Circus and Easter

At the circus with cousins Taylor and Dina

Elephant riding

Swinging on Easter Sunday with Taylor

In their easter outfits...ready to break out of them!

Noah in his bunny glasses from Nana and Grandpa Mike

Silly Face

Last thursday we went to a circus in Cashmere with my cousin Shaney and her two girls Taylor and Dina. It ended up being a ton of fun for him. They ate cotton candy, saw lots of animals, and got to watch guys on motorcycles (Noah's new favorite thing!) The highlight for him was riding the elephant. A few months ago Noah, My Mom, Gracie, and I took Noah to the Rainforest Cafe and it scared him to death! When it started thundering and the elephants screamed he started shaking crying. For weeks he was saying, "elephants all gone!" So, we've been trying to show him nice elephants since and he must have conquered his fear as he rode one! We were very proud of him.

This Easter was a lot of fun for us. My Mom and Mike came over Saturday night and we had fun chatting and hanging out. Sunday morning Noah had a great time with his basket from the Easter bunny and looking for chocolate eggs. We went to church (where we have never seen such a big turn out!) and then had my cousins over for a great dinner that Mom and Mike made. We had a fun day with family and a great time celebrating that Jesus conquered the grave!

Pre-School Concert and Picture attempt!

Finally a good picture of the two of them. It was at a pizza place and they only stayed like that for two seconds...details!

Noah paying attention...finally!

Noah's friend Mia dancing, she is too cute!

Noah and his friend Derek dancing

This took us forever and it's not that good!

Not so good...

We realized that most of the pictures of the two kids together are in their pajamas. So, we got them dressed in their Easter clothes and made an attempt. As you can see it didn't go very well. We did our best, but Noah kept saying, "All done!" and trying to shove Gracie off of him and Jack kept getting up to go after the Pirate's Booty that Josh was bribing him with, which in turn, would make Noah realize that he wanted some "booty" (his words!) too.  We gave it up!

Later Noah had a fundraiser for his pre-school. They held a children's concert and we were really excited to see how many people showed up. The kids had a great time dancing and singing together. Noah, of course, can't sit still and was keeping Josh busy chasing him around the gym. They looked cute though in their school shirts! The best picture that we got from the day was after the concert when we went out for pizza, who would have thought!

Suncadia Weekend with the McDaniel's

Noah and Molly snuggling at Midnight...someone wouldn't go back to sleep!

Maddie, Noah, and their Daddies playing ring around the rosie.

Just hanging out.

Eating bunnies.

Big hugs!

Waiting for their Dad's to come down the slide, they were too little to go!

Our good family friends, the Gervais', have a beautiful house in Cle Elum at Suncadia. So, Josh, Noah, Gracie, and I met Molly, Korey, and Maddie there for the weekend. The adults had a great time chatting and the kids had so much fun running around and playing with toys together. Before we left Korey and Josh took the kids swimming and they had a ton of fun playing in the water. Molly and I grew up together so its really fun for us that our kids get to do that as well. We wish that they lived closer so that we could get together more often. Thanks for a fun weekend guys and all of the great girly hand-me-downs (I was scoping out the clothes she was wearing this weekend for future use!)

Gracie's Baby Shower

Josh opening gifts at his first shower!

All of the Kids playing in their favorite toy for the evening, a box!

Noah and Jaden playing with the balloons

Josh and all of the ladies from work

Noah giving Jaden a kiss, her Mom, Angie, and I have decided that they are meant to be!

Gracie is not happy in her first dress wearing experience

Our friend Angie, a teacher at Josh's school, would not let us talk her out of doing a baby shower for Grace. She decided to do it at her house, which was great. The other Mom's brought their kids (most of whom Noah knows) and they all had a great time playing while we ate, visited, and opened presents. Because this was with all of Josh's work ladies we insisted that he be at the shower. It was his first experience so I thought that he should open some gifts. You could tell that he was new because he was going very quickly and kept forgetting to pass everything around. Gracie received so many nice gifts and it was really fun to hang out with everyone. Thanks Angie, Rhonda, and everyone else for all of your hard work and the great gifts!

New Pictures

These are just a few pictures we've taken of the kids!

Noah pumping!

Noah holding Gracie, he says, "all done!" pretty quickly!

