How did that happen???

So it seems just like yesterday it seems we were bringing her home from the hospital and now this? What on Earth! LOL! Funniest part is that she's not even crawling yet! We were sitting around in the living room and when I looked over Caroline was literally standing in her play pen. We have one of the ones with the false raised bottoms in it and since she's not crawling or anything yet, it makes it so much easier to change diapers. Well when I first saw her she was laying with her belly on the armrest of the chair. She had gotton to her knees, then stood up and was inching her way out of the playpen! How on earth does he have that much strength and still not crawling? Well all day toady she has been pulling herself up to her knees on furniture. She look so funny doing it since she's still just a peanut at 14 lbs 12oz!

I also go a few good pics of her "inch worming" herself across the floor. This is her way of crawling right now. She's pretty good at it and can get to where she wants pretty fast. It's so funny to see her inching along!

Pictures and Layouts

So here are a couple of those hospital pictures of Emma that I promised. Obviously you can tell pre surgery to after surgery wild woman hair! The past couple of days she has been pretty much herself except for a bit more clingy to us and she will play for a while and then crash for a while. She is also still on the meds, so as long as those are still in her system she does all right. The two times that we didn't get it in her system before the old wore off was not a pretty picture. Poor little thing!

Today has been a lazy Sunday with Nathan helping my brother move and the girls and I chilling out here. I have been busy this afternoon listing on ebay some deals I found. Click on the "My Ebay Listings" Tab to the right of you want to check them out.

Here are a few of my newest scrapbooking layouts. The first two were just for fun, but the ones under those are from my design team kit with 2 Sassy Scrappers.

Home from the Hospital

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we are home safe and sound from Emma's surgery this morning. Tonsils and Adnoids are officially out now. The surgery went really smoothly and was over in about 20 min. The Dr said all looked well but since they one tonsil was so much bigger than the other they did send it off to pathology (which is normal.) He also said that her adnoids were huge and completely blocking her nasal passages. So it was wonderful that we were already having them taken out as well. Emma did great and actually is sitting her with me on the couch with her beloveds...the kitten and her silky. She is a bit horse but still talking and acting pretty normal. Tylenol with Codine does wonders! She actually wanted her My Little Pony Gummies when we walked in the door. The Dr said give her whatever she'll take as long as it's not sharp or rough so we did! I'm sure she'll crash soon but for now she's just being her normal self. Isn't it amazing that kids used to stay days in the hospital for this surgery and now she's home 4 hours afterwards and eating gummies! Praise God! I have some cute pics of her at the hospital that I'll have to share later. Right now I need to get her in comfy clothes and try to convince her to take a nap for a bit.

Bad Blogger am I!

Ok, I know it's been almost a week since my last post but it's that lazy days of Summer thing. I just haven't felt like uploading anything and wanted to wait until stuff was off my camera before I posted again. Caroline turned 7 months on the the 17th. She's still pretty tiny, but she is growing up on us just the same. We went to the doctor today for her well baby visit and they said she weighed 14lbs 12 oz....which isn't bad except when you weighed 9lbs at birth! So they said she is tiny but she gained 2 1/2 lbs since I had her there last and she was doing everything a 7 month old should be including being almost ready to crawl! She is a tiny one though, what a peanut. She is length wise in a 6-9 months now but around there are still some 3-6 month pants that are too big on her. So I am thinking all those 12 month winter clothes that I bought up on sale this Spring might not be happening. Who knows thought?

Emma goes on Friday for her surgery. Maddelyn actually told me yesterday that she was upset that she wasn't going for surgery as well, especially after reading "Grover goes to the Hospital" and when his Mommy buys him a gift at the gift shop after his tonsils were removed. She was ok though after she found out that she gets to have a slumber party with her twin cousins Morgan and Cathern Thursday night instead. Funny how slumber parties can help you forget hospital gift shops?

For all of those non-Ohioians, I ask that you be in prayer for us. We had some really bad storms come though yesterday and today involving a small tornado, LOTS of rain and now flooding. I have heard that we got over 6 inches of water over night. Lets just say that everything is flooded and people were being rescued off rooftops by helicopter in the next town over. The scary thing is that the forcast shows rain and thunderstorms through Saturday for us. Where on Earth is all the water going to go? We ended up ok with just a little water in our basement. Most of the running water was running straight into our drain. My aunt and uncle were not so lucky. They had at least 6 inches in their finished basement today. They live in the next town over that hit pretty hard. Someone said they had 9 inches of rain compared to our overwhelming 6 inches! So please be in prayer for us that the rain holds off as much as possible so these families can try to get things under control before the next wave hits.

