Just Keep Swimming

The highlight of our summer really was the swimming. I was really worried about getting a city pass this year because I didn't know what I was going to do with Clara if we did. She wasn't going to want to go in thepool but I couldn't leave her In the shade when there was a million people around. The solution: my parents had moved into an apartment with a great pool so we went there! It was nice too because we could use any floatingwewanted and a good portion of the time we were the only ones there! I was able to just keep Clara in her seat I the shade and not haveto worry about her, it was also great becuase my mom was there most of the time so she was able to help me with the kids.

There was one thing that really drove me crazy though and it was the kidsconstantly wanting to get and stay in the hot tub!! Even when it was over100 outside they would still want to go and cook themselves in the hot tub!!

It was really fun to go a few times with cousins when they came to visit. Swimming is really fun with a big group!

Annie spent a lot of her time laying out towels and messing around on the side.

Nellie really made strides last year with her swimming and she really picked it up even more this year! She did great!

Jane was ver timid in the beginning and then totally blossomed by the end of the summer. She was swimming on her own, going underwater and even in the deeper end.

 

This was one of the best things of all, watching him learn to love swimming!

Janie learned to jump in, it was really cute!!

 

This was one of the best things of all. These two learned how to swim completely on their own with their life preservers. The would just paddle all around the pool, it was really the cutest thing ever!!

The one time we tried to put miss Clara in the pool. She hated it, ( it is pretty cold) we took her out and she fell asleep with dad.

Even if we didn't do tons this summer by way of activities, at least we went swimming lots!!

 

All About Nellie-9 Years

Nellie is 9 Years old!  these kids of mine are just growing up way too fast!  Next year I will have two in the double digits!
I love that Nellie is still a little girl.  She thinks she wants to grow up but really she doesn't.  This past year there has been a big shift in our family.  It used to be that Lizzy and Nellie were super tight and Jane was the one that was left out.  Not so anymore.  Lizzy has moved onto liking things that are older so Jane and Nellie have become really close and they are the ones that play together all the time.  We moved into a new house that is quite a bit smaller than the last one, so we don't have as much room in the house, but Kevin made up a play area out in the garage and that is pretty much where you will always find Nellie and Jane playing.  They love to play house the most I think.  They also play with their dolls a lot, which makes me happy that they are going to good use.  I just wish they didn't feel the need to make such a giant mess that they don't want to clean up.  Nellie is still the biggest slob.  She is so very creative when it comes to the games she makes up.  I love it because she is always coming up with a creative new game to play.  The only problem is that she throws a massive fit when I make her clean up the mess. She struggles to keep her room clean and now that she and Lizzy share a room, it has become a giant problem that causes a lot of fighting.
Nellie is now in fourth grade and is still dong well in school.  She really does well with math especially.  She may not like it but she does pretty well with it.  We also now live really close to one of her good friends so it has been fun for her to have a friend nearby. 
Nellie still really loves candy and sweets and I can use them as an incentive or a consequence of choices.  I know that if I threaten to take away a treat that she will do just about anything to get it back.
Nellie loves her baby sister Clara so much.  I think partially because she looks the most like Nellie of any of the kids.  But Nellie loves trying to get Clara to smile and helping take care of her.  When Nellie wants to be a helper she is a great helper, the problem is she would rather not do it, so on days when Lizzy is gone she makes sure to stay MIA so she doesn't have to help. 
One funny thing about Nellie is that she wants to have money so bad, but she doesn't want to earn it.  She wants to get it in the easiest possible way.  Nellie is still probably my hardest kid.  She has such a hard time with change so this past year with a new baby and a move was particularly difficult for Nellie.  But since we have gotten settled and things have gotten easier, she ahs started to do better. 
Even though Nellie gives me a run for my money, I wouldn't change a thing about her, because she is special.  She has such a good heart.  She makes our life exciting and she challenges me to be a better mom.  I love her so much and I am so glad that she came to our family, because she makes life so much more exciting for  all of us!1

Nellies 9th Birthday

Nellie is 9, my how the years are flying by. It was an off year for a party so she just had a family party. She has been wanting a summer kind of cake and settled on a watermelon cake. It was pretty easy to make and pretty fun too. We were of course in the middle of moving again. Poor Nellie and Kevy! Their birthdays fall at just the wrong time for this! Too many moves have taken place around their birthdays. I hope one day to somehow make up for that.

I hope the kids one day look back with appreciation for all the cakes that I dreamed up for them.

