10.20.2013

Starting Fresh

So….since I’m super behind on blogging from the summer I’m just going to do a little recap here and then start fresh from now on.  And, hopefully I can keep up better from here on out.  Smile  No promises, but we can hope. 

I am 20 weeks now and I can finally say I am usually feeling better and somewhat back to normal.  Around 18 weeks I started feeling pretty good most of the time and have only thrown up once or twice since then.  For awhile there I was throwing up multiple times a day.  I am also able to eat a little more normally now, but still can’t eat great.  I didn’t gain any weight last month, but I’m guessing I will go up quite a bit this month because my belly is definitely looking like it has a baby in it now!  I feel huge already and I know I have a long way to go!

On to the summer recap! 

May – We started off the summer by going to Ohio for 7 days for Paul’s brother’s (Mike & Mary Kate) wedding!  We stayed in a hotel for 7 straight nights and I can honestly say it went extremely well!  I was pretty nervous before we left for how it would go with the kids being on a crazy schedule and living out of a hotel room for that long, but it worked out great.  And, of course we had a blast spending every day with Isaac, Luke, & Grace.  The wedding was beautiful (Brynlee did great as flower girl!!) and all of the other ‘vacationy’ activities we did were great and very fun for all of the different age groups.  I was nervous for how the vacation part would go with traveling everywhere with such a large group (we typically had 15 or more people in our group), but everything we did was great!  We went to the Cleveland Zoo, an Indians baseball game (some people went to more than 1), took a ferry boat to an island (close to Canada!) and explored the island on golf carts!, hung out with Mary Kate’s family, swam in the hotel pool, ate out a lot, and had lots of family bonding!

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In June the kids and I did a lot of enjoying our summer!  We spent our days at the pool/water parks, summer movies at the movie theatre, story time at the library, dinosaur museum, strategic air and space museum, children’s museum, the zoo, going on walks/runs, and just enjoying being able to sleep in and hang out! We also had a garage sale in June, which took up a big chunk of time and work, but it was well worth it, made a lot of money and got rid of a lot of stuff.  It was a really great month!  Oh, and we found out we were expecting baby #3 at the end of June!  I pretty much took a pregnancy test every day for 10 days, just to watch the line get darker and make sure.  Yeah, Paul and my sister both made fun of me every single day.  Smile

In July we started off the month by going on a family vacation to Kansas City!  Last year we went for 1 night and it was super fun, so this summer we decided to spend 3 nights there and do a lot of ‘kid’ activities that we haven’t done before.  Grady was beyond excited.  We ate at the Dinosaur restaurant at Legends, went to 3 Royals games (Well, Brynlee and I only went to 2 and we got to go back to Legends and shop for the afternoon!!  BUT, that also happens to be the game that Grady got picked to be the ‘Play Ball’ kid at the Royals game!), went to the Zoo (awesome!), ate at Fritz’s train restaurant (which we had done last year and loved), went to see Despicable Me 2 the day it came out, which we had waited to come out and were excited about for months!, went to a Curious George exhibit, went to Science City (super great for families with kids!! highly recommend), ate at lots of great restaurants, and went to a 4th of July fireworks show in a nearby park close to our hotel.  We also loved our hotel (Hyatt Place in Overland Park), was perfect for what our family needed and super nice.  Grady asks all of the time when we can go back for our next vacation.  And, him and Brynlee like to play ‘hotel’ and pretend they are back there! 

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The rest of July is kind of a blur.  I started feeling sick from the pregnancy around 6 weeks, which was about a week after Kansas City.  Grady went to bible school (which he loved!) and I helped with it, so that was fun, but would have been much more fun if I would have felt better.  Brynlee got her first hair cut also in July.  Other than that we mostly just tried to survive each day while I laid on the couch being sick.  Poor kids!  I hate thinking back to how our summer fun ended at that point, but I am so glad that those days of feeling that sick are over.  Luckily they could survive on Lunchables and Kid Cuisines that I could throw quickly on the table and then go back and lay down.  So sad. 

In August Grady showed a cow at the Cuming County Fair again, so that was fun and a big hit with Grady!  He won 2 ribbons, reserve grand champion for the open class dairy show!  We also had a fun trip to Omaha one night to meet Andy & Cassie and family at the Amazing Pizza Machine, which was another huge hit with Grady. 

Grady started preschool at my school (North American Martyrs) which has been great!  He loves it and is already so much more talkative and relaxed than he was last year.  He loves his teacher and loves going every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday afternoon.  During the mornings he goes to an in home daycare down the street from my school (Angie), who he also loves!  On Tuesdays & Thursdays he goes to Kellan’s with Brynlee.  Brynlee goes there every day.  She loves it too and has started doing preschool 3 days a week there, which is really fun for the kids!  It’s hard to believe we are already thinking about getting her signed up for preschool next year and decided where it will work for her to go. 

I am doing a combo K-1 class this year, which took a lot of adjusting to (while being super sick every day) in the beginning, but now we are settled into a really nice routine.  I love my class!  We picked the ones we knew could handle being in the combo so it is great to have no behavior problems and higher level thinkers.  I have a couple kindergartners who are reading at probably a 3rd grade level.  And a couple first graders who are probably at a 5th or 6th grade level, so that is so fun! 

We are in a great routine with being back in the school/daycare/preschool routine.  It’s so nice to have Grady go to bed easily because he is so exhausted from his busy days.  Definitely a change from the past 4 years of his life!  Winking smile  And, now that I am feeling better we have ventured out of the house a few times in the past couple of weeks!  Hurray!  I will hopefully post some pics of that fun!  We have been to 2 different pumpkin patches in the past couple of weekends.  Grady did a 1 mile pumpkin run yesterday morning (with Paul).  And, we went to the Husker volleyball game last night! I think we left the house more this weekend than we did in the last 14 weeks.  haha!

Whew!  I think that is enough rambling for now!  At least I can feel like now I am ready to start blogging fresh from here on out instead of not knowing where to even begin from where I left off! 

10.08.2013

Cousin love

























Wedding fun









Our new niece and cousin!



We got to to visit little Evelyn Jean, our new niece and cousin! She is Andy and Cassie's fourth! Grady loved her so much and was so excited to hold her and talk about our new baby coming! Brynlee did not want anything to do with her. She wanted to watch what was going on with her, but didn't want to hold her or be next to her. I think she was mostly shy about everyone watching her. And I think she was a little scared about Cassie being in the hospital bed and hooked up to things. 

We 





 






Story time with Great Grandma Marlene