Busy

Okay - everyone is busy so this really is a lame excuse but my poor blog has been seriously neglected over the last month. We have been busy playing with trips to Kansas City, Pella, Independence, and Nauvoo. In the middle of May we had Grandma and Grandpa Folsom pay us a visit to meet Lydia and to also see Dave graduate with his doctorate from The University of Iowa! We have had lots of play dates at the park, children's museum and friends houses. We had Lauren's graduation from Pre-school and her dance recital is today. And in between everything we have been getting quotes from moving companies, showing our condo - still trying to get it sold, cleaning constantly so it is ready to be shown, and looking for a place to live in Pennsylvania! I will be glad when the last one is done! It takes up way to much time to constantly be looking at the listings, emailing people, making phone calls, setting up times to see properties. And tomorrow Dave and I are leaving our sweet girls with some dear friends and we are finally off to PA to pick a place to live! So once we are back we will finally put some pict. of all our big events we have had the last month.

Here are a couple of cute pict of the girls though!

Lydia and Lauren adore each other and love to play together.

Look - I have two teeth now!

Lauren at her dress rehearsal for dance yesterday!

(From L: Tori, Megan, Claire, Anne, Lauren)

Where's Liddy?

Can you find the cute little baby among all the toys?

We're moving to Bethlehem!

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania that is. Dave accepted an offer as a tenure track professor at Lehigh University yesterday! Even though this job moves us even farther away from our families we feel really good about it and are very excited to have a job! Lehigh is a small, private University with a top ranked Business Program and Dave will have some really good students to teach and work with. We have been online trying to learn more about the area and have talked to some church members who live there. We are excited for this new adventure. We want to take advantage of being so close to so many fun places and explore while we are there. We will be close to NYC, Washington DC, and Philadelphia and I am really excited to explore those cities and visit all the amazing historical areas that the East has to offer. So if any of you find yourselves on the East Coast - give us a call! We want visitors!

Six Months

Look who's six months old already!

At Six Months Lydia can:

Roll Over

Sit up all on her own

Sleep through the night

Eat Baby Food

Learning to drink from a sippy cup

Jabber and Jabber

Loves to play in her Exersaucer and with Blocks

Loves to put everything in her mouth

Has many nicknames: Liddy, Lid, Itty Bitty Liddy, Itty Bitty, Bitty Boo

Still has no teeth (this is a weird one for me since Lauren had teeth at 4 1/2 mos.)

Still won't take a bottle

Smiles and Laughes almost constantly

Insights of a 5 year old

My friend Annie just had a baby last week and says she is home, bored and wants new blogs to read so Annie - this is for you! (And anyone else who stops by to read my blog)

The other day Lauren and I were driving in the car and talking about how we are trying to sell our condo. She was talking about wanting to get some new toys/books and I told her we don't want more right now, we want less because we are trying to keep our house clutter free so it looks bigger/more spacious and so someone will want to buy it. She thought about what I said for a second and then said, "Oh, you are trying to make our house look fatter!" I laughed and said, "what"? And she said, "fatter. You know Mom - make it bigger". I guess you can't argue with that logic, fatter is bigger!

We were at the mall earlier this week and we ran into Claire's to look for some hair bows for Lauren and Liddy. While I was browsing, Lauren found a purse with a kitten on it and told me she really wanted it. Since it was her birthday I looked at the price but I just didn't want to spend $8 on the dumb purse so I told her no, not today ( I am not a big cat fan either but she really likes them). They had a cute purse in the shape of a cupcake (definitely more to my liking) and I said I thought it was cute so she said, is that purse on sale Mom? I looked and said no, it is $8 too. Exasperated she puts her hands on her hips and says, "Is anything in this store on sale"! Can you tell we usually shop clearance around here?!? Don't feel too bad for her though. Her Grandma sent her some money for her B-day and she knows exactly what she wants to get with it - a purse with a kitten on it from Claire's!

Lauren is 5!!!

Wow – I can’t believe my first born is a big 5 year old today! On Saturday we had her birthday party at the Iowa Gymnest! She had a GREAT time! She was able to invite 15 friends and they got to play on all the gym equipment for an hour and then for the last 30 min. we went back into our fun room (which had a big tree house/slide in it) and we ate cupcakes and ice cream and opened presents. I am so glad that so many friends were able to come and that everyone had a fun time running, jumping on the tramps, jumping into the “pit of cheese” and just playing together.

