Olivia's Birthday Party

Today we finally got to celebrate Olivia's 1st birthday. There are 3 babies in our Sunday fellowship that are all turning 1 in July. So we had a Teddy Bear Picnic for all the babies. It was really fun. What a joy Olivia is in our family. We are so grateful for her!



This was the end of the party - not so sure why Luke doesn't have a shirt on. But as you can see by the size of his belly, he thoroughly enjoyed the food!! Olivia enjoying her cake. She loved it , although I don't have any funny pictures of her smearing it in her hair. She just got down to business and ate every bite.


After we sang Happy Birthday, 2 of the babies were pretty excited to get their hands on the cake.

During the Baby race, Olivia (the only walker in the group) got distracted and let the lightning fast crawler beat her to the finish line. We gotta work on that speed!!

All the kids

What a sweetie !!

Last week was a rough week

Here is my poor baby last Friday. We had a rough week (including both Olivia and I being sick on her birthday) which ended in a scary Friday morning. We woke up to Olivia crying and her eye was huge and swollen shut. She had had pink eye and also flu-like symptoms but this was really scary. So that morning Olivia and I got on a plane and headed to the capital city to see an American doctor. Luckily we actually got to meet with an ophthalmologist , who was super kind to us and very helpful. And thankfully, as soon as she started the antibiotic , her eye started to look better. I'm so thankful for how God provided us a flight that morning, a place to stay, and 2 great doctors to look after her. But most of all, I'm so thankful that she is ALL better now !

Happy Birthday , Olivia Ruth!

It's hard to believe a year has passed since Olivia Ruth came into our family. What a joy she has been and will continue to be. ( And I think as we learn more about her personality, a handful she might be!). Thank you God for choosing us to be parents to Olivia.

Unfortunately this has been a rough 2 weeks for us. Since we returned from our trip , we have all been sick. This week is has been Olivia and me, and both of us were still sick today on her birthday!! That is why she looks sad in her pictures. I think she's getting better, but she was definitely not at her best today. Good thing we didn't plan to have her party today! We will be celebrating on Monday, with 2 other babies born in July , so she'll just have to wait until then for her first taste of cake !







We had our family birthday breakfast outside , which Olivia and Luke always love. She was pretty excited about her special muffin, although it was hard to get her to smile for the camera.

There's a smile!

Hey, what about me? I think today was a character building day for Luke as it wasn't his birthday. He was just sure he was going to turn 3 on Olivia's birthday. His day is coming in a few months, and it will be all about him then.

Olivia was more interested in the muffin crumbs in her chair rather than opening her presents.

First swim, a baby that is trying to grow up too fast, a sick boy, and Felsnaptha

There probably couldn't be a more random title, but this is quite the random post. We just returned from over 2 weeks of being gone. We traveled to the capital city to see Nana off and then headed to a beautiful lake in our country for a conference. Overall everything went smoothly and Luke and Olivia had a blast in childcare. The first day Luke screamed for about 5 minutes, but after that he was good to go. He was even asking to go to childcare every morning. Olivia, of course, just loved all the attention she got from everyone at our conference. We got to spend some time on the beach , but it was still quite cool unfortunately. Olivia had a BLAST in the sand and the few minutes she got in the freezing swimming pool.

We returned home to start 5 loads of laundry, yes 5. At least it's stinkin' hot here now so hanging the clothes outside to dry is just like having a drier. And let me tell you about Miss Olivia, that girl is trying way to hard to grow up!

In the last month she has:

• started refusing pureed foods- only wants table food now
• weaned herself and started chugging bottles
• loves cow's milk now and just had her last bottle (we were at the end of our formula can and so we thought we'd make the switch 2 weeks early)
• now is officially a WALKER - doesn't stop moving and actually chooses to walk rather than crawl
• gotten tooth #5 and #6
• can say "bye bye" and says it to everyone, says "night night" ,"dada", "wa" for water
• loves music - claps her hands and shakes her head every time she hears music

And there's probably more. Just tonight I had one of those moment when I was just watching her walk around and really interact wth Forrest and it made me so teary. Just a year ago I was very great with child , thinking he/she would never be born. Then I got to hold this sweet newborn girl in my arms. How did a year just fly by like that?

And on to the sick boy - poor Luke. He seems to have come down with a virus from childcare. Pink eye we think, but again the high fevers. Last night it was up to 103 again. Pray for him and for us to be wise in what we do for him.

And you might ask - what is Felsnaptha? I said that I did about 5 loads of laundry. Well thanks to Felsnaptha all the millions of food stains from kids came right out. It's actually a laundry bar soap that is very old, and you can get a bar for about $3 I think. Check it out.

Wow, I've crossed over to the other side when I get excited about a stain remover , huh? :)

Thanks for persevering with me through this post. At least this gives the family a good update.

l

Too cute for words

I had fun playing dress-up with Olivia and her new tutu from Nana. I bet she will love this as she gets bigger!

Olivia is 10 months!

I'm a bit behind on posting these, considering in 8 days she will be 11 months! But anyway you can still enjoy. She is quite the personality these days and is cutting teeth #5 and #6. She loves to stand and try to walk. She has so much energy and wants to be a part of whatever is going on~

What a face!

Fun pics from our week

I promise to try to write more next time, but tonight I'm just using this blog as a way to share pics with friends and family.

Olivia is pretty excited about her new swing that her Nana bought her. She could stay in this (or the bathtub) all day long.

These ice cream pics should be reversed. This is the end of the cone, check out the next pic to see how huge this was . You better believe Luke ate every bite. He hasn't had many ice cream cones in his time, so he was smiling ear to ear when he got this. Can you believe this is only about 25 cents?

I love this !

Mother's Day

I feel so blessed to be the Mommy of Luke and Olivia. Oh how they stretch me , but they are such precious children. What a privelege it is to watch them grow and change and learn.

Luke pushing Olivia around in her cart.

Miss Olivia wants to stand and walk ALL the time. None of that crawling stuff for her - she's on the fast track to growing up.

Nana is here visiting us for the month of May. It's wonderful for her to see our world and also have special time with Luke and Olivia.

No great title---just cute pictures to share

Livi already has this phone thing figured out. What a girl.
I love this picture of Olivia looking at Luke. He insisted on holding her. She really does thing he hung the moon.

A few other April P365 pics

I'm trying to share some of my favorite pictures from each month. Here are a few from April that you never saw.

Our team (minus 2 kids) in the mountains for a picnic
What a face!

Luke's BIG BOY Party

No one told me that Luke starting to lick the ice cream container when I left the room to get spoons.

Lately we have been hosting guests for about 3 weeks, trying to keep an eye on Olivia as she is constantly trying to walk, and having some serious "2 year old" days with Luke - I'm tired! So I've been meaning to post these pictures for a while. At the beginning of April I decided to try potty training again , thanks to some great encouragement from my friend Karen. Well , we are happy to report that he got it in just a few days! He is quite motivated by rewards, even so he would make insist on going to the potty again just so he could get another M & M or try to work towards another #2 prize. Anyway, he's doing really well and I'm soooo happy to now just have 1 child in cloth diapers!! That plus our more regular electricity to wash diapers has made life a bit easier.

Forrest had promised Luke a Big Boy Party if he learned to go to the potty, and so we followed through on that promise after church one Sunday. He requested a blue and brown cake and ice cream. He was pretty pumped about all the cake and the other kids were too- they kept asking "is it Luke's birthday?"