New School Pictures

Don't I have beautiful kids?!! This is the second set of school pics that they had taken. You might remember I mentioned them a while ago. We got the proofs back today and, of course, they're so cute, we'll have to order some. :-) I think they do this because our school consists of K-8th grade and the 8th graders get graduation pictures taken, so they just open it up to the whole school. We could even schedule family pictures to be taken then as well. We've just never done that. Probably should've had them take Livie's at least, but Pete was in Toronto that week and I didn't want to mess with it. But, I was so excited to see how well they turned out. Such cuties!!!!!

BALDIE!

BEFORE

AFTER

(and by "after" I mean, after Pete went crazy with the clippers!!)

Noah's needed a hair cut for a good week or two and since Pete cuts Noah's hair, I had him do it this evening. I should have been scared when I heard Noah say he wanted to be bald and Pete laughed in agreement! But, I didn't take him too seriously. When I heard them calling to me from the bathroom, telling me to close my eyes, I started getting nervous. Surely he wouldn't have cut it THAT short, right? But, as I walked in, I saw Noah in the bathtub, holding a giant handful of hair and both he and Pete were sitting there with big giant smiles on their faces. Those smiles, however, could not eclipse the bald head of my boy! ;-) He definitely got what he wanted! He's sporting the army cut right now, which should make his Uncle Andy very proud. :-) I think he's even more excited to know that I won't be doing anything to his hair in the mornings. Pete told him since it's so short, he can just wake up and go. Just more time he can spend watching cartoons in the morning, instead of having to stand in the bathroom while I brush it and wet it down and stuff. I've told him many times that he should appreciate the hair he has, because if my gene pool is any indication, he won't have that hair much past his 20s - or if he's like his Uncle Micah - much past his graduation from high school. ;-) But, he's a boy and he wanted it as short as humanly possible, so he got his wish. And, how can I be upset when I see what a cute little bald guy he is?! Plus, that smile he's got on his face makes it all worth it.

Oh The Things They Say...

On the way home from church today, we hear Noah say "You're a poopy butt", which is something don't like them to say, obviously. So, Pete said, "Excuse me?! What was that?!!". Noah very sheepishly said, "I said 'poopy butt'". Pete asked him if he's allowed to say that and Noah said very sincerely, "But, I whispered it, so you wouldn't hear." We both gave each other a look. Obviously he's learned that having a nearly deaf mom makes it easier for him to get away with whispering. Pete then said, "Yes, but you're not supposed to say it even if you whisper." "Yeah, but Jesus loves me and forgives me anyway, so it's ok." He has an excuse for it all, doesn't he? ;-)

Flashback Friday

Today is another installment of "Flashback Friday". Brought to you by the lovely folks in the Trolinger household. :-) This picture was taken the first week Noah was home from the hospital - February 2003. Look at that sweet scrunchy face!!!! Precious!!!!!! Madie wasn't quite 2 there and still had short hair with just a hint of curl in the back. Boy was that a happy time. I don't think there's anything quite as wonderful as those first days home from the hospital with a new baby. Just relished every single minute, all three times I got to do that. When I left the hospital that last day after I had Livie, I remember getting all choked up saying goodbye to the fantastic nurses there and then crying most of the way home. I knew it was going to be the last time I ever experienced that. Experienced the joy of having a new baby. Experienced that first time we walk in the door with our new family member. Experienced someone else making meals for me and bringing them to my bed and then taking the dishes away. ;-) hehe Seriously, there's something so magical about having a newborn. I look at this picture and the memories just come to mind of those perfect days at home with my new baby boy. How sweet!

Noah's Field Trip..... A Week Late

I am FINALLY getting around to blogging about Noah's field trip last Friday. Pete went with him and he had a terrific time! Surprisingly Pete took lots of pictures - AND didn't grumble about it! Shocking, I know. He's not usually one to volunteer to take the camera, let alone actually get some shots in. Maybe all my blogging is finally rubbing off on him. ;-) Now, since I wasn't there, I'm going to have Noah give me the info on each of these pictures. So, all the captions below are courtesy of my sweet boy. Here it goes...




