Wordless Wednesday

Oh Boy - Another Girl!

We got our ultrasound on Wednesday, and surprise surprise it's another girl for us! I would have been shocked had it been a boy. I would love to have a boy but I know God has His reasons for giving us another girl and I'm fine with that. We were very happy to see that everything looked great and she was measuring right on schedule. I've started to gain more weight recently. I will try to post a belly shot soon. We've got a lot coming up - all the girls' birthdays and our trip to Houston for the Texas Children's Hospital reunion.

We do have a house - sort of... The papers are signed, and our closing date is the 30th, but only time will tell when it will actually happen. Things are already delayed with trying to get the electricity turned on for the inspection. Still, it's a great house and I will wait as patiently as possible. I can't wait until it's actually ours and we can get it fixed up & move in. I will put up before & after pics & probably be asking for some decorating advice!

A Day in the Life

Avery & Alexis have gotten very mobile & mischevious. Things are rarely dull around here these days.
Alexis likes to pull up on things and then cries when she can't get down.
Or when she lets go & falls on her bottom.












They are both crawling & exploring and many times end up stuck somewhere.








Avery has a funny face that she likes to make since we always laugh when she does it. Don't be offended if she makes this face at you sometime.











And of course big sister Kaleigh is never far away from the craziness!

New Home Wish List

Nathan and I have a couple of "must haves" for a new house -

• at least 4 bedrooms or 3 with a room that could be a bedroom
• a garage
• a good backyard for the kids to play in

However, Kaleigh has quite a different kind of list -

• A house with stairs - not on my list
• It needs to be pink or purple - hopefully her room will suffice
• A trampoline - maybe
• A deck she can eat outside on - this sounds nice
• lots of trees and if it doesn't have them "we can bring them and she will carry a small one".
• A new baby in mommy's belly - I'm hoping she means the one already in there
• A new Daddy - What?!!? I asked for clarification on this one. Are we talking about replacing our daddy? "No, we just need another one because we keep getting lots of babies and we need somebody else to help take care of them." (I love how she phrased that, like we keep going to Wal-Mart and bringing babies home or they just appear. She then told me she was just kidding about the new daddy.)

Officially Homeless with 3 kids & one on the way...

Okay, don't feel too sorry for us. We do have quite a comfortable place to stay, even if it's not ours. We were glad to officially sell the house today and get to really looking for a new one.

We wanted some family pictures in front of the house and waited until the last possible moment and took some this morning.








And lastly - this little bit of funniness. Kaleigh wanted to pray the other night for her friend Noah. So she started off her prayer "Dear God, thank you for Noah and for his best friend - Me!" It went on very appropriately, but I was smiling the whole time. She is an interesting little person.

Home Update

We've officially moved out of our house and are now living with Nathan's parents. We don't actually have to be out until the 29th, but we set moving day for yesterday. We had a lot of great help from some friends & family. Thanks guys! Now we just have a bunch of odds & ends to get out. Thankfully the appraisal & inspections went fine, so things should continue smoothly.

We found a house we really like & made an offer, but of course it's not a simple situation. It's in a short-sale, which is kind of pre-foreclosure. We heard nothing on the offer. Not a yes or a no or a counter. Somewhat frustrating b/c until we have closure on this house we probably won't find anything we like better for the price. We took Kaleigh to see the house & asked her if she liked it. She said yes and we asked her how much we should pay for it. She said "Hmmm, I think maybe 3 dollars". Then she said she would give us the $3 out of her piggy bank. Isn't that sweet?

Then yesterday we had the funniest conversation where she informed me that she doesn't want to move, she likes our house. Then she said "Okay, we can move. But we have to get a house with stairs". And if it's ugly we can paint it pink and purple so it will be pretty. I'm thinking we probably won't let her decorate for us!

BYE BYE SHAKER RIDGE...

We are so glad that God allowed our house to sell in such a short amount of time. That can be a stressful & trying ordeal & we were spared much of that. Thank you all for praying for us. Now we are looking for a new place to live & trying to make the best decision in that regard.

We have looked at a few houses. Some were absolutely awful but we did find some we really like. In typical Nathan/Shelly fashion, I'm ready to buy one today, and Nathan wants to think about it and look some more and keeps thinking of things wrong with them... This could indeed be fun.

