and like my other kids has a long torso.  Here are pictures of him wen he was born and a few days after he was born:

Here are two pictures of him now:


I feel so blessed to have him as my son.  I really look forward to watching him grow and getting to know him and his personality better.

Swimming

Last Friday we took the kids swimming.  We love The Cove.  Especially during kid swim (Mon-Friday 10:00-12:00). We haven't gone swimming since last summer, when my sister visited.  Taking three kids by myself was not something I wanted to do, and now I have four.  So we wait until Mike has some time off and then go. The boys were so excited.  They love swimming.  I didn't take Shirley swimming because I was sure he wouldn't enjoy it and the water would dry out his skin even more than it is.  I wasn't sure how Rilla would like it.  She was 8 months old the last time she swam, but she loves taking baths.  She didn't like it at first.  She was scared of the water.  It took over an hour before she seemed to finally like it.  She has to have an adult right by her at all times also becasue if she falls in the water she doesn't do anything to get herself out of the water, which is quite scary.  She just lays or sits there with her head under the water like she is frozen.  She did that three times while we were there.  My favorite place to swim with the kids is in the hot tub.  It is plenty big and nice and warm.

Slivers!

I can't stand paper cuts or slivers.  I can tolerate other pain (like sinus headaches) pretty well, but when it comes to something small like a sliver, I am a big baby.  It is amazing how a cut so small or a tiny little sliver can hurt so much.  I haven't had a sliver in a long long time (I can't even remember the last time I had one) but I got two this week.  One last Saturday and one on Tuesday.  The one on Saturday was on my thumb and too deep, so I had to wait a couple of days for it to surface and then cut it out.  The one I got yesterday is on the palm  of my hand and I can't muster up the courage to deal with the pain it will cause to get it out.  How frustrating.  Just thought I would vent. 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!  We had a great Easter.  It is so much more fun having kids to share it with.  They all got new church outfits and an Easter basket from the Easter Bunny. Shirley looked so adorable in his church outfit. It was the first time I have dressed him up for church.

Easter Egg Hunt

What is Easter without an Easter Egg Hunt?  Giulliana, Teah, and I planned our own Easter Egg Hunt.  We had it at Giulliana's house since she had the biggest and best yard to do it.  We added plastic eggs filled with candy with the eggs we colored on Thursday.  There were lots of eggs for the kids to find and they had so much fun.  One tip though, chocolate candy in plastic eggs melt pretty fast in warm weather.  The weather was in the 70's.  We had to put the candy filled eggs in the fridge for a while.

Coloring Easter Eggs!

Holidays are so much fun, especially as my kids get older.  We had a lot of fun coloring Easter eggs yesterday. Teah, her girls, and Giuliana, her son and sister, came over and we colored the eggs and had lunch.  Amazingly, no cups of dye were spilled (especially with three 1 1/2 year olds) and everyone had a good time.  It turned out that Giuliana's sister went to school with Teah so they had a nice surprise reunion.  What a small world it is.  

We Miss You Daddy!

Hi Daddy!  We sure miss you but we are having lots of fun with Mommy.  Madison, Peyton, and her Mom were over for dinner last night and we had a fun movie night.  Mommy made us popcorn and ice cream cones.  We even got to eat them in the living room on a blanket.  We watched "Strawberry shortcake Sweet Dream".  Mommy also helped us set up the Geo Trax in the garage yesterday.  It is so cool.  

Form Walter: Today we had lots of fun playing.  Mommy even played Mario Party 7 with us.  Mommy would let me play Nintendo for an hour then I would play with Jem and Rilla for at least two hours before playing again.  I am trying to play nicely and to not be bossy.  Tonight I took a shower instead of a bath.  I really like showers and want to take them from now on.  My tummy wasn't feeling too well tonight, I threw up a little bit after my shower.  Hopefully I will feel all better in the morning.  I picked out the book, "How To Be A Grouch" to read tonight.  Mommy says I can have a  $1.00 a week allowance for helping pick up toys that I didn't play with every day:)  I am very excited that I don't have school next week.  Thank you for helping me make my lepracan (sp?) trap for school.  I was so excited that it caught a lepracan Friday while we were on our field trip.  The Lepracan left us chocolate gold.  I love you and am glad you are coming home Monday.