Me pushing my hands into those things. Um, well, you just push your hands in there and whoever gets the most wins.

That's the big checker board. What game is that called anyway? (chess) Oh, chess. I like chess. 'Cause my favorite is that one (points..), except it's black.

Stairs, I couldn't build them. I needed the numbers and I didn't have all of them. I didn't have 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

That's the same thing as the first one. The pushing thing.

That's the mirrors that make you look like weirdos. You look in there and it makes you look like a weirdo. Yep, pretty fun, but not my favorite part.

You put something in the tube and the wind in there blows it all around and it comes out another tube. There were little like cloth pieces and the other balls you could put in there and the wind in the tube goes woosh, woosh, woosh and it comes out in two places. 'Cause there's 2 places. One's in this side and one was in this side (points in different directions). They were all up high. I had the fuzzy yellow ball.

That's when you put the balls in there and the wind pushes it up and takes it somewhere. Um, I think it takes it to a little bucket, but it doesn't have any openings, but the balls have to be in there. But, it's made of glass so you can peek in there. That's what I think it is.

Me holding the watermelon and the watermelon is my favorite part. (Why?! It's just a watermelon?) Because it's my favorite. I just like it!!!!!!!!!!!

Me holding the watermelon in front of the robot. Well, it's half cool and the other half is not cool. The body is NOT cool because it's made from a trash can. The arms and legs are.... I have no idea what the arms and legs are.

That's the water. And, that's all.

That's the skeleton and it's on a bike. If you sit on it, then the skeleton will go. But, if the skeleton is going and you're not going, the pedals will go by itself. But, if you put your feet on it hard enough, the pedals will stop. And, the skeleton will stop.

That is the train tracks and my favorite car is the school bus actually.

That is by the wind things. If you push on the red button, the wind blows the ball up. See that orange ball??

So, Noah obviously had a really great time at his field trip. It was a special day for him and for Pete. Pete had been gone the whole week prior when he was in Toronto and Noah missed him tons, so it was good for them to spend that day together. :-)

Madie's Birthday Party

I am so far behind this week!!! This weekend was a crazy, busy one. Madie turned 8 on Sunday and we had her birthday party on Sat night. I don't think we slowed down one bit the entire time. That's why I'm just now getting to posting. Heck I still haven't posted about Noah's field trip last Friday. Guess I'll try and do that tomorrow. Looks like I'm working backwards. ;-) Anyway, we had a really terrific time on Sat.! I wasn't going to throw Madie a party this year, but apparently she thought she was having one, because she told all her friends to come! Ornery! So, I went ahead and booked the IVGA (Gymnastics Academy) for her party. It's so easy with them. It's a 2 hr party and they have an instructor who takes them through different activities for the first hour, then there's a half hour party where they provide all the decorations and napkins and plates and food and drinks, then a half hour at the end of free play. All I had to do was show up with the cake and the money. :-) Pretty sweet deal!



Madie got to have 9 friends come, plus herself and she had 8 that showed up. Livie was there, but was in a mood, so you won't see her in many of the pictures. They did their stretches and a musical star game on the bouncy floor first. You can see, they did NOT want to stop bouncing!!!

Then they had an obsticle course that they got to run and jump and climb through.

Then they went to the tumble track. She was making them jump as far as they could over the jumpropes to see who was the best jumper. :-)

The next game was a "Madie says" game. She sat on the beam with her instructor Miss Mandy and the rest of the kids stood on the beams in front of her and she made them do different things like stand on one foot or jump or something. If someone fell off, they had to go sit by her.

Here they are waiting their turns to jump on the giant trampoline. This was the last station before heading in for pizza and presents!!

Pizza Hut is right across the street, so they brought in the pizzas for us and the kids ate that up. Well, all the kids except Noah. He doesn't like pizza. Can you believe that?!!!!

