Little Natey Boy

I do like my little boy, I do like my little boy, I do like my little boy. This is what I have been telling myself the past few weeks- make that 3-4 weeks. My nice little boy had turned into a crazy man. He wanted to be held all the time- no swing, no toys, nothing but human arms. You also needed to be standing up. None of my other kids were like this so I am definitely not use to it. We chalked it up to teething- but who knows?!
This is the reason I haven't been blogging pictures of him or probably even mentioning him in my posts. Sorry Nate but it was everything I could do to not go crazy! He is getting a TON better and loves his toys again, and his sisters, and rolling around on the floor. He can cover quite the distance from rolling and scooting around. I can now see why people smile when they see that Nate has two older sisters they say 'Good luck! Boys sure are different.' He is definitely a mover.
He is almost 6 months old- the end of next week. He was long and average for weight when I took him in the end of last month. I think he is about 18 lbs now- Alyssa was 18 lbs when she was 1 year old. So he might be passing her up in the weight catagory pretty soon. We love him (especially when he is good) and have really enjoyed seeing him grow.

Bed Time

Bed time around here as gotten pretty lax since Phil has been home at night. The girls get either Phil or my undivided attention. They get books, stories, scratched backs- pretty much whatever they want if they will just go to bed. The girls are realizing this and we usually have them getting out of bed and either going into our room or now Alyssa comes down stairs. Last night they decided they wanted to have a little tea party while they were getting their books. They got in the bath a little early and I said they could have a cookie after. McKell set up this wonderful little scene for them to have cookies, drink tea (water) and get books read. Times are going to be changing when Phil starts his overnights in the ICU in October. They might as well live it up while they can.
McKell and Alyssa are loving stories from when we were little. They have heard all the stories I can think of- which weren't that many for some reason. Phil has tons of stories. The girls love them and I have overheard them telling their friends about when their dad was a little boy. So Alyssa, quite the little copier, tells us stories about when she was a little girl. It is hilarious!

That's Right!

McKell's school is too far away to walk and to close for buses so we do a car pool with two other kids in her class. It has worked out so very nice not to have to drive both ways each day. It has been fun to hear the conversations between the two girls and one boy when I take them. One of the moms told me about a conversation from this past week.
They were discussing how girls have long hair and boys have short hair and everyone agreed that this is how it is. Then Dallin says 'but there was one boy in my preschool who had long hair'
Madi 'I knew that'
Dallin 'How did you know that, you don't know that boy'
Madi 'Well you can't know everything, no one knows everything'
Dallin 'I know someone who knows everything'
McKell 'It's your mom! Right!'
Dallin (with a sigh) 'No way! Jesus'

Of course it was Dallin's mom who was driving that day and she of course was laughing. So I have been teaching McKell some things at home- that her Mom knows everything! So funny!!

Happy --------- to You!

I don't know if anyone in Phil's family actually looks at this blog cause they never comment but I thought I would write this anyway. When Phil and I got married (10 years ago tomorrow!) two of his older brothers were already married. These sister-in-law's birthdays are September 13th and 14th- funny huh. We laughed at the fact that my birthday wasn't next to theirs. Then Phil's younger brother got married and her birthday is September 12th! Crazy huh! I really didn't belong. But now all of his siblings are married and everyone else doesn't match up with these three. So anyway- Happy Birthday Mandy today- Julie tomorrow and Suzanne on Friday!
We got married on Julie's birthday- I didn't even know until our wedding day that it was her birthday. And Phil's parents anniversary is the 14th of September so Happy Anniversary Dean and Marsha- Hope you are having fun on your mission in New York.
So for our 10 year anniversary we are going on an amazing get away. In our dreams anyway. We both have such a busy day tomorrow that we won't even see each other until after 9 pm. We are planning on doing dinner Friday night.
What a difference a decade makes! We have gone through a lot in these first ten years and I would like to say that the next 10 will be a piece of cake, but I don't think that is the way things work. Phil is great, our kids are fun, we have a nice house, Phil is enjoying his job, we are healthy, and we have wonderful family and friends. We are truly blessed in all aspects of our lives!

Sea of Black and Gold

We live in the Iowa Hawkeye crazed town of Iowa City, I thought Milwaukee was bad with the Packers. A guy Phil works with invited us to his tailgating party yesterday and we went. I had never been by the stadium during game day so I didn't know the depth of the craze. We had to park at least a mile away 'cause Phil was too cheap to pay the cash to park on someones lawn (some were charging $25 for parking).
Anyway it was a nice walk because we were able to people watch.
Our tailgating party was prime- in the stadium parking lot(I heard someone say the high roller tailgaters). We had some yummy food and the girls played a little football.

Nate and I were just about the only ones in the millions of people who weren't wearing the correct colors. I am NOT exaggerating, I can't believe how many types of Iowa shirts there are. I will be shopping this week for some cute Iowa colored shirts for the fam(Phil already has one).
We all had a good time and it was really fun to experience a Hawkeye Game Day. Phil and I were wondering if we would enjoy the tailgating life- every home game they are there. I think we decided it would be fun to do it a few times a year but we are not dedicated enough for much more than that.

Time For Tea

McKell turned 5 on Friday! She was very excited about it and when we went to pick up her friends for car pool that morning she said to Dallin- 'Do you know who's birthday it is?' Dallin of course said 'it's yours' I'm sure she had been talking about it for the last week. When we got to school to drop them off McKell started singing "Happy Birthday to McKell" I hope she wasn't one of those super annoying kids that can't stop talking about it all day.
Well her party started after school- 3:30 pm. She had invited 15 of her friends and they were all suppose to dress for a tea party and bring a bear or doll. When they got here there was a feather boa for them and make-up to put on and they were able to put flowers on their straw hat. There were feathers everywhere on my floor as you can imagine.
We played some games and read the book Fancy Nancy and then went downstairs to our back yard deck. Phil and Ben had done an amazing job decorating it. They had their own china tea cups with pink lemonade in them to drink. To eat they had little sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries, mini blueberry muffins, fruit kabobs on fancy pink toothpicks and for dessert they had ice cream cone sundaes.
The girls all looked cute and they all looked like they had a blast. They thoroughly enjoyed the tea party and had chocolate all over their faces. McKell had so much fun with her friends and is very happy to finally be five! (Is this enough details- to those of you who wanted to know?)

McKell's own personal Hell

Some of our friends came down from Milwaukee to spend the weekend with us. It was so fun to hang out with them. Phil took a few days off while they were here and one of the days we went to City park in Iowa City. The park has some little rides you can pay to ride and a train that goes around the park. It was a lot of fun, the kids had a blast- everyone except for McKell. She was the oldest child- it was the day before she turned 5. As some of you may know she takes after her father and is very cautious about things. She was talked into going on these rides- mostly by me and she didn't like them at all. We were kinda afraid she was going to get sick but she said she wasn't sick just scared. It probably means I am a bad mom because these pictures make me laugh. The first one is her screaming and the second one is her just putting her head down and bearing it. The lady doing the ride gave us an extra long ride cause there wasn't anyone else there- poor McKell.