Elise at 6 months...

Our sweet baby girl is a growing like a weed!:) We went to her 6 month checkup and she is weighing in at 18 lbs 6 oz so she is at 90% on her weight. And she is 27 inches long so she is at 97% on height. So she is just a solid healthy girl!:) She has been sitting up now and she likes to try to crawl and will get up in position but she just can't get her body going! It's so cute! We have officially tried some veggies and she liked them. Her fav right now is sweet potatoes. We have only tried one fruit, pears which spit out every time! Maybe she will love her veggies, that would be a first in our house!:)

Ethan's 7th Birthday with our family...

It was a great day! We took the kids to eat at Chuck E Cheese. We had never been before so it was exciting for them. I was glad I had a coupon because we got to play 40 games and eat pizza for around 20 dollars. Can't beat that deal! We opened presents and had cupcakes. We had his party with his friends today which was a lot of fun! Ethan is so blessed to have so many special friends! I have some really good pics, I'll try to post soon!:)

Our basement windows; Before and After...

We have been working on our old 1937 house since the day we bought it going on 4 years ago and have never looked back. We had the old original basement windows still in tack, well sort of. Over the winter the glass finally cracked we had cardboard up until it warmed up so we could take the window out and repair it.

First Mario had to rub the rusted out metal frame of a window with a wire brush, then knock out the original glass and glaze(which holds the glass in old windows), then paint with Rust-Oleum paint, and finally replace glass. The whole project cost around 20 dollars. It was mostly just time consuming getting all the rust off of it. We thought about just replacing the windows but after hitting every home improvement store we soon realized that the standard basement window was too big that was in stock at the stores. And we would have to have a professional window installer do it which was way out of our budget. So Mario with a lot of work and a little money managed to bring our old basement windows back and I think it is very neat to say we have the orignal windows to the house! They even open to let fresh air in our basement!!! I snapped this picture of our house to show we don't live in a creepy house we just "USED TO" have creepy basement windows! But now they look much better! We are working on making a small retaining wall with the bricks around each window but that is for another weekend! :)

Easter

I took these pictures in our house and in our front yard. We had a good one except that our water heater/heating unit had to have 4 parts replaced on it and was not fixed until Monday. So we had no hot water or heat. It's been pretty warm but at night it gets down to the upper 30's. But we made the best of it! I am planning Ethan's 7th birthday for next weekend! He is having a Super Mario Bros. game theme party. I had to order the plates, balloons, etc on line yesterday because we couldn't find any Mario themed party stuff. He is so excited. I've been busy planning it, I hope all his friends will have a good time. It's funny because I was thinking about my own 7th birthday. I still remember exactly what I got. Barbie's of course, but it made me realize that from here on Ethan is making childhood memories that he will take with him into adulthood. The days are moving fast and I am seeing Ethan grow up right before my eyes. The good news is he still will let me hold him, on my lap of course. He's been too big to pick up for many years!!! And he still lets me kiss him! He tells me he'll always be my baby boy. :)

Elise Fun, at 5 months...

Elise has 2 favorite toys, these baby keys(which were Ethan's) and this jumper we bought for her. It is a Baby Einstein and she loves it! She has figured out that she can jump like crazy in it! The girl has a lot of energy! She is sitting up pretty good now and when we put her on her tummy she moves her legs and arms but she just can't seem to get her bottom going! I can't believe she is 5 months now! She now cries if someone holds her that she doesn't know. She knows her name because she'll smile if we say Elise, it's so cute.

Very nice!

This is a great video...~Mario

Here and there...

The weather has been beautiful! It's not the warmest but we've had snow on the ground still before on Ethan's birthday in April so I'm happy. Also if you look close our bushes are budding! :) I'm hoping this weekend we can start cleaning out our flowerbeds by at least raking the leaves. It's still been a little cool to really do a lot of yard work.

My flag deals. Somehow we got lucky and hit a store that was closing and found our last name initial still available on these flags! We literally paid dollars for them and I really like the way the look! I guess the initial "A" isn't that popular.

We also found these neat canes that the kids thought were cool. One is a rooster head and we have a family debate on the other! Not sure!

