Sweet Summertime

If I haven't ever mentioned it before, I absolutely love summertime! I love being able to take the kids swimming, playing outside, wear flip flops everyday and just enjoy the sun! There hasn't been a lot of extra time to spend taking the kids a lot of places this summer, but I do try to play outside with them everyday. 

Veronica and Presley love riding their bikes, well Presley enjoys it more than Veronica but she can convince Veronica to ride with her most of the time.  The two of them take their "babies" for walks around the block on almost a daily basis.  Every once in awhile they are actually allowed to take Gabrielle for a walk in her stroller, which they enjoy even more. 

Gabrielle even enjoys playing outside already and will follow me to the door if she hears me calling the dog to go outside.  Grandpa Paul made a stand to hang a baby swing on for Gabrielle and she LOVES us pushing her on it! She starts cracking up the minute we start pushing her.  I need to try to get it on video! Thanks Dad, she loves it!

I know that the warm weather isn't going to last much longer so we are trying to enjoy it as much as possible! I hope everyone else is having a wonderful summer too! I will leave you with a couple pictures of the girls enjoying being outside!

Catching up

I have obviously not kept this updated as I had originally planned, so I am going to try to update this a lot more frequently from this point on!

A lot has changed since the last time I posted...obviously since it has been about 3 months! Veronica and Presley are out of school for the summer and are enjoying getting to go swimming a lot and spending time with different family members.  They went to Florida with their dad at the beginning of this month and had a great tme! They are now spending a few days with my grandma and my nephew, Carter, at my grandma's house.  She lives close to Lake Erie, so she plans on taking them swimming every day, as long as the weather allows it!  They go back to school on August 30, so it is sneaking up on us already! Veronica turned 9 at the beginning of this month...it is so hard to believe!

Gabrielle is now 9 months old! She started crawling about a week before she turned 8 months and has been non-stop ever since! She is pulling herself up, walking around holding onto things, and is standing up for short periods of time without holding onto anything.  She also claps her hands and waves.  She waves all the time...and always has a big grin on her face when she does it! She is such a happy baby and so fun to be around.  All of us enjoy her so much! Veronica and Presley miss her when they have to go away and I think the feeling is mutual...she gets so happy when they get home!

Here are a few recent pictures...

                                                     Veronica at her birthday party

Gabrielle standing like a big girl!

The 3 girls and myself at the American Cancer Society, Relay for Life (looking right in the sun)!

Trying to take pictures for Daddy for Father's Day...she preferred to chew on the letters I wanted her to hold.

                                                              Presley posing for me

                              Veronica, Presley and Gabrielle at Brook's family reunion

Presley and Gabrielle swinging

She is quick...and sneaky!

Apparently Gabrielle is starting early trying to be sneaky and get into things.  The other day, I had her sitting on the kitchen floor while I was putting away the dishes.  I saw that Veronica or Presley had a bag sitting on the floor with Easter gifts in it, but I didn't realize there was open candy in it.  When I turned around to look at Gabrielle, this is what I saw!

She found a peep! By the time I saw her, she had licked all of the sugar off of the top of it and made a huge mess! This was probably all done in a matter of 1 minute or less.  I should have known when she was being so quiet that she must have found something.  I let her have it long enough to take a couple pictures, but then I took it away from her.  She was not happy about it! Silly baby! :)

Florida Trip

We got back from our trip to Florida a little over a week ago.  We all had a terrific time and did not want to come back to the cold Ohio weather! The whole time we were in Florida it was between 75-80 degrees...gorgeous!

We spent the majority of our time at the house we rented.  It had a heated pool that all of the kids loved and they would have stayed in it all day if we let them.  Veronica and Presley are doing much better in the water and even swam in the deep end (with Mommy right beside them) without any floaties or anything. This was Gabrielle's first time swimming and she seemed to really enjoy it as well! She even didn't mind it when one of the other girls accidentally splashed water in her face...or when she splashed water in her own face!

One of the days was spent going to Disney's Magic Kingdom.  We spent the whole day there, which we were kind of nervous about, because we thought Gabrielle would get tired of it! The kids all did really well.  At the beginning of the day, Veronica wasn't feeling well and I was afraid she wasn't going to get to spend the day with us.  After going with Grandma Jan to get some medicine and eat a little lunch she felt better and was able to join us.  We stayed to watch the Light Parade and the fireworks at the end of the day and they loved it all! Even Gabrielle loved the fireworks and stared at them in awe!

Brook's niece, Morgan was singing at Downtown Disney one of the days we were down there, so we went down there as well.  The girls got to pick out some souvenirs and enjoyed watching Morgan sing.  It was a little chilly that day and kind of rainy, so they were ready to go, but we had a good time there as well.

Overall, it was a great trip! The ride wasn't even as bad as I had anticipated...not that I want to do it again anytime soon though! I will leave you with a few pictures from our trip.

Getting ready...

There hasn't been much happening lately, so I haven't had anything to update everyone on.  We are getting ready to leave for our trip to Florida in just a little over a week.  We are going down to Orlando with Brook's sister and her family for a week vacation.  The girls are looking forward to it and have already started packing their suitcases.  The condo we are staying at has its own heated pool, so they will get to go swimming a lot! It will hopefully be a lot of fun.

Brook and I, however, are not looking forward to the drive there (or back)! With a baby who is not quite 5 months old and loves to be held, a 7 year old who asks a million questions (including "are we there yet?") and an 8 year old who gets car sick...it should be a great trip! Notice my sarcasm? It should be fine...we hope! We are going to take a couple days to drive down so it will not be so hard on all of the kids...and us. 

It will be nice to get away for awhile and spend some time with the kids relaxing.  I will definitely post some pictures of the trip when we get home.  I added a couple more recent pictures of the girls this time as well, because it makes what I post more exciting! :)

Peek-a-Boo

  Here is a video of Presley playing peek-a-boo with Gabrielle and making her giggle.  She loves her silly big sisters! It is kind of blurry because it is from my phone and the sun was coming in the window, but it's still cute!

Snowy Days

As most of you all are experiencing, we have gotten a lot of snow and ice here over the last few days! Veronica and Presley had three days off of school and I was off of work for two of those days, so we got to enjoy some lazy days at home! We didn't leave the house, except for the first day when we had to take Gabrielle to the doctor for her 4 month check up and shots. She now weighs 14 lbs. 2oz. and is 24 1/2 inches long.  She is in the 75th percentile for both her height and weight.  We got the go-ahead at this vistit to start feeding her solid food, so we have started giving her rice cereal (Dad, I know you are jealous!).  She doesn't really have the hang of it yet, but she seems to enjoy it! I posted a picture of her at the doctor's office with Veronica holding her...she is starting to hold her own bottle now so the girls said I had to take a picture of her! The doctor commented on what a happy baby she is, because the whole time he did her physical she smiled and cooed at him.  Just wait until she associates the doctor with getting shots and screams as soon as we get there! :)