aultman - Stories

Rylan~He is awesome! I love this age. He is just about 18 months now. He just started really walking about 3 weeks ago. Seemed like it took him forever, but I was assured over and over again that he is a big boy and the bigger the kid, the longer it takes them to walk. I also have been told by many people that the later they walk, the better they are in sports! LOL...so we will see. Anyway. He started walking about 3 weeks ago and is such a happier kid since he has independence. He is practically running everywhere now. He is talking alot more. He tries to say almost everything we do and I can actually understand almost everything he is asking me. A few things he say's are: Mommy Daddy Doggie Trees Outside Juice Apple Bubble Bye-Bye Uh-oH Oh-No ....and a few more. He is really so different from Avery. Can't believe how two kids can be so different in personality. I am really enjoying his so much!!

16 July 09~Ok, so once again, super far behind on keeping this updated. I think alot of it has to do with time and then facebook. Facebook is so easy to put pictures up on and all my friends and family are on there, so no rush to update this website. I thought about letting it go, but then it has been so nice to have this journal and when I wonder something, I come back and do a search and go, "Oh yeah, Avery walked at 13 months, etc., etc" You get my point. So maybe what I will do is just use this forum to do my journaling and leave the pictures to facebook. Thoughts?

Derek and Michelle~We got moved into the house and I love it. Still need to update some pictures on FB of the final product. But I love everything about the house. We have the best neighborhood ever. All our neighbor's rock! And we figured out that just on our steet we have 24 kids between the ages of 1 and 7. How great is that!? We are almost finished with the outdoor kitchen...again, pictures are up on FB. We just need to finish the countertops, which required 28 days to cure after they were poured. Once they cure entirely we will do the acid stain and then finish the brick work.

This is our super busy time of the year with work. So not much time until the end of Sept. But we are having a great time. We celebrated Aunt Dale's birthday a few weeks ago, then the 4th of July (major block party with a pig roast...great times) with my parents (they drove up from FL), and then Avery's 4 year birthday party, which was a Little Orphan Annie Birthday Party. We had a total of 60 people and it was a great time. I had food, sand bottles for crafts, crayola sippy cups, 20' slide, bounce house, bean bag toss....it turned out incredible. Pictures are on FB.

My mom and dad found a house while they were here over the 4th of July! They are moving here at the end of Sept, and it will be great to have them so close. Can't wait. Very excited.

I am sure I am missing a ton, but with limited time, I am going to highlight and then try to do better at journaling.

Avery~Doing incredible. She loved her birthday, of course! Mom made her an Annie dress and Grammy sent her an Annie wig;-) So darn cute. She is doing great in school and we have her in swim lessons. Hopefully she will be able to swim at the end of the 8th private lesson. She really wants to swim, so she is trying super hard. Her personality still kills me...she is such an outgoing little girl and let's just say, she is....Hmmm...Persnickety at time...Hahahah...I just love her strong personality though. Her 4 yr well-baby is at the end of August, so stats to be updated then.

Rylan~Growing like a weed and wow is his personality really coming out! He still isn't walking, but is cruising everywhere. I am sure it wont be too long before he takes off. His vocab. is growing too. We have the usual's (mama, dada)...now he is saying Milk, Cake, Bye-Bye, Night-Night and a few others. He only gets his binky at night time, so he is using his words more and more. He is still a very big boy. 24 month clothing and about 28 lbs. He is so darn cute though. And VERY much into a routine. You mess with that routine and you have one crying baby on your hands! No kidding...

So, again, I apologize for the lack of updates. Everyone I know if pretty much on FB, so you got the picture updates. I will continue to use this to update the journal and when I get around to it, I may update photo's. Just takes so darn long...Oh well.

Must run, seriously running out of time today. But only 45 more minutes until I go get those kiddo's of mine.

22 June 09~Why is it so hard to keep up with this BHP these days? So sorry to all my follower's here. Things have been super busy lately, obviously. So let me capture as much as I can.

