Nelson Fam Update

Still doing good in Spokane. Lance is enjoying his job working on finishing up his research project, and looking forward to a trip out to Purdue to present his project and enjoy some time with friends during his Birthday at the end of Sept and he's been getting some good use out of our Gym Membership at the Y since it's right near his office.

Mia has been having a blast doing swim lessons and doing some preschool stuff at home with Mommy. She has had fun working on a little bit of reading and making her own books, painting, and writing any word she can find. She has been very passionate lately about her dancing ballet and ESPECIALLY Hip Hop! :) We'll have to try and post a video sometime with a demo of her Hip Hop Free Style! She has been making friends here and having fun with playdates. She got her eyes tested this month and in keeping with her Daddy's tradition she will be getting glasses. Her right eye is a little worse then her left and they are hoping wearing the glasses for a couple of months will help correct things but if not (again like her Daddy) she will have to wear a patch and glasses for a little while. She doesn't seem to mind the idea of wearing glasses but she keeps telling us, "I don't want to wear the 'hatch' though". So we're crossing our fingers for her that glasses will be enough.

Maddi cracks us up daily with her 2 year-old-ness. She is growing up too fast in some ways (thanks to her older sister). Her newest lines these days are, "But my heart will be broken" "You're being mean" and "I want to wear my balalina" and "I'm SO angry". She gets attached to things very easily from her blankie to the nursery leaders at church etc. And lately her attachments include an old cut up credit card, an old set of keys, a tiny book of mormon (her 'scriptures') and a 'ballalina' skirt that she wants to wear EVERY day. She is getting her 2 year old molars that adds lots of excitement to our day and she is becoming quite a little fish at her Mom and Me swim class she has been taking. She is absolutely fearless. To illustrate we signed up for a membership at the Y and took the girls to the pool as a family. I stayed (fully clothed) out of the pool and Lance got in the pool with the girls. After watching for a minute I decided I should get a little closer to remind Maddi that 1. She does not know how to swim yet and 2. That she needed to wait until Daddy was READY to catch her before she jumped in the pool. While doing this Lance had moved to the other side of the pool with Mia and I was sitting near the edge by Maddi. I was in the middle of telling her to wait for her turn when she looked at me and then turned around and jumped RIGHT in the pool which meant that I in turn had to jump partway in the pool (in all my clothes) to pull her out by the ankle. It was quite exciting and shortly ended our pool stay that day however I think she learned her lesson because she has yet to do that again!


You can see Ella's Update Below.

And as for me, I am just enjoying being the Mom (most days!) and starting to get adjusted (in most ways) to having 3 little girls. I have been trying to start running again (averaging one day a week!) and have been having fun doing some couponing and trying to see how much money I can save us on Groceries each week. And most of all I am just glad that I actually got this update written! I think I've been averaging once a month blog updates but I guess it's better then nothing.

We are really enjoying Spokane despite the fact that we still miss Indiana and all our friends there but thank goodness for email, phone calls and blogs to stay in touch. And we are looking forward to some fun little trips to see family this fall and winter.

Maddi has a BIG GIRL BED! We finally moved Maddi out of her crib and into a Big Girl Bed. I was dreading this day because Maddi is such a good sleeper and I didn't want to rock the boat but so far so good. Our only little quirks were one night when I woke up numerous times to find a little girl in my bed touching my face and staring at me (slightly frightening but thankfully only happened one night) and a few falls OUT of the bed (not so fun when you have wood floors but Maddi's a tough little cookie so she handled it well).

Some days it's more of a love hate relationship, but overall it's so fun to see the little bond our girls have. It totally reminds me of me and my sisters.

Mariella 4 months old

At the mercy of your 4 year old sister, a couple of lais and a bunch of bracelets!

I promise we don't have you in the car seat ALL the time....but it's a good thing you like your car seat because you are certainly there more then your older sisters were!

Well this a little late in coming since she will be 5 months on August 2 but hey I do the best I can! So our little Ella Bella had her four month checkup and she is now

11 pounds....Go Ella!

And this puts her on the regular 4 month old chart which is great. She is:

12% for weight and

30% for height.

She is talking and cooing a lot, She can now lift her head up when we put her on her tummy, and she is starting to put weight on her legs and wiggle around on the floor. She is sleeping well and if Mommy could just get to bed earlier she would be sleeping well also! We are waiting to get a laugh out of her but are enjoying her sweet little personality and cute smiles and it's so fun to see her get chubby! Look at those cheeks. :)

Jarrett's Visit

Lots and Lots of Babies!



My adorable niece Chloe and Nephew Liam





Bathing Beauties. It was SO hot while Jen and Kelly were here that the girls spent LOTS of time outside in our blow up pool.




Oh the poses! Jen and I were cracking up watching them pose for these pictures.

The babies enjoying some time outside.

Little Artists! One of the best things about having Isabel here was that Mia had someone to enjoy her "quiet time" every day while all the babies were napping and they soaked it all up!

