Second Floor

The second floor is now framed!!  More progress, whoohoo! :)

3 Days

It's amazing to me how quickly they can frame a house.  Today was the third day they worked on our house and the first floor is about framed.  We've been driving out to see the progress after Joe gets home from work which has been earlier now that he just this week started a new job that is much closer to our house.  I never pictured him working close to home (what are the chances that you find a job that fits you that is close by?), but it worked out that way and now is actually quite handy. 

 The kids get very excited to see the house, but tonight got cold quite quickly and couldn't wait to get back into the warm car!  I'll be happy when the weater warms up and the snow goes AWAY!

My Little Valentine's

Layla got to tour Zeeland Community Hospital with her class the other day which she LOVED.  She loves all things related to hospitals/doctors/nurses and especially loves talking about babies being born.  She probably would have liked to see a baby being born on her tour:).

 Grets loves her grits, but they sure are messy!

 My girls sharing a hug on Valentine's Day...

 Here's Layla ready for her school Valentine's Day party.  The party was originally going to be the Tuesday before Valentine's Day, but then got switched to Friday which worked great because Layla had her first sick day on Tuesday.   She woke up barking and sounded terrible so I didn't think I should send her to school like that! So thankfully, by Friday she was much better and was able to hand out her Valentines.   Of course she wanted Dolly in the picture--tonight at dinner, the Bible story was about not being able to take earthly things with us to Heaven and she was very concerned about not being able to bring Dolly.  Touches my heart how much she loves Dolly, for obvious reasons, but also because my mom gave that to her in the NICU.  She felt better about the situation when she decided that she could leave her here on earth with her future daughter:D.

 And here are my three little amigos riding on their cars.  It is so cute seeing Greta play with them more and more.  She pretends to eat play food and the little sounds she makes while doing that is quite possibly one of the cutest things I've ever seen:). 

House Progress

2-13-13

First lumber load! (late in the day 2-13-13)

Saturday, 2-16-13

                             It was quite snowy when we visited on Saturday! The kids love seeing the progress, but I think they're expecting it to be done quicker than when it's going to be done.  Gibs wants to go look at it every time we're in the car and cries if we can't go:).  He also pretends now at home to build a house whether it be out of snow or out of blocks using his toy excavator.

2-18...We were hoping that htey worked on it today and they did!  It started raining in the early evening, so we were thankful that the rain held off until then.  Unfortunately, tonight and tomorrow we are supposed to get a lot of snow, so I'm not sure if they'll be able to work on it at all tomorrow:(.

House Progress

We started making progress on our house and then it started to snow a lot:(.  We are hoping that the framing can start at the end of this coming week.  We had a lot of dirt to haul in and wet, snowy and very cold temps have made that whole process take a bit longer than normal, but at least we are making progress:).  

This pic looks like it could have been taken in the fall, but it was actually December that it was staked.

The week that we were in Florida (early January) our walls were poured...

And this was taken today after a lot of dirt has been taken in and after a lot of snow has come (and yet a lot has also melted away)...

Walking!

Greta started taking her first steps around her first birthday (2 months ago) but then took until last weekend to decide she wanted to fully walk.  She still crawls every once in awhile if she falls down or whatever, but starting about a week ago, I'd now consider her a full time walker!  We still think it's funny how long it took her to walk though.  She started crawling in  June so she crawled for almost 8 months!  We were just surprised that it took her that long to start walking.  Finally, Miss Smiley Pants is a walker:).  Uh-oh, does that also mean that she is now a toddler??  No, she's definitely still my baby:).

Gibs' 3 Year Stats

Gibs had his three year appointment in January and I believe he was 75-90th in in everything which surprised me a bit. 
Height: 39"
Weight: 35 lbs (He is now a few pounds more than Layla!)

He is definitely FULL of energy and all boy.  He has been incredibly whiny lately and so we are hoping that this is a short lived phase:).  He can be so sweet which is especially fun to see when that sweetness is shown to his sisters (although, trust me, he can also be not so sweet to both of them!).  We just potty trained a couple of weekends ago (I wanted to wait until after our Disney trip) and it went SO much better than I had anticipated.  Layla was so easy to train that I thought for sure with his strong-willed and high-energy personality that he would be the difficult one.  I am happy to say that I was very wrong.  Other than a couple of mistakes the first few days, he has not had any more mistakes and always tells us when he needs to go.  It's strange now only having one kid in diapers!  We love our little guy and love seeing him interact with is sisters.  He is so sweet yet so tough that I can't wait to see what a great big and little brother he will grow in to.  He can also be such a goofball.  Recently, his jokes often include the words underpants or mustaches.  He seems to catch on quickly to which things people laugh at and apparently those got the best reaction from others, so he now likes to throw them into his stories randomly.  Trying to explain to him that there are times when he shouldn't be talking about underpants seems to only make it worse, so we are now attempting to just not say anything and hoping he drops it eventually:).  He definitely does not understand having a filter.  The other day while waiting at Layla's dance class he announced to those around him that his fruit snacks were making him toot:).  Such a typical odd Gibs comment:).  He loves making people laugh so that will be interesting to see too how that changes as he ages.  I just signed him up for threeschool this week (for next fall) and just last month he started Young Children's Worship at our church.  We love our silly yet sweet little Gibs and feel so blessed to have had in our lives for three years already!!  Time sure flies!