Catching Up

Here are a few pictures from the last month. Eliza is a wonderful baby and I couldn't ask for more. She feels that if she's awake she should be held, which makes getting things done during the day somewhat difficult, however, right now she is sleeping well at night. I'll take the night sleeping and day holding anytime. Her big brothers LOVE her.

This was her first day home. Sam couldn't wait to put her in the swing, and most of us couldn't stop looking at her.

Andrew loves to feed and hold Eliza. He's a great big brother. Jacob loves to hold her too, I just haven't gotten a lot of pictures of him.

Sam loves Eliza, but in short bursts. He does tell me all the time that she is SO cute! I have to say in this picture Sam is SO cute. He was having a great time dressing up.

Helping PopPop fix the tile in our kitchen prior to listing our house.

The first attempt at a family picture - I've lost all control.

We loved having my parents here.

Having fun with the camera.

This is Andrew's Horton Hears a Who project. They planted the seeds at school and Horton grew some hair!

Baby Eliza is here!!!

Baby Eliza came March 3, 8 lbs 11 oz and 21" long. All the boys were excited when she came home and had to take turns holding her.

So far she has been an ideal baby. She sleeps a lot, eats when she is supposed to and fills her diaper on schedule. The last two nights she has also allowed us to sleep from 11 pm to 7 am. I guess that won't happen much now that she is home from the hospital and the nursery won't take her back. For Jennie's sanity we have decided to bottle feed. I do have to say that although the benefits of breastfeeding were always explained very well to us, no one told us about the benefits of bottle feeding! Eat once every 4 hours, sleep longer because tummy is full, lowers the risk of jaundice, Daddy can also do it so mommy isn't always on call. This may work out better than expected.

Extra Curricular Activity

I think my friend Britt, who moved here last summer with her family, put it best when she said, "We finally figured out that school here is an extra-curricular activity." After no snow in December I thought we were going to get away with an easy winter. However, this being our fourth snow day in 3 weeks, I must admit I was wrong. When you move here you just think to yourself, "Snow happens all over the world and people deal with it, what's the deal with New England?" Everything comes to a stand still. We woke up to 3 inches on Tuesday (still had school), no big deal right? WRONG! What is normally a 25-30 minute commute took Adam 90 minutes!! School buses were late picking up children and everything was a disaster. I don't know what it is, but I do know it's how it is and there is nothing I can do to change it. So think of us New Englanders in the lovely month of June when your children are enjoying the summer months. At this point, school will extend to June 21.

Here is our predicted 3-5 inches of snow. I often wonder what would happen if doctors were as precise as weathermen.

Adam and the boys spent an hour shoveling this morning. Sam was pretty smart and opted to wait until the shoveling was done and then headed outside to play. I'm sure if the other boys knew that was an option they would have chosen (however, it wasn't for them). Adam said the boys asked if the baby was going to have to help shovel and then were utterly dismayed to figure out that by the time she's old enough to help, Joshua and Jacob probably won't even be at home.

These are the piles on the side of our ever shrinking driveway.

The picture below is from Monday. On Monday the high was 4 degrees. That's right, 4 degrees. When I put Joshua and Jacob on the bus at 8:45 it was still -8. When I dropped Andrew off at 12:30 we had just hit zero. The picture below is of Andrew's beach day at school, which was on Monday. I hope you are all catching the irony here. All the kids wore their beach clothing, brought beach toys, goggles, etc. The preschool cranked up the heat and brought in a bunch of sand (can you imagine the clean - up? - just one of the reasons I LOVE this preschool), and let the kids have fun in the sun, or at least the heat.

Great neighbors!

Uh, DeAnn, can I borrow your snow blower? Adam is another state and we have somewhere around 15 inches of snow and it's still snowing. There's been a lot of blowing so it's difficult to tell for sure, but when I walked outside it was up to my knees.

Fortunately, we have great neighbors. They have a snow blower that initially wasn't working. So their teenage son and a friend came over with shovels and told me to go back inside (for which I was SOO grateful. Normally I don't mind shoveling. However, it was causing pain in places I shouldn't push through). In the end the snow blower came back to life and for now we have a relatively clear driveway. I'm so thankful for great neighbors!!

8 Kids, 4 hound dogs and the piggy we stole from the shed...

So, maybe it's not really Grandma's feather bed, but I

imagine they won't get much sleep, but they'll have a

LOT of fun.

This was our first Veteran's Day sleepover. The boys love to get altogether in one bed and read books and tell each other stories. Since there is no school tomorrow (and since Sam fell asleep on the way home from karate, which means he's going to be awake for a LONG time anyway) we decided tonight would be the perfect night for a sleepover in our bed. We will of course move them, I not that nice of a mom. However, they are currently having a GREAT time. They may have to move to their own beds in an hour or so.

A girl?!!

Well, I'm officially announcing that we are having another baby and according to today's ultrasound we are having a girl. When we told the boys last weekend about the impending arrival they took the whole thing in stride. Jacob asked, "What if it's a girl?" and after a few minutes decided it was okay because at least he'd be older than her. Joshua was ecstatic to be the oldest of 5 and Andrew looked at me wide-eyed and said, "There's gonna be 5 babies?!" In the end Joshua determined either gender would be fine because it'll either be a boy or a Tom-boy. His glass is always half full. Oh, my due date is March 1, 2011.

Boys

They are in so much pain I feel bad laughing, but the cause is really quite funny. I was talking to my sister this afternoon when I hear a whimpering coming from outside. Joshua and Jacob both walk in and Joshua very calmly states, "I think this is an emergency." In a search for adventure Joshua and Jacob hopped on Andrew's big wheel at the same time and headed off down the hill that is our street. I guess at some point they figured out they were in trouble because Joshua tried to bail but his foot got stuck. Anyway, to avoid a bush they somehow crashed the big wheel and both met the pavement with extreme force. Jacob's main complaint is his face (although there are many other wounds). I was most concerned about him initially because Joshua just looked to have a skinned knee. However, when Adam got home and we took a closer look at Joshua we realized that it was a very deep cut. He and Adam ended up in the ER and 2 stitches later (and only 90 minutes :-)!) they were back home. We are going to have some very sore boys tomorrow. I wonder if they'll think twice about riding a big wheel uncontrollably down a steep hill again. By the way, they would both want me to mention that there were no tears. Joshua only screamed once at the ER and that was when they numbed him up. Jacob had a hard time eating (which, if you know Jacob is a true hardship) and was whimpering all evening, except when he was at the computer :-).