Thankful on Tuesdays

I've been slacking on my thankful posts, but it's probably because I've just had way too much to be thankful about! We've been having so much fun this summer, playing, laughing and just enjoying each other. Overall, those things are what I am most thankful for and what most of my "summer update" posts have been displaying.  But here are a few specific things I am thankful for..

1. These two babies, and that we've finally "mastered" getting out just the three of us.  Here we are enjoying the mall playground after lunch at Chick-fil-a

2. These carts at kroger (I'm sure every other mother of 2+ kids out there is saying "amen!")

These two had so much fun, it was adorable to watch.  At first Hank had his own "baby" crackers, but then I heard Lucy saying "you want some Hank" and saw that they were sharing Lucy's quaker rice crackers. This became the day I started letting Hank have pretty much whatever Lucy had!  This car + yummy snacks = a very successful shopping trip!  Thank you Kroger.

3. Fun at the Fishers Summer Concert Series, and that my mom and jadyn and jordyn live nearby to love on Lucy lots!

Oh and have I mentioned how much this girl loves to dance!

 
I know what you're thinking and yes, she is the only one dancing up on stage. And yes, we are in trouble.

4. A new Beth Moore study that our Bible study is doing and spending daily time with Jesus reading it.

5. Our Bible study!  Which has added 6 new babies in the past year (1 per family).  Here we are celebrating Henry's first birthday (the 1st of the 6) while Corey and Jourdan were off at the hospital having baby Reese, baby #6.  We are so blessed to be involved in such an amazing community.

Take 2...

State Fair 2012

Going to the State Fair is a must for our family, but since we have had pretty jam packed schedules, we decided to go on a Tuesday morning, and Ben took off work to join us!  I didn't bring my camera, but here are a few highlights from our trip.

We rode the train down! Lucy had been talking about it all week, so I couldn't resist!

Hank was supposed to be napping while we were there, but he decided to stay awake most of the time.  He spent part of the time snuggled next to me and part of the time in the stroller.

Petting the animals...

This girl loves to dance! She was literally the only one breaking it down to this music, and I loved it!

Summer Update

Here's what we've been up too...

Towel hats and under ware necklaces

Zoo visits and face painting with Uncle Nick.

Big carrots from the garden

Chuck E Cheese trips with Mimi

Pony tails and painted nails

More Chuck E Cheese

Cool glasses to celebrate dad's bday

Oh Lucille

 A few weeks ago when I was taking Hank's monthly pictures I couldn't help buy grab a few pictures of my first baby.  This girl steals my heart every time I look at her.


 She is outgoing, loving, goofy, smart, talkative and nurturing.  While she takes some time to warm up in a new surrounding, I do think she is more outgoing than most kids her age.  She loves people and loves playing with anyone and everyone.  She is so full of life!
I've been trying to write down funny stuff that she says because years from now I want to be able to remember why I laughed so much during this stage of life.  Lucy is seriously funny.  She makes funny faces, uses funny voices, and will mimic everything I say - but out of her two year old voice, it just cracks me up.  Like the other day when she said "Mom, this is embarrassing", or how her current phrase she says with everything is "or something", so when you ask "What is baby's name?" she will answer, "JJ.. or something". 

She picks up on moods and will say "settle down guys" if Ben and I are talking too serious. 

Although we have our share of battles, I can tell she genuinely cares about pleasing us and wanting to do good.  After being in time-out and talking with her about what she did wrong she will say, "are you happy now?" or she will do something and say "does that make you happy momma?". I'm not sure she understands fully what "happy" means, but I do think she gets that when she has good behavior mommy is a much nicer person!

Lately she has also been having lots of little conversations to herself- they are hilarious!  It's awesome to listen in on the imaginary conversations she is having.  One day she was praying to herself and said "Dear God, I love you so you love me.  Amen" (said really fast).  It was adorable. Now whenever I ask her to pray, that is what she says.

I'm not going to lie, we have our days and moments when I want to lock her in her room and scream into my pillow... but I will say, for the most part, I genuinely love getting to spend most of my days with this girl.  She is a true joy in my life.

