It's only been three months

Seriously, it's been three months since our last post and we've missed so much stuff. I'm sorry for this but we're going to do a quick catch up to Christmas. Here is some of it in reverse order.

First and foremost, Lily is walking...EVERYWHERE. We had her taking little steps here and there and using her little push toy, but then right before Christmas she decided to up and go. She officially walked before Christmas, but she wasn't a master walker until almost New Years. But now she is cruising everywhere and is having a ball playing tag and chase with the other kids. She's really grown up so fast.

There in late November and early December we got a lot of winter weather at our house, it started with snow and then turned to ice. Kids didn't care though, it was warm enough a couple of the days for them to sneak outside and get some quality winter fun in.



And this picture is on here just because it's so darn cute. I'll tell you what...she better never ride a horse topless when she's older. I'll be one unhappy daddy.

Last but not least here is one of the pics from our halloween excursion through the neighborhood. For the first time in years it wasn't freezing cold out there, it was somewhere around 50 degrees and it was nice to be able to let people actually see the kids costumes instead of heavy coats and gloves.

As usual the kids made out pretty good and we have lots of Halloween candy left.

She's an angel

This past weekend Lily was baptized and here are a few photos from the special day. Jenni and I chose Jenni's cousins Casey and Paul to be Lily's god-parents. Casey was able to come visit us over the weekend, but Paul had to participate from afar, he lives in Connecticut and couldn't make it back in time for the baptism. She was such a pretty baby in her little white dress.

The kids and their Great-Grandpa

While we were at the park Jenni's grandparents came and visited and here are some pictures of the kids with their great grandparents.

Wedding = mini-vacations

As with most people our age and with families our size we get to go to a lot of weddings and we had another opportunity this past weekend to head to Nebraska and celebrate. As the time got closer for the wedding we started looking for hotel rooms and the realization came to us that there weren't any rooms in Lincoln that weekend because of some big football game between the Tigers and the Corn-Flakes (or something like that). So Jenni came up with this idea that we'd take an extra day or two and stay in a cabin at Mahoney State Park, located just 25 miles from Lincoln. She had heard good things about the park and we gave it a shot. It turns out that all the good things she heard were true and it was a fantastic weekend. First off, the park has everything a water park (which was obviously closed, but looked fun), paddle boats, horse trails (and rental horses), lots of playgrounds, nature trails, and all the other great state park stuff. And it had a ton of lodging options, you could camp in a tent, camp in an RV, stay in the main lodge hotel, or rent a cabin. We went the cabin route it costs about the same amount as a hotel room and we had two bedrooms, a big bathroom, heat and a/c, and a kitchenette. It was great. They also have different kinds and sizes of cabins, all of them reasonably priced. I bet you can't pick the one we stayed in (hint-it wasn't that big).


We would highly recommend that any of you take a chance to visit Mahoney, especially if you are like us and have a couple of rambunctious kids and a low budget. The park is also close to Omaha so you can visit the zoo and the other museums around there. We really enjoyed the outside time and all the activities at the park and here are just a few pictures of our adventures.



I did say we went to a wedding as well and I'd like to say that it was also a nice event and I want to congratulate Neal and Lori, thanks for the invite.

Country kids aren't always farmers

Here's the back story...

For the last five years Jenni has wanted to plant a garden and for the last five years we've gotten to some point of starting, most years we bought seeds, one year we actually picked a spot for the garden, the next year I tilled the spot....and so on and so forth. So, this summer we decided to actually give it a go and wouldn't you know it it was the wettest summer ever. All the spring rain and our normal busy lives caused us to plant a little late, but we actually got the seeds in the ground so that's a big step for us. We planted cantaloupe, green beans, peas, carrots, corn, pumpkins, watermelon, and gourds and we watched them grow, flood, grow a little more, flood again, and grow a little more. It was pretty pathetic watching those little green bean and pea plants drown in all that marvelous rain. Needless to say we didn't have a whole lot of success with peas, green beans, corn, or watermelons. BUT WE CAN GROW GOURDS....HOLY SMOKES.

Our carrots were washed out about three hours after we planted them, we went to bed and it started raining and flooded the seeds and spread them throughout the entire garden. And we didn't do well with them either.

The cantaloupe turned out great we ate four or five and gave a couple away and we have big enough pumpkins to adorn the sidewalk for fall. It was definitely a learning experience and we'll probably try again sometime.

She's mobile

It has finally happened, Lily is mobile. For a couple of weeks she has been accidentally scooting and rolling all over the floor and about two weeks ago she finally did it...she started crawling. There is now nothing stopping her, she is everywhere and she's getting there quickly. I can't believe that she my baby is growing up this fast.

Kayla can hear again

Many of you probably don't know but Kayla gave us a little bit of stress over the past several months. During the last school year it was brought to our attention from her teacher that she was having difficulty hearing, we had noticed it at home as well, but we thought she was just ignoring us and causing us grief. We got her hearing tested and she failed four different tests and we found out that she had significant hearing loss in both ears because of an inner ear infection. The good news was that they said it was correctable with tubes. We scheduled her surgery for this summer and got it done at the end of July. She had tubes in both ears and her adenoids removed. It was pretty hard on us to take her in to have surgery at such a young age, but she was a super champ and went through all the motions like it was nothing. We were so proud of how she did and we had the follow up doctor's appointment and her hearing was perfect. Here is her picture in her hospital gown right before they took her off to the operating room...she's awful cute.