Happy Easter

He is risen, he is risen indeed! Alleluia!

We have had a wonderful celebration of Easter this week. I feel like we all took time this year to slow down a little more and meditate on what Christ actually did for us on the cross and in his resurrection. The Son of God willingly died for us, took the punishment of our sins, conquered death, and rose victoriously. That's the best news I've ever heard!

I'll post the typical Easter post of egg dyeing and the kids in their cute coordinating outfits (wait til you see James in a tie!) but for today I wanted to share Will's drawings. The first is from the church service we attended on Friday at noon, remembering Christ's suffering and death. The second is from today, celebrating his resurrection and life. I love these five year old puctures and that he is understanding both parts of Easter. If you only have the cross, it's just sad and unfair that he died. If you only have the resurrection, you miss the pain and suffering of our savior for you. We have to have both to grasp what God has done.

I hope that you and your family had a wonderful Easter celebration as well.

Anna is 3!

This crazy, sweet, spunky, lively, silly, gorgeous little one turned 3 years old this week! Wow! I can't believe she's so big. She thinks she's a big girl too. She told me that now that she is 3, she's as big as me.  She is changing and learning so fast. It's really exciting to watch.

We always let the kids pick what they want for their birthday dinner and she picked hard boiled eggs and juice. I hope it's not reflective of my cooking that her favorite thing to eat is a hard boiled egg! We did convince her that we should have pancakes and fruit too, but she mostly ate hard boiled eggs. Strange, for sure.

She really enjoyed helping make her birthday cake, especially the pink icing and the sprinkles. 

She was very excited to open her presents. So much fun to watch her get really excited about something. Catherine and Will picked out a Minnie Mouse memory game for her and she has told them thank you multiple times for it. She received a few other games, puzzles, and books and has really enjoyed them. She also has a new Dora Hot Wheels, but so far she can only pedal backwards.

We love you, sweet Anna! You keep us laughing and every day with you is full of surprises. It's been that way since the day you were born. We should have known we were in for a crazy ride after your quick labor and delivery of all 9lbs 5oz of you! You have a lot of personality and spirit and we are so glad to be your parents. Happy 3rd birthday!

Filling the Eggs

Will and Anna enjoyed filling the Easter eggs to take to school for their Egg Hunts this week. 

James and Elizabeth enjoyed helping too!

you don't want pictures

I have no exciting pictures from this week. If I had taken pictures of things in our home this week, you wouldn't have wanted to see them. Our house has been hit hard by the stomach virus. It is going around our town like wildfire. I seriously think people are getting it just from reading friends' facebook status updates or driving past a group of children while in their car. It's crazy. Here's a brief synopsis of our last few days:

Saturday: While having friends (who do not have children) over for dinner, Will gets sick. I'll spare you the details but it was terrible. We had to ask our guests to leave. And it continued to be terrible every 20-30 minutes for the next 5 hours. Catherine hyperventilated and made herself sick by being anxious that she might get sick during the night.  I "slept" in the hallway upstairs most of the night to help Will and be close by in case anyone got sick.

Sunday: We spent the morning staring anxiously at each other and wondering who was next. Will, however, jumped out of bed at 7am and was quite chipper all day. I was a bit tired from being up with him all night. How was he not tired?? By Sunday afternoon, both babies were having bad diapers. Catherine declared that she didn't feel good and spent the afternoon in bed. By that night, she was sick. Thankfully her sickness wasn't quite as traumatic as Will's.

Monday: We all stayed home and I changed the babies' diapers ....a lot. Poor babies. I was scheduled to teach something in Catherine's class at school, so Mimi came over to watch everyone while I was gone for an hour. Catherine and Will were much improved; babies not so much; Anna was totally oblivious to it all.

Tuesday: Babies had a really rough day. By 11am, I had given James three baths and changed his clothes and all his bedding twice. Elizabeth was doing only slightly better. Thankfully the big kids were feeling better, but were now being clingy and demanding because all Mommy had been doing for three days is cleaning up after sick people. By 1pm, I put them in the car and drove to Zaxbys to get myself something to eat and a sweet tea. Will declared that it wasn't fair, but too bad. We drove around for 15 minutes just to see the sunshine and get out of the house. I just cleaned the babies up, again, once we got back home. On Tuesday night, we went to Mimi and PopPop's house for dinner, although we were still all a little scared to eat.

Wednesday: Mimi calls at 7am to say that she has been up sick all night. Uh oh. I'm still paranoid and can't tell if my stomach hurts because it's sick or because I've barely eaten in almost 4 days. I'm surviving on protein granola bars and goldfish crackers, just to be safe. Big kids are all fine, but the babies still have upset tummies. By the afternoon Elizabeth made it a few hours without a blowout and James was slowly improving. By 4pm, Jay was home because he was getting sick. He's now downstairs suffering through it.

Please add into each of these days the following phrases: "do laundry", "do more laundry", "clean bathrooms", "clean bathrooms again", "change sheets", "wash bedding", etc...

