Thanks Dad for our awesome suprise! We love our automoblox. We think they are so cool! Hatties favorite one is the white one, Porters favorite is the blue one, and Landen's favorite is mixing them all together.

In other news...I think premature balding has hit our house. (Notice Porters 3 bald spots on the side of his head.) Or it could have possibly been the fact that his older brother handed him mom's razor while they were in the shower after getting haircuts. I guess Porter thought his hair would look better this way. I am just grateful it was just his hair and my loffa and nothing else!

And last but surely not least...Hattie...I took Hattie to the doctor on Monday because she wasn't acting like she felt well. She was coughing, runny nose, and a slight fever The doctor checked her out and said she had a cold. She had a well child visit on Tuesday. She is now 5 months and she weighed 14lbs 15 oz. and was 25 inchs long. At the visit I had the doctor take another look at her because she still wasn't acting like she felt good. Well come to find out she has ear infections in both ears. She is starting to feel a lot better now that she is on amoxicillion only problem with that is now she has a nice rash on her pat00kie. At her visit they also thought there was a chance that she had developmental hip dysplasia. Today I took her to Childrens Hospital (For those of you that haven't been this hospital is amazing and the staff is so good!) to have an ultrasound done. She gave the doctors a pretty hard time. They kept saying wow she is really strong. I had to inform them that she does have 2 brothers so she has to be. The doctors said that everything looked normal which we were very grateful!. Hopefully now she is on the up and up and we can get some sleep around here!

When I have grown a foot or two...

I hope they call me on a mission, when I have grown a foot or two

I hope by then I will be ready to teach and preach and work as missionaries do.

I hope that I can share the gospel with those who want to know the truth

I want to be a missionary and serve and help the Lord while I am in my youth.

Things I've Learned

Some things that I have learned this pass week since Ty has been gone are...
1. The garbage in the house doesn't magically disappear
2. Garbage day is on Thursday
3. The garbage can doesn't take itself to the curb than back in the garage. (Hope we don't have a lot of garbage this week. Oops!
4. The Jeep doesn't always stay on full.
5. The gas goes in on the driver side.
6. Its really not fun to pump gas. (Your hands stink and its cold and boring to just stand there and wait.)
7. Laughing at my own jokes is not as fun as having Ty laugh at them:)
8. The mailman doesn't deliver the mail to my counter top.
9. Kids diapers don't stay clean after 5:00 P.M. (You actually have to change them.)
10. HOW MUCH TY DOES AROUND THE HOUSE! I LOVE YOU AND THANKS FOR ALL YOU DO! Hope you have fun on your first flight!

Funniest Kids!

Posing for some pictures after bathtime.

Porter in his big boy undies! Yes we are going to start that long road, but I think he is ready for it.

Hattie in her new favorite chair. Hunny this is a bumbo.

Rice cereal anyone?

My favorite thing about our new place!

Yes that is Porter sleeping in the Jeep! This is really my favorite thing about our new house. If the kiddos fall asleep in the car I can just roll down a window and leave the garage door to the house open and I don't have to wake up the sleeping monster! (Porter is really a monster sometimes when he gets woken up.) We just got home from the store and Porter fell asleep and we had to go to a baptism and I didn't want a grumpy boy so sleep away Porter!

Happy Valentines!

Here are the final pictures of the Valentine cookies.

Porter was much more interested in eating the candy and licking the frosting off the knife then to decorate his cookie.

Landos Masterpiece!

The kiddos with their Valentine Suprises! The boys both got a box of Transformers Chocolates and Hattie got a lullaby soother in hopes that she would sleep! (P.S. It didn't help, but the boys love to watch it!)

I even got a special suprise at the door! These roses from the best hubby in the world! I even got to talk to him again today for 15 mins! Life was great today!! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TY! WE LOVE YOU!!

Enjoying the Snow!

Landen and Porter are getting ready for their snowball fight. The snow wasn't wet enough to form balls so it turned into a snow dust fight. They still had a lot of fun.