Big thing is, we moved into our new home. I need to take a few pictures of the house finished and get them uploaded. I will try to do that this week. I do have more on Facebook than I have here. But I dont have the final pictures on FB either. We are all moved though and we LOVE it here! The house is beautiful and mostly unpacked and decorated. The kids love it here. We counted the other day and we have 24 kids between the ages of 7 and 1 here on our street. The kids are beside themselves with the amount of friends they have right here in their "new house neighborhood". Avery has just jumped right in and her bike is getting a ton more use these days:-) The water park in the neighborhood is also incredible. Gets the kids nice and tired on the weekends.

Avery has been super busy lately and has adjusted very nicely to her new school. She has had a birthday party to go to every weekend since we moved. And this coming up Saturday she has 2 parties to go to in 1 day! She is doing great in school. She has started drawing pictures with people in them, grass, clouds, sunshine, etc. It's very cool to see that. She certainly is our little princess. She loves all princesses and I think she would certainly not be able to handle a day if PINK wasn't invented:-) That is all she wants to wear these days. Certainly our little girly-girl. Her new room is pink with fairies all around and she thinks that she has the coolest room "ever". She puts a smile on my face everyday and always has me laughing at some of the clever things she comes up with.

Rylan is awesome. He is up to 6 teeth now. Still a big boy. He is 28 lbs now and is in 24 month clothing. I asked the Dr. at his 12 month well baby if I should be concerned that he is so big...he said, "Nope, he is all muscle and he is just going to be a big boy. Don't be surprised if he towers Dad!" Derek is a little over 6 feet, so that will be something. He started pulling up and scooching around about 2 weeks ago. So he is a late walker, but again, nothing we should be concerned about. Dr. said that bigger kids walk later just because there legs have more work to do. He is also talking alot more. He say's Ball, Cracker, Dog, Cake, Momma, Dadda, Get it, Ok, and a few others. He gets his point across and communicates very well. I bet when he does decide to walk it wont be for long before he is off and running! I swear, the second child seems to grow up so much fast than the first one...Or maybe it is because I know we are not having any more kids and this is the last of baby for me. He is on all table foods and Milk. Has been for about a month now. He just refused one day to eat anymore baby food! Which is fine. It is easier to feed both kids when they eat the same thing.

Other than that...busy, busy, busy. Derek and I broke ground on our outdoor kitchen the Monday after the weekend we moved in. It is a 16 x 24 Open Gabled Outdoor Structure with a BBQ island, side burner, sink, refrigerator, cabinets, etc. The top of the inside of the structure is stained beadboard with two ceiling fans and speakers. The post have sconce lighting and the bar area has pendant lighting. We also have a 42" TV out there. Derek and I are the General Contractors on it and have done alot of work on it ourselves. It has been an experience to say the lease, since this is something we have never done before. We just know that when we lived in FL we spent more time in our outdoor kitchen than we did in our home. We have missed it dearly since we moved and when we made this home we decided that we were going to build it. And here we are. I can tell you this....HGTV lies!:-) It takes way more time than a weekend and the budget has been long ago blown through. But we love it so far. I think we have about another week and a half before it is done. In between all that, Derek and I put up 240 linear feet of privacy fence. That was a very tough job, but we did it. Hmmmm...maybe I am starting to understand why I have not had enough time to update this site:-)

Well, that is the down and dirty for us. I will work at getting the picture portion updated here soon. May take a while...at the rate I am going, it may be a full day job.

...Must get better:-) But if your on FB, you atleast have pictures. If you on there, look me up and add me as your friend.

12 May 09~Hello all...and a belated Happy Mother's Day to all my BHP Mommies and of course, my wonderful Mother and Grandmother!

Avery is doing great. She has moved up to the 4 year old room and is doing great. She is learning more "site words" and is getting good at sounding all her lower case and upper case letters. We are still fighting ear infections! Uhhh - poor thing. The ENT said she still has fluid behind her ear's and he doesn't like that. He has put her on Zyrtec and Nasonix and wants to see her back next Friday. He said if it doesn't appear to work then he is going to put tubes back in. Which I am really hoping he doesn't do since our new neighborhood has a water park - really don't want to deal with her having to keep ear plugs in her ears everytime we are in the water. What a pain! Other than that though -- all is great with Ms. Avery.

