Brice, Melanie, Gabbie, & Will


Brice, Melanie, Gabbie, Will, , Henrik, Luke, & Benjamin

est. 2005







Sunday, December 29, 2013

Pictures continued 2

Lucky the tree fit on top of the van, since shortly after we bought the van the truck broke down. Our next purchase will be a horse and buggy

Gabbie and Dad at her first school concert

Kisses, Will obviously loves it :-)

Attempts at a family Christmas card picture. Still haven't mailed them out anyway

Reviewing the list

Will wasn't letting go of my hand, good thing he was too naughty to request a gift anyway

Pictures continued 1

Back to Halloween...someone enjoying his ice cream and the bird at the care center

She says "Its a girl for sure, look at that hair"

Cheesy smiles for Thanksgiving! Gabbie is wearing her new scarf...I was knitting it when she decided I was done and cut it off, so we made a short scarf :)

With cousin Jackson

Disney on Ice, she loved the Little Mermaid part


Picking out the Christmas tree...had to climb to the top to find the perfect one of course!

Will's knees after the climbing...

Friday, December 27, 2013

Halloween, Gabbie's birthday, and beginning of November


Its been awhile I guess! Had been neglecting the blog in an effort to get ready for our taxes and Christmas I suppose. Here are some pictures from the late part of fall...my computer is slow to upload pictures so I'll add more later of Christmas
 
 
We hated to waste even one apple with the great production year we had! The kids and I got a workout one weekend sorting apples; saving the good ones and giving the rest to the pigs. We got them all cleaned up and are still trying to eat them. I should get more ambitious about making some applesauce.
 
 
Halloween party at dance class


He just looks like a little terd to me!

Gabbie wanted to make her own birthday cake!

I woke up Gabbie the morning of her birthday because I was so excited. The lack of equal enthusiasm on her face is obvious...when will I learn my kids do not like being woken up? She wanted to eat at Pizza Ranch for her birthday, so we did that a couple weeks after the 'actual' birthday; she had an Ariel birthday cake this year :-) I'm hoping the picture is on my phone since I couldn't find it on my camera. The sad part is as I wrote this I couldn't even remember if we had a birthday celebration for her...either it was a long fall with harvest or my memory is slipping!

A bumblebee, who refused to wear his hood with the antennae on it, and a spider witch!

Had to go share our goodies with Grandpa Simpson!

The last ride in our first (and what was supposed to be our last) mini-van. I was aware of an oil leak that the van had, just didn't realize how big the problem had become until I was stranded on the side of the road on my way to work. And of course I picked a day when Brice couldn't easily come help me. Luckily it worked out, I have helpful co-workers and my father-in-law gave me some instruction on the phone. So, Brice and I did some chatting and within the next 36 hours had purchased a newer van. I really wanted a Prius as I HATE my gas bill every month. However we find ourselves in a lot of situations where the van is handy and are glad we stuck with that. I had only had the other van for 3.5 years, but somehow had put almost 95,000 miles on it without having put money in it other than for maintenance. I probably would have kept plugging away with it if it wasn't for the fact that it was supposed to be our 'good' vehicle. And the value of it was not much more than what the estimate was to tear it apart and find the oil leak. It was just annoying...close to holiday time, and had a few other unexpected expenses at the same time. But it is what it is! The kids were not happy at first as this van does not have a DVD player (heaven forbid). 8 weeks of owning the new one and they are still alive without the option of watching a movie, its amazing.
 

Lisa's baby shower; I'm proud of my creativity! (And thankful for Pinterest)

Those diaper cakes are more work than they look like...

The Momma, due mid-January!

Gabbie always acts like she has such an important job to do!
 
 
Fast forward a bit to December...Gabbie and I did a good chunk of baking this year and she was very creative at decorating the cookies!
 
