Busy, Busy!

Hello all, I cannot believe I have not blogged in like over two weeks. I am so busy during the day and at night my energy is zapped. We have been keeping busy on he weekends also. Last weekend we went to sunflower farms with the girls and cousin Tavish. We also went with Grandmom, Aunt Jan, Uncle Brian and Jan's sister Julie and her 3 kids. We had a lot of fun, petting the animals. swinging on the enormous tree swings & playing in the tree house. It was a great place for kids, if you have never been you should definitely take the kids. The weekend before that we went to chuck e. cheese and had a family dinner with Tavish and his folks at grandmom's house.



Abby still loves preschool and cannot wait to go, she has a new best friend at school named Chloe. Chloe's mom works with Michele so we set up a play date and Abby had Chloe over for dinner and play last night. Brianna is so very two these days that I am ready to send her to the moon. She pretends as if she doesn't hear me, has gotten very sassy and is back to crying at the drop of a pin, which I thought she was getting past. She is not yet much of a fit thrower like Abby was, but I should probably knock on wood, because I am sure that day is coming.

Fall is finally here and the holidays are not far off now. This is my favorite time of year, especially now that I am a mommy. I waited my whole life to have a little one to do Halloween with and Christmas morning with. She will really grasp Christmas morning this year, and she is already telling everyone she is gonna be a baby chicken for Halloween, " cheep, cheep". Abby has really figured out the whole Santa thing, she is aleady creating a mental list of gifts Santa will be bringing her...LOL...

Well, I will try to stay on top of this blog thing better. Michele had masters classes this weekend so we didn't do any big fun things , that gave me a little time to update. I will try to steal these moments more often.

Spaghetti Night!!!

Wow, do these girls LOVE their spaghetti, but they wear as much as they eat. Especially Miss Brianna. Just look at her, sucking down those noodles like she has never seen food before. She had two helpings plus garlic bread. This is a child I usually have to bribe to get her to eat much dinner, but not on spaghetti night. She thought she was pretty cute getting her picture taken at dinner time to. Abby is a little messy, but she has mastered holding her head over the bowl most of the time. Neither girl will let us cut up the noodles, because they like to suck it down like the Lady and the Tramp.


Then it was clean-up time, forget trying to clean them up with an ordinary washcloth. This job calls for a total hosing off. One at a time, in the sink. They both find this horribly amusing also! Anyway I just felt these adorable pictures must be shared. And let it be a warning to all of you, not to invite us over for spaghetti dinner.:)

Highlands Ranch Cowboy Days

Hello all, as you saw yesterday we went to Highlands Ranch Cowboy days. For those of you who do not know, Highlands Ranch is a city in our state. There is a Mansion there that is now called Highlands Ranch Mansion. It was built around 1900 and has a rich history. One of the bedrooms called the Julia room is thought to be haunted by one of the former owners daughters. There was also a murder scandal that surrounded around it's mistress in the early 1900's when one of her lovers killed another lover. Then her husband threw her out of the mansion. The mansion she was kicked out of by the way was called Castle Isabel which was her name. In the mid 1900's it was converted to a dairy and cattle ranch. Now it is only used as a place for tours and things like yesterday. It is very pretty and inspired Abby to want to get married. I think it was the Ball Room that did it, after we were in it, she said people get married there and kept telling us she wanted to get married to a boy...LOL... I think the ball Room reminded her of her Cinderella movies. Brianna liked all of the animals, as did Abby until she got her hand accidentally nipped feeding carrots to a pony. We had fun and it was a beautiful day for it. We went with Papa bear, and the girls love to spend time with him. Well, I hope everyone has a great week.

Blog Slacker!

I have not blogged in over a week, in fact almost two weeks, By the time I get around to being able to sit down and gather a thought, all I want to do is go to bed. Things in daycare are getting confusing now. I have Abby in pre-school on Mon./Wed., Cooper on Tues./Thurs, William gets here on Mon. after preschool on a school bus, Tavish is now only 2 days a week, but we are not sure if it is Mon./Thurs. or Tues./Thurs.Trying to remember who goes where when and who is coming back at what time is very new to me. They did all arrive and leave at pretty much the same time up til now.It adds a new level of hectic to my day, I am sure it will get better, once I remember who is going where. I am not complaining, I wouldn't change a thing, and I know it will only become more crazy when the kids head off to "real" school and I am managing all of this, plus school work, activities, volunteering at school, more play dates and whatever else comes at me. Being an at home mom is one thing, but adding other peoples kids and trying to keep the house as clean as a business(because technically it is) just makes it a little harder to keep up on. If it were just my kiddos, I could dress them and feed them when I got to it and if the dished sat in the sink or the toys weren't picked up the only one who would care is me. As I said, not complaining, but I get distracted and either forget to blog, or I am wanting to sleep, over blogging.

Tomorrow Michele and I are taking the girls, along with Papa Bear& maybe Grandmom, Tavish and Aunt Jan to highlands Ranch Cowboy Days. It should be fun, with a petting zoo, and ponies and Native American dancers. It is only suppose to be in the low to mid 70's tomorrow, which for me is ideal outdoor activity weather.

I am sooooo excited the days seem to be cooling off a little earlier this year. you all know me, I have already put out a few fall decorations, a couple cute little pumpkins and scarecrows. No Halloween yet, I am not that over zealous.

