New Years 2010!!

We are officially lame old parents :) We don't have any exciting plans this year, well I guess what some would consider exciting plans!! We will be staying home this year, putting Max to bed and playing games with the kids until midnight!! The kids are a little bummed about not having our annual New Year's Eve bash, but with no basement I'm not about to have 15 kids over for a party!

2010 was a great year for us, here are a few of the highlights...

• Max is potty trained, and really starts communicating and talking :)

• Had a great Disney family vacation!

• Actually had many vacations and getaways, I do love the beach :)

• Spent our first full year as NC residents!!

• Jack went to Middle school!! (yikes)

• Olivia gets the Omnipod, life changing...such a blessing!!

• Harrison has made such great friends this year, you can't keep him in the house!!

• We find out we're expecting #5!!

• Tim and I had a chance to have a getaway just the two of us to SF!! (hence the above blessing)

• Tim's personal business is flourishing, I'm so proud of him!!

I feel like this year we grew a lot, as a family and as individuals!! Moving here and dealing with all the new and the change, has really made all of us do a lot of thinking about what is important in life!! As long as we're all together we are okay!

I often have to remind myself that although these days feel crazy and stressful, these are the days I will long for when I'm older!! To have little kids running around happy, playing, fighting, whining..it's all good!! So for me this coming year I hope to embrace the craziness I call my life a little more, breath it all in, be okay when milk is spilled for the 3rd time at dinner, and know I'm blessed to have all these little crazies to call mine!!

Happy New Year's everyone!!

New Years fastly approuching

Everything is such a blur lately, and we're busy trying to soak up some family time, I know more company will arrive shortly!! Tim's parents will be arriving on Sunday to spend a week with us, it will be somewhat difficult because the kids are suppose to go back to school on Monday!! Anyways we're used to spending our New Years Eve in MI, this will be our first down here, so I'm hoping to make it fun for the kids and to maybe start some new traditions!! I really just realized it's in a few days and I better get going on that!! Any ideas, or fun things you do with your kids for New Years??

Every year I always have a list of things I'm going to do or change, they never seem to get done though :) I guess it's always a work in progress, always busy trying to better yourself and your family!! Hopefully this year I will attempt to once again work on doing these things :)

At the moment as sappy as it sounds I just feel blessed!! Olivia is doing great on the pod, and her life seems much closer to "normal" than it has since she's been diagnosed, this is a huge blessing for our family!! The boys are great, healthy, happy and adjusting really well this past year!! We also feel blessed that we have this "surprise" of a new little lady coming to our home in the spring, although I'm sure this summer is going to be crazy it will be wonderful at the same time!! I've been working on changing how I think of things a lot this past year, I'm defiantly a negative thinker. I need to start focusing more on the positive, and let a lot of stress and anxiety go, it at time consumes me and eats me alive!! So this year I'm just going to try to focus on the feeling of being blessed :)

Then there were 5

As most of you know we are welcoming another little baby to the family, which we recently found out was a little girl!! To say the least we are over the moon!! My due date is confusing, by my last period it would be May 12th, but by ultrasound they want to go with May 22nd!! I won't be induced at 38 weeks this time around, the doctors down here think it's unnecessary, so I will be induced at 39 weeks instead! I've been feeling great, the first trimester I did have some serious fatigue, but that has subsided for now and all in all I feel great!!

So I'm around my 19th (or 21st) week, I've gained maybe like 2 pounds and for the most part I'm still wearing all of my normal clothes. The only maternity thing I wear right now is a pair of maternity skinny leg jeans, I can't wear my normal ones of those anymore for some reason.

I didn't really think about girl names, because I thought a chance of that happening was slim to none :) We're thinking of Stella, Gracie, Macy and Lucy right now, but I defiantly need some help in this category!! So we have a Jack (Jackson), Olivia, Harrison, Max (Maxwell) and.......??

