Let's get a move on...

Well, Nathan is seven and a half months, and if you look close, you can see his two bottom teeth. For about 2 weeks in the beginning of April, Nathan went through a teething marathon complete with drool, cranky moods and a nasty runny nose. At the end of the 2 weeks, he surprised us with 2 top and 2 bottom teeth. Their smiles always look so much different once they have teeth.

Just this week, he has started to get up on his hands and knees. When I walk into the room to get him up from his nap, there he is on all fours staring at me from behind his crib bars crying to the tune of, "What took you so long? Get me outta here!" (Well, something like that anyhow)
Today, Caleb was playing with him on the floor and Nathan was up on all fours rocking and reaching his arms out to get the toys in front of him. My prediction is that he'll be crawling within the next week. (Unless I keep him off the floor just to prevent it :)

Metro Brothers

Can you believe it?? It's that time again. Time for my boys thoughts and actions to be consumed with the sport of the season... Baseball!! And time for a break in my home-bound routine with twice weekly trips to the ballpark for practices and games. I have done this enough now to know that the enthusiasm that I currently have about watching their games and rooting them on will wain toward the end of the season and I'll be breathing a sigh of relief when the last game rolls around, but for now... let the games begin!!

Visitors...

We had visitors staying with us once again. The Anderson Family came out to stay with us for a week. Steve, Ema and their 4 kids came out to attend our Church's 25th Anniversary Celebration. Steve's father was the founding Pastor. It was a busy but good week. Much better than last fall when we hosted them for 2 weeks and Nathan was only 2 weeks old. The kids really do enjoy having friends over 24/7. I, on the other hand, like my space and though we did enjoy our time with them... it is nice to have our house back. Love ya, Steve & Ema and kiddos.

It's a TEA party!!

We went to a TEA party today at noon at the Will County Courthouse. That's TEA as in Taxed Enough Already. We joined hundreds of others in a public rally to motivate people to have an influence on our politicians via petitions, phone calls, letters, ect. There are upwards of 2000 of these TEA party rallys going on all across the country in response to the wasteful government spending and ever increasing taxes.

The kids did their part in being good, little political activists by waving their flags and holding signs. Gracie even got her moment of fame when the speaker asked to take her up to the podium with him to show off her "I owe $18,000 in taxes already" sign that Aunt Dawn made for her.

Nathan's "professional" pictures

Yes, my conscience was getting to me, so I took Nathan in to get professional pictures taken at JCPenney's just after he turned 6 months old. My hubby "helped" me realize that I really SHOULD take him in to get professional photos, especially since all of the others had them taken almost monthly in their first year. Now, let me explain that I did take him to get 3 month pics taken in December. Even though I had an appointment, the wait around Christmas-time was much longer than I could deal with, so I left. Well, I made the appointment for his 6 month photo at Penney's once again, and went in with high hopes. Unfortunately, this time was about 2 weeks before Easter, and after 30 minutes of waiting, I realized that they were still photographing the same kids as when I got there (and I was like 4th in line). Seriously, I have no desire to sit and wait, and all the while I'm thinking that I should've dressed him in something cuter and I could just as easily take the pictures at home, so... I left... again.

I'm not sure if it's obvious or not, but these are NOT professional pictures. We took them at home on our porch. Either way, he's still my adorable baby, professional or not.

Easter pictures

Oh, by the way, I made their Easter dresses. A friend taught me how to follow the pattern, and I stitched them up last week. Cool, huh?

Will you bee mine??

Ok, I can seriously come up with a million puns to use with this new adventure of ours, but I won't bore you with most of them...

My handsome, charming husband has now added beekeeping to his repertoire! That's right, we added around 20,000 new pets to our home on Easter Sunday in hopes of attaining some home-spun honey... Yum!

We put the bees in back of the barn to keep the "sweet" little things mostly out of our yard (fingers crossed on that one). We bought 2 pounds of bees and their new "queen".

For the sake of explaining the process, it goes like this: we add the 20,000 bees and keep the queen in this tiny separate box in the hive with them so they can get used to her lovely perfume. She, being a queen and all, has her own personal attendants in the little box with her. After a couple days, we take the plug out of her box (well, Paul will be doing that since it involves reaching into the hive full of bees to get the box out) and then replace the plug with a marshmallow. (Yep, I did say marshmallow). The worker bees are so anxious to be able to dote on her, they eat the marshmallow to free their lovely maiden from her chamber and then proceed to hand feed her and wait on her hand and foot (or shall I say wing and antennae?). Anyhow, it is really like a little kingdom in a 2x2 foot box. The bees entire life is devoted to serving their queen and making honey to feed on during the long winter. (At least that's what I've gotten out of the whole process...that, and... well, I guess I'm not Queen Bee around here anymore :)

Coloring Easter Eggs...

I haven't blogged for a bit... so, we're going to do a posting marathon...

We didn't color eggs in the traditional sense. Our chickens' eggs come out already colored in blues, greens, browns and whites, so we really didn't feel the need to buy white eggs just to color them this year. Instead, we made egg-shaped cookie cut-outs and decorated them with all different colors of frosting and sprinkles. The kids agreed that the egg cookies tasted much better than colored boiled eggs...

No more training wheels!

Yeah!! Noah can ride a two-wheeler now!
We raised up his training wheels on his bike about a week ago because when he rode, they were both touching the ground and it was more like a tricycle than a two-wheeler. After just a few days of learning to balance and not depend on the extra support, he picked up a bike without any training wheels and took off! That was last Saturday, and now he's skidding and doing wheelies like the rest of the boys.

Red Envelope Day

Late last month, we, along with thousands,maybe millions, of other people, sent out red envelopes as a pro-life/anti-abortion message to President Obama in hopes that he will reconsider signing FOCA into law. FOCA (Freedom Of Choice Act) not only allows abortions at ALL stages of pregnancy, with ANY age girl or woman and without ANY parental notice, it uses MY and YOUR tax money to do it. President Obama also is against any form of "Born Alive" protection. That is to say, if a doctor doesn't get the job of killing the baby done and it is alive when it is born, they will do nothing to save or protect it. Millions of empty Red Evelopes were sent with a message on the back that said something like "This evelope is empty because it represents one of the millions of lives that were taken by abortion." We added "Please choose life". We hope and pray that this will make an impact, but even if it doesn't, we know that we are being proactive, and in a way are saying that though we have no choice but to pay taxes, we do not support what is being done with them. (Which leads me to recommend supporting your local TEA (Taxed Enough Already)Party Day Rallies that are being held across the country on April 15th at Noon. More info to come...)


Earlier this year, Caleb had learned how to make envelope, which worked out great. We just used red construction paper, a little glue, and voila... a great family project.