a little celebration ~ Independence Day & Foofie's Fourth Birthday

Little Buddy snoozing in the vintage Erickson infant seat ... also doubled as a car seat back in the day :)Fun times with the cousins ...

Happy Birthday, SWEETIE!!! (We love your grin!)

The babiEs :)

a little summertime

a little fashion

At dinnertime tonight, I said, "It seems ... I almost have ... no clothes that aren't crazy."

"What are you saying??? You ... have ... almost ... no clothes ... that are not ... crazy???" Husband slowly repeated after me, trying to decode the double negative.

"Sooooo ... you are saying ... your clothes are crazy???" He asked ... as though guessing the answer to a riddle. Suddenly, imagining crazy clothes struck us as rather funny and we all burst out with laughter.

Shortly after supper, I was completing Halo's haircut ... that I had started three and a half hours earlier ~ yes, kinda goofy ~ but life is a bit chaotic right now. (The haircut got interrupted by Baby waking up and other more urgent needs.)

Anyway, as I started working on her hair again, Halo said carefully, "You know ... ... ... I have noticed ... ... ... that most of your clothes ... ... ... are ... ... ... not ... ... ... very ... ... ...
well-fashioned."

a little mower girl

Halo mowed the lawn today! She did a great job! Isn't she cute???

a little scooter machine

Today, Foofie and I went on a three mile "scooter~walk" ... she scootered and I walked. (Biking has lost a little of its excitement and newness ... now she is into scootering and is asking for her own "Razor".) She actually went a bit farther than three miles because she likes to go a little ways into most driveways that we pass. (Thankfully, she's done with stopping to HOLLAR off every license plate she sees ~ that was last week ~ something she learned from her crime-fighting older siblings.) Foofie, of course, made lots of interesting comments along the way ...

We noticed two birds sitting on one of the branches of an old, dead tree. "They're having a meeting," she said matter-of-factly.

Then, we saw an older kid pop-a-wheelie on his bike ... "He can lift up his bike! He's famous!"

"You're not grown up first. First, you're a baby ... and second, you grow up. It takes lots of days until you grow up to be three or four."

After doing one of the driveways ... "That's a bumpy driveway, Mommy! They must have a bumpy house."

As we neared the pond ... "It smells here. Someone put a smell here. This stinky smell hurts myself ... whoever did it was being bad. It was probably a motorcycle ... they have poison gas."

After the exercise, a snack was in order. I had some sesame Toasteds handy ... which she hasn't liked in the past. Now, however, she was eating them with gusto. I commented about her not liking them recently ... and she said, "Well ... I like them ... now that I'm older." "When do you think you'll like salad?" I asked her. "When I'm older than you ... probably fifty-five ... or ... maybe when I'm nine like Halo."

Then, she asked if we could go two more miles. I told her we didn't have time today. "Can we go eight miles tomorrow? Or ten?" she asked. She's hard-core!

Ready to roll (6/18/09) ... this might be Buddy's best smile ever!

a little gathering

A few pictures from Great~Grandpa's 98th Birthday Party ...

a little ride

Little Buddy had his first stroller ride by "the lake" tonight ...

A flower Foofie picked for me on our bike~walk ...

a little album ~ "So fun to have a baby again!"

Memorial Day at Mom and Dad's ... four days old

Great~Grandma (age 93) and Foofie ...

five days old
ten days old
a funny expression ...
gotta love this little mudge ...
thirteen days old
I like Mommy :)

a little snack

FOUND: ALL~NATURAL animal crackers at Target (my favorite store)!!! I hardly ever buy animal crackers or graham crackers or the like because they have all kinds of junk in them ... so this was quite exciting :)

They're really good (especially the box with half original and half chocolate) ... and reasonably priced ($1.99 for a 10 ounce box). My kids would rather have a pile of animal crackers over a cookie any day!

