My little nephew, Wesley Daniel, was born yesterday, May 4, 2008, at 12:27 PM, to Steve and Sarah. He weighed 8 pounds even, and was 21 inches long. He loves his Aunt Kari best.

It’s been almost a month since Easter, but I wanted to post a few pictures anyway of some of the things we did with the kids.

Anna Kathryn’s cousin Austin invited her to his church Easter egg hunt on Saturday. When we arrived, they ushered us to a small room to wait for the eggs to be hidden strewn about the play yard, and the children were given a presentation about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ with a project using the colors of jelly beans. 

The twins felt pretty proud of themselves when they got set in chairs with the big kids. Their cousin Lauren is sitting next to them. Then we were sent outside for the hunt. Anna Kathryn knew just what to do, and ran about picking up eggs. John and I each took a boy and showed them the ropes. They filled and dumped their baskets several times, and had a blast. William is in the gray; Stephen in navy blue.

On Sunday, we went out to the courtyard at our church and had a friend we ran into take a family picture of us. Then we ran around after our kids and tried to get some cute shots. They thought they were getting away with something and started running around the courtyard with wild abandon. We ended up with skinned knees on both the boys, but nobody seemed to really complain.

All of these are Stephen. He was being the most precocious. William was too fast to catch on film. I’m serious. He also did not wish to be seen in public wearing that ridiculous hat. Wait, there he is.

I am embarrassed to be seen in these photos. I went to church wearing classy black heels, which I very quickly discovered were not made to walk a mile in (yes, our church is that big). After church I changed them for my flip-flops which I luckily found stashed in the van, after which we decided to go to the courtyard. So I crossed my feet and tried to hide them under the stone bench, but alas, our gallant photographer didn’t take the hint.

After church, we all met up at Pa and Bebe’s house for lunch. They are actually Brayden and Lauren’s grandparents, but Anna Kathryn follows her cousins’ lead in all things, and calls them by their “grandparent-y” names. Bebe thinks she may be growing out of her name, but good luck changing it now!! Our kids think of them as their third set of grandparents.

After lunch, we had a little Easter egg hunt in the front yard. There’s Bebe helping the cousins find the really hidden ones.

William took to the hunt like a pro, waltzing all over the yard, while Stephen found one lucky spot and stayed there, while his older cousins came to him and filled his coffers basket.

Uncle Anders showed up. He was a great addition, though I think he called Leif a turd for going to his girlfriend’s family’s place for lunch instead. He hadn’t met some of the extended family here yet, but he fit right in. I was ecstatic to have him. I told Steve that if his two sisters were going to move to Memphis to keep him the foreigner company, then by george my two brothers were going to do the same. So hah.

Lauren and Anna Kathryn.

We tried to get a picture of all the cousins together, and there may be one floating around in somebody’s camera, but it was a challenge. Someone was constantly walking off or bursting into tears, though we won’t name names, Stephen and William.

Siblings, three.

For Anna Kathryn’s birthday, I asked her which friends she loves to play with the most, and she listed out five or six from her Mother’s Day Out class, and a few friends from church. Along with her cousins, that made for at least fifteen invitations, so we decided such a fun party was more than our little house could handle. Jumpin’ Jax gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They provided a party room, bought the pizza and balloons, and handled all the clean-up; all I had to bring was the cake. We also got a good, solid hour of playtime.

We got there thirty minutes early, and waited out in the hallways. The twins found a little riding toy, and followed each other up and down the halls learning how to share.

Anna Kathryn’s friends arrived, and they ushered us to a play area. The kids knew what to do.

This was a high climbing “wall”. It was indimidating to slide down the other side. Here’s Brayden thinking about it.

The uncles enjoyed watching–they might have jumped a little too, in the name of helping the kids have fun.

There’s Uncle Matt on the right–back from Afghanistan!! My church girlfriends thought he was one of my brothers, probably because Matt got the tall genes in his family.

Sarah, 8 months pregnant, chose not to jump on any inflatables. I can’t imagine why!

Stephen, as usual, was less brave and preferred to run around on the floor laughing. I grabbed him and got him to try a big slide, and he LOVED it.

But that was enough for Stephen–he found a spot on my lap that Anna Kathryn immediately challenged.

