Rainy days

We have been stuck inside alot this week since the rain won't seem to go away. Mom and I were going to take the kids to the pool on Thursday but that got rained out. We ended up just hanging out at the house and Maggie got to play with her new doll house that is as big as she is!

It doubles as a princess house and a house for her pets. Gracie is over at Patti K and Jim's house this week so she's also gone over to play with her some and has loved that. Friday morning we took Owen to the eye doctor to have his eyes checked out. He has had a tendency to have one eye turn in over the past few months and I just wanted to get it checked out while we were home. Well, he did awesome, they even had to put drops in his eyes and run lots of tests and the little champ didn't cry at all. The doctor told me what my personal doctor, Neila Susan(Dr. Thompson) had already said...he thinks it's just pseudo-strabismus. This is just where he has a wide nasal bridge and when he looks at things it appears that his eyes cross but in reality they really are not crossing. As he grows and his nasal bridge isn't so wide it will go away. He wants to see him again in 6 months or so to check it again but said he thinks it's not a problem. So that was good news and took that worry off my mind.
Last night we were supposed to meet JR, Lori, TJ, Jim, PK, Gwen, and Gracie at Camden Park but when we got there it was raining pretty hard so I didn't want to have my 2 little ones in all that so we headed back home. Maggie was pretty dissapointed since she was really looking forward to being with all her cousins, but I told her we'd do it another time. This morning she got right up and headed over to Patti's house to play with Gracie and stayed there about all morning long.
Joe got his plane ticket booked so he comes home Aug. 18th and flies back with us on the 2nd of Sept. I am glad he will be with us on the flight home. We have a busy 2 weeks planned when he gets here. We will be in Ohio, Peoria, Kentucky, and West Virginia so that will be fun. Amanda and Tres are going to my house in Germany the 13th of August and staying Europe to sightsee for a few weeks before coming back to my house in Sept. and staying a few weeks. It will be nice to have them there, we always love having company in Germany. I hope to get Owen in this weekend for yet another haircut! His hair grows so quickly and already needs a good cut again.

BUSY BUSY BUSY

What a fun week we have had!! Last week we spent alot of time outside and the kids and I got some much needed sun! Mom and Dad have 2 baby pools so we put them outside and the kids had a blast. One is the perfect size for Owen and he just rolled around splashing. Wednesday my friend Karri and I took Maggie and her little boy, Nicholas, to the pool. It was really hot out so I left Owen at home and mom took him out in the baby pool at her house. We had so much fun and stayed longer than we had expected. Maggie and Nicholas had fun going from pool to pool and it was so nice to hang out with them and get to catch up with Karri. We hope to go back a few more times. The pool just recently opened back up and nobody knows that so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.
This weekend we just hung out and Saturday we got to see Maggie and Owen's friend Carlyn.

She is a month younger than Owen and so cute! My crazy Owen about scared her to death though, he is such a boy and he was so excited to see a baby his age I guess.....he would just not leave her alone and just kept squealing at her. Mom thinks he was trying to impress her...but if so it totally backfired! She is almost walking so I hope Owen took some notes. :) That evening mom, dad, the kids and I went to the mall. I shopped like crazy while Owen and Dad spent the entire evening eating. I think they got a snack from every food place we passed! :) They definetly are good shopping buddies. Maggie wanted to sample a little of everything but was more interested in just running around.
After church sunday the kids and I loaded up the car and headed to Kentucky to see Nick and Neilasusan and their baby Carson. We, of course, made a pit stop in Lexington for a few hours and shopped some. I just have to once again say how much I love that city!
We got to Neila's that evening and finally got to see baby Carson who is just adorable.



After loving on him some we got all the kids to bed and sat around talking until pretty late. It was so nice to hang out with them, I have missed them so much and was so glad to have some time to spend with them. Monday morning Neila adn I headed out early with all the kids to get Carson's first picutures done. (Yes, of course I was there for this) We went to the Picture People and I of course get suckered in to getting my kids done also while we were there. Okay, it didn't take much suckering. :) All the kids did awesome and we left with lots of adorable pictures. Unfortunatley the Picture People are very good about safekeeping their pictures and i just cannot get them off of the website to post so I can't put them on here. But they are super cute.
After the picutres we shopped like crazy.




Carson and Owen slept pretty much the whole time and Maggie was a champ since she missed her nap totally. We stopped that evening at neila's office so she could give the kids their check-ups. The kids did great. Owen weighed in at 22 pounds and 30 inches. That puts him in the 50% for weight and about 70% for height. Maggie was 34 pounds and 38.5 inches. She was in the 85% for weight adn 90 for height. Guess she's going to be our supermodel. :) She took blood from both kids to run a few tests and neither of them even cried! I couldn't believe it. She gave them both a clean bill of health and said they looked pefect! We then headed back to their house for steaks on the grill which were great!
The kids had a blast at nick and Neilas house, Neila and Maggie made cookies for dessert, I think they ate more cookie dough than they made cookies though!



Owen didn't quite know what to think about his new "little" friend.

He was pretty inquisitive though. Owen had a huge milestone this past week too, he is done nursing. I was sad, but since I have either been pregnant or breastfeeding since Feb. 2003 (yes, 3 and a half years) I figured my body needed the break. But Owen seemed to get pretty annoyed whenever he would see Carson nursing, so I guess it will take him some time to forget!

Tuesday we spent the day at the Lousivile Zoo.


This was Nick's pick of things to do! It was super hot out so alot of the animals were in a cave or some place cool where we couldn't see them. Maggie really liked it all though.