We will miss our sweet little house. It was our first home together and the only house our children have ever been in. I did tell Nathan a while back that we needed to move b/c I had bad associations after my bedrest here, but now I will be leaving with good memories.

Don't you just love it when the forces of nature conspire against you to make things difficult? I'm working on something I needed to get done today, and it looked easy to start with. A list of information. 6 things...

1. my due date
2. Copy of my last bank statement
3. Mileage & Payoff of each vehicle
4. copy of my ID
5. copy of my birth certificate
6. Nathan's income for June & July
   

I looked at the list & it looked easy. I thought "this won't take more than 15 minutes to get it all together". Well the first thing was a little trickier than I thought. I needed something from the Doctor showing my due date. Turns out I have nothing. So, I'll come back to that one. #2 should be easy. I'll just print that off the computer. Then I remember the printer is not hooked up so that has to be done first. I'm already past my 15 minutes. I go in and print it out, but the ink is almost out. This complicates things. There goes #2, #4, &#5 until I can get more ink. 4 hours later I still have not one thing on the list. Don't worry, I haven't been working on it the whole time.

I have not been very good about blogging lately. We've definitely been busy trying to get our house on the market. Well, Nathan's been busy & I've just been tired. It was finally listed on Monday. I decided it would be easier to skip town with the kids than trying to keep the house clean with them there. Hopefully some good news on that soon, then it will be off on the search for a new house!

I'll try to keep up with things as much as possible, although it may get even crazier for a while. July was crammed full of activity. Me & Nathan's 7 year anniversary was last Monday! We went on a nice little date to the Flying Fish (I got crab legs, yummm) and the to see the Harry Potter movie.

Here are some random pictures. Kaleigh & Mimi made a pinata for her to break.
Alexis decided to rest on top of Avery one day.

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
(Psalms 127:3-5 ESV)

A few weeks ago Nathan and I were shocked to find out that we are expecting baby #4! We weren't sure if there would be a number 4 and definitely did not plan on having 4 children age 4 & under, but God has His own plans. We were relieved to get an ultrasound and fine out that there is just one! We're now working on selling our house and looking for a bigger one.

Here's a picture of our little bean -

9 months & sitting pretty

Avery & Alexis turned 9 months on July 1st. They are finally both sitting up well. I can't believe it took this long! It will be nice now and make it a little easier to dress them and bathe them, and also give them another view of the world. Avery is also cutting her first teeth! Two little teeth coming in on the bottom. She is just a little bit fussy and a LOT drooly! I think Alexis is getting some too, but I can't see them as well yet.


Nathan and I got a little break over the weekend. We left the kids with grandparents and went down to Felsenthal with some of Nathan's friends from way back & their wives. We do this annually on the 4th of July and call it the Guys & Wives reunion. Although we didn't get to go last year. I had just had my surgery and was in the hospital here. This year was definitely an improvement! It was all about the fishing this year. I didn't go as much as some of the others, but it was fun. We were able to stay in the shade for the most part or go in the morning before the bad heat set in. The highlight for me, besides just visiting with friends, was seeing an alligator! Liz spotted it first and we stayed a safe distance away, but it followed us for a little while. I kept my eyes on it. I wasn't scared as long as I knew where it was! Andy finally threw a fish at it, & the gator ate it then turned around & swam away. Fun.

SUMMER FUN

Lake Weekend, Sort of...

We had planned a lake weekend with our friends, but it turned into just a lake day for most of us. My family came to visit for a few days and we got to spend some time with Lance & Kristin before they move to North Carolina. I'm happy for them and will enjoy visiting them there, but we will miss seeing them. We wanted to spend as much time with them as we could, so we stayed home Friday night and got up early Saturday to go to the lake.

It was a gorgeous day. Perfect for swimming, riding around in the boats, laying around, talking, eating, and playing with the kids. It's rare these days that we can all get together. Nathan's still nursing a slightly hurt ankle, so he couldn't wakeboard. He spend most of the day taking pictures with our new camera. Here are a few of those. I need to get a photo editing program and zoom in on some of these.

More Camping Pictures...

Camping Preview!

I don't have time to do a full blog on our camping trip, but here's a little preview of what we did. We took Kaleigh with us to Heber Springs and left the babies with Nana & Poppa (Thanks again!) We also borrowed their camper. That's about the only camping I do these days. It was a great weekend.

