My favorite day :)

Today Ben and I celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. I love our marriage. I love my husband. I am blessed beyond understanding! He loves me, leads me and cherishes me. I am so thankful! I have so many fun memories from anniversaries in the past, and tomorrow my husband is taking me on a surprise date...more fun memories! Ben says he wants to be married for 99 more years, which would put us at approximately 131 years of age :) Today Ben gave me a 7 page hand written letter. I cried. Thank you my hub for taking the time to invest and grow in your relationship with me but more importatntly to grow in your relationship with Christ and leading me and our children toward Him. You are my bestest friend!!

36 weeks along!!!!!!

Actually, I'm 36 weeks and 5 days along. Every day counts at this point! This means less than 4 weeks to go in this pregnancy!! I am SO very ready to be done. I know, the real work begins on the day we meet this little one, but I'm ready to move from the "joys" :) of pregnancy to looking into her eyes, and yes, even feeding her in the middle of the night. We must admit that we are excited to be able to have one baby to care for instead of two at one time. We LOVE our twins, and I wouldn't trade a moment of their lives, but that sure was a lot of work, and often I feel like I never got to enjoy the infant stage due to pure exhaustion! I'm so glad we have so many pictures of them as infants as we so often were in such a fog just trying to get everyone fed, changed and sleeping. I'm so thankful that God blessed me with an amazing husband who endured every sleepless night with me! He is my fave :)

Kara, Luke and Ellie are so excited to meet their little sister, and I know she will be well loved and protected! The kids have had some practice with new babies at church, and they all understand that, and I quote, "we get to have one of THOSE at our house." :)

Autumn fun!

One of our favorite fall traditions is apple picking. Monday we went picking for the first time this season and had a blast! The kids are all old enough to enjoy it now, so it made for a fun family outing. We've already enjoyed our first homemade apple pie of the season too...much more of that to come!

Dreaming about spheres

In the morning when Kara wakes up she loves to tell me about her dreams, and I love to hear about them! The latest...

Kara: Mom, last night I just kept dreaming and dreaming about Kindergarten.

Me: That sounds fun. What kind of things did you dream about?

Kara: Oh, you know, spheres and cubes and stuff...

Me: giggling

Kara: ...and all about writing whatever letters I want to, whenever I want to, and getting my ears pierced! Oh, and my numbers too. I like to dream about numbers and the pictures that I color too!

Oh how I love my little ones. I am amazed at what they learn and how they communicate. I desire for them to always share their dreams and what they are thinking with me. I pray that she will still tell me about her dreams when she is 15 years old and 30 years old! Sometimes it is easy to get discouraged and just plain feel drained in the midst of these pre-school and toddler years, but time truly is flying by, and it's these little conversations that make me just adore being a mom. My kids are little people. Yes, to some this is obvious, but often I forget that when the day is filled with whining. They have souls and I am blessed to have the privilege of parenting these little souls. I look forward to our conversation tomorrow morning...I'm smiling just thinking about it!

Happy Birthday Aunt Mary!!

We love you Aunt Mary!!



Luke's solo :)

Sparkles...

Before (no ear sparkles)

and After (pink sparkles on the lobes)

If you look closely you can see beautiful pink sparkles on Kara and Kailyn's ears...what fun for two little girls! Kara's friend Kailyn turns 5 today! To celebrate we went and visited this weekend and one of the highlights was getting Kara and Kailyn's ears pierced. Kara loves her new pink sparkles and is taking very good care of her ears.

We love our friends and with the transitions that are coming up in our lives we are cherishing the time that we have to spend with them.

A few other highlights:

A stroll downtown

A visit to the library

The group picture, which is always fun :)

All made for a wonderful, friend-filled weekend!

Happy 5th Birthday Kailyn!!

The Dreaded Pantry...defeated!

I can not keep my pantry/mudroom/shoe room organized for the life of me! It drives me crazy! It is the first thing we see when we enter our house and it always makes me nuts. Today Kara asked if she could organize the shoes in the pantry. You have no idea what a service this is to a mom who can barely bend down to put on my own shoes, let alone organize and put away all of the shoes that clutter up our little pantry floor. She began and worked for over 20 minutes until she had them all paired up and removed from the floor so I could sweep it out and organize. What sweetness! She thought it was fun of course, because she is MUCH like her daddy (which I adore :) She loves projects and loves to organize and sort things. I told my little 4 year old how much it meant to me, and she just kind of stared at me blankly. When she is a 7 month along pregnant mom of three little ones, she will understand...and I will thank her again. So thankful for my little helper!