Rylan is doing great. He has weened himself off of formula. We started giving him half milk/half formula. Next thing we know, he wouldn't drink it. So I went back to all formula, he threw the bottle;-) Then I went to all milk, and he sucked it down! He is also off bottles!! I can't say I will miss washing bottles. But it does seem like it is all happening so quick this time around. He is doing great on solid's. He will eat just about anything we put in front of him. Oh, and we turned his car seat around. He loves that so much better. We are celebrating his first birthday with family this Saturday! Can't believe it has been a year. Man...where does the time go?

We have been so busy lately. We went to see Ms. Aunt Dawn in Charlotte this past weekend and had a great time. This week I am traveling for work. Then we have Rylan's birthday party and the neighbor is having a party. The following weekend (23rd), Avery has a birthday party to go to (princess party) and then we are headed over to hang our with our buddies; we have been trying to hang out with them for so long and our schedules never seem to sync. They had a little girl in the beginning of March and I have YET to meet her!

Anyhow...wanted to give a quick update on the kids...upload a few pictures...and try not to let my BHP site get too far behind. Hope everyone is doing great!!!

28 Apr 09~I know I have been so bad about updating this site. But I am not going to quit...Just have literally not had the time. I love BHP though, and am committed to trying to get this site up to date. My backgrounds are going to have to wait a while, since I had to rebuild my computer and my Adobe Photoshop software is packed up in a POD right now. So bear with me...

As for what's been going on...I can't believe it has been over a month now since I updated.

Avery~She is doing really great. Her vocabulary is getting so much better and she is doing great at her phonics. We work on words every night. She came down with the Croup about 3 weeks ago, which led to a double ear infection and a sinus infection. Both ear drums perferated and back to the ENT she was. Her ENT is worried about all the moisture so he put her back on Zyrtec and Nasonex and wants to see her back in a month. If the moisture doesn't go away, he wants to put tubes back in. UHHHHH---I really hope he doesn't have to do that. Our new house has a water park in the community, and I would hate for Avery to constantly have to worry about ear plugs. Outside of that, she is doing so great. And such a fun little girl to be around. She loves riding her bike and playing with her friends, coloring, etc...She cracks me up with her imagination. And I can't get her to wear anything other than dresses or skirts! LOL...I am sure that time will come to an end in the next few years. So I will enjoy it while it last. She is growing up quick though. She is a size 4. NO, not toddler 4, a little girl size 4. CAn't believe it. And she wears as size 8 shoe.

Rylan~He is such a fun baby and growing up WAY too fast. He is still crawling and pulling up on things. He hasn't decided to walk yet, but that is fine by me;-) He has started to wean himself off baby food. He basically refuses it and wants big person food. He will eat almost anything you give him. Just this weekend he ate Turkey and then for dinner he ate a Soy Burger. He just loves to feed himself. He has his top two teeth and then his bottom teeth. Honestly, he has turned into a little boy right before my eyes. He jabbers alot, but only has a few words (Mama, Dada and dog). But I am not worried about that. Isn't it funny how you just don't stress about things like that with the second one? He is almost off formula too. We have started mixing in Milk with his bottles lately and he is doing great on it. And he is quite the master of the sippy cup now:-) He is wearing size 12 month shorts, 24 months onsies/overalls, and 24 month shirts. He is really long! Well, he is just a big boy;-) I love this age.

Derek and Michelle~We are great. I have been traveling a ton for work lately. Nature of the beast. I went on a 2 week trip this month. Headed down to Tampa for a mtg, then Orlando for a VMware Partner Exchange, Eglin AFB for mtg, Warner Robins, GA for a mtg...a short stop to see my Sister-in-law and break up my drive home...and then home. It was great for business...but I surely missed my family. That was the longest I had been away from them. When I got back on that Friday, Derek had arranged the nicest date night! He took me downtown to an amazing Sushi resturant (even though he cant eat sushi, I love it)...then he surprised me by taking me to the broadway production of Lord of the Dance. It was fabulous! Truly an amazing show. I love it!!!

