Friends...

I have been blessed with a great group of friends.  Here I am with my friend Jill and her daughter Olivia Erin who was born just 12 days after Eden.  Although, Olivia was due a week before Eden.  I never would have guessed Eden would be born that much sooner then Olivia!  Jill is one of three of my friends that have had a baby within three months of me!  Playdates are going to be interesting!!

Sweet Olivia...she is such a pretty baby!  Olivia has three very excited and helpful siblings at home.

Here we are at another friends' house.  The McQuillens just had a baby 3 months ago and have a daughter that is about Kezzie's age.  Both Adah and Kez love playing with her!  Here they are all dressed up like the princesses they are!!

Sweet Baby Reid!

Here she is the day after delivering...he doesn't look very happy!  I think it's time for some milk!

A friend of mine (my OB doctor whom I have talked about before) just had her baby Sept. 21st!  They named him Reid Matthew.  He was a whopping 8 lbs. 14 oz.!  Big brother Beau and big sister Gracie are very proud of him and call him 'peanut'.  He is such a sweet addition to their clan!
Here he is about 3 weeks old:

Reid came down with pneumonia and had to be taken to Mason City to stay in the ICU for five days.  He is doing great now but they still need to try to keep him contained from people as much as possible.  He is such a sweetie!  I can't wait to meet our little bundle!

Visiting old and good friends!

Yesterday we left around 4 and headed to Cedar Rapids to visit some much missed friends!  I don't have any pictures...I don't know what happened that I didn't once get out my camera, but I don't want to forget that I got to visit them!  I got to Kristin's house just in time for pigs in a blanket.  My other friend (Jami and her daughter whom I hadn't even gotten to meet yet) that I used to work with was there too.  It was so great to see them both!  The last time I saw either of them was when Jami was very pregnant at her baby shower in February!  And Kristin was just a few weeks pregnant!  Now Kristin has a brand new sweet baby named Cohen.  It was such a blessing to meet this little guy!  Keziah had a lot of fun playing with Cohen's older brother Hunter and Adah just had fun playing!  We stayed overnight and left earlier today after nap time!  On our way home I couldn't resist stopping to see another old friend I used to work with when we lived in Marion.  Her name is Angie and she has three kids that I miss so much!  She fed my kids leftovers (so I wouldn't have to stop anywhere) and we headed for home.  We walked in the door in time for a few minutes of play and then bed.  It was such a great time and I look forward to the next time I get to see them all!!

A"maze"d by Grace Corn Maze!

We had a really good time today with some great friends.  I recently heard about a corn maze in Charles City that is in the shape of Noah's Ark.  Click here for their website if you are interested.  They had a petting zoo too!  It was pretty pricey for our family to get it ($8 each for Austin, Brian and myself) but would have been more worth that money if we had more time to stay.  There were three different mazes you could choose from and they gave you a map to help you find your way.  One maze took 1/2 hour, another 1.5 hours, and the other took 2 hours.  One of the longer ones actually had a 'farm scene investigation' that looked really cool.  We only did the half hour one since we had other plans later that evening.  The petting zoo wasn't to die for, but the girls liked it well enough!  There were a couple llamas, a horse, a mean turkey, a couple bunnies, and some mature baby chicks-none of which you could really even pet.  On our maze we let the kids lead mostly!  We were there with our friends the Epperlys and McQuillens.  Kezzie has friends from both families so she was in heaven!  Along the path of the maze the three kids (Beau, Abby and Kez) pretended they were on a lion hunt searching for a lion.  They actually thought they were going to find a lion because the maze we were in was in the shape of a lion!  They kept stopping along the path and pointing out lion prints.  It was really sweet!  Abby carried around a map as if she knew where to go!  The kids all had a blast with the exception of Austin as his allergies were going very crazy.  I think we spent the time we wanted to there and headed home after a long 2 hours!!! It was a good thing we were in the company of friends or else I think we all would have been miserable!

Mini Vacation!

Kezzie is showing us her swimming skills!  I couldn't get the better video to load so this one will have to do!

