My Little Cubbie

Zander is the cutest little cubbie i've ever seen. a cubbie is from awana for those of you methodists! :) hahaha...sorry. cubbies is the young form of awana and zander has his little vest and everything. he's such a doll. he's said his first two verses and got his first patch. honestly i thought he'd struggle with memorizing but he's really good at it. mind you, the verses are short and simple, but he's doing great. i'm so proud!
in other news, after almost four years, we finally got a baby gate. :) ronan has learned to climb the drawer handles in the kitchen and has had one too many experiences with knives. soo..we finally broke down and got one for the kitchen. ronan is so not happy, but hey i'll take the squealing over him getting into danger.
mmm...let's see. anything else? oh we think we have a baby name!!
JADE GABRIELLE. gabrielle is a work of ben, who combined letters from gail, becky, and ilene. gail is my mom, becky's ben's mom, and ilene is the middle name of barb ben's mom who died when he was little. we wanted to pay respect to all our moms. so we hope you like it!
and please, just like with ronan, stop telling me if you don't like the name. DON"T CARE!!!!!
ok that's all from the annens!

Must Stop.....

Shopping!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is ridiculous! but all the summer stuff is on sale and she'll be born in march, which means its starting to get relatively warm....so i'm loading up. :) its so much fun! it's such a change to shop in the girls section (unless i'm shopping for my favorite twins!)! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but i'm going broke...so send money. hahaha totally kidding on that one....sort of....no really. don't send money i'm kidding. jay and cheryl i got the dress today! sooo cute! we love pink and brown! it totally matches these little hair things we just got! very cute! WOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

baby jake

is not a baby. :)

HAD THE ULTRASOUND!!!

ok so i woke up this morning and couldn't wait. i called the place and they could fit me in at 11:30. so off i went! i took zander with me and dropped ronan off at melissa's. ben couldn't come with me but he was ok with that as long as i called him. sooo.....
the tech found NO PENIS!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO HOOOO!!!! there is a chance that a penis could drop in the next week or so, but it's rare. most of the time the penis has already descended and is visible by about 12 weeks. but they have to cover that risk. so i go back in two weeks to confirm, but we saw the three girlie lines so i'm thinking she's going to stay a 'she'. :)
words cannot describe how excited i am!!! i am beyond over joyed at God's blessing! we went to babies r us tonight and of course i started crying. but it was fun to buy a few girlie pink things!!!!

i'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GEEKED!!!!

Waiting for Wednesday

I'm so nervous!!!!!!! Wednesday at 10 am we have a 4d ultrasound to find out the sex of the baby. I AM FREAKING OUT!!!!!!! I know every baby is a wonderful gift, i'll love whatever God gives me, blah blah balh....please save me the lecture. i know all that. BUT....i REALLy want a girl. yup, really, truly, horribly, desperately, badly want a girl. i know i will love whatever baby is born and held in my arms, but i have to be honest when i say that i will be very sad if they tell me it's a boy. and i will probably have to name him "it" since i've really run out of boy names. so....i wait till wednesday.
as for the boys. zander is doing well with his bright blue cast. except that occasionally he bonks ronan too hard. and ronan is still ridiculously full of it and into everthing. except he flashes that cute little grin at you and just melts your heart.
we also find out that jay, cheryl, baby jake, oma and opa are all coming for christmas! woo hoo! how fun to have family here for christmas! zander is so geeked! he can barely stand it. every day he asks if it's christmas yet? he's also very excited for halloween too. his costume just came and he wants to wear it all the time. ronan also loves his costume. ronan is going to be nemo, zander is crush (sea turtle), ben is bruce (shark) and i will be dory. ben of course is making his costume and mine and they are going to be awesome! seriosuly, he's amazing.
you will all love the pics i'm sure! too bad it's a month away!

Morning Phone Call

8:15 am...phone rings. it's radiology at urgent care. Zander did in fact break his thumb so back to urgent care we went for a more elaborate temp cast. We have an appointment on tuesday to see the pediatric ortho about the break. i guess it's on his growth plate so they want to decide if it should be a permanent cast and for how long. oh joy. three breaks before he's four. God help the child.
Tonight i gave him a shower and we took the cast thingy off and his poor little thumb was still huge and turning purple. he's in a lot of pain poor little thing.
pray for the little guy!

dr. visit again

so tonight was zander's first night of awana! they meet during the same time as our small group meets so it works out perfectly. most of our small group has kids age 3-5 so they all got to go. about an hour into it i get a phone call saying that zander has fallen and i need to come see him. when i get there his thumb is GIGANTIC! i mean it has no lines, no bends, nothing. the poor thing is sobbing and ben and i rush him home. i called my parents to sit with ronan and off we went to urgent care. i prayed on the way there with zander and we prayed for a quick in and out visit. which, is pretty unheard of in urgent care. literally from the time we arrived to we left, it was only an hour! praise God!!! we had xrays and everything. fortunately nothing is broken! he just has a really bad jammed thumb. they put a little splint on it and let zander have a xeroxed copy of his xray. he's very into bones right now. so he was so excited about that! so he's home, and off to sleep now. my brave little boy.

these are also some pics of our small group bbq with the kiddies playing together. thanks casey for the pics!

Legoland

today we ventured off to legoland....here's some pics of my cuties having fun! and don't mind zanders horrific haircut you can blame ben for that one.....

A Godsend

Today was a day from Jesus. Literally the Lord knew what I needed. as soon as i woke up this morning i had a text from casey asking if ben worked today (which he did) and if i wanted her to watch zander and ronan for the morning. and first i said no, it's labor day which is a family holiday and i thought she'd want to spend time with her family. it's very hard for me to take help from other people. then i was like, who am i kidding i've been praying for a break and this is exactly what i needed. so i said if she was still offering i was accepting. so i dropped the boys off at 10 and cried for a good portion in the car feeling guilty for getting this free time. i wanted to do something that required ZERO effort so i would still feel rested. so i opted for a movie. off to the theater to see sisterhood of the traveling pants 2. i go tthere and was sitting there by myself and started crying again cause i am an emotional basketcase. i think there has just been something there ready to break. thank you pregnancy. and let me just say that the movie was not a good one for a weepy woman. it wasn't overtly sad for the normal person, but hey, it's me. so i cried through the whole movie. because of the girlfriends, the sad mom parts, etc. all in all, it was soooo relaxing and just what the doctor ordered. i picked the boys up and ronan was cuddling on casey and didn't want to leave her. always a good sign. she said they were good but busy. she even fed them lunch. so i brought them home put them to bed and that was that! then after they woke up i had a renewed vigor for them and the playful side of me was back. so we went for a walk after dinner and then i got sick sick sick. back home, on the bed, and laid there till ben got home. as soon as he walked in the boys jumped on him and wrestled for the next hour. it was so cute to watch them. there is nothing better than watching your husband play with your kids and love doing it. now i'm waiting for ben to get back from running.... what a good day.