The hosue is coming along great. Looks like we will close on the 28th of May. Which means we are only 4 weeks away. It is looking so great. We just have 1 more appt, and that is to pick out our landscaping! Yay!!! I am really looking forward to getting settled in again.

With that...I am going to upload a few recent pictures of the kids and then get back to work. I will of course have a ton more pictures in a few weeks when we have family over to celebrate Rylan's FIRST birthday! Can you believe his going to be 1??? Wow --- it just goes by too fast.

20 Mar 09~Before the updates get away from me again I wanted to get it all jotted down.

Derek and Michelle~We FINALLY sold our house! Yes, after a full year of being on the market, we closed and handed over all key's on the 13 of March...Friday the 13th;-) How appropriate! Derek and I took 2 weeks and took our time packing up the house. We ordered 2 PODS and had them delivered 1 at a time. It worked out wonderfully. We had 1 day of help from my awesome Sister-In-Laws; but outside of that, Derek and I did it all ourselves. Whewww...it was a lot of work.

We moved in with my SIL, Dale. Or..."Ms Aunt Dale" as Avery calls her. She is so gracious to open her house up to us and we are so comfortable. Derek and I have the Guest suite with our own bathroom. Avery has her own room, and Rylan's Crib is in Ms Aunt Dale's office:-) It is just perfect.

As you can tell from the pictures and I believe I stated in one of my earlier stories, we are building a house. It is tentatively scheduled to be done the 1st of June. It is coming along though! I LOVE it. It is so much fun to be able to pick every single thing out and then watch it come together. For instance, we picked the outside siding color, trim color, gutter color and Stone color. I wasn't sure from the tiny paint samples how it would look...well we drove out there after they painted and WOW...it is so beautiful! I almost cried;-) We are actually headed to the light store today at 10:30 to pick out all our lighting fixtures. Yay!

Derek and I are crusining along in our work. It's all good and I thank God that we have great and stable work. We are blessed!

Avery~Doing so great. Turning into such a little kid. My "baby/toddler" is gone for sure. She has such wonderful idea's though and very creative. She likes living with Ms Aunt Dale and outside of about 1-2 days, I think the transition is going fine. The weekend we moved into Dale's and finalized the house, her Grand-Mama and Pop took her down to their Beach House for the weekend. She thought she was the Queen of the Castle getting her OWN personnal Vacation! They had so much fun too. Then when she got back we had her room here set up and I think that set the stage for an easy transition.

She is doing great with writing all her letters. She knows the different sounds between upper case and lower case. I know I am her Mom and all...but she is one smart cookie! Love her to pieces.

Rylan~Whewww, this little man is growing up too fast! He started crawling this past Sunday and is all over the place now. He is saying, "Mama, Dada, OK" and a ton of gibberish that makes perfect sense to him. He is still so great natured. He literally laughs at just about anything! Especially his sister:-) I am telling you...that kid never cries unless he is hungry. And speaking of food. We have him down to 12 ounces of formula a day now. And he is eating quite a bit of table food. He started Cherrios about a month ago now. He loves Yogurt, Grits, Hamburger, Banana's, Cottage Cheese and a few other table foods. He is also doing a pretty good job at drinking out of a sippy cup. Why does it go by so much faster with the 2nd one???

I have some pictures to update. I got some cute pictures of Rylan eating his first cupcake on St. Patrick's Day! He LOVED it! It is so weird for me because as most of you remember, Avery had the severe reflux and we had such a time with her eating. We didn't really go to solids until about 18 months. Now we have Rylan who will eat anything and loves everything at 10 months. Makes me look back and feel bad for Avery. Of course -- she is great now. Although, we still struggle with vegetables. She would eat nothing but candy 24 hours a day if we would let her~LOL!

So, that is the brief overview/update. I will get some pictures uploaded here shortly. I hope all our friends and family are doing wonderful!! Email me for our temporary address! Our home phone # is no longer, but our Cell Phones are good.

20 Feb 09~Once again it has been almost a month since my updates. I truly have no idea where the time goes anymore. So, here are the updates on the Aultman's.

