They just grow up so fast!

Jacob had a field trip to Dewberry Farms last week with his preschool class.  I got to go with him, and it was fun to spend the day one on one with him.  They got to see lots of animals, ride pedal go-carts, have duck races, go on a hayride, and run around and play.  He had lots of fun!

Annie turned 6 months old last week.  I can't believe she is growing up so fast.  She is getting big, even starting to push back up on her knees, so she will be crawling before she is 7 months for sure.  She was 15 lbs 2 oz and 25 1/4" long, 25th percentile for both height and weight.  She is alot smaller than Jacob and Gwyn who were both 16 lbs at their 4 month appointments!  She also went through a big change this week...I finished nursing her and she is on formula!  She has done really well, and I'm excited at the prospect of her starting to sleep through the night hopefully in the upcoming weeks.

The kids like to help give her bottles:

The big news of the week is that the kids got some new shoes.  Jacob, who uses his shoes as brakes on any rid-on toy that we have, needed new crocs and new tennis shoes.  He had told Gwyn a few weeks ago, that they didn't have any skechers.  I said how do you know about skechers, and he said Austin at school had them and that they light up, and the girl ones are twinkle toes.  Well, I did get Gwyn twinkle toes and another pair of sandals (poor thing measure a size 8 1/2 and I had been squeezing her foot into a pair of size 7 tennis shoes!), and then I went and bought Jacob a new pair of crocs and a pair of tennis shoes (they aren't skechers), but when I brought them home, he said "I got skechers!" and was so excited about it.  He has since told everyone he has encountered about his skechers and Gwyn's twinkle toes...here they are:

Gwyn is obsessed with picking flowers...everyday she is picking them right and left, they make me sneeze, my allergies start acting up as soon as she gives them to me, but she is so proud of them!

Some other big news...Gwyn can ride the tricycle!  Jacob had been trying to help her on the bike, but she felt a little uneasy about being up so high, and then she went and hopped on the trike and took off!

Later this same day, Jacob was sitting in time out, outside and I guess he got bored and stuck a rock up his nose.  He got it stuck pretty good and was starting to freak out, but Brian made him close off his other nostril and blow out his nose real hard and it had quite a seal on it because it shot out of his nose really hard and landed about 5 ft away.  Hopefully, he learned his lesson and we won't be making ER trips for things he stuck up his nose.

Here are some pictures I took because the girls looked so cute in their new skirts that Sue sent.  Gwyn actually loves to wear headbands.

This was my best attempt (above) at getting a picture with all 3 kids.  Hopefully if I try this once / week for a year I will end up with one picture with them all 3 looking at me and smiling...the odds are still stacked against me!

Here are a couple of pics from a week or so ago of them playing in the pool with Carter, we ended up giving them the pool since we'll have a built in one at our new house!  We are excited!

Some funny things the kids said this week:

Gwyn to me:  "You married to Daddy, I married to Jacob"

Jacob to Annie:  "You look like a beautiful princess!"

Jacob to everyone he sees: "We got skechers!"

Jacob to everyone she sees: "I got twinkle toes!"

Jacob commenting on Gwyn eating: "She just shovels it right in!"

Jacob to Brian: "You need your shoes, if you go outside without your shoes on, your feet will get messed up like Mommys."

Jacob to Gwyn: "God made our whole family."

Busy bees and eating feet

This is how Annie wakes up most days from naps, the kids love going and jumping in the bed with her.  She loves it too, she starts smiling and kicking her feet and flapping her arms.  We have been very busy bees this week.  My mom made it down for a quick (Saturday morning - Monday morning) visit to see us.  She helped out quite a bit by watching the kids so that Brian could get everything out of the attic, and I could go through two rooms of the house.  We've been collecting several bags a week now for Goodwill and several more bags of just trash, so it is nice to know we are getting rid of and going through things before the move.  We close on our new house next Thursday, and we are aiming to move by mid-May.  My dad is coming down for a week and then Rick down for the following week, so we're hoping to get somethings done on the house before we move in with 3 small kids which make those kinds of things impossible to do!

Jacob is quite inventive and entertaining.  Here is a picture he drew of his whole family:

He drew me with a crown and he drew Brian with a "tough nose" because he's so tough.  I thought that was hilarioius.  In these pictures starting from the upper left hand corner is: Daddy, Mommy, Jacob, Gwyn, Annie.  2nd row: Nana, Papa, Jason, Justin, Stacy 3rd row: G and Grandpa, Mrs. Fenwick

Here he is being inventive: a lawn chair on a swing...he may just invent something crazy someday that makes alot of money, who knows!  His favorite new saying is "to infinity and beyond" and this is usually as he's jumping off the edge of a couch or stacking up chairs and doing something boyish and dangerous that makes my heart skip a beat. 

Annie has made a great discovery this week, she has learned she has some feet and that they taste pretty good.  It is a constant now, that she is sucking on that big toe...we've been keeping them extra clean for her!

I've also included a picture of her with me because she is just so fun to hug and squeeze, she has a little freckle on her leg, and Gwyn has one on hers, and Jacob asked me why I have all those dots (talking about my freckles and moles), and I told him that God made me that way.  From this, he later gave Brian the excuse as to why he wasn't sharing with Gwyn as "God made me that way."

And here is another picture of Annie sitting up playing...she's too cute!  She has now tried just about every fruit and vegetable that they make, and she loves PEAS (yes, that is right Sue, she loves them and she really wants you to feed them to her next time you are here!), she loves squash, sweet potatoes, and pretty much all the fruits except peaches.  She is also starting to take a little bit of formula everyday, and her SIP (sleep improvement plan) seems to be working, she is still just getting up once/night to eat. 

