Happy Days are here again!

 Yep, fancy chocolate cake.  I am not ashamed to admit that I bribed our children.  I told them that if they read a couple more books before school started they could go with us to the Compass Room downtown.  After 9pm the Compass Room has $5 desserts and it is super fancy.  So they read, some better than others, and we all managed to go.  Highlights of the trip were riding the glass elevator, being in a restaurant that spins 360 degrees (we stayed for about 180 of the degrees), eating yummy chocolate cake, and getting to stay up late.  Thanks to my Amanda sister some of our cousins from the east side came and were fancy with us.  I will pat myself on the back and say it was one of my better ideas.

 Here is a rare picture of Dinah being sad.  Most of the time she is a happy little angel bunny.  She was sad because Daddy was out of town.  He was gone this weekend picking up a car in New York.  But he is home safe after a long drive and we are all very grateful for that.

 The girls and I went school shopping on Saturday, thrift store shopping of course.  They got a bit waylaid in the shoe aisle so I told them to find the most ridiculous pair of heels they could find and I'd take a picture so we could move on to more sensible items.  Here is the result.  They have a fondness for high heels.

 Here's how Dinah looked for church yesterday.  She is adorable.

 And here is the day we have all been waiting for.  I have seriously been looking forward to this day for several years.  Seriously.  Peter has started kindergarten!!  All day kindergarten.  Oh bliss.  He is such a happy person about it, he has been chomping at the bit lately.

 He is sitting between two adorable little girls, I hope they prove to be a calming example to him today.  I know there are lots of moms out there who miss their kids when they go to school and they cry and stuff.  Although I cry about most things, I have yet to cry about sending a child to school.  I will say that I will probably miss him, I will miss all of them but I think school is really good for them and I am grateful to have a good school just down the road that the kids can attend.

 Our 8th grader.  His last year at this school!  You should have been there for the taking of this picture.  There was a bunch of 8th grade girls standing behind me giggling and commenting about how much these two look alike and how adorable they are.  Big trouble.  Also, we didn't dress these two like twins on purpose, it was just a happy coincidence.

 Pickles was eager to get to her classroom.  She is in the same classroom Leah was in last year and Jeff was there the year before.  Her teacher is different though, she is actually the same teacher Alana had last year.  She is a great teacher, I'm excited for Tess, she will have a fun year in 6th grade.

 Miss Brumm let Tessa choose where she wanted to sit and my brilliant daughter chose a seat right up front!  That's my girl!  She is such a sweet little lady.  I am glad she is one of my middles.

 Here is the tiny middle one.  She too had a choice about where she wanted to sit on this the first day of 4th grade...

 Front row!!  I love it.  Alana has a teacher we haven't had yet but I've seen her around a lot and she seems like a good one to me.  I'm sure she will have a great year, she is an excellent student.

 Leah got on campus and disappeared with her friends.  I got most of the other kids dropped off and stuck my head in her 7th grade class for a picture.  She is there way in the back.  I have a feeling she is planning to be a social butterfly this year...

 We got home from our walk to and from the school and baby girl decided she wanted to be adorable for a little while before her morning nap.

Like me, she is glad that everyone is learning and having fun at school. 

Nine Years Ago

Nine years ago this week I sent Ryan off for his first scout camp as a leader.  I got a lot of props for sending him with four smallies at home including a brand new baby Lana.  I expected him to come home and listen to my tales of woe and feel sad for how hard it was for me with all those littles all by myself.  Boy was I wrong!!  He arrived home and I took one look at my filthy exhausted husband and listened to his stories... Oh my.  He had it much worse than I did, hands down.  Yikes.  Scout camp.  I won't tell you the stories because some of you may be eating right now (I'm eating carmel corn), and I don't want to upset you.  Oh the nightmares you would have!

 Here are my nine years ago babies.  Aren't they so squishy and cute?  I just want to squeeze them and tickle them!  They are longer and pointier now.

Pete took Jeff's place in the photo.  Jeffy went to scout camp with Ryan.  They are having a great time.  They even got to bring Jeff's cousin, Oscar, along to camp so Jeff is pretty much in heaven.  He lives for scout camp.  Princess Dinah took Leah's spot for the photo this time.  My Leah Buggy went to girls camp!  She just got home this afternoon and had a perfectly lovely time.  I am so glad my sweet girl gets to go to camp where I went.  LoMia rocks.  It is unbelievable that she is 12 already, but I suppose that if the little tiny peanut from the top picture can grow into the adorable little flower shirted person in the bottom photo in a mere nine years, anything is possible.  Yes, Tessa looks exactly the same.

