That's a lot of girls!!!!

So, my prediction was right, we are having another girl!  We haven't decided on a name, but we did actually talk about it yesterday.  All of us are very excited - well except for Meredith who has no idea what's going on! ;)  Yesterday I even went through the pile of clothes that had been in Meredith's closet and sorted through what can be kept for a third time, what needs to be donated and what can be sold at the resale shop.  We have only 6 outfits under 12 months!  But, like my mom said, maybe the third girl deserves to wear new clothes! ;)

Brandon and I agreed that we can go a little more girly in our selection of carseat, bounce seat and other stuff because we don't have to worry about needing it neutral for the next child.  I actually picked out a carseat with pink in it!  We will be changing the bedding for the baby and we talked this morning about looking at a purple rather than our go to pink.  What?!  Did you know you could use other colors besides pink when having girls?! ;)

Below are the ultrasound pictures.  Everything looked great and she is measuring right on schedule.  It's always so great (and reassuring) to see pictures and hear the heartbeat when I'm barely feeling her move around now.

I'm assuming this one shows the "girly parts". We'll try to be more discreet with her once she's born! ;)

Her cute little feet!  We have a similar one of Mackenzie like this.  So sweet!

A profile pic with her hand up by her face.

Another profile picture.

Funny story from Mackenzie: While at the doctor's office (the whole family went), the nurse listened for the heartbeat and played it on the microphone thing (sorry I don't know the technical term).  After she had gone, Brandon asked Mackenzie if she knew that the sound was the baby's heartbeat.  She made the sound and said, "yes, I didn't know it was so loud...I can't even hear mine!" Ha!Ha!  We explained to her that it was the microphone that made it loud, but it was so cute to hear her opinion of everything yesterday.  She's already a great big sister, but I know she'll be even a bigger help this time around.

Boy or Girl?

Tomorrow we find out if baby number 3 is a boy or a girl.  I'm going to go ahead and say that I think it's another girl.  This pregnancy is no different than the first two, so I just have a feeling that means its another girl.  But, of course, I could be totally wrong!  We'll find out in less than 24 hours!  I'm so excited to find out either way!  I feel like it's Christmas Eve and I'm waiting to see what Santa brought me! ;)  I think a lot of my excitement is wrapped in the fact that once we know the gender, we can move forward with selling/keeping clothes, registering for other baby stuff and decorating the nursery. 

Not to mention we can finally talk about names!  I think we might have talked about names once since we found out I was pregnant and even then it was only a few minutes and nothing definitive.  I guess we just don't want to waste our time arguing over a name when that might not even be the gender.  I'd say we are much more relaxed this time around even though this 3rd one is going to change our lives just as much as the first one.

So, I have two questions for you guys:

1) what do you think the gender of baby number 3 is?
2) do you think we should stick with another "M" name?
3) what name suggestions do you have?

I'm very torn with question number 2.  If it's a boy I don't think we "have" to keep an "M" name because it's a different gender, however I really like my kiddos being called M&M's so it would be cute to have a boy "M" name.  The thing about the boy M names is that we would never use the typical M names - Michael (Brandon's boss) and Matthew (a fairly close relative).  There are still a few other names that I would use, but Brandon's pretty picky! ;)  I'll be honest, we might not listen to your answers to questions two and three, because let's face it, it's a decision that affects our lives much more than yours, so we have a little more invested in the answer/result.  But don't get me wrong, I still want to know what you think! ;)

Just like always, we'll be letting everyone know tomorrow evening.  Stay tuned!

2013 Dance Recital

Mackenzie had her end of the year dance recital this past Saturday.  This year she performed both ballet and tap routines.  We had the same exact ballet costume as last year, so maybe this Halloween the girls can be matching ballerinas! ;)  We don't pay for the professional pictures, so I just took her picture in front of the brick wall outside the dressing room.  Here's our little ballerina!

I asked her to pose and this is what she chose to do.

Here she is with a friend of hers from dance this past summer.

