What We've Been Up To....

Lots! Seems like life is never dull, not even for a moment!! We have been enjoying having Tony home. We sure missed him and were so glad to have him home! I learned lots about myself while he was gone, but mostly I learned that I do not like single parenting and that if he does have to travel again, I know I can do it. We just hope he doesn't have to leave us again. We were able to meet up with Tony in between his weeks in Des Moines. He drove to Omaha, and we met there. The girls enjoyed some daddy time and I got to drop some baby stuff off to be consigned (made over $200). Tony came home Friday a week ago, and we have been on the go since. He arrived home and a few hours later, the Welsh clan from Pocatello Idaho came in for a visit. We had Ella and Madeline baptized! Yes, we FINALLY got to meet Madeline and boy did we ever have fun visiting with each other and allowing the kids to run rampat in the house. They had a great time as well!

Having Ella and Madeline baptized together was very special for us! We miss Kevin and Jenny and their family so much and really wish they lived closer. The kids had lots of fun playing together and just picked up right where they left off in September when they came to visit after Ella was born. Madeline is super cute, and oh so petite. She is smaller than Ella. Madeline warmed up to the girls and to us rather quickly, much to all of our surprise. She is walking and doing so well. Still having some sleep issues, but she will come around.

Having the kids together was both loud, chaotic and oh so much fun. They played exceptionally well together. They enjoyed walks outside, flying kites on a windy day, playing in the backyard on the swingset and in the sand box...and being loud! Kevin, Jenny and the crew left early Wednesday morning and made it home in record time despite not feeling well. We are anxiously looking forward to the next adventure together in July when we all head back to my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylavania for a family reunion!

Leo got this tool bench while he was in Nebraska. Not sure I ever saw HIM play with it. Olivia and Madeline sure enjoyed it though!!!

A Lesson in Patience

In case anyone is actually reading this and cares...we are surviving here. I am learning a lot about myself this week. I have learned that I absolutly HATE waking up in the middle of the night a hundred times. Actually, I really even hate waking up more than once. I need my sleep and need sleep to feel like I can function like a normal mommy! Ella has been sleeping terrible. She is teething, and I am sure she senses my tension during the middle of the night. I have also learned more about being a patient mom. I also know about myself that I am sometimes quick to snap in the evening when I am tired, or the girls have exhausted every last nerve I have. I am learning/trying to stay calm, and let the dozen potty trips roll off my back. There are so many things that the girls do that just aren't worth getting upset over or making a fuss about. The girls have had to take on a few more responsibilites for themselves and I know that for them it has been a challenge as well. Addison has really stepped up and is trying to be a big helper. I am trying to constantly let her know how proud I am of her, and how much she is helping me.

The middle of the night has been the toughest so far since Tony has been gone. I know lots of people whose spouses travel for extended periods of time, but when it is the 1st time it has ever happened to you and your family; you sort of have no idea how you are going to handle things. So, I am coping...treading lightly with the girls and praying each and every day for more strength, both physically and emotionally and really praying for more patience. I know God will only give me what He knows I can handle, I just wish he didn't trust me with so much!!

The girls are doing okay with Tony being gone. They ask me EVERY day when he will be home and they talk to him at least twice during the day. Olivia is probably the one who is struggling the most. She just does not understand why he isn't here when she goes to bed and still isn't home when she wakes up in the morning. She asks about him a lot; wants to know what he is doing, why he is doing it, when he is coming home and then reasks all the same questions over and over again!

Tony, we love you and miss you lots! I hope and pray that you are learning a lot and are ready for this new adventure when he get home. I also hope you are ready for me to check myself into a hotel for some R&R!!! I will post some pictures tomorrow!

Happy St.Patrick's Day

We Miss You Daddy

Hi Daddy! We are being good girls and listening to mommy. We miss you lots and miss reading books with you and you putting us to bed at night time. Mommy doesn't do it like you do!!

Tony is out of town for 2 weeks for his new job. He has resigned from the college and is now working for Northwestern Mutal Financial Network...so if you need some life insurance or anything, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE call him!! This is a huge leap of faith! We need lots of prayers over the next several months as he learns the business and goes through the "learning period". At the end of the 75 day learning period, he sits down with the boss and discusses whether or not Tony has a future in the business!! He is in Des Moine, Iowa to start his learning. This is the longest he has ever been away from the girls and the longest I have been with the girls by myself. A test of wills if you ask me! Theirs and ours!! :) One night down, and we survived!!

Tony, the girls have asked about you almost EVERY minute, that is no exaggeration either. Liv misses you putting her bed and does not understand why you can't be here and I can't feed Ella while you are putting them to bed. I just don't do it like you do I guess. Bedtime takes a wee bit longer because I don't sit with them and make sure they are asleep, or fall asleep with them...I got Ella chomping at the bit to eat! Needless to say, we miss you very much!

I am having trouble loading the pictures...will try tomorrow! We love you!

