Alicia's Blessing Day

This past sunday Alicia received her name and blessing during sacrament meeting.  The blessing was beautiful.  She was told she is a beloved daughter of God, she can learn much from her older sisters and one day she will marry in the temple.  She was an angel during the blessing and didn't even cry, in fact Grant said she smiled at everyone.  When they announced she was going to be blessed I handed her to Grant and there was an audible sigh from the congregation and ah's when they saw her after.  All in all it was a nice day topped off with a great talk by Grant on grace.  The only thing that would have made it even better would have been family to share it with.  Here are some pictures.  They aren't the greatest but at least everyone is in them!

With her hat on, just for Grandma Claudia!

Customary family picture on blessing day.

Just a random picture of me, Alicia, and Emma (with her owl chapstick!)

Becca helping Grant get his lunch ready, thought it was funny him walking around with her like this!

March update

A quick update while half the children are sleeping...
Things are going well for us, although we are still waiting on spring to arrive.  It is snowing. Again.  Oh well spring will come eventually and then we will be complaining it is too hot and humid!
The girls are all doing well.  Emma continues to love school and is enthralled in magic tree house books.  She can read one in an afternoon so we are making frequent hold requests and trips to the library.  Leah likes school too as long as she gets to play with the crown at school.  Not sure what it is probably a crown, but it determines if she has a good day or not at school she says.  She has rediscovered her cowboy boots and wears them everywhere and is so excited for soccer to start she wore her shin guards to school today!  Becca has decided the number 4 is her favorite and that means we read 4 stories and sing 4 songs at bedtime.  She also has to have 4 chicken nuggets and 4 ponytails in her hair.  You have to make sure you show her and count them all or she will get very upset if she doesn't think it is 4!  Although last night singing songs I showed her 4 fingers and then named the 4 songs and she pointed to my thumb and said all of the fingers, so maybe she will be requesting 5 of things soon! Alicia is growing super fast. I think they grow up quicker with each one that we have.  She had her 2 month check up and weighed 10lbs. 14 oz and was 23 inches long.  She is 50% for weight and 75th for height.  If they kept track of foot size she would be in the 90% I think. I have never had a baby grow out of jammies because her feet were too long!
Grant continues to work on research and writing papers and looking for jobs in his "spare" time that really isn't spare.  I continue to try and keep everyone going although the months of sleep deprivation seem to be catching up with me.  It is getting harder and harder to wake up in the middle of the night!  I am enjoying getting back to doing things that have been neglected the past 11 months or so.  I kinda feel like myself again thank goodness!
Here are some pictures.  We did get a nice sunny day and grant took the 3 older girls to the park to play.

Isn't it great having 3 older sisters to dress you up!

an attempt at a first st. patricks day picture, but she was uninterested.  Also her outfit looks much more green in person, well teal at least!

So today is yet another snow day.  Not quite as bad as a week or so ago but probably 6plus inches so everyone is home.  I don't mind another 3 day weekend! Not much is going on lately, just trying to get a new routine going with the addition to the family.  We did get papa murphy's pizza last week for the first time since moving here.  The closest one is about a half an hour away.  The girls say it tastes even better in Maryland than in Utah.  Grant has been busy with scout stuff, I am taking care of girlies all day, but I did go to Relief Society meeting last week and learned how to make crochet baby booties for preemies.  If I had know it could be that easy I would have attempted long ago!  Emma is happy at school and continues to excel in every area, especially writing.  Everytime I talk to her teacher she brags about how wonderful Emma does writing.  Leah is happy at preschool and brings home lots of fun crafts and continues to work on recognizing all the letters of the alphabet so we can start working on learning to read.  Becca continues to talk and talk and talk.  Even Leah's friend that came to visit commented that Becca sure says momma alot.  When she doesn't know what something is called she comes up with her own name for it such as grants tie is now a sunday scarf and tights are sock pants.  She has also started labeling colors with more description so instead of blue or pink it is light blue or dark pink for examples.  Alicia is 6 weeks old and made it through her first 3 hours of church-she slept the whole time! She is growing so quickly and loves to be talked to and look around.  She even surprised us and prefers to go to sleep on her own than being rocked or walked around which is good since she is the 4th!

Tummy time!

Becca wanted to do tummy times just like Alicia

Emma wanted a picture with Alicia....

so then Becca did too.....

And Leah too!

Guess Who?

So I thought it would be fun to put up pictures of all the girls at one month old since Alicia is now that age.  See if you can guess who is who!

Valentine's Snow Day

So this last week was full of snow and valentines fun!  Last Sunday we decorated Valentine sugar cookies-got to keep up the tradition.  It did take us 2 whole days to pull it off but we had fun once we were finally ready.  I braved taking all the kids to walmart and survived so maybe I can handle 4 after all!  Thursday morning we woke up to 18 inches of snow! Everyone got the day off.  It was even kind of powdery  snow and made me feel kind of like I was home in Utah.  It took grant 2 hours or so to dig out.  Good thing we only have a walk way and a little sidewalk.  We did have the car to dig out too.  The neighbors and Grant worked together to get the cars out.  The girls also had no school on Friday not really sure why but we had fun sledding and playing in the snow.
Alicia continues to eat and grow.  Last night she even slept for 5 hours!
Grant is finally back at work in full swing and we are once again trying to figure out where we will be in six months or so.  His fellowship ends at the end of summer so we are exploring our options and trying to make a plan-exciting but stressful too!
A few funny stories from the girls this week:
Emma: after school on wednesday Emma came running out saying "mommy no school tomorrow we are supposed to get a leg of snow".  After a few minutes we figured out she meant a foot of snow!
Leah: She came running upstairs and asked "mommy I can't find my blowheads I think Becca ate them!"  Apparently she meant the airheads she had gotten at walmart.
Becca: when she saw the snow she looked out the window and said "big snow, big problem"  also the next day at bedtime I told her to climb up on the bed because it was time to go to sleep and she said "its 8 o'clock"  We have her well trained already I guess!

Alicia wears out Emma too I guess!

If you look close you can see our car buried in the snow in the background

Snuggling with mom

Thought this was funny- the girls taking pictures of the outfits they were planning to wear that day!