Avery~Doing so great. She is doing wonderful in school. We do have some concerns with the class she is currently in and we are looking at options. Basically, she is ahead of her other classmates. She can already write all her letters and she knows the sounds of each, etc. So when the teachers hand out the letter writing assignments, Avery is already done by the time they finishing handing them out. To which they then send Avery onto a playmat to play by herself until the other's finish. She is also the only one who does not take a nap anymore. But due to state law about teacher/student ratio, she is forced to sit on a cot during the 2.5 hour nap schedule. To keep her occupied they have her do her Art assignment at that time. I asked them, "what does Avery do when all the other kids are doing Art?" They said, we have her go sit on the play mat and play (by herself). Well, the last month Avery has been complaining that she doesnt want to go to school anymore, which raised a HUGE red flag in my eyes! Yeah--not very happy. So, Derek and I are looking at other school's, or possibly moving her to the next classroom (mainly 4 year olds).

She is just as funny as ever! Her imagination is blooming. The latest thing is that she has a very funny Triceratops in her closet. Her name is Kerri and she is purple with "a little bit of pink strips and sparkles on her nose". Kerri sometimes "bites her, but it only because her teeth are so long that when she licks Avery she sometimes bites her." Kerri sleeps alot and also helps Avery pick out her clothes in the morning. To which I reply, "I think Kerri might be slightly color bling":-) Because Avery has not matched in the past 4 months or so. But hey--Avery likes to dress herself and she enjoy's it; and who really cares if she matches at this point in her life? She has many years to "look cool".

Rylan~He is wonderful too. He has moved onto more solids now and is down to only 20 ounces of formula a day. His 9 month well baby went great. He is 28 3/4 long, 21 lbs, and HC is 46" -- 70% across the board. Which he has been since the beginning. He still isn't crawling, but he scootches. He could easily crawl right now, but just hasn't made the leap. He gets on all fours, rocks and then does the superman. He laughs ALL the time and is such a funny little man. He is sleeping 12 hours straight at night and I love that. He does say "dada" and other gibber-jabber. He say's Mama every now and then, but not often;-( And he loves his cherrio's!

Derek and Michelle~We are wonderful. I am getting settled into my new job. Going to start traveling more and more. So the pace should get more hectic. Also...WE SOLD OUR HOUSE! Yes, thank goodness. It has been a year! Most of the issues we had were with traffic noise. I mean -- we live in the middle of a city! The other thing that worked against us was the price range we were in. It required a jumbo mortgage, which the banks just were not giving out. The stars did align though and we have a closing date of March 13th.

We found an awesome neighborhood here that we are very excited about. It is full of people our age with kids our age. The community has 6 swimming pools, 1 water park, 2 HUGE water slides, a lazy river, 2 playgrounds, a Frisbee field and tennis courts. The club house puts on multiple family functions throughout the year. I just know we are going to love it. We are building a house since we couldn't find anything pre-built that we loved. So it is exciting. We just met with the designer this morning and we are picking everything out...down to the hardware on every cabinet. Next week I get to go pick out the piece of granite we want and the tile. I will post pictures on the website as we move through construction. It is supposed to be done on the 1st of June. In the mean time we are going to live with "Ms Aunt Dale" as Avery likes to call her;-) It should be a ton of fun.

4 Feb 09~As you can see - we have been living in the artic for the past month or so. I am so ready for spring I can hardly stand it! Uhhh. I am glad the kids got to see snow and it was fun to play in, but now I am ready for warm weather.

Avery -- She is doing so great in school. She know's all of her letters and can tell you if it is upper case or lower case. She can sound out most of the letter's too. So if you say, what sound is an lower case t, she would say "ta". So proud of her. She is still doing great in Gymnastics. I am hoping she might get to move up in class this year. We will see. Oh, and we are starting her in soccer in March. I think she is really going to enjoy that.

