Party on, Garth!

When Elijah turned 7 in July, we celebrated with a couple of his favorite friends.  He invited the Grove kids (our good friends from church and our small group, who also go to school with E) and his best friend from preschool, Isaac.  Elijah chose a Lego theme, and we had a fun picnic lunch and spent the afternoon playing with water outside.  Isaac got sick that day, but he got to come over and spend the morning with us the next day, so it was like two days in a row of celebrating!

Birthday morning pancakes

Party on, Wayne!

In June, Miss Molly turned five, and we threw her a big ol' party!  She's not really had her own birthday party before (although the one she shared with Tallie was super awesome!) so we figured it was her year.  She chose a cowgirl ballerina theme (so Molly - totally unique and fun and PINK) and we had a great time planning it.  It was such a fun day - Molly was thrilled, and we all loved having our house full of people we love.  It was so neat to watch her be so excited and thankful for every gift, too.

Walking!

Finn has been taking some experimental steps lately, and loves walking around with the help of his push toy, and tonight he finally decided to take the plunge!  We are all so excited for him - yay Finn!

Movin' on up!

I wasn't sure we would see this at all, but today Finn has moved up from his signature "wounded soldier" to a real hands-and-knees crawl!  We were all pretty excited for him this morning.

Finn's birth

Tomorrow we will be celebrating one year with Finn!

One year ago, when we were getting ready for bed, I started feeling faint contractions.  I knew that with both Molly and Elijah, I was already quite dilated when I started to feel contractions, so I paid attention right away.  When I timed them, the contractions were only 2-3 minutes apart, so we called the doctor.  We went to the hospital about midnight, and spent the rest of the night alternately walking the halls and watching the monitor.  My first two labors started slow, but went REALLY fast at the end, so we were all prepared for things to speed up at any time.  Finn decided to take his time, however.  Later in the afternoon, I got an epidural (my first - I was so scared!) and took a short, much-needed nap.  Finn finally made his appearance at 5:09 pm.  We were so excited to meet him!  He took to nursing right away, and we enjoyed spending some quiet time together.  It was a wonderful day.

Finn Patrick, 7 lbs 12 oz and 19 1/4", July 22nd

It was a very, very hot week.  During the first night it finally dropped below 100 degrees around 2 am.  The monitors around the halls of the hospital reported the temperature outside all night.  We were glad to be inside in the air conditioning!

Elijah's shark party!

Elijah turned six today!  We had a fun party to celebrate on Saturday.  Elijah chose sharks/oceans for the theme and we had a great time getting ready.  The kids helped make some decorations:

Everything turned out great, and we had a fun day celebrating.  

It's your birthday, Chum!

The birthday boy!  Finn was wearing his matching shirt, but we didn't a picture of them together.

Elijah's best friend, Isaac, and his brother Levi

All the kids loved playing in the pool, but Molly was in there ALL DAY

They also had a great time with the sprinkler.

Shark cupcakes!

Elijah, Molly and Evan got their shark tattoos on their foreheads!

Elijah and Molly proudly wore their shark tattoos to church the next day.

They became slightly famous at church.

Our sweet girl is FOUR!

Molly turned four years old on Wednesday.  We celebrated last week at Koenobel's with Patrick's family, and we tried to make sure her actual birthday was pretty special, too.  She loved her Strawberry Shortcake decorations and reveled in choosing all her menus for the day.  We had 'M' and '4' shaped pancakes, smoothies, and "noodles with white sauce," of course.  Aunt Lorrie and the cousins came and took Molly and Elijah to a movie, in the theater!  And Bobbi came for dinner.  We had strawberry lemonade, strawberry cupcakes, and strawberry ice cream.  She was thrilled with all her gifts, including lots of Jessie and Hello Kitty and her very own (pink!) Legos. 

in her strawberry shirt, too, of course!

crisscross applesauce

Molly is spunky, silly, and full of energy. She loves to draw and color and is learning to write lots of letters.  She is really looking forward to preschool in the fall, and seems to be a little less shy around new people this year (although you never know when she's going to suddenly need to hide behind my legs or just need a few minutes to warm up).  She loves to play pretend with Elijah, or her babies, or just pretend!  She "has volleyball practice on Friday mornings" with her pink volleyball, and loves to swim and dance.  She is also our resident artist - she loves to color and draw and paint and write "notes."  We love this little girl, and the four years we've had together!