Brianna, is really feeling her two's these days, she is so funny though, because she is just to sweet to push it to far, she hates being in trouble and always ends up apologizing to me and kissing and hugging like crazy.

I decided the other day, that Brianna is starting to get old enough to meet her baby brother who was placed with a different family last October. If you remember, I tried to get him, but his birth mom fled 5 hours out of our county, so they had to place him there. Well, I contacted family services there a couple of days ago, and guess what. Birth mom got the baby back about a month ago. That means poor Brianna is unlikely to know him, at least until she is an adult, unless he is removed again and we are notified. Ordway is such a small town and Crowley is such a small county, that they only have 2 social workers and one judge. I do not know if they were more lenient with birth mom or if she did a complete 180 for the baby, but she never did anything when it was Brianna. I am surprised she could make such a turn around. I hope she really has, for the baby's sake, and for hers also I suppose. I know Brianna will someday ask about her, and probably want to go find her, I would prefer it if she has gotten her life together and it can be a positive experience for Brianna, as opposed to a disappointing one. I was just really hoping for the kids to have that connection of knowing eachother, it would have been so good for Brianna, but that is part of why I waited, i wanted to be sure before I mentioned him to her. Now I will wait until she is old enough. I a going to try and see if I can get a picture or two for Brianna of the baby though.

Well it is now almost 12:30 am and I need to get up reasonably early for tis thing tomorrow. We will take pics and I will post about our day later.

Crazy Weekend!

Well, it has been a crazy weekend here at our house. We have two extra kids, the Crise kids. Katherine can be a big help when she wants to be, but she likes to get under her little brothers skin, and William, well, lol... He is definitely a 4 year old boy. Katherine has had a little trouble with scaring herself at night, so both nights she ended up sleeping in my bed with me. I do not sleep well with other people in my bed, so needless to say I am a little sleepy after two nights of that. But I love those kids and I love having them around.

We went shopping for some fall clothes this weekend. We got some pretty good deals. Old Navy had $7.00 kids jeans and GAP had their jeans buy one get one half off. They will obviously need more before the fall shopping is done, but we made a good dent.

We spoke to the adoption case worker Renee Teague at Adams county and told her that Michele is ready whenever they have a match. She is leaning towards wanting a boy, just because it would be so different from Annabelle and maybe would bring up less of those feelings, but she told Renee she would not turn down a girl if the situation were perfect, like if she were abandoned or relinquished. I pray it works out better this go round. If Michele loses another baby, I am almost certain she would not give it another try.

We saw our new neighbors yesterday. It appears that it is a single mom with three kids a teenage girl in 11th grade, a fourth grade girl and a three year old boy. They seem very nice and fairly sociable so far. Well that is all for now. Talk to you all later!

Ear infection, neighbors & a big preschooler

Well, sure enough, Her left ear drum was ruptured. She is on oral and topical drop antibiotics now. Poor thing, no wonder she kept me up all night. She already seems to feel 10 fold better. I just hope this is not the beginning of another rough year of ear infections. I assume if it is we will end up getting her tubes replaced. And now she is older, and I think it would be a little more tramatic. We go back in 2 weeks to recheck them. This morning when I put her drops in, I saw something sticking out of her ear. She has a lot of gunk in her ears from the rupture, so at first I thought it was part of that. But then I realized it looked hard, so I got it out and it was the tube they put in her ear over a year ago. They are suppose to eventually fall out, but all of the fluid coming out must have pushed it out. It was so much tinier than I expected it to be, and shaped kind of strange also. The doctor said her ear was to full yesterday to say weather or not it was still in the left ear, but she could still see he right tube was there. Well now I can say for certain that the left one is no longer there.

We got new next door neighbors this past weekend. We haven't met them, but I sure hope they are nice. And I hope they do something about that sorry excuse of a backyard. It makes ours look bad with the low fences.
But mostly I just hope they are nice and friendly.

Abby started preschool yesterday, Michele said she enjoyed it and was not shy about it at all, for more on that and more pictures of her there, check out Michele's blog. Well that is about all for now. I have a full sink of dishes calling my name.

Love you all!

Blog is rolling & here is my first real post!

So here it is! I am soooo excited. I think it looks so cute. If you all noticed, there are links to other family blogs attached to pictures. If you click on the pic. it will take you to those blogs.

I'm taking Princess Brianna to the doctor this afternoon. She had me up at 12:30am and kept me that way until my alarm went off this morning. She has a low temp. and is complaining about her left ear. We have not had an ear infection in over a year, and this is only the second one since she had tubes put in back in may 07'.

Michele and I are adjusting to not having Annabelle (Charlotte) around anymore. It helps me a lot to be able to look at her blog and see what she is doing. Michele has been in e-mail contact with her new mommy Salina almost everyday since she left. I think it worked out as well as can be expected, she wants us to remain in Annabelle's life and that helps our loss a great deal.

Abby goes to preschool open house today. She will be meeting her new teacher and gets to see her classroom. Brianna is jealous. She seems to think she is going also. We keep telling her she has to be 3 first, but I am not to sure she cares much for the rules and regs aspect of it.

Well that about wraps it up for now, I hope you all enjoy the blog!