Knoebels!

Monday was our annual trip to Knoebels amusement park with Patrick's family. This year, Patrick took the kids and let me spend the day sleeping and trying to rest up after a crazy weekend of moving! I was pretty worn out, and we decided that a long day of walking around and being too pregnant to take the kids on any rides wasn't the best idea. (Last year, I took the kids while Patrick had a work conference - maybe next year we'll all get to go together again!)

Getting moved in ...

Well, moving is always a crazy adventure, and we are certainly still right in the middle of the crazy. But we are excited to be living in our new house, and that everything in the past week has gone quite well, considering all the extra complications. Patrick had to be traveling for work for three days last week, and was gone again over the weekend, and during the day today, so this was NOT the best time to move. But thanks to lots of help from my mom and Patrick's dad (and some professional movers), we survived the week, and all of our stuff made it from one place to the other without any major disasters. We are loving our new house and all the extra space, and I am excited to have already met some of our neighbors, who all seem really nice. Wow - neighbors! So cool! We have a lot of unpacking and setting up still to do, but I'm excited about how things are working out.

First sunset in our new house - this is the view out our back door.

The kids are loving the new playroom, and their new kitchen!

Wow - we're finally moving!

Well, after eight months of looking at houses, four offers that didn't work out, a whole lot of waiting and wondering, and a couple of weeks of near-panic when we suddenly couldn't close when we thought we would, we are finally moving! Closing is scheduled (FOR SURE this time!) for Friday, and we are moving on Saturday - just in time to prevent being homeless. =)

The past couple of weeks have been, wow, a nightmare headache to say the least. I'm sure that in a few months or years it will be just a crazy story that we laugh at and tell to amaze our friends (like the refrigerator in the bathroom closet in our first apartment), but right now it feels traumatic and stressful, and not really a story I want to tell on our public blog. God has been very gracious to us throughout, and we are so thankful for all the ways that He has blessed and protected us and we continue to trust that His way is the best way.

We are so thankful for this new house - the space and the YARD that we have been hoping for for so long, and just the blessing of having a place of our own. And I am very glad to be moving before baby comes, and that we will likely even have a few weeks to get settled before we become a family of five. Hopefully we can post some pictures as we get settled in, but we won't be doing a whole lot of improving right away, so no exciting before-and-afters just now. =) I am just thrilled to have the space to unpack!

Really a big girl - yay!

As of today, Molly has been wearing her big girl undies for two days! She kept her training pants dry for three straight days, so on Sunday night we gave her her new undies - she got Hello Kitty, Jessie (Toy Story), and Princess and the Frog. (Well, she really stayed dry for four days, but one day we had to drive to Baltimore to pick up Nana, and so she was in the van for almost five hours, and she wore a diaper for that, and that shouldn't count.) And, she has kept her panties dry since she's been wearing them - yay!

Molly is so proud to be a big girl! I am so proud of her, and so excited that potty training has been relatively painless this time. (Although I'm sure that we are still a long way from being accident-free all the time.) I don't think I would have chosen this particular time to work on potty training, with moving and everything else that is happening, but I am glad to take it, if this is when she wants to do it - she made it so easy for me!

Miss Molly is 3!

Happy, happy third birthday to Miss Molly!

This year was the first that Molly knew what to expect - so she was really excited for her birthday! She had planned the menu for the whole day, and made her requests for cake decorations, and made a list of the presents she would like. When she got up in the morning, she was so excited to come down and find the kitchen already decorated in pink streamers and balloons - and a Hello Kitty balloon!

We had blueberry pancakes and smoothies for breakfast. Molly's pancakes were shaped like the number 3 and the letter M. (Shaped pancakes are a lot harder when they have blueberries in them, FYI.) She loved her breakfast!

Showing off her finger number 3, and her pancake number 3

Mmmm, blueberry, strawberry and yogurt smoothie!

The kids went to the park with Nana before lunch, and then we had Molly's favorite lunch: mac 'n cheese with peas. Both kids took a great nap (yay!) which gave us time to get ready for more celebration. Bobbi joined us in the afternoon, and Daddy came home after work to celebrate with us. We had "noodles and white sauce" for Molly's birthday dinner, and then had presents and cake and ice cream.

Molly has been asking to have Hello Kitty for her birthday for several months. I was so glad to be able to borrow this cool pan so I could make just what she wanted! It ended up requiring the help of both Bobbi and Nana to get the fondant on, but we all had a good laugh working on it. Molly loved it!

So excited for her cake!

I was surprised that Molly knew just what to do with those candles this year. I guess she's not a baby anymore!

And she blew them all out by herself!

I forgot to take a wide-angle picture of Molly with all her decorations - you'll just have to imagine lots of pink streamers and all those pink balloons behind her. =)

It was so special to be able to celebrate Molly's birthday with both Nana and Bobbi!

Molly got a bitty baby from Bobbi!

And LOTS of fun accessories!

Opening more presents

We had so much fun celebrating Molly today! She is so grown-up and fun. I loved watching her enjoy her birthday today. She had enough expectations to realize what was going on and enjoy it, but was still so surprised and delighted when she received the things that she asked for. I don't know if birthdays get any better than that! Happy Birthday, sweet girl!

Elijah...

Just got home after I tidied up a bit. He said, "Wow! It's neat-o daddy! Its...well...as clean as I wanted it to be."

So glad I could meet his expectations...

:)

June means strawberries!

Twice in the past two weeks, Bobbi and Papa have given us some fresh, local strawberries grown on their friends' Lancaster County farm. Hooray for strawberries! We all love them around here, and they just don't get any better than this.

She emptied her bowl before I could get a picture! Yummo!

Baby update - 31 weeks

The weeks seem to be flying by as we wait to know for sure if we are really and truly moving ... in only 9 days. Yikes! Despite the moving question, and potty-training, and the traveling that Patrick has and will be doing this month, and the kids' birthdays coming up, and all the craziness, the wee bairn (aka baby boy) is growing and developing and seems to be well and healthy. I had my glucose test a few weeks ago, which came back normal (hooray!) and the blood tests done again. The Rh antibodies test was negative (yay) but my iron was still low, so they actually increased my dose. I was very much hoping to be able to quit taking the iron, but it isn't the worst thing in the world. It's just a lot to remember - twice a day, not with the prenatal vitamin, but with food, but not with dairy, which inhibits the body's ability to absorb the iron ... Anyway, I got my regularly scheduled RhoGAM shot two weeks ago, and was only sore for a couple of days. Yuck. I think that was my 7th dose over the past 5 pregnancies? Maybe this time the wee bairn will be Rh negative and I won't have to do it again after he is born. =) Now we are back to the quick, boring appointments - every 2 weeks for now.

According to the baby development book, the wee bairn is now approximately 16-17 inches long, 3-4 pounds, and almost a skinny little version of his full-term self! He is still very active whenever I am not, and pretty still during the day while I am busy. Soon he will start to run out room for all this activity, but we are enjoying feeling his big crazy wiggles for now. Molly is not at all sure she wants to be able to feel the baby move, and usually frowns on him if he happens to move when she is snuggled with me. But the rest of us think it's great. =)

Patrick and I went on a tour of the hospital where I'll be delivering, just so we know where to go and what to do when it's time. I think it's crazy that we have had to do this with each baby - learning all over again at a different place with different procedures. I should get a job writing reviews of maternity wards around the country. (Queen size beds in the maternity ward, people. Dads DO NOT like those horrible fold-out chairs!) I'm glad to have that done, though. Now we just have to map out the best route from the new house to the hospital. Of course, we don't want to have to use any of this just yet - hopefully we'll have more than 10 days after the move before the baby comes this time.