Because the snow was so soft we couldn't really get going to fast down the hill in front of our house so we headed out into the road where we could go a lot faster. Porter didn't want to let Landen have a turn because he was having way to much fun so the solution to the problem was putting Porter on Landens lap. They thought it was a lot of fun.

Trying to sled down our front hill.

Porter trying to shovel all the snow!

Our First 24 hours

Our first 24 hours with Ty being gone has looked a little bit like this...
Hattie woke up with a rash all over her legs and arms. During the course of the day it spread to her face. I made a Dr. appt for her, but due to the pictures below it got cancelled. I did call a nurse and I think we are going to be just fine.




So this is the reason the doctor appointment got cancelled. It snowed all day long. We have about 9" of snow at our house just from today. Its crazy that it can go from being so nice outside to snowing once again.

This picture is from our back door which has a step down to get to the patio. We are going to have some fun playing in it tomorrow!

Thanks to some kind neighbor I didn't have to shovel my driveway. The Brooks Family (by the way thanks so much for dinner! It was so nice to not have to cook today and thanks Panter family for our dinner that is in our freezer waiting for us!) had called and told me they wanted to do it for us in the morning, but some random neighbor beat them to it. I am so grateful for wonderful friends and neighbors who are making sure we are being taken care of.

This afternoon when I went to take the picture of the house, we had a package on our front step from our Secret Valentine. They had brought a bird house to paint and a box of chocolates. Since it snowed all day the boys were antsy to do something so we headed to the garage to paint the bird house and boy did they have a lot of fun.

Hattie was supervising the painting.



We also made our Valentine cookies. Its become a tradition at our house. Pictures of the final project will come another day, but we sure did have a lot of fun making them.

The best part of the whole day we couldn't take a pictue of, but that part was talking to our Dad on the phone! He made it there safe and sound and pretty sleepy from the long flight. It was so much fun to be able to talk to him! We love him so much and we hope he is enjoying the nice warm weather there. In fact send a little bit of it our way!

And He's Off

Well he's off to fight the bad guys! Ty we want you to know how much we love you!

We love to take long car rides as a family so we decided to go for one to Burchard Lake. It is in Southern Nebraska. We had a fun 2 hour drive there and once we got there we drove around the lake to find the perfect spot to throw rocks into it. This is one of the boys all time favorite things. Well as we were driving around we realized the whole lake was still covered in ice. We decided to take this as a challenge and see how many times we could break the ice with rocks. Well as you can see from the pictures the lake won. Oh well we had a lot of fun!

Packing Peanuts anyone?

We know what we are getting our kiddos for their Birthdays and if they are really good for Christmas. A box filled with packing peanuts! Could life get any better?

Update

Just some updates on our family. Ty is still on the deployment list to leave next Thursday so it really looks like he is leaving this time. (He was supposed to go in October and he didn't and then we thought for sure he was going in December, but once again he didn't.) Its a exciting/sad thing for us. We are excited that he finally gets to do his job after almost 3 years of being in, but we are really sad that he has to leave to do his job. There is exciting news that comes with this and that is he only has to go for 30 days! HOORAY!! This is such a great blessing for us...well to be honest for me. I was and am really nervous about him leaving and me being responsible for our children and taking care of all there needs (for everyone that doesn't have kids just think of taking care of your own needs times 3, pretty overwhelming thought isn't it.). I've never had to do this with 3 kids, but I'm up for the challenge. The first time Ty left we only had Landen and I lived only 5 minutes away from my parents. The second time we had Landen and Porter and I stayed with my parents while he was gone. So this time around will be a first. We have Landen, Porter, and Hattie and I live 13 hours from my parents. This could be an adventure, but we love adventures around our house!

What do you do on a warm winter day??

We like too...

Swing in huge tire swings

Splash in every puddle we can find

Go for 3-wheeler rides through a muddy field

Pose for a family picture by a huge tire swing

Climb over fences so we can run in an open field

Help build a fire before the sun goes down

Learn how to drive a 3-wheeler all by ourself

And of course end the day roasting mini marshmellows!

Thanks Hanks Family for all the fun!!