It's a Girl!!!

This past Monday we recieved highly anticipated news when we went for a scan to find out the gender of our baby. While Bailey and I along with many other friends and family were rooting for a girl, the boys in the family including Devin were hoping for another boy. So when the doctor said it's a girl there were mixed emotions among the crowd. We are all excited and happy to be having another healthy baby but the boys were only a little disappointed. Teagan, our most stubborn is the only one still holding out, believing there is a margin of error to the doctor's guess. Anyway, now we can start working on names and unpacking baby clothes, and sewing projects. Bailey is thrilled to be getting a sister and I'm happy it's even with 2 boys and 2 girls. Let's just hope the doctor's margin of error it very very small. ;-)

As for other news, we've been busy with the usual things like school and appointments. Just about every week in April and May has some appointment. By the end of this month we will have been to the dentist, the vet, the OB, and the optometrist at least 3 times each. I like the fact that since we homeschool we can have morning appointments when these place are typically less busy but it also interferes with the school schedule and leaves us missing more days than we should.

This month wraps up our extracurriculars like cub scouts and the boys' Bible study. I've been racking my brain trying to come up with something for them to do over the summer but they don't want to do anything I come up with. I may just have to pick for them.

We have several trips planned for the year. We are taking a long weekend over Memorial Day and headed up to Yosemite. We are staying in a cabin outside the park. I am not a Californian and haven't learned the art of booking campsites 6 months in advance! We've never been to Yosemite and are looking forward to a nice weekend spent mostly outdoors! Just not the 6 hour drive with a dog. :-) If anyone has tips or suggestions on what to see there please let me know!

In August we are planning a family reunion (on my side) in Breckenridge, Colorado. So far my sisters and their families, An Uncle and his family and possibly my Grandparents are planning to come. It will be a long drive especially while being 34 weeks pregnant by then. We are so looking forward to getting away though and seeing family. Some of which I haven't seen in years!

In October we plan to go back to England for Devin's graduation from University. He has really wanted to do this and we had to postpone going in March because we thought he would be deployed. So now we plan for October. We will be leaving our bigger kids with my parents and be bringing along a 1 month old. Not ideal but I'm going to support my husband and I'm proud of his accomplishment. We will finally be able to call him Dr.!

Well time to end this long ramble. I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately. I hope to get some recent ones put up here soon!

Cub Scouts Fun

The boys got to check out some of a police officer's gear when he came to a cub scout meeting. You'll see Austin in vest and helmet. Teagan is holding a gun.

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Random happenings

April already!

The months are going by quickly this year it seems. It's already April. It appears summer is just around the corner and while I'm longing for warm weather, I'm also overwhelmed with the amount of work needing to be done. Specifically school. Taking all of February off has put us a little behind and I've threatened my boys with no summer break unless they really buckle down. And thus so, it is spring break here this week and they do not get a break. They don't seem to mind though.

The month of a March went rather quickly. It was less rainy than last year but at least a little more interesting than our February was in terms of weather. In March we celebrated 2 birthdays. My two boys were born 2 years and 2 weeks apart. They turned 8 and 6. Being so close together makes it difficult for party planning. The boys had talked about having a party. We threw around some ideas. In the end with them each wanting different things and inviting certain friends it just wasn't going to work out. There were some other factors in the mix that just made having a party for them seem like we were rewarding them with something undeserved. I felt bad and my mother will never let me live this one down but their birthdays have passed and they haven't asked about it. We did celebrate just as a family by doing something special on their day and having dinner together and they opened gifts from grandparents.
I love my boys and they are growing up too fast. But they get harder to handle with each day it seems. I don't know what people mean when they say girls are more difficult than boys. I feel exactly the opposite!

I mentioned earlier we took all of February off of school. That was because I could barely handle being out of bed more than a few minutes at a time. We are expecting baby #4 and I was so sick that month! I'm feeling much better lately and have finally resumed normal household duties like cooking, cleaning and teaching school. Oh yes and trying to potty train my 3 year old. She seems very uninterested and just doesn't get it...still. So far the only thing that works is setting an hourly alarm. It feels so long ago that I potty trained the boys that I'm forgetting how I did this with them and wondering why it seems so difficult this time around?

So busy...

I want/need a vacation....

February is over!