And here is Adah 'jumping' off the side into my arms!  She giggles so much when I catch her!  And when I set her back on the cement she gets super excited to do it all over again!

This weekend I turned 30 years old!  I can't believe it.  I feel like I am officially getting old.  I mean, seriously, I am only 10 years away from 40!  Anyway, to celebrate as a family we decided to take a little trip together.  We haven't gone anywhere for a long time so we thought this would be perfect.  We went to the indoor water park in Dubuque.  The Grand Harbor Resort and Waterpark.  It was wonderful and just what we needed!  There were 3 bigger slides perfect for Austin's age, a lazy river, a basketball hoop area, and an area no more than 2 feet deep.  Adah and Kezzie had a blast.  They each enjoyed jumping off the edge to me.  Kezzie learned how to swim with a life jacket on and did awesome keeping her legs down so she wasn't wobbling all over.  She learned to hold her breath too!  Brian did great hanging out with the girls in the shallow end while Austin and I went and did our own thing on the big slides! There are two slides right next to each other so we had a good time racing each other to the end and back up again.  There's areas you have to climb up and through making it a challenge to get there fast.  Austin came up too fast in one area and hit his head really hard.  OUCH!  Kezzie was even allowed to go down 2 of the 3 bigger slides on my lap and really enjoyed that.  She even went down the other big slide that required an inner tube and was completely enclosed and dark.  On this particular slide she wasn't allowed to sit on my lap and instead had to sit by herself on the double tube with me.  That didn't seem to bother her at all and said she had fun!  I was really happy with how well everybody slept that night too.  We had the two girls in our room with us and Austin was out in the living room on a hide-a-bed.  The rooms were completely dark so the girls slept really well and Adah slept late!  After getting the girls to bed Brian, Austin and I hung out in the living room watching TV, eating junk food, and playing Angry Birds on the iPad!  Kezzie was up at 6:15 like usual on Friday morning and after I got her set up with a cartoon and some cereal, I went back to bed for another hour!  That was nice!  Probably not so nice for Austin since he was the one out in the living room with Kezzie watching TV!  While Brian and I got everything rounded up and Adah fed, Austin and Kezzie went down to the arcade where they blew through $10 earning a bunch of tickets to get some prizes for them both!  They had so much fun since it is basically a Chuck-E-Cheese!

 After a couple hour swim Friday morning, we requested a late check out and loaded our things to head over to our friends' house, who lives in Dubuque, and we stayed a night with them.  They graciously watched our kids for us while we went to a movie and out to eat for supper!  We went to Source Code (very good movie) and ate at The Star (wonderful food).  Saturday my friend and I headed to a consignment shop and got some good deals on clothes for the kids.  After Adah took a much needed nap we hopped in the car and headed to Independence where we celebrated Bennett's 3rd Birthday (post coming soon)!  It was a great couple of days away from home and just doing something we all enjoyed together.  I am so greatly blessed to have such a wonderful family!  And I am really looking forward to what Brian and the kids got me...a gift certificate to a spa in Cedar Falls.  I should be able to get an hour massage and a haircut or something!  And all without kids!  What a blessed 30th birthday!

A Baby Shower!

Last night I came to Cedar Rapids and stayed with a friend of mine (Kristin) that I used to work with at Yellowbook.  I miss her and don't get to see her nearly enough but I had the perfect excuse to come to Cedar Rapids and stay with her.  Today we had a baby shower for a mutual friend (Jami) that used to work at Yellowbook with us.  She is due in April (right around my birthday) and it was so great to see her and her beautiful growing belly!  Kristin is also expecting a baby this summer!  Kezzie and Adah had a great time too, although Keziah was really confused on where the 'shower' was.  I didn't even think about that being confusing and tried my best to explain why it is called a shower but she still asked several times when we were going to see a shower.  There were two adorable little girls there that Kezzie enjoyed drawing with and talking to.  Adah mostly just made me nervous as the shower was at a very beautiful (expensive) home.  Not really a place for little ones to run around in!!  I am already looking forward to the next time I can get together with these ladies and meeting the new little ones!

