Happy Spring!

Sorry, I only have time for a quick update. Here's a few pictures of the girls.

We started Anna on solids recently, per recommendation of her pediatrition since she is in the 3rd percentile for weight. She has tried bananas, avocados, applesauce, and pears. She likes them all, except applesauce! Though, Anna's favorite thing to eat is her bib!

Here are the girls hanging out! I just missed a smile from Anna-instead she looks shocked!

In other news, I am very busy this spring doing my online scoring job for a company called Pearson. I try to work in all my spare moments like naps and when the girls go to bed at night, but I'm defnitely not getting as many hours in with 2 kiddos as I did last year. I will be doing that until the end of May as I just got an offer to score another project! Woohoo!

Justin will be moving out of the office he has been working in with his financial advisor mentor and into his own office some time in May. He started leasing a building in La Crosse in April but it is being remodeled currently. We are searching for furnishings for that in the meantime.

Our family and our whole church team's weekends have been filled lately with doing finishing touches on our church building and getting set to open on May 8th. It's neat to see something we've been working on over the last 2+ years finally come to fruition. I will have to take and post pictures soon! I am working with my friend Beth to coordinate the church's nursery.

On the side, when we find extra pockets of time, we are attempting to remodel our bathroom. Progress has been very slow as you can see from above that we are more than a little busy right now, but it will get done in time. I will include before, during, and after pictures when it's done.

Happy Valentine's Day! Lots of pictures!!!

Well, well. Our life is finally starting to calm down, so I though I'd catch you all up on what we're doing through pictures.

Miss Anna Mae is a calm and happy, happy baby who is letting us actually get some sleep at night. Here's one of our sweetie's smiles.

In mid-January, my mom, uncle and brother Sam came and helped us move almost all our furniture. Thank You!!! Unfortunately, the day we picked to move a one of the chilliest days of the winter. Double Thank You!!! Never again will we move in the winter with little children. There's a reason people don't do that!!!

All of us in our new living room!

On January 20th, Kipton Holmen was born. Megan Holmen was my maid-of-honor. Here is Anna "meeting" Kipton.

Megan and I had Nora and Emma and now Anna and Kipton both about 12 weeks apart from each other respectively. Our friend Beth is also down to the week in line with us from her first pregnancy to her second little boy who is due in March. Here are the big sisters with thier mommies and little siblings.

Amidst all the stress of moving and unpacking, we took some time out to make these delicious 3 layer popsicles. Nora thoroughly enjoyed making and eating these.

On February 6th, a historic day for Wisconsinites and all Packer fans alike, we hosted a Superbowl party at our new house and were quite glad with the result. Go Pack!

All the kids in their Packer gear. Anna is on the far right with her crying friend, Eli who is Lance and Chrissy Klessig's son. Lance was Justin's best man.

Now more Anna. We are starting to come up with nicknames for her. One is "Gabby" since she constantly babbles. She loves to tell this Cat in the Hat all about her day. In fact she was babbling so loud the other day that Justin heard her while he was taking a shower upstairs. We also call her "Mimi"-well Nora started that because she heard her friend call his sister that. But it's catching. Also Nora calls Anna "Mr. Piecey" Not sure why...

This is a classic Anna these days. She sucks on these 2 fingers when she sleeps or anytime she's not gabbing really. She is almost 3 1/2 months (Woah!)

And this is classic Nora these days. As she says all the time, "I'm your great helper, mommy!" She's so modest...no, but she really is a great helper-here's she's pushing down the toast while I made eggs. She will be 2 1/2 tomorrow!

And finally, finally we have a yard to play in. Justin took Nora out yesterday to play in the snow. It was a very warm winter day so she had a blast. They sledded and made snow angels and this snowman. It was so warm that about an hour after they came in, the snowman's head fell of from melting. Oh well, we have no complaints about winter caving into spring in this household!

Making progress

With holidays, the house, and 2 kids we've been busy, busy, busy lately. Here are some "during" pictures of us working on the house. I will try to do before and afters sometime to show the difference in each room as we finish them. Above is our bedroom-look we found nice maple floors when we ripped up the carpet. They were in great condition and are being refinished on Friday.

