March

Julie was born a few days late, on the ides of March.  I got induced around 8:30 AM, the doctor broke my water around 9, got the epidural around 12, doctor checked on me during her lunch break, and delivered Julie after she got off work.  I was a little disgruntled that everything revolved around my doctor's schedule, but I was in labor for less than 9 hours and my epidural worked great.  Plus, Julie was delivered happy and healthy so no complaints.

 

I had to push for quite a while and the doctors and nurses thought the baby was going to be a trouble-maker boy, so we were all surprised that the baby was a girl.  The cord was wrapped around her neck a few times; she was a little blue and hoarse but she was fine.

JoLynn and Stephanie came to help and we celebrated Easter while they were here.

 

Happy Easter 2016

Kate's Easter egg hunt for preschool and our neighborhood Easter egg hunt

 David found a great fishing spot, and another great trail to throw rocks in a river with the kids.

Kate picked out some jewelry to buy with her birthday money.

Enjoying Spring in KC--zoo, kites, farms

And enjoying our beautiful little baby Julie.  We adore her.

February

In February, I did a lot of nesting/cleaning/magic-art-of-tidying-up before baby came.  Here is Mason with his collection of preschool masterpieces, and Kate with some toddler-art I hadn't the heart to part with until I took a picture:

David indulged this irrational phase of mine and assembled this bunk bed for the girls as part of my kids-bedrooms-makeover surge.

Grandma "Jo" came to visit over Valentine's Day weekend with it being a 3-day President's Day weekend.  It was so fun to spend time with her, and David and I were able to go on a fun date to a Da Vinci exhibit where we saw models of a lot of his inventions and paintings.  We also impersonated Mona Lisa.

 

Mason had his 6th birthday!  We went as a family to the Great Wolf Lodge and enjoyed the arcade and water park.  Highlights: Me winning a pink horse Kate had her heart set on in one of those claw-drop games (which I had previously assumed were impossible to win at), and David winning 1,000 tickets at a fishing game--it took us 15 minutes to finally collect all the tickets and insert them in the ticket-counting-machine.  It was pretty exciting!

 

Valentine's Class parties with Kate and Mason:

 Taking a break and playing in the dirt by our neighborhood 

 Kate got the stomach flu... and then I got the stomach flu the next weekend.  Horrible stuff.

 These three!  There were several times during the last few weeks before I had the baby where I wished that time would just stop.  Like the impromptu dance party after we blew out Mason's birthday candles, or sitting with David in the basement on a Sunday afternoon watching the kids play together.

January

In January, I felt like I started doing a lot of nesting; cleaning out closets, re-arranging kids rooms.  We also did a few fun things:

David took Annie to the library's reading time a few times.

We went out as a family to T-Rex cafe.  

Kate has been enjoying preschool--here is a bird feeder (seeds on a pinecone) that we have had so much fun watching the birds eat.

Visiting the aquarium

And playing with all our fun Christmas toys

 David is an incredible Dad.  He reads the kids books every night before they go to bed (when I am ready to throw in the towel), loves playing with them and is intentional about spending one-on-one time with each of them.  There were a few times he took Kate and Mason tubing  at this resort about 30 minutes away because we haven't had a lot of snow here to go sledding in our neighborhood.  The girls LOVE putting make-up on him.  We are so lucky to have him!