Six years.

Love this guy. Six years ago today we made it forever. It was a Friday that year too. 

I had an interesting experience recently. I was sitting in the hospital lab waiting room for a long test. I ended up chatting with another pregnant girl who was there for a while, and during the course of our conversation, she asked if I was married. When I said yes, she asked how long. I told her almost six years, and she was awestruck, seriously. She said "wow, you know you beat the average". According to her, it's 3-5 years. Who knows how close that statistic is to correct, but I felt so sad for her (especially after hearing more about her life) that it was so unusual that two people committed to each other and stayed that way. To me, six years is not that long since I know so many happy couples who have been married so much longer, but it really made me think about how that is not "normal" in the world today, it's incredibly valuable and not something to take for granted. I felt so grateful that day for what I have and how I got to this point in my life. It certainly has never been easy, but it has been so worth it. I am so blessed.

Happy Anniversary, Love.

Christopher's birthday week

Well, our boy had quite the week! Ben's birthday party was almost a week after his birthday, so we took him to Chuck E. Cheese on the actual night-- so of course, we had to do the same with Chris, even though his party was scheduled the night before his birthday so it was a full weekend. We tried to talk him into other dinner options, but of course he had to do what Ben did. They had such a great time!

We got a ton of tickets and came home with suckers, tattoos, and vampire teeth.... raaaaahhhh!

When Saturday (party day) rolled around, I woke up feeling off, and got sicker as the morning passed. Long story short, I ended up taking a trip to Labor and Delivery after talking to the on-call doctor, and they hooked me up to and IV with lots of fluids as well as anti-nausea and tummy medicines. It was just a virus or something, but I ended up having to stay and be monitored and hydrated all night, since the sickies had left me so dehydrated. The boys were great about the party having to be postponed. They spent the day over at Grandma and Grandpa's and Daddy took them home late that night.  I mostly just slept all day/night, thanks to Phenergan (for nausea) in my IV. They all picked me up in the morning and I was glad to go home!

That next day was Chris' actual birthday, so we did cake and ice cream and gifts after dinner.

His favorite was the big set of LEGO people! The boys love to play LEGOs but Chris especially loves the people. He'll just dig out all the people and play with them for hours. So what could be more perfect. This set came with like 30 LEGO people with all kinds of accessories. He has been playing with them every day since!

When the next Saturday rolled around, we got ready to party. We were lucky to not only have all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and Grandma and Grandpa- but we also had Great Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Peggy in town that day, so they joined in the fun.

After pizza, the kids enjoyed "LEGOman" cupcakes... (if you can't tell, those are LEGOman heads made out of marshmallows on top of the cupcakes. Chris thought they were pretty awesome. (I got the idea here, if you have a LEGO party in your future).

After the kids got covered in frosting, and the adults enjoyed a nice chocolate bundt cake (no stained tongues), we spent the rest of the evening out in the pool playing. It was a fun party.

What a birthday! Next year I want to celebrate my birthday for a week too! Jon's is coming up next week, I'm hoping for a little bit lower key celebration for this one, since he doesn't really know. He'll be excited for anything!

Treehouses!

We got a family membership to our local Botanical Gardens the weekend before last and spent the morning checking out the Treehouses they have there right now. So very cool, the boys loved climbing and exploring all the treehouses! It was a lot of walking for such a hot day, but very fun!

Memorial Day weekend...

We did a few fun things over Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday, we went to a big flea market and scored a few fun things, then that evening we had fun checking out the balloons at the Alabama Jubilee in Decatur. There weren't too many this year, because of the weather, but they were fun to see.

That Monday, with Daddy off from work, we wanted to have another adventure, so we headed off to Chattanooga, planning to visit the aquarium and possibly the Children's museum since the weather was iffy. On the way, we saw a sign advertising Lake Winnepesaukah ("Lake Winnie") amusement park, which we had forgotten we wanted to check out sometime. I looked it up on my phone and it looked fun, so we headed out there instead, hoping the weather wouldn't be too bad. We could handle a few sprinkles!

Well, we got there around lunchtime and got something to eat, and that's when it started to sprinkle, and then POUR. We got some ponchos at the gift shop, and everyone thought little Jon was just hilarious running around with his tied up so it would (sort of) fit him.

Despite our fancy ponchos, we still got pretty wet! The rain lasted maybe an hour. We took the train ride and the kids went on a few kiddie rides. The boys were having so much fun- they weren't bothered at all by the rain. We took a little break from the wetness in a pavillion for a few minutes, and finally the rain let up. The rest of the day was hot and sunny, yay! 

The kids had fun on all of the rides. There were a bunch of kiddie rides, and several family type rides that we could go on with them. Chris loved the haunted house, surprisingly, and they all loved the carousel and the roller coaster. I was surprised at how much pregnant people were not allowed to go on (bummer). Even the kiddie roller coaster. But I didn't mind, it was fun watching the boys. They loved every minute of the day.

This was just hilarious to watch Dave on this little ride. We were just going to let the older boys go on it but the girl told Dave he could go so he went along with Jon. So funny.

We had some of the worst "snow cones" ever, but they were nice and cold and turned your tongue red, so it was great fun!

We will definitely head back there sometime! It was a fun weekend.

Happy 4th Birthday Chris!

Four years old! So hard to believe! Just looking through all of our pictures made me realize how time flies, and how much Chris has grown up just in the past year. He's gone from a little babyface to quite the big boy. It was hard to choose just a few favorite pictures- which surprised me because he's usually the hardest to get to smile or look at me when I have my camera out!

He has been our biggest baby, at 8 lbs. 15 oz!

 

Chris is such a funny kid. He constantly surprises us with the things he says. He has such a fun sense of humor, he likes to joke around. He is very thoughtful, and when he has mulled something over, you'd better be prepared to hear about it in detail! He loves to have a plan for things. He LOVES his Legos, specifically the Lego people. He will just go through the bin and pull out all of the people and play with them forever. He loves to swim and is very brave when it comes to the water, he will just jump right in. He is a very snuggly little guy. He also loves to sing and will just break out in song anytime anyplace, sometimes very loudly! He is the hardest one to get moving and out of the house when we have somewhere to go;  for some reason these days he just wants to stay home. But usually very content to just sit and play with his toys at home and doesn't really need much to keep him happy!

Of all the boys, Chris seems to be the most excited about the baby coming. Whenever he mentions something about the "baby girl" he has a big smile on his face. It's fun to see, and I'm curious how he'll be when she gets here!

He was supposed to have his birthday party with the family on Saturday, but I got sick so it has been postponed to next weekend. We did take him to Chuck E Cheese Friday night and did cake and presents last night (Daddy's won't be home until late tonight), so I will post pictures of all that after his party.

Happy Birthday little buddy! We sure love you :)