Jenna 4 Months Old

This baby girl is growing up too fast!!  It is hard to believe that she is 4 months old!  She has sure brought a lot of joy into our home in such a short time.  Dave's sister happened to be in town this weekend and offered to take a few picts for me.  I am so glad she did!  They turned out so cute! 

Her brothers sure love her, and Chad can make her laugh and smile like nobody's business.  And I can already say that somehow, a girl is different, even at this young age.  When she got her immunizations today, she screamed totally different than any of my boys ever had.  It was a piercing, high pitched scream, and I could just hear the drama coming through. 
But, she is such a sweetie.  So glad this girl is part of our family.  We wouldn't be complete without her. 

Debt

This thermometer (see below) has been hanging in our hallway for a year now.  I created it when we bought our car and slapped it up on the wall.  I wanted it to serve as a visual reminder for my kids that we were working really hard to pay the debt that it represented.  When we first bought the car, I told the gal at the bank that did our loan, "I will have this paid off in a year!  And I'll be sure to let you know when I do and you can celebrate with me."  When we decided to have another baby, I knew it would slow us down a little on the pay-off, but I'm happy to report that today, 14 months after we bought the car, we now own it debt free!  Wahoo!  

My boys have been coloring it in each time we paid on it, and they were good reminders that we needed to pay it faster.  It was also nice that we as parents could refer back to it when one of the boys wanted to do something that we felt deviated from our pay off plan.

I joked with the gal at the bank when I made the last payment that it should be like when you vote and as you put your ballot in the box, the ladies always say, "Telena Hall has voted!"  They need to announce, "Telena Hall has paid off her car!"

As I drove Tyler to preschool today in my paid for car, the beautiful Acadia that always passes me on my way there didn't look as appealing as usual.  I just thought to myself, "I'd rather drive a paid for mini-van than a big, beautiful Acadia with a car payment any day!"

It feels good.  We still have one more debt . . .a bit one-Dave's student loans.  That will be a happy day when I can announce that they have been wiped out, but that is still a few years down the road. 

Tyler's Birthday

Tyler turned 5 on Monday.  Five!  That seems hard to believe!  For his celebration, we decided to head out as a family and go roller skating.  Our boys have been wanting to go for a while now, but Dave and I knew that it would take more than just the two of us to make it a reality.  We figured that if we had to enlist the help of others anyway, we may as well make it a party for all that came.

I wish I could say that it was perfect and blissful.  In hindsight, it seems pretty funny.  But . . .

Just getting to the skating rink by 6:30pm with dinner done was a feat.  Before we even left the house, we had two plates of dinner meet the floor.  Once we got to the skating rink, Greyson wouldn't even stand up on his skates.  He was having a meltdown because he was so nervous about the lack of stability he felt.  Tyler was falling ALL over the place.  He was realizing quickly that this was not quite what he had imagined it would be.  I sent Dave out to the car to find the stroller (the skating rink allows you to push a child in a stroller and I thought that might work for Greyson) but it was not in the car.  Eventually, family showed up and I handed the baby off to my mom, my sis-in-law and I took Tyler on each side and worked with him.  Five minutes later, Dave flagged me down to to see if I had brought extra clothes for Greyson.  He had had an accident and was SOAKED!  No-I hadn't remembered extra clothes.  Dave left with Greyson to drive home and get him changed.  While he was gone, I noticed that Chad (who is 7 1/2 -seriously!) had wet himself too!  Whaaat!?!?  I called Dave and had him bring a change of clothes for Chad too.

Once Dave returned, we did finally get to the gifts and cake part of the evening.  Tyler had wanted a beach cake .  

 

 Of course, I forgot to bring candles too, so Dave had Tyler blow out the fire app on his phone.  (For what it's worth, we have since discovered that there is a birthday candle app available that will actually blow out when you blow into the microphone.)  I promise I did remember to bring some things. I actually thought I was doing pretty good to remember cake and ice cream, something to serve them with and on, gifts and socks for everyone.  Sigh. 

Tyler was not even sure what he wanted.  My parents got him a box of Legos, Dave's parents got him some play doh tools-both a hit with him.  We went with a snow cone maker and I can already see the multitude of snow cone sales he will be having this summer with it.  He even received a while sleeve of cone cups and two containers of flavoring syrup to go with it from my brother and his family.

I have recently started reading the book I Didn't Plan To Be A Witch by Linda Eyre.  I thought one of her statements was very fitting for our evening: "Let's realize that crisis plus time equals humor."  Yes, it is already a little funny now.