 

I realized I didn't have any pictures of nellie with her present. But I did find this random one that one of the kids took. That's right Nellie got crutches for her birthday. That is what she really wanted and she uses them all the time!! Jane and Nellie play this game that they call " the broken leg game" where they are injured and the have casts and slings etc. I would think this was weird but I played it as a kid as I am sure many kids did. Having never had a broken bone I always thought it would be so awesome to have the attention. I know that is one of the reasons that they play as well. It's been really fun to watch Mellies and Janes relationship blossom. Now that Lizzy has gotten older and gotten into other things, these two play so well together. I am going to be so sad on the day when Nellie decides she is too old to play with Jane and Jane is on her own.

 

The State Fair

After living here for five years and not going to the state fair ever,  I decided that it might be fun since we hadn't done much this summer.  We decided to go on a free kids night because it is so expensive, that way we were only paying for me and Kevin.   This was yet another poorly planned event on our part.  We got down there pretty late, dinner time, the parking was pretty bad, so it took us forever just to park and walk into the fair.  We needed to eat so we spent a good portion of our time trying to find something to eat and then waiting in line for it. which would have been fine except Kevin had to be back home around seven, so by the time we finished eating we had maybe a half hour to try and do something.  It  was pretty ridiculous. So we just found the nearest exhibit. Luckily it was one for kids so that was good.

The food was alright, certainly not for the price that we paid, but that's life.

 

It was fun for the kids do a lot of the little hands on things.  By far the favorite was the giant bubbles.  but there was a pretty big crowd around them so we couldn't stay too long there.

 

 

We have decided that if we do this again we will for sure spend the whole day rather than trying to do it in a couple of hours.  Clara was still not the easiest baby at this time, so she was unhappy as well.  So overall, not the best trip, but that is ok.  The great thing is we always can try again next year.

Our Fun Fourth

We had a whole bunch of things planned to do on the Fourth this year. We were going to go to the parade in the morning, meeting Lizzy and Kevy there becuase they ran the 5k that morning. Then we were going to come home and go to some friends a little later for water games for the kids and then have a fun dinner with a bunch of friends and then do some fireworks that night. Well Nellie woke up with a sore throat after throwing up the night before and not feeling good and I just had this deep down sick feeling that she had strep. So we met Kevy and Lizzy at the parade. It wasn't that great but the kids enjoyed it alright. I took Nellie to the instacare after that where the nurse confirmed my suspicion that it was indeed strep. So we got to stay quarantined from everyone. We tried to make it fun for our kids and we tried to have a little dinner and Kevy got some fireworks for us to do, but everyone was sick and grumpy and Lizzy came down with strep too. It ended up being such a crappy day. We didn't even end up doing fireworks that night becuase we just wanted everyone to get feeling better. Kevy did take a few of the kids to watch the city ones that night. The crappiest thing of all was that we thought we would save the ones we bought and do them the next night, and then we found out that the fourth was the last day we could legally light them! It was so disappointing. It defintely is a day I won't remeber fondly!

 

On the bright side I got to dress this cutie up in this darling outfit. To bad no one really got to see her.

 

Clara's Baby Blessing

everyone was here for Joes wedding, so we decided it would be a good time to bless our sweet Clara! All of the baby blessings have been not or miss wit how many family members were around to participate. I think we may have had the most for this one though so that is pretty neat. It is crazy to think that we have our whole family here now! It makes me a little sad to think there won't be any more sweet baby blessings for us. Kevin gave another sweet simple blessing. The was they are supposed to be.

I think it is so special that all the girls were blessed in the same dress. It is very special.

I love too that Clara was able to wear booties that her namesake made. How special is that!!

I love this beautiful little family of mine!! I am still in complete awe all the time that these precious souls all belong to me!! I feel so very blessed.

I love this sweet little baby!! She has the sweetest little spirit and I am so grateful we have been so blessed to welcome her into our home!! I still can't believe we ever could have thought we were done before we had her, she really completes our family!

 

Minion Party

This wasn't the best summer for us with getting out and doing stuff. Between having a fussy baby and having to deal with getting the house ready to show and showing it, we didn't do much. I really feel bad about it, but the kids overall were really good sports. We were really glad that a lot of our cousins from the Hansen side came and stayed with us when Uncle Joe got married. It was pretty soon after Jack and Matthews birthdays so the big girls decided that they needed to throw them a birthday party. I think I might have some serious party planners on my hands becuase I can't count how many hours they spent on it. The girls even came to Kevin and I with a list of estimated costs. It ended up being about right on!! They spent countless hours making up games and decorating signs. They even drew the cutest minion for pin the hair on the minion. It ended up being one of the things we did that was the most fun. Eveyone had a blast. I think I'm going to put the girls in chaged of my party planning from now on becuase I loathe it, and they love it!