Honestly, I've never been more happy to make it past this month. February has been pretty blah. Lots of sickness going around. Very little schoolwork got done. The weather has been fairly nice but for someone used to having seasons, 60 degrees and sunny everyday gets a little boring. We did spend a day at Disneyland. A morning at Santa Monica Pier. But there were only 2 highlights during the month of February.
#1 celebrating Bailey's 3rd birthday. How can she be 3 already? She had so much fun with friends and a bouncy castle she didn't want the day to end. She is our sweet and precious little girl!

#2 Leap day - which happend to be the day Devin was promoted to Lt. Col. His parents flew out for the ceremony. It was really nice and we enjoyed the day with friends and family. I am so proud of him! I hope to get more pictures posted but this will have to do for now.

A new pet.

Well, we did it. After a lot of begging from the kids we finally gave in. For the last 6 months we've spent many weekends visiting shelters, adoptions and doing internet searches. Despite Devin's love for bigger dogs (labs in particular) we knew in our current home a large dog just wasn't a good idea so we had been looking for something in more of a medium size. We had also preferred an older dog in hope of being housetrained and less hyper but were worried how a young to middle aged dog would be able to deal with our kids. You know the phrase "you can't teach an old dog new tricks"? When considering getting one from a shelter we don't really know their behavior or their past. It could be hard to retrain  over any aggressive behavior.We would have hated to pick something and have to return it to a shelter. So we decided puppy or very young dog was the best way to go. Last week I found an ad on Craigslist for the most adorable Mini Australian Shepherd. Based on it's size and knowledge that this breed is supposed to be good with kids, it didn't take much convincing to get Devin to drive the family up to Malibu to meet him. He was a Christmas gift to someone who was not going to be home enough to take care of him and so decided to sell him. So on January 2nd we became the new owners of this little guy we now call "Brumby". If you've seen the movie "Man from Snowy River" you've heard the term brumby which refers to the wild horses. We thought it fitting in reference to his breed and also that he can get a bit hyper. The kids just love him to pieces. We all do, though there are times I think I should never have given in.

Christmas 2011!

I'm a little late getting this post up but finally here are the pictures from Christmas! We had a great holiday season with fun activities, vacation from work and school and fantastic weather. It felt a little odd for someone from Colorado. Like we were celebrating Christmas in the middle of summer!

Our Tree!

Our house with lights!

Teagan made a gingerbread train.

Austin made a gingerbread sleigh with reindeer.

I actually made some Christmas cards this year!

We went to Disneyland to see the Christmas decorations! Here's the princess and her castle. :)

Small World ride all lit up!

    

Santa definitely made a stop at our house!

New Pajamas!

Teagan was very happy with his new Thomas movie!

Star Wars!

She loves Tinkerbell and Minnie Mouse!

Dollhouse and furniture from the grandparents!

TEN ON....THURSDAY

December 29, 2001

Today marks our 10th wedding anniversary and with that I thought I would try to list what we've done or where we've been for each of them! A lot has happened in 10 years so some anniversaries are a bit fuzzy and we can't quite remember them.

#1. Devin surprised me with an overnight trip to Cincinnati and a fancy dinner on a riverboat. 2002

#2. I was pregnant with Austin and we spent Christmas in Albuquerque with family and probably went out to dinner somewhere. 2003

#3. Don't really remember this one. :( 2004

#4. I was pregnant with Teagan at the time and we left Austin with my parents.We spent a night at the Hotel Monaco in Denver where we each got massages and went to a nice dinner at Willie G's Seafood. 2005

#5. We left the boys with my parents and went to downtown Colorado Springs and did one of those spa packages that included dinner and champagne, massages and pedicures. 2006

#6. Our little family of 4 spent a few days over our anniversary at in indoor waterpark in England and then visited Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon (the home of Shakespeare). 2007

#7. I was pregnant with Bailey and after Christmas our family drove to the Isle of Wight for our anniversary/New Year's. We spent a few nights at a holiday resort in a cabin where we could cook our own meals. We played games and went for walks. This one was very memorable because I had a terrible sinus infection and I discovered Austin had gotten headlice and we couldn't find a drugstore on the island that was open for the whole week. 2008

#8. This one is fuzzy too. But it's likely we had a babysitter and went to dinner. 2009

#9. Our first anniversary apart. Devin was finishing his thesis in England while we in the States with family for the holidays. 2010

#10. Our good friends/neighbors are babysitting all the kids so we can have a date night! 2011