Anna, Audrey, & Noah

Monday, February 21, 2011

Blog Recommendation

I just checked out this blog after it was recommended to me by a dear friend. All mommies with young children should check it out...

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/

One of Anna's favorite games to play is Hang Man. She's quite good at picking tricky words that stump me too. Of course she thinks it's hilarious when I can't figure it out. I think I lost part of my brain with the delivery of each child! :-)

Saturday, February 19, 2011

65 Degrees

This past week we were blessed with two gorgeous days of temperatures right at 65 degrees. We took walks, played basketball and soccer, rode bikes, played hopscotch, tried to jump rope (comical!), opened the windows and just enjoyed the spring-like weather. Noah went for his first "big boy" stroller ride without being in his carrier and loved it.

We love the jacket Aunt Heather and the outfit Grandma Smith!

Peek-a-boo! I love the hats with the ears!

The girls and I had fun making a train with our strollers and shopping cart. Anna was prepared for the most dangerous train of her life wearing her helmet and knee pads. =) Thank you Lord for wonderful weather - Please bring it back and make it stay soon!

Who's Who?

Ok, it's pretty obvious who's who, or at least who the girls are but I haven't done a comparison post yet and here are pictures of our three kids each at 3 months old. They have some similarities but none of them look exactly alike. My thoughts - I think they all have the same nose, Anna's face is much narrower and longer (more like Michael's was as a baby) than Audrey and Noah's (their's looks more like mine did when I was a baby), Audrey and Noah look the most alike, Audrey definitely had the most hair, they all have similar mouths, Anna's eyes are different than Audrey and Noah's, they're all adorable. :0) Your thoughts?

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to you! We had a special dinner tonight that was great fun! While Daddy and the girls were at Anna's basketball practice, Mommy worked very fast setting the table with heart themed plates, cups, napkins, and lighted candles. The lights were turned down low and dinner music was playing. The menu consisted of gourmet heart shaped grilled cheese (Ha!) for the girls and chicken fajitas for the adults. Once the girls got home they had to quickly get dressed up in their fancy dresses and put on some high heels and jewlery. It was a fun way to have dinner on a special day.

Valentine Noah - he'll hate this picture some day. :)

Valentine Audrey - ornery as ever!

Valentine Anna - goofy girl!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Brrrr it's cold!!

It has been so cold this week! The snow is pretty but I do not enjoy the cold. You know it's way too cold when you walk outside and you immediately feel like you have boogers in your nose because your nose hairs are frozen!

The kids love to warm themselves up by laying on the floor in front of the fireplace with blankets. There is usually lots of laughter when they're doing this too. :)

We've been couped up inside but have enjoyed snuggling, reading books, and watching movies.

Audrey better watch out... Noah's going to catch her in size before too long!

Daddy's Birthday

On Monday we celebrated Daddy's birthday and the girls were so excited to "plan" and decorate for his "party". Who knew so much "planning" and excitement would go into a party with just the 5 of us?! :0)

We love you Michael Wesley!

Friday, February 4, 2011

3 Months Old Today

Another month has flown by and Noah is 3 months old today. Breaks my heart... he's such a sweet baby and I don't think it can get any better than this. He sleeps great, he can't get into anything, he doesn't talk back, and he's not a picky eater. =) We are enjoying every minute with him and are so thankful we're getting to experience what it's like to have a happy, laid back baby. Of course we love the girls but I don't think we enjoyed them much when they were babies because they cried so much, at least during the first 6 months. It wasn't their fault, Anna didn't ask to have colic and Audrey didn't ask to have reflux but it made life very stressful. With Noah being such a good baby, I'd love to have more babies, however, after much prayer we decided before he was even born that 3 blessings were enough and instead of praying for more children, we'd pray for wisdom to know how to teach the children we have to know and follow the Lord.

