I'm back

Golly, it's been a long time! I took off for Spring Break and just got out of the habit I guess. ... not to mention life is busy too! :) We are getting so excited that Austin has just a few more weeks of school. UNREAL! It will be so fun to celebrate at his graduation in a few weeks in Iowa with his family!!! Although it's been a month since I blogged, our kids have grown up a lot. So, I thought I'd give a little update about them all with just their scrapbook pages (it'll make it a lot shorter).

Emma started cheerleading last week and LOVED it! She loved learning the cheers and the fact that she was the smallest so she'd be at the top of their triangles. She said that it was the best day of her life (except for when we go to Disney Land) and that it was her most favorite class she's ever gone to. She still goes to performing arts every Saturday for High School Musical III. She and Lily like singing and jamming out to the music at home. Her performance is at the end of May. She's doing great in school. We're working with her on CHEERFULLY cleaning her room when asked.

She got these roller blades (at a yard sale. These were marked for $3. When the lady saw that she was paying all of her money for them, she knocked down the price to just $1. Emma thought that was pretty neat. She's spent a lot of time on them and really loves to roller blade now. She's about as tall as me with them on.
I think you can click on the smaller image to make it bigger.
Emma had a FABULOUS performance at her school of Stone Soup. The music/songs were so neat. I tried to video tape it, but the video camera was having some serious shaking issues. But, it was just beyond ADORABLE to see her sing these songs. I'd look over at Austin and he was seriously just smiling at her the WHOLE time.


Lily got her 5 immunizations (and 1 more to go) to get registered for school. I can not believe my little Lily girl will be in kindergarten next year. :( I'll miss not hanging out with her. We just spend our days together doing everything we need to do. She likes going to the gym-- ONLY as long as her friends are there and having play dates. She likes carrying and playing with William.
Here, we had a great time going to the zoo with friends.



We borrowed this bike and in to time at all she was riding like a pro. She is really fast and she asks to ride almost every day. This is definitely one of her favorite outfits. She likes her comfy "rock star" shorts, her dance top, and she loves her boots! She tries to get out of the house with them almost every day!


Dad has been teaching the girls "how to not throw like a girl!"


She went to an all out fabulous princess birthday party at Teia's. She had a lot of fun. There were 3 "princesses" (teenagers) there to help with nails, hair, etc. I think she had a great time and felt like a princess all fancied up.


Lily finished soccer. Unfortunately, she made it to probably half of the games. Most of them were rained out. But, it was still fun. Maybe we'll do it again....???


William has had a lot of milestones. He is SUCH a fun, sweet boy. It's so fun to watch him. Austin and William have great communication. Austin will go "AHHHH" (progressively louder) and William will do it back over and over. He jabbers a lot. He eats everything we eat (blended up). He's a GREAT sleeper (7:30 p.m. - 7:00 a.m.). He's learned to sit up on his own...

sit or kneel in his crib (and as of today - stands up in his crib) after he wakes up...

hold his own bottle...


hold his tummy up...
get up on his feet...

look quite adorable...

is developing more and more personality and love....

and he now crawls fast all over the house (and yes, getting into everything). (I need pics of him crawling). I now have to FIND him!
His top 3 teeth broke thru the last few days....

and he is, like Emma and I, allergic to bananas and latex. While I was out watering the garden, he was playing in the living room. In no time at all, I heard him crying. He had banged his head getting out the back door step. But, it wasn't that bad. It was scraped a bit and was oozing just a little. So, I put some ointment and band-aid on. The next morning, it was like 100x worse. It is looking much better in this picture, but we'll make sure to buy latex free bandaids for him!
I feel like I've been doing a little bit of everything without getting a whole lot accomplished. I'm going through our garage today for a possible garage sale on Saturday. The girls still want to do a lemonade stand so badly. I spend my mornings at the YMCA to workout. I started a garden a while back that's been fun to watch. Austin's Dad bought all of the containers for us, which was a huge jumpstart for getting it started. It took me about a week just to buy all the darn dirt and get it planted. It's a lot of fun for all of us to see what is new each day and eat what we've grown. We've ate our own yummy tomatoes, lettuce, and swiss chard. Lily thinks the swiss chard is "so gross!" But the rest of us like it cooked. Surprisingly everything is growing really well. We also have peppers, squash, zucchini, potatoes, cucumbers, and lots of herbs. It has rained like crazy here. In fact, yesterday it flooded in parts here. Austin was out driving and his car got stalled in the water. He had to push it like 200 feet. Something is now wrong with his car. He's getting it towed tomorrow morning to get it~ hopefully~ fixed. Now that William is getting older, I am about ready to advertise my photography business. I put my site on a few free sites last week, and got 3 gigs for later in the year. So... that's exciting! It's really time consuming though, so we'll see how it goes.
I guess that's it for now. I hope to be a more regular blogger now! :)