Thursday, December 6, 2012

Family Photos!

Family pictures have arrived!!!! Here are a few of my favorites so far. There are many good ones to choose and I just randomly put some on here. They are great pictures, about 3-5 of each kiddo and 15 of siblings and/or family! We are super excited to have updated pictures, the last time we had our pictures taken it was when Jacob was barely walking! Our Christmas cards are going to rock this year...surely I'll actually get them addressed and sent out this time! :)
 
This is the best family picture. It's not perfect with real smiles but it's a keeper!

Mr. Cool!

This is a great one of Emily, she was a ham for pictures! And she would not let go of the leaves for the throw the leaves up in the air picture! 

 All 3 looking at the camera at the same time!

OK Emily, we get it that you're tired of listening to us say smile! 

Sweet, serene Megan chillin' on a log!

 Cuteness!

 Another family picture!

Emily and Mommy! 

Hug each other if you want ice cream! 

I like this action shot with the smiles! 

I love Megan's eyes in this picture. The exposure is a little off but I still love it! 

Megan's serious look! 

This is starting to be my favorite picture, it's cute with Megan looking right at the camera and the other two staring at her! 

 Action shot!

Awww! I also have one of them walking backwards but it loaded sideways for some reason!

I'd say the best picture of Michael and I since our wedding!

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Fun Times!

Emily is really showing us her individuality these days! She loves all things Jacob and Megan of course but all of a sudden she has an opinion and is letting us know! She is also little miss independent because she will all of a sudden decide she wants to play downstairs and she'll open the gate (if it's not latched...if it's latched insert yelling at the gate here), climb down the stairs and go play by herself. Each time she goes off to entertain herself we joke that's the 3rd child syndrome! The most exciting thing she's doing these days is talking! She has been repeating nearly everything we've been saying. On November 24th she said her first sentence "Night-night Dada " and since that day she's been jabbering and copying all kinds of words. It's super exciting since Megan and Jacob had/have speech issues and were a little behind. It's crazy to hear Emily talking the way she does, it's a first for us at this age!

Jacob is all boy all the time! He's a rough kid but we're working on that! Michael and Jacob were wrestling the day we put up our tree and somehow Jacob managed to jump directly on top of Michael's neck resulting in a loud scream (I'm surprised Jacob didn't fly across the room!), a trip to urgent care, and a week of medicine because they feared infection due to broken blood vessels. Poor Michael, when Megan was 3 she broke his tooth with a flashlight, now Jacob did this...he should be careful around Emily, she's next!  In other Jacob news, he loves school and I love having him in my building! He's a man of habit at school-they have to make him choose a different "job" once a week otherwise he is always the milk helper and at work time they put away the plastic tigers once a week so that he will play with something else! 

Megan is really growing up on us. Her reading is improving everyday and what I love most is her improved attitude for school. She continues to be motivated to learn and grow. She is crazy about animals as always but now she's more specific-she says she loves reptiles and amphibians! When she asked Santa for a leopard gecko Santa looked at me, I smiled, and he said we'll see what we can do but those are hard to come by! She wants one super bad and each time we talk she mentions getting a leopard gecko but now she's concerned since Santa wasn't too sure. I can't wait until Christmas morning when the thing she wants most is waiting for her under the tree!

Megan and I went downtown for the annual Christmas "Living Windows" and she was absolutely mesmerized by the artist and his huge painting. She sat there forever and then wanted to look inside at the art gallery. Megan's in the striped hoodie. The picture doesn't do it justice!  

Megan posing in front of an old fire engine.

My mom had the kids Sunday afternoon while we worked like crazy on cutting boards in the garage and finally finishing the swing set structure my dad got the kids...in July. The kids had a blast and worked as a team to make the gingerbread house! 

We went to the Runge Center to get our pictures taken with a new photographer, super good deal and I can't wait to see the pictures-I will post as soon as I get them! Before she arrived we looked around and saw all of these turkeys, the kids loved it!

Megan on the giant turtle! Her first real animal love is a turtle!

Jacob trying out the cool dune buggy...he would run someone over for sure if we ever owned this!

The kids enjoyed going to Bonkers (giant indoor playground) and Jacob of course enjoyed playing in the car. We never get a picture of Megan because she's off with some friend she meets each time but she was there and had a blast too! Jacob followed her around for a round or two but then got a little scared when she left him up to go off with a new friend!



Ah, our daredevil in action! She went down this slide over and over. Thank goodness she didn't go exploring the bigger playground or we'd never find her!

And this is the result of a big day! Ah, so sweet when they're sleeping!

Friday, November 23, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I posted these pictures while standing in line for over an hour at Dick's to get Michael's shoes for Christmas! What a crazy night of shopping, I had a blast and it was so great to go with my friend Nicole! I don't think I've ever shopped continuously for 13 hours ever before but it was worth it! 

