Ally's birthday party!

Ally had a great birthday party. She has all her friends there. They had a great time playing on the playground and eating pizza and cake. She even had a few friends from school come. She's really starting to develop some really nice friendships at school. It's so cute to hear her talk about her friends.

Ally turns FIVE years old!!!

I can't believe Ally is 5. Time really flies. The night before her 5th birthday, Matt and I were saying how we couldn't believe that it's really been 5 years! Seriously, when we were going through colic with her, we couldn't see past that very trying time and it seemed like we would never get out of that first 6 months of her life! But here we are...with a very happy and healthy 5 year old!

She's come so far. Although minor compared to what many little ones go through, it was a rough go for Ally in the beginning. We're so grateful that she seems to have grown out of the gastric issues. She is a healthy little girl.

For Ally's birthday, we celebrated with presents, lunch out with Boba and Papa .B. and then dinner out with Grandma and Grandpa .K.. Ally picked where she wanted to go. We went to lunch at Steak N Shake and dinner at a local pizza/pasta place. After meeting Grandma and Grandpa .K. for dinner, we went to their house for cake! It was a very nice day.

We told Ally she could pick out an activity to do on her birthday. She picked bowling, but when we got to the bowling alley, there was over an hour wait. The kids didn't want to wait, so we decided to reschedule for during the week. On Thursday, we called around trying to find a place that has open bowling during the week, but we had no luck. Ally decided she wanted to go play mini-golf, so that's what we did. We had a GREAT time. The kids loved it. They both had so much fun! I couldn't believe it, but Tommy actually participated rather than running off like he normally would! We had a really nice night.

nothing much new

A few of you have asked how things are going with the house. So far, we're just playing a waiting game. We have it listed with Matt's mom now. We were spending too much time, energy, and money trying to market it ourselves and it's hard to get the exposure you get when you list is, so we went ahead and listed it w/ her. We've actually had quite a lot of people looking at it, but either they have a house to sell and aren't ready to make any offers or they are looking for a little bit bigger of a yard.
I'm sure it will sell, but it will take longer than usual. It's just not a great time for real estate. Matt's mom is doing an Open House on Sunday, so hopefully that will bring in some perspective buyers.

Nothing much else is new. Ally will turn 5 next Friday. I can't believe my baby is going to be 5!!! It's just crazy how fast time has flown by ! She is loving preschool and doing so well! She's starting to recognize small words in books and starting to figure out how to write small words. Tonight, she drew a picture of Frosty The Snowman and wrote "FRSTY"all by herself. She forgot the "O", but I couldn't believe she did that by herself. She's so smart! :)

Tommy is doing really well, too. He's very easy to please. He loves spending 1 on 1 time w/ me while Ally is in school, but on the other hand, he misses her terribly. He asks me all the time when we are going to get ally. He's my little helper. Always willing to take care of little chores for me. He's doing better with talking. He has had some speech issues, but he's getting better. We may consider seeing a speech therapist if he hasn't improved more by his birthday in December. He's communicating, which is good, but he's subsituting certain letters for others. To some extent that's normal, but there are certain letters that they consider red flags at age 3 and Tommy switches all those letters. I'm sure in time he will learn, but if he's still making those substitutions at 3, I would rather get him checked out. He's a very smart little boy. Very mechanical like his daddy. He loves to see how things come apart and go back together.

Matt's been busy at work. He really likes it there. In November, he will have been in this "new" position for 1 year, although, he trained for the first 6 months of it so he's really only been on his own for about 5 months. He's the "go to" guy, so he's enjoying the step up.

I am still taking orders for a home shopping channel. It's been great. I can work for an hour here and there, which is perfect. I usually work when the kids are sleeping, so it is just enough to have a little extra money for "fun" stuff.
I have also opened up my own Amazon.com Marketplace. The merchant name is Christmastoyshop if you ever get a chance to check it out. It's been good. I spend a lot of time and energy shopping for good prices/sales/coupons, etc and put my items on there. Our basement looks like a toy warehouse (lol) but it is organized and stacked nicely. Matt has a UPS account at work, so we can ship things at an incredible discount, which helps. It's been pretty good for us so far. I was originally thinking of only doing this during the holidays, but I'm considering doing this full time even after the holidays.

Other than that, nothing is new. Just keeping up w/ the kids and trying to keep the house clean for showings. We'll keep you all updated!

Ally's first day of preschool!!

HI! Today was ally's first day at preschool! It was just a "getting to know you" type of day, so we were only there for an hour, but I think she'll really like it. She really seemed to be excited to go this morning and already made a friend named Mary.

The teachers are great. I can tell that they really love kids and they are so patient and kind. Ally really loved both of her teachers.

The only thing she's going to have to get used to is getting up so early! ... And the fact that my baby isn't a baby anymore! I can't get over how shocked I am that this day has already come. It seems like just yesterday she was cradled in my arms listening to the vacuum cleaner to calm her down! lol :) I am so proud of her, though. She's really come a long way. She's so smart and she is so eager to learn. I hope that she will always have that excitement over learning.