5 Things we LOVE about Lauren

1. Lauren has the tenderest heart – she never wants anyone to feel left out.

2. Lauren is the best big sister! She had to wait a long time for her little sister to join our family and she loves Liddy very much. She cannot be in a room and not be touching or kissing on Lydia.

3. Lauren loves to be outside! She loves to go on walks and find special treasures. She loves to throw rocks and sticks in the water and watch the ducks. And she loves to go camping and sit around the campfire and eat Smores and sleep in the tent.

4. Lauren loves to cuddle and watch movies! I love that she likes to cuddle now because she was not a cuddly baby. (I think she mostly likes the popcorn and orange julius we make when we watch movies together!)

5. She is a very social girl! She LOVES to play with her friends and she is so good at including everyone and having fun with anyone!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Lauren! We love you!

Going down the slide with a bunch of the girls

Lined up and ready to go into the gym to play

Learning the rules before taking off to play

The "pit of cheese" as the kids liked to call it!

This was one of the favorite places to play!

It also had a fun wall you climb. The kids liked to climb it and fall back into the pit.

Lauren ready to jump into the "pit of cheese"!

There she goes! (The funny thing here is that she won't jump 5 inches into the water but here she jumped 5 feet into a pit of styrofoam cubes!)

Anna, Lauren, and Claire playing at the gym

There were also some fun tramps to jump on!

This was another fun tramp the kids all took turns jumping on.

(the kids could also climb up on the pommel horse behind Keira and jump into the foam pit)

Back in our party room ready for cupcakes and ice cream!

Blowing out the candle on her cupcake!

Opening her presents from her friends!

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We have had a fun St. Patrick's Day out here in Iowa! We started our morning off right with a "Green" breakfast! Lauren was so excited to help me make our green breakfast this morning and she loved putting the food coloring in the eggs and milk and waffle batter!

After our yummy breakfast we got ready to go to a St. Patrick's Day party at a friends house. It was a lot of fun and there was LOTS of yummy food which was the best part! We all got to bring something to eat and I couldn't figure out what to take so we looked up some Irish recipe's online and decided to try two new ones. We made a corn beef/cabbage/potato pizza which actually turned out a lot better than I thought it would. I even saved Dave some and he tried it tonight and pronounced it edible and said I could make it again if I wanted! And we also made Irish Potato Candy (made with cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, coconut, and rolled in cinnamon). While at the party the kids had fun playing outside in the beautiful weather (warmest St. Patrick's Day in the last 10 years)!! And all the kids got to paint a Blarney Stone and got a fun goody bag to bring home! Thanks so much for hosting the fun party Rivka! We had fun eating/playing with so many friends!

Then tonight Lauren thought we should have a green dinner to end the day. It was already 5:30 and I hadn't even thought about dinner and Dave had just called to say he was on his way home and starving - oops! I asked Lauren what she wanted and she said Macaroni and Cheese and Hot Dogs! I agreed since it was quick but I knew Dave would not be thrilled with this choice of dinner. Lauren again wanted to dye the food green so we had green Mac and Cheese and green milk and Lauren even had me dye her mustard green! We ended the day by walking around the pond at a favorite park. We have loved our beautiful weather this week and we really hope it hangs around a bit longer!

Wacky Wednesday

Did you ever have Wacky Wednesday at your school while growing up? A couple of weeks ago was Lauren's first ever Wacky Wednesday and she loved it! She wore all her clothes backwards to school and we did her hair crazy (two crazy ponies and two braids with crazy ribbons). Here is what she looked like on her way to school that morning.

Lydia has started eating some new foods and she really likes her carrots! So far we have only introduced some veggies into her diet but she likes them all and is getting better at eating! We usually aren't so messy anymore.

A Giveaway Tag!!

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!

2- What I create will be just for you.

3- It will be done this year.

4- You have no clue what it's going to be.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this offer on your blog and make something fantastic for the first 5 people who respond to you! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

So get commenting!

Solids already?

Look who's eating baby cereal and likes it?!?!