William had a great time playing on everything. He couldn’t get enough of it, and didn’t seem to care a bit when he got knocked down by bigger jumpers.

After play time, we went into the party room for pizza and cake. Anna Kathryn got the Princess for a Day chair, but wouldn’t wear the hat. I thought it looked a little scary myself.

Anna Kathryn asked for a pink cake. I decided to get her a Disney Princess cake, since that’s the kind of nighttime pullup she wears (and loves), and also the chair, beach towel, and swimsuit she got from Laila and Jack.

After cake, we all gathered on the floor mats in the corner and opened presents. Anna Kathryn received some build-a-bears and Polly Pockets, both of which have opened up a whole new world of playthings in our household. She also received a trunk of princess dresses from Omie, some fun games, and other little girl things. She’s been playing constantly for days now, and her mommy couldn’t be more thrilled!!

everybody got to bring a balloon home, and Anna Kathryn got this one:

Stephen couldn’t get enough of the balloons. He was fascinated.

When we got home, he fell asleep in his bed with a balloon string held in one hand, the balloon floating quietly above him. Here are some quickie fun shots of stephen and his love for balloons.

Thank you to all of Anna Kathryn’s friends who came to her birthday party. We had a GREAT time!

L-R: Elaine, Anna Kathryn, Lauren (back), Molly (front), Austin (back), Sam, Erin, Jackson (back), Brayden, Ella, Annaliese (behind), Chloe, and Emerson.

Four years ago today, my water broke at midnight. Well, it trickled. John and I tried to be ultra-casual about the whole event. After all, everyone has babies, right? The new-parents class at Methodist Germantown was very low-key and anti-stress, so we took our cue from that and decided to play it cool. He went to work that morning, and around 10 AM, I drove myself to my OB’s clinic to get checked out. Apparently, doctors and their nurses aren’t as laid back as the general public, or the baby books for that matter. Also apparently, waiting ten hours to get checked out after one’s water breaks is really not advisable very much at all. They should have told that to the folks who wrote What to Expect When You’re Expecting, because I thought I had at least two days to let things happen naturally. Silly me. By 10:30, I was stuck with IV’s and pumped with enough labor-inducing medication to make me climb the walls in pain (and climb I did). Six hours later my resolve finally broke, and I begged for an epidural. The helpful anesthesiologist almost got a baby named after him, except that I was having a girl. Thirty minutes later, I was the proud recipient of a six pound, nine ounce baby girl, wrapped in a blue and pink striped hospital blanket and wearing a soft, white knit hat. We named her Anna Kathryn while she lay in my arms.

And so was born the love in our hearts for the most beautiful, precious little bald-headed princess our world has ever seen. She’s no longer bald; her hair is long, with dark-blond ringlets that her mommy brushes daily to rid them of tangles. She’s no longer little either; she is the tallest four-year-old she knows. But she’s still beautiful, still precious, and still loved so very much.

We had a birthday party on Saturday for Anna Kathryn and several of her closest friends; I’ll post pictures of that as soon as I get a chance.

“Mommy,” my daughter informed me last night, during a discussion of heaven, hell, Jesusonthecross, and nightmares, “when I have a bad dream, I just open my eyes to come back home again.” And then climb into bed with us, of course.

Perhaps it’s time for The Wizard of Oz movie, what do you think?

Anna Kathryn doesn’t naturally play creatively. She prefers to color, play with play dough, look at books, watch television, sit on my lap, and other non or semi-creative things. I have to sit down with her and teach her to play with her toys before I ever get a chance to get any work done. She does like stuffed animals, though, and has named them all very simply: “Bear”, “Goose”, “Little Lamb”, “Reindeer”, “Pink Baby”, “Purple Baby”, etc. I’m still waiting for real names. But she has a lot of animals she never touches. I gathered several of these up a couple months ago and put them in my consignment pile.

This week is my bi-annual Mother’s of Multiples Consignment Sale, and I have all my bags and bins piled up in my living room in various states of being labeled. Anna Kathryn saw a dog in there that used to be ignored on her bed and asked for it. “No,” I said. “I’m getting rid of that.”

“Okay,” she answered agreeably. I thought I’d just gotten away with it, when she continued, “I’ll have it back when you’re done ridding it, okay, Mommy?”