Her tap costume was super cute and is now officially in our dress up box.  They didn't wear the matching gloves or leggings, but we also have those for dress up too!

Just like last year, Brandon brought flowers to her on stage when she received her trophy.

There were so many other people on stage taking pictures that I think she had a hard time focusing on me.  This is the best picture I have of the two of them.

And finally, the actual videos.  Mackenzie was the furthest from her teacher, so I think she had a hard time seeing what she was supposed to do next.  She also is very careful to stay on her spot on stage! ;)  This routine was a lot harder than last years routine, but I think she did pretty well, considering we missed 4 dance classes in March due to her separation anxiety (or whatever that mess was).

Now for the tap routine!  You might want to skip the first 30 seconds as you will be looking at a black curtain.  Brandon wasn't sure when she was going to be dancing, so he just waited for the curtain to open for each show.

So for whatever I can't get the tap routine to load in the blog, so go here if you want to see it!

As of this afternoon, we are officially finished with dance.  We are taking a break through the end of the year, if not permanently.  We'll re-evaluate all extra curricular activities in January after we've adjusted to preschool and baby number 3.  By then, Meredith might be interested in something, so we'll see.  

Preschool K3 Unit 15

How does time get away from me so quickly. One day I'm posting about unit 14 and about 2 weeks later I'm finally posting the next unit. While looking through the pictures I realized we did do a few more Valentine's Day crafts during school that I never posted about. I'll show you in a little bit. For now, here is the synopsis of our unit 15.

Bible: Elijah (1 Kings 17:1 - 18:46)
Letter: E
Theme:Valentines
Sight Words: at, love, mom, dad

Now for the details...

Bible:
I'm following the general plan of Hubbards Cupboard Bible and Rhyme curriculum.  Actually, I'm only following her bible story timeline and next in line was the story of Elijah.  We did two crafts with his story and I think she enjoyed making both of them.  The first was to make a paper plate raven just like the raven that brought food to Elijah when he was in hiding.

We even cut out little pieces of brown foam for the bread to fill in his "pocket".  She flew it around for awhile and we took turns being Elijah and getting the food.

The second activity was making the altar (misspelled on picture :/ ) as described in 1 Kings 18 when Elijah proved to the Baal worshipers that God has power and Baal does not.  We placed 12 stones (grey foam) with wood (popsicle sticks) on top.  Then covered everything with water including a mote around the altar (construction paper).  When God answered Elijah, the altar caught fire (tissue paper) and burned the sacrifice.

Every time we talked about this story, I kept remembering our church's drama during this past summer's vacation bible school.  It was pretty cute and funny, but probably very true about how the prophets of Baal felt when they couldn't get their sacrifice to light. 

Letter of the Week - E:
Since we were talking about Elijah, why not study the letter "E" too?  There is no shortage of letter of the week activities to do on the internet and based on my pictures, we did quite a bit on the letter E.  We did the animal ABC's activities every day...E is for elephant...

We took turns coloring this sheet from the animal abc's pack.

E is also for eagle...

Another new activity I started using from 1+1+1=1 are these "ABC find it" sheets.  We used them a few different ways.  First we just talked about the different objects and letter E's.  Then we matched the cards (second sheet) to the correct picture.

And finally, I read the description cards and Mackenzie found the matching picture.  She really liked looking at all of the different E's and we even learned a new word...emu! ;)

On top of all of those activities, we did a couple from Confessions of a homeschooler.  Finding the E's in a sentence about an elephant...

Tracing E's...

Using our oversized magnets on the dot marker page.  One of these days I'll get a pack of the same size magnets so that she can do this sheet properly! ;)

Another idea from Confessions of a homeschooler, is to trace the letter E with a push pin.  She really likes to do this, but she got tired after a while, so the spacing was more spread out in the end.

And lastly, we did a couple of sheets out of our ABC book.

Theme:
Since this unit was done the week before Valentine's Day, we actually did a few valentine's activies.  Color by number from 1+1+1=1 Just color valentines' pack.