What to do if you have extra babies lying around the house...







Have a slumber party!
Kaleigh is starting to realize how much fun her sisters are going to be. Of course they are probably more cooperative now than they will be in a few years! It's so cute to watch them together.








We had a busy but fun weekend. My sister got back from Austria and my grandparents came from Alabama to visit so we all got together at our house on Saturday. Of course Sunday was Mother's Day and we had Nathan's family over. He cooked a great meal and took good care of me on behalf of our girls. It will be nice when they can do it themselves :)

Birthday Fun & A Day on the Town

My 30th birthday was Thursday. Nathan is already planning a weekend getaway to Hot Springs for next weekend and I thought that was the main celebration so we didn't have much planned for my actual birthday. Just dinner at home and I was going to get coffee with some of my friends who gave me some nice presents. Little did I know when I got back to the house there was a whole slew of people waiting for me! Many of my friends and family were there and we had cake and ice cream and snacks in the backyard. It was so nice and made me feel very special. Nathan did great!

My parents stayed in town until today and my dad wanted to go out to eat. Instead of just going to a restaurant we decided to enjoy our lovely city of Little Rock and the gorgeous weather. We went downtown to the RiverMarket and got some food and ate outside by the river. Then we shopped the market a little then walked along the river. They have really fixed up a great play area for kids! There is a huge slide and all these tunnels leading different ways, then rocks to climb back up. There is a "fountain" where water shoots up periodically from the ground. We watched some kids playing in the water and tried to get Kaleigh to run through but she wasn't having it! I would definitely like to go back and have her bring a bathing suit next time. We got some ice cream then went home.

Yesterday Gretchen came over and did a photo shoot for us. It was the first time we've had anybody take family pictures, and of course she got tons of just the kids. She did a great job. There is a little preview here at her photography blog.
It was fun. The babies did great, much better than I expected. Kaleigh wasn't as "into it" as I would have expected, but she did good. I love Gretchen's style. She just captures the essence of people. Poor Nathan had a root canal yesterday morning. Please pray for him, they weren't able to finish and he has to go to a specialist tomorrow to get the rest of it done. Every time he goes back to the dentist we get more bad news (& spend lots of $$). He takes excellent care of his teeth, he just inherited "difficult" teeth.

Here are some Easter pictures. My Dad got this amazing basket from the high school in Bearden. They were doing a fund raiser and all the stuff was donated for the baskets. It had so many books in it and nice things. Kaleigh is wearing the Ariel gown that Lance & Kristin brought her from DisneyWorld. She loves it. And of course the family shot Easter day. Since it was pouring down rain we couldn't get the outside picture that I really wanted. It was a nice weekend.
Don't forget to look at our pictures on Gretchen's photography blog!

Random Post

The last few weeks have been crazy busy. Nobody warned me that twins at 6 months were harder than twins at 3 months?!? Here's just a little of what's been going on...

We got together with some of our best friends. We always try to get certain pictures when we're together. The picture of the kids with Ben is just a fun tradition. We thought about trying to get ALL the kids in, but that probably wouldn't have worked! I love these people. We laugh so much when we're together. It's a little harder these days, but worth the trouble.

We had Maddie over to play with Kaleigh the other day. Those two are such sweet friends. They played great together and I loved listening to their little conversations. Look at the second picture what Maddie is wearing. Is that a match made in heaven or what?!









We've been selling a lot on ebay. We hit up a garage sale last Friday and found all sorts of interesting things to sell. The best so far was $3 camera lenses sold for $25 plus S&H. We may not get rich that way, but it's fun! I'm also in a dispute with someone that I bought from. I bought a PC game and it never came. He won't respond. I'm pretty sure he's scamming a bunch of people... Or maybe he just overdid it and I'm being cynical. We'll see. I actually called ebay on him though.

Funny Kaleigh story.. Nathan had been letting his facial hair grow for a while and finally shaved the other day (with some encouragement from me). Afterward he went into the LR where Kaleigh was and sat down next to her. He had his shirt off. He asked Kaleigh "Do you notice anything different about me?" She looked him over and finally said "I don't know." He said "I shaved the hair off my face". She thought for a second and looked at him again then said "Oh Daddy, did you put it on your arms?"