Friends!

This is a good friend of Keziah's.  Her name is Ellery and comes to play with us almost every Thursday while her mommy volunteers at the school her siblings attend.  Kezzie and Ellery have a blast together.  They love to play dress-up and babies and 'cook' in the little kitchen.  Ellery is teaching Kezzie all sorts of ways to have fun pretending.  Most of all though, Ellery loves our puppies and gives them lots of lovin'!

Playgroup Halloween!

For our playgroup today we met at the New Hampton Nursing Home where Brian's grandpa and great grandma live.  Kathy came with me so she could help me with the girls on such a cold and rainy day.  Plus, she wanted to see her dad and grandma!  It was so much fun to see the joy the kids brought to the residents there.  A lot of them just wanted to reach out and touch your hand or the kids' hands and say how cute they were.  Kezzie mostly just shook their hands and told them Happy Halloween and to have a nice day!  Adah was squirmy but when we put her down she would hold our hands and walk.  We tried to get a group photo but with that many kids, it's hard to get them all looking and smiling at the same time!  The photo up in the left corner is the kids with Selma (Brian's great grandma) and down at the bottom is the kids and I with Dave (Brian's grandpa).  Kezzie had fun playing catch with Dave too!  He doesn't always remember people but since Kathy was there I think it helped him to know that the girls were Brian's kids.  I'm glad we could brighten the residents' day a bit even though it was so yucky outside!

More Time with Great Friends!

Jamie Steele's husband, Micah had to be in Waterloo for business today so she and the kids decided to come with him. I just so happened to be in town for Kindermusik this morning and then I also had to stay in town for a church meeting for our upcoming camping trip. My meeting wasn't until 7pm though so I had the whole day to hang out! We met with some other moms at a park in CF for a picnic and then Jamie and I along with the kids headed to my parents' house to play and relax. Isn't little Levi just adorable? And Naomi couldn't get enough of baby Adah. Austin and Isaiah had a blast shooting each other with squirt guns and running through the sprinkler. And after Kezzie woke from her nap, we treated the kids to some ice cream at 4 Queens! Another great day!

A Friendly Visit!

(click image to enlarge)
We had the privilege of visiting one of our dearest friends this weekend and their newly adopted son Levi. We used to go to church with them when we all lived in and around the Cedar Falls area but just don't get to see each other often enough now that they moved to Dubuque and we moved to New Hampton. We decided we would go stay at their house for the weekend and after driving through some horrendous rain we made it there at almost 8:30pm on Friday. Saturday we went to an Arboretum with many flowers and a fish pond where you could feed the fish with food bought in the gift shop. Keziah enjoyed watching the fish eat and fight for every piece. It is a beautiful place but it was extremely hot so we didn't do a whole lot of walking around. We quickly headed back to their house for lunch and naps. During naps, the guys (Micah, Brian, Isaiah and Austin) all went over to a baseball card shop to look around. When they got back Jamie and I got to have a break and go to an awesome consignment shop where I got some really good deals on things for the kids. I even got myself an Abercrombie t-shirt!

Here are the two beauties of the bunch-Naomi and Keziah! It has been a while since they have seen each other but didn't have any trouble settling in to play together! Austin and Isaiah were the same way even tough Isaiah is quite a bit younger. Austin is such a good sport and ended up having a really good time with him and even showed him how to get a good campfire going! Levi had a blast with them all too. He is so carefree and smiley all the time. He enjoyed following the bigger kids around and doing whatever they were doing or he was happy to just play by himself. He is such a sweet boy and adorable too!

Sunday morning we woke up and got our stuff all packed up and then we went to church with them. Since it was Father's Day we thought we would leave right after church and go to my parents' to eat lunch and lay the girls down for their afternoon nap. We had such a great weekend. Too bad it had to come to an end! We love you Steele family! We look forward to the next time we get to hang out with you all!