Baby brother is almost here!

So, I'm pregnant and scheduled to have this little guy on October 10th.  It should be exciting!  I'm not sure how ready I am now to go from having three independent kids to adding on a fourth extremely dependent one.  We are super excited, it just feels like stepping out into the unknown again.  (Except it isn't really all that unknown.)  This will be a good time to teach the older girls about caring for a baby, which will be pretty helpful for them when they have their own little ones.

Kid Prayers

Sometimes the kids say funny things in their prayers.  Usually the phrasing is just a little off . . .

Sophie has been praying lately:
"Please bless Juli so she can be happy about her mom dying."

And Alice has been saying:
"Please bless Jesus can't die anymore."

I love kids!

Ice cream poop

I didn't take a picture.  Boo.  The other day we went to Jason's Deli for dinner.  (Kids eat free on Saturdays with each adult meal.)  Anyway, they have a soft serve ice cream machine where you can make your own ice cream cones.  I'm pretty sure this is the highlight of the meal for the kids.  We had the kids bring their cones in the car since they weren't done and we were ready to leave.  Two of them still had them by the time we got home.  I remember Sophie running in the door and yelling, "I have to go to the bathroom!" 

Cut to the next morning, I went in to use the bathroom and noticed brown sludge on the toilet.  I thought it was the traditional sludge that can oftentimes be found on the toilet seat whenever anyone but me uses it.  (I NEVER make a mess.  Right?)  I cleaned it up and noticed there were some other drips leading down the toilet and finally saw an ice cream code sitting on top of the toilet.  I guess Sophie put it down when she went to the bathroom the night before and forgot about it.  I'm glad she did, cause that's gross.  Toilet cone.  Ew.  I guess I need to talk to the kids about food in the bathroom.

Water polo

I'm hoping to get some good water polo pictures to post from Abby's class she's been taking.  We'll see, it's hard to capture something good in the water.  The first week of the class there was a local reporter writing up a story about it.

Here it is:

Olympics create local interest in water polo

Summer Swimmy

Abby was on the Summer swim team this year and Sophie and Alice took swimming lessons.  They are all getting pretty good.  Abby is perfecting her strokes and found a love for butterfly of all strokes.  Sophie can actually swim now and even jumps off the diving board.  Alice is still pretty timid and doesn't want to get her face wet, but she is getting more confident.

She jumps without the noodle usually, but this is the only picture I took of it.

And Jeff Got Married!

Tom's brother, Jeff, got married this Summer.  Woo Hoo!  Juli has been a great addition to our family.  Unfortunately, I don't have any real pictures of the event.  Here's what I've got.

Alice raises the roof for the newlyweds.  Not really. 

Owen was being coy.

Abby was in charge of pictures . . .

This was before Sophie nearly whined me to death because it was so hot.

I don't think Owen wanted to sit in the sun either.

I made skirts for the girls to wear.  It was such a cute fabric!

We got matchy flip flops for the girls to wear too.

Track Team

I signed Abby up for track this last Spring.  I was surprised she wanted to do it - she's never been much of a runner.  She seems to want to sign up for anything that's available.  After a practice or two, Abby asked the coaches if Sophie could practice too.  She's too young by a couple of years, but they let her participate.  I was even more surprised that Sophie would want to run, she won't walk down the block without complaining about being tired.  Here are a few pictures.  I don't think the girls got any faster this year, but they got some exercise and a little taste of running, to see if they want to do it in the future.