Ethan is really starting to look more and more grown up! Elise thinks her big brother is pretty special!:)

I know I haven't posted a pic of Ethan and Emma in a while so this is for the grandparents! We are painting our basement this weekend. We are trying to make it a place that we can use but our basement isn't the prettiest, we're hoping with a little elbow grease and A LOT of hard work it will be nice. Did I mention a lot of work! I'll take a pic and post soon. It's amazing what a little scrubbing with bleach and fresh paint will do!

Relaxing during a nice bath or nap!

Elise LOVES her bath time, she has learned to look forward to it. She splashes like a fish. She is in awe of her hands! She has had good control of them for sometime now. She pulls hair, earrings, books I'm reading to the kids, food, anything in her reach now. And everything goes straight for her mouth. I can't believe she will be 5 months soon.

Her eyes still get very red like this when she gets very tired. It's funny because by the time she wakes up from her nap the redness is gone! :)

Our 11 year old and 9 year old cats enjoying our sun room. They must have finally worked out their differences because they haven't been hanging out much the last few weeks. Talk about a "cat fight" but now all is well again!;) They wouldn't even eat at the same time, strange I know. We took the kids to Des Moines this weekend and had a great time. It was nice to have a family day and enjoy each other, I feel so blessed. We found a great deal on a weight machine and we will pick it up this week sometime so next Monday will start our life changing eating habits. I'm very excited about it! Mario and I are not only going to start cleansing our bodies of all the junk we eat but we are changing the kids eating habits as well. On the weekends we will treat ourselves to a "fun food day" within reason because we are going to be realistic about this diet. We did this before about 8 years ago and both of us lost about 15 lbs each very quickly so I'm ready. I'm also ready to be able to carry Elise, all 16lbs of her, and not get sore arms! That's how out of shape I am. I know it's going to be a hard road but we're doing it together! I hope I'll have good news in a few weeks of inches being lost!:) I need this because I haven't been feeling very energetic!

Gabby Elise!

I snapped this picture of Elise in the middle of talking, she loves to play with her toys. She even seems to have favorites now. We have been so busy the last few weeks but I'm trying hard to just slow things down so I can really enjoy her because she is at a fun stage. Everything is so new and exciting to her. She is awake a lot more during the day. She still takes her cat nap(which is always around 30 min) in the morning then her long 2 hour nap from around 1:30-3:30 then is up until 8:00 her bedtime she gave herself. But now she likes to be entertained which is not a problem in our house! Ethan and Emma love to play with her. And she finds them extremely fun! I now know how fast this time will go! Ethan and Emma have been so busy with school, I'm so proud of both of them. Emma has been reading better and better. The other day we were in Target and Emma just started reading any word she saw, I REALLY love the new A Beka phonics we're doing this year. And Ethan is doing great too. He seems to shine at Math. And believe it or not in our math curriculum he is doing a very basic algebra. It's more or less for example ?+7=10 but he is really doing good at it. It's so rewarding to see such great progress this year as a mom and their teacher. We rented the movie Old Dogs and I don't recommend it! The story was just blah! We had high expectations though, I was so wanting it to be a good family movie. :( Ethan said Elise was more fun to watch and I have to say I agree!

Sick Days...

We bought the kids the game Mario Cart's for our Wii and they LOVE it! Notice Emma had to be dressed in her play dress up including shoes!:^)

Ethan is so into this game notice his mouth, wide open! Yes Emma put some of my makeup on! She is such a "girly" girl!

It is their new fav! I'm gald someone in the house is feeling better! Mario, Elise and I have seen better days...

Elise LOVES this chair. She just chats away in it. You can always tell by her eyes when she is getting tired, they get red like this! I think a nap is in her future...

I walked in on Mario an Elise laying on the sofa in our office with yes, that is a heater! As you can tell they don't feel good. We are all sick AGAIN with the same head cold, yuk. But I thought this pic was pretty priceless. I asked why a heater instead of blanket, and Mario's response, "a heater has warm air blowing on me!" I think that fever has affected his thinking! :)