Then we brought out the ice cream cake, asked for especially by Madie. Several of the kids said they didn't want cake - that is, until they heard it was made out of ice cream! Then all the hands went up. ;-)

Here she is blowing out her candles.

She got some really cute presents from her friends. This was a High School Musical outfit that she's opening. She was thrilled!

This is the "silly face" picture. Aunt Jill has made this a favorite in our house. :-) Livie was too busy eating her cake to want to take part in the picture, but her friends are as follows...

BACK ROW - Tessa, Emma, and Michael FRONT ROW - Noah, Madie, Jade, Jack, and Andrew

Tessa, Emma, and Jack are brothers and sisters of some of our best friends here in Ottawa. Their little brother Charlie was too little to come. He just turned 1. Then Jade is our neighbor friend. And, Michael and Andrew are brothers and are best friends of the kids. We've just recently gotten to know their parents. Really great people. :-)

After that picture, it was free time! They blew up the inflatable slide, which the kids slid down a good 1000 times before that half hour was over.

Madie's jumpin' high on the trampoline!!

Her best friend Michael was just getting over being sick (still is recovering) and was WIPED OUT by the time the party was over. You could tell he wanted to be running around and playing, but his poor body was so exhausted, that he just had to keep resting to make it through. Such a sweetie. I kept going up to him and asking if he was ok and he'd say "Yeah, just need to rest a bit, so I can do more stuff". I just love him. :-)

Madie's trying out the bars. She and Emma and Tessa had lots of fun on this one.

This was actually taken on the day of her birthday. We gave her a Star Wars Clone Wars book on Sat during the party, so she thought she had gotten all her presents, but we surprised her with a new bike on Sunday. She was soooo excited!!! So, I do believe she had a terrific birthday. She raved on and on about how fun her party was. All the kids were so disappointed when it was over. They thought the 2 hrs went by too quickly. Pete and I thought it had gone on for 20 hours! So, we were ready to call it a night. Boy, are we getting old! But, my sweetie is 8, had 8 friends, and 8 presents, and was happier than ever. So, I guess we can count it a success! Oh, and to make that night complete, when we got home and had the kids get ready for bed, we discovered Noah was covered all over his torso in a rash. A rash that was VERY similar to the one Madie had when she had strep last year. So, Sunday, on her birthday, Pete had to take him to the emergency room and whaddaya know?! He has strep. Scarlet Fever to be precise. So, again, another reason why the past few days have been a bit crazier than normal.

Happy Birthday Madeleine Sue!!

Today is my Madie Moo's birthday. My oldest is 8 years old now!!! It's so hard for me to believe that. It literally feels like it was only a few months ago that she was born. The first of our brood. I had been induced on a Tues morning at 8am and had contractions most of the day, but nothing too major. By 11 or 12 that night they had stopped. So, the next morning at 8am, they broke my bag of water. I continued to have contractions, these getting more uncomfortable but when they checked me at 6 pm that night, I was only at a 2. Great. Two days, 2 cm. So, they gave me the epidural and some pitocen on top of that. I was living the high life for about 2 hours, then started feeling the contractions come back. After another hour, the epidural had worn off and I was in MAJOR pain. Then I started getting a fever and just becoming a mess, so they decided at midnight to do a c-section. I was so glad it was finally going to be over. We were going on day 3 and I wanted to meet my baby. We had no idea if it was a boy or a girl, so we were excited to find out. Well, when they wheeled me back, they tried to give me more epidural medicine to numb me, but I could feel them cutting, so they wisked Pete out of the room and put me to sleep. The first memory I have when I woke up was a nurse saying, "You had a girl" :-) I was happy, but still so groggy and out of it, that I just kind of smiled and went back to sleep. They woke me up to show her to me through the nursery window as they rolled me to my room. She was screaming like a crazy person, so I was like, "oh." and fell back asleep again. It wasn't until around 8 that morning I woke up for real and was anxious to meet my little girl. Pete rolled her in and I couldn't believe how much she looked like me! It was like that moment I finally realized my dream and that dream was to be a mom.



