Colorful

Due to our late snow many people around here lost their tulips and earlier flowers, but I'm happy to say ours are blooming and blossoming and beautiful.

Confirmation Sunday/Happy Birthday

We only had two jr. high confirmands in the class this year, but we also had two adult confirmands confirmed today. The really cool thing is that it was both Mark and Samantha's (one of the confirmands) birthday today. We knew it would be a busy day so the girls and I brought daddy his cake as 'breakfast in bed' (really healthy I know!) The candles were really cool and the flames lit up in the same color as the candle. I let the girls pick out some stuff for him, so his gifts were quite interesting...disappearing ink, doodle pen and a tenis game. He got his 'real' present early since he needed a new desk chair I hit a sale at Office Depot last month - and even let him have early since he needed somewhere to sit. We went to Austin Lake's confirmation dinner after church and then headed to Pierre after we all had a nice nap. Then to celebrate Mark's birthday we went to our favorite park and had a picnic and played for awhile. Then we hit Walmart before heading home. It was a very long day but a very happy one as well. We got all your messages (mark says thanks for the great singing girls!) sorry we didn't return calls, we got home late and are getting to bed!

Right before bath

The girls decided to dump all the animal crackers all over the floor so they also got to pick all the animal crackers back up and put them back in the container. At least they are pretty darn cute, even when they are making messes.

Gabie had a blast pushing the button for a song on the book and then clapping through it - over and over and over :0) again.

Whew...

We thought little Jojo was making an early appearance last night. Thankfully I just have an infection which will easily be cleared up with an antibiotic which was causing some early labor symptoms. Everything is still going well and jojo is doing great (but needs to stay in a couple more weeks!)

Time for Bed

Mark caught a picture of me giving Elie a kiss goodnight. You can see that Elie is in her own jammies again, only because Bridget was nice enough to do a 'we deperately need a few things' load for us. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the part is coming in tomorrow to make the dryer work.

Getting ready for baby....

Hi everyone, as we're gearing up to add a new little one we were putting together phone numbers - well as my cell phone's screen no longer works I have lost many phone numbers due to the fact that I can't see them! So rather than calling every random person (and not knowing who we're talking to) please make sure we have your phone number (e-mail allig4stripes@hotmail.com or comment on here) if you'd like a call when little Jojo greets us - otherwise just watch for updates here in a couple of weeks.

5 more minutes

Wow, this has been a great day!

Thank you to anyone that saw my update and said some extra prayers...Barb is doing much better - got rid of three stones today, we were so thankful to hear her voice sound strong again.

We also heard fun news that some camp friends had a little boy named Josiah (mark's a little bummed since that's his favorite boy name for little Jojo, but thrilled that everything was good for them).

We had a doctor apt yesterday for little Jojo and things are still good. I've done all my stage one labor (most of it without notice) so now we just are awaiting the strong contractions, that will hopefully hold off for a couple more weeks. According to my two due dates I am between 34 1/2 and 36 weeks so a couple more weeks should be enough either way.

Gabie had her well baby check today - and it's her 17 month birthday. This was a combined 15 and 18 month check as she was supposed to have shots somewhere between these months and needed her follow-up from her hospital stuff. I was really nervous to see her weight. I know she's eating, but sometimes that scale doesn't agree with me. The apt went well and we had some good news - she has gained weight! She was 21 pounds and 31 inches - wow! The only downer was that she has (of course!) ANOTHER ear infection. I think we have yet to go to an apt without one. Her tube is still in place and they did say that the tubes are not a 'cure-all' but I'm getting really frustrated. She's not to be on antibiotics so we discussed some options, the best one being just wait it out a week and see using tylenol for pain if needed. At least that explains why she's been up crying all night these past three nights after having a solid week of sleeping through the night. If in a week it's not better they will give her an antibiotic through a shot instead of oral, which will hopefully help somewhat, but we will still have to go back on two other medications to help prevent a re-escalation of what happened last month.

