Happy New Year!!!

New Years Resolution #1: Get back to blogging!! No matter how short the post may be, i want to make it a goal to update at least once a week. The past five months have been absolutely insane in my household, with lots of family changes taking place not only in our personal lives but also in our daily routines, so come the end of a very long and stressful day, the thought of blogging was absolutely not appealing to me at all. Time to get back into the swing of things. I certainly miss writing about my beautiful family! So keep your eyes posted for a few big updates very soon- there are a bunch of things I want to get off my chest :) Happy New Year!! (BTW- those huge kids you see sitting in our laps are now 3 years old and 10 1/2 months old!)

Four

Yesterday Louis and I celebrated our 4th anniversary. All day long I was thinking back to what I was doing at that time on our "big day," and brought out our wedding album to go through the pictures. Every time I open it up I start to cry, and yesterday was no exception! Our wedding was the MOST special event of my life. Why, you may ask, was this event more special than the birth of my children? Because without the marriage I wouldn't have the kids! Without the love, trust, commitment and covenant that Louis and I have in our marriage, we wouldn't have our family. I love my husband more than I could ever describe. No words in this blog would do justice to that. I know this blog is mostly filled with stories of my kids, because face it, life after kids is always about them, but this entry is dedicated to my husband =) The rock of our marriage and the head of our family. I really can't find the words to say right now without sounding completely cheezy, so I'm simply going to end this with a great big I LOVE YOU...and I can't wait for the next set of adventures that come our way as we continue through our marraige!

For your viewing pleasure!!

This is my feeble attempt at blogging for tonight! I just uploaded some great pictures that my cousin Rebecca took during the past few days when she was staying with us, and I thought that while I had the computer up and running I might as well share them with my readers =) We have been having quite the fun summer, doing quite a bit of swimming at Grandma's house, and now with our own (tiny!) kiddy pool. On Monday we are taking our very first trip as a family of four! We are spending two nights in Carlsbad. The agenda? The beach, Lego Land, and lots of time in the hotel swimming pool! I am so excited. I'm crossing my fingers that this is the only year where the kiddos join in on Mommy and Daddy' s anniversary trip I can't leave Evelynne overnight or else she'd starve =( We also need to get in all the family time together now that we can because the following week, Louis starts his new JOB!!! He got rehired BP- he had a VERY good contract position with them last year, which ended two weeks before Evelynne was born (yeah that was fun...) and now he has been rehired to launch a new project, all of which was his idea, and if it is as successful as they project it to be, then after 8 months he will be permanently hired! Praise God!!

....so perhaps this entry is just a smidge longer than I intended it to be =) Enjoy the pictures!

Jeremiah, 2 1/2 years old

Evelynne, almost 5 months old (on Friday!)

Here we are!

This is one of Evelynne's 3 month portraits. I have my kiddos portraits taken every 3 months (and picture worthy holiday- Easter, Halloween, and Christmas) during their first year. Evelynne is now 4 1/2 months old, rolling over, starting to eat rice cereal and babbling up a storm. So yes, I am quite a bit behind in my blogging! And that's okay. You have to learn what is a priority and what is not when you have two small children. For example- "clean" and "organized" take on a whole new meaning when it comes to the status of my house. As long as my house is sanitary and somewhat neat, I am perfectly happy. A house with a 2 1/2 year old and a 4 1/2 month old is NOT going to sparkle and constantly be spick and span. And I'm okay with that. However, since Marissa is now living with us, I try to be more consciencious of the state of tidiness that our house is in. Her mere presence in my household is such a motivation for me to be more on top of the housework after the kids are in bed rather than putting it off til the next day and cuddle up with Louis simply because I am too exhausted to think about it.

I can't believe that tomorrow we will already be in July. I am so thankful that (so far) this summer has been fairly mild. It's supposed to be in the mid 70's on the 4th of July! I hate it when it gets miserably hot. I have no desire to play outside with the kids or take them on walks if it is sweltering hot. Their rooms get so stuffy since we don't have central air conditioning, only the wall units, so naptime and bedtime can be quite difficult unless we have fans blasting. Speaking of July, on the 22nd Louis and I will be celebrating four years of marriage! The past three years have always been celebrated with taking a little vacation, just the two of us- Vegas, Laughlin or Coronado have been our prior weekend getaways. This year, with Evelynne still exclusively nursing (minus the one or two bottles of formula she gets every Saturday when my mom takes the kids for a few hours, and even then she will only drink an oz at a time) we will not be able to take a trip by ourselves. We are thinking about taking the kids on a little getaway to San Diego but still haven't made a firm decision on that yet. I would LOVE to get away for a few days with my little family and spend some time at the beach, however Jeremiah refuses to sleep in a regular bed. The only time he will crash with us (not that it's a bad thing!) is if he is very sick, like when he had the flu last month. He's too big for the play pen now (and besides, Evelynne would be sleeping in that). So I have no clue yet what we will be up to for our anniversary. Definitely a romantic date night, just the two of us, the night of our anniversary, but we don't know about any sort of trip yet.

