One Word Wednesday - (no more) Braces!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

Mother's Day 2016

I love being a mom. Really. I do. I know that is the thing to say on this day, but I genuinely mean it. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by the chaos of a homeschooling household filled with nine children. My husband is super supportive, helpful and provides abundantly for all of us. This is a truly blessed life that I live!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

Picture Perfect

We've been in our new house for about a year now. A few months back, we decided that we should probably start putting some pictures on the walls. I'm a typical parent. I think my kids are beautiful and have countless pictures of them. The difficulty comes in deciding what to do with them.

For example, school pictures can be tricky to display when you have nine kiddos. We used to get the 8x10 of each of the children and hang them up on the wall. We are blessed with a large home, but finding that kind of wall space is tricky! So, I decided to down-size this year and got the 5x7 of each child and picked up some combination frames at IKEA.

3 groupings of 3 - looks good, no?!

Here's how they look walking down the hall towards the loft.

Similarly, I shrunk down tub pictures of the kids. At nine months, I have a tub picture taken which is totally cute! We used to have 8x10's on the wall in super nice, matchy-matchy frames. But, alas, the good Lord has blessed us abundantly and the 8x10's took up too much space. So, I shrunk them down to 5x7's and purchesed some more white frames from IKEA.

Agnes' will be added in about 6 months when she has her 9 month photo shoot. For now, the cute little duckies will have to do!

Here's how the grouping looks as you walk into the half bath on our main level.

It's amazing how much more homey and personal our house feels with little touches like these. Because we rented for a year and a half, we packed up all the pictures when we moved 3 years ago and didn't bother putting them up in the rental house. It's so nice to slowly make this house feel like home!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

Twinsies!

Okay, so it is quite obvious that they aren't ACTUALLY twins, but they are having so much fun pretending! Grandma Eileen bought them matching outfits and they are tickled to be looking alike!  I remember when young Madeline and Haley were like this -----> fast forward 7 years and being all matchy-matchy would be fashion suicide. How time changes things, right?

And here's a random Benjamin picture, just because.  This little ham is such a firecracker!  He's always on the go!  He has definitely turned a corner with his breathing and is doing much better. He is sleeping through the night and only doing nebulizer treatments 3-4 times a day.  We're wondering if maybe this guy needs to see a pulminologist so that we can have a plan when he gets sick other than get him into the family practice doc ASAP.  With it being spring time and thing warming up, I am hopeful that the "season of sickness" has passed.

We're puzzlers over here.  I think we're averaging about a 1,000 piece puzzle a week.  And when I say "we" I mean everyone but me.  My role is to keep the little guys from "helping".

Finally, a Peter/Esther selfie.  That's a whole lot of cuteness right there!

Hope you're having a great day!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

2 Months!

Our little Agnes is 2 months old today!  She is growing and changing so quickly.  Just today, her eye lashes grew and curled up...it's so adorable!

I take a picture of the children in this chair each month of their first year.  So, here is her 2 month picture.  It's amazing how big she is getting already!

Big sister Lillian is such a good helper.  She's always ready to jump right in and do whatever I ask of her.

This is Benjamin at the doctor's office on Thursday...2 hours at the doctor's office in the tiny room...yeah, 2 hours! He has a double ear infection and pneumonia. He's on an antibiotic and nebulizer steroids around the clock.  He's starting to return to normal and is back to running everywhere he goes.  We're hoping that he really turns a corner here soon and we can begin weening him off of the steroids.

Madeline and Haley had their Living Stations of the Cross performances this week at our church.  That is Madeline next to Jesus as one of the Weeping Women of the 8th Station. It is such a powerful performance and is very moving.  I'm so thankful that our church works with the youth to do this each year. It is an only youth cast - amazing!

The weather has been warmer - nice enough to eat lunch out on the deck! Hooray for spring time!

As part of Girl Scouting Sunday last week, our American Heritage Girls brought the gifts up at each of the Masses.  They were so respectful and reverent. Well done ladies!

And a random Peter selfie that I found on my phone.  This turkey definitely makes my life interesting and fun!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

Everyone Loves Agnes!

These past 6 weeks have FLOWN by...I know it's cliche, but where does the time go?  We are plugging right along over here, trying to find our new groove.  Agnes is growing bigger and bigger every day.  She's out of her newborn clothes already and into the 3 month outfits!  I'm just guessing that she's about 9 pounds right now.  We're still struggling with nursing. I spend a good chunk of my day pumping bottles so that I can feed them to her. She's also supplementing with formula. I'd say she's about 75% breastmilk and 25% formula.  According to the lactation consultant (who is amazing, by the way!), Agnes has insufficient suction to properly nurse at the breast.  I'm hoping that she'll outgrow that and as she gets bigger and stronger, become a better nurser along the way.  I guess time will tell on that one!

Now for a few photos of our little lamb!

Sporting a fancy new outfit from Grandma Pam - thanks grandma!

Godmother Molly got to hold her for a while at the Lenten mission at church last week.

Esther is always asking to hold her. Agnes really loves listening to Esther sing to her.

Where would we be without big sister Haley?! Madeline is extra busy with play rehearsals these days, so we're calling on Haley a bunch.  She is such a blessing to us!

And here's the proud papa!

That's all for now...Agnes is calling me!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

One Word Wednesday - BABY!

More details to come....for now, some pictures of our last 2 weeks!

Ahhhh....we're all in baby-love over here!

God Bless!

Heather :-)