We also did a little math from 3 dinosaurs...

And finally, a few puzzle and number activities from Over the Big Moon and Mom to 2 Boys...

Sight Words:
We started the You Can Read unit 4 with sight words "at", "love", "mom" and "dad.   We do these two sheets first every time we start a new unit.  That way she can start to recognize the words without having to look at how they are spelled.  I'm not sure why, but she struggles with these connect the dot shapes EVERY time.  I try to explain it very simply every time, but she struggles with drawing a straight line to every dot.  I think she tries to go around the word and it bothers her that she is supposed to draw right through it.

I'm pretty sure we did sight paths for all of the words, but I only got a picture of "at".

Circling the correct word with the correct color marker...

Tracing the words...

Using Magnets and tracing the word again...

She also colored all of the words with the color by number sheets.  These are also from 1+1+1=1, but not in the You Can Read units.

Miscellaneous:
And finally, our miscellany stuff we did.  Tracing the numbers 2 (and 3 - not pictured)...

We also did a couple of sheets out of our money book.  Here she is learning a little more about nickels.

And lastly, I taught her how to play UNO.  She enjoyed it and as you can tell, she even one a couple of times! ;)

That's it for this unit!  I've made my list of photos to edit for unit 16, but I still have to edit them.  Mackenzie has strep throat right now, so we are being forced to stay in today.  Here's hoping that means I'll actually edit those photos today, but I can't guarantee anything.

Toddler Bed

Meredith did not have such a great morning on Mother's Day.  She threw a fit before we left for church and got to spend a few minutes screaming in her crib.  When I went back to get her, I noticed she was trying to hike her leg over the rail, but she put it down when I told her no.  She did fine in bible class, but then luckily she went to sleep all during church because based on those first 5 minutes when she was awake, church would NOT have been good.  Then, on the way home (the last 2 minutes actually) she threw a huge fit because I wouldn't give her any more french fries.  Brandon took care of her and did several rounds of: sit at the table to eat, scream, time in the crib...repeat.  After at least 4 or 5 rounds in her crib, she finally sat down and ate a little bit.  In all of that FUN, Brandon noticed Meredith trying to get out of her crib also.  Knowing we aren't ready for the girls to share a room yet (we don't have all of the furniture), we decided we would convert the crib to the toddler bed.  Since she sleeps with her door closed and doesn't know how to open doors (yet), we don't have to get another gate to keep her in her room. 

I was a little worried about bed time the first night, but she's such a good sleeper that we didn't have any issues.  It did take a minute longer than normal to convince her that it was bed time and she needed to lay down, but I think that was more because she was having to lay down on the opposite end of her bed than she's used to.  I said good night and closed the door and didn't hear a sound out of her until 6:00am, just like normal.  Unfortunately the 6:00am is normal, despite my wishes for at least 30 more minutes of sleep! ;)

It's been great not having to lift 30 pounds up and over the crib rail!  Last night I told her to get in her bed and she just stood there and shook her head no.  When I held her hand and nudged her a little to her bed, she got right in.  She hesitated again to lay down, but luckily I was able to just say that it was time for bed and then she just laid right down.  We have definitely been blessed with great sleepers!  Here's hoping number 3 is just as easy!

The picture is blurry, but this was her first time in the toddler bed.

We put the front rail in the hall closet knowing we'll be putting it right back on the crib in just 4 short months! ;)

Vacation

We went on a family vacation last week for a couple of days.  We went to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine and had a lot of fun.  I have about a dozen photos total and none of them include the water park which is what Mackenzie was so excited about.  If you are not familiar with Great Wolf Lodge, it's a hotel with an indoor water park.  They have restaurants, an arcade, food stalls and lots of different kid things to do inside.  They also have story time every night on the main level, which we went to both nights.