Finally, we have Eliya - when Mark went to get her up from her nap today for confirmation questioning/BBQ @ church she rolled over and said "just five more minutes!" Gabie's had a similar view so we grabbed the camera to show off their opinions of being woken before they were ready.

Caught!

I caught these three trying to figure out what mommy does at her 'bunco' nights :0)









A prayer request...for anyone that follows our blog you've probably seen pictures of Barb and Bryce from time to time. Barb was admitted on Monday to the hospital in Pierre with a kidney infection and kidney stone. I know she's in a lot of pain and has some tough decisions to make about what to do - options are limited this far into pregnancy and they can't do much for her pain for the same reasons. Please pray for her! Thanks.

That's Ridiculous!

Almost three year olds are just funny...
I always try to give Mark a 5-10 minute notice before lunch is ready on days we're all home. I either call or send Elie down to let him know. Today I told Elie to go downstairs and tell daddy lunch would be ready in 5 minutes. I even had her repeat it back to me and practice holding up 5 fingers. She promptly went downstairs and said (holding up 5 fingers) "Daddy, supper will be ready in 4 years!" Oh my goodness we're still laughing about that one. Later tonight we got out title quote out of her. Our dryer seems to have died, and unfortunately all of Elie's pajamas and most of mommy clothes that fit her right now were in the washing machine. So we decided Elie could wear one of our t-shirts for bed tonight. She was not at all thrilled with this idea and kept saying, "No, I don't wear your clothes I wear Elie clothes." Finally Mark got her to stand still long enough to slip a tshirt on and she looks down at it and rolls her eyes and said "this is just ridiculous!"

Evening Church

When I asked Elie what she wanted to do this evening I got the typical response of "play outside or play games". Well...outside would be my choice except that we are in severe thunderstorm watches/warnings and it's very wet and muddy out there. So I asked what she wanted to play. The response is always who she wants to play with "mommy, daddy, gabie" so I said that daddy couldn't play cause he had to leave for church in an hour. "I want to go to church too!" I considered the fact we haven't done the Saturday night thing for quite awhile, added to the fact that we probably won't for quite awhile with the new addition coming soon and agreed. So the girls got an early bath from daddy and dressed up in adorable dresses that great grandma had sent. They even behaved themselves quite well (especially compared to last weekend!)

The Three Musketeers!

Eliya, Hannah and Kirstie got to spend a few hours together today as we went to the park and then had lunch together. We had quite the crew as Bridget (Kirstie's mom) Barb and Bryce joined us as well. At least for today the kids only outnumbered us by one, but in another month Barb and I will each add another to the crew and we'll be outnumbered even after Hannah goes home (and I'm sure our lunch outings will decrease as a result!)

Slumber Party

Hannah Sundberg will be staying with us for a couple of days while her family does the funeral thing for a close friend. Eliya was happy to get to spend some time with her old friend again, too bad it couldn't be under happier circumstances for their family. I know many of you were wondering how the dr. apts for Jojo have been going - everything is going fine, and we're tentatively scheduled for an induction on the 15th provided everything looks good at that point. Let's hope this little one stays in that long!

Face Painting

Mark gave the girls some bread and butter for a bed-time snack. We found them sitting on the bottom step in our closet enjoying it.
Tomorrow we are having a circus in preschool so I decided I better practice the face painting (and make sure it comes off!) tonight. Elie was a willing model, telling me exactly what she wanted. (I hope it's not too hard to figure out)

A Sad Day

We are having a sad day today - when I took the girls to daycare this morning Krystie told us that they (our daycare lady's family) are moving to NE next month. We are bummed not only for the lack of daycare, but also for good friends leaving. Wish me luck finding daycare for three part-timers!

OUCH!!!

