Big Red Ball

Sorry, I forgot about my blog again! Time sure does go by faster when you have a kid in school! Emma has the week off for fall break and can't wait to go back on Monday. Hopefully she keeps this enthusiasm all through high school....

And since I haven't been by here in a little while, I haven't been able to announce yet that we're expecting baby #6 now! I was a little bit surprised by this one. The due date is April 14th so Adam will be a whopping 13 months old when this baby is born. I really thought we were getting a little better at spacing our children! Oh well. After this is just abstinence I guess ;-).  We should be finding out the gender in just a few weeks so that will be some news I should be posting about.

And here are some completely unrelated pictures of the kids playing with a giant red ball that my grandmother got them!

 Adam watching

 Ian

 Owen

 Abby looking completely crazy

And Emma!

Mix-Matched Schedules

So Scott works a weird 2nd shift, 2pm-10pm Monday through Friday. It's worked out for us so far, we just had to have lunch as our "family meal" instead of dinner like normal folks. Now we kind of have a problem. A pretty big problem. Emma goes to school before Scott wakes up and doesn't get home until after he's already at work. That means he gets to see her pretty much never during the week. He will be going to school again in a couple weeks and will be dropping her off on his way so at least they'll have a 15 minute car ride together, but dang! It was hard for me to realize that he didn't get to see the kids much anyway especially with naps and everything, because I am with them every single hour of every single day. Just as he doesn't quite understand that I would have no problem if a grandparent would want to steal them for a few hours or an afternoon...or a day....or a weekend...

Right now he's completely stuck at this job at this shift. The guy that does his job on first shift is really old and I think he should just go ahead and retire, but we don't see that happening any time soon. It would be really hard to find a job that pays enough and there are a couple other issues that are keeping him were he is right now. So we're just plain stuck. It sucks, but we can hope there is a 1st shift job in our very near future, especially since we'll be sending an additional kid to school each passing year!

Off to Kindergarten!

Here are some blurry iPhone photos of Emma all dressed in uniform before heading off for her first day of kindergarten! She is still all kinds of excited and had no trouble whatsoever with me leaving her there. I knew it would be no trouble with Little Miss Independent!

Summer

Nothing too exciting has happened this summer. My mom came down for a visit a few weeks ago, but it was too hot to do anything outdoors and we didn't have any money, so there you go. She did get a few cute pictures of the kids while she was here though. 

Here we have Emma and Abby looking like they actually get along...

And here Emma and Abby are carrying Ian by his arms and legs, which apparently in the funniest thing ever. They also did it to Owen and he LOVED it.  Poor baby...

Little Adam, almost 5 months old, loves his thumb!

This is a really goo picture of all 5 of them together and almost looking at the camera and pretty much smiling. What more could you ask for??

On Tuesday we'll send a kid off to school for the very first time! That's right, Emma is starting kindergarten! She is very excited about it. I know she'll do great! I'll be back then with some pictures of her all ready for school.

What to Read...

So I just finished the last Harry Potter book. Yeah, I'm just a bit behind on the Harry Potter scene! Of course they were all really good and I got through them all in around 3 months so that's not too bad. Now I don't know what to read though. I hate picking things to read! I was going to read Under the Dome by Stephen King, but Scott let his dad borrow it so now I have to wait for that one. I don't even know what kind of book I want to read. Just something good I guess! 

So...What do YOU think I should read??

 Here are just a couple pictures from our trip to the zoo last weekend where they have a pretty good dinosaur exhibit set up for the summer. And in case you didn't know, our kids LOVE dinosaurs!

Mammoth Cave

This past Saturday we took a trip to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It was pretty cool although next time we decide to go in a cave we'll make sure none of our kids are in the toddler stage. The 3 big kids did fine and seemed to enjoy it, but I couldn't let Owen walk around in there so Scott had to carry him the whole time. We had to get through some tight areas and it just wasn't a good set up.

We walked down a little trail before our cave tour began and the kids were very excited to see a chipmunk up close.

I also learned that taking pictures inside a cave is pretty tricky so most of them didn't turn out especially since I didn't have any extra attention to devote to changing the settings on my camera.

Our one family shot of the day turned out pretty bad. Nobody was looking, Owen was crying, and Adam passed out. So we only gave it one try.

New Haircut

It has been about 2 years since I've had a haircut! I was pregnant with Owen for the last one and he's 19 months now so, there you go. This is definitely the longest my hair has ever been. So here is my before picture:

And here is the after:

Much better. I don't really mind having long hair, but I don't miss it either. I know it was time for a change and I'm glad I had enough to donate. :)

Family Photo

I got really lucky and using the timer on my camera I was able to get a pretty decent picture of all of us together. At least everyone is looking at the camera and smiling. What more could I ask for?

Adam's Baptism

Adam was baptized yesterday! Luckily our friend Jessie was able to make it and got some pictures for us. 

Here is all of our family with the Godparents and their four children. This turned out to surprisingly well considering how many little ones we had to get looking at the camera.

  

And here is one of just us, but it didn't turn out quite as nice. Not too bad though...

Adam in his baptism outfit minus the hat which wouldn't fit.

This is a good one of the "big" kids. Emma is 5 now. Abby is 4 and Ian is 3. So cute!

This would make a great family picture if only Adam was in it!

Newborn Pictures

My friend Lynn with Junebug Photography did some newborn pictures of Adam when he was about 9 days old. He was wide awake for the whole shoot and completely adorable of course! Here are some of my favorites. 

Make sure you visit Lynn and check out the rest of her awesome work!

Meet Baby Adam!

Well this is a little late and I haven't posted anything since my first prenatal appointment, but baby Adam is here! He was born March 9th after 13.5 hours (!!!) of labor.

He weighed 8lbs 13oz, which is what the other two boys weighed when they were born. How weird is that? He was 23 inches long. And look at all that hair!

Everything went great, no trouble, no complications except my labor stalling for a few hours in the middle even though I was walking up a storm. So that was a little frustrating, but what are you going to do?

He started nursing right off the bat and was a pro from the get-go. He was already gaining his weight back before we left the hospital. At his 2 week weight check he was already up to 9lbs 1oz.