Grace in the big boy chair.

Noah and Josh shoveling snow. Noah loves it, Josh hates it.

In the bath

Josh's Great Idea

Last week Josh was doing the dinner dishes while I was feeding Gracie and Noah was wanting his attention. So, he decided to give him a bowl of flour and a wooden spoon to keep him occupied. I came in and asked what Noah was doing (he was eating and throwing it) and Josh said, "Well, you usually don't like it when he gets wet so I gave him flour instead of a bowl of water." I laughed so hard that I was crying, this all made perfect sense to him that Noah should do one of these activities right after his bath and in his clean pajamas! I told him that redirecting was a great idea, but maybe to something cleaner next time. To his credit, the flour brushed off and we just ran the vacuum, the mess could have been a lot worse. I have a feeling this will be an issue again in my near future!

BlaBla and Gigi

When Noah was a baby his Nana bought him a doll named Bla Bla.  They are now best friends and it is hard to find Noah without him. When Gracie was born my Mom bought her a Bla Bla too, but her name is Gigi. When she arrived Noah fell in love with her too! He wants both of them and he will sit and say (over and over) "Bla Bla, Gi Gi." He knows that Gigi is Sissy's and he does share her (for a minute!) My Mom thinks that we might need to buy another one for Grace, but I am convinced that Noah would adopt that one too, but he is out of arms!

Bowling

Noah and Mommy's feet in our cute shoes

Making sure that Noah doesn't run down the lane after his ball

Noah bowling

After he lost interest and found the toys

Our score...yes, I lost to a 20 month old (he had bumpers, in my defense!)

Today we were wanting to go do something, but there isn't a whole lot to do around here so Josh came up with bowling. We went down to the local bowling alley and had fun playing. Noah lost interest very quickly, but it was still fun for him as he found the arcade with all of the kid rides. 

Gracie Update

Noah was eating markers...again

Noah and Grace cuddling

Grace is adjusting very well to our family. We keep telling her that we know that we are a little crazy, but you don't get to choose your parents and we're sorry, but... we all love each other a lot! Noah is really into his sissy now and her name is the first thing he says when he wakes up. He likes to cuddle her right away and holding her is his new favorite  past time. We couldn't believe how long he will sit there with her, ten minutes for him is forever, but he loves it. She is a very happy baby and we still haven't heard very many cries from her. These are just some pictures from the last few days. The first one is of Noah eating a marker (or two!) Anything used for coloring; paint, crayons, markers, etc. Noah likes to put in his mouth. For the most part we just let him go at it and realize on his own that it doesn't taste very good, but today he went too far. Josh looked over and he had bitten off the top to two of them and was chewing on them, we had to step in!

Grace Jacobs Benedict

Gracie

Brother loves cuddling his sissy

So does her other brother Jack

We still couldn't believe she was a girl

Meeting Nana and Grandpa

I have been wanting to do this for days and I finally got around to it! I went in to the doctor last wednesday for one of my (many) appointments and found out that Gracie's heart rate would go down periodically. I was admitted to the hospital then for observation and it continued to happen as the day went on. My doctor decided to induce labor and started with the process. We stayed up to greet the New Year and decided to get some rest as they were just giving me low doses of the medicine and were going to up it in the very early morning. At around 2:45 I awoke to about three nurses all around and them trying to put oxygen on my face. They told me that the doctor was on her way and that they needed to get the baby out. 

I was not thinking that I would have to have a c-section at all, but my doctor thought that labor was too risky and that they needed to get her out of there right away. So, at 3:38 AM Grace arrived and we were very glad to meet her. As much as I would have liked to have a vaginal delivery a healthy baby was the number one priority and we definitely got that. She is a sweet girl with a very nice disposition. We think that the Lord knew that we needed an easy baby after our VERY strong willed Noah and so far we think we got her. She sleeps very well and doesn't seem to cry too often. Noah is adjusting very well to his new baby sister, he loves giving her kisses and cuddles. 

As it turns out Gracie was the first baby of the New Year in Wenatchee and they wrote an article about her in the newspaper. I am having a hard time adding the link to the article, but if you search: "the wenatchee world new year baby" then it will come up. My favorite part of the article was that it said that Gracie's mother declined to be photographed...well of course I did! You can definitely tell that a guy wrote the article!