Sledding(finally!)and Swimming

This past weekend we made an impromptu trip to Algona. My parents had gone up for a few days to help my grandma with a project in her basement and on a whim that day I had asked if there was enough snow up there to go sledding. Mom thought there was and they were staying at a hotel that night with a pool so it was a bonus, sledding and swimming all in one weekend! We met my parents and Grandma at Pizza Ranch and had supper and then surprised the kids with the swimming at the hotel. The pool area was pretty dark so I didn't take a ton of pictures but here are a few. My very excited red head.
Goofy first born who does not necessarily like his picture taken.
and the all of the sudden camera shy little girl.thats more like it.
We spent the night at Grandpa Matt's and Grandma Nancys house. The next day we made our way into town to Daylight Donuts and visited the Chocolate Season as well. The kids loved their donuts and treats and then we headed out to the farm. The kids said hi to Great Grandpa and Great Grandma and then were ready to try sledding. We found a somewhat small hill in the yard and decided to give it a try. It wasn't the steepest hill but it seemed to work pretty well for small legs to be able to walk back up.Callie played the part of the princess very well and would get to the bottom of the hill and say "Bone come get me" hold up her arms and of course Uncle Bone would go get his favorite great niece. Stinker.
Callie quite enjoyed her first time our sledding.Ty had lots of fun too.I think Gabe was getting tired of carrying the sled back up the hill by the end of our sledding time but he was a trooper.
We went out for lunch with the Great Grandparents, Bone and Grandma and Grandpa and then after lunch headed back out to Carl's parents. Callie needed a nap, Carl needed to watch the ISU basketball game and I needed to rest for awhile. After the ISU win Carl took the boys outside and gave them a pull on the sled behind the tractor.
While they were out for their ride they found another hill to try sledding on. This one was a little steeper and they had to be careful not to sled into the creek but they had a blast.
We all had a great weekend and Gabe proclaimed it to be the best weekend ever when he went to bed Sunday night. Guess he had a good time!

Titus and the 3 Bears

Ty's preschool class put on a few plays last week. They did 3 Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and The 3 Little Pigs. Ty played the part of the baby bear in Goldilocks and the 3 bears. We had heard him practicing his part for a few weeks and were so excited to go see his acting debut. Here he is helping set out the 3 chairs.Soon it was Ty's turn to say his part, as you can see he is a little animated.In the above picture he was exclaiming that someone's been eating his porridge and they ate it all gone...wahhhhh(we're pretty sure he ad libed the wahh part but the preschoolers thought it was hilarious and he received quite the crown reaction for his performance) Next someone had been sitting in their chairs(Ty is patiently waiting to say his line)
and at the end of course someone had been sleeping in his bed and she ran away:) I didn't get a very good picture of that part but here they are taking a bow at the end of the play.After the plays were over we even got to see his class do the infamous crazy dance, he sings that song at home all the time, so much so Callie knows how to do it too.

After this they went back to their classroom to celebrate a birthday and we joined them for a few minutes before it was time to go. At the end of class Callie even got to join them at the carpet, she thought she was pretty big stuff.It was so much fun to see them perform and they did a great job. Maybe we have an aspiring actor on our hands:)

Baby #4 at 19 weeks

We had our 19 week ultrasound on Thursday of this past week. Because it had to be rescheduled because of a death in the techs family we had to go for the ultrasound Thursday and the results with my doctor Friday. We took Gabe with us this time as we felt he was old enough to sit still and actually appreciate what he was seeing:). Gabe thought the baby looked like a dinosaur especially when looking at the spine and bones. It was fun to have him with us especially when the baby kicked up its legs and moved its arms up by its head and even opened its mouth wide. Gabe begged to let him find out if the baby was a boy or girl but we stayed strong and are waiting for the surprise. He had said earlier he would know if it was a boy or girl because a boy would have short hair and a girl would have long hair, he was somewhat disappointed to discover this method definitely would not work when he got there.