May Happenings

 Dinah and Daphne got together for some concentrated cuteness.  And Whitny took pics of the babies.

She made me birth announcements for Dinah with the photos.  So sweet. 

 Amanda brought her chihuahua pups over to see us and they were tiny but not compared to Dinah. 

Peter Mac graduated from Preschool.  He was awesome!

Dinah liked the graduation ceremony.

His teachers thought he was pretty nifty.  He is very excited about Kindergarten in a couple of months (I'm pretty excited myself).  The rest of the beasties ended up their school years beautifully and they were very happy to be done last Thursday.  We are having a fun summer so far!

 We blessed our baby Dinah yesterday at church.  It was lovely.  Lots of family came out to see her blessing.  Ryan is a little rusty I guess, because he headed up to the front and was giving the men nods to join him at the front but he almost forgot the baby!  He had to come back for her.  He gave her a wonderful blessing though, very sweet.  Jefferson got to hold the microphone for it and he told me that during the blessing Dinah was smiling.  It is neat that he got to be up there and be a part of it. 

 Dinah wore the same blessing dress that I and all my sisters wore, and it is the same dress that all her girl cousins have worn for their blessings.

Baby Daphne was blessed later in the day so we all went out to Gilbert to see her big moment and have family dinner after.  Whitny took more wonderful pictures.  She took pics of the girls in the dress and photo shopped them together.  They are pretty darling.

Welcome Baby Dinah

Our little impatient baby girl arrived three weeks early in the morning on May 7th.  Her name is Dinah Pearl and she is a lovely little lady.  She was born at 12:02am, she weighed 6 lb 1 oz and is 19 1/2" long.  So far she is very sweet and patient and likes to cuddle and sleep and eat.  We are getting along really well :)

Leah got to come and see her be born.  I have a feeling it was an experience that she won't soon forget.  She has been talking about it ever since and has excellent ability to recall everything that happened, even how grouchy I got!  Oh well, we wanted her to see how real life is and she got to!  She loves the baby and is super pleased that she got to see her before I did.

Here she is just born.  It is always an odd experience for me to finally meet the little nudger face to face.  I seem to always be surprised that they are who they are. 

 She weighed 6 lbs 1 ounce and looked like one of my babies!  It was hard to tell which one, but she for sure looked like a baby of ours.  All of the staff agreed that she was lovely, she even did a little modeling before she was an hour old.  When the nursery took her to do her newborn screening one of the nurses took some photos of her during her bath and asked us for permission to frame one and put it up in the hallway, they were in the process of redecorating that hallway.  So she showed us the photo she had taken and had us sign a paper.  It was all a bit strange to be happening at one in the morning while I was in a wheelchair being transferred to the post partum room.  But such is life with lovely children.

 We brought her home and she has been busy being adored ever since.  Her siblings are quite pleased with her and love to help take care of her.  The first day home from the hospital I fed her and handed her off to her baby sitters and fell into a deep slumber only to be awakened two hours later by a child returning her, saying she was poopy and hungry.  Ahhh, sweet bliss.  That sleep was fantastic.  Love my kids.

 She has been very pleasant, she thinks that since she started out so small that she needs to grow quickly and that means she has put herself on a strict diet.  She eats very often and sleeps most of the time.  The diet is working, she has gotten almost plumpish.

We are so grateful that she has arrived safely and that she is doing so well.  We love our little Dinah-saur, our Pearly Girl.

April Happenings

 I continued on my baby construction project.  I kept thinking in my brain that I would last till my due date at the end of May.  People rolled their eyes.  What do they know?
 

 Peter invited Ryan over to his preschool for Donuts with Dad, whereupon they ate donuts and had their photo taken in the tent in his classroom.  It was a big hit and I love the little craft Peter made for his dear Daddy.

 We got three baby bunnies from a friend of mine.  They were quickly adopted by the children and named Cadbury, Oreo, and that little one with the mustache is Fru-Fru.  The bunnies are seriously adorable and the great news that we found out weeks later is that they are all of the female variety so we need have no concerns that they will find themselves in the family way and we won't be overrun with adorable bunnies.  They really are stinking cute.

 Speaking of cute, Alana received many awards for being amazing.  She got great grades all year long and had an impressive attendance record.  She was pleased with her third grade experience and looks forward to fourth grade.

