Mother's Day

i had such a wonderful mother's day!  toby tried to let me sleep in, but my kids just wanted to hang out with me, which i love, so i only got about an extra hour of sleep.  which is totally fine with me.  my boys came back up to wake me up so that i could enjoy a homemade breakfast of pancakes and bacon.  then, the hubz had scheduled a mani/pedi for me so off i went...

i made sure to park the truck far away and backed it in.  good enough?

getting my toes decked out in "cajun shrimp"

cards from my boys...and a "flower" that roman made for me at school (awwww)

after naptime i got to do what i love best...hanging out with my kiddos

gianna loves to sit up now and she actually likes to watch tv too

this is her fresh from nap dazed and confused face

oh hey there pretty girl!

roman did not want to take a picture with me, so this is what happened...see him trying not to smile?

okay, momma's too goofy not to get a smile out of him

and finally, roman's favorite color is green (these days), so i got some bath fizzies that turn the bathwater different colors and we dropped in a blue one and a yellow one.  what do yellow and blue make?  a happy bath, that's what!

this is what being a mom is all about and i love every minute of it!

Chase and Gage's Birthday Party

the highlight of our saturday was chase and gage's birthday party!  roman had been looking forward to it all week.  he knew there would be a bounce house, which is always exciting, but most of all, he just wanted to play cars with chase!  those boys and their nascar(shakes head)...

birthday boy gage in his cadillac exersaucer

gianna in her little civic exersaucer

ro and rylee headed down the slide

and here come chase and ro

one right after the other

here comes finley

and here's ry and ro again

meanwhile, the babies had to hang out over on the patio

it looks like they were really interested in each other's toys

gage could reach over and grab gianna's toy

what guys?  we were just playin', i promise

time for cake!

yummo...

silly birthday boy!  funny story...chase says to ro (in his deepest little voice):  "hey ro, i need you." ro looks over at him..."you like my beard?"  oh lordy, it was so stinkin' funny.  those boys are a mess!

pretty girls...gianna and jj

mikey and the newest colella, mikah

gage was having fun in baby jail!

mikah was trying to catch some zzz's

the boys...

roman played a little golf

first outtake...had to include this one.  look at mikey's face and brian eating a cheeto in the background.  too funny!

a little bit better

sleepy girl

time to open presents!

alright...a cool truck!

girlfriend got all cozy snuggling up with mikey...she was drooling. :)

6 months

happy half-birthday baby g...

can you believe she is 6 months old today?  i can't.  time flies.  we certainly are having fun.

• she weighs 14lbs, 9oz. 
• she has two teeth coming in on the bottom.  she's only bit me once.  good girl.
• she is no longer interested in eating rice cereal, oatmeal or applesauce.  we still try every once in a while, but it always seems to come right back out. 
• momma can't keep up (apparently, i'm no longer the dairy queen...maybe just the dairy princess now) so she gets formula now too.  she never even gave it a second glance, pretty much eased into it seamlessly.  are you surprised?  i'm not.
• she rolls over onto her belly a lot now.  in fact, she was sleeping on her side two nights ago when i checked on her before i went to bed and when she woke up in the morning, she was on her belly.  she probably slept that way most of the night.  if she's anything like her momma, she'll love to sleep on her belly. 
• she will lay in her crib and talk to herself in the morning until momma is ready to go get her.  when i get there, she is ALL smiles!
• she can imitate most sounds that we make and loves to talk. 
• she has started to give kisses.  you know, the open-mouthed kind.  once, she even licked roman's face.  he didn't mind, he thought it was funny. 
• she loves to be in her activity center...i think it has something to do with being upright and able to see what's going on.  nosy nellie we've got on our hands!

she's brought us SO much joy these past 6 months.  i can't imagine our life without her.  i know that sounds so cliche, but it's true.  she fits into our family like a missing puzzle piece.  we all adore her and she seems to like us too:)

Life's a Stitch

so, our day started out good.  we let poppa sleep in and we went downstairs to hang out. roman wanted to take pictures of me and gianna, so here they are.  they are blurry because a 4 year old was taking them.
     

 then ro discovered the feature on the camera that allows you to take a picture of yourself without turning the phone around.  and so, i think i ended up with 925 of those.  here are some outtakes.

 then, we let baby girl play a little.  she is definitely rolling onto her belly more and more, but she doesn't really like it once she's there.  

 and then, poppa woke up.  he asked roman if he wanted to get ready to head out to target, so roman went to get dressed.  i honestly thought he was still upstairs when i heard a really loud crash.  i was on the 2nd step, when i realized he was in the downstairs bathroom.  i opened the door and he was standing there, half dressed, crying and there was blood on the floor.  i couldn't tell at first where it was coming from, but realized quickly that his teeth were all still in his head (since his mouth was wide open for me to see).  so, then i realized it was his chin.  i asked him to look up and he had a small little opening, but it was deeper than i was comfortable just slapping a bandaid on.  so, we quickly pulled ourselves together and headed to the ER.  

our little patient was SOOOO good.  he was very brave and very patient.  we played games on momma and poppa's phones, did a little yoga, and talked about what toy he would get from target when we were all done. 

 a very nice doctor stitched him up (only one stitch necessary) and there were NO tears!!!  i'm very impressed with this brave little boy of mine.  i can't believe he didn't freak out. the worst that happened was that he almost cried when we tried to put a bandaid over the stitch.  he is afraid it will hurt when it is time to take it off.  but the doc said the stitch can stay in for a week, so we told him that he could leave the bandaid on that long, so we had a happy camper on our hands.  we picked up some Mickey D's on the way to target and now he is resting.  thank you God for a brave little boy and an injury that was not worse than this!