The next day at my doctors appointment she told us everything looked good, baby we smeasuring a little bigger then my due date but not enough to change it. The anatomy and organs looked good, umbilical cord and placenta were good. The only thing they discovered was the baby has a very small white calcification on it's heart. My doctor assured me it does not effect the way the heart functions or have any negative effects on the baby. It usually goes away as the baby grows so at our next ultrasound around 30 weeks they will check again and most likely it will have gone away. She assured me though that even if it hasn't it will not hurt the babies heart at all. She said that many more of these spots have been discovered lately because of the ultrasound technology improving so much. In the past they probably wouldn't have even seen the spot.

I'm not sure what to think about it as far as it being a good or bad thing kind of seems like some of these things are best left unknown so we don't worry about them unnecessarily. I say worry because of course stupidly in the afternoon I googled the spot and it came up as a very soft marker for Down Sydrome. That of course freaked me out so I began searching the likelihood that this spot could actually mean there is something chromosonally wrong with our baby. I was actually pretty reassured reading the research. Most of the time one very soft marker for Down Sydrome does not raise your risks of having a baby that actually has it. Plus my doctor did not mention the risk of Down Syndrome at all, which tells me she is not concerned about it since their is no other evidence pointing her in that direction.

Mostly I've learned from all this research that many perfectly healthy babies show this little spot on the heart and even statistically there is no reason to worry myself to tears like I did yesterday. Ultimately our baby could show no signs of anything wrong and be born with a chromosonal abnormality or health problem and the fact that we would love it and trust God with its life would not change. We are just trusting God in whatever plan he has for this baby, whether that means like the vast majority of babies this spot is gone by our 30 week ultrasound or that it is still showing up, whether our baby is completely healthy or has some challenges to face it is part of a master plan that we don't always understand and I think it's better that way. So in the mean time we of course will pray that our babies spot would be cleared up by our 30 week ultrasound and that it be a happy, healthy baby but we would pray these things whether a spot was found or not. So without further adieu here is sweet baby #4.

This is

Danielle.Danielle watches our kids almost every Sunday while we go to connection group(and is as we like to call her our much older, adopted Korean daughter:). But beyond that I never have to worry when Danielle is with them. She knows their tendencies and their likes, she knows their schedules and when they are trying to pull one over on her(not that our children would ever do that...) but most importantly she loves them despite all of that stuff and they love her...A LOT! This was the night they had a sleepover party(she even brought balloons and footy pajamas), they play all sorts of games including but certainly not limited to spy kids, connect 4 and many different versions of Angry Birds. Since we love Danielle so much we decided to make her a special valentine. We unwrapped a bunch of Valentine colored crayons.
It was a bit of trial and error to figure out how to do this right but next we shredded the crayons into wax paper(well Daddy did we handed him the crayons:)
After the crayons were shredded we took an iron to the wax paper, now this is where we weren't quite sure if we were doing it correctly. The crayons ran A LOT and actually leaked through the wax paper onto the table and the iron. This was our result.It looked like a very large, very red bunch of mess. Upon further examination of the webiste though we discovered that this was actually what was supposed to happen for the most part so the idea of mixing the colors together was not the greatest since red dominated. Once we figured that out though we created a few other colors of paper as well. When we were done melting crayons the kiddos got to work practicing their heart cutting skills.We also traced each kids handprint and cut those out as part of our project. Here is the finished product. I think it turned out kind of cute despite our wondering what the heck we were doing at first.
Danielle was pretty happy with her Valentine and the kids had fun making it for her. I decided I don't do crafty things like this very often because I don't like to clean up the mess but it was worth it. We wish everyone a very Happy Valentines Day!
PS(no ultrasound today, our doctors office called and their ultrasound tech had a death in the family so we rescheduled for Thursday, still very excited to see our little peanut again!)

We're Alive:)

Sorry I know it's been awhile but honestly we just haven't had anything super blog worthy around here lately, which is good and bad I guess. I don't think I've even taken a picture since Christmas, crazy! The lack of snow hasn't helped either, the boys got a sled for Christmas and have been dying to try it out, alas no snow to use it on. I thought for sure I'd at least have some fun sledding pictures to share but no such luck. The nice weather has been great, although cleaning up mud and muddy shoes and boots seems so odd to me in January and February. Next week I should have some blog worthy material as we have an ultrasound and Ty's preschool class is putting on a few plays on Thursday. I am guessing my camera will come out of hibernation for that:). Hope this mild winter has been treating everyone well!