Hannah's Birthday, Take 2

We celebrated Hannah's birthday on Wednesday with a family dinner. It just so happened that my Aunt Julie and Uncle George were down for a vacation and flew in that day. So, we had the pleasure of having them join us for birthday dinner. Of course we had Yaya & Papa, Grammy & Gramps, Uncle Justin a & Erica, and the girl's Great-Grandma Mimi. It was a fun evening. Hannah was in good spirits and didn't even cry. She got some fun birthday presents and money to buy books. Here are a few pictures from the night. If you haven't seen the video yet of her eating (or should I say NOT eating) her cake, scroll to the next post and watch it there.

I saw this cupcake cake on the back of a cake box and thought I'd give it a try. I'm not the most artistic person in the world, so I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

Hannah's birthday, take 1

OK, I've been trying to find time to post pictures, but haven't. Here is a video for your viewing pleasure. Hannah was not sure what to think about the cake. She made some very funny faces. Hopefully more pictures and stories will be coming soon. Until then....enjoy....

Happy 1st Birthday my sweet Hannah Grace

Hannah Grace was born one year ago today! I can not believe it has been a year already! We are having a family celebration tonight which everyone is looking forward to. Even my Aunt and Uncle from Ohio will be there!! I'll post pictures later. For now, I'll leave you with her first few moments.

So sad...

Something destroyed and partly ate my beautiful zucchini :'-(

My first Veggie!!!!!! and a few pics of the girls

Oh my goodness...I'm so excited. I was working in the garden yesterday, weeding when I found our first veggie! It's a zucchini...and it's big already! I ran around front to get Jeremy so I could show him. I'm not sure when to cut it or know it's ripe. Honestly, I think it's perfect now, but maybe I'll wait a few days to cut it anyway.

Friday night we had a beach picnic with our friends Ben and Jami. A few cute shots of the girls were snapped. It was a perfect beach night, cool, no bugs and enough wind to fly a little kite. Hannah LOVED both the water and the sand, woohoo. Nicole had a blast going far out in the water with daddy. I love love love to watch them play together. She was taking every moment in with him. It was precious.

Hannah and Vanessa, playing in the sand

This is a classic Hannah face. She is LOVING the sand and water.

We went to a park last week, and I thought this was a cute photo of Nicole.

Time Savers

I have seriously been give at least an extra hour in my day....maybe even an hour and half. Ladies and gentleman I now have a working dishwasher!!!! ***Applause*** I have been handwashing my dishes for a little over a year now. I don't think I complained much, it really wasn't a big deal. I actually sort of liked doing it. But, as Hannah gets older and with another baby on the way, the time I spent washing dishes was beginning to get the best of me. Well, it's here. I've used it for three days and tested it out well. The first night I piled ALL of the dishes into it, including pots and pans. I didn't pre-wash, just scraped the food off and loaded it. Dishes were done in minutes, and the next morning, everything was spotless....woohoo!!! Last night I had a grand idea of delay starting it. I knew the guys would be over for Bible study and I would be asleep before they were done. So, I thought I would start the washer around midnight . Grand plan, except I forgot to tell Jeremy to load up the few cups and plates used, so the dishwasher was only half full, and my sink was half full this morning too. Oh well. The delay start worked great by the way.

It's not a fancy dishwasher, just wash and go. No extra settings, no bells and whistles, but you know what it works! Great so far, and I've freed up my day a bit. I am pleased:-)

Oh, the first time I ran the dishwasher, the girls were both awake and Nicole kept asking me what that noise was (when it would turn the water on, or the jets or whatever). Even Hannah crawled over to get a better look, hehehe.

Hannah's first time Finger painting and Morning Fun

Another beautiful day in Sunny Florida:) We started the day early by swinging and taking a short walk. Here are a couple of cute pics of the girls (in matching dresses today by the way)

I love this pictures of Hannah. It makes me laugh. Her mouth opens SOOO wide!!

Then we spent the later part of the morning painting and playing in the pool again.

My little Picasso.

Hannah even got to try finger paints for the first time today.

She wasn't so sure at first...

Finally, she gets paint on both hands.

Oh....this is fun! (check out Nicole's face in the background, haha)

Oh Yeah!!! I like this!!!!

She is totally into it now. By the end, she had both hands smearing the paint around. We love to paint. It's so much fun. I'm glad Hannah liked doing it too. I didn't get a final picture because she had just put her hand in her mouth and had yellow paint all over her face, haha. So we had to quickly wash it off.

Oh...we also played with water balloons. No pictures, but we plan on attacking Jeremy when he gets home tonight. Sshhhh...don't tell ;)

Painting, Picnic, Pool

Yesterday was a beautiful day! Perfect really. The sun was shining and there was a a slight cool breeze. We loved it. After running a few morning errands, we came home and enjoyed ourselves. Nicole Painted, which she loves, outside. We had a picnic with great-grandma Mimi, and then the girls played in their little pool. We all were in our glory. This is how every day should be. Here are a few pictures to share.