Ella and Olivia got to spend Saturday with Mamo and Bampo. Mamo took this picture of Ella roaming the living room floor and rolled right up to Raggedy Ann!! Mommy took Addison out to lunch, shopping and to a baby shower!! They had such a great time and really enjoyed the bonding time. It was a long week for Kerry at work and dealing with some other things, so she was really excited to spend Saturday with just Addison. Addison was of course spoiled and got some goodies while shopping...like tap shoes!!!! She taps all around the kitchen now! No pictures though, sorry!

I Did It!!!!!

Jenny, this is for you! I actually accomplished making baby food today!! Jenny has inspired me to make my baby food ever since Olivia was born, and I finally decided to try. I made sweet potatoes, Jenny said they were easy, and boy were they!!! Maybe I can get Jenny to make some more with me in March! We even tried it out on Ella and she loved them!!

Happy Birthday Londyn

We missed cousin Londyn's 3rd birthday, but we did manage to send you some birthday wishes...enjoy the Chapman girls singing...listen closely, you can hear all 3 of them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE5nqKfYgxs

Olivia Cheerleading

Hoping this works better. I loaded the vidoe to YouTube...Blogger was killing me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI1h7SQX29U

I'm A Big Girl Now

Just some fun pictures of Ella! She is finally eating better. Sleeping, she is still in cahouts with her cousin Sydney on that one! But she sure can make us laugh! She is rolling all over the place, trying to scoop, pivots and really wants to be crawling...I am sure it won't be long before she is mobile!! Watch out Addison and Olivia, she is gonna come after you!!! She loves to hold her own bottle now too What a big girl she is!!

Happy Valentine's Day

Have I ever told anyone lately how AWESOME my husband is?! Well, he is the greatest, and I don't give him nearly enough credit for how awesome he really is! He surprised me this year with a wonderful weekend. He had both my mom and his mom in on the surprise and they were both able to help him to make it work. He told me to be ready at 2pm Saturday. I had no idea what I was doing. He was going to take Addison and Olivia to his mom's that morning and they would spend the night. My mom came in Saturday morning. He made the girls and I heart shaped waffles for breakfast. We gave the girls the little valentine's we had for them, Addison of course got a Taylor Swift CD, and Liv, well she is a puzzle fanatic, so we got her a big floor puzzle. We got the girls ready, Tony left with Ella in tow also. I was told to take my mom with me at 2pm...we went and had a spa manicure and went to lunch! It was wonderful. When we got home, Tony took me to a movie, out to dinner and then got us a room at the Hampton Inn for the night. Peace and Quiet!!! It was heavenly!!!! And we both slept awesome! Thanks Tony, I love you so much!! I am sure Jenny and Kristin are laughing and thinking that I got pretty lucky to marry such a romantic, because they always used to tell me that I had no romantic bones in my body!!

Snow Time

We are starting to get restless being couped up inside on the weekends and my days off! The girls want to be outside ALL the time, even when it is 16 degrees. Last week, we got quite a bit of snow on Friday, about 6 inches in 4 hours. So when we got home from work, Tony took the girls outside to play while he scooped the driveway. Ella and I stayed inside to stay warm. It took quite a while to get them ready to play outside. Thankfully no one had to go potty once they were dressed!

Olivia Wants to Cheer Also...

Olivia is feeling quite jealous of Addison getting to "cheerlead"...so we had an impromptu cheerleading session for Liv!! She was hilarious!

Check out the video....

Well apparently Blogger has decided that my video is corrupt...what is wrong with a 2 year old cherring and dancing?! C"mon on Blogger!

Flower Girl

Addison has been asked to be a flower girl in Eric and Angie's wedding in June. Eric is one of Tony's cousins. Addison is so excited to be in another wedding. She did such a great job at Cassie's! This time she will get to walk with Londyn...the aisle is pretty long in an older Catholic Church. Hopefully she will make it all the way down the aisle. Londyn will be walking with her, so I am sure they will have no problem thrwoing rose petals. Here are a pciture of 2 dresses that she has tried on. Angie's colors are Royal Blue and Ivory...Addison will wear an ivory dress...Oh and by the way, she has this bad habit of not looking at me while I am trying take a picture...

Cheer Camp

The Lutheran high school that is affliated with Addison's preschool had a Cheer Camp about 3 weeks ago and Addison got to participate. Hard to believe my girl is already big enough to start participating in these kinds of things. She was so excited about cheer camp and talked about with everyone she saw the week leading up to practice. We even got a note home in her notebook from school about how excited she was for it! They had "practice" for 2 hours on a Saturday afternoon, and then the game was on the following Tuesday. I show up on Saturday with my camera, video camera and one very prud mommy, only to find that there are NO parents there. I do not want to humilate Addison, so I only stay for a little while, take a few pictures and leave.

Tuesday night, she was VERY excited for the game and did a great job. During the game, she noticed that Olivia was eating popcorn and thought she needed some also. After one of the cheers, she is trying to get my attention to tell me she wants popcorn, and the older girl is trying to pull her off the basketball court...it was quite comical!

Olivia had a good time hanging out with Mamo and Bampo, and going potty a dozen times!! Sometimes I don't think there can be any more pee left in her, but she always goes!! Liv didn't really like the noise or the buzzer all that much! Ella was just as happy as a clam!

