Bella, Gabe and Josiah

When Gram and Bella got home, they brought Gabe a Spot Dog. He loves it. You’d think they brought him a real puppy. He carries it around so much that Pat and I were starting to feel bad for Timmy. Luckily he brought Timmy the other night when he crawled into bed with me, so Timmy hasn’t been completely forgotten... Spot Dog needs a name. Right now I’m still partial to Spot Dog, but certain other family members are  insisting that he needs a real name. Gabe has a few thoughts. Right now the top choices are Marshall, Chase or Sky (characters from Paw Patrol). Or George the Dog. Or Popcorn. Or Old Macdonalds Food. So the search for a name continues.

If I don't write these all down, I'm going to forget them... There's a bear statue that we pass on our way to school every day.  The other day we noticed that a bird had pooped on his head.  Gabe saw it and said "Oh no.  Disgusting!  I'm sorry Bear!  The rain will wash it away."  Well, it hasn't rained in a few days and now every time we walk by he says "Oh no,  the rain hasn't washed it away!  And now the bear is thirsty.   He needs some rain!"  I'm not wishing the rain to come back, but it is adorable that he's so concerned about the bear. We also walk through the capital building every day, which includes going through the elevator.  I mentioned to Gabe that when we get in, we need to ask people what floor we're going to.  Now when we get in the elevator he looks at everyone else and says "What number?"  If they pick 4 or 5, he has to stretch on his tippytoes to reach them,  which makes everyone in the elevator sm

Since I’m still having drama with the blog and pictures, I have to do these separately. Anyway, here are a few pictures from our date...

It's been quite the Spring Break around here... First of all, since it's Spring Break, Gram took Bella to Arizona for the week.  Apparently they are having a wonderful time as I keep getting pictures of them going to the zoo, shopping, swimming in the pool (at 46 degrees...) and having girltime with Auntie Katilyn.  Bella's not going to want to come home... The rest of us have not been having quite as much fun.  The weekend was full of unpacking and trying to put our house together, plus exciting things like shopping for blinds.  Apparently moving involves all sorts of random little details that you don't think about... Monday morning I had a doctor's appointment and since Gabe hadn't seen an ultrasound yet, I decided to take him.  He thought it was great to actually see his baby brother.  He also spent the rest of the exam crawling on my head and kissing me, so this may be his last doctors appointment, even though he did manage to charm every person worki

It’s official!

Tomorrow we sign all the papers and all of this house stuff will be all official. I’m glad it will all be done! Even though everything is lining up exactly the way it should, I’m still paranoid that something is going to happen and this whole thing will fall apart. When the ink is dry, I think I’ll feel better. But tonight I went to the old house for the last time. And not surprisingly, it made me way more emotional that it probably should have. While we were dating, I sat at that bar for many hours talking while Pat cooked me dinner. That’s the room where Pat told Bella her mom had died. Pat proposed to me in the dining room. I sat on the couch for a month in the living room while on bedrest. And that’s the house where we brought our tiny baby home from the hospital. We’ve lived a lot of life in that house. It’s funny. I almost didn’t want to marry Pat because I didn’t want to deal with his house. And now, 5 years later, I’m struggling to leave it. I know we’ll make many other w

We did something drastic around here... We sold our house. And bought a new one. This has been a long time coming. We officially put the house on the market in May, and that was after months (or years?) of house projects in order to get the house ready to sell. We did take it off the market for three months in order to put in the new floor, but realistically, we’ve been working on this for a year. And then suddenly, a little over a month ago, we had three offers in 24 hours. The house that we’d been eyeing was still available, so we made an offer on it. The last month has been full of loan paperwork, inspections, appraisals, repairs and packing. It’s been a little crazy... Technically, we close on both houses on Friday, we were able to get into our new house this last weekend. Pat and some friends loaded the truck on Saturday, then they unloaded it on Sunday. Yesterday was a pretty long day. Pat and I were taking the truck back at 9pm and then we still had to track down bedding and pho

And just like that, we now have a teenager! Happy 13th Birthday Bella!

On Friday, school called and told me Gabe was sick. Gram and Gramps were able to take him for the day, but he didn’t was a pretty sick little guy. I figured he’d sleep it off, like he usually does, but Saturday morning he was definitely still sick. He spent the day watching Cars while the rest of us worked on packing. His fever was definitely worse that night, but he was still reasonably pleasant. Sunday morning he felt so much better that I figured he was finally feeling better. He and I skipped church anyway, just in case. Then he woke up from his nap and the fever was back. On Monday he never had a fever, but he definitely didn’t feel good, so he spent the day with Gram and Gramps. But Tuesday he was fine, so I took him to school. Plus, he’d been fever free for over 24 hours. When he woke up from his nap, the fever was back. I picked him up and took him straight to the doctor. She checked his ears and his throat, but he looked fine. His chest sounded a little funny, so she thought m

I’m ready for this winter and all of the winter bugs to be gone. In the last month and or so, we’ve had two rounds of colds go through the family and a stomach bug. Bella, with her immune system of steel, has somehow managed to avoid almost all of it, simply getting a cough for a few days. The other three of us have not been so lucky. Gabe has been sick 4 of the last 5 Fridays and Pat and I just keep catching things and giving them to the other one. I know we’re supposed to share things, but we may be taking this too far... I’m sure that the stress of selling our house, packing things up, craziness at work and a high-risk pregnancy aren’t helping our immune systems either. But I’ll be ready for the weather to warm up a bit and hopefully make a few of these bugs go away for good.  The thing that does make this bearable is that no matter how bad Gabe feels, he’s still and sweet and pleasant as always. Well, that and the fact that my parents are in town and don’t mind watching a sick Gabe