Time to rewind (part 2) Vacation!

At the end of April we took our annual vacation to celebrate our Anniversary - this year was seven years!  We had actually purchased this trip back in October of 2011.  If you do the math - the kids were a mere 3 months old and the sound of a vacation sounded great.  We just never imagined it would take close to 4 years to take.  It was a trip to Cancun but of course we needed to find someone to watch the kids since we didn't think it would be very relaxing to take three three year olds to another country.  So we got my mom and dad to agree to watch them.  We drove to my parents house and spent a day or two to get everyone acclimated and then flew out of Buffalo a few days later

Tony watching Papa outside.

We all went to pick up Savannah from school the first day to surprise her and ended up playing in the playground for a little while.  While they were playing I was trying to figure out how I knew the mom of another little girl in Savannah's class.  She walked in the room and immediately came over and said hi to me and my mom and asked me if I had kids that went to school there.  I showed her my kids but let her know that I didn't live in the area.  It took me the better part of an hour to figure out that I had worked with her at BHSC.  She was actually a manager over my department while I was going through my 'rebellious' stage.  Something that I'm not very proud of but something I learned alot from.

Of course I need to snap a picture of my babes sleeping!

 They decided to have a small cake for my upcoming 40th birthday!  Or maybe it was just an excuse to eat ice cream cake!

Christmas in April!  I had completely forgotten, but realized that my sister Karin had forgotten (for a long time) to send out the kids Christmas presents back in December.  So we decided to open them up!  They each got a dvd movie and then a shared gift of these magnetic shapes that you make pictures with.  They loved it - they weren't sure why they were getting gifts in April, but nonetheless had fun!

More to follow...

Time to rewind (part 1) Hair cuts!

It had been a long time coming, but I finally got Amelia agree to get a hair cut.  Her hair was getting longer and longer, but thin and somewhat stringy and difficult to comb/brush through.  Olivia wanted to come too so I made appointments for all three of us girls at Sweeney Todd Hair - where I've gone a few times.  They good, they're fast and inexpensive.  Olivia went first and we had talked about what they do and she wanted to get her hair washed.  The stylist started out cutting her hair and when she was basically done, Olivia quietly whispered to me "shampoo?"  The stylist let me know it would cost extra, but she was looking forward to it, so I said let's do it. 

Amelia was next, but she did NOT want her hair washed - she was too worried about getting soap/water in her eyes.  She did great with the rest of the hair cut and her hair feels and looks alot healthier!

She drew me a picture

Olivia was drawing on the etch a sketch and she drew us!  So cute! 

Big Kid Beds

We are crib/toddler bed free in our house.  I wasn't quite ready for this, but we went out looking for furniture a while back and ended up ordering it.  It was delivered a few weeks later and they've been sleeping in their big kid beds for the past few weeks.  The girls got loft beds with the dressers that fit underneath.  They LOVE them.  They get to climb a ladder and have a ton of space now for all of their stuffed animals.  Little Tony actually still has the same furniture.  His crib actually converted to a full size bed and man is it nice and comfortable.  Sometimes I want to fall asleep there with him.  He has his own room and the girls are together.  I always felt sad with the thought of separating the three of them, but the thought of it was worse in my head than the reality of it all.  They did great and we didn't have any problems.  They surprise the heck out of me on a regular basis!

Amelia sleeping in her loft

bad lighting - Amelia ready for her first night in her big girl bed!

Tony sleeping in his big boy bed!

He moves around ALOT!

I'd also like to point out that everyone is potty trained and actually have been for the past few months.  Amelia and Tony were the first to come out of diapers - Olivia was the hold out, so one day we just told her there were no more diapers and she's been going on the potty ever since (during the day).  There were a few accidents here and there, but actually none recently.  Toward the beginning of the year they'd be fine during the day and we'd put them in a pull up if we went out but they've been doing fine even when going out.  We often have to make random stops to find every bathroom which can get annoying but necessary.  They still get a pull up at nap time and bed time -  Olivia and Tony are typically dry in the morning and nap time along with Amelia.  She, however usually has a wet diaper in the morning, but doing great otherwise. 
I guess when we were using diapers, I never thought we'd get to this point, but time moves on and things change. 

Happy Easter

This past weekend we celebrated Easter.  The weather is slowly getting nicer here in NJ but it was pretty windy.  We did our own egg hunt in the backyard, but because it was so windy the eggs got blown around a bit. 

We did another hunt over at T's mom's house.  It worked out fine, but Uncle Steve told everyone they were looking for 8 eggs a piece, but it was actually only 7 so we were looking all around for a bunch of eggs that weren't hiding.  Oh well, they all had fun!

Here are some pictures of the day!

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Our Easter baskets!

The girls dancing around before everyone else arrived.

Listening to the rules of the egg hunt from uncle Steve

Olivia found an egg!

Tony found an egg!

Amelia found an egg!

Smile :)

New hours

In the past few weeks, my work hours changed from starting at 9:30 or 10am to starting at 8am.  It may not seem like much of a shift, but it involved quite a change.  I've been good for the most part - I got up pretty late this morning but still made it on time.  So the earlier start comes with an earlier bedtime so I haven't had as much time to blog.  It may seem like I have more time - but I spend that extra time with the kids.  The other day I got home and the kids had been wanting to make muffins.  So we pushed up our sleeves and washed our hands and mixed up some muffins for dinner.

On that note, I need to get to bed so I can get up on time. 

I have not forgotten...

The past month and a half have gone by with me vowing to blog, but it just hasn't happened.  I'll catch up eventually!
February came and went with alot of snow ice and very cold temperatures.  We attended Andrew's birthday party on Valentine's day.  The location was at iPlay America - which is this huge indoor amusement park.  We were actually late for the party because I had put the wrong time in the calendar on my phone.  We left the house in time, went to get breakfast and onto the party and ended up getting a phone call from Tony's mom wondering where we were.  Oops!  We got there and everyone else that was there for the party were ready to leave, but they ended up staying a little longer.  The kids rode a few rides and then climbed around a jungle gym for about an hour. 

It was Valentine's day and I made the heart/ribbon streamers that I hung in their door way of their room.  I like doing crafty things - I just don't usually have alot of time for it. 

...and one more 'so I don't forget' moment...
We were in the car and I looked back and noticed that Amelia had a coin in her mouth.  So I told her to take it out - she shouldn't put them in her mouth and little Tony says "yeah, you're mouth is not a bank"  It was so funny/cute I didn't want to forget!