Rylan -- Still just the best baby ever! Always laughing, kicked back, hanging out...I just can't believe how easy he is. He is now saying "DaDa" and "MaMa"; although I don't believe he associates the words with Derek or myself. Still though. He will eat almost anything. Oatmeal, Fruits, Veggies and Meats (Stage 3). He isn't picky. And I actually think Green Beans might be his favorite. He is also eating Puffs now too. His pincer grab is not great, but he gets determined and he gets them. Still not quite ready for Cheerios. We tried it and he gagged;-) We have his 9 month well-baby coming up next week and I can't wait to see his stats! He is already in 18 month clothing...:-)

I am doing wonderful. I started my new job this week. I really love it. It is going to require some travel here and there, but only for a 1 -2 days and then I will be back home. Can't beat that. I am really looking forward to being out in front of the customer again. Anyhow. I will report as things progress.

Derek is wondeful! Status quo for him...he did go last weekend on a guy's camping trip. He had a blast but said their next camping trip will be when it warms up. Apparently it was so cold that all the guy's woke up to frost INSIDE their tents. Derek said his sleeping bag had frost on the outside of it. LOL...NO thanks!

Going to get better about keeping this site up. Seems like I am trending to 1 x month. Promise to try to get back into the swing of things.

This is the conversation we had this morning while I was getting ready for work.

Mommy: "Avery, can you please go in and make up your bed and then go and brush your teeth."

Mommy: "Avery, I have asked you 3 times now to go make your bed and brush your teeth."

11 Jan 08~I know, I have been so bad about keeping up this site. I blame facebook!;-) Seriously though, I need to get better at updating this journal so that the kids have their "stories" recorded. At this point, I am not going to try to go back and write up about the last month, I will just hit some of the important events.

Christmas was great! We had such a laid back and relaxing time. Not stressful at all. EXCEPT for one thing -- Rylan wound up with his very first Ear Infection. Poor little guy was so sick. Fortunatly, our wonderful pediatrician was able to get us in and get him on Omiceft. Thank goodness for that.

The kids had a great Christmas. Avery loved opening all her gifts -- and all her brothers gifts -- ok, she opened everyone's gifts! We enjoyed it so much.

And here we are in a New Year. Alot of changes going on around here. I have decided to go ahead and make a career change. For the past year I have been looking at going from an Account Support Role to making the jump into Sales. We kept on putting it off and putting it off -- somehow all the stars have aligned and the perfect opportunity came up. So, Derek and I talked ALOT about it and I decided to make the jump. Tomorrow I am going to be giving my resignation to NetApp and will be going over to SwishData. I will still be selling NetApp, so I will still have my roots and loyalty to a great company! My customer base is ANY Federal customer that I can get in the door with. So I am going to be hitting up my prior Comm Contacts hot and heavy. And of course, if any of my BHP peeps have any contacts within the DoD that deal with IT Storage, please let me know;-) As you can imagine, there will be quite a bit of travel involved, but Derek and I can handle it together. We will work our travel around each other. Since he is with SwishData too - they are looking at us like a team. --It should be interesting! I am super excited though...seriously - super excited.

Rylan is almost crawling now. Can you believe that? He is almost 8 months old now. Crazy. He is still just such a happy baby and laughs and smiles all the time.

Avery is wonderful. Such a little grown up. She is writing her name now and is currently all about making her 'sounds'. So she will say, "that is a lower case a" and then make the sound;-)

Avery is still ALL about Annie! We watch it atleast 4 times on the weekends. She sings all the songs on it. It was so sweet yesterday, I came up to sit with her when Annie was just finishing up. This was at hte point Annie was being chased by Mundge...

Anyhow. I promise to start updating this site again. Oh, and if your on facebook -- see you there;-) (I think I am addicted)

15 Dec 08~So, you might be here wondering...where is the Christmas Newsletter? That would be the one thing on my list I have not gotten done yet...I promise to get one written before the New Year and get it posted. So check back:-)

In the mean time, I did update some pictures from my Birthday this past Sunday.

25 Nov 08~Ok, so I just have to say...How cute did those Christmas pictures turn out to be!!?? I was about to take the kids up to get their pictures taken when I thought to myself, why not try to take them myself. And I think we did a pretty good job. I ordered our Christmas cards and I think they turned out to be really cute.