This is one of the first picture I have with her. You can tell that because of my "writhing hair". That's what I call that mess of knots and tangles in the back of my head. I was rolling around and groaning those last few hours and my hair showed my battle wounds!!

Madie was such a good baby. So sweet and cuddly. I didn't want her out of my sight. Something clicked in me when she was born and I didn't want to be apart from her. Not even for a moment. I was fiercely protective of her. I looked forward to when she'd wake up in the middle of the night to nurse, just so I could spend more time with her. And, we'd spend hours in her room trying on outfits. I loved it!

After she turned one, we moved into our house here. She had it all to herself and she really loved it. It was shortly after she turned one that we got pregnant with Noah.

She didn't really know what to make of being a big sister at first, but as he grew, they became best buddies. She loved to play with him and was always a good sister to him. Noah would follow her around and do everything she did and she loved being his little teacher.

Madie has always been my girly-girl. She went through a phase from about 2-4 where she would dress up every single day. Most days she was Blue from Blues Clues and other days she was a princess. She loved putting on necklaces and crowns and wearing pretty dresses. Look at all those beautiful curls!!

When she was 4, she entered preschool. I was pregnant by this time with Olivia and since she was older, she was sooooo excited to have the baby come!

This is Madie on her first day of kindergarten. She was a little nervous to go to a big school, because she's always been a bit on the shy and quiet side. But, she enjoyed going and was such a good reader, she was going to reading classes with the 1st graders that year.

Madie got her glasses in 1st grade, when we noticed she couldn't read the print on the tv. And, she got her ears pierced when she turned 7 last year. She's grown up so much!! Still the littlest in her class, just a little 40 lb thing, but that doesn't stop her. She's such a cute girl, with a fun personality. She loves to laugh and will laugh like all of us Drexlers - long and loud! She's got a best friend now for the first time and they are inseparable. And, she's still a very smart little girl. She now reads at a 5th grade level and is in advanced math. I continued to be impressed by her selflessness and her kind spirit. Yes, she can be like any other girl - full of drama and mouthliness - but, most of the time, she's laughing and having fun and teaching her brother and sister something new. Can't believe how quickly these 8 yrs have passed. She changed my life when she was born. Changed it in ways I can't begin to explain. When she entered our lives, it's like my life finally began. I have loved her deeply since that first moment in the hospital when I held her and looked into a face that looked just like my own. Happy Birthday Madie!! We love you soooo much!!!

Flashback Friday

1952

2004

For our Flashback Friday entry today, I thought I'd post the picture above from 2004. It reminded me of a picture I posted on "Conversations with My Father" just last week. As you can tell, not much has changed in those 50+ yrs. ;-) Kids still won't stand or sit still for pictures! I remember sitting there, wanting to take a picture of the kids together. If you look through the shots I took, there was a progression. First they sat near each other, looking in different directions. Then they sat closer together and looked at me without smiles. Then they started to lean over. Then I took the picture above where Noah starts leaving and Madie starts cracking up. Eventually about 5 more pictures in, I got them hugging and smiling and looking at the camera. What was that, about 9 shots? It was a chore and still can be even though my kids are older now. I just thought it was funny to compare what my grandma went through with her kids and what I go through now. Decades can pass, but kids are always too busy to sit for a photograph. ;-)

I'm a Blonde!

OK - maybe not BLONDE, but much lighter than my normal dark hair. :-) I decided that my hair was in definite need of an overhaul. I needed to get rid of the enormous amounts of grey that were accumulating at the top of my head, so I headed to the salon today and took care of it.



This picture was actually taken a couple months ago, but I didn't take a "Before" shot of the whole hair look. It looked like this though.

This is the one I took this morning. Here you can see the massive amounts of white hair that were growing in my 34 yr old head. And, when you're 4'10", that's all people see when they look at me! Ugh!!!!

