Birthday Week!

It is a busy, fun week here and before it gets too far away from me, I wanted to post how grateful I am for this year's birthday blessings. I had a fantastic day on Monday with highlights including:

--a 3.8. mile run (1/10 of a mile for every year of life so far!  The girls' idea!)
--birthday breakfast of oatmeal, fresh fruits, bacon, and coffee served with love by my gang
--a new Steelers shirt and lovely necklace
--a fun trip to the Milwaukee Domes with friends, including great pictures
--another day of wearing my new birthday shoes from my parents
--sushi lunch with my kiddos
--"Aunt Karianne's Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas" for dinner and a Wisconsin dessert of custard and Kringle.
--my sweet husband agreeing to watch the Mad Men finale with me (while assembling gifts for the next day's birthday!)
--kind, thoughtful, generous cards, messages, emails and gifts by mail and phone. I am so very blessed!  What a great stage of life to have a houseful of kids as well as my parents, sister, in-laws and friends old and new all a active part of it. I have a feeling that 38 is going to be full and fantastic.

(This technically wasn't on the day of my birthday but it is pretty much every day around here!  )

Christmas Program Shots

 The girls did a wonderful job singing and reciting the Christmas story at the Children-led Advent service this week. It was Delaney's first year for this and she did really well. Much better than these pictures would lead you to believe.

She was sweet and smiley until I asked for a group shot.  

This was the best she would do. 

We told her we would post these pictures just like this if she kept pouting. 

On nights like these, having a lot of girls in the house just wears a guy out.

Since we didn't get a shot of Everly that night (although she was there!) here's a recent one of her all dolled up.To keep things fair!

A few gems from this summer

I just found some fun pics from this past summer and Brinn's birthday. So fun to look back at them!

Nine Months Old!

 Oh, Everly. Oh, Grant. Such double trouble these days. It is really hard to keep them still enough for a Pooh picture, even when they both have colds.  Poor Grant's eyes even look sick today but nothing is keeping these two down. They are into everything and it is a lot of fun to watch them. They know exactly where the Cheerios are in the pantry and go right towards them. They HATE the baby gate and are vocal about that. If it is silent, that means that Grant discovered an open gate, and is headed toward the basement or to the fire place. He also uses as raspy "Monster Voice" loudly when he is excited and loves to grab his daddy from his high chair for a little "table wrestling". Everly has a huge range of sounds (today I heard "mamamama" in there!) and the prettiest smile ever. She has little tolerance for her brother's wrestling with her, so she just grabs his binky from his mouth. Game over. Her happy place is in the Ergo on my back and she spends at least an hour in it a day, just hanging out while I take care of laundry, dishes, etc. She giggles and coos whenever I get it out of the closet.

They both are still nursing really well, eating solid foods with a vengeance, and sleep pretty well for babies. Their ideal bedtime is 6:00 pm (conveniently located at the start of dinner for the rest of us) but they have been troopers about managing to be awake during basketball games, evening church and other activities lately. When they do go down for naps or bedtime, they collapse into bed (he is still swaddled!) and are often immediately asleep. It is hard work to being such adorable, silly, busy babies. Love you Ever-Lou and Boojy-Two (nicknames courtesy of big sisters)

Everly really looks like Brinnly did at this age in this shot

Grant Laughing with Grandpa

This is an oldie but goodie...Grant laughing (probably for the first time ever!) with his Grandpa on Father's Day. Grant already looks so much bigger now than he does in this video.