Our Summer in Pictures....so far!!

Well we've had a fun and eventful summer so far and it's just begun!! I just thought I'd take time to do a sort of pictorial of the fun we've had so far.

These are Noah and Abby playing at our local park with a splash pad. So refreshing in the heat!!

Noah was baptised a few weeks ago. We're very happy with his decision to devote himself to the Lord.

These two are from the Taste of Cincinnati. We met a talking Hot Pocket!! And enjoyed some yummy pizza from Balboa's. We also pet the police horses and ate some other yummy treats. It was lots of fun.

These two pics were from our latest field trip with our homeschool group. We went on a bird watching expedition. It was really cool because Josh, the naturalist, had this special hand held thing that could imitate bird calls and the birds would actually come close to us to see who was invading their area!! It was really cool. The top picture shows the kids on top of a tree trunk that had fallen from a tree that was over 300 years old!

We're still working on our lessons this summer. And these two pictures are experiments Noah did one day when he was studying rocks. The first was to show how sedimentary rocks are formed and the second shows that only limestone bubbles when vinegar is applied to it. He's very much into geology and mining right now. He loved this study.

This was from our big family trip to Gatlinburg. We went with all of my Dad's family including his parents, his sister and her family (husband and son), his brother and his family (wife and daughter), my family and my brothers family. We all stayed together in one gigantic cabin in the mountains. I really loved it. It was so much fun to be with everyone.

This is Noah, Abby and Riley eyeing an exhibit at the big aquarium in Gatlinburg. That is the coolest aquarium I've ever been to!!

Noah and Riley goofing around in the cabin!!
This is Abby standing on one of the three balconies our cabin had and you can see our view. It was awesome!!

These are go-kart pictures from Gatlinburg. Most of my family including my grandpa raced those go-karts!!! It was so cool to see them all out there!!

These 3 photos are from the past weekend when went to the grand opening of the Lego store. The kids made bricks to help the brick master complete an 8 foot tall R2-D2. The 3rd picture shows Noah's hero, the brick master!! We then waited in line for 2 hours to get the limited edition lego set for our store. It was worth it, he was so happy!!

This is Abby in her dance costume outside at our house. I thought it looked so cute when she looked through the leaves. You can see one of my peaches growing on the tree too!!

These pictures are from Abby's dance recital. She did wondeful and her whole class looked just beautiful up doing their ballet. I loved it!!! The last one shows the bouquet of flowers she got from her family!

These 3 pics are from the Reds game where Abby announced the lead off batter for the 3rd inning. I can't show the pictures of the scoreboard because it has her full name and city she lives in. But you can see the picture of her in front of the big camera! It was so cute because the crowd was shouting things like "great job Abby" and stuff like that. She didn't want to take the Skyline hat off because that's how people recognized her when we went to the restroom or something!!

The picture of Noah is him eating peanuts. The kids LOVE to eat peanuts during the games. We bring our own to save a few bucks, but they are just as happy as can be cracking open those peanuts!!

On Fathers Day we went fishing at my aunts house. She has an awesome stocked pond and everyone caught several fish. Mainly blue gills were caught, but Noah caught a bass and then Abby caught the biggest fish of all, another bass!! She caught it with a tiny Dora fishing pole. Daddy thought the pole was going to break!!

This is from the Reds game we went to with my parents and my brothers family. It was the Civil Rights game and they had a ceremony at the beginning honoring Hank Aaron, Muhammed Ali and Bill Cosby. It was really neat to see them. This picture shows Bill Cosby going around the stadium.

And finally we have Abby practicing her letter writing skills (language arts!!) by mailing a letter to Mamaw!!!

An update date on Poppy's preparations!!

It's baby post time!