Gwyn is growing up and I just can't believe how big she's getting.  She is so sweet, and always asks, "please can I have juice, please can I have white milk, please I can have snack."  She's learned quickly that asking nicely is the way to get things, and for some reason Jacob hasn't caught on to that yet.  She did however, get mad outside and kick a toy, and we thought that was pretty funny her acting like a boy!  She also told me that when she gets this tall, she's going to Fenwick's school (that is Jacob's teacher).  Here she is singing, she can now sing her whole ABCs and various songs and they usually end up all intermingled. 

Tree Huggers

Jacob and Gwyn have so much fun playing together. They were hugging this tree out front and I called them tree huggers and they thought that was the funniest thing. The chairs are getting ALOT of use from Nana and Papa, Jacob, Gwyn, and Carter carry those things all over the cul-de-sac and set them up, it is funny to watch.

Well, not only did we buy a house last week, but we sold our house too! I was a little worried, but got some encouragement to have some faith and sure enough, the first person who walked in gave us what we were hoping to get for it! We are set to close on our new house April 29th and close on this house on May 28th. We are getting excited about moving, but also a little nervous about all the work with three small ones running around. We're doing some downsizing, going room to room and deciding what we really want to take with us and what it is time to get rid of, whether it be trash or Goodwill.

Little Annie got her ears pierced on Friday...you can barely see them in these pictures, but she looks super cute! I took her to get them pierced in the same outfit that Gwyn wore to get hers pierced when she was 5 months old. Annie is growing fast and loving food, she LOVES bananas and squash, and is now eating those twice / day. She is however our worst sleeper yet, so she got put on a SIP (Sleep Improvement Plan), that I made up last night. I had to feed her 4 times from 11 pm to 6 am the night before, so I decided I had just about had it because I can barely function during the day. Anyway, I did feed her at 10 and then at 2:30, and then she woke up at 6:45 and Brian gave her a bottle, so at least I went down to feeding her once / night. She has just gotten used to me nursing her to sleep, so that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she can't go back to sleep unless I nurse her, AND she was only eating 2-3 ounces at a time since she was eating so often (every 2-3 hours). She thinks she is training me, but now that she is on a SIP, we'll see who is boss!

Jacob is getting so big, they celebrate summer birthdays at school during April and May, and today was his birthday snack. We took green and blue cupcakes to school and he was so excited that all his friends out love them. He did think we should have gotten some pink ones for the girls since they like pink, I thought that was sweet.

Annie is getting better and better at sitting, and will now sit for long periods of time with the kids playing. She is in the empty plastic water bottle / tv remote / cordless phone phase where she just wants to play with those all the time and of course EVERYTHING that she can reach is going in her mouth.

Since we have had to keep the house nice and clean, which is SO hard with making sure everything is picked up, since we had at least 1 showing a day over the past week, we've been having to drop things and get out of the house for an hour. Sunday, we went up to McDonald's where Jacob had an ice cream cone. I said, "Jacob, you got a little something on your face!"

This isn't the greatest picture but I wanted to include it because Gwyn was so happy, she loves to sing and dance and this was in the car when we pulled in to a store and I let her get out of her seat, and she was singing and having fun. She's such a cute little girl!

They are quite a pair, he takes care of her and she says and does everything he does!

Happy, Hoppity Easter!

Happy Easter! We have some big news....we bought a house!!! We're very happy and excited, since we've been looking in another area closer to where Brian works, 4 bedrooms, good schools, etc. for over 2 years now, and it is finally happening! All in God's timing right! We put our house on the market on Thursday, and we've already starting doing some downsizing of some things that we don't want to move. So, besides that, we've been busy with life...Jacob had an Easter party at school, we did an egg hunt here at the house for the kids after church, and we had a field day with some of our friends and their kids at a park on Saturday. So, I've got ALOT of pictures below, so I hope you enjoy!

Oh, Jacob and Gwyn have been saying some funny stuff lately, and I've got to write it down because I don't want to forget it...Jacob asked why Brian didn't have any hair on the top of his head, and Brian told him he used to and had to get a picture out to show him so he believed him, and then Jacob said, "I think swiper swiped your hair." Too cute! (I did ask Brian if I could post that, and he thought it was too funny not too!) Jacob also informed us that if you have something on and you're not using it then you waste power, so now we've got an environmentalist on our hands! He also said that God made our whole family...he's so sweet! Gwyn is just too funny and cute and laughs all the time. Her favorite thing to say is "that's funny" and then she laughs so hard.

Annie has started eating vegetables, she's mastered sweet potatoes and carrots so far and she's liking it!
Here are some random shots from Easter, Annie looked too cute in her bow and sandals, neither of which lasted long!

Here are some random shots form our field day and Jacob's Easter party at school. Lots of fun, donut bobbing, egg races, parachute and playground fun:

I had to throw this on in there because it is a rare occasion that Gwyn is in front of Jacob!

Brian and Jacob mowed the lawn together. Brian puts gas in his mower and then water in Jacob's mower. Jacob showed me how you turn it on and everything, I think he really thinks he is mowing it!

Crazy kids getting ready for bathtime:

I took this picture of Jacob and Annie outside while Gwyn was napping, and I thought, I think this looks awfully familiar...
Same position, Jacob about 22 months, and Gwyn about 3 months:

Annie's new ride...round three for our Step 2 Whisper Ride we got for Jacob's first Christmas in 2006, alot of miles on this thing, all around the cul-de-sac!

I had to put this picture in here, Annie had been up all night...she's getting used to getting her "mommy" time all by herself every 2 hours during the night...then she does this during the day, on the couch in the middle of the living room with screaming kids running around playing!

Annie sitting up and having fun with Jacob's new fun too...thanks Stacy and Justin!

The kids made this "airplane" in the front yard this weekend, Jacob just makes up things left and right and Gwyn goes right along with it...she's his sidekick.