Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers out there! Hadley & Laney are so lucky to have such a great mom. She doesn’t hear it enough, but Joey is a fantastic mother to our little girls. This year, the girls and I got Joey a new bicycle for family bike rides, a voice-recording picture album, a Prince CD (she LOVES Prince), some flowers and chocolates, some penuche from Libs (another favorite), and we painted her a huge painting with Laney & Hadley’s hand prints.
Laney & Hadley spend Friday night at Nana & Pawpaw’s, so Joey and I went out to Nagasaki & saw Obsessed at Showplace. Saturday, Joey ran around town with Brooke, then we all went swimming and grilled out at Jeri’s house. Saturday evening was the grill out at my parents’ house… the one year anniversary of the gas explosion I caused that sent dad to the emergency room in an ambulance. We had a great time without any surprises.
We have been having a great Mother’s Day weekend, hope you are too.

May 2009

Our house is currently ground zero for a road construction project. The city is adding a center turn lane, a right turn lane, a bike lane, and sidewalks to the street in front of our house. The project will last all summer and will take up a good portion of our front yard.
While the city is tearing up the street, the power company will be digging a HUGE pit in our front yard, ripping out the driveway and a bunch of 30’-40’ pine trees to get down to some gas lines buried in our property. They already replaced the gas meters, and found a serious gas leak inside our garage at the water heater! Despite repeated questions about possibly smelling gas, our home inspector claimed we had no leak when we moved in. This was the same guy that said the roof was fine. When the tree hit our house, the contractor saw the roof and said it was in such bad shape that he was shocked we hadn’t had serious leaks yet.
When Blake left the house with the girls during the gas leak, the car started having problems. It turned out that there were several problems, so the car was in the shop for about a week. That weekend, our air conditioner went out...needless to say, this hasn’t been the most peaceful couple of weeks.
The girls have been growing so fast lately. Laney’s vocabulary is huge, and she has done a great job with potty training. She talks about going to preschool in the fall all the time. She names everything Carly, loves jumping on Sydney’s trampoline, and love’s the kids club at Tri-State.
Hadley is pulling up, and has just cut her first tooth! She’s been crabby for a few days due to pink eye and a mild ear infection, so we didn’t even really know it was coming until it had almost popped out. She is still ridiculously happy most of the time, likes eating real food (like stewed carrot or cheese pieces), knows how to play peek-a-boo, and has lots of gibberish conversations with people now.
Now that the weather is nicer, we all love spending a lot of time outdoors. The girls love swinging on their swings. Laney plays make believe a lot now. When we are on the swings, she says “Bye bye, I have to go to work”, then she climbs up into her tree house, makes “working sounds”, and slides down to “come home”. I think our family’s favorite new thing to do is to go on bike rides. The girls have a trailer that attaches to Blake’s bike. It’s a great way for all of us to be together outside having fun.

Finally, a Family Update

Ice Storm

The night of the ice storm was pretty scary. We are still repairing the damage from the tree that fell into our house, so when the trees all around were cracking, falling, and hitting the house...it was a little nerve racking. When the sun came up and we started venturing out, everywhere we looked there were broken trees, downed power lines, and no lights on (even street lights and stores). We were lucky enough to get our power on in about 3-4 days, but many are still without power even now. We took the opportunity to go sledding one day. This was Laney's first time sledding, and she had a blast. Here are pictures of the sledding and the storm damage.

Play Time

Hadley has a new toy that she loves. Here she is sitting up and playing with it. It's fun to watch her giggle while she smacks and kicks it to make music and sticks her tounge out at the mirror. She has started to eat a lot more food now and loves a new snack she found at the William's house. They are called Mum Mums and are little surfboards made out of rice that dissolve...she loves those.

Play Dates Rule!

Habbey couldn't keep up with the other girls, we put her in a basket and she decided it was a great place to take a nap!

Syd & Laney loved Bowling at Arc

Taylor & Bayleigh enjoyed bowling too, Hadley mostly liked the sparkling lights....I think the parents all had a bit of a time keeping up with everyone, but we had a fun time.

Riley & Maddux came over to play, Riley put on her Jonas Brothers CD and ended up making a music video with Laney in dress up clothes.

Laney & Anna tucked in "togedur"

She's here!

Our very first niece/cousin is here. Caitlin Rose Alsman was born on 12/29, and is absolutley beautiful. She is healthy and strong and is doing very very well. For that matter, so are her parents (Grant & Jennie). We got to go see her in Chicago the first week end in January. We had a great visit. Laney had her first sonw day (she calls playing in the snow "snowing" and she loves it!). We didn't come prepared for the snow, so she is in a mixture of Aunt Lynette & Uncle Bill's clothes. It was too funny. She really loved making snow angels and knocking down the snow man. She also wanted to take a safari through the snow on the golf course. Caitlin seemed to like the girls, and Laney LOVED her. We can't wait to come back up in a few weeks to see her in February for Cailtin's baptism. Here are some photos of our trip...

Uh oh!

On the 27th, the weather went crazy. The temperature rose 50 degrees, winds were 65-70 mph for hours, and the rain was a torrential downpour (for a little whlie at least). Unfortunately, all this bad weather knocked down our beautiful 60 ft. pine tree. It was uprooted and fell hard on our house over the garage. It hit so hard that the neighbors felt it and came out to see if a tree his their house. The branches punched holes down through the roof, some of which went into the playroom right where Laney and Hadley were playing minutes earlier. Laney has some residual anxiety issues (like nightmares and fears of people in the house), but the important thing is that no one was hurt. Our house will be turned upside down for a few weeks, but back as good as ever when it is finished.