Spring Finn

Here are just a couple of baby pictures from May.  Our little man is growing and growing ...

Finn is 10 months old and is getting around the house with his modified army crawl - using only his right arm and his big toes.  He is alarmingly fast despite the inherent difficulty of his method and shows no interest in trading up for a traditional crawl.  I suppose we can commend him for his tenacity - and attach a fuzzy rag to the belly of all his shirts so he can keep the floor clean as he chases, uh, follows me around all day!

Finn continues to enjoy being in the middle of whatever his brother and sister are doing, but more and more also wants lots of attention from his mama.
 

He sure is a smiley little dude, and loves to laugh at just about anything, especially Elijah being silly.  He has had the most difficulty/pain with teething of any of our kids, but still has plenty of grins for us!  He started teething late, but they came very quickly - the first four came one right after the other.

The night before Mother's Day, Finn slept for 10 hours straight - which was far and away the longest he's ever gone.  His sleeping is getting so much better all of a sudden!  I am thankful for every good night and each day with reasonable naps.  For so long it seemed we would never sleep again!  Hooray for a sleeping baby!

Gone home

My Grandma Jennie passed away last Wednesday morning.  She was 97 years old, and had lived an extraordinary life, in a quiet and unassuming way.  She was a teacher, a missionary, an encourager, and a wonderful grandma.  She loved God with all her heart and loved people in real and practical ways.  She was funny, smart, humble, never complained, prayed without ceasing, and made awesome gravy.   Since Grandpa died in 2005, her health had been declining, and in the last few years she lived increasingly with anxiety and confusion.  She had been ready and waiting to go home to Heaven for a while, so now we are rejoicing with her.

On Monday we got the news that she was not doing well - blood pressure, heart rate, various signs that the end was coming soon.  Patrick and I took Finn and drove to Pittsburgh on Tuesday.  (The big kids got to stay with Bobbi and they had a great time.)  We got to spend the afternoon with Grandma.  She was on morphine, but still obviously uncomfortable.  She was more awake  than I had expected, but mostly just gave one-word responses to our questions, and seemed to tire quickly if we tried to talk to her much.  But we sat and held her hand, and let her listen to Finn laugh, and sang some psalms for her.   My mom also flew out from Colorado and arrived while we were there.  Before we all left, she suddenly asked about Elijah, which was the most she'd said all day.  We were all so surprised!  We had dinner and spent the night at Uncle Bruce & Aunt Margie's house.  It was really nice to get to spend some time with them, too.

We got up really early and drove back Wednesday morning so that we wouldn't miss Molly singing in the little Christmas program at our Bible study.  Mom called while we were driving back to let us know that Grandma died.  She died before Mom and Bruce & Margie could get there, but my great-aunt Jean and great-uncle Clark were there with her.  I am so glad that Grandma did not have to linger long, and that we got to say good bye, and to know that the last thing I said to her was, "I love you."

We took all the kids and went back out to the funeral, which was Saturday.  It was great to be with all my cousins (we were only missing two of my brothers - Stuart and Cameron - all the other grandkids got to be there) and celebrate Grandma's life together.  We also celebrated my birthday - how great to be able to be with my family that day!  I was so glad that we got to spend a lot of time with Mom & Dad and with my brother John and Linde and baby Madeline.  I thought it was going to be a long time until we got to see them again.  It was such a blessing to have that time together.

Mom, me and Grandma 2002

Grandma & Grandpa 2002

Four generations (with Elijah) 2007