Slip & Slide

I bought Zoe a slip & slide thinking she would love it - she loves water and loves to slide! Well, I couldn't exactly show her how to do it, so she ended up playing in the water that pooled at the bottom, but she still had a blast.
While we were getting ready to go out, she fell in the bathroom and put a big scratch on the toosh - which is why she started in a swimsuit and ended stark naked! :)

Slacking!

With everything going on right now, I've really been slacking on keeping up with the blog! I just noticed that the last post I made was a month ago about Easter! So here are a few updates and hopefully I will get a second to upload a few pictures.

Zoe - She's now a big girl :) We finally convinced her that if she started going in the potty then she would get a big girl bed and a new room. She decided she wanted to have a purple room and after a trip to Jim Miller's she also decided she needed a bed with steps, aka a bunk bed. I then had to set off on a mission to find a quilt (actually 2) that had purple in it! After hours of searching and 40 minutes on the phone with Penny's, we finally have blankets for the big girl bed!
Here's the bed:
http://www.everythingfurniture.com/coast-bunk-bed-8.html?utm_campaign=Froogle&utm_medium=Comparison&utm_source=Froogle_EF&utm_term=COAST-14600731#axzz0p4KwEZPA
And the quilts:
http://www3.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6E.aspx?DeptID=72403&CatID=72673&GrpTyp=ENS&ItemID=1735f0e&attrtype=&attrvalue=&CMID=72403%7c72671&Fltr=&Srt=&QL=F&IND=8&cmVirtualCat=&CmCatId=72403|72671|72673

Ryan - Has been extremely busy with new houses and thank the Lord things have been moving lately! Golf season is of course in full swing and he is on the course every chance he gets! For example, he is playing in league tonight, a scramble tomorrow, and 2 rounds on Saturday. He has been working on getting the barn finished up and trying to keep up with our yard! I am very blesses to have a very understanding husband who realizes that I don't feel so hot and that I have a ton to do this time of year!

Baby Howard #2 - I went for my check up yesterday, at 26 weeks. Everything is right on track and looking good. I did, however, gain 8 pounds in a month. Overall, this isn't bad though considering I had lost 7 in the beginning. The heartbeat has stayed right around 139 the entire time and was the same this time. When discussing my due date, he was pretty sure that I wouldn't make it to Sept. 2nd, which is just fine with me! I go in a few weeks to do the lovely glucose test and drink the nasty orange drink. YUCK! We did go for the ultra sound and somewhere in our house is hidden an envelope with the baby's gender and locked in our heads is the baby's name if it is a boy or girl - you will just all have to wait!

Me - Excessively busy doesn't describe how I have been lately. Our building is having asbestos abatement over the summer and we are required to pack everything in our rooms into labeled boxes. Since I'm not starting the school year, I have been cleaning and organizing before packing = NOT FUN! I am also halfway through my final master's class and will be submitting my final portfolio sometime the last week of June/first week of July! I'm am super excited! On the pregnancy side, I'm surviving. I hate feeling so crabby and grouchy all the time and I just feel like a fat beached whale, but I am very much looking forward to having a new baby in the house and watching Zoe with it. :)

Overall, we are really looking forward to summer and lots of pool time!

Easter

Zoe looked like a little lady on Easter with her pretty dress and hair curled. She loved to hunt the eggs and put them in her basket! I love the pictures that were taken towards the end of the day where she is being very "lady like" :)







