Bella, Gabe and Josiah

I sorted through all of the baby clothes this week, trying to located all of the preemie and newborn clothes, as well as putting everything else in piles based on size.  Apparently when I moved all of Gabe's clothes out of his dresser, I moved out the stuff that didn't fit, but not necessarily all of it at the same time.  Technically, he's still wearing a few pairs of 12 month pants and at the rate he's going, he'll still be wearing them when this new baby hits 12 month clothes too...  Even though it doesn't look like we'll be having a preemie, all those clothes are washed and ready to go, just in case.  I know that most pregnant ladies don't worry about making sure they have preemie clothes ready, but with our history, I don't really have a choice. I did manage to find the outfit that Gabe came home from the hospital in.  It's so tiny!  And it was so big on him.  I know that he's pretty tiny now, but the kid has grown so, so much. Sp

We had a lovely weekend.  On Saturday, Grandpa Phil came over for dinner.  We haven't gotten to see him in awhile, but he was in town for a funeral we got to spend some time with him.  However, by the time Pat dropped him off and then I made a pie and Pat did a bunch of Easter dinner prep, it made for a very late night.  This wouldn't be a huge deal, except that I got to be at church at 8... This year, the church's Easter offering was going to the Feeding Center in Nicaragua and I was asked to do a presentation at all three services.  Since I can talk about Nicaragua anywhere, anytime, I agreed.  The worst part is that they told me I could only talk for 5 minutes and they wanted pictures, video and a history of how I got involved, as well as information about the Feeding Center.  I'm not sure I quite made the five minute mark, but I think I kept it under seven! Anyway, I got to be at all three services, while Pat got the kids ready to go.  I did miss out on them

Gabe had a wonderful time on his date with Gram during Bella's birthday party.  He did have trouble falling asleep, but I think he was confused that it was bedtime and not just naptime...  Gabe knew that Gramps was showing up while he was sleeping, so both Gram and Gramps got a lovely 6:30 wakeup call of Gabe yelling "Gram!  We have to wake up Gramps!"  I'm sure that's not how early Gramps wanted to wake up after a week long trip...  But then they got to play Squish, a game that was so much fun that Gabe has since told us about it multiple times. They played for the morning and then went to go and feed the ducks before coming home.  However, there was some sort of photography class going on at the park and they were trying to take pictures of the ducks in a natural environment, so Gram and Gramps decided that perhaps stealing all of the ducks for an early lunch wasn't the best option.  They went to a couple of other ponds looking for ducks, but weren't

One of the reasons that we wanted a new house was because of Bella. She’s now a teenager (how is that possible?) and we wanted her to be able to have friends over and have a place for them to hang out without being in the same space as everyone else that did not involve only hanging out in her bedroom. As a mom, I wanted to be able to be around without being in the middle of things, if that makes sense. When we were house hunting, that was the biggest thing I was looking for. Thankfully our new house has exactly that. And last night, we got to take advantage of it. Technically Bella’s birthday was the beginning of March, but since that was a week before we moved and most of our stuff was packed up, we convinced her to wait for her party until we could get moved and a little bit settled. So last night we had six middle school girls spending the night. It was pretty much chaos. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they all had a wonderful time, but middle school girls are a new level of noisy.

Friday night Gram and Gramps took both kids so that Pat and I could out to dinner, which was lovely.  However, it ended up just being dinner as we couldn't come up with anything else that we could do, given the restrictions of being pregnant, having gestational diabetes and not doing any exercise.  There aren't a lot of options there... We picked up the kids and by the time we got home, Gabe was late for bed.  Pat got his jammies on while I laid on our bed because apparently a dinner date completely wiped me out.  Anyway, once he was ready for bed, Gabe came in so that I could sing him a song before bed and Pat came with him.  Gabe requested "The new song from church", so we snuggled and sang "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand."  (It was written in 1834, but sure.  It can be the "new" song from church...) So Pat and I sang, Gabe snuggled and Baby Brother kicked away and I thought "Yep.  This is a pretty perfect moment with my boys."

M: Do you know something? G: What? M: You’re a silly boy! G: Do you know something? M: What? G: I love you! You’re in my heart! He’s also started telling me I’m his best friend, which I’m not going to complain about at all...