And, now here's the after. I didn't tell her what color I wanted. Just let her go with it and I really love it!! It's got chunky highlights in a honey-brown/blonde color and then she did a full color over the rest of my hair in a medium/dark brown. And, she straightened it. It's so soft and is laying so nicely. I want her to do my hair every day!!! I think I look a lot younger than I did before.

Here you can see the difference on what it looks like now. I think it's fun and funky. When I got home, Pete was in the bedroom on the computer and I said "So, do you want to see your blonde wife now?" He didn't believe me, but I rounded the corner, his eyes popped and he was like, "Wow! That's really different!!". Livie came in then and was giggling nervously, "I see your blonde hair mommmy." She was giving me these funny looks like I was an alien or something. It's different, but not THAT different, I didn't think. Madie said "Wow Mommy. Your hair is like blonde or something". But, Noah cracked me up the most. When I asked him if he noticed anything different about me, he thought and looked at me and said "Do you have a new coat?" (typical man!) - "No." "OH! Your hair is different!" I asked him if he liked it and he said, "Yeah, because you looked like a little old lady with your grey hair and now you look like Goldilocks" hahahaha I laughed so hard!!! Such funny kids.

Happy St Patrick's Day

Happy St Patty's Day everyone! Got the kids all dressed in their green clothes and sent them off to school. Livie wasn't dressed in her green yet, so I told her I'd take her picture later and she got mad that she could take it with Madie and Noah, so she never let me take it. :-) Ornery!!! Noah said leprechauns raided his school room today and messed everything up. I talked to his teacher and she said the kids got pretty crazy after they saw the mess that he made. She said it took a while to get everyone calmed down again. When I went in today to do my volunteering stuff after lunch, I could tell they were still excited about it, because about 10 kids came up to me "Noah's mom! Did you hear that leprechauns came and messed up our room?!!" Guess those little leprechauns even sprinkled glitter everywhere. Really cute. :-)

Madie said they did a lesson using Lucky Charms and afterwards, got to eat them. I'm sure when she said they ate them, she was only referring to the marshmallows, because anytime they eat that here, all that's left are the "lucky" parts, not the "charm" parts. ;-) Sounds like they all had a great time. Now they're outside enjoying our beautiful, wonderful day. Best St. Patty's Day we've had in a long time!!!

Happy Birthday Surprise

Today is our Pastor's 50th birthday. At church yesterday, they had the sanctuary decked out with balloons and we all sang "Happy Birthday" when he walked in. It was really fun. Well, as a surprise, a few of us decided to go to his house last night and sing "Happy Birthday" to him and bring him a few "gifts". ;-)



This is a picture of some of us who were gathering down the street, so we could all walk down together. Someone donated 10 large bags of adult diapers to give to him. You can see Noah struggling a bit to carry one. Those were the "gifts" I mentioned above.

Livie had fallen asleep on the way to his house, so she was a little sleepy, but she still wanted to carry John's card. We got him a REAL gift too.

We made this giant sign for him during Sunday School yesterday morning in secret. All the kids in ZONE (our SS) signed it, as well as a couple of the 6th graders. They did such a good job decorating it with pictures and stuff. It was really cute! John, our pastor, was born on March 16. Get it? John 3:16. Someone told me that yesterday and I just thought that was so fun!

Here we are walking down to his house. It looks darker than it actually was though. My flash made it seem like it was nighttime. The sun was setting, but it wasn't THAT dark. And, it was a pretty beautiful day, though it was starting to get cold about that time.

Noah ran up and rang the doorbell and here's John coming out to see all of us singing to him.

And, this is everyone loading him up with the diapers. ;-) He said to us, "What in the heck am I supposed to do with these things?!!" hahaha

Here we are all talking to him and giving him a hard time for being such an old man now. ;-) That's his wife Debbie in the doorway. They are such super nice people. It was a pretty fun little thing to do for him. He got a kick out of it and so did we. Happy 50th, John!!!