Porcupine Brother

Finally! The cat ...er...porcupine is out of the bag. We will soon be a party of five! I am 20 weeks pregnant now, halfway done and am so excited to announce we are having another little boy! I waited longer this time to share the news with friends since this will be our last tiny addition. As much as I would love to keep growing our family I think that 3 beautiful babies is the perfect number for us.

 

We found out we were expecting early January.  We told the kids the very same day as I am an optimist and prefer to think the best rather than the worst.  The kids were so excited! From day one Paige hoped for a sister and Quinn insisted on a brother.  I think that even though a brother would be a better fit for Paige, she figured, she already had one stinky little brother and that was enough.  Maybe a sister wouldn't mess with her stuff as much.  After all her cousin Dakota is just one and doesn't cause any trouble at all!  Yet....

Quinn, from the very beginning, has been passionate about not only the baby's gender, a boy.  But also the kind of baby it is.  A porcupine brother.  Still a mystery to us but he will call him nothing else, his name is porcupine, he looks like a porcupine and he is a boy...his brother...period.  I have even asked him what the porcupine brother looks like and he describes a porcupine right down to the prickly spines.  Ouch.  As cute as it is..I am really happy it just isn't possible. 

But, in the end, Quinn was right!  A new baby brother it is!  Paige wasn't as disappointed as I thought she would be. She got over the idea of wanting a sister pretty quickly as soon as I told her that a little sister would leave sparkles all over ALL of her stuff. 

 

I also want to note that Paige drew herself 4 different times before settling on this last drawing.  The first 3 featured her wearing a button down shirt, bowtie and short boy hair.  When I asked her why she kept erasing her picture she said she was concerned that I wouldn't like it.  She knew that I liked her looking "kinda" like a girl.  I reassured her she could draw herself however she wanted and this was what she finally decided on.  Love that girl to pieces.

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 Now only 20 more weeks to go!!! We can't wait...but oh man, life is going to get crazy!

An Egg Hunt for Grandma Betty

As a child I would look forward to Easter every year for one reason..well two because the Easter Bunny was pretty good to my sister and I...but this one came first.  We had a huge egg hunt at my Grandma's house with all of my cousins.  We were all close, close in age, close by location and close as a family.  It was always so much fun.  

I know that as a child, it was great for obvious reasons but now as an adult I think my Grandma had the most fun of all.  You see, she was a poet.  She liked to write short whimsical rhymes, ones that a child would relate to.  She put her talent to good use in writing short poems for us to give clues as to the whereabouts of our final eggs.  I can picture them clearly, carefully written in her curly and articulate handwriting.  Her writing was so distinct, so different than any other. 

The annual egg hunt was one of many traditions we had with my Mom's side of the family.  She has one brother and two sisters and with all of the children combined there was a grand total of 12, 10 of whom lived in the area.  And of the 10 of us there was only a few years difference between the oldest and youngest.  Who needed friends when you had cousins like that!

As we all grew older, the egg hunts stopped.  We got together for happy hours and birthdays, then for bridal showers, weddings and baby showers.  We all grew up and started living our lives eventually having children of our own.  A few years ago,  the Easter egg hunt was started again and little by little the guest list grew.  We had all had babies, nearly every one of us, and our family was growing.  What can you expect with all of those girls!  Between all of us we have a grand total of 18 babies with 2 more on the way!

This year was our first Easter without our Grandma.  She left us in the Fall and we all miss her terribly.  The home that we have gone to our entire life had been sold to a young woman who will hopefully feel the joy that has been in that home year after year.  There was so much love, how could you not.  As a family, we decided to celebrate Easter with Grandma, in her home, with her family and in her love..one last time....

We postponed our celebration until after the Easter holiday in hopes that we would have decent weather.  We were able to coordinate every last one of us to attend and although the forecast called for rain...for sure...we hoped for the best.  The weather turned out to be perfect, the wind died down and the rain held off until we were able to complete our egg hunt and our balloon release to celebrate Grandma.  It was her you know.  She would have never let it rain on us.  And as soon as we went back into her house after the outdoor festivities were complete the skies opened up and the rain fell down. Thank you Grandma...

Tidbits 4.2.13

My conversation with Paige on the way home from school yesterday

 (She is in 1st grade)

Paige: Hey Mom, I learned geometry at school.
Me: Really? Tell me what you learned?
Paige: A polygon has at least 3 sides with straight closed lines and connected corners.
Me: Silence

My conversation with Quinn Sunday night when he was going to try to go potty.  But had a baby erection.

Quinn: Mom, something is wrong with my pee pee

Me: What is wrong?  Does it hurt?

Quinn: No, it has bones in it!  Feel it!

Me: How about we try to potty in a little bit instead?

Hoppy Easter!! 2013

I am going to write about Easter on time!  Yippee!  It has been a REALLY long time since I have been timely in one of my posts.  Yay for me!  This one is mostly pictures so it is pretty simple, but still...right?

Thankfully the kids went to bed at a reasonable time Saturday night so the Easter bunny didn't have to stress too much about when to stop by and visit.  I don't know how he finds the time, it is alot of work to stuff over 100 little plastic eggs and hide them all over a house. He must be so exhausted on Sunday.  I know we were just from thinking about it!

Paige was so excited, she wrote a letter to the Easter bunny asking specifically for a whole line of Lego toys.  Ummm, no.  Good thing EB is buddies with Santa, he probably put in a good word.

 

Lucky for us, Paige got a kick out of the Easter bunny's response. 

 

Paige woke up at 6:20 and tried to get the okay to start searching for eggs.  After being told many times to go back to sleep, it was still dark out, it was too early, her brother was still sleeping....Paige got up to use the bathroom before heading back to bed.  It wasn't until a few hours later that we found out that she took that opportunity to stake out the house and found both her and Quinn's Easter baskets.  Lucky for her, she left them alone and went back to bed where she laid for the next 2 hours waiting for her brother to wake up.  Once he was up it was all we could do to stay out of their way!

 

Quinn was SO excited when he found his basket in his favorite hiding spot!

 

Two very happy kids!!!

 

After the egg hunt the kids asked me to make bunny pancakes.  I was not prepared so I had to make some batter from scratch, it wasn't very good as I just pulled the first recipe I found online...but Paige liked it!  Quinn loved helping to make the pancakes, but changed his mind after I made them.  Now he wanted waffles, not pancakes.  Since it was Easter...and the batter was yucky.  He got Eggo's and he was happy as can be.  We do what we can! 

 

 

 

Happy Easter!!!!