Easter Pictures

So after this third baby, I obviously have a lot less time on my hands.  I feel soooo behind on my blogging.  I don't even know where to start.  So here goes on trying to catch everyone up on our lives...

Easter! It was a beautiful day as we celebrated our Risen Lord!  The day before, we decorated Easter eggs and had a fun egg hunt at Egypt Valley.  Then Sunday morning we headed off to church and then to a yummy brunch with my parents and Peter and Rachel's fam.  After, we headed off to Nona and Papa's for the cousins Easter Egg Hunt where Keith and Lissa's fam joined us.  So a lot of hunts, but it was wonderful weekend!!

Decorating Eggs

Easter Morning Family Pic

Hunt at EV

Hunt at Nona and Papa's

The Cousins minus Charley and Stella (sleeping)

Charley just hanging out (she already looks so different)

Grant checking out his loot

Photo Shoot

Charley will be six weeks old on Friday...if you can believe it.  Time is flying by as usual.  She is doing pretty well, and sleeping about 6 straight hours at night.  I'm still working on getting her to go to bed before 10:30-11, but once she is down, she usually sleeps until 5 or 6.  I then put her back down until morning wake time at 7.  We have busy mornings and busy bedtimes, but we are adjusting.  Naps are on and off throughout the day and she sleeps a lot in her car seat, considering we do a lot of driving back and forth to get Grant from school.  She is starting to smile and coo and I just love it!  She is changing everyday and I can't wait to see the little person she will become.

When Charley was about 4 weeks old, my friend Renee took some awesome pictures of Charley.  

Here are a few of my favorites:

Charley ~ 2 weeks!

So we've made it two weeks!  Hooray.  I feel like Charley is still quite little, and I'm anxious to find out at her appointment this coming Tuesday if she has indeed grown.  She is quite the little angel and is still a sleepy newborn.  We are still not quite sure who she looks like yet...perhaps I'll actually have a child that looks like me!  I get glimpses of the other kids in her, but she definitely has a narrower shaped head and face.  Grant and Molly looked so much alike, so it definitely is hard to say.  She smiles in her sleep (I know they say its just gas, but I think its adorable).  She is becoming more alert and seems to gaze right into my eyes.  I'm trying to take in every moment of her infancy as I know that it will fly by.  She is sleeping better at night which is always a blessing.  She still gets up twice, but I don't mind our alone time together in the least bit!

Sisters

Big Brother Grant

Bright Eyed

Pretty in Pink

Mommy and Me

Daddy and his girls

Charlotte's Birth Story!

She has arrived! Charlotte "Charley" Grace was born on Friday, March 20th at 4:03 pm...five days early if you can believe it!  She weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces and measured 18 inches long.  She was my littlest one.  My water broke early in the morning at 4 am without contractions.  We got down to the hospital at about 5:30 am and not much was happening.  After about 5 hours of hoping for contractions to start, we had no such luck.  So I was induced at about 11, tried to be a hero with horrible petocin contractions for about two hours, and then nicely requested the epidural, which is wonderful, except for the fact that it makes my blood pressure go super low.  So I'm pretty much a zombie til pushing time.  We are so happy that she has finally decided to join our family.  We love her so much!  Praise God for a healthy and beautiful child.  We are so blessed!!

Night at the Museum

Thursday night, we took Grant and Molly to the Public Museum for a night out.  We are still trying to get through this winter!  The Public Museum had a family night that included dinner, entrance to the dinosaur exhibit and entire museum, a planetarium show, and unlimited carousel rides.  It was a lot of fun actually.  It was a little different than I expected...and a little scarier.  I was expecting dinosaur bones and instead they had robotic dinosaurs that roared and moved.  I was praying we weren't setting ourselves up for a night of nightmares.  The planetarium show was...interesting...but Grant loved it.  I'm hoping he didn't actually take in ALL the information, considering its not at all what we believe, but we just emphasized afterwards that God has created everything even if we don't know how or when.  So here are some pics of our little adventure.  

Carousel Rides!

Waiting in line for the planetarium show
 

One Big Belly! (36 Weeks)

Four weeks to go!  Today I'm 36 weeks pregnant and due one month from today!!!!  Yay!  And as you can see from the picture, I have one enormous belly.  I'm getting a lot of "wows" and "you look like you're gonna pop", oh and don't forget "are you sure it's just one in there?".  Why are people so dumb sometimes?  Do you really think that I want to hear these things?  Do you really think that I don't know how big my belly is that you need to comment on it? Anyways...things seem to be going well, and we've only had one minor bump in the road.  Monday I had my appointment and my blood pressure was quite high (which is very odd for me).  So in addition to that, I was also having some strange chest pains and headaches, and I have had high liver enzymes in the past.  So they sent me to OB triage to get checked for Preeclampsia.  Thankfully, all the tests came back normal and they sent me home.  Not sure I was quite ready to give birth that day, but I wouldn't have complained about being done being pregnant.  Too bad I didn't get another ultrasound to confirm this baby is actually a girl.  I guess I should start getting ready for the arrival of this little one!

The Junior Gunners

Grant recently finished up his second year playing indoor soccer.  We were encouraged to see some big improvements this year, and we found that we have quite a little goal scorer on our hands.  Actually, we were just grateful that he didn't sneak over to the video game area 10 times per game like he did last year.  Matt had a lot of fun coaching and reliving the glory days through Grant.  Matt also decided to rename the team after the MVP Sports Spot stuck us with the team name "Lions".  He switched it to his favorite team, The Gunners (Arsenal) for obvious reasons.  Here are some action pics from his last game.

The team pic

Taking it to goal...

