FINALLY!

Okay okay. I finally made myself sit down and do this! In the interest of not keeping you here for the next month reading updates on our lives, I have just gone back to about October and picked some photos to share.
I'll add an update on everybody at the end, but here are the photos--which is what everyone wants anyway, right!!?

My Aunt Patty made quilts for Ella and Miles and Blake. Here is Ella's.

Here is Miles' quilt.

Ella and Blake posing by their snow bunny.

Miles never wants to be held so when he wasn't feeling good all I did was hold him! It was so nice. He was so snuggly.

Results of our 2nd Annual Hanley Halloween Pumpkin Carving Party

Bob the Builder and SuperGirl

Shout out to my mama

Ella "driving the bus"--Miles looks a little worried!

Christmas!

This is Miles at about 10 months

Ella's 1st haircut. I just trimmed it.

Why am I the only one not sleeping??

Cousins in the Crib

So that was the quickest trip ever through the last five months!! My computer is taking FOREVER to upload pictures though so I just picked what I really wanted to put on and will have to try to get more up later.

Updates:
Peter and I are doing well. Peter is playing tennis about once a week now but that will start to pick up here in the near future. I am enrolled in school once again to pursue my Masters in Accounting. I'm pretty excited about this and hope the time flies by! It should take me 2 1/2 years.
Last month we traded in my Sante Fe for a Chevy Trailblazer with 3rd row seating. We really needed the space. I miss my Sante Fe, but think this will work well to get us through the car seat/booster seat stages with Ella and Miles, and it gives Blake a normal size seat to sit in!

Blake is in 6th grade now. Middle school! I think he has adjusted well. He is keeping up his grades and participating in basketball. His Language Arts teacher sounds pretty awesome as she is a huge fan of The Hunger Games! He is growing up fast! His voice istarting to change and he is starting to develop that pre-teen attitude. Ella thinks he is the coolest thing in town and misses him immensely when he is not here. He is great help with both Miles and Ella and all in all is a wonderful son!

Ella is 3 going on 15. It seems like overnight she developed this attitude of impatience and bossiness! It's not that often, but when she does it I have to keep from laughing and try to explain to her that it's not nice to talk to us that way. She loves to sing and dance and still puts on shows from the fireplace. She is really smart and wants clarification on EVERYTHING. Why? Why? Why? Ella will be 4 years old in May and it's time for Peter and I to make some decisions regarding preschool. Yikes!!

Miles! Ahhh, Miles! He is the best baby. He is ticklish and flirty and funny and chubby and wonderful. He loves to hang out with Ella and Blake. Like I said earlier he does not want to be held that much. Always wants to be on the floor. Around 11 months he started pulling his self up on things and is now very good and holding his self up with one hand and reaching for stuff with his other hand. The other day he pulled himself up on the bookshelf and then reached up to the third shelf and pulled something down. He's definitely more of a handful than Ella was when it comes to getting into stuff that he shouldn't. I'm sure I'll go crazy once he starts walking.

I'm so sorry it has taken so long to update this. I really do need to set aside time to do this and really need to take more pictures.
Miles turns 1 in a few weeks and I will make a point to post those pictures right away.
Hopefully I can get back into the swing of this!

Hope all is well with everyone!

So Much Time, So Little To Do...

Would it be an understatement to say that I have been remiss in keeping our blog updated?! My apologies. And rather than typing a whole long update of what has been going on I just decided to post a ton of pics and use descriptive captions.
The pics are kind of willy-nilly, jumping back and forth as far as timeline. Again, my apologies. Just wanted to get this up fast, before I ran out of time...which happens quite often these days.

For our 6th wedding anniversary Peter and I ditched the little ones and headed to Glenwood Springs! Above is a pic of Peter in one of the caves we explored. Tight quarters! I was a freaking out just a little bit. That's really the only good picture that came out-most everything else was too dark.

We also hiked Hanging Lake. One of my fav places in Colorado.

Spouting Rock

Glenwood Canyon behind us

Hanging Lake

On Memorial Day we took Ella (and Miles) to the Children's Museum. Ella loved it!

