Spring Break???

Riley J

T-man

Lacey and her snowman, "Sparkles"

No, I did not mis-name this post.  These are not leftover pictures from Christmas vacation.  We had NO snow ALL Winter long and then the first day of Spring Break..... we get dumped on!  Really?? What is up with that??  But the kids loved it and had fun playing in the snow since they never really got to do it during the Winter months!  Hopefully the weather warms up, so we can venture out and do some "Spring Break" outings this week.....

2 Months

So, I had the brilliant idea of nursing her right before taking these pictures in hopes she would be happy and content.  Instead, she was totally milk drunk and it was all I could do to get her to barely open her eyes.  Poor thing!  

Here is our little Peruvian Princess.  In May, 2006, Dave and I hiked the Incan Trail to Machu Picchu with my brother and sister-in-law, Carrie.  Neither of us had any kids (although I was pregnant with Lacey, but didn't know it yet - I found out the day we got home from that trip!), but we found and purchased these cute little alpaca sweaters for our future kids.  She now has three and I have four and we have both put all of our babies in our sentimental sweaters from that trip :)

Tons of thick blond hair!

I couldn't totally get her to do it for these pictures, but her latest "trick" is that she can now purposely smile!  And we are loving it!  The first time that we could be certain she was smiling on purpose was 3 days ago on her 8 week birthday.  You can see the start of one in this picture.  So fun!  I am still exclusively nursing.  I am pumping on the 2 days I work and so far, so good.  We discovered she has reflux, so she is now on Prevacid, but can't really tell how much it is working.  We go in for her 2 month check-up next week.  She still seems so "little" to me and hasn't grown out of any of her clothes yet.  Can still fit into her newborn-sized clothes.  In fact, she wore newborn sized pj's last night, but most of her clothes are 3 months.  But I know she's growing because people keep commenting to me how "big" she is getting :( We got a new pappazan swing (that we are borrowing from a neighbor) and Ella and I are both loving it!  She loves to be held, so whenever I have to put her down, I have about 5 minutes until she starts crying for me.  But with her swing, I get much longer chunks of time.  She sleeps with me every night and she still wakes up at least 2-3 times to eat.  Love, love, love my Ella Grace!

Addendum:  I am writing this addendum on 4/3/13 because I just got home from Ella's 2-month check-up.  She weighed 11# 8 oz (between 50th and 75th %ile) and was 22 1/4" in length (50th %ile).  She has a clogged tear duct that I need to massage and they bumped up her 1/2 tsp Prevacid from once daily to twice daily to treat her reflux.  And she got 2 shots for her vaccinations :(  But otherwise, she is perfectly healthy, growing well and absolutely precious.

Lacey in a Leo

Lacey has taken gymnastics on and off since she was 2 years old.  We've taken a little break for other activities, but she's been asking to go back, so we re-enrolled her and she just finished up a 10-week session.  Here she is on the tramp....

Practicing her handstand

Her teacher, Miss Lisa, said she did great and is really improving.  Lacey LOVES gymnastics!  But, we're going to take another little break to try lacrosse (much to Lacey's chagrin!), and then I'm sure we'll end up back here again :)

Easter Egg Hunts Aren't Just for Kids....

For the third year in a row, we've participated in an "Adults Only" Easter Egg Hunt!  It is a total blast!  How it works:  You register in advance, then on the night of the event, you show up at this big park with your flashlights/headlights, and basket (we've learned as we've gone - we now bring bags so you can run w/o risking your eggs falling out :)).  Then, when they blow the horn, you're off!  Down paths in the woods, in and around bleachers and baseball fields, etc.  There are 1000 plastic eggs hidden and each contains candy and a number.  About a third of the numbers correspond to a prize.  Well, the first year I only got 2 eggs (Dave got 9).  Last year, Dave had a church commitment, but I improved to a whopping 7 eggs when I did it with my sister-in-law and my friend Kim (who remains the reigning champ at 21 eggs!!  She's in Korea now and I so missed her!).  So this year.... I got 12 and Dave got 17!  However, only 2 of Dave's eggs corresponded to prizes, but 7 of mine did :) Here we are showing off our loot (including the hat on my head and the thermos Dave is holding).  Some prizes are on the lame side, but some are pretty decent.  Our two best?  A $25 gift card to Bertuccis and a year's worth (1/month) of bread from Panera Bread!  