From Jem: Hi Daddy. I like when Walter is home from school. I have so much fun playing with him. I am trying to be a good boy and listen. I only had two time outs today. We cleaned our room today. It looks really nice. I helped Mom cook dinner and I helped give Shirley a bath. I took the picture, too. Yesterday I had to take a nap because we were going to have a movie night. I woke up after an hour and came out and fell back to sleep on the floor.


From Rilla: Hi daddy. I sure do miss having you chase me. I have had lots of fun with Mommy and my brothers, though. I haven't gotten into too much mischief. I did get a little frustrated with my stroller today when it wouldn't go where I wanted it to go. I had lots of fun last night. I got to eat popcorn and an ice cream cone, without ice cream since I don't really like ice cream in it. I love having Mommy and Teah around because they always have chocolate goodies to share with me:) Tonight I got to take a bath but I really wanted to join my brothers in the shower, too. Mommy wouldn't let me though. I love you daddy.





From Shirley: I miss you making me smile, but my brothers and Mommy have been making me smile and laugh a lot. I am so lucky. I like my jumper. I even enjoyed my bath tonight.

Candy!

With the candy sales after Christmas and Valentine's Day, we have had quite a bit of candy in our house.  Rilla only says a handful of words and "andy" is one of them.  Of corse she means candy.  She even has her favorites.  She likes chocolate just like Jem does.  I found out what happens when she gets too much candy last week.  We had friends over for dinner and I didn't keep track of all the candy she got (the candy bowl got left on the ground and she had had several pieces before I discovered it).  She went to bed at normal time but woke up about 11pm and was wide awake.  I hadn't gone to bed yet so I let her get up.  I am very surprised she didn't wake anyone else up, she was so loud and had so much energy.  This is a picture of her having a snack (of course one without sugar:).  She was so happy.

She sure is a fun little girl. She will be 17 months old this Friday. She loves girl toys and plays so well by herself and with her siblings. She is actually very accommodating. If a toy gets taken away from her by another kid she usually doesn't even fuss, she just goes and gets another one. I have been very surprised. I wonder if that is part of being a third child. Here is a great picture of her after she had chocolate pudding. You can tell she really enjoyed it.

I have a great husband!

I just had to write about my husband.  He is so wonderful.  He helped me get caught up on laundry last week and helps so much around the house.  He works hard to provide for us and I am very grateful for that.  I get to stay home with my kids and I am so grateful.  There is nothing better than being a mother.  ALL the laundry got washed folded, and PUT AWAY.  The putting away is the hard one for me.  It was weird to see the laundry so white (because there were no clothes to add color) and actually echo.  I finally did get all the clothes on my dresser away (though they are starting to pile up again) and I got my desk organized.  Yeah!

Gilbert is also such a great dad.  He always comes home for work and takes the time to play with them right away.  The boys and Rilla just love it.  In this picture Gil is trying to do pushups but Rilla has other ideas.  Rilla sure is a Daddy' little girl.

Necklaces

My mom has been visiting and she bought all her stuff that she has to make necklaces so Teah came over and we each made a necklace. They all turned out really cute.  

It sure is fun to do girly stuff.  I am not much into wearing a lot of jewelry but I do like wearing necklaces.  The only other jewelry I wear is my wedding ring and my CTR ring.

Colossal Caves

I haven't written since Tuesday because I decided to rearrange my house (living room, play room, and dining room). It was quite a bit of work but I am very happy with the results.  I will show pictures once I have it completely organized.

On Friday we went to the Colossal Caves located just outside of Tucson.  It was a lot of fun.  It was a beautiful day to get out.  Rilla loves being outside.  This is what Rilla thought of being outside.

The boys have always loved going sightseeing.  They love the outdoors just like their Dad.  Gilbert loves learning about the desert wildlife, plants and animals both.  He has bought many books about the plants and animals here and can point out what most plants and animals are.  It is pretty neat and the  boys really enjoy it.

The cave tour was pretty neat but I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't had Rilla or Shirley. It is a little scary with some sheer drop offs right next to the path. There are hand rails but little kids can walk right under them. Jem was really scared at first. The stairs are pretty steep in some places. Aside from that fact, I really thought the cave was really neat. There were some awesome formations.

Rilla didn't like having to be held the whole time while in the caves. This is what she thought of being inside them.
Walter really enjoyed the caves.  He was happy when we were almost done though since it is about a 45 minute tour.

Finally, this is what Shirley thought of the whole experience.