Rylan had his 6 month well baby visit today. He is of course -- perfect;-) He was 19 lbs 3 oz, 27" long, and I forget his head. But he was 75% for weight and 80% for height. He is now sitting up by himself, which you can see from the pictures. He is eating 2 solid meals a day, 1 of oatmeal and 1 of stage 2 food. The Dr. said we could move that up to 3 a day. We also need to go get a new car seat for him as he is too long for his infant seat. He will still need to be facing backwards but we need a "big boy" seat for him. Where does the time go.

We had a nice weekend this last weekend. we had Thanksgiving dinner with my in-laws since they are at my brother-in-law's house in Florida for Thanksgiving. Then we are having my two sister-in-laws over at the house on Thanksgiving. We are going very easy this year and allowing Kroger to cook the Turkey. We will do the side dishes though...

Anyhow. Really looking forward to a few days off of work. And I am happy the holidays are here...

14 Nov 08~Everything is great. Can't believe the holiday's are among us:-) I am really excited for them though.

Avery -- she is doing great. In fact, better than great. No tantrums, helpful, sweetheart, just a pure joy to be around. Here is the Avery Funny for the week.

As I head to bed I always go in and make sure both kids are good. Covered up, tucked in...breathing;-) So I head into Avery's room two nights ago and as I tuck her in she opens her eye's and this is the conversation:

Rylan -- Little man is just still as happy as can be! He just laughes and laughes. You can't help but crack up. I need to get some more video of that. He is eating like a horse these days, but he eats really good. Typical diet now - 6 oz bottle 5 x a day, 1/4 cup oatmeal, and then a jar of food. He eats green beans, corn, squash, sweet potatoes and apple sauce. I can't wait for his 6 month check up, which is next week, to see what he weighs and how tall he is. Oh, he is also sitting up now. After about 10 minutes he will fall over. But he sits up for a long time. We have got to go get him a new car seat soon as he is too big for the infant seat, and I am willing to bet is too heavy for it. It is only rated to 22 lbs:-)

Derek and Michelle--you know the story by now. I was in DC all last week and Derek had the kids Solo. It was a great trip business wise and Derek said the kids were angels. I am off Mon-Wed this next week on another Business Summit. Should prove to be exhausting but fun. 200 Partners are attending...I will try to take some good pictures.

On that note...hope everyone is getting preped for the holiday's. Kroger is cooking the turkey for us this year! We figured with only the 5 of us (Aunt Dale included in that), no sense in cooking a huge meal. It will be nice to have a no stress holiday though.

30 Oct 08~What a fun night! We took the kids to a Halloween/Fall Festival at the kids school. It was a really nice setup. Avery had a blast. As you can see she was a Flower Fairy Princess...exactly what she asked me to be. And YES ladies...Mommy made the costume!!! I am really proud of myself that it turned out so good. I even made the winds;-)

Little Rylan was such a cutie in his Fire Chief outfit:-) I just wanted to hug him to pieces! LOL..

Must head to bed, it is late. Just wanted to update the site tonight while I had a minute. And of course, show off my babies in all their cuteness!

19 Oct 08~This is so funny! We busted out some of Avery's old stuff. We brought out the walker and the jumper. Rylan loves both of them and I can hardly believe it, but the boy fits in both. His feet are able to firmly hit the ground:-) Anyhow. We were upstairs today and Rylan was in the Walker. Avery decided it would be fun to push Rylan around the room as fast as she could. Rylan LOVED it! He cracked....so of course, I caught it on video:-) Check it out...I not kidding, they did this for about 45 minutes.

18 Oct 08~So I realized the other day that I have about 1000 pictures of Avery from her first year of life, and the last pictures I had of Rylan are from our beach trip in August! How does that happen??? I think I journaled every single time Avery smiled or did anything...and I am not sure I have really captured that with Rylan.

So, I took a few pictures of my handsome little boy today and put them up on the site. I cannot believe he is almost 5 months. I also took a little video of him and it is on the front page, so check that out.