...on another note...
The morning ended with a trip to the pediatrician for Tommy. He swallowed a penny... We have an x-ray film for his baby box. lol I have tried to teach him never to put things in his mouth, so although I was a little freaked out at first, i'm not at all surprised. People look at me with a puzzled look when I say that tommy still puts things in his mouth. Well, now you know why I'm always so nervous about him with small toys!
My biggest fear is that my kids will choke, so I don't take this lightly at all. We brought the x-ray home for him to see and i've been talking to him about where that penny is and how it's not safe to eat anything that isn't food.
So now we wait for the penny to appear....

Vaca at the Lake!

HI! Last weekend we went to the lake with Matt's sister and her family. It was a lot of fun. The kids had a blast!!!
We got down there Friday afternoon, so we unpacked and got some groceries for the weekend. After that, we came back to the lake house to do some fishing. Both Ally and Tommy each caught a fish. They LOVED it. They had so much fun!

The kids got to ride in go-carts one night, which they loved, but their favorite were bumper cars! It was a lot of fun. Tommy kept telling me to "hit daddy!" He was having a blast!

We had a ton of fun shopping at the outlet mall. Laura and I got a ton of great deals there. I just love shopping over Labor Day weekend. We got socks for .19 a pair from Children's Place! You can't beat that!! lol

The last day we were there, we went to Big Surf. We didn't know how the kids would do b/c the last time we went swimming, they were both pretty afraid of getting in the water. They both did amazing. They loved the wave pool b/c it was a 'walk-in' style and they could go to their own comfort level. It also helped seeing their cousins going in and enjoying it. When the waves came, they would both stay in and just battle the waves near the 'shore'. We took them out into the bigger waves on a double innertube and they both loved that! They also had a kiddie pool, which both kids really enjoyed. They loved the little kiddie slide. Anna and Ellen really enjoyed it, too. I think all the kids really had fun there. Ally says that was her favorite part of the weekend.
Laura and I rode a few of the grown up slides. They were tons of fun. There was this one called the Space Bowl (it's just a big toilet bowl - you literally get a swirly going on this one). That one wasn't my favorite, but it was interesting and good for a story. lol My favorite was the skateboard one. It was awesome. If you ever get a chance to go there, go. it's a lot of fun.

A few pictures of the kids

Here are a few new pictures of the kids. I took one of Ally and Tommy together (above). This doesn't happen often. I have to catch them in the right mood to take one together. lol

The rest of them are of Ally. She starts preschool on September 5th and her teacher has requested two pictures of Ally only and one family picture. So I had to take some ally-only pictures. Here are the two pictures of Ally that we are bringing to orientation on Wednesday night.

This one was taken a few weeks ago

and this one was taken the other day.

Here's another cute one. I'm still deciding which one of her in the blue shirt to give them.

On the market!

Hi! You all should see our house! It's looking SO good! :) I LOVE the new carpet. It's so soft, i just want to roll around on it! lol The house is so de-cluttered and clean. It's been so nice! The kids seem a little bored (10 boxes of toys have been put away, so all they have are the toys we left out in the basement. There are no toys upstairs at all). But they are doing fine. We're spending a lot of time in the basement or outside or going to the playplace near our town or having playdates w/ friends. I'm keeping them busy.

The house is officially on the market! We put it on a few fsbo sites last week. We haven't had much interest, but it's hard to advertise a fsbo home. There are a few online sites, but the paper isn't really a source anymore. It used to be that's where everyone would look. In fact, we found our first home in the paper. There used to be like 10 FSBO homes in the paper for each city. Now, there are only about 4 FSBO homes in the entire real estate section. We're still trying to figure out the best way to advertise.
We held our first Open House on Sunday. It was SO hot and we didn't really advertise, so we didn't expect anyone to be there, but we did have one couple. They seemed really nice. Their daughter goes to the in-home daycare provider down the street so they said it was great that it was so close. They seemed interested - took about 10 minutes looking around, which is pretty long. Matt and I know whether we like a house within about 2 minutes of setting foot in it. So we thought it was a good sign that they stuck around for a little longer. The hard thing is that we really don't know if they just saw the sign when they were dropping their daughter off and were curious or if they have been searching for a house and stumbled upon it. They may have a house to sell or may not even be pre-qualified at this point. I should have asked more questions, but I didn't want to seem over-eager and pushy. I guess if they are interested they will call.

We have a sign in the yard with a flyer in it. I made the flyer myself. It looks/sounds good if I do say so myself. :) Since this is a public site and I have pictures of my kids on this site, I cropped the picture so that the address and links to other sites can not be viewed and I blacked out the phone number. Let me know what you think! And if you see anything that I should crop out (for safety reasons) please let me know. It's easy to overlook those things.

Sorry, I can't make it any bigger. I know it's hard to read, but let me know if you think it looks good. :)