Barbeque

We went over to a coworker's of Dave's for a barbeque tonight for a farewell for another coworker. We had a fun time. There were lots of other kids for ours to play with.
Greta made strange when she was being held tonight, twice! She looked at the person holding her and her lip started trembling and she started to scream. I thought she was too young to be doing this already, as I don't remember the other two doing it until they were closer to 9 months or so.. but I guess each one is different... and Dave's coworkers are scary ;)

Haircut

Not sure if it was the post-maternity hormones or the length of my hair, but I seemed to be shedding a lot lately. It was starting to drive me nuts.
So, I decided to get it chopped off!
I had about 6 inches cut off tonight. I like it so far, but we'll see what it looks like once I actually wash and style it tomorrow. (never looks the same when I do it myself). I also have a few shorter pieces in the front, so we'll see if they drive me crazy by being in my eyes too much.

4 months

Greta had her 4 month baby well-check appointment today. She is a giggly, happy baby!
She weighed 12 lbs, 6 ozs.
She had to have 4 shots :(
She was happy happy until they stuck her with the first shot then she screamed and screamed until we left. Poor thing.

Insane Webkinz extravaganza

The Toy Zone in town had their Webkinz extravaganza today. If you spent $10 on anything in the store, you got a free Webkinz. Maria just got invited to 2 birthday parties, so we needed to get gifts anyway, so we figured it would be a good time to do so and get the freebies. It was crazy! We got into the store and picked out gifts in about 10 minutes. The next 90 minutes were spent in the checkout line!!! I can't believe we did it, but once I was in line for 20 minutes, I felt committed and didn't realize it would be that much longer... Looking back, we would NOT do it again as it wasn't worth it.
Now that Sunday school is over, we aren't committed to attending the 8:15 Sunday morning service. So we tried the 4:30 Saturday one. We liked it! There was an ice cream social afterwards, so we felt better going to the Saturday night mass and having ice cream before dinner rather than going to Sunday morning and having ice cream before breakfast :) It's nice to now know that we can sleep in tomorrow.. looking forward to it.

Too much whining

I'm so tired of listening to whining!
We were thinking of going out for dinner tonight, but Maria was having a whining fit because she was told to pick up her toys (that she agreed she'd put away when she was taking them out). We told them that we could go out for pizza and she started having another tantrum because she wanted to go to Gorilla's. (It's a buffet with some arcade games - used to be Golden Coral). So, because of the tantrums, we ate in. Not a big deal, but I was looking forward to getting out of the house for the evening. Thanks Maria :(

We love our park!

Another day of rain. It was so nice over the weekend and we were getting spoiled with being able to go to the park. We are loving having the park so close! The kids want to go everyday, and we are meeting new friends each time we're there. We already met a new family and they invited Maria to the girl's upcoming birthday party. Such a great way to meet other families who live in the same area of town and have children that are similar ages to ours. We still don't know that many people in this part of town as it seems that most of our friends live more north. So the park is definitely helping us in that area.
We got some information today about Maria's last days of school, the upcoming class parties they have planned, and her kindergarten graduation. I can't believe she's almost done with kindergarten. It's such a special and exciting year. I'm going to be sad to see it end.

The stitches are out

Ray got his stitches out today. It took 4 people to hold him down. Thankfully, the doctor was pretty quick at taking them out. The scar doesn't look that bad. He still has a scab over about half of the cut, but the rest is looking good. Since it's in the crease of his eye, it hopefully won't be noticeable.
We went to the grocery store today and I picked up a few things that I said I'd donate for the kids Vacation Bible School coming up in June. I didn't realize they were asking for such large portions. Such as, they needed 500 plastic spoons. They only sold them in boxes of 48, so I had to get 10 boxes (plus a box of 24 to reach 500). I pretty much cleared Hy-Vee out of their plastic spoon supply. But all for a good cause!

Family and a Friend

Our weekend consisted of family and a friend. Here's a recap...

Saturday - I decided to do a little Garage Saleing in the morning. Our church had their sale, so wanted to check that out. Got a bunch of new books for the kids - some easy readers for Maria. I then went to another church rummage sale and found a bunch of novels for myself. Rummage sales are the best places to get books!
Grandma and Grandpa O and Diane and the girls came down for the weekend, so we went to Amy's for a fish fry (yummy, yum, yum!!). They hadn't seen Greta yet, so it was good that they got to meet her finally. Sorry that we haven't made it up north yet with her.
We had a great time visiting with family and letting the kids play together.

Sunday - Maria and Raymond had their last day of Sunday school until next fall, so they put on a concert afterwards. Maria did great and was really into the songs, singing loudly. Raymond was the opposite :( He sat down on the risers and was either sitting or laying down for the entire concert. He didn't sing at all and just sat there frowning. He can be so stubborn!
After the concert, we met Amy, Morgan, kids, Grandma and Grandpa at Amy's church for a pancake breakfast. We got an unexpected bonus when we pulled up and saw a big fire truck as they were also having a health fair. So the kids got to tour the fire truck (although I think Dave and I had more questions and were more excited than the kids - its been a long time since I got to see a fire truck up close). We also got free fruit, snacks, and toothbrushes. Score!
In the early evening my good friend, Karolyn, arrived. She moved out of town about 5 months ago, and I miss her a lot. Luckily, she has to come back for work every now and then. So she gets to stay with us and we get to hang out. We went out for dinner and did some shopping (along with Greta - who is the best shopping baby ever as she just sleeps).

Cupcakes and Cordon Blue

Today was a nice low key day. We didn't have any errands in the afternoon, so after dropping Maria off at school, we came home and Ray helped me make cupcakes. I can't remember the last time we made cupcakes.. and now am wondering why we don't make them more often since they are easy and yummy!
For dinner, I made chicken cordon blue. I had to use a rolling pin to flatten the chicken first (never did that before). The coating called for corn flakes which we didn't have, so I substituted crushed up FiberOne instead. Tasted great and the family all got some extra fiber without knowing it :)

Night of Kids

We had the cousins over for the evening. So that put us at 7 kids total. We went to the park and I kept counting heads to make sure I knew where they all were. (How does Amy do this everyday? She is a super woman!)
It was a fun night. We played at the park (now that the weather is nice), watched Disney's Robin Hood (my favorite) and ate popcorn. The kids were all well behaved and we hadn't seen Ben in a while so it was good to snuggle him up.
It is so great for us to be able to visit with our cousins. The kids always have so much fun together. We are so glad to have them in town!

4 stitches

Raymond got 4 stitches today :( Poor guy! He was rocking on his little rocking chair and watching a movie when he tipped it over and hit his face on the TV stand. I wasn't even sure if I should go to urgent care or not as I couldn't tell how bad it was. Obviously, glad we went in! I'm so bad about knowing when to go or not. Guess I need to err on the side of caution and go when in doubt.

He cried and struggled when they did the stitches, but they had numbed the area first and then put him in a 'papoose' so his hands and feet were held down. After it was all done, the nurse brought him 4 stickers (all 'boy' stickers) and he was in a good mood from there on. He immediately offered to give the Spiderman one to his dad. Such a trooper!

First blog!

Well, I've decided to start blogging (yes, I'm being pulled into the dark side). Now that I'm home with the kids, I need a better way to stay in touch with everyone and to fulfill all the requests about how the kids are doing.. so you can come here to check out what's happening in our little world (from here on known as tingting land). Enjoy!