Somehow, so far I've avoided it. I have no idea. Only by the grace of God because I don't know who would be taking care of these people otherwise. And Anna, we aren't sure if she has avoided it or if she started it. She had an upset tummy last Thursday.....we didn't think much about it at the time because she never complained about feeling bad, but now it seems a likely culprit. It would be very Anna-like to be sick and not actually let us know she felt bad at all.

Sorry for the gross post. I know many of my friends are reading this in complete understanding because it also tells the story of their week. I'm not listing these things out to complain or whine. It's just normal life, especially when there are lots of small children in the house. I'm thankful that it hasn't been any worse and that I have been able to take care of all of them.

But I'll spare you any pictures from our house this week. Maybe next week.

Eight Months Old

James and Elizabeth turned 8 months old sometime between Feb 28 and March 1. I guess there was a split second somewhere in there that celebrated the 29th. 

I really can't believe it has already been 8 months. I can't describe the delight that these two are to our family. It is so much fun to see their different personalities continue to develop and see them interact more and more with all of us and with each other. Their laughs and babbles are fantastic. Just this afternoon, Will was in the nursery playing with them when they woke up from their nap. He was pretending to shoot his bow and arrow at James and James was cackling. Catherine came running downstairs saying "Did you hear that? That's the best sound ever!!" And she's right. Baby laughter is about the best sound ever. 

They both LOVE their daddy. They both have made "da-da" sounds lately, and I really think Elizabeth may say it to Jay specifically. They light up whenever he is in the room, jump and kick their arms and legs and are so excited to be with their daddy. Now that they're getting a little bigger and are moving out of the newborn stage, daddy has more fun with them too.

They are both working on teeth. James is getting numbers 3 and 4 (on the bottom) right now--I guess technically that's happening in month 9 since I'm behind with posting. Elizabeth has 1 tooth on the bottom that has come through and the second one isn't far behind.

They are pros at eating baby food---pears, apples, squash, sweet potatoes, yogurt, etc. We are working on cheerios and puffs. They'll eat a few but don't really love them yet. Mostly they enjoy the challenge of trying to pick them up and then drop them. They are not that interested in trying real foods yet, except for the occasional taste of whip cream or dessert that Mimi keeps sneaking them :) We are done nursing, which makes me a little sad. I'm trying not to dwell on it, so that's all I'll say about it before I get really sentimental and cry.  They drink 6-8 oz bottles 4 times per day, in addition to eating 3 meals of baby food each day. Anna is my baby food helper and thinks it is her job to select what they are eating for each meal. 

James is crawling all over and learning to pull up. He is by far the most mobile baby we've had. He still can only sleep in sleepers that have zippers or else he kicks them open and gets himself all tangled.

Elizabeth is starting to push herself up onto her hands and knees and rock back and forth. This is huge progress for her! We are so excited! 

Both babies can sit up, which is making bath time easier. They love bath time, but rarely get to enjoy playing in the water. I usually give them a bath in the morning when I realize that they are covered in pee from the night. There's not enough time in the morning for a leisurely bath before we take someone to school, so it's in and out pretty quickly.

Elizabeth has started with her Early Interventionist (EI) and physical therapist (PT). The EI will come every two weeks and the PT will come weekly. Thankfully they come to our home, which makes scheduling much easier. We still think her delays are mild and mostly are based off of her not using her arms to cross her midline--like her right arm reaching across to her left side--and some low core muscle tone. She also sometimes just forgets to use her hands and needs to be reminded that she can use them to get what she wants. She's a pretty laid back baby and I think that contributes to some of this. If a toy is out of her reach, she's content to just look at it and wait for a big sibling to eventually give it to her. Why should she work so hard for it?? Sweet girl! I think that with the EI and PT we will start to see improvements pretty quickly.

Sometimes it feels like we had our "normal" family--you know, the typical 3 kids--and then the whole family had babies. It's really a group effort around here. We love you sweet James and Elizabeth! We are so glad you are our babies.

Working on chores

We have always expected our kids to help around the house. Sometimes we've referred to them as "chores" but usually we just asked them to help on an as-needed basis. Catherine, our type A first child, has occasionally made herself chore charts and rewarded herself with stickers. I've never been consistent with that so she has done it for herself and her siblings when she felt motivated. Once when I asked her to make her bed, she whined "I could do it so much better if you just made me a chart!"

I started to notice a few months ago though that Catherine and Will do much better if they know ahead of time what is expected of them with chores and if I give them some freedom as to when they get those tasks completed. I tend to just notice what needs to be done right that minute and expect them to immediately cooperate. So I started thinking of a way to make this work best for us at this stage of life, to train and not exasperate them, to encourage their helpfulness.

I came across this idea, or something similar to it, on Pinterest. I got some foam door hangers and wooden clothes pins from The Dollar Tree (total investment of $3 for a 3-pack of door hangers and 2 packs of clothespins). The kids wrote their names at the top and we divided it down the middle with a "to do" section on the left and "done" on the right. Then I wrote various chores on the clothes pins, such as laundry, set table, bathrooms, books, toys, shoes, stairs, and trash. The kids and I have talked about what these mean, so they know that if I put "shoes" on their chart that they need to collect all their shoes from beside the front door and put them away.