What happens when your Mommy runs out of swim diapers and puts a regular one on instead! I swear I've done this before and yeah the diaper gets a little large but I had never seen THIS before.

We were dying laughing watching Maddi with her "expanding diaper" or so we thought!

When I finally removed her swimsuit I realized that the diaper had actually exploded inside it and all the largeness you see on her bottom half is actually diaper insides just floating around! It was quite the mess to clean up but gave us a good laugh. :)

Reading Bed Time Stories.

Listening to books on CD. We got these at the library and they are awesome!

We wanted to do some "learning time" together while Isabel was here and we were able to do at least one day. Our theme was berry picking since we knew we'd be picking berries later in the week and read some fun berry picking stories and then did a little art project where the kids put their fingers in ink and stamped "berries" all over their paper. Very Fun and easy!

So Ella is about the same size at Liam and Chloe (they are about 8 months chronologically and she is 4 months) but they still act a lot older with all their fun sounds and moving around. Ella was very easily overstimulated by all the excitement in this pic!

The formal flower gardens at one of our favorite parks here in town.

All the babies in their sleep sacks. I just wanted to see if I could hold them all at once....it actually wasn't very easy!

Ella sleeping through all the fun.

At Green Bluff picking Raspberries and Cherries. Green Bluff is now one of our favorite places to go. We went and picked strawberries when Lance's parent's were here and had a blast then too. It's great because it's close to our house and they have tons of different farms with all sorts of uppick places. This time we did Raspberries and Cherries which was a little easier when you're carting babies around.

Cute Belle

I love this pic of Jen and Liam...so sweet!

I think I had the best spot. Since Ella needed to eat we just pulled a chair right up next to the raspberry bushes and I got to sit in the shade AND pick a few berries.

Maddi enjoying her Huckleberry Milkshake. Spokane is known for Huckleberries apparently, so they have Huckleberry everything up at Green Bluff. At this little cafe they made me the best Huckleberry Smoothie with Soy Milk (for my Non-Dairy diet) and they accidentally made it with milk first so they brought out both the soy and the milk smoothie but they looked the same so we asked which was which and they had forgotten so they went and made another one. So we ended up with about 3 extra smoothies at our table not that we were complaining. It was just Huckleberry Heaven!

Jen and Kelly being good sports and roasting hot dogs in our backyard in about 100 degree weather! The kids were so excited to roast hot dogs and marshmallows so we waited as long as we could in the evening when it STARTS cooling off a little bit and went for it.

Downtown Spokane.

The carousal another fun Downtown thing we like to do

Mia Crashing out at the end of the week after tons and tons of fun playing with her cousins.

Sisters!

Ending our Berry Theme Week O' Learning and making Berry Pie while the Daddies were having Guys Night out at the Arena Football Game. Kelly and Lance said the show was more in the Stands then on the field!

July was SERIOUSLY the hottest month here in Spokane. And the week Jen and Kelly came topped them all. We don't have AC in our house but thankfully we have a window unit AC that does a pretty decent job cooling down the front part of the house and our basement stays cool so Jen and Kelly weren't too bad off but my poor girls' bedrooms get SO HOT. Ella still likes to be swaddled so this presents a problem when it's over 80 degrees inside your house. One night however I had laid her down on the floor after changing her diaper and got a phone call. So while I was talking on the phone she laid on the floor underneath the fan and just put her little self to sleep. I think it just felt so good to feel cool poor thing!

Maddi was Uncle Kelly's buddy this week and tagged along with him any chance she got. And he was very nice to indulge her!

The Whole Gang! We are quite a sight on the bench on Sundays I have to say! With 6 kids under 6 and 3 babies you spend a lot of time going in and out of sacrament meeting.

So my oldest Sister Jen and her Fam were so nice to come and spend a WEEK with us here in Spokane. It's been so fun for us to be able to have family come and visit now that we are living closer. I think we've had 5 visits from family in 3 months that we've been here and we've just loved it. And this visit was especially fun for Jen and I since we are at the same stage of life right both having babies and little kids. We joked that while this was supposed to be a "vacation"... for us Mom's it's just normal life but at least we got to do it together and when we had to stop and nurse babies at least we had someone else to talk to! Lance and Kelly were very nice though to watch all the kids one night so that Jen and I could have an awesome girls night out. We got pedicures (one of the most interesting pedicures I've ever had by the way) did some shopping and had so much fun running errands without having to haul kids in and out of the car. Jen and I spent all week watching each other take care of our kids, (her with her Twin Babies and Me with my 4 month old and 2 year old) and we went back and forth over what would be harder....TWINS....OR.... a baby and a 2 year old! I would normally say TWINS hands down but I think there were many times when Jen would watch me (like when I caught Maddi on the kitchen Counter drinking Vanilla....or the time when I caught her on the kitchen counter biting into a raw egg!!!!) and say...."Oh I'll take the twins!" Haha. It's a good thing 2 year olds are SO cute. Maddi spent lots of time following Jen around with baby "Lamb" and "Coly" as she calls them.