Half-way

This week marks the half-way point -- only 20 weeks until we meet the baby!

I had my ultrasound on Tuesday. The baby is healthy and I even got to see the baby grab it's toes during the ultrasound. We are waiting to find out the sex when he/she arrives in April. Technology has changed in the past two years -- the latest update is they burn a dvd of the ultrasound -- pretty cool! I'm going to attempt to link a video here so you can meet "baby S" (Sophie or Samuel).

** It appears I'm experiencing some technical difficulties trying to link the video to the blog - hopefully I'll figure it out soon! **

A Mouse, A Bee and Batman Invade Apartment 23A!

The kids had loads of fun dressing up this year! We found Jacob and Hannah's costumes at ARC thrift store. And Luke wore the traditional bee costume which Jacob and Hannah also wore on their 2nd Halloween.

Jacob - 2003 Hannah - 2005Luke - 2007The kids trick-or-treated around our apartment complex. Luke came along for the first set of apartments and had his own bag for treats (people actually gave bigger handfuls to him than the older kids - what were they thinking?). He quickly learned where I hung the bags of candy and would point at the end of a meal and say "ca, ca" for a piece of candy. For about a week after Halloween we gave the kids a piece of candy after lunch/dinner. And then tossed the rest. This pattern of rationing out the candy would have dragged on for too long -- way beyond Christmas. So we decided it was best for them to be done. It scares us a bit how they can be controlled by candy. They will do ANYTHING for candy -- almost...

Here they are inspecting but mostly oohing and awing over their loot

They weren't thrilled with the idea of saying goodbye to their candy, but they look forward to goodies in their stockings at Christmas :-)

After we finished trick-or-treating, we stopped at the Halloween party at the Aggie Center (in our apartment complex). The kids got goody bags and these silly teeth were in the bag. The kids tried them on when we got home. As I was in the living room taking this picture of the kids, Pat was talking to Lois on the phone and she warned us not to let the kids put plastic teeth in their mouths as the plastic may be tainted with toxins -- lead, etc. But I did get this picture before we found this out....

Happy Belated Halloween from mouse, bee and Batman!

On the Mend....

Luke woke up from his nap on Friday afternoon throwing up. Saturday morning Hannah started in and then Saturday in the middle of the night both Pat and Jacob got sick. I managed to wait until Sunday morning. The bug has swept the whole family and we're still on the mend. Luke is running circles around us! He is back to his cheery self. Luckily he is great at indepedent play. This is by far the worst bug that has hit us in our family's history. Never have Pat and I both been so ill at the same time. Thank goodness for pbs kids! In general, we don't watch much tv but having pbs to entertain our kids has been a good thing the past 3 days. We're hoping for a full recovery by Thursday so we can enjoy turkey and stuffing!

Glimpses of Love

I love catching little exchanges of love between our kids. Here are two recent moments I want to remember.

Jacob helped Luke play the xylophone

Jacob reading to Hannah

Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord

Psalm 150
1 Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.

2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.

3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,

4 praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,

5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.

6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.

The kids love to get out the instruments and play music together. We have an assortment -- mostly percussion instruments -- and they can get pretty noisy! I have to remember how much joy they have in playing the instruments -- and also remember that this exposure is good for them -- in order to not lose my sanity. ;-) They love to make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Apples and Leaves

Nana Haertel brought us several boxes full of apples, pumpkins, and melons. The kids have especially enjoyed the apple harvest. They love being able to pick out their own apple from the box, bring it inside to wash it and have a whole apple all to themselves. Luke was very proud to sit and eat a big apple all by himself.The bounty of fruit has stocked our freezer -- with 6 quart jars of homemade applesauce, three bags of sliced apples ready to be made into pies, several bags of cooked pumpkin to make into pumpkin bars, cookies, pies, soup and bread! Yum! I love fall foods and have a lot of fun stocking up our freezer for the months ahead. Thank you Nana for sharing with us!

Piles of leaves bring so much joy to our kids! We have several large trees in our courtyard. We've done a lot of raking and playing in the leaves the past few weeks. It's great exercise for me and hours of entertainment for the kids.