Kisses :-)

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Baby update

Okay, the last update that I can think of. We can hardly believe we are halfway through this pregnancy to meeting baby #3. The time is flying! I haven't taken the time to journal or take 'baby bump' pictures as I have in the past. I have made a VERY conscious effort to not gain so much weight this time as has been my habit. Still swimming, running, walking, trying to eat right, etc. Has it paid off?
NO. I weight in 22 pound gain at 20 weeks. Wonderful. The doctor is not worried as he looked back and I gained it all in the beginning with the other 2 also. But that's the problem...then I have the joy of carrying it around the whole time instead of just at the end. Oh well. On the plus side, according to our ultrasound from Wednesday the baby is nearly 1 pound, where average at this point is 8 ounces. So...that accounts for 6-8 ounces of gain. I don't want to think about where the rest is at!
The ultrasound went well, but the pictures really aren't worth posting. I don't mean that rudely, just that the tech was having a lot of trouble as the baby started moving quite a bit and she really couldn't get the 'classic' picture. But that's fine with us. We'll see it early in 2014, God willing. According to the ultrasound we are due in late February, doctor has figured March 7th based on dates. I guess we'll just have to see! Either way it will be late based on history, but I'll take that over too early. The two we have keep us on our toes so for now this one can stay where it is :-)

Gabbie as flowergirl

Gabbie was honored to be the flowergirl at Jim and Chloe Wallaces wedding on September 20th! It was a beautiful day for an outdoor wedding. Here are some pics...
 
Watching the dancing

Just before the wedding

Waiting for the bride

The boys at rehearsal

Gabbie and Bob the ring bearer

Its always fun to get Will dressed up so he can ruin it!
 

Seattle trip

I should have known trouble was up today when I hadn't heard from Will in several minutes...I had started this post last night and forgot about it, and found Will messing with the computer this morning. So, these pictures somehow got out of order and I'm not sure how to rearrange them. Here are some of my pictures from our trip to Seattle in early September, in random order :-)

Seattle had a great aquarium; these are always one of my favorite parts of visiting bigger cities

Gabbie does well on airplanes! She has already asked me "when is our next vacation?" Unfortunately for Gabbie the next Hundling vacation will hopefully be just Brice and I!



There was a really fun music museum

At the aquarium there was some places where you were allowed to touch the starfish and other fish

Gabbie enjoyed taking pictures with her "IPad"

On Lopez Island where we met Grandma Linda's roommate from college (Creighton) who owns the pharmacy on the island with her husband

The travel planners

The ferry we took to the island

There are always fun creatures to see in other places, like slugs :-)

An outfit at the museum, I believe this is one of Loretta Lynn's outfits from one of the music awards ceremonies
   
'
o

Friday, October 18, 2013

Will's 2nd Birthday

I'm a bit behind in logging our recent happenings! September was a crazy month, not all good things but not completely bad either. Just seemed to be that we had to take one day at a time! We were able to have a celebration for Will's 2nd birthday over Labor Day weekend. What a fast 2 years...he's alive and growing, and I consider that an accomplishment! An active healthy kid. He did have early signs of pink eye last week, so to save some money I took him in for the pink eye as a 'well child' check...so somewhere I have his "2 year stats". I think he was 26.5 pounds and 35 inches long; close enough. He's growing anyway!
 
 
I was so excited about his 'big gift' of a tractor...

turns out he was most happy with his 'small gift' of a skid loader toy! I have a fun video of him making the sound effects of reverse and the bucket lifting up, just couldn't get it uploaded on here very easily. Maybe will try again another time

The skid loader did not leave his side for several days! I see this picture still had a bottle in the background...we were successful shortly after his birthday in finally breaking this habit! Actually Brice was successful...he would have been broken a year ago if I hadn't kept giving in

He loves being outside no matter what!

I made Will a tractor cake and Gabbie insisted she be a helper!

Didn't matter to Will who made it, as long as he could eat it

Will's birthday loot; although the backhoe was scary to him. He did learn to enjoy after he got used to the noises (or maybe he was jealous of Gabbie playing with it!)

Eating popcorn off of a hair pick...who doesn't do it that way? :-)