We also pulled up the carpet on the stairs, living room and dining area, and in an upstairs bedroom. The linoleum you see at the base of these stairs, we pulled up on Sunday so now that is the same maple floors that is in our bedroom. In addition, we've deep cleaned a lot of the house including the basement, painted, and are lining up new carpet to be installed. Justin and his dad are installing some leftover hardwood from Justin's dad in the dining room on Saturday (and maybe my new/used sink-also leftover from Justin's dad) So by the end of next week, everything but the bathroom, kitchen, and basement should have a totally new look. Woohoo!

We are still spending most days and nights at our apartment in Onalaska, but we've slept a few nights in our new house. I help Justin after the girls go to sleep for the night and during their naps, but otherwise I try to keep them entertained while Justin works. Here's Nora playing with her play-doh set, a Christmas present from Uncle Jake and Katie, in the booth. She named her play-doh dog Martin, even though we don't know anyone with that name.

Anna is just starting to gain interest in some toys. Here she's "playing" on her activity mat and smiling at the star above her. She is 8 1/2 weeks old and has her 2 mo. check-up on Friday. Finally, below is a video of Anna rolling for the first time last night. I had her on her tummy on my chest and she just looked like she was about to roll so I put her down on a blanket. She rolled about 8 different times. I don't really think it was purposeful rolling to get around but still a milestone. Nora was very jealous of all the attention Anna was getting so she wanted us to tape and clap for her too.

Anna-5 Weeks and more pics

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was fun but we were so tired/busy, we forgot to take pictures to document it-bummer! This was a picture I took of Nora, helping me make my pies before Thanksgiving. She's such a good helper!

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we did get to meet Justin's high school friend Tom and his wife Jackie's baby. His name is Gavin and he was just a little over 2 months and 13 lbs. in this picture. Hard to imagine Anna could be that big in just another month or so. You can really tell the difference in alertness too-Gavin was wide eyed and smiling and Anna slept through most of their first meeting.

Here's a picture of Anna a couple days after we brought her home from the hospital...

And here's a picture of her from yesterday. She still fits into her newborn clothes but I can tell that she's really filled out, especially in her cheeks, arms, tummy, and legs. I love those chubby baby rolls! I think she also must be taller because her pants and sleeves are getting a little short. Today, I'm going to try on the next size up to see how those clothes fit. It's so fun to see all of Nora's cute outfits get worn again and to put Anna in some new clothes we were given this time around! I have to put her in a new outfit everyday so they all get worn!

We look forward to the next 2 weeks. Next Friday, we close on our house and the Friday after is Christmas. What a fun time. I better scoot and go wrap present before the girls wake up!

Welcome Baby Anna!

We've had quite an adventurous last few weeks, so I will do a 2 week in review post. Two weeks ago today, Nora went trick-or-treating for the first time. She dressed up as a penguin. Here she is next to her friend Emma, an elephant. On Monday, my due date, we took a second look at a house with Justin's parents. We actually got to spend 3 hours in the house by ourselves-where Justin and his dad fully inspected it. Since we were very interested in it, Justin's dad let us know what repairs we would need to make and how much they would cost. Later that day, we put in an offer on the house. We went back and forth in offers and counter offers all week. On Thursday night, Justin heard back from the realtor that they accepted our final offer! So we will close on this house on December 17th-just a little over a month away. To add a little further craziness to this week, Nora started consistently potty training from her own desire this week. We are glad, but the timing was a bit chaotic.

Within hours of hearing that we got the house, I went into labor. I tried to go to sleep, but I was so excited and in a little pain so it was impossible for me to fall asleep. At 1 a.m. I went downstairs to iron and time my contractions. About an hour later my contractions were about 3-5 minutes apart. I got Justin up, called the hospital and our friend Megan came over to be with Nora until the morning. She snapped this picture of us leaving for the hospital at about 2:30 a.m.

After a few hours, Anna Mae was born at 10:21 a.m. She was 7 lbs. even and 19 inches.