Her favorite thing was the sea otters which kept barking and she thought it was so funny. Owen slept most of the day so he didn't see much after the girrafs. We grabbed some dinner and then headed back to WV. Our trip home was very eventful.....the kids slept/played until we got about to morehead, which is about 1.5 hours from mom and dads. About this time Maggie had a totaly breakdown saying she had pooped and it hurt. Well, she was screaming so loudly that I pulled to a rest stop and changed her diaper. I wasn't really sure what she was so upset about but that seemed to cure the problem. About 30 minutes later she began screaming and crying again saying her "poop" hurt. Her scraming woke up Owen once again and so the both of them were wailing and I am trying to figure out what Maggie's problem is and why she just can't wait a little longer to get to mom's hosue. I was totally out of diapers so I told her I would change her but she didn't have any dipers left to wear home. I pulled over at a McDonalds and laid her on a towel in the parking lot (how redneck does that sound) and stripped her down since she had somehow made quite a mess of her dirty diaper. I put a skirt I had in the car on her and told her she COULD NOT poop or pee anymore until we got home since she had no diaper on. We drove on to Nitro and were pulling into Ginos to get a pizza for dinner. All of a sudden she starts saying she has to poop again. So here I go into Ginos with Owen in a carseat, Maggie in nothing but a skirt (barefoot) and I am sure looked like I had been through it. I get her in the bathroom and sit her on the potty and she pees and was so excited. She said she was done so we finally get our pizza and head home. She told me the whole way which toy she wanted at the house for going on the potty. (she gets rewards for going) So anyhow, I guess the way to potty train her is just keep her out of diapers. So here we are back in Poca and resting up again today. I hope to hit the pool again tommorow or friday.






Here are a few pictures of Owen with some of his birthay gifts. I thought they were really cute.

More birthday fun

The kids and I went to a birthday party for my friend Karri's little boy yesterday. He was turning two and had a JoJo Circus party and there were tons of kids there. Maggie had a blast!










She loved being with all the kids and playing on all the different toys outside. They had a "Jupiter Jump" there and she loved that.


















They had a pinata and she thought that was neat....she is her mother's daughter, when the candy came out Maggie began sorting out the different types into piles. :)



















Owen had a good time too watching all the kids play.












It was a really cute party and Maggie wore her clown nose the whole way home singing JoJo's Circus song.




I was glad the kids did so well since neither of them got much of a nap yesterday. Mom and I had them out running errands until about 3 or so and they only slept a little in the car.

Maggie has really been loving childrens church too. At the beginning they have kids say songs they want to sing and Maggie loves that part. The first week she wanted to sing Jesus loves me, and last week it was the BIBLE. And boy does she sing, in her loudest voice...not always so on key, but she enjoys it. Well, that is about all going on here. We are going to try to get out some this week to the pool.

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY OWEN!!!

Owen is one today!!





It is so hard to believe how fast his first year has gone. We had his party yesterday and it turned out great. It was cloudy and rainy looking all day, but Dad and I got things decorated anyhow since we both were pretty optomistic that it wasn't going to rain. The sun came out about 3 and from then on we had a really pretty afternoon for his party.



He had alot of fun and especially liked eating his cake. As you can see Maggie helped him dive into his birthday cake.










With all that sugar I was sure he would either vomit on me or be up all night, but neither happend.



Maggie had fun too and she and TJ helped Owen open all his gifts up.



After all that excitement Owen was exhausted adn ready for a bottle of milk.






It was so fun with everyone getting together and thank you so much to everyone who came to help us celebrate. We sure missed Joe being there, I sent him all the pictures but I know it isn't the same.

I thought I'd just post some of the pictures from the party for everyone to see.......

Busy busy Owen

Well, as of today this is Owen's new accomplsihment.....pulling up.







I put him down for his nap today and 25 minutes later he was still crying. I peeked in to see what the problem was and here he was standing in his crib holding on for dear life. He couldn't figure out how to get back down. Poor little guy! Anyhow, from then on the rest of the day he goes from thing to thing trying to get up and then cries because he is stuck. He is so so busy, much more than Maggie ever was. Mary, you think Maggie was a piddler, you ought to see Owen! We are getting ready for his birthday party this saturday. We are just going to cookout and have cake and ice cream so I know he will love that part! I took him last week to have his 1 year pictures done at the picture people and they turned out so so cute. I took a cake with me and after his pics were done we stripped him down and let him go to town on the cake while she took pictures. It was so cute. I haven't figured out how to get them to download off the site so I can post them, but if I do I will put them on here so you can see. Here are a few of his birthday pictures that I took, although most of you probably got one in the mail already.






We had fun on the 4th of July cooking out with Jim and Patti K. Maggie wasn't feeling great yet, so we just decided to go next door and have a small cookout with them. Owen loves Jim, Jim can get him laughing so easily. As busy as Owen is it is nice to have lots of extra sets of hands to help out with him. Here are the kids on the 4th in their cute outfits.




Mom and Dad are doing some updating around the house and it's coming together great. They got all new lights which look great and painted and the new carpet is coming tommorow for the family room. I thought we ought to take one last picture of the multicolored shag carpet sis....but mom said she'd remember it in her dreams forever. :) Mom and I went uptown yesterday to look for new shades for the family room and found some we really liked. We haven't ordered them yet, as that would not be like mom at all. She said we're going to sleep on it a few days to make sure it's what she wants! I think they will probably be ordered by the end of the week though. We have no big plans this week, I am going to visit a few friends and get things ready for Owen's party on Saturday. I hope we have nice weather since we're having a cookout!