We drove up on a Thursday morning and Mackenzie was so excited that even though we told her we wouldn't be there until after lunch, she asked the dreaded question, "Are we there yet?" 4 times with in the first hour.  She didn't ask it nearly that many times afterward, but it was asked quite a few more times before the trip was over.  She had been counting down the "sleeps" until our vacation, so she was just super excited to go and talked about it all the time.  Having to sit in a car seat for 4 hours was probably just more torture for her! ;)  Knowing we were going to an indoor water park/hotel where everything is inside, I didn't pay attention to the weather, so we were the silly ones who stopped to eat in Waco wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops in 51 degree weather after the cold front blew through! ;)  We got there about 1:15 and looked around the hotel for a little bit before getting straight into our swim suits and checking out the water park.

We spent about 2 hours at the water park each day we were there and the girls loved it.  I think when they are older we would probably stay longer in the water, but 2 hours was about the max Meredith could handle before it was nap time or meal time! ;)  Brandon took Mackenzie on one of the bigger water slides with the intention of riding down together, but when they got up there they said they couldn't do that, so Brandon said he kind of gently pushed Mackenzie down the slide.  She did not cry afterward, but she also didn't do the slide again! ;)  At least she tried it, which is more than I expected!  I unfortunately didn't get to see it because Meredith was sleeping in my arms for over an hour in the middle of the water park.  The trip had exhausted her and apparently the noise of the water and people all around didn't matter.  I did however get to see Mackenzie do the smaller slides in the 0-5 year age range.  She loved those!  She went down those several times and didn't require us to constantly watch her or be within 3 feet of her, so we are making progress!

In general the girls loved being in a hotel and going somewhere different than our usual places.  It was nice to have family fun with just the four of us and I'm proud to say I didn't think about a single thing that I had to do at home.  I truly went on vacation!  It was great!

Below are the few photos we have of our vacation.  I was not going to be the stupid girl that dropped her camera or phone in the water just to take a picture of my daughter going down the slide.  The camera only came out in the hotel part and even then, it was very little.  Oh well!

During story time, one of the 3 park characters would come out and help read the story.  Aftewards they stay for pictures.  The first night, Mackenzie didn't want to take any pictures with "Violet", but by the second night she had decided it would be fun to take a picture with Violet.  Then story time started and it was a different character, so she decided against it.  It's always a no go when things aren't exactly as she planned.  Here's Oliver from the second night.

About half the kids were in pajamas, including the girls.  Story time starts at 8 and since they go to bed at 8, they were bathed, dressed and ready for story time so that they could go straight back up to the room and go to sleep about 45 minutes late.  This is the girls about to do the "Great Wolf Howl".

Mackenzie really liked hearing the stories.  (I think we need to try library hour again.  Although, we didn't quit because she wasn't into it, but because so many other kids there were not!)

The second night we did stay up long enough to eat a pudding cup and watch a little bit of a movie on the ipad.

Mackenzie is already planning our future vacations and they are all based on her age.  As of today, I believe we are supposed to go somewhere with a ferris wheel when she is 5, Sea World when she is  and Disney World when she is 7.  Brandon said since she remembers EVERY THING, we shouldn't give her any confirmed dates/ages, so I told her all of those were probable, but we'll see about each one as the time gets closer. 

My Spare Time - 365...again!

After a couple of months of being in a photography funk, I've decided to start keeping up with my 365 blog again.  After about 7 or 8 months of not consistently picking up my camera every day, I'm going to make an effort to take at least ONE picture of our daily activities.  As has been the case for the last 3 days, one picture leads to about 20 and I've already gotten some great photos of the girls!  There's even a couple of self portraits of me and the girls.  That's rare!  I miss having so many pictures of the girls and I know adding a third child is only going to consume more time.  I'm hoping if I get back in the routine of taking daily pictures, then come September/October, I'll keep taking the pictures of the girls and baby number 3.  I'd hate to have baby number 3 have very little photos as a baby just because I didn't pick up my camera that sits out all day every day!

Anyways, just wanted to let you know that you can actually look at NEW pictures on my 365 blog (link on the right side bar of this blog)!  I'll try to keep up with them daily or weekly - basically whenever I get a chance to edit and post them! :)  Enjoy!