He scores!!!!

18 Months

Molly is 18 months old now!  Crazy how time is going by so fast.  We had her check up today and she is doing great.  Not a whole lot has changed, but here's a few fun facts:

• 33 3/4 inches tall (95%) - Very tall for our little family!
• 23 pounds 6 ounces (35%)
• 12 Teeth
• Starting to repeat words more clearly and says about 15-20 on her own.
• Going through the "NO!" phase...with quite an attitude I might add.  We've started 1 minute timeouts for disobedience and amazingly...she'll stay.  
• Taking about a two nap in the afternoon.  She doesn't get to bed as well, but goes right to sleep (usually) when I leave the room...it's just getting her there that can be a struggle (at least for me.  Matt seems to have more of a magic touch with her).
• She is definitely a daddy's girl and will choose him over me if he is around
• Likes to copy her brother (not sure this is a good thing).
• Still loves to read books and babbles as if she is actually reading them
• Sings to ABC song...more like A-E-A-E-A-I-Ooh (very cute).
• Loves to say..."Knock Knock" then I say "Who's there?" and she says "Dada" and I say "Dada Who?" and then she laughs.  For some reason this is very funny.
• Starting to put up a fight to get out the door.  For some reason this is a huge issue for my children.  Getting shoes and coats on seems to be the end of the world!
• She doesn't like me to carry her around as much, which is a good thing, and would much prefer to walk on her own.  
• She knows about five animal sounds and does well pointing out her body parts.
• Definitely becoming a picky eater.
• I feel like I'm losing my baby girl.  I can't seem to get close enough to her with this big belly and she is growing up so fast.  Soon she won't be the baby anymore and will enter middle child ranking...something Matt and I both know a lot about.
  

House for Sale...again.

Well the house is up for sale...again.  We had it on the market last year from about March through August.  After we found out that I was pregnant and Matt got a new job, we thought we should step back for a little while.  And we did.  But now we have the itch again.  I don't believe the market is any better than it was last year, and maybe even worse.  But we're just trying it out.  We had our first showing yesterday.  We are not sure where we are going to go if it does sell, but we know we'd like to try it out again.  We did have an offer last year, but were a little displeased with it and were slow to respond...and missed our opportunity.  So hopefully we've learned a little from last time.  We love our house and would be sad to move, but just feel like we're growing a little too much, along with my belly.  Yes, perhaps this is the worst time to try to move, being about 6 weeks from my due date, but I figured that maybe that will make it happen quicker because isn't that usually how it goes?  

Single Digits

So I have passed the 30 week mark...in fact I've passed the 31 week mark, which puts me in the single digits for how many weeks I have left!  Yay!  Even though it was only yesterday that I turned 31 weeks pregnant (9 weeks left) I still tend to jump ahead and say 8 1/2 weeks left.  It doesn't make any sense but it makes me feel better.  I've posted a picture of the belly below, which is growing everyday.  The baby is moving a ton, and I'm convinced that it is sideways in there.  I can't believe that in about two months the baby will be here...or wait yes I can believe it...because I feel like I've been pregnant FOREVER!  I still have tons to do, so I'm sure its a good thing that we're not quite there just yet, but I will say that I'm getting so curious to see what this little girl looks like (if it is in fact a girl...not buying it just yet).  Three kids?!  Whew.  I'm already tired.  My weekly baby center updates tell me that the baby measures over 16 inches long and weighs about 3.3 pounds and is about to head into a growth spurt.  Goody!  Grant was 7 pounds 12 ounces, Molly was 8 pounds 3 ounces, so I can only imagine this one will be even bigger.  Whatever the size, I'm praying for a healthy baby and a smooth delivery.  God is good!

A Day at the Beach...

This past Friday, my mom, sister and I headed up to the lake house for some quality girl time.  During these winter months, I need to get out of the house for a little break.  It was a beautiful day up in Muskegon and the lake is just gorgeous in the winter with the ice mounds and awesome sky.  We had a nice little dinner and movie night.  We had a relaxing time just hanging out and talking.  I had to head home a little earlier than expected the next day though, because our beautiful day turned into a major winter storm warning with high winds and drifting snow.  I wasn't sure that I wanted to be snowed in for the rest of the weekend, so homeward we went.   

Sledding!

The other day, we decided to trek our way out to Cascade Township Park to do some sledding.  It wasn't too cold of a day so we thought we'd try it out.  Grant had a great time going down the hills all by himself and only got taken out once coming back up.  I suppose he'll learn eventually to walk up the side of the hill instead of the right up the middle.  Molly was not too sure about the whole thing though.  When Matt took her down the hill, she said "done, done" the whole way down, and wouldn't really get back in a sled after that.  So perhaps she's still a bit too young...maybe next year.

 

Glasses

Recently, at Grant's five year check-up, we learned that Grant had less than perfect eyesight.  Apparantly, he actually has somewhat of a lazy eye.  There is some big name for it that my dad can explain to you, but from my understanding, it pretty much means that the eyes are not focusing at the same rate or degree...or something.  So Grant was prescribed glasses.  Hopefully the glasses will help the eyes learn to focus the same and this will be a short term thing, perhaps just a couple of years.  I believe the glasses are to help the eye that is kind of a lazy bum to start working a little bit harder.  We've never noticed anything that would lead us to this conclusion, so hopefully we are not too late and this can be corrected.  I guess if you hit seven, its too late.  The only thing I ever saw was him crossing his eyes a lot as an infant, and I thought (or was told by his pediatrician) that that was normal.  Apparantly not.  So here he is, my little man with glasses.  Be sure to tell him how handsome he looks the next time you see him!