You can see it the picture the poster of the minion that they drew for the game, I got a picture of it and accidentIy deleted it which was so sad because it was the cutest thing ever!!

This group was so cute! They looked so funny as minions.

I think this was one of Russy's first experiences with a piñata and he liked it.

The cutest minion there!!

My sweet baby, with her daddy

Funny faces!!

Clara - 3 Months

Sweet little Clara, I almost didn't think I was going to make it through the first few months of her life. It was truely one of the most difficult things I have ever gone through. Starting at around two weeks she got really colicky. Every night was so challenging because for hours she would cry and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. But then she started getting fussy during the day too and she started refusing to be put down. I had to wear her in a sling constantly, just so I could get anything done.

But then when six weeks rolled around, the time that everything is supposed to get better it started to get worse. She stopped nursing. Like refused to even latch on at all. I was so stressed because I knew that she was really small and she needed to eat, so I started pumping and trying to feed her that way. She took bottles of breast milk really well but then I started to dry up. So I knew I needed to start switching her over to formula. She started to refuse the bottles of formula. This was around her two month check up and of course right when she started eating a little bit better we all got sick with the stomach flu, including her and we had to start all over at square one with the formula. When I took her in for her 2 month check up she was only at 7 lbs. 12 oz. That was only one pound exactly, more than at birth. My babies are tiny, but this was beyond tiny. Of course to compound the problem our regular great doctor wasn't in and the doctor we saw was a woman that pretty much started freaking out about it. Just what I needed as a completely stressed out mom!! And things really didn't get better for a while. For the next couple of weeks she would eat good on and off. I didn't know from one feeding to the next if she was going to refuse to eat or eat good.

During this whole time we were having to get my parents house that we live in ready to show becuase they decided to sell it. To say I was under a lot of stress was an understatement. The great thing is though, she did eventually figure it all out! She is now a really sweet baby. She eats really well and has put on some good weight. She is still tiny, but it is a healthy tiny, not a scary one.

This picture she had fallen asleep crying becuase I just had to put her down to get a few things done.

This was after she started getting much easier. I had to take a picture of this because she is still really funny, she has to have everything be exactly right to fall asleep. She has sto be swaddled with a paci and I have to hold her just right on one side and rock her and pat her back. It is kind of ridiculous really. But since she has gotten so much easier than she was before, we forgive her. So it was very odd for her to fall asleep under here. She does love her playmat though. It is her favorite thing to do and she will play for a long time under there.

 

She likes her bumbo chair too!

We went for a bike ride and I figured out a way to get her in the trailer. She really liked it too.

She has gotten really smiley, although I haven't gotten too many pictures of it. She also is starting to giggle and really has started to try and grab things like toys and hair. It's so fun to watch her becoming more of a little person.

 

 

The kids just love her to pieces, and now she actually will let them get near her. She used to scream her brains out if any of them got near her. She loves the attention now.

This was quite an interesting picture because she usually wakes herself right up if she gets her arms out of the blanket.

We sure love this sweet girl!!

 

Wake Island

A few days after school got out Amy Wright, a good friend of mine invited me and the kids to go with her and her kids to a place called Wake Island. It is actually only about ten minutes from where we live and it is a really cool place that we had never been and had always wanted to go. It's a water park, although not in the traditional sense. They have a cable system for wake boarding and they also have a water park kindof like the stuff you see on wipe out. But we were only going for the free beach because let's face it, I am a cheapskate. We only do expensive stuff every once in a while. I feel like it is important to show the kids we can have fun without spending a lot of money, and that they will appreciate stuff more if they are not handed it all the time.

The kids got right in and were having a blast wading around in the wateruntilthey realized that there were really big catfish and they were notshy either!! They would swim right up to the kids and rub up against them. Mykids are really not into animals of any kind but especially not into fish!! They were not very excited about the water after that and stayed mostly inthe sand.

Annie pretty much just stayed on the side and stuffed her face with snacks. It said no outside food or drink but come on I have little kids who aren't going to wait until we get home.

Russ had fun with his buddy Peter. I am loving watching Russ become a big boy! He now has little friends and they actually play together rather than playing around each other. It is really fun because Peter has become his really good friend and I have become such good friends with Amy, Peter's mom.

Jane buried herself and Lizzy worked on making a river that flowed all the way back to the lake.

More snacks! I am going to lose it lately with my kids and the snacks, they seem to want to eat twenty four hours a day. It drives me nuts, I hear all day long, "I'm hungry mom! What can I eat?"

 

 

 

Nellie was one of the few kids that did play in the water most of the time. All in al it was a fun day and a great way to start off the summer!