He is doing so great. Just happy as can be. Loves to eat his feet and LOVES the Exercauser. As long as he is involved he just laughes all the time. The only time he fusses is if he gets really hungry. He LOVES oatmeal. After getting oatmeal he will no longer eat Rice Cereal. Go figure:-)

Avery moved up to a new classroom. They are tracing their letters and they do quite a bit more academics. She is thriving in the classroom.

Derek and I are doing great. Trying to slow down a bit, which with it being colder out it is somewhat easier to do. It has dropped into the 50's...brrrrr.

I managed to get Avery's costume finished. She is going to be a Flower Fairy Princess. That is what she said she wanted to be. Since I couldn't really find anything I decided to make it myself. I think it turned out really good. Her school is having a Fall Festival on the 30th where the kids dress up, play games, trick-or-treat, etc. So I plan on getting LOTS of pictures;-)

I hope everyong is doing GREAT! Can't believe the holiday's are almost here...How great it is going to be this year with having our little prince here with us:-) I couldn't be more blessed!

13 Oct 08~Ok, I realize that it has been almost a month since I did any updates. I have seriously got to get better at keeping up with this. Especially with pictures and stories on the kids. I took a very cute video of Rylan the other night, so I will try to get that uploaded soon. In the mean time, here's the long overdue scoop:

Avery- She is doing wonderful! The tantrums have pretty much stopped and outside of a few moods she gets in, she is such a joy to be around now days. They have decided to move her up in her school 3 months early. She already knows all her letters, and is really good at tracing her letters. They said that she is well ahead of the other kids in that class so they want to go ahead and move her up. I like the new teacher alot, so it is fine with me.

She is still doing Gymnastics once a week and I think that we are going to get her into this music class. She has done a few "trials" in the music class and loves it. The other day she started directing me while I was belting it out with the radio. When the chorus started, Avery said, "Mommy, you be quiet on this part. That part is for your friends to sing." And then when the main chorus started, Avery said, "Ok, get ready...and sing". Kills me.

Her conversation has really been striking me lately too. Today the kids school is closed due to Columbus day. So Derek is at home with them. So, this morning I am getting ready and Avery say's, "I am not going to school today?" I told her no, she was staying home with Daddy. She said, "Ok, that's fine with me. Let me get the door for you. Bye-see you later"...and then shut the door. Just like that. So adult like.

And then yesterday we were washing bottles and she likes to help. So I wash and she gets her stool and stands beside me and rinses them out. Well, I accidentally dropped a bunch of water on her head:-) Here is what she said, as she looked up with water dripping down into her eye's...

Avery: "*sigh*, then since it was an accident you need to apologize and then give me a kiss on the check and then I will say to you, 'that's alright, it was just an accident'"

Rylan:He is of course just magnificent!!! Getting so big. 9/12 month onsies and 6/8 month shirts and 3 month shorts. He has a really long torso, so that is my clothing issues. Avery had a long torso too. He is eating two solid meals a day. He isn't too keen on Rice Cereal, but LOVES Whole Grain Oatmeal with Banana! He will eat about 4 tablespoons of that stuff. He still just laughes and engages. Only cries when he is really hungry. He gives you tons of cues before he cries though, so you know when he cries, he is really hungry. He is rolling all over the place, eating his toes and feet, and just babbling all the time. I took a cool video that I will post sometime later tonight. He truly is a dream baby!

Mommy: Trying to slow down and enjoy the kids more. I have gotten involved in a new additional venture. I am under a ton of NDA, so I can't really talk about it right now. But eventually, I will be able to tell you all about it. In the mean time, I will just say that it takes about 20 hours a week of my time. So I have been really doing the balancing act. Between my babies (and working extremely hard to keep that my priority), time with Derek, keeping up with the house being on the Market (getting ready for showings at the drop of a house), working, and then my second venture now...whew...there truly is not enough time in the day! Hence the reason the kids website is lacking. I am going to try to do better though. Otherwise I will realize I have every twinkle Avery did when she was a baby journaled and nothing for Rylan!

Oh, I am also making Avery's Halloween costume. I can't wait for you to see it. As soon as I am done I will get some pictures and post them for you. I am going to try to finish it this week!