We are home but soon will be gone

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a great time in Indiana. We left Wednesday morning. Thursday Aunt Cindy and Uncle Rick cooked a wonderful meal. On Friday they took the older three kids to the circus. The kids thought it was great and got to ride an elephant, except for Kyra, she didn't want to. They saw horses, bears, tigers, lions, acrobats, clowns, etc. While the kids were at the circus, Mark, Brandon, Grandma, Kyleigh, and I met Tyler for lunch. Saturday we checked out the Evansville zoo, very nice zoo and we got to see the handy work of Sprinklers Plus (aka Uncle Rick and cousin Derrick).

We got home on Sunday in time to watch the Vikings beat the Bears! Today I took Kyra and Kyleigh to the doctor. Kyra has a UTI. Kyleigh has what might be the beginning of an ear infection. She tipped the scales at 19# 15 oz (10%) (she would have weighed 20 lbs. had she not pooped right before we weighed her). She is also 30 1/4 in. long (45%). We will be keeping a close eye on her since she isn't saying very many words but as the doctor explained he tends to see extremes in 3rd and 4th kids. They either talk ALOT (Kyra) or the don't need to talk because everyone knows what they want (Kyleigh). She gets her point across by grunting so why should she learn to talk.

Tomorrow Mason has Pajama day at school. I will be helping out. Thursday afternoon we are leaving for Minnesota. We will be staying at the farm Thursday night, picking up a niece and heading to Hawley for Brady and Jodi's wedding. We will head back to the farm on Sunday and back to Illinois on Monday.

Have a great week. Sorry no pictures but I forgot to take my camera to Indiana. I'm waiting for Aunt Cindy to send some but we won't have any of the circus.

Valynn is 7

So it has been a couple of weeks since I've posted, we've been busy. I'll start with the most important thing. Valynn turned 7 today. Wow, where does the time go? She is getting so big and too smart. If Mark or I are reading a book and we make a mistake, she corrects us, she brought home her last list of sight words that she needs to know by the end of first grade, and is curious about how everything works. Unfortunately we weren't here to help her celebrate her birthday. We are fortunate to have such good friends that brought her a cake and help her ring in her 7th year. She got a horse blanket from Grandma and Grandpa Larson (great job grandma!). Mark, Kyleigh and I were in North Dakota to celebrate my "other Mark's" wedding. We had a great time. Friday night we drove to Eden Prairie and spent the night with my college roommate Christy and her husband. Another college roommate stopped by to visit with her two kids. We had a great visit with them and wish we could get together more often. On Friday we drove to Fargo (it was cold and rainy, and in IL, sunny and 80). We had a great time at the wedding catching up with old friends from college. A friend of mine was there with her little boy Emery who is one day younger than Kyleigh. We joked that they had their first wedding dates. Of course we couldn't resist taking a few pictures. I also had Kyleigh get her picture taken with the bride and groom. Kyleigh shares a birthday with Mark. We had a long drive back today but were very happy to have to turn the air conditioner on when we got home, much better than the 3 inches of snow in Lignite. The three older kids stayed with some friends of ours over the weekend. They had a blast playing with their three kids but were happy to get home. We brought back "Chippers" (chocolate covered potato chips) as thank you gifts for everyone who helped us out by watching the kids.


Valynn marched in the homecoming parade a couple of weeks ago with girl scouts. As you can imagine Mason and Kyra had fun getting the candy that was thrown. We're doing good, Kyleigh slept 6 and 7 hours stretches at night this weekend so we're hoping this trend continues. She was a very good traveler sleeping most of the way. Valynn and Mason have tomorrow off so we're going to be able to sleep in and take it easy except for gymnastics, get Halloween costumes, finish the head room mom list and buy groceries for Valynn's birthday supper. We should have a pretty easy week, Valynn's birthday party is on Saturday and Mark is planning on going to the school to help install the new playground equiment. We finally got another contractor lined up to do the garage and it sounds like he plans on pouring the concrete this week, yeah (keep your fingers crossed)!!! Mark finished his online class last week so he has a couple of weeks off. He won't know his grade until later since the class is graded on a curve.

Friday morning was hectic here because the school bus left without Valynn. It showed up 5 minutes early. The neighbor kids ran out to the bus when they saw it pull up but because we can't see the bus stop we didn't know it was early and Valynn saw it pulling away. I called the bus supervisor to discuss the situation and then the bus driver called me to apologize and tried to tell me she was on time. She didn't have an answer when I asked her if she realized that there were no kids waiting at the bus stop so she must have been early. If it happens again the bus will have to start driving down the street to pick up Valynn.

Thursday I took Kyleigh to the doctor. She hadn't slept well for two nights and has had a cold so we suspected an ear infection. The doctor was positive she had one as well based upon what I told her. As it turns out Kyleigh didn't have an ear infection, which was good, and the doctor thinks she might have had a sinus headache from being congested or just had difficulty breathing. Our little peanut is now weighing 9 # 5 oz. Wow, is she getting big.

That is about all from here. I think I have the last two weeks summarized. Have a great week everyone.

Iowa Vacation

We had a great time on vacation. We left a day earlier than planned and headed to the Quad Cities. We went to the zoo and spent close to four hours there. They have a lot more features and animals than the zoo in Peoria. We were able to feed some birds nectar, they kids thought it was great how the birds would land on you. We saw a baby monkey playing with it's parents. The kids enjoyed all the animals and the train ride. After the zoo we headed north to Maquoketa to visit Bonnie and Jerald since we hadn't seen them all winter. Bonnie spoiled us with fresh homemade donuts and chocolate chip bars. We always eat too much when we're there. We had a great visit. On Monday we went to Burlington, IA. We went to the waterpark, go kart track, arcade, and bowling. The kids had a great time. Kyra didn't think much of the water at first but by the last day she loved it. Valynn was able to go down the big tube slide with Mark. I think the two of the would have spent most of the day there. It was too cold for the outdoor waterpark to be open, so maybe next time. Valynn and Mason were able to drive their own go karts. We made sure to drive down Snake Alley, it's the crookedest street in the world. We also had to try to tackle their 28" pizza (we ate half). The kids thought it was great to watch TV until 11:00 at night and sleep in the next day. The kids can't wait to go again. We have a busy weekend coming up so I'll be posting more pictures later.