This system allows me to pick out 2-4 chores that need to be completed each afternoon for each child. Not every day is the same. I tend to let the folded laundry stack up for a few days and then they all get the laundry chore. I rotate who takes out the trash, sets the table, and clears the extra dishes from dinner (everyone clears their own plates).

I usually assign the chores by 2-3pm and I encourage them to complete them before dinner time if possible. They are very good at encouraging and helping each other and it usually takes about 30 mins to get their chores completed.

Sometimes they even decide to do extra chores on their own. Yesterday Catherine swept out and organized the entire garage without me asking. Anna has become quite proficient at setting the table. Last night she set the table for 7 (Mimi and Poppop were coming over) and even included Easter eggs for decorations at each napkin. I was impressed!

Catherine did still make some kind of chart on the refrigerator and they've been rewarding themselves with tally marks for each chore they complete. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with those tally marks. Maybe she will tell me when they reach a certain goal or something!

Mostly I want them to contribute to the work of our family, cheerfully and responsibly. I'm sure this will be an ongoing and changing process of training over the years, but for right now it's working for us.

Circus party

Last Saturday our church's Orphan Care ministry hosted a Circus Party for the local children's home. We have been trying to establish an ongoing relationship with the workers and children there over the past few years. We go there a few times per year for work days and meals and to play, but we also wanted to have them come to us to play too.

The party was a huge success. The kids loved the games (parachutes, clown relay, etc) and crafts. We even had someone making cotton candy and popcorn and a magician perform.

We aren't allowed to take pics of the kids but here are a few pics of Catherine
and Will enjoying the activities too. I love that they think it's a great experience to be with these kids who don't currently have families--to develop compassion and understanding in their hearts from a young age for others who need to be shown the love of Christ.

Blessed to know that generation

A few days ago, my great aunt passed away. She was my grandmother's sister, the 2nd of 4 daughters of my wonderful great-grandparents. I am extremely blessed that I have actually been able to know and to love and to be loved by so many in this family.

 My great grandparents, Sid and Fanny Vaughan (their real names were Sidney and Frances) passed away when I was in high school. Most people don't have the opportunity to know their great grandparents at all, and I had many years with them. I remember playing in the yard with her good teaspoons as we "baked cakes", eating many Sunday lunches and always getting a peppermint stick from her cupboard, and visiting on Christmas Eve. I remember giving her giving the best hugs and how much she loved babies. Papa Vaughan always had a dollar (or more) in his shirt pocket and I can still picture him standing by his chair. I also remember their 3 legged dog named Jip, appropriately named because he had been jipped out of a leg they said. I remember their very old and very run down farm house with a claw foot bathtub off the kitchen, a slanted front porch, and an old rusty glider swing in the yard. They had  a great sense of humor and a little adventure too. I recall my great grandmother asking us to sneak her a hot dog into the hospital when the doctor wasn't looking. I also remember how they loved each other until the very end, and how she knew he had passed away before the nurses even told her. It was only a few months later that she joined him in heaven.

And what farmer isn't blessed by four daughters? I'm sure that Papa Vaughan hoped for a son but he loved his girls tremendously. Those girls did the work of sons and were strong and tough. All four were pretty close in age and have lived in the same town and lived life together for the past 85 years. 

Three of them and their children and some of the grandchildren attend the same church. 

And I had the privilege of knowing and loving all of them. 

The oldest, Margaret (Aunt Mac to most) passed away last year. Shortly after her death, Katie (Aunt Kitty to me and Buddy to most) had a stroke. She never really recovered and she passed away this past week. It was sad yesterday at the funeral to see only my grandmother (Helen) and the baby of the family (Dorothy, Aunt Dot) remaining. Those ladies always came in a group.

My grandmother now lives on the family's original farm. She renovated the old farmhouse about 15 years ago and moved back to the homeplace. And I'm pretty sure that's where my mom will end up living as well. It's great to see it passed on, but difficult too. 

Mostly though, I just feel blessed to have known them all for many years.

Boosterthon Fun Run

Catherine's school had their Boosterthon Fun Run this morning. She was so excited about it!

She has been collecting pledges and donations all week from friends and family. The kids run laps (25-35) for an hour and pledges are made for each lap. People could also make a flat donation. The money is being used to buy a set of iPads and playground equipment for their school. And ten percent of what each class earns goes directly to their teacher to use for classroom supplies.

I'm not a huge fan of fundraisers and I don't like asking people for money, but I do have to say that the organization who runs this has it well planned and thought out. It was the most enjoyable fundraiser I've participated in.

Catherine did a great job of learning to speak to adults and talk to them about it. Her first attempt to ask Mimi and Poppop for a pledge required three phone calls, lots of tears, and a good bit of prompting from Poppop. But by yesterday she was calling out of town friends and our neighbor. She even wrote a note to the sweet mom who drives her home in the afternoons and asked for a donation. She always made sure to tell them that they could pledge up to $65 per lap :)

We are so proud of you, Catherine. It's a lot of fun to watch you grow up and try new challenges. Many thanks to our friends and family who supported Catherine's fun run!