Justin helped the nurse get her footprints and give her a bath.

One week ago today, we brought Anna home. This picture was taken literally minutes after we got home. It was followed by a huge reality check for Justin and me. We had just spent 2 relatively calm days in the hospital with a little girl who slept most of the time. Then Nora came back and all her energy. We went upstairs to change Anna and she was jumping on Justin's back, dancing around her room-just barely missing Anna, and going around the house finding all of Anna's burp cloths and diapers and showing them to her at her normal loud volume. The balancing act began.

The next day, we took a family walk. It was nice to have Justin home with us all week. Also Justin's mom stayed to help us until Wednesday.

Nora had a hard time adjusting to Anna in the house all the time at first. There were a few tears, but she's been adjusting to it better day by day. There have been a few cute sister moments. Here Nora was showing Anna her toys and had just been reading her a book (I think Anna was sleeping).

She does that a lot. She also likes to cross her legs like this.

Nora loves when she gets the chance to hold her baby sister. Earlier in the week, she said, "Be gentle with my sister dad." Last night when we gave Anna a bath she was crying. Nora said, "It's okay Baby Anna!" and then, "Stop crying Anna, you're scaring me!" It's so funny, because she talks to Anna as if she is her age-asking her questions like, "Do you see my striped Pj's, Anna?" then she waits and looks at us and says, "Anna doesn't talk yet." but she continues to ask her questions. I can't wait to watch their relationship unfold over the years.

Taking Pictures of Toddlers

Goodness gracious it's tricky! Well, we have been very busy getting ready for Anna around here that I have completely neglected this blog. I am currently 37 1/2 weeks along-so pretty much full term. I have a huge to-do list I want to get through before Anna comes and updating the blog is on my list. Check! I looked on my camera for pictures to update with and I haven’t even taken any pictures at all since August, except for a few days ago. So that is all what I'll show you today.

We watched Ben and Megan's daughter, Emma while they went out on a date this last Tuesday. We saw their friend Hurshle outside playing in the leaves and the girls wanted to join in the fun!

The kids were so cute that three of us parents tried to coax these energetic toddlers to all look at the camera at once. This is hard when you're too busy playing!

Or when someone tries to steal your pumpkin!

Or even when you each have your own pumpkin, but the leaf pile is calling your name again!

But sometimes, just sometimes, out of 15 pictures taken-you capture that moment when they all pretty much appear to be looking at you-and then it's gone. We hope you are all enjoying the changing leaves, pumpkins and all the other joys of Fall. Check back in a few weeks for pictures of our new little girl and family of four!

The Coast

In mid-July, we took our first trip to Oregon with Nora. My family rented the above beach house right on the Oregon Coast. The coast is probably my favorite spot in the whole world. The beaches are nearly isolated because the water is frigid and the days can be cool enough to wear pants and fleeces-even in the summer, but it's just so fun to be near the sand and amazing waves and pretty much have them to yourself. My enjoyment of the beach increased on this trip as we got to share it with Nora for the first time.

Here's our little traveler on the her first plane trip. She loved playing with stickers and paper, but she was most excited about the "Scooby Snack" fruit snacks she got to eat at take-off. She did a great job on the plane. She even slept through one whole flight.

Nora was all smiles on her first walk down to the waves. She didn't even seemed fazed by the chilly water. Nora loved to collect rocks she found in her little bucket.

She also got to spend a lot of quality time in with her daddy. With Justin starting a new job about a year ago and working hard all year to start it up, it was nice to have him all to ourselves.

Overall, it was a relaxing and fun family trip. It was great to spend extended time with my Dad, stepmom, and sister. Nora learned so many new words-mainly from my sister, Sydney, including "flanges" (from her biology class), "merci" (from her French class), "Keith Urban", "iPod","Hugh Jackman and Simon Baker" (my sister's favorite actors"). She also started saying things we had never heard her say before like, "I'm hungry" and "That's the one". Every night at dinnertime, she seemed to take advantage of her captive audience and perform a show or make requests that the whole table sing "Wheels on the Bus" or "Old McDonald". We got a lot of funny video footage from these times.