I sure love our Tyler.  He has the most contagious smile.  He loves to play- Candyland, Legos, school, you name it.   He enjoys building houses and tents with pillows, and he is known to ask often, "Mom, why in 'Lego' does it say 'leg'"?  or any number of variations of this phrase which usually have no answer.  He's pretty excited to start kindergarten, and I think a little disappointing that he doesn't get to start until the fall.  I think he thought that if you start at age 5, then he should be starting NOW. 

Happy Birthday Tyler!!!

Jenna's Blessing

Jenna's baby blessing was this last Sunday.  We had a wonderful time with both of our families being able to attend.  I know I have not posted in months and I have lots of things to catch up on, but I wanted to put up a few pictures of her special day.

This girl is such a sweetie!  She has sure brought a lot of joy to our home and her brothers adore her.  It has been so fun to see her personality stating to develop and she has started sharing her beautiful smile with us.  Here pretty soon, I'll try to get my life back together and I'll get a few Christmas pictures up. 

Jenna

I'm so happy to announce that Jenna Marie joined our family this week. She was born on Tuesday, Nov. 13th at 7:12 a.m.

She came without much of a fuss.  In fact, I can honestly say that I didn't feel any real pain with her delivery.  I don't know where I got the notion that I need to wait to get my epidural until I am in significant pain.  I have always waited until I cannot bear the pain on my own before I "give in" to getting my epidural.  This time, because it was in the middle of the night, the anethesist was only temporarily in house, and it was now or possibly miss it all together.  Good news-I should have done that with all my others.  It was glorious!  It kicked in before the pain really did.  I felt my contractions, but not pain.  I made quick progress and it took just 6 pushes to get her here.  We came home the next day and we are all doing well.

Her first visitors were her three big brothers and Dave's parents.  They generously gave of their time to come and help during her delivery.  My mom came about the same time and stayed much of the day to keep me company.  In times past, she has been the one helping with our other kiddos and has spent very little time at the hospital.  It was so fun to spend the day with her. 

 Greyson is one proud big brother.  He loves to "hold baby" and talk to her.  He has been very sweet with his new little sister.  I imagine he'll be very protective of her as she grows. 

My sister and her family also came up to meet Jenna.  Her daughter is the only other girl in our family so she is pretty excited to have another girl to play with.

So are we.  Our little family is growing.  Jenna already brings us so much joy and I can honestly say (now that I'm not pregnant anymore) that is was all worth it. 

Halloween

I always loved Halloween as a kid.  I loved that my dad always dressed up with us and took us door to door.  I loved our family tradition of making and decorating sugar cookies and carving pumpkins.  I've tried to carry on some of those traditions in our own family, and I hope for our boys that Halloween is something they look back on one day with fond memories.  

Now, as a parent, I find the day to be very chaotic and busy, but we still have fun. 

We grew our pumpkins in our garden this year.  Some years, we have success, other years, not so much.  We had two nice size ones this year, and one that grew giant!  Tyler claimed the huge one, and Chad did not even argue because at the time, it was still green and the others were already turned.  Of course, it turned by Halloween, but everyone seemed to remain happy their his choice of pumpkin.  

We mostly let the boys design their own Jack-O-Lantern's.  They clean them our and draw on the faces, and Dave and I do the carving. 

They were pretty proud of their finished result. 

Here are our three skeletons.  This year, I had wanted to make a skeleton shirt for Dave and I, and Tyler had already decided to be a skeleton.  Chad and Greyson wanted to be Woody (from Toy Story), but I never could get Greyson to put the Woody costume on.  So, I knew he would happily wear his skeleton pajamas, and all we had to do was convince Chad that we should ALL be a family of skeletons.  We found Chad's shirt and just used fabric paints to add bones to his arms and legs. Here is our finished outfits.  Nothing creative, as I have seen this all over blogs, but I still thought it was cute. 

And one last picture, of Chad sorting his candies.  This is one of my favorite memories as a kid.  When I finished trick-or-treating, I loved to dump my bag and sort my candies.  It was so fun to see Chad and Tyler do it on their own this year, and even Greyson followed suit with a little help. 

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween as well.  Our baby should be here in just one week!  Happy Day! 

Chad just finished up his first season of soccer.  And I can honestly say that it was enjoyable.  We were super excited when it came time to sign up, but when the schedule came out, Wow!  I was a little overwhelmed at the amount of time I was going to be spending at the soccer field.  Most of the boys on Chad's team have been playing for 4 or 5 years, and he was definitely at at disadvantage.  However, he had a wonderful coach and he made a lot of progress.  He understands the game now, and really did become more confident as the season progressed.  He even started to get in there and try to get the ball.  Most importantly, he had a lot of fun!  And we are already looking forward to next year. 

Chad with his "trophy".  He was pretty excited to have something to commemorate his season.  He did such a great job!