I know they are blurry, but I had to add these two pictures becuase they were too funny not to. This is Caroline enjoying her first swing ride at the Blueberry festivel this past weekend. I think she liked it???

More Vacation Pictures

Ok, for some reason the typing comes out as a link?? I'm just too frustrated today to try to fix it so here we go...

Here are the rest of the photos from vacation tha tI promised last night. these are of Storybook Forest in Idlewild Park.

My brother and his three kids (Nathan and I's first born kids)

My parents as usual with the baby!

Nathan with all of the kids at The Sword and the Stone part of storybook forest.

They loved all of the kiddie rides there!

Even this big kid loved them. He just made it under the height limit.

This was the lifesize trolley from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Once you got on it to took you on like a 15 min ride, visiting King Friday, Prince Tuesday, X the Owl, and all the other characters in their homes! Of course only us big kids knew what all of those things were but the little ones still loved the ride as well.

Pierced and Vacation Pictures

So we finally got around to taking Caroline's baby pictures with Nathan and I as we did with each of the other girls. I emailed them out to several people today. If I somehow missed you, leave a comment and I can send them on to you as well. Anyways, this mornign we went and got Caroline's ears pierced. I wanted to wait until after her pictures beacuse they make her look sooo grown up and I wanted one more set of "baby" pictures before we did them. She of course cried but no different than when she gets her baby shots. She gets mad at first and then gets over it. It's amazing how much they make her look like Maddelyn as a baby, just a lot smaller and not as chubby!

So I finally found my camera cord and was able to upload these vacation pictures tonight. Here are just a FEW of the cute ones seeing as how I took over 220 of them in like 3 days? Yeah, as I said a few!

My girls with thier first cousins infront of the Pittsburg Children's Museum

Emma milking a cow at the Ohio State Fair

Maddelyn's turn milking a cow, she waited all week to do this!

Emma trying to hurry and pet the sheeps head before it moved. She would tap it's head and then giggle when it moved.

Emma's very first fish ever caught at the Ohio State Fair. She was terrified of it. As soon as Nathan started reeling it in she was out of there! She wanted nothing to do with it!

Maddelyn's Fish - She was much braver but wouldn't touch it because she didn't want to get her hands wet....such a girlie girl!

My three "Tina's" - Long Story, but Maddelyn kept saying CAroline's name wrong and she said she could call her whatever she wanted so I said I would call her whatever I wanted. Well... Tina, Tina 2, and Tina 3 later she loved all their new names! Guess that didn't work!

Caroline at the Children's Museum

My Mom playing and creating with the girls at the musuem

My brother in his moment of glory having his picture taken with Mr. Roger's Neighborhood's Trolley. I think he had more fun in that section of the museum than the kids did!

I have lots more pictures of Storybook Forest, Idlewild, and actually riding the real sized trolley, but I will post those tomorrow since it's getting so late. Sorry for such the L-O-N-G post!

Home from PA

Just letting everyone know that we made it home safe and sound form our mini vacation in PA. We went with my parents, brother, and his 3 kids on a 4 day trip. It was one crazy trip with just about everything ending up more complicated than you'd imagine, but it was alot of fun! We started out spending the night in Columbus and going to the Ohio State Fair in the morning. Well, the day we decided to go there was a heat advisory out for the area with raw temps (not including humidity) at 101! Yeah...miserable hot! That night we traveld up to Pittsburg for the night. Well on the way there the town next to Mansfield had a mini tornado! So that kinda says the weather we were driving through. We got to our hotel that night at about 10:30 and of course were exausted! The next morning we were all excited about going to Idlewild amusement park (the reason we had driven 5 hours the day before.) To our surprise, the park was closed Friday because the storms that we had driven through the night before had knocked the parks power out. So...now what do you do in Pittsburg with 6 kids? We got on the internet and found an awesome children's museum in town. It's the type of place that if we lived nearby we'd have a membership. It was a total hands-on-learning experience with LOTS of free play, imagination, creativity, and of course MESS! The next day we did end up getting to use our tickets to Idlewild when they opened the park back up. It was loads of fun at the park and so neat to watch the kids enjoying themselves. The park has a storybook forest, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood Tolley, huge Kiddie Land, and the normal amusement park rides and such. The park is aimed at preschoolers but was fun for everyone. My mom actually visited the park when she was little and has pictures of the same nursery rhyme characters as my girls now do. I have lots of pictures to share with you of the trip but I will have to upload them tomorrow. Today was a busy, busy day with trying to unpack, do laundry, and all those other things that you have to catch up on after being away.