Megan had her annual eye exam and the doctor told her she needs glasses. She is super excited about it so that's a plus! Here is a picture of the ones she picked out!

Jacob's exam is in January when the vision insurance kicks in (that's also when Megan's glasses will be ordered). Michael and I also had eye exams and we had it all planned out to switch the kids over and go home but we weren't expecting Megan's appointment to take so long! Jacob and Emily were troopers and I'm sure when we left the staff all had a sigh of relief! Jacob really wanted to try glasses on too so he had fun trying girl glasses on. He will most likely need glasses in January as well so we will be a glasses family soon!

Mom's boss gave her a giftcard to Applebees for doing a great job! Here is a picture from the night! It started out great but then after an hour and a half the kids lost it!

Thanksgiving was a nice relaxing day with lots of time to enjoy the kids! We got the Lego's out and all three had fun! Emily does a great job with the little lego's!

Ahhh, the calm before the storm picture! The good: Jacob had fun building random things with the Lego's. The bad: He didn't pick up the Lego's (I told him before he dumped them out he would have to put them away). The ugly: He refused to pick them up so his Lego's are permanently removed from the house and he's no longer able to play with Megan's Lego's. Hopefully he learned something from this but he didn't seem to care...

Megan didn't want to build on her own at first but after we refused to get involved she finally let her imagination go and she turned her beauty shop Lego set into a flying hotel!


My friend Nicole and her kids John and Allie came over for dinner and we planned our Black Friday shopping fun. The kids had a great time, especially John and Jacob because they had major boy wrestling fun, Jacob got a little beat up but loved every minute! I hope to add another picture of the kids all eating dinner together smiling from ear to ear! This picture was taken by Megan who swiped my phone, I didn't even know these pictures were on there until uploading to the blog!

Monday, November 19, 2012

Our little gymnast and random pictures!

Megan had her first showcase for gymnastics this weekend and had a blast. She was patient as it lasted over 2 hours! Here she is on the podium getting her award! She's hooked now more than ever!

Emily is quite the dare devil! She took a break from the slide and this is where we found her...she made it all the way to the top. Needless to say I was beyond nervous!

She made it...I hope she never wants to do that again :)

Jacob has been pretending to be a dog lately and here he is laying down with Shoney!

Emily is making a line with the letters! She is talking so much now it's amazing! It's so cute when she says baby, mama, more, bye-bye! She's also imitating everything these days. At church she was trying to sing which was sweet! She's also little miss independent wanting to do everything herself which is usually a good thing (except when she will not hold my hand to walk so then she gets picked up and screams like no other!)

Marathon Man!!!

Michael ran his first marathon on Saturday!! He has trained for 16 weeks straight without ever missing a workout! He did an amazing job and it was great to see all of his hard work pay off! His goal was to complete it under 4 hours 15 minutes and he accomplished that by doing 4 hours 7 minutes! We had a great time in Kansas City and couldn't have done it without my mom (who had Megan and Emily), Laura and Jon (who had Jacob), and my coworker Sarah (who had Shoney). Laura and Jon even made the trip with Jacob so they could see Michael finish!  I managed to chase Michael through Kansas City to finally catch up with him two times...I missed him by minutes two other times (I'm still a little miffed about that!). I personally learned a lot about being a spectator and will put it all to use when Michael runs his next marathon (possibly in April/May).

http://www.thenorthface.com/en_US/endurance-challenge/kansas-city-mo-road/results/?stop_mobi=yes


Here we are before the race!

I borrowed this image from the race website!

Another borrowed picture!

I managed to take this one myself! Michael wasn't supposed to be with the 4 hour pacers so I wasn't looking for him and I was distracted by 2 little boys running the half marathon that I almost missed Michael completely!

Wahoooo! He finished the race!!!

Here are his official times!

Jacob waiting for his daddy to finish!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Random Fun

Random pictures from the week so far!
Megan seems to think she likes Barbie's now...I hope it's not just a quickly passing fad with her!

She's the one in the blue doing her warm up stretches! She continues to enjoy gymnastics and we bit the bullet and signed both kids up for the next session. We weren't planning to sign Jacob up but he moved up a level so we felt we needed to go ahead and sign him up too...and they both love it of course!

Ahhh, the look on Shoney's face during our "Polite" Tea Party at school! The kids absolutely loved seeing her be dressed up and us be silly with a pretend tea party with Clifford and other friends!

Jacob is growing up way too fast! We had his parent-teacher conference and the teachers said he's doing great, he counts to 11 or 12, knows 5+ shapes, knows most colors but struggles with green (asking the doctor in January when he goes for his vision test because he is solid with all others besides green and brown!) In this picture he can wrote his name! 

At the pet store Megan was testing out the full grown gecko leopard! We are trying to get her interested in anything but a turtle! She loves the turtle but it requires so much that we'd rather not get into it!