Right now I am 24 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I will be 25 weeks on Friday!! So far I've only gained 2 pounds. I'm apparently only gaining the actual baby weight and using up my "reserves" for anything else I need!! Trust me, I've been eating, but I suppose my metabolism has been boosted or something!! My doctor thinks it's fine as long as I'm not losing any weight and the baby is growing as it should and both of those are being met, so she's happy!

We had the ultrasound two weeks ago and everything looked perfect! I almost forgot to tell the tech that we didn't want to know the sex, but luckily I remembered in time!! It was so nice for all of us to see the baby. We saw all the important parts: spine, skull, arms, legs, heart, etc... and both the tech and the doctor said everything seemed great. That's such a relief. My next appointment is in two weeks and I have to do the yucky glucose test. Hopefully that'll all turn out great as well.

Poppy's looking at us!!!

I've gotten pretty big now. Not much in my normal wardrobe fits except for a few shirts and elastic waisted skirts or pants. I haven't bought a ton of maternity clothes yet, I'm just trying to get by with the few things I have. Everyone has felt the baby move now. That's always fun. After the ultrasound and feeling it move, all of this just feels so much more real. Although there isn't a day that goes by when I question if it's real! I wanted so long to experience this again, and sometimes I just can't believe I'm blessed enough to get to do it again.




We have done a lot of the "getting ready" things that need to be done, but we still have a lot to do. We moved the kids playroom downstairs to clear out the last bedroom upstairs for the baby's room. I'm still working on organizing and purging the stuff in the new playroom. We've gotten rid of a lot of stuff already, but we still have so much. I just can't deal with the piles and piles of stuff anymore. So that room is still in a disarray.

We painted two of the walls in the baby room. I like the new colors, it's much brighter than it was before. We also installed a closet system and the furniture my parents bought us is now set up in there. I love it all!! I keep walking by the room and peering in at the crib. I was sure I'd never see a crib in my house again.










I organized all my diapers and wipes in the closet and took an inventory. As of right now, I have :


120 Newborn Diapers
257 Size 1 Diapers
256 Size 1-2 Diapers
312 Size 2 Diapers
520 Size 3 Diapers
346 Size 4 Diapers
52 Pull-Ups
82 Packages of Wipes

I feel pretty good about our amount of diapers up to size 3 and then I think we need to add more to the size 3, 4 and 5's.



Oh and names. We STILL can't decide on names. Boy or Girl. It's driving me crazy. I really want to get this settled and for some reason no one can agree!! Aaargh!! Maybe we'll just end up calling them Poppy since that's what we've called them all along!!

And I'll finish with just a few pics of the cute little clothes I've gotten for Poppy already. Their so cute!!

I bought these at Meijer a long time ago. I just thought they were so cute!!

I got these all on clearance at Target. All set with Disney shirts for Poppy's first trip this December!!!

The middle one is not new. It's one both Noah and Abby wore. Riley even wore it too! It means a lot. The other two are new. I think they're so cute. Even though we buy gender neutral ahead of time, I still think they're really cute!

This is one is really for a boy, but I thought it was so cute, I thought I'd take the chance!! I just loved it!!

Well that's it for now. I'll try and update in a few weeks!! We're almost ready for you Poppy!!!

Hi

We have a big weekend planned.  It's recital weekend, as well as Abby's debut at the Red's Game!  We also have our nephew Aaron's Birthday party too!  I have a lot of little things to do to get ready for all  of that (shop for gift, charge cameras, iron necessary clothes, pack up Abby's dance stuff, etc..).  We're also VERY busy getting our house ready for baby!!  The furniture we ordered for the baby's room is in, and my parents would love to bring it here and set it up (they bought it for us), so I've been working day and night moving the playroom downstairs and the classroom out to other parts of the house.  We also got new furniture for our family room, so we had to move out all the old furniture.  I'm very tired, but now that things are starting to look finished, I"m excited!!  

I'm planning a big baby post sometime soon.  Sort of a checklist for myself, a journal entry and something to share if anyone is interested.  So look for that soon!

Well I better get back to work.