Apparently I am not pleasing my sister with the number of posts! I do have some pictures to share with you of Addison at cheerleading camp! I know, I asked myself the same questions; is she really old enough to be doing that, and did Tony really let her go?!!

Got some great outdoor pictures, since it has been so nice lately, we have taken great advantage of the beautiful weather! I will TRY to work on posting some pictures tomorrow.

Open Wide

In an attempt to get more sleep for both Ella and mom and dad, we started baby food this weekend. We started with carrots. Ella ate them like a pro, only an occasional shiver of dislike! We have been trying rice cereal for a few weeks. Before she got sick, Ella was eating her cereal great, now she just spits it out. After a few succesul spoonfuls, I added the cereal to it, that little stinker started spitting it out!! Guess she hates the cereal!! Oh, and she is on a nusring strike! Mom is not liking this!!!

An Usually Nice Day

We spent Thursday outside for most of the afternoon, enjoying the usually warm 55 degree weather. In case you are wondering, we have about 2 1/2 inches of snow on the ground today! The girls were so excited to run around in the backyard, swing and just blow off some of their pent up energy. Addison recieved some outside games from school this week. We attempted to play jacks. That was a disater, and I spent the first couple of trys, chasing after the ball. We moved to a different area and just practiced, dropping and catching the ball! The girls enjoyed chasing each other, and attempting to jump rope. We have lots to learn this spring!! Including riding the bike! Addison gets so distracted and hates to peddle.

Tony and the girls have all been sick with colds. I think both the girls started with croup and then turned into nasty colds. It hung around for a little awhile, and then Tony and Ella got sick. Tony was home from work for 3 days with fevers. For him to miss work is a big deal, he hates missing work. Addison and Liv are feeling much better, despite the coughing in the evening and the sometimes stuffy nose. We can't give anything to Ella, so we basically just had to let her suffer. We cleaned out her nose a lot, gave her tylenol and some baby vicks. She still has a nasty cold. I was afraid she was getting RSV, last week she was sounding very rattly. Never really wheezed though. Grammy, Bubba and Lou got the brunt of sleepness nights and hacking. They were kind enough to watch the girls for us while Tony and I had a work function in Omaha last weekend.

Happy New Year

We rang in the new year in great fashion...in bed by 10:45pm!!! What do you expect, we knew Ella would be up at midnight to celebrate! She was up at 12:23am!! Brian, Kristin, Blake and Keyara came over to help us celebrate with Grammy. The girls had a great time playing, minimal arguing, and lots of dancing and laughing! The girls were not happy to stop and take a picture for me! They all wore their pajama's and princess dresses while they partied and played!!

Olivia got some new "diamonds" for Christmas. For those of you who don't know what her diamonds are, shame on you...her diamonds are sometimes rocks (yes, the ones from outside), but are usually colored rocks that you use to decorate inside vases or use for something classy. Not Olivia, these are her diamonds, and don't you dare lose them, take them from her or in case of her mother, not go back to Hy-Vee to find them! She left them, wasn't listening and didn't tell me she didn't have them until I had all 3 girls buckled in their carseats and was buckling myself. I told her I wasn't going back in to get them! She has reminded me everyday since that they are still at Hy-Vee. In these pictures, her "diamonds" were sticky and she was puttin them on herself. She was talking to Michael Leo in this one...probably telling him about her diamonds, or mommy's tree and he was probably telling her about cars, trucks or maybe "Manlin". Toddler talk!!

We decided to bring out a new toy for Ella, the exersaucer. She is loving it, now if she could only love sleeping as much! I am fairly certain that when we went to York for Thanksgiving with Tony's family she must have had some kind of a talk with her cousin Sydney from Wichita. Sydney is a parent proclaimed sleeping nightmare!!! Sydney sleeps about 1-2 hours and then is awake to eat, play or simply get on her parents nerves! Now Sydney is only 14 months old, but is already trying to teach the youngins her tricks...here they are in cohots trying to devise the new sleeping plan for Ella..."Got to bed really good, then around 11:30 start waking up and be in an allout crying fit by 12:30am. Your mommy and daddy are gonna try to rock you back to sleep, but let them know you aren't having any of that...you want mommy's platinum milk and you want it now. Go back to sleep with that feeding and wake up exactly 2 hours later until morning! Your mommy and daddy will be so proud of you for sleeping!!" We have tried to reason with her and tell her Sydney has no idea what she is talking about, but apparently Ella is already telling us who is boss and who is gonna run the show around here, and it ain't gonna be mommy or daddy!!

Compare these all you smarty pants....

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It was harder than I thought to find pictures that did not have anything in them that

would give it away, like certain blankets or other people.

Comparisons...

As we start a new year, I always start the year with some great resolutions. This year, I hope to stick to ALL of them...#1 being, try not to be pregnant this year!! Ha ha - seriously though, I have been pregnant during some time of every year since 2003!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, it got me to thinking about how much our lives have changed since the girls and how awesome each and everyone of them is. I started looking back through some old pictures and wanted to share baby pictures of all the girls at almost 5 months of age...that is how old Ella is now. See if you can figure out who is who....

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