Let the festivities begin

A duck a saurus t shirt. she got it when we were at the beach and he loves it. He wants to wear it all the time and laughs at all the ducks being chased by a dinosaur.

Hop on Pop. Very appropriate for Ben

Grandma came down for a Saturday visit and she brought Ben his birthday presents. He was so excited to see her. Uncle Steve came also and Ben was in heaven. He loves Uncle Steve. We got to go to Macoroni Grill which we all love and had a great time. He has loved having his 'birthday month'. We went to the party store and he chose transformer plates and he has been eating off those every night for dinner. It is his special month. We love you Benny. You are the funniest 3 year old.

This baby better be a girl...

A blanket I made for her. It's nice and soft and took forever. I am not making one like this again.

cute little dresses all ready for her.

Grandma Meilstrup made her a cute eyelet blessing dress.

I can't paint so I chose the paint color and let Dave do what he wanted. He chose to do a stripe at the top. The walls were that color when we moved here.

I recovered the rocking chair and ottoman from the boring beige color. I like how it turned out and it was only $5 and really easy.

Nana's living quarters. We will see how long the bed stays in the room. Thanks Nana.

I have decided to go all frilly with this baby. With Siena I didn't want to and I had a lot of green and yellow in her room and she turned out way girly so I decided to just start out this way with this new little one. I think it is way cute, hopefully not too pepto pink. I have been so excited to get all the pink out again and frilly dresses. I am about complete with the nursery and am definately ready to be done with the pregnancy. She can either come between Ben and Siena's birthdays or after Siena's (when she is due).

Red White and Blue

Siena and her friend Sara.

Siena was so excited to have a USA day parade at school today. They try to celebrate all the summer holidays throughout the school year. They had fathers day a couple months ago but I didn't get to go so I don't have any pictures. It's a cute idea. She was so excited to wear red white and blue today. She threw a fit this morning because she didn't have any shoes that were red white or blue but we figured it out. Of course she didn't sing any of the songs they presented but she was happy to march around and wave her star around. Each class had a different theme of USA. Siena's class had a banner because they were the beginning of the parade but another class had Lincolns log cabin that they carted around on a play grocery cart and another class had white beards like Washington. It was really cute.

Valentines Day

I was all ready to start Valentines day mid January. We got all excited and decorated for it. Siena made her Valentine cards for her class Feb 1st. Then we lost steam. I am hugely pregnant and just tired. We managed to do all our Valentine treats yesterday because I felt bad that we hadn't done anything all month. Siena did love the mailboxes that we had from last year and filled them up frequently. I felt bad she kept saying that everyone else in the family had a lot more cards than her. So Sunday night Dave and I got our craft on and filled her mailbox up.
This was a fun felt wreath that we made with some friends. The kids love it and are so proud that I made something and hung it up in our house. I am glad they like it so much. It is cute.


our sugar cookies.

Siena ready to go to preschool with all her goods. Ben was excited to go to music class, "his school" and deliver his cards.

white chocolate popcorn and m&ms for the teachers. it kinda just looks like a pink explosion.

yummy heart brownies.

Now I get to move on to our birthday month planning and a new baby!

Dave goes away

I have been very lucky and I think the total amount of business trips Dave has had are 1 or 2 the whole time we have been married. He never travels for work and I hope it stays that way. He will be gone for only 3 days and I don't know how or why but everything has been crazy. Dave is the snow lover of the family, I don't really care for it. So he left Wed afternoon and Wed nite it started to snow. We got probably around 6 inches, which is a lot around here. It was heavy snow too as it had rained first. So Wed nite I was making dinner and the lights started to flicker. In our old townhouse the lights never went out. With those 2 huge storms at the beginning of the year our lights never went out. We have lost our electricity so much here. The kids thought this was so exciting. I was getting really upset and nervous about it. We gathered flashlights for everyone and had dinner by flashlight. I could see out the back window that the lights across the street were already out. We ate and took baths by flashlight as it was flickering on and off. The kids were so excited to sleep with their flashlights. Finally they fell asleep and at 9 that night the power went off for good. I was so upset. I wasn't ready for bed at 9 and when the electricity is off it seems so eerily quiet. It was not fun. We have a fireplace and I wanted to start a fire but we haven't gotten it inspected and I didn't really want to burn the house down. I was afraid the house was going to get so cold that night. The kids were fine. Ben cuddled up with me in my bed so I had a kid kicking me and a baby kicking me from the inside. It was real fun. Siena was fine in her bed. So finally I find my way to bed around 11. Then at 1 I wake up to a beeping noise. It was our FIOS saying the back up battery had died. I didn't know what it was so I had to wander around the house looking for the beeping noise. Finally at 6 the lights and everything come back on. Then I had to go around and turn off all the lights in the house that were on when the electricity went out. I felt like I had a newborn because I was getting up every couple of hours. It was awful! Finally the kids woke up around 7:30. Everyone had stayed warm. I was so glad the night was over and the electricity was finally on again. I cleaned up the kitchen from last night and for some reason our garbage disposal decided to break. I don't know if there is something in it but it won't turn on and our dishwasher was running water all over the floor. I did not deserve this I was so mad! So Dave gets to come home to a broken garbage disposal and I think the dishwasher was just latched incorrectly. Lots of drama here. So in this new house we have a long driveway and I knew that we should start to shovel it so I wouldn't be stuck home forever if it decided to ice over. I started doing it and got 3 feet done when I felt exhausted. Ben wanted to ride his bike on the snow and had tipped over and Siena couldn't figure out how to build a snowman. So we didn't last too long. Finally I braved going back out. We have inherited a snow blower and thought I would be brave and try it out. I was terrified that I would run over my finger or something and have to go to the ER but it was easy and I did a couple more feet until I was exhausted again. I didn't want to go into labor and be stuck at home with 2 kids and no husband. I went inside and rested and woke up to some friends that came to the rescue. Ben and Michelle came over to rescue me from being housebound for another day. It couldn't have been a better surprise. The Dr. Pepper that came along with it was a big bonus too. Ben plowed the rest of the driveway so now Dave will be able to drive his car up into the garage and I will be able to leave tomorrow! I am so excited about it. I think we are supposed to get a little more snow tonight but I don't think too much that I will have to dig out again. Dave comes home tomorrow and I hope he never has to leave again. I realized I really don't want to run this house on my own and that I really don't like the snow, I don't care how pretty it is. It has taken down 2 of my trees and Siena has been out of school for a whole week.

Blah January

I feel like I want to get ready for the baby but I can't. It is still too far away (2 months from yesterday) plus all my babies are always late. But end of Feb and March are busy with birthdays for my other kids so I have started getting ready. Dave has been really good and painted the room. I am working on some finishing touches and then I will post pictures. So today the kids decorated shirts for the baby. They were really excited about it. They are cute. I didn't get the stencils out in time so they just freehanded everything so it looks funky! Lucky baby!

hard at work...

We went to a later church yesterday for our friends baby blessing and so Ben didn't get a nap. In the middle of our dinner, picnic, he fell asleep. Poor boy. and he is wearing underwear but had no accidents!!!!!

One of the 4 pregnancy pictures I have of myself. Courtesy of Siena. 2 months to go!

Siena's Christmas

Here is the start of Siena's budding photography career. She loves taking pictures with her camera. Some of them are really funny. She is learning not to move it so quickly after she takes the picture. A lot of them are really blurry. Here are some of her favorites.

She catches Ben in the act of stealing popcorn.

Our clock cookies for our new years party.

Her favorite new toys..

another fun toy

Bens favorite new toy

For some reason there are a lot of pictures of this. It's her camera case, I guess she just loves it!

another great present.