Happy Easter!!

Yesterday we joined in a neighborhood egg hunt sponsored by our Neighborhood Task Force. LOTS of kids from in and out of the neighborhood came for candy and fun prizes:

We failed at getting a family Easter picture, however we did try to get some pictures of Ansley. It started like this:

But ended like this:

A New Adventure

In case you haven't noticed...diapers are expensive. I would rather not know the total amount of money we spent on diapers for Isaac. I bought some cloth diapers for him once, but they filled with pee in about an hour and I wasn't dedicated enough to figure out a good system.

Well, this time I was pretty determined to master cloth diapering and save same money (and the environment I suppose).  I got some recommendations from friends and decided I liked the gDiapers the best. You can either use cloth inserts or biodegradable ones that you can flush or compost. We are using the cloth inserts because the others are just as expensive as disposable diapers. We lucked out and found them buy one,  get one free on Cyber Monday so we bought everything we would need until Ansley is potty trained. (total cost: $180--what we probably spent in a couple of months on disposables)

The verdict so far...they are AWESOME. If you have ever had a newborn, you know that in disposables they have "blowouts" pretty often. We haven't had a single one in 2 weeks of cloth diapering. The part that makes it super easy: the diaper sprayer. It is attached to the water supply of the toilet and has high water pressure to spray all the gross stuff off without having to swish around in the toilet. Definitely worth every penny!

Catching Up

You'll have to forgive the lack of updates since Ansley has been home. Literally someone in our house has been sick since we brought her home! I will spare you the details, but thankfully it seems we are on our way to a sickness-free household. Let's just pray it stays that way! Here are some pictures from the last month:

Sweet sleeping baby girl:

A visit from Nana:

Passed out in the bed:

Rising hockey star:

Isaac making his sister feel better with his bear/blanket:

Tongue exercises:

"Really mom? Stop taking my picture already"

COLD

It's COLD here. Not sure "Fair" is an accurate description of any weather like this, I don't care how much the sun is shining. I think it may be a PJ day for us!

	Today	Tonight
Fair	Mostly Sunny	Clear
-14°F	6°	1°
Feels Like: -33° Get FREE weather on your desktop	High	Low

Christmas Review

We had another relaxing Christmas this year in Billings with just the three of us. It has been fun to make some of our own family traditions and enjoy seeing Isaac wake up for Christmas morning at home. Each of us gets a new ornament for the tree on Christmas eve that somehow represents that year. We also make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. This year, when Isaac finally realized it was Christmas morning, he exclaimed "cinnamon rolls!!!" It took him about 10 minutes to realize there were presents under the tree, but from that point on he was focused on opening them all. It was also a lot of fun this year because Isaac is old enough to begin understanding the real meaning of Christmas. He helped me make "Happy Birthday Jesus" cupcakes for the kids at church to decorate and enjoyed hearing stories about baby Jesus.

Isaac's new camping ornament

The excitement of Christmas morning:

Presents!!!

(Isaac got to open baby Johnny's present too)

Counting Down...

Only seven more weeks until we have our baby girl!! We have a c-section scheduled for February 17, so unless she decides to come early you can put that date on your calendar...

I am currently in get-things-done-we're-running-out-of-time mode. So far we have traded rooms with Isaac. For now he gets the bigger room all to himself, but come February he'll have to share. The crib is moved in with him and the dresser is on its way. I've organized his closet with lots of plastic storage bins (life just feels better when things are put into clear plastic bins, doesn't it?) and cleared out some toys he no longer plays with. I also cleared out one of the bathroom cabinets to make way for baby stuff (babies require way too much STUFF).

Now for what's still to be done...bring in the cradle from the garage (get mattress/sheets for it), wash all the cloth diapers LOTS of times so they're ready (yes, we are cloth diapering this one. I am sure I will put up a post about our experiences once we get there. But we would still welcome your loving donations of disposable diapers :)  Also need to go through all of Isaac's baby STUFF, sort and put away. What else?..... I am also trying to finish getting our house the way I want it as far as decorating, so I need to buy/put up/put things on some new wall shelves. Make some wall decorations to go above the crib. Put up some pictures in our bedroom. Buy/paint an old window to put pictures in. Go through two boxes of house 'decor' and get them off our front porch. If all of this gets done before she's here I will call it a miracle.

AND we have a new stroller arriving soon in the mail (coming from New York--so at the moment it is delayed by snow). It's the ultimate single convert to a double and also use as a snap-n-go for your car seat wonder. Just don't ask Steve how much of his Christmas money he donated toward the purchase....

And I'll get some christmas pictures up as soon as I get them off the camera!

A visit to Memphis

We just got back from a 12 day circuit of St. Louis, Memphis and Columbia. So I think I'll write a few posts over the next few days highlighting our experiences (and I still need to collect some pictures to add). 

We spent the first weekend of our trip back in Memphis. "Uncle" Larry was gracious enough to share his whole upstairs with us, so we took over with our tornado of suitcases and toys. It was refreshing to catch up with old friends, spend a couple lazy afternoons not doing much, and revisit some of our favorite places (including multiple trips to sonic and chick fil a). We've yet to find suitable mexican food here in Billings so we made sure to enjoy some Los Compadres while we were there.

One of the greatest highlights was visiting our old church for their celebration service. There were lots of new faces, but many old ones to catch up with. As always, the best part was being able to listen to and join in the worship of the many Burundi refugee families. It is such a picture to me of all the nations worshiping together before the Lord, and encouragement that people from such different histories and walks of life can join in worship and service together.

We spent the last evening in Memphis having dinner and hanging out with our Memphis 'family.' It was a great reminder of how the Lord gives us people who will always be like family to us, even if we move all the way across the country.

The Family

These 2 definitely get Entertainers of the Year Award. Isaac woke up every morning and from every nap asking for Doug and Colby. They introduced him to a new game: living room frisbee golf. It was a hit (although I can't say I want to have it in my own living room).