Our New Ride!

The Easter Bunny Came to Town!

The Village Market in town has an egg hunt every year for Easter. They designate different aisles for different age groups. It's so much fun for the kids! One of Annabelle's eggs had a prize ticket in it so she won a basket with sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and a stuffed bunny.

And last night Jenny and I did some outlet shopping. I bought these two outfits. Our baby will be coming home from the hospital in one of them. I also got things that the Easter Bunny will be bringing to our house for Bennett and Annabelle. I'll get pictures of their goodies on Easter morning.

The BEST one dollar toys EVER!!

Bennett has rediscovered his matchbox cars and they have kept him SO busy. He lines them up all different ways, brings them in the bathtub, races them on the hard floor with Annabelle, you name it he's done it. They usually come out first thing in the morning.
This is one of Bennett's favorites. As he says, "I like this one because it looks like my buddy Andrew's truck." His "buddy" Andrew is Darrin's friend Andrew Miller.

Wrestling, Writing, and What Not

We had the end of the year wrestling party at our house about a week and a half ago. It's a lot of boys, a lot of pizza, and a lot of fun! Following the get together at our house, everyone headed to the school for awards and dessert. It was bittersweet for Darrin because 2 students who were with him from the start of this program at Colon (when we were still with Centreville) will be graduating. He enjoys his wrestlers and forms really good relationships with many of them.

Above is a picture of the coaches...and Bennett.

The boys thought our Playsation 2 was so outdated :)

A game of cards.

Annabelle was fascinated by all the activity. She must have thought it was a good time to pull out her pon-poms because she had them all night doing little cheers. Bennett ran around the house trying to avoid the camera. I really should post a funny picture I got of him trying to avoid me :)

Annabelle was working on her name yesterday while Bennett was at school. She's been doing Ann for a little while now but yesterday I taugt her the small [a] so she could write Anna. We're almost halfway done with her name :).

I got my haircut today...spur the moment...short...with bangs...and without telling Darrin. He was very surprised. I think it's going to take a bit for him to get used to. I like it. It's going to be very low maintenence but it has a style.

While we were there I asked if they had time to cut Annabelle's hair. They did and I'm so mad I didn't have my camera. She's had her hair cut before but never in the salon. She even had it washed. They gave it a good trim and added some layers so you can really see the big ringlet curls under the top layer of her hair. It looks cute and she did awesome! She got in the car and said, "Mom, I did so good! I sat still and didn't even cry. But I didn't talk to the lady." One thing about Annabelle is that she talks...a ton...but not in front of people she doesn't know so she's very easy for me to take places because they *think* she's so well behaved :).

On another note, we took Bennett to the kindergarten round up last Thursday. He currently is in our schools title one preschool. He qualifies for that this year because his birthday is one day before December 1st. He won't qualify next year because of this same reason but it does mean he technically qualifies for kindergarten in the fall. We are NOT sending him to kindergarten at 4. We will wait until the following fall.

But we have determined that these are the options for Bennett this coming fall. I would LOVE to have him in the title one preschool again which is 4 half days. I'm hoping if they have spots still available at the start of the school year they will find a loophole to get him in.

Another option is all day every day pre-k. We're not fond of the all day every day thing as that's part of the reason we're not sending him to kindergarten but it's an option we need to keep open just in case. We asked if we could divide his time with another little girl whose mother does not want her in all day every day either but the state requires that those enrolled meet a certain number of hours in the classroom.

And our third option for Bennett is to send him to Leonidas kindergarten which is 3 full days. The catch is that it's at a different building and is primarily Amish children. It's part of our district and is taught by a very nice, young, non-Amish teacher. But it's in a different building- (about a 15 minute drive from our house) so I'm curious how long the bus ride would be for him. The little girl whose mother doesn't yet want her in an all day every day program has chosen this as her best option so Bennet would know this little girl and would likely ride the bus with her. Despite the fact that this is kindergarten, we would have Bennett repeat kindergarten at the main elementary school the following fall. We have a while to decide so I'm done worrying about it especially now that I know my options for him.

And I guess that's all for now. Sorry...I feel like the above ramblings have horrible sentence structure but I'm too tired to edit. Have a great night!

A Glimpse

of our baby...

Here are two profile pictures. The head is on different sides of the two pictures because the baby was doing so much flipping around.

I'm pretty sure that's the leg kicking up in this picture.

20 week ultrasound and a few other things...

We had our 20 week ultrasound today at 4:30 this afternoon. We were thrilled that all seemed to be just perfect. My doctor will get the results on Monday or Tuesday and if he has any concerns he will let me know. But if there had been anything serious we would have been asked to stay and speak with a doctor right then and there. The baby was moving and flipping positions quite a bit so Amanda (the ultrasound tech) was having difficulty getting some of the measurements she needed. We saw the baby open and close his/her mouth, move his/her arms by the face, and stretch his/her legs out straight. It's really very cool to see! We did not find out the gender but I aksed her to tell us if she could in fact see anything. She said she thought she could tell what it is by the few glimpses she got. She never had us look away so I think when she was in that area she didn't focus on it long. We are CLUELESS! The baby's heartrate today was 144 which has been pretty typical. And just because I think it's interesting...
Bennett's heartrate on his ultrasound day was 151.
Annabelle's heartrate on her ultrasound day was 143.

So what do you think??? :)

I am going to try and take pictures of my ultrasound pictures tomorrow and put them up here. I need some good lighting to make that work. We'll see what I can do.

Here I am just before the appointment.
And of course we needed one with the kids.

On another note, Darrin and Jason played in a staff vs student fundraiser basketball game last night. I got the above picture of the kids on the bleachers but all my other pictures turned out too dark. For more on that visit Jenny's blog.

Also, two Saturday's ago Bennett and Darrin had the privilege of attending a pirate party at the library. They had a really good time! Bennett came home with a lot of fun loot!