Here she is playing receptionist at the veterinary clinic.

Now it's time to get to work. She's checking his ears.

She would actually grab the chart and look at it and then say, "Okay puppy, it looks like you need a shot."

She painted...

and ran the grocery store...

and drove the fire truck!! (Look at that smile!)

Miles is a hoot! He loves to laugh and smile and he is quite the talker. He's got some good competition between me and Ella! He is not a crier at all. When he wakes in the morning, he just lays in there and talks. He gradually gets louder until I get up and get him. He falls asleep between 7 or 8 at night and sleeps until 4:30, sometimes a little later. I'm very lucky!! His pics are just scattered throughout, but this is the most recent...taken a few days ago...3 months old!


This is not a picture of my toilet. Look closley under the shower curtain and you will see two little feel poking out. This was Ella's hiding place one day when we were playing Hide and Seek!

Ella lined up "her babies" in the bed and asked me to take a picture of all of them.

Our roses that are doing pretty well this year despite my lack of care.

Miles

Our backyard renovation is complete for the most part. Just a few things here and there that I need to finish up. These pics got posted way out of order so you're getting the after pics and then the before pics.

I laid rubber pavers in front of our rose bed to make a play area for Ella. This was by far the worst project I did. It was so hard and time consuming. It's not perfect, but it will do.

The before pictures of this area will really show you how much this area has changed. We laid mulch on one half of the yard. Built a "dog path" with gray breeze from the steps and all along the fence. And left a patch of grass. THe other dirt over there is Koa's potty. =-)

This is a before shot of the rubber pavers area.

Mid job.

Finishing touches.

Ella posing for the camera.

I took pics for Ella's 3rd birthday, but they came out really blurry. That's one reason I bought a new camera. Anyway, this is a pic of the bouncy house (cake) we rented for the party! It was lots of fun. I have other pics that Tina took that are wonderful. I will try to post them soon.

More Miles.

Playing with my new camera which I have no idea how to use!

Silly face!

All smiles.

And more backyard...

This would be what it looked like before we did anything.

Sleepy head.

Party animal.

Doesn't hang out in the swing too much anymore. This was about a month and a half ago I think.

And way back in March I think, our main sewer line broke. Here's a few pics of the construction site in our front yard. They were there for about a week.


And here are more pics of the backyard. I didn't realize I posted so many, but man I'm proud of it!! Go back and check out the finished project, hehehe.





Quick updates on the kids:
Blake will be starting middle school in the fall! He is taking a math class this summer so that he can take higher level math when he starts school. Originally it would be so he could take Pre-Algebra, but his teacher has already bumped him up and he will be taking Algebra in 6th grade! Yikes. So much for me helping with any homework!!
Blake is also playing baseball this summer. His season just started. He's the fastest one on the team and the lead off batter! It's crazy how grown up he is getting. Freaks me out to think we'll have a teenager hanging around here in no time at all.
Ella is a lean, mean, potty trained machine! She is awesome! She loves to play pretend and make stories up. She also likes to perform for us, which I will record for you once I figure out how to do it on my new camera! She absolutely loves Blake and gets very sad when he is not here. She warms up to people much more quickly than she used to and has a lot of fun playing with other kids. She adjusted really well to me going back to work which helped me not be so sad either. We sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and our ABC's every night before bed. She has also learned some other kid songs that we listen to in the car and she can be caught singing those every now and again.
Miles is a wonderful baby. As I said earlier, he's not a crier. He doesn't cry to eat or be picked up or anything. He might fuss for a second to let you know he's bored or needs attention, but really the only time he cries is if he is hurt, and then boy does he let you know!! There have been a couple of times that he has scratched his face and he just wails! He giggles and smiles and kicks his feet. He rolls to both sides quite well and is giving it so much gusto that I imagine he'll be rolling to his tummy quite soon.
We are so lucky to have three great kids!
I'll be taking a few photography lessons so that I can be sure to catch all of the big milestones that will be here before we know it!!