Cost of Registration: $10

Cost of Baby-sitter:  $28

Running around like a teenager when in fact you are 36 years old with 4 kids:  Priceless

Sharks, Eggs and a Pot O Gold

We've had a busy weekend....

We live relatively close to a great Aquarium.  However, at $29.95/adult and $20.95/child, we don't make it there very often.  The good news is that on Fridays after 5pm during the winter months, they only charge $12/person.  The deal ends in another week, so we decided to get there while we could!  We also figured it would be much easier without Riley and Ella (since strollers aren't allowed inside), so I stayed home with them while Dave took Lacey and Tanner.

Tanner's favorite part -- the sharks!

The next morning, we took the kids to the neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt.  They all had a great time, but Tanner was especially happy!  In each age group, there was one egg with a gold coin in it.  And he found that egg!  The prize was this huge Easter basket full of toys and such.  Yeah for Tan!

We (meaning Dave) decided to go all out for St. Patty's Day this year!  We turned our sunroom into a a rainbow room with shamrocks all over the windows.

At the bottom of the rainbow, was the pot of gold.  Each pot of gold consisted of a gold helium balloon attached to a a pail full of gold.

It was almost like Christmas, minus the presents.  The kids didn't know anything about this, but when they woke up this morning, we told them that some leprechauns had visited, so they ran downstairs and discovered the "rainbow" and "gold."  They were very excited!

Lacey with her "end of the rainbow" discovery

As usual, this is the best we could get of Riley.  Not exactly a poser!

This is what was attached to their gold balloons

We then sat down to a green breakfast of scrambled eggs, milk and apple juice

And we had some green mouths afterwards!

And a bonus.... we discovered that the rainbow became really fun once we turned on the ceiling fun!  It provided all day entertainment!

So.... how does an exhausted mother of 4 young kids including a brand new baby pull this off?  Simple.  She doesn't.  Thanks to their dad, the kids had a great weekend!  The only thing I can take credit for is a couple of green toilets.....

Flowers

I went back to work last week.  Tuesday was my first day back; Ella was just 5 weeks old.  I realized on the morning I left that I have only been apart from her on 3 occasions and never for more than an hour or two.  So to start back to work knowing it would be for 9-10 hours twice a week consistently was hard. I was misty eyed when Dave left that morning and felt it all "happening."  But two things made me feel a lot better.  1) My in-laws watch my kids every Tuesday.  They come to our home and it just makes my life so much easier not to have to pack everything and everyone up.  And it's nice leaving with the kids with their grandparents, who love them.  And the second thing were these flowers.  When I got to work, I was told I had a "special delivery."  Dave had this beautiful bouquet of 100 mini-roses delivered to me at work to make my first day back a little brighter.  It did :)

And speaking of flowers.... in my quest to do as many of things I can from the "1000 Places to See Before You Die" book by Patricia Schultz (I am blogging my way through the book at www.1001placesbeforeidie.blogspot.com), I talked Dave into going to the Philadelphia Flower Show.  Why drive all the way up to Phili with a 6-week old?  Well, because the Flower Show is only for one week, once a year, so here was my little window of time!

The main entrance - it was a British theme, entitled "Brilliant."

An example of one of the many displays made out of flowers

A flower-filled British crown

Truthfully, Dave and I were rather underwhelmed by the experience and not quite sure how this made it into that book!  But still nice to have an (almost) kid-free few hours since we got a baby-sitter for our older three :)