Pittsburgh Trip

So, at the beginning of the month, the kids and I drove out to Pittsburgh to keep my sister company while her husband was out of town for several days.  It was a long drive, but the kids did great.  Here are some of the highlights, as documented on my phone:

Penny and Ben on my Grandma’s little rocking chair that Rachael inherited:

And Penny on her own:

And here’s a little video of Ben and Ollie having a picnic together.  They got along pretty well, although Ollie was kind of sick.  Ben actually had a lot more fun with Owen.

And a couple of pictures of the kids playing with the play food.

Tobin and Penny with Ollie in the background.  Penny and Tobin sometimes played near each other, but it turns out that Penny is a bit of a bully.  She kept stealing Tobin’s pacifier, so he wasn’t her biggest fan.  Still they had a couple of cute moments together.

The four younger kids playing together.  Ben, Ollie, Penny, Tobin.  Owen was at school most of the time.  I’m not sure I have any pictures of him, but he was so cute with my kids.

Some of you may or may not know that while we were in Pittsburgh, Ben took a spill and split his face open right above his eye.  Here is an up close shot of the injury at the hospital before we got it stitched up:

And after the stitches, as you can see, Ben was very upset by it.  He thought it was pretty cool that he had “hairs” on his face:

Of course, he wasn’t that calm and pleased the whole time, but he was very brave.  He screamed when it first happened and was asking for his “boo-boo bear” which is a little kids ice pack we have.  Of course we hadn’t taken it to Pittsburgh, but we got him calmed down with a sucker.  When we got to the hospital, he actually recognized it as such.  He knows that daddy works at a hospital, and when asked what daddy does there, he says “he fix people”.  So as we were walking up to the emergency room he said “We going to the hospital mommy?”  I told him yes, we were.  His little lip started to quiver and I could tell that he was fighting back tears and trying to be brave and said, “I have owie”  I told him it was a hospital like where daddy worked and asked him what they do at hospitals.  He replied that they fix peoples.  I tried to reassure him that they would fix his owie too.  He perked up a bit and said, “Yeah, because they crash” and started making car crash noises.  Apparently, when Jon first taught him about hospitals, it was when they were passing some ambulances at a car accident.  The hospital was great and we didn’t have to wait at all.  He did really well.  Since the cut was so close to his eye, they had to strap him down to a little mummy board while they injected the anesthetic and put the stitches in.  He was not pleased about being strapped down.  He freaked out for the shot, but who can blame him, that part is extremely unpleasant.  Once the cut was all numbed up, he actually calmed down and was very curious and sweet while they did the stitches.  He was talking about getting more suckers and seeing Nammy (who was on a plane to Pittsburgh at that moment) and asking Grandma for a present (I may have mentioned that he could ask for a present to calm him down during the injection).

Here is one more close up the next day that my mom took with a real camera.

On to the rest of the trip.  Here is an adorable picture my mom took of Tobin.  Can you believe those blue eyes?

And a picture of Tobin and Penny being super adorable after their bath.  They are two such happy little babies, even though both of them were cutting their molars.  Yipes!

And a picture of me with Owen, Penny, Ben, and Ollie, all in our jammies

One day, mom, Rachael and I ventured out with the four little ones.  Here is a picture of Tobin and Penny in the cart at Sam’s Club.  Penny is using the car keys like a cell phone.

And here we are on the road.  These kids were such good travelers.

It was a great trip.  There were many more pictures taken by my mom, who is a great photographer, but she accidentally deleted them from her memory card when she uploaded them to Rachael’s computer.  I guess Rach will have to post them.

Phone Dump

I know it’s been a while since I posted, and that I still owe my loyal followers (if there are any of you left) documentation of important things like Christmas, Penny’s birthday, and our trip to Wisconsin Dells.  I’m still too lazy, and a little bit overwhelmed by our impending move to do so.  Sorry.  Maybe once we get settled in Iowa City, I’ll do some backlogging.  Oh yeah, that reminds me, Jon Matched!!! Yay!  We will be going to the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital in Iowa City.  I am feeling super pumped about this.  We took a trip to Iowa City, and it is a lovely little college town.  I think we can be very happy there.

In other news, I just dumped my phone’s memory card so get ready for a bunch of photos.  Here are some of the highlights from the last couple of months since I got my new phone:

The view from our back door in early February.  We had some pretty killer icicles. 

Mommy trying to get a good picture of us all nice in our church clothes.  This is about as good as it gets:

And this is what should be expected:

Daddy is a slightly more cooperative model:

Sometimes they get along:

and Ben lays one on his little sister (though he’s not always gentle in doing so):

Ben is learning to draw.  Here are some “peoples” he drew on his magnadoodle:

and a fire truck.  I swear he drew this by himself.  I gave him some directions on what shapes to draw, but he really drew it:

My camera doesn’t take great videos, especially if the lighting isn’t perfect.  But I have to include this one.  Penny likes to put this little cloth box on her head and walk around running into things.  It kind of reminds me of the kid from the Parenthood movie:

And here is Penny at one of her first attempts at feeding herself.  She actually does pretty well:

And Penny running around in her beautiful dress that Geri gave her.  Seriously, can you get any cuter?

I think I’ll end this post now.  I might post later with phone pics and video from our Pittsburgh trip and the rest of March.