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Pray for Stellan

There is a blog by a stay at home mom that has, in essence, become famous. This lady had just a regular old blog like mine not to long ago, but it became hugely popular, in part because of some very trying circumstances in her life. She and her husband have been married 5 years, they have 4 children, 4 and under:) This summer, as she was just past halfway in her fourth pregnancy, she received devastating news...her unborn son had a serious and fatal heart condition. She was told he would die before he was ever born. Miraculously, her baby...Stellan, survived pregnancy and his birth, and all signs of his heart condition were pretty much gone. God had worked a miracle in this little life, and the life of his mother, father and brothers and sister. Recently, however, Stellan (now 5 or 6 months old) began having heart issues again. Without going into medical terminology that I don't understand, I will simply say that he has been in the hospital for about 4 weeks. He and his mother just flew to Boston a few days ago and tomorrow morning a very dangerous surgery (for a child his age) will take place on his heart. Thousands of people, all over the world, are following this story and I ask you to pray along with those people for the surgery of this sweet little baby boy. It sounds like it will take place at 8:30am EST and last about 3 hours.

Here are a few links...
This is the link is the background of Stellan's story
This is the link to her actual blog, updated often
This is the link to a news piece done on them last week in her home town of Minneapolis, MN

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OK, I just got done typing all of that, and went to her site to link and found out that little Stellan has not been doing well. He may or may not have the surgery in the morning. Either way, if you have a few minutes to look through her blog, it's rather interesting. She is pretty real and easily shares her struggles, failures and successes. It's refreshing. So...please pray for her, her family, and little Stellan.

Pregnancy and Gardens

I had my first midwife appointment on Wednesday. I have nothing exciting to share. You can not pick up the baby's heart beat quite yet on the doppler, so I didn't even get to hear that. My official due date is November 16 (that's my brother-in-law's birthday). I have a feeling it will closer to a Thanksgiving baby though, because I'm always over due. I have felt pretty well this pregnancy. I've had a few yucky feeling days, but I have not been throwing up, so I'm happy. I'm a bit tired and run down, but that is pretty normal. It's actually better if I don't give in and get to lazy. The lazier I get, the worse I feel it seems, so I'm trying to stay really busy. This morning I did not feel well at all. I had a small probably when I was pregnant with Hannah passing out. I passed out a couple of times (once I ripped the towel rail complete off the wall and even took out some drywall...no good. Today I felt pretty weak and dizzy for a few hours. So, I reluctantly made an egg and cheese bagel and drank a Gatorade, and I feel a lot better. I even got a good lunch, grilled chicken, broccoli and un-fries. So, I feel better...I'm hoping it stays this way.

Garden update....I think our garden looks great! We've had a few problems and a few successes so far. Let me share.

Problems...
*We've tried planting corn, I believe 4 times now. Every time within about 5 days, the birds pick the corn seeds. They don't even have time to sprout. I think this is something I need to plant and grow in small containers, maybe indoors until they are established then try to transplant. I'm pretty sure it's to late in the season to do that now though.

*Most of our salad greens are not doing well. Spinach and iceberg lettuce have not grown at all. I think these are fall/winter plants down here.

*I'm pretty sure I shared my pathetic radishes with you all. So, no need to re-visit that.

Successes (so far)
*Several of our veggies have flowered this week this seems to be a good sign to me.

*Our beans and peas look great. We need to find a way to give them more room to climb. Our little fence is not doing the job. Maybe this weekend. Our peas flowered this week.

*Two of the salad greens, Indian Mustard (I think that's a salad green?!?!) and Romain lettuce look great, to me anyway.

*The zucchini are huge. I had no idea how these, and cucumbers would grow. I definitely didn't plant them "right". But we'll know better for next year. These plants needs lots and lots of room. We transplanted a few that I don't know yet if they'll survive. Zucchini flowered big yellow flowers this week.

*Cucumbers also look great, and they have flowered too. I think they need more room than we gave them, but again, we know now for next year.

*I think our carrots are looking alright, but that will be hard to judge until it's time to harvest.

*And our onions seem to be doing fine too.


We really wanted to have sweet potato plants, but I couldn't get any sweet potato roots to sprout buds, so we just planted two whole potatoes. Probably NOT the way we were suppose to do it, but I couldn't figure it out. What do you think? Do you think we'll get anything? The two potatoes we planted each had 4 or 5 nice long roots coming off so I guess I just thought maybe they'd grow into plants. I'll have to work on that better for next year I think. We'll see though.


It's been fun to watch these plants grow. I hope we actually get to harvest some. Nicole and Hannah both like to play/work in the garden. Hannah was in there with us the other day. We were pulling weeds, so she started imitating us and grabbed anything green she could find and rip it up. Unfortunately, it was usually a real veggie, not a weed! hehe.