Coming home from the hospital

These are a few pictures of Ellie on day two, when she is all dressed up and ready to go home. This was probably my easiest hospital stay of the three, but I was still quite anxious to get home. There always seemed to be a constant stream of people in and out of our room.

What a good big sister! Tori was so excited to have a little sister - she's already talking about all the dolls and toys that she's going to share with her when Ellie gets older.

James loved holding Ellie, too. I think he liked kissing her the most. He calls giving kisses "mmuh". So, he kept saying "mmuh" whenever he was near Ellie.

Below, James wanted to see what it felt like to be the baby, again. When did he get so big?

Below is a little video of us dressing Ellie to go home. I was just so happy that Tori and James were so excited about everything that had to do with Ellie.

Eleanor Marie

April 14th, 2011

We welcomed Eleanor Marie to our family.

She was 7 lbs 9 oz and 20.5 inches.

Here I am in front of the U of I football stadium right outside the hospital right before I was induced. Everything was going great with the induction, until my epidural stopped working. Luckily, the whole process went pretty quickly so I only had about an hour or so of feeling really horrible pain then our sweet wonderful Ellie was here and it's amazing how fast you forget it all.

Ellie was a sweet little baby from day one. She is a our littlest baby this far, so she seemed super small and delicate to me.

Tori and James were really excited to meet their new little sister. Tori is a sweet and gentle big sister who loved holding Ellie. I didn't think James was going to really understand what was going on, but he was very excited to see Ellie and kept saying "Bebe, bebe" over and over and wanted to hold her. However, soon he found the medical equipment in the room and was very interested in all the buttons.

What a wonderful day!

Mall and Dance Costume

John and I celebrated our birthdays by taking the kids to the free carousel night at our mall (where you can go around about a million times for free). I think the most I've ever been able to stomach in one night was 9. Then we went out to eat at Red Lobster and stuffed ourselves with crab. Tori and James love the carousel and eating out so they made our birthdays a lot of fun.

Tori got her dance recital costume this week at dance and was super-excited to try it on, so I took a fun pictures of her doing some poses.

Jumping Jane's

After we went to the Mississippi river museum, we stopped by a place called Jumpin' Janes. It had a ton of bouncy castles and other fun places to play. The kids absolutely loved it and we had some fun, too. We were having so much fun, it was hard to get anyone to hold still for a good picture, but here are a few that we took.

Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium

John had a little time off and we decided that we wanted to take a day-trip someplace we hadn't been before, so we went to Dubuque, IA (just about 1 1/2 hr drive north). We all had a lot of fun at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. They had some great exhibits and a fun water play area for Tori and James to explore (we forgot to get pictures of them playing with the water stuff). Here are the kids eating their lunch at the cafeteria.

James took a nice nap in the stroller.

We took our picture outside by the Mississippi river. Tori is holding a colored picture of a butterfly in some of these pictures since a friend of hers that used to live in Iowa and moved to PA sent it to her as part of a school project. We were suppose to take pictures of it at different fun places/landmarks and answer a few questions about Iowa and mail it back. Tori had a ton of fun taking pictures all over of her and Megan's butterfly.

Below is a picture of Tori and the pretty cool octopus. He was moving around quite a bit and it was pretty interesting to watch.

I love Tori's face in the picture below - it's because we told her the giant fish behind her were going to eat her (what great parents).

Above Tori is touching one of the crayfish (I was impressed that she actually wanted to touch it).

We had to get a picture of Tori with the alligator, since the mascot for her elementary school is the Garner Gator.

One of our favorite things to watch were the otters swimming around. There were about 3 or 4 of them and they were wrestling and playing with each other and just going crazy. Their energy was amazing (almost like Tori and James ;)).

Happy Valentine's Day

We started out Valentine's day by having some friends over (I swap babysitting with a friend so we can volunteer in our kids' classrooms.). I didn't pose them for this picture (above) they all just climbed up on the chair together and sat there looking cute, while I ran and got the camera. James is sitting with Luke and Kate. He loves it when they come over and when he gets to go to their house. He gets really excited and will say, "Kate, Kate" over and over again.

These are a few pictures of Tori's class Valentine's party. The kids that Tori sits with at her table starting with her and going clockwise: Tori, Parker, Payton, Abby, McKenzie and Jack. Below Tori is enjoying all the treats that were brought in for snack.

Above, James is watching all the kids at the party after having his treat. All the little girls in Tori's class love playing with him when we visit her class for parties.

We had a few friends over to exchange Valentines (at Tori's request) after school. Tori is a sucker for holidays and loves any excuse to have a party. Here are Tori and James filling bags with friends.

Tori Swim Lessons & her dog Lucy

The pictures aren't that great, but I thought I should at least document Tori's swim lessons. She's doing such a great job. She's gotten so much better at putting her whole head under the water and is really quite good at what she calls her "front rockets"(basically she glides with her head under water). She passed one of the levels and is now doing the next level and can actually glide with her head under while kicking all the way across the shallow part of the pool (about 6-8ft). May not sound super impressive to most people, but I'm proud since I wasn't willing to do much in the way of swim lessons when I was Tori's age.

Tori received a cute little stuffed dog for Valentine's Day that she promptly named Lucy. It has now been added to the list of things she sleeps with at night and she has loved playing with her and taking her everywhere. We're just happy because for the time being it has satisfied her desire to have a dog. :)

Below is a short video of her walking Lucy that she wanted me to take.