P.S. I also just discovered their Archer Farms line of ice cream ... as far as I know they only have four flavors. The exciting thing here is that the first ingredient is cream! It's not quite Haagen~Daz ... but it's pretty close ... and MUCH cheaper! ($3.99 for 48 ounces versus $3.00 for only 14 ounces.) We tried Madagascan Vanilla and Bavarian Chocolate. YUM!

a little MIRACLE ~ actually a big one!!!

Well ... it wasn't twins ... just a pretty large baby! Our sweet baby boy came into this world at 4:37 on Thursday morning! He weighed 9 pounds & 10 ounces ... and had a whopping 15 inch head (my doc said she'd never seen a 15 incher ... and she's delivered over 500 babies) ... so it was a very good thing that he arrived ten days early.

It never ceases to fascinate me that one moment this little person is inside of me and then, just moments later ... this same little person ... is out! Isn't it amazing how the LORD knits little babies together inside of their mothers? It seems more amazing to me with each child that we have!

We are all so excited to finally see him and hold him and kiss him! Halo is such a good helper and can't get enough of the little guy. Buddy is so thrilled to have a brother. And Foofie is pleased that our family is even and balanced now ~ three girls and three boys.

He doesn't officially have a name yet ... we're narrowing it down though. My husband joked that he's the Haagen~Daz baby as that was a key component of my pregnancy diet. At the moment ...
he is happily going by "Little Buddy" or "Cutie" :)

a little "huge"

Today, after the nurse had exited the exam room and my doctor was preparing to see me ... I actually heard the nurse whisper to my doctor out in the hall, "She's huge!"

a little belly (okay, a big one)

Well ... today I heard it about six times. "Are you having twins?" or "Are you sure there's just one in there?"

It is rather strange as I was never asked this ~ not even once ~ during my previous three pregnancies.

Anyway, my kids have heard it so much that they're starting to think it's a real possibility.

I'm either having a really big baby ... or a really big placenta??? Definitely not twins.

a little biker

Foofie inherited Halo's first bike on Friday night and she biked 4 miles on Saturday and 4 miles on Sunday! She wanted to go more ... but her pregnant mother was tired out!

a little commentary

Recent comments from my family ~

"When you bend your leg and I see your veins ... it looks like your leg is going to die!"
(Foofie ~ by the way, she remembers to pray for my veins daily.)

"Your bellybutton is all blown out!" (Buddy)

"I can't remember what you were like without a big belly."
(Halo ~ and I can hardly remember it either.)

"Look at the plump mamma robin!" (Halo) "Just like your mamma!" (Daddy)

a little mother's day album

Jeff and his sweet mother (and some other dudes) ...
Me and my dear mother ...

Me and my precious children ... Dessert time ~ yummy sundaes!

And a cupcake for Foofie!

a little planning

Halo asks to visit the library several times per week ~ she can hardly survive without new reading material! Tonight ~ as usual, she was planning ahead ~ she asked if they could go to the library while I'm having the baby. Why not?!?!?

"Your brain is always on the library," I teased her.
"My brain is always on legos." Buddy told us. No kidding!!!
"My brain is at the hospital." Foofie chimed in :)

Then, the kids collectively decided that the best time for me to go into labor would be on Sunday morning at church ... because we'd be close to the hospital and Daddy would be sure to be around. I'm not so sure I'd like that scenario though ...

a little disbelief

Tonight I said to Jeff, "I can't believe we're actually going to have a baby!!! Can you?"
"No, I can't either," he agreed. "It's totally unbelieveable."

P.S. I also cannot imagine how I could possibly get any bigger ...

a little modesty

One Foofie story I forgot about from this past week ...

She was playing outside and got her shirt wet. I took her shirt off and told her to hang on ... that I'd find something else for her to put on.

"I need a shirt right now!" she said. "Or the neighbors might call the police on me!"

a little drive

A few times in the past couple days I've asked my husband if he wants me to make him a sandwich or something ... and he has responded with, "Can you make me a burrito?"