In December there was a t.v. show on called The Sing Off. We loved watching it and recorded each episode. Little did we know that the girls would want to watch those episodes over and over again. They LOVE music! We watch The Sing Off episodes at least once a week, usually more. Here's a video Michael took of Audrey jammin' away while Anna and I were at Awana. Sorry it's sideways, I've got to give him lessons on how to make a video. :)

Friday, January 28, 2011

Embrace the Journey

"Embrace the Journey"... these are words I'm stealing from a good friend's blog. These words hit home with me as I'm not always embracing the journey I'm going through right now but typically just merely surviving it. The picture below sums up the past two months for us. I took this picture because to me it's complete chaos; messy house, sick kids, bottom half of tree lights not working, etc. It is very hard for me with my A-type personality to let things go. I want to keep everything in order, have a plan, and be productive and some days (most days), that just doesn't happen anymore.

I heard on the radio station KLOVE today (great radio station by the way) that instead of making a New Year's Resolution we should instead choose a word that sums up how we want to be or something we want to work towards throughout the next year. As I thought about that, the first word that came to mind was Surrender. There it is, that word "surrender" again. I wrote about it several months ago when it came to letting Anna ride the bus and the Lord has brought it to mind several times since. It's hard for me to surrender, to let go and let Him, but I can definitely see that He's trying to teach me a lesson. Too bad I'm a stubborn student who's not learning very quickly. =) As I adjust to life with 3 kiddos, I'm learning that I have to let go of many things even if I don't want to.

I've also been reminded several times that all three of our children are complete miracles. It brings me to tears when I think about how the Lord has blessed us with each one of them. This picture below is of the girls' pictures in their dedication dresses and Noah is in the bassinet. The next picture is of one of my favorite decorations. I hung it on the wall right beside the girls' pictures (and Noah's will go close by there too once we have his taken) because of the verse that's on it. It's from Matthew 9:26 - "With God all thing are possible". Our children are a testimony to that verse.

Eight years ago I had surgery to remove Endometriosis and we were told that we had a small chance of having children because it is a disease that typically is not curable. We began working with a fertility doctor after months of not conceiving and were told that I also was not ovulating and would need intervention to make that happen. However, God had another plan in mind and before I started the medication to help with ovulation, we found out we were pregnant with Anna. You can imagine our shock and excitement. Despite what the doctor's saw or didn't see, we were going to have a baby of our own.

Move ahead two and a half years later and to our surprise we were pregnant again after the first try! Woohoo, we were on a roll. =) However, 8 weeks into the pregnancy I began bleeding and after having an ultrasound, they determined that I had a hemorrhage behind my uterus and that my chances of keeping the baby weren't good. I literally cried out to the Lord, "Jesus save my baby" and I believe He did. The bleeding went away in about a week and I delivered Audrey 9 months later.

Jump ahead two more years... I was beginning to have really rough cycles again and I knew the culprit - my Endometriosis was back. I wasn't sure that we'd be able to have another baby without having surgery again but after just two months of trying we found out we were expecting again. I was excited and scared... could we handle three kids? I began to have real fear once again when I started spotting at 6 weeks. An ultrasound showed that all was fine with the baby and the doctor said that it's not uncommon to have spotting in the first trimester. However, the first trimester spotting turned into second trimester bleeding and the doctor began to get concerned. After an exam, she told me that I was close to miscarrying and that I needed to be off my feet as much as possible with absolutely no lifting. Several weeks passed and after several exams, my doctor determined that I had a cervical polyp that was causing all of the trouble. At 17 weeks she felt that it was safe to remove the polyp and thankfully that took care of the bleeding. The part that still astounds me today is that the pathology report of the polyp showed that there was placenta with it and as my doctor said, "it's a miracle that you only passed part of the placenta and not all of it". 22 weeks after the polyp was removed, Noah was born.

Audrey couldn't believe it! There were her "friends" just a few feet away from her. Her reactions were priceless!

Anna loved it too even though it was her second time seeing the characters "live".

Noah did well considering it was a very stimulating environment with all of the lights and music. He hung out in the baby carrier for awhile and then got a bit fussy but did very good considering the noise.