We've already been busy buying up some pink things, and since we sold all of our baby things when we moved I think this little girl is going to be all pinked out :) I'm so excited to buy little cute dresses, hats, bows, shoes, socks, really you name it I love buying little girl clothes!!

I'm feeling a lot of movement, and Tim and the kids have been able to feel her a couple of times. During the ultrasound she kept kicking the want, I think she's going to be quit fiesty like her sissy!! During the entire ultrasound she was folded in half, like her knees were touching her forehead :) They did find that her kidneys had some extra fluid in them so it's something we'll keep our eyes one, it looks like what Harrison had when he was a baby :( I'm okay with this, with all we've been through in the past I'm not going to fall apart because of it!! She looks healthy and that's all that matters!!
So here is my 19 week preggo picture, crappy as it is it's all I have right now!! I took this yesterday, and it was a dark gloomy day, and I'm too lazy to edit it so it's what it is!! This whole taking a picture of yourself in the bathroom mirror is harder than it looks can I just say that!! So there is defiantly a undeniable baby bump there!! I'm starting to feel huge, but I know I have a long way to go and HUGE will come soon enough!!

Christmas Eve

We are enjoying a lazy Christmas Eve this year, my parents just left this morning and we are going to spend the day laying low!! We're skipping the traditional Christmas eve dinner (fish, blah, blah, blah) and are going with Mexican pizza, and bean dip...weird I know but sounds easy and casual!! The kids will exchange their gifts to each other tonight, and then maybe a Christmas story and book and off to bed they will go :)

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!

The list is long...

and I'm talking crazy long, and it just seems to multiply by the day!! Every year I have big plans, to be all festive, bake daily, take many Christmas outings, and fill this house with the Christmas spirit. Ugh, it seems like every year I fail at this hope, or should I say dream. In reality the stress of Christmas is overwhelming, the many school Christmas parties, remembering what kid needed the cotton balls, the ornament, or the nine bags of M&M's, choosing which extra parties we can make it to on the same night, it all seems to get the best of me. So I baked cookies once, made rice krispies once and that summed up my baking so far for the holidays :( There are cranberries in my refrigerator waiting to be strung with popcorn, projects that I planned one doing with the kids, and many cookies recipes waiting for us to bake. On top of all this I wanted the older kids to do some kind of community service, which unfortunately doesn't look like there will be time for. All of this leaves me feeling like a failure!! While I would love to say I have time to squeeze in the last this last minute Christmas cheer feeling, I don't! Let me give you the rundown on my next few days...

Today-Christmas party for Olivia, decorating for Olivia's winter wonderland Birthday party tomorrow, grocery shopping, making cake pops, and Olivia has a Christmas play tonight.

Friday-Dr. apt first thing in the morning, Harrison's Christmas party, setting up the finishing touches for Liv's party, party from 3-6, Liv has friend spending the night taking them down to Charlotte to ice skate at the outdoor ice rink, Jack has his first dance, shew I think that's it!!

Saturday-Sqeeze in some of that Christmas fun, Christmas party, and taking the kids to drive through the lights and ice skate.

Sunday-Liv's B-day!!! She wants to go see Tangled!! This day will be filled with trying to please the Birthday princess!!

Monday-another Dr. apt, and my parents show up..ahh!!

On the positive side, my Christmas shopping is done, the goal of a "smaller" Christmas was thrown out of the window by my husband once again this year!! The sucky thing is when you have older kids you can spend a LOT of $$$ and they still only have 5-10 gifts to open.

Hope everyone else is fairing a little better in the whole Christmas cheer thing, I have to learn to just make it happen and find the time!!

On a side note I stress so much over Olivia's parties, she is very hard to please!! Last year I transformed my front room into a spa, and I thought it was adorable, well she didn't agree! This year we're going with a winter wonderland party, she only decided on this party on Sunday, so I've been running around trying to buy up all the snowflakes I can find and stressing about giving her the perfect party!! Then I think this child is going to be 9, she is way too demanding and hard to please!! She should just be happy she's having a party, right??