Rachel and I figured that as long as we were getting together, we’d hold off on all the kids’ birthday gifts until the kids could watch each other open them. So for the twins’ 1st birthday in September, Jack’s 4th birthday in October, Laila’s 7th birthday January 1st, and Anna Kathryn’s 4th birthday coming up at the end of March, we all got together while they were here and opened gifts. The cousins are so rarely all in the same place.

The twins loved the picture of their gift–since it’s for summertime outside, they didn’t get to open it yet.

Anna Kathryn loves her new Disney Princess chair and the matching towel and bathing suit.

William loves her chair too. Here he is, texting his friends on John’s old cell phone.

Jack got a FedEx plane/truck/airport set from his cousins.

And Laila got art supplies which her mother wisely didn’t let her open until my three inquisitive children were nowhere near them.

It was a great visit, even if it was short. When they left, Anna Kathryn had two questions for me:

“Mommy, do we know how to get to Uncle Eric’s house?”

and

“I want to play with Laila’s Leapster game again.”

Within a day, we were back to this:

I actually trimmed my rosebushes the weekend before THE BIG SNOW. A few days after the snow melted, it was so warm and dry outside, that I took my laptop out to the backyard and worked while the kids played. It felt like the beginning of a long and happy summer outside. All three of my kids are mobile and can play in my yard without danger of eating leaves and grass and bugs and ant spray–except when they fall face-first into it of course. That can’t be helped.

The boys were not thrilled to be cooped up in this fence outside. Even assigning Anna Kathryn to throw the balls back inside the fence as fast as they threw them out didn’t help. Oh, well. It seemed better than putting them in their cribs with toys so I could get those rose bushes trimmed. I just love those shots of me in my oversized sweatshirt looking about 8 months pregnant. I suppose I could have edited me out of those shots. I guess John-the-photographer figures that if he has to see me in his front yard looking like that, the rest of the world might as well too. Hehe. Not funny.

Eric and Rachel decided to come for a weekend visit the day it decided to snow all throughout the midsouth. When they were an hour and a half out, they hit icy roads and accidents all along the highway, which had traffic at a crawl. They pulled off the road looking for a hotel, and missed the very last room in town. There wasn’t an availability for miles in either direction. So, troopers that they are, the trucker, his pregnant wife, and their two young children took a nap in their pickup for a few hours. We were expecting them before midnight, but due to the roads, they finally arrived around 7:00 AM the next morning, just in time to play in our new snow.

This is Jack, making first tracks.

I fed everybody breakfast (aren’t you impressed that I cooked?), and then we hunted down mittens and rain or snow boots (I used neither–plastic bags covered my crocs; it was oh-so-hip) and took everyone outside.

Eric built a snow man with the kids, and John stockpiled ice balls (to aim at his unsuspecting wife).

Anna Kathryn attacking Eric from the rear–on the rear.

The girls made snow angels.

As the day wore on, the kids and their dads got creative and decided to see if the jeep could treck over the snow.

It could.

This was a first for the twins, and they were sufficiently awed. William was incredibly eager to explore.

Stephen was a little less certain. He found the one spot without snow and stood there for a while.

Then he sat down and observed until his bottom got cold.

William meanwhile went off the main tracks and blazed his own trail. I tried to follow him with the camera, but all I could get were his footsteps–he doesn’t walk, this child. He flies. You’d have to see it to believe it. Especially in those rain boots two sizes too big.

There he is!

The boys tried out the riding toys. They didn’t go anywhere.

Stephen decided he wanted to watch the fun from Mommy’s lap. So Mommy sat down on the wet chair and obliged.

And William sat down with a shovel and played in the sand–er, snow.

It was a morning well-spent. Rachel agreed–she got a shower and a nap!

So I guess the first snowfall was practice, because a few days later, this happened:

4:00 PM March 7th

5:00 PM March 7th

6:00 PM March 7th

It snowed all night long.

The next morning, we woke up to this:

This is our street from the house. The roads were chunky iced snow for a few hours until the sun melted things.

This is our backyard–never looked prettier.

For about 24 hours, I got to enjoy winter the Minnesota way. I bundled the kids up and sent them outside to play.