three beautiful girls

I did a little photo shoot at home for Maddilyn's birth announcement. Here are some of the photos that turned out. . .




and some that didn't . . .

fun stuff

Kimee and Audrey got a bunch of fun stuff to do from the Easter bunny. This has come in really handy as we had a week of staying home, not going anywhere, with the new baby. I think their favorite has been two little balls that they have played catch with over and over. Here they are with their new markers, colored pencils, and sketch pads. What a special day!

trees

Dave loves trees. At our old house, we tried to plant one tree every year. That wasn't hard since there was not a single tree in our yard when we bought the house. It was sad when we moved to leave behind the trees we had planted, especially the London Plane in our front yard that had gotten so big. It was awesome.

At this house, there were two trees. Not nearly enough. So we planted three the first year we were here. Last year we ended up having to move two of those to make room for the shed we put in. Dave planted another tree up front to add more shade, but it ended up dying. I think we planted it too late, and it didn't get enough water to keep up with the heat. Dave has been itching to replace that tree for months now.

The first week of April he came home from work early with that project in mind. He and Audrey went down to the nursery and picked out a tree. They came home and got to work replacing it. Funny thing is, I thought it was still too early to plant a tree, but Dave timed it perfectly. In the two weeks since he planted it, we have gotten tons of rain (and snow). I think this must be a happy tree now, with plenty of moisture to get it established.

I love that Dave likes working in the yard, something he learned from his Dad. It's something I love to do and I think our kids are learning to enjoy it too. I can't wait for more spring weather to enjoy the yard! Before you know it, we will be able to plant the garden. Maybe I'll even post a picture! :)

Mommy's helper

Audrey has become quite the helper in the kitchen. She loves picking out the spoon or other utensil that we will be using. She opens the drawer, points at one and says, "This one? This one? This one?" until she gets to the right one. Her favorite thing to do is to unwrap a stick of butter. She starts to do this almost immediately when we start making something. She loves to help with stirring, putting in ingredients, and most of all washing dishes. It is just so much fun to play in the water! This has really motivated me to keep the sink free of dirty dishes whenever possible so that I can avoid the major water mess that follows Audrey's dish washing.

A few other cute sayings of Audrey right now:
Are we going on a busy road?
Can we go on a busy road and see the horsies?
It was fun.
Call Janna?

I love Audrey! I love watching her grow into her personality and independence. She is so sweet and so much fun!

Kimee loves to read

Kimee has always loved books. I have pictures of her when she is really little surrounded by books on the floor as she pulled every one off the bookshelf. Now, she loves to read all of those books. She reads to herself a lot, but she really likes playing school. She is always the teacher, of course. If she has no one to be her student, then her beanie babies are the students. Kimee's best student is her cousin Sarah. Kimee will easily read books to Sarah for an hour and they both love it. Audrey doesn't have much of an attention span for being read to, which is frustrating to Kimee. Audrey wants to change books every 30 seconds. Kimee is a great sister and she still tries to read books to her. Hopefully someday soon Audrey will enjoy it too.

animal report

Kimee did a great job on her animal report at the end of March. Kimee really wanted to do a bird. So we looked through our beanie baby birds and chose a blue jay. We had fun putting together the diorama including real branches, rocks, and bird food. Kimee colored the background and wrote on the front of her box. We typed up some information for her to read to the class. She absolutely loved the entire process and says she wants to keep it forever. She loved having her dad come with her to school for the "animal showcase" where all the kids showed and told about their animal. Kimee did a great job!

Cute as a bug!

Maddilyn is such a great baby! She does not cry very often, and when she does it's just so cute. I don't have this urgency to stop her from crying because it is such a cute cry. Sorry, Maddilyn. Anyway, the few times she does cry is when you mess with her. She does not like having her diaper changed. Here she is at the hospital when I got her dressed into her first outfit.

Maddilyn all cozy and ready to come home.

Maddilyn has the cutest dimple in her right cheek.
I managed to catch it in this photo of her in her car seat ready to leave the hospital.

New babies are so much fun! I love Maddilyn so much and words cannot describe how happy I am that she is a part of our family.

Maddilyn's here!

We are so excited that Maddilyn is here!
Born Monday, April 13 at 7:11am, she weighed 8 lbs. 6 oz. and was 21 inches long.

Maddilyn came on her own timetable. I think she really wanted to be born on a beautiful sunny spring day, which she was. The rest of the week was cold, rainy, snowy, windy, and wintery. So she didn't have much choice but to come on Monday for us to be able to call her our spring baby. Also, I wonder if she wanted to be born earlier, but had enough patience to wait for me to get my scrapbooking goal accomplished, and to wait for her sisters to be over their fevers. What a patient and kind soul.

Now for my side of the story. I really was hoping she would come early, but since she hadn't come yet, I was completely planning on going in to be induced Tuesday morning. Well, Monday morning I woke up with contractions. After so many contractions over the past month, it took me a little while to realize that I was really in labor. Dave and I hurried to get ready to go. Janna come over to our house to watch the girls. Despite a few delays with the blow dryer not working and the car battery being dead, I really think we got ready about as fast a we could. Well, it's a good thing we didn't dilly-dally any further, because Maddilyn was born 26 minutes after they hooked me up to the monitor. Nope. No time for an epideral. No time for much of anything. We did have to wait for the doctor for about 10 minutes (yes, once he got there, he was seen running through the halls). Having to wait was probably the worst part of the whole thing for me. It was just so exciting. Actually, it was one of the most exciting days of my life.

Since Maddilyn was born in such a flurry of excitement, I wonder what that says about her personality. Will she always make such a grand entrance? Will she surprise us with her many talents and abilities? Who knows? Only time will tell. But we will always have a great story to tell of Maddilyn's birth. We are so glad she is in our family.

Easter

The girls were great sports in letting mom take their pictures before church on Easter Sunday in our backyard.






I really wanted to get good pictures of the girls in their new Easter dresses. After about 50 pictures, I could only find a handful of decent ones, and even these aren't that great, despite the beautiful subject matter. This has made me conclude that I definitely need a new camera that does not have a 2-3 second delay when trying to take a picture. And maybe I need to take a photography class!