my birthday celebration...

I know this is a couple weeks late but here is how we spent my birthday...

we drove our "picked up that day" minivan (nice 27th birthday present huh?) to the North End in Boston with my family...

we all fit! that was really most exciting for my dad I think...
we ate at their favorite North End Italian restaurant , Giovanni's....
walked by ours, Giacomo's (just to small for a big group and no reservations)...
Carter LOVED the calamari... who would have thunk?...
Rebekah had her own dish... no sharing for this post-birthday girl!...
Daisy was a ham.... mistaken to be Rebekah's daughter by the hostess.... uuuuhhhh.... SCARY!
Carter ate the noodles slowly, spinning them around the fork... a hard task for him but he knows thats how you eat noodles...we then waited in line for cannolis....Carter was treated to gelato... Daisy had a pink cookie....

all in all it was a beautiful evening out... I felt we like we were pretending to be foreigners in a far off culture....the North End is just so different than my life here out in the country... but is an easy escape especially in a minivan!

a secretary I am not....

I say this at work all the time... the paper work is enough to drive me mad!!!!... to document my nursing assessment multiple times not to mention pain scales, neurologic assessments, safety assessments, restraints checks more times than I can count in one 12hour shift... and then to file it all?.... Yuck!

even in the scrap booking industry a huge look last year was office supplies showing up on your family page albums.... while sometimes appropriate it kinda erked me if you know what I mean...

the smell of white out even drives me to a tizzy...

so when my crazy busy husband asks me to do a "secretarial task" it is hard for me not to cringe...

so far I have spent this Saturday morning changing the addresses on our licenses, figuring out which hair salon his hair dresser moved to and fasting for an hour this morning so we could have a life insurance physical... needless to say I am trying to be good and not think of this as a chore but a service to my husband who has spent endless hours the last month figuring out what car we should buy, what life insurance policy is the best for us all while working 40+ hours a week/commuting 10hours, watching the children at least two nights a week so I can work and taking a masters class... it's all about the service around here but now with most of those things out of the way we now turn to renovating two bedrooms in the house so we can fit another child in!

emotionally exhausted...

(family game night a few weeks ago)

this week has been tough.... a young man(Steven) in our church (18yo) has been diagnosed with brain cancer (a very aggressive type)... he has had many symptoms over the past month or so but no one thought this tumor would be the culprit... he had exhaustive brain surgery to remove the tumor on Wednesday and I worked Wednesday night in the ICU he was staying in... his mother, father and grandmother were waiting in the waiting room... I spoke with them before they went home that night knowing that the road ahead is long, hard and grim.... his mother(Lisa) is very strong in the Lord and her faith is being stretched... his father is lovingly being drawn back to Him... our church has out poured love on this family in ways I have never seen before.... I spoke with Lisa last night in the ICU again and just was baffled by the fact that one day Steven was 3 years old, cute as a button but driving her crazy, making things difficult, making her laugh, and cry all at once.... if anything it makes me want to stop and hold my own babes a little longer, knowing that God is ultimately in control of them.... and resting in the fact that I am merely a tool in His hand to mold them, show Christ's love to them and resting in the peace that He is in control... please join me in praying for this family and Steven to be healed miraculously...

his version of sneakers...

after having high top blue chucks last fall, winter and spring (really stretch the life out of those!).... Carter seems to think these are sneakers and nothing else measures up... I have to say I agree but in an effort to by shoes better for winter (and that I don't have to tie when I am 9 months pregnant) I took him to Target and Stride Rite looking for other options... in the end these were purchased off of Ebay and we are both happy!...



what kind of kid am I raising?.... makes me wonder...

Cricut creating...

I have been having lots of fun with my new toy...
making cards, tags for gifts, titles for my pages, cute animals for the kids to play with, etc....

the creating is endless with this thing...

watch out I may be electronically die cutting anything I can get my hands on soon!

what do you do when your stuck at home?

we make bread, stay in our PJs, do laundry, try to clean, make a shopping list, play together and wait for our new minivan (coming soon)....


I am "official" now to do this mama thing!

Carter family birthday weekend

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Dawson may love balls but Daisy loves clothes...

Dawson, my nephew is apparently obsessed with balls of all kinds.... while Daisy of growing her own obsession with clothing (here she is caught with Carters "boys" on like a helmet)... she has been caught with everyone in the families clean underwear on her head at one point or another... the other day she went upstairs and came down with her blanket and monkey in her arms and Carters pajamas almost completely on over her clothes! I am not sure how she learned to dress herself but this should make things easy once the baby comes... now if only she could change her own diaper too!.... hummmm?

NE in mourning....

the nurse I was working with last night in the ED looked out the window this am and said I wonder why the flag is at half staff.... I said it must be because of our poor "Tommy boy"....

banana baby...

the kiddos were so excited to learn that there little "c" baby is now the length of a banana (they now measure head to foot so it might seem like a big jump)....

since this is their favorite fruit/food I have been waiting for the babycenter weekly e-mail (that always compares the size of the baby to a fruit) to say it was the size of a banana...

I think I need to make a mini album of pictures we have collected from this series of "baby fruit".... creative juices are flowing these days but I have many other things on my plate right now...

first being preparation for our first house guests next weekend- Dave, Jayme and the fam will being visiting for the annual September birthday celebration... lots of floors to clean, beds to make and pictures to hang...

favorites from the Frog Pond

on Labor Day we head to Boston to see Grandma, Grandpa and Auntie B... we took the train to visit the historic Frog Pond and Tadpole playground.... this was on our to-do list this summer and we just made it on the last day it was open!... we had lots of fun in the water but Carter thought the busy playground was even more fun!
this last one is of Kevin being a goof trying to get my mom in our couple shot... Rebekah had a fun time using my camera and she got some pretty good shots with me actually in them! (don't have many of those)

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we are half way there to meeting little Cora Anne Marie!

(look at the counter on the side! 20 weeks marks the halfway point but could be less or more depending on the when the baby comes.....)

a new treasured toy...

this box left over from our new printer has been a source for many hiding games, playing "house", the infamous "throwing every toy in the playroom in the box" game but this was my favorite box moment yet....



this was spontaneously done by them and literally melted my heart when I saw it!