Lake Ella

2 weeks after getting home from Mahomet, we traveled to my grandparents lake cabin in southern Indiana, Lake Ella. My cousins, Lauren, Jillian and Makenna all LOVE playing with Hank and Lucy (and of course Jadyn and Jordyn do), so we had tons of help with the babies.  Ben and I actually got to relax a bit!  At first I felt bad leaving Hank with them so much, but then I was listening to them while they were watching Hank one afternoon:

"Ok Jadyn, your 5 minutes is up, now it's my turn to hold him." 

"Ok, but then we should probably give him 5 minutes to play on the ground by himself"

Seriously?!?! They were actually fighting over him, and conscious enough that he needed some crawl around time too.  They are too sweet.

While we had lots of help during the day, the babies did not take well to sleeping at night, so we ended up leaving a little sooner than we had planned.  On Friday night, Lucy kept getting out of her room and screaming crying when we put her back (very unlike her) so she didn't end up officially falling asleep till 11:45pm, then Hank woke up to nurse at 2:30am (unlike him too) and again at 5:30am for the day.  I tried to ignore him at 5:30 but since he was sharing a room with Ben, Ruthie and I, I don't think he was having it.  It was also hard for me to fall back asleep at 5:30am bc I kept thinking I was hearing a pitter patter of footsteps above my head.  Turns out I was right, when I finally caved and took Hank out of his pack n play at 6am, I found Lucy was already up playing around.  Let's just say everybody was a little sleepy that day!

A few pictures from the weekend...

My grandma, the lake's namesake.  We were taking pictures to update her facebook profile picture :)

I think this was about 7:30am, Hank is all smiles!

Lauren holding Hank

Boat ride with Jillian... I think this is Jillian... shoot... now I can't remember.  The twins are identical, so I'm not a bad cousin, just hard to tell them apart!

Ruthie had a blast of course.  My grandfather owns about 70 acres and the entire lake, so we just let Ruthie run around as much as she wanted.

helping mom in the kitchen

cheese-er

this girl needs to be an actress, she sure knows how to get her pout on

Swimming! Lucy didn't love the water, I figured she would have been in the whole time, but I don't think she was that comfortable.  Just this past week we've had her in a real life jacket at the YMCA pool (previously we had her in more a swim jacket) and she has been loving the water and jumping in on her own.  We'll have to try that down at the lake next time.

Bible Study Getaway

We have been busy! Between just every day life, we've also been traveling lots and I've been busy planning my 10 year high school reunion.  Here are highlights from one of our recent trips.  A few weeks ago our Bible study was invited to spend the weekend at Thad's parents home which is set on a private lake in Mahomet, IL.  It was amazing!  The home was gorgeous, the lake was gorgeous, and the company was perfect!  Between the 6 couples that went we had 7 babies and 1 on the way.  Let's just say our Bible study has been growing over the past year.

A few pictures from the trip (I stole all these from Heather and Emily... thanks for being the weekend photographers, girls!)

Heather holding Hank and Gigi, I'm guessing Hank probably caused the tears here... he can't get enough of that baby girl's hair... do you blame him?

With 5 of the babies being under 1 there was lots of toys, play mates, and helpers around to play with!

Although somehow the adults were able to manage playing a few games..

and relax a little too.

And of course, we got in a little boating time

Lucy watching mom on the wake board... my second time getting up! Thad is an excellent coach.

Tramp

I mentioned this in a previous post - Ben came home from the grocery with a trampoline one crazy Sunday and life here at the Wehner home hasn't been the same since.  While I did give approval for the trampoline, I did not actually think Ben would buy it, so I was a little surprised when he brought home a 14ft trampoline to set up in our back yard.  I'm not going to lie, I think it's a bit of an eye sore, but I will say that Lucy (and Ben and I) do enjoy it and usually go out to jump every day if not several times a day.

So here's to hopefully getting a bigger back yard some day, or at least one with more a side yard so that I can put the trampoline off to the side and not stare at it all day long.  I hope Lucy, Hank and their friends will use it for many years to come... and that maybe we'll be the "cool" house to hang out at.

Ben said the trampoline was "for the kids"... ha! yeah right.

Lucy was pretty freaked out at first.  When ben flipped she started crying - it took her a while to warm up to the trampoline.

This face pretty much describes how she felt about it for the first couple days

But now she is a jumping pro!

Don't worry, mom gets in on the fun too!

"you wanna jump on my trampoline?"