Cousin Sleepover

Well, we survived! Last night we had 7 girls 5 and under spending the night at my grandparents house! WOW! Lots and lots of giggling but over all they were pretty good. We had no major meltdowns just lots of loud toddler voices. I think they finally went down at about 11:30 (mine are usually in bed at about 8:30) and the first ones were up at 7:30 this morning. This morning I asslembly line showered, dressed, and fixed hair. The girls sure did have a blast though! We decided that we are going to do this every August right before school as a last of Summer fling. Although all the cousins live near by, they rarely get to see each other and this was the first time they had ever spent the night together. We painted nails, ate popcorn, played dress-up, and watched movies. Everything a good sleepover includes! Here are some cute kido pics!

Yesterday while we were at Kingwood center I got a few pictures of Caroline in the grass. This is the first itme we've been there that she's been sitting up so I could get the flowers in the background. It was her first time sitting in the grass as well so of course I couldn't get her to let go of the fist full of grass and look up at me. What more interesting....mom...or grass!!

First Food and Summer Happenings

Yesterday was my new cousin's baby dedication (isn't she a cutie!) as well as the Hamons family reunion so we were gone much of the day. The kids had a lot of fun playing together at the picnic and of course were running around wild as preschoolers do! Here is a picture of the gang. The older boy and the twins in the dark green and yellow are my nefew and nieces. The other twins in the mint green and white are my first cousins, and then the other two in pink are mine of course. Yes...we do have two sets of twins in ou family that are just a week apart in age. Both sets are exactly a year older than Maddelyn. Her birthday is in the middle of the week between theirs! So that means 5 girls birthdays and birthday parites in one week! Nathan calls is Birthday Season!

Caroline got her 1st tooth in this week! It's so funny to see her rubbing it with her tounge. She also started her first veggie and hated it! I made my own baby food green beans for her this week. (Yes Rachael, you inspired me to make food for her like I did Emma!) She normally gets cereal at night so I thought it would be an easier transition to just add the peas into it and give it to her that way. WRONG! She hated them! She was wiggling and whining for the cereal when she saw the bowl like normal, but after about 4 bited she realized I had tried to trick her and started shivering, spitting them out, and gagging. She hated them! We laughed so hard at her faces while she was trying her best to get it out of her mouth. I tried her on them again last night and mixed a tiny bit of formula in with the ceral/beans to add to the flavor and she ate them just fine that way. It's a good think because I have another 17 servings of beans already frozen in the freezer!

Today was a counsin day before school starts for everyone. We took all the kids (pictured above) to the Carosel here in Mansfield. They loved it! Even Caroline got a good laugh as we rode around and around. Afterwards we had a peanutbutter and jelly picnic and then headed over to Kingwood Center to feed the ducks. That is the place where I take all the flower pictures of my girls each summer. I'll have to post those pictures after I upload them in a bit.

Tonight we are going ot have a cousin sleepover at my grandparents house since my aunt from KY is here visiting. It should be a blast with 7 girls 5 and under there! We have a make-up and dress-up party planned with lots of popcorn, sleeping bags, and of course giggles I'm sure! I'll have to let you know how it goes!

Oh, and if you guys could all say a prayer for Emma I'd appreciate it. Friday at dinner we noticed a HUGE growth looking thing in her troat! It's at least the size of a quarter and takes up 1/2 to 2/3 of her throat! So our Dr had her go to the ER because of her airway and the ER Dr said it was her tonsil! He said it was not red, infected, or anthing and that it was just huge? He referred us to the Ear Nose and Throat Specialist in town for an appt tomorrow. I did look at Maddelyn's though for a comparrison and sure enough hers are enlarged too? Not as big as Emma's but both of hers are big? Isn't that wierd? So please just be in prayer for them both. All I need is two surgeries schedualed!