That's about all i have time to write about now. Jeremiah's babysitter is here (she comes twice a week for two hours a time) and she's playing with Evelynne because Jeremiah is still taking his nap- so I'm going to relax myself!!

Evelynne's first (and hopefully LAST!) hospitalization

Evelynne came down with a fever out of the blue on Sat, with no other symptoms or even fussiness. since it peaked at 103 we were sent to the ER, but got released within a few hours since it was going down and had nothing else apparently wrong with her. The dr. didn't want to subject her to too much testing on day 1 of her illness. The fever was still there Monday night so we had to take her back, where we found out she had a urinary tract infection, which caused the fever. They ran blood work, did x-rays, and even a spinal to rule out meningitis. My poor little girl... it was SO hard seeing her subjected to all those needles and catheters! Shots I can handle; IV's, spinals and blood drawing is totally different. She had to stay in the hospital until today- luckily everything is perfect with her now! No allergic reactions to the medication, and all her other tests came out clean as well. I just felt so bad for all the other babies and children that I heard crying and screaming in the pediatric ward, especially since my little girl was so HAPPY the entire time, unless she was having something poked in her or prodded. I had so much to be thankful for.

I'll do my general "Evelynne update" like I did for Jeremiah later this weekend!

My Sweet Son!

I am going to do my updates in a few different segments to prevent me from having another LONG blog (such as Evelynne's birth story). Oh, Jeremiah. My sweet, sweet Jeremiah. Getting oh so big and amazing me every single day! His speech lessons are certainly paying off because I can't even count how many words he knows now, and new words are sprouting out of him every day. He is also starting to form small sentences, sometimes two words or three words. His favorite words all revolve around Evelynne- "Sister, Evy, and Diaper" are heard All Day Long. Speaking of his sister, he loves her to pieces. From the moment he wakes up he is asking for her and wanting to give her a hug and kiss. Very cute, but when she was still sleeping in her cradle in our room it would cause me much distress that he was going to wake her up! (We bring him in our room when he wakes up in the morning to cuddle, drink his sippy cup and watch a little TV). Now that she's in her crib in her own room things are much better =) I recently put away the majority of Jeremiah's "noise making toys"- the kinds with tons of buttons that light up and play music. He would spend the majority of his day just sitting down and pressing them rather than engaging in more social or educational play, even though most of those toys are labeled "educational." I call tehm "anti-social." He now LOVES wood puzzles, shape sorters, play doh, coloring, balls, his sand box, and racing dead batteries off of our coffee table (his little invention!) Twice a week he has a babysitter, a college student we had respond to an ad we put on Craigslist, come over and play while I hang out with Evy or clean if she is napping. He adores his babysitter and gets so excited when she comes over. I am so thankful for the four hours of undivided, individual attention that he gets each week from her that is so hard for me to give him right now. If you take a look at the picture closely, you will see Jeremiah's first set of stitches, which he got a week before Easter after running into the closet door. It was a mess- blood everywhere, and he absolutely hated getting straightjacketed to get the stitches, but my brave little man pulled through =) Boys will be boys!

Jeremiah is going through that terrible twos stage, embracing his independence and new abilities to vocalize just what he wants. He is known to change his mind about what he wants to eat as soon as I present him with his requests. He is still really picky with eating so I usually make him his own dinner for now, until he gets a more broad palette other than fish sticks, sandwiches, dino nuggets and hot dogs. It's a slow process but I'm hoping for the best that this won't last forever! He knows that he can get away with a LOT when I am nursing Evelynne- I can't exactly chase him down when I have the baby suctioned to me. Things have gotten better but I have more than a few gray hairs from this stage of his life.

Stay tuned for my update on Evelynne!

A Teaser =)

I have *FINALLY* uploaded more pictures to my laptop and fully intend on writing a good lengthy update, complete with pictu sometime in the next day or two- provided I see some feedback on my blog =) Honestly, PART of the reason that I hardly update anymore is due to lack of feedback. Anonymous or not, I love to hear from my readers!