I'm not sure how well this picture shows this, but poor Gabie had another stressful day. She split her chin open and had to have it glued back shut. I have heard of this glue stuff, but none of us have been hurt for so long, we hadn't experienced it till today. Boy was I thankful - that was way less stressful then stitches would've been, considering just being in the doctor's office has her hysterical ever since her hospital stay. It took less then 10 minutes from the time we walked it to have it glued and a few butterfly tape things. Luckily she is a-okay - but this after the stairs incident and wiping out on the drive-way earlier this week. Poor kid! I guess she just takes after her mom's clutziness.

Mom made brownies for desert tonight which always cheers everybody up! So minus the stressful doctors visit, we had our happy girls back this evening.

Tiimmmbbbeeeerrr!

When we first moved here there were 8 Chinese boxsomething or other trees in front of the church and our house. Due to a storm with down-bursts, straight-line winds and some tornados back in the summer of '05, three of them came down in the storm and there was significant damage to the rest that has been slowly taken care of. As of now we are down to four, with one more to come down and lots taken off of the few that are left. We were hearing crashes against the house as some branches banged up against it coming down, so the girls amused themselves watching the chain-saw progress sitting in the entry way front windows.

Another Beautiful Day

Our Little Sailors

Today was a day that was inevitable, but still had my face bright red...Gabie was being a hand full in church so I took her out due to her volume. I told Elie to stay with Jacalyn (a nice lady from our church who sat with us). As I settled Gabie down in the narthex one of the ushers tapped my shoulder saying "um, Allison..." and pointed down the aisle of the church. There went Elie, straight for her dad, who was preaching out of the pulpit, so even easier to get to. It was too late to chase her down that way, so I went up the side-aisle and Mark had to help guide her over as I carried gabie (not to mention my pregnant bellie) and walked red-faced back out. Of course by the time communion rolled around they were both asleep (probably due to the fact that I would not allow either of them to do anything after that so they both just nodded off). Everyone was wondering what I did with my kids...no I didn't just take them home and leave them :0) they were sound asleep on the floor. Why is it cute or funny when it's someone else's kids, but when it's your own it's so humiliating?

The Circus

Mark had a hospital call in Aberdeen today and it just so happened that the circus was in town. So for all of us that had never been (mark, elie and gabie) and those of us that couldn't really remember it cause it's been so long (nana and allison) we decided it was time to check it out. We were so impressed! They had lions, tigers, monkeys, elephants, acrobats, jugglers, clowns, a motocycle ball and so much more! Elie even got to ride on one of the elephants! (they also gave her a tempoary tatoo to remember the occastion with) We had great seats and were right next to the doors the animals would come in so we got a great view of them all. We decided we need to make this a new tradition. It was hard to take pictures inside because the lighting wasn't quite bright enough to fore-go the flash, but the distance for the flash to travel didn't always work the best, but of course I still took tons, so here's a few for you to view of our exciting day.

Gabie loved the cotton candy!

Spring is finally in the air

We were able to finally get outside for a little bit today. The girls had all kinds of fun tooling around in the 'barbie car' South Dakota driving gets younger and younger. Next they were off to the races on their trikes.

At last Nana pulled up while we were still playing outside - and Gabie added a new word to her quickly growing vocabulary and called out "nana!" when she saw her. Nana's easter gift to the girl's was as much as a gift to mom and dad - an automatic bubble blower! Now we won't get quite so lightheaded during bubble time.

Can't Wait...

We only got her shirt off, but she was tired of waiting for us, so gabie climbed right in, socks and all. Can you tell how much they love their bath?

YUM!

Sharing ice cream before bed

COLD

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate cold weather? This week our preschool theme is 'spring' - so as I'm talking about all the things that grow and change in the spring I have my little kiddos saying "mrs. m - it's snowing outside!" I think Eliya takes after her mom, because she has just been having one of those days. Constantly bumping herself and falling down, and of course getting herself into trouble - like finding the candy stash and pushing her sister down the stairs (just the entryway stairs, and yes she's fine). But tonight she did prove herself to still be mommy's little helper as when I asked to throw all the dirty clothes down the laundry shoot she said 'ok' and did right away. Gabie has been her normal easy-going self, spending most of the evening playing with her favorite bear.