Then, late this afternoon, as we were working in the garage ~ going through junk, consolidating, tossing in the trash (hopefully lots) ~ we came across two bags. In case you're wondering ... one had extra pillows and the other held a few small rugs. "If the pillows and the rugs want to go into boxes they could be stacked on the high shelf," I suggested (I know ... strange wording). "I'll ask 'em," said Jeff. "Well ... they said they'll go in boxes if we get burritos for supper." (It was funny at the time ... but it doesn't seem as funny now while I'm typing this.)

So ... guess where we went for supper?

After Chipotle, we went for a little drive.

Buddy's memorable statement from our evening was ... "If we have more kids we're going to have to buy a limosine."

Foofie saw her first convertible of the season ... and perhaps she can't remember ever seeing one before. So, when we pulled to a stop next to a convertible she said, "Look! They don't have a top!"

a little comparison

Halo decided it is harder to rake the yard than to eat carrots. (She informed us at supper that she used to consider the latter to be quite a task.)

a little charmer

My little Foofie, who is now 3 3/4, can be so darling. Here's how she woke me up this morning ...

"I like you," she said with a grin, as she playfully poked my cheek.
Then I laughed ...
"I made you laugh," she said with a smirk.

"You are cute!" she continued.
"You are beautiful!" she went on.
"You are delightful!" she exclaimed.
More laughing ...

"I LUUUUUUUV my Mama!" she finished and leaned in to kiss me.

I am blessed ...

a little entrepreneur

Halo started a new business venture today ~ "Helper Halo". As I said, this was a new endeavor as she has had several other entrepreneurial ideas in the past. For example, I think it was last year that she and Buddy collected all of the sticks in our yard ... then tied them in little bundles with colorful yarn ... and attempted (without success) to sell the bundles for 25 cents each. For their "store", they wrapped a few rows of yarn around three small trees in our front yard ... which created a nice triangle shape to work in.

Anyway, her current business is ... raking, walking small dogs, and watering gardens. She made a little flyer ~ which we helped her edit. It was a bit humorous before the editing ... she wrote "I will NOT accomplish work on Saturdays and Sundays! You can call me a few days ahead and I will have a calendar to keep track of jobs. I only work near our street." We pointed out that if someone was going away for the weekend and wanted her watering services ... she would miss out on the job. We also informed her that walking dogs might include gathering up their doo-doo. Anyway, after the flyer was completed, she and Foofie dropped one off with each of our neighbors.

To our amazement, a couple hours later, the gal right across from us came asking for Halo to walk her dog! So ... Halo (and her brother and sister too, of course) walked the little dog up and down our street a couple times. It maybe only lasted five minutes. Jeff said he was watching and the dog wasn't cooperating too well with the new dog walkers. Then, the neighbor lady called to them and said they could bring the dog back home. Halo was so excited and encouraged ~ thank you Mrs. B. :)

a little sniffing

Today, I was the lucky helper for Buddy's phy. ed. class. They were playing softball/tee-ball with a whiffleball. Would that be whiffleball??? Anyway, the teacher wanted the batting team to be lined up alternating boy-girl. So ... she was inserting boys into the line in between the girls.

When she put Buddy into the line ... the girl behind him grabbed him by the shoulders, kinda gave him a hug, and then she sniffed him.

"You smell like bugspray," she declared.
Then she waited for a reply ...
Buddy didn't respond though.
"I love it!" she said.
"I hate it." Buddy said.
"I love it."
"I hate it."

Kids are funny.

a little memory lane

Just kinda fun to look back and see how the kids have changed and grown since last Easter ...
My how time flies ...

He is risen!

I decided my blog was due for some photos ... so here we are :)
These first two are of Palm Sunday ... the childrens' choir is preparing to sing.Happy Easter! What a lovely day it was!
Foofie ...Christ is Risen ...
This one's a bit fuzzy ... but Foofie took it all by herself ...

We lunched at Rudy's ...
The kiddos got gift bags filled with snacks ... goldfish crackers, raisins, animal cookies. The sun in their eyes was a problem here ... but this is the best of the three pix I snapped.