-This is Zoe and her older twin :)-

More vacation pictures

Vacation

It may take me a while for me to get all the vacation pictures posted, but we're going to give it a shot :)
During Spring Break, we decided to take a vacation to Captiva Island, Florida. There were some good things and some bad things, but overall, we had a good time! Zoe was most excited to go on a "big airplane" than anything! She was wide awake when we got on our first flight and even let me take her picture with George on the plane. All the other rides after that, she pretty much slept the whole time. She only had one issue with her ears and that was when we were landing from Columbus into Austin, Texas. We finally got her to chew on a small piece of gum and it really helped! Now she is hooked on gum and is always telling me that she wants some. One day, she told me "Mom, me want to ride on big airplane and eat gum again".
We stayed on Captiva Island in a resort that was way too elaborate for our liking and we didn't really fit in with our Old Navy and Kohls clothes. We kept calling it a cruise on land because everything you wanted to buy, you put on your "card" and paid at the end. There were kids running around everywhere buying whatever they wanted! We went almost every night to Sanibel Island to eat and look around. We went to a nature reserve and also took a boat ride into a bay and saw two manatees.
Our room looked out over a Marina of million dollar boats, so Zoe was obsessed with going on a "big boat" - the boat tour was only on a pontoon, but she was happy with that! :)
The pools were really nice and also heated, so Zoe was a fish. Her swim lessons really paid off because she wasn't the least bit scared of getting into the water! The ocean temperature was only about 67 though, so we only put our feet in a few times. There were shells everywhere. Once Zoe figured out she had a pocket on her swimsuit coverup, she filled it up!
We had a good time, but are hoping that the doctor will let me travel sometime in June or July so we can actually get in the ocean somewhere :)
Here are a few pictures to start with. I still can't see the pictures that I'm posting, so it may be hard for me to comment about each of them.

It's been a while....

It's been a while, I know! I feel like the past few months have just been jam packed with busyness and I have'nt had a chance to breathe. Finally, today, we have done nothing (partly because Zoe and I both have colds), but it has been very nice to actually be bored!

Zoe took a tumbling class and a swim class at the YMCA. I wasn't able to go to her swim classes, other than one that I didn't take my camera to, but Ryan did get to come to some of the tumbling and take pictures. He was in charge of the camera, which is why you are mostly looking at the top of her head :)

She did an awesome job! We were so proud of how focused she was on everything and she tried so hard. The instructor said that Zoe was definitely built to be a gymnast and that she seemed to have a natural talent for it. Ryan and I have decided that if she has to do something girly, we could handle gymnastics. HAHA!

Updates.....

It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I thought I would catch you up a bit :)
Zoe is doing great. She is starting to take some initiative on going to the potty, but of course it is only on the days she wants to. She has had a stuffy nose for a while now and we are thinking it is thanks to 3 molars coming through at once. I'm so ready to be done with this teething stuff for a few months! She is talking all our heads off from the time she gets up to when she falls asleep. Her favorite saying at the moment is "Where is it?" She has been in gymnastics and swim lessons for the past few weeks. She absolutely loves the gymnastics and is taking to the idea of learning to swim.
Buckeye is healing well. We took her back to the surgeon last Wednesday and she was very happy with her progress. She has another two weeks on a leash with increasing walks each day. After two weeks, she is free to roam - right over to the neighbors, I'm sure!
Ryan has been busy, but enjoying his time with the little lady. He loves waking her up in the morning and spending the mornings with her. He is the one taking her to swim lessons and has said a million times how much fun he has with her. He bought a new toy at an auction a few weeks ago and loves it....a Kubota 1100 RTV (aka. a super mini truck). I caught him driving it to get the mail the other day! I'm just excited that he will have something to actually plow the driveway with instead of spending forever using the snowblower. I'm not so excited that he is now talking about trying to get some snow removal contracts.
I'm doing fine. I've been extremely busy and am very ready for spring break and the beach! I am feeling very old today because I had a student participant start in my classroom. She will be there for 4 weeks and will be teaching at least one lesson a day. She seems great and has already started taking some initiative. I'm looking forward to a little bit of down time so that I can start organizing my room for the end of the year.
Baby #2 - is still growing....but it's really "wittle" as Zoe would say. I'm still not feeling so hot and lacking energy, but I'm surviving. I'm 16 weeks today so I just keep thinking that I'm almost halfway there! We go back to the doctor next week and would guess that we will schedule our ultrasound then. We have decided that we are not going to find out the sex and are not going to share any names. We had such a fun time with this the first time and we are excited about doing it the same way this time!
That's about it in a nutshell! Sorry I don't have any pictures to post right now, that would require me to get off the couch and find the camera - and I'm just too tired and lazy right now! :)