 Little Miss Tessa had outstanding grades all year and she had perfect attendance ALL YEAR, which is saying something.  She worked really hard and should feel proud of her accomplishments.  She handled fifth grade like a boss.

 The first Saturday in May was our annual Gray for Jay Brain Cancer Awareness Day, wherein we eat pizza and pazookie which were Jay's favorites.  Jay passed away in March from brain cancer, he was a great friend and a great man.  We miss him a lot.

That very same Saturday we added two new trees to our landscape thanks to SRP and Tessa who helped me carry them.  They are cute little palo verdes. 

On Sunday we went out to Chandler to visit family.  We stopped to see Amanda and Doug and their adorable puppies and boys.  We stopped at Whitny's to meet her new little baby GIRL who was born three days prior.  Sweet little Daphne, more about her later.  Then we had dinner at my parent's house.  It was super fun and good to see all the east siders.

 

Monday  morning early I woke up to my water breaking.  Here was my last pregnancy picture, took it Monday morning.  Good times.  So then...

Peter's Birthday

I am catching up on blogging.  Our sweet Pete turned the big 5 back in April and we had a great time celebrating his wonderfulness. 

 He had a special breakfast.

 He got special toys.

 He got a pinata cake.

 He decided to just cut it open instead of hitting it with a stick.

There was candy in it.  Which was neat.  We love our five year old!  He is becoming quite a grown up boy, he is smart and funny and sweet and we are glad he is ours.

Much Ado

 

Here's what's going on with us lately:  

At the beginning of this month the kids got to participate in the annual District wide track meet.  This year it was held at Apollo and it was nice that it was so close and on our own turf.  Alana ran the 100m dash and did rather well.  In her heat the girl in the lane next to her ran in front of her so Alana had to run out of her way a bit but she made it into the final heat and upheld the family honor.  She was kind of tired at that point so no win but lots of excitement (especially for Dad).  She also did the long jump, the softball throw and ran the 200m dash (whew!), with coaching from Daddy she did well.  Tessa also ran the 100m dash and did very well.  She let her body get a little ahead of her legs but she stayed on her feet and ran well.  She did the long jump and softball throw as well and had a good time.  Jeff and Leah both decided not to participate this year, something about them being "too cool" even though last year Leah got second over all in the softball throw .  Don't worry, they will hopefully come to see that they are built for speed like their Dad (they just might have a touch too much of my non-competitiveness and dislike of bodily discomfort to make them the outstanding athletes they could be, my bad).

Tessa performed in her school's production of "The Little Mermaid".  She was Adelle, one of Ariel's sisters, she was also various other sea creatures and had a lot of stage time.  She is quite the performer and has a lot of enthusiasm and talent.  I am sorta in awe of how she just gets up there and goes for it, she is fearless.  She did a great job and was a pleasure to watch.  I'm sure it is just the beginning of a long and illustrious stage career.

 And here's a recent belly picture.  I've resolved to take a picture occasionally to document this pregnancy.  I shied away from cameras for all my other pregnancies but I decided to bite the bullet and take some pictures.  Hopefully I'll decide later that I was kind of cute with a belly.  We shall see about that.  I'm nearly 29 weeks now and everything is going very well.  I'm excited to meet this little person and see what she is like!

 Peter found somebody's stash of Valentine's stickers and tattoos and wanted this one installed on himself.  So I put it on him and sent Ryan a picture at work.  He was so proud and excited that Pete has "Bieber Fever"!

 Leah had a Girl's Camp Fundraiser this weekend (I know, she isn't old enough to go to girls camp, but it appears they let all the girls who are "12" go).  It is crazy that she is 12.  Anyways, she and I baked this cake for the auction.  It is entitled "Leah's Luscious Lemon Layered Cheesecake", it was four delicious layers of lemon cake and cheese cake.  It was kind of a lot of work so she was pleased when it sold for $43.00!!  Not too shabby.  It was a fun night, we bid on some items and had a great time.  Our ward has fabulous Young Women's leaders.

 I accidentally chopped of part of my fingernail while cutting potatoes for dinner last week.  It was sad.  But I am grateful to have fingernails to protect my actual finger that won't grow back after I chop it off.  The kids were all suitably impressed with my injury though.

 Tonight we got to go and write get well soon cards for a dear friend and member of our ward who is in the hospital.  He has brain cancer and is having a hard time.  It was a very large gathering of people who love and admire him and his family.  We are all praying for them and hoping for the best.

We are grateful for our blessings and our health and safety.  And that's what we've been up to lately.  Maybe I'll post something again soon!