Bringin Down the House...or Kitchen....

Ha!! I'm so excited that I can finally upload pictures again to our blog! Too bad I can't get them on Facebook. :( Anyway, we are at the beginning of a huge and very exciting change in our house. We have knocked down our wall that divided our kitchen and living room and are making an island instead. We are so thankful to have our very good friend Mark and his company doing this remodel for us. So far things have gone very well. We have a temporary kitchen set up in Joel's workroom downstairs and it works great since we have a fridge down there and plenty of shelf and counter space. So far....so good. This is as close to roughing it as I get...as many of you know.

Here are some pictures of our kitchen BEFORE........

Meet Louie, our new sweet puppy!

Finally we have our sweet little puppy! Joel has officially caved...actually we wore him down and then made a deposit when he wasn't there. :) Louie is so good....doesn't cry in the night and loves to play. Even his new dad can't resist him! He's 8 weeks old.

He doesn't even mind being held for long periods of time by Claire. :)

On another Claire note, the other day we were getting ready to go to the pool and the girls wanted to bring Barbies to swim. They went running downstairs to find them and get them ready to go swimming. The trouble is we only have one Barbie bathing suit....Claire came upstairs sobbing, "Mom, Anna has the zucchini!" Translation, "Mom, Anna has the bikini!" Barbie bikini, that is.

One more Claire story....We were at the Barry County Fair looking in the cow barn and I pointed to the dairy cows and told her that these cows give us milk. Then we got to the beef cows and I told her these cows give us meat like hamburgers and steaks. She looked at me and asked, "Well, which cows give us gravy?" :)

Happy 9th Birthday, Ethan!!!

Gosh, it's hard to imagine sometimes how fast time goes. It seems like not long ago at all we took our baby boy home from the hospital and now he's 9 years old. This is our sweet boy that we prayed and prayed for and we are so thankful to have him in our lives. He adds alot of fun and spark into our lives. He's our clown and king of silliness. Ethan has taught us all about Nascar and the NFL. We know more than we would ever have hoped too. We have more little Nascar racecars in our house than I ever thought possible. :) He is a terrific big brother and in typical, or so Joel assures me, big brother style - he has taught his sisters the finer points in 3rd grade "cool talk"...like every other word is "dude" and also has satisfied his dad's longing for a kid who loves gross bodily functions and baseball as much as he does.

Of course, he still needs to snuggle with his mom even though he acts like there is no way on this planet he would do this.

We got Ethan a Michigan State helmet, jersey etc and he totally loves it. He has been wanting a helmet for so long....he wears it constantly and has discovered he does have to take it off to eat, which is good. This also came with fake shoulder pads - also a good thing because he used to put on a t-shirt that was 2 sizes too small, put a little foam ball on each of his shoulders (under the shirt) and pretend that those were his pads. Foam balls do not stay in place after having been fake tackled.

We made him wait until the end of the day to open his gifts....we thought he might burst with excitement! Ethan also got a pitchback which he loves and his dad loves even more. :)

Yippeee!! I can upload videos now!! :)

OK..I can finally put some cute videos on here that hopefully aren't too grainy like the ones from my camera were. Here is a very cute one of Claire saying the Pledge of Allegiance....we have no idea how she learned this but we love the new "dog" spin she has put on it. I had no idea Dalmations were such a part of US History.

A few more fun pictures from our trip...

Look who's on a roll now!

Here is part of our big gang that was down in Florida...in addition to our own family, we have Uncle Brett, Aunts Sarah and Erin and Uncle Rich. We were posing during our ice cream eating. :)
Do we look like sisters??

Holy cow, Ethan is beyond excited to be at his favorite restaurant Da Ru Ma....the Japanese steakhouse near our condo. Bring on the the food!!!!

Ahhhh...a peaceful morning on the Gulf. How I wish I could be back there right now!

Beautiful little Claire at our Christmas Brunch.

It's a miracle......

OK....my computer FINALLY cooperated with me. And wouldn't you know, it was a practice run with the pictures I chose so let's just see what we have here. There is so much to catch up on that I think I may just move forward and not go back to all the xmas ones.

We drove to Florida again this year - 23 hours in the car with 3 kids straight through the night. They did remarkably well and slept most of the night. We had fantastic weather while we were there and lots of fun each day. Here are Ethan and Anna in front of the Ritz-Carlton hotel, which is just up the way from our condo. They hire a castle-builder for the week b/w Christmas and New Years. We walk down and check out the progress each day.

Here we are after a great dinner at The Dock. I don't know where the rest of my kids are! :)

This picture will give you a good clue about what our big gift was this year for the kids (and secretly for ourselves). We have all loved having a wii - even Joel who didn't really want it in the first place but now golfs every night. We have all had sore arms from boxing and tennis and the kids love Mario Kart and have gotten really good.

This is a classic Christmas Eve pose....Anna and Ethan eating so many strawberries w/powdered sugar they're about to burst. No sugar highs in this house! :)

This was also Christmas Eve. Gigi and Papa's church has an "unrehearsed" Xmas pagent (sp?) and the girls love to dress up as angels. They were very sweet. Ethan is now "too old" for this stuff plus HATES doing anything new in front of a crowd.

Now that my computer seems to be a bit more agreeable I will see if I can post more regularly again....Thanks for not giving up on me!

I'm still here......

Hello there everyone who is still checking this neglected blog! Just wanted to let someone know that I'm still here and am still going to eventually post an update. Each time I try to upload some cute pictures of our super fun Florida vacation, my connection gets reset and nothing loads. It is not for lack of trying as I sit here each night and try, unsuccessfully, to get this done.

We had a great, almost 2 week vacation in Florida and are now back in the groove of real life, which feels pretty good. I am hoping to post Xmas/vacation pictures soon so keep checking...not too often, or I'll look even worse. :)