Update...

I haven't had much of a desire to post anything lately, so I will attempt to update as best I can remember! This says May 23rd (which was actually our anniversary, but I didn't get around to finishing this post until June 16th...that's today's real date! Sorry!)

Two days after my last post, Brian and I reached another milestone in our life...our 11th wedding anniversary! YEAH!..."Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of miracles"...Unfortunately we were not even able to be together, let alone celebrate. Brian had been doing a rotation in Allentown, PA that month and was not able to come home very often. We were able to finally celebrate on the 28th by going to The Melting Pot, thanks to his mom! (Thanks, Cherie!) We've been there a few times now, but it never gets old. It's YUMMY! Anyway, the exciting thing is that we've made it to 11 years!

I thought I'd do us by the numbers:

we own 1 cat
we dated just over 2 years
we have 3 beautiful girls
we endured and experienced 4 years of medical school
we've lived in PA about 5 years total
we've lived in 6 different wards
We've lived in 7 different homes
total years of medical training by the time we are done....8
Our favorite number is 9
How many kids we hope to have...10...JUST KIDDING(Couldn't think of anything for 10!)
WE'VE BEEN MARRIED FOR 11 YEARS!!! YEAH
(This really isn't the best picture of us...we were still stuffing our faces!!)

I love my husband with all of my heart and am grateful for the love he has for me and our girls. I'm grateful for his endurance through all of this training so he can provide for us and I don't have to go to work. I can stay home and raise our girls. We've been through a lot. It certainly has been an interesting 11 years, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

To sum up other things we've done in the last month...

Courtney has finally learned to ride a bike! It's not her fault she hasn't until now. Living in apartments makes it tough to keep bikes around. We have storage units but they are downstairs in the basement and it would be such a chore to keep them there and get them out when we want. But a friend gave us a bike for Jessica last month, and we just decided we are keeping it around so the kids can learn. So it's a bit small for Courtney, but she just practiced and practiced and now she can do it!

Ally is quite the ham! She continues to come up with humorous expressions, moves, and sounds to delight her entire family and friends and all her meet her! One thing she likes to do is put sunglasses and a hat on, do the peace sign and say "Dude". The older girls taught her that. Her verbal vocabulary is slowly growing...she says "rea.." now, which means "read", when she wants a story. That's helpful But she is still signing up a storm...even more helpful.
She is a climber, too. She is trying to learn to climb into her crib. She hasn't made it all the way in yet and the climbing out seems to not be on her radar...yet, thank goodness.
The other day when we got home from a BBQ with some friends, it was raining. Brian has eagle eyes and spotted a baby toad and, being a boy, grabbed it. Courtney isn't too girly that she's afraid of things like that, so she wanted to hold it as well. We spent a considerable amount of time outside with the baby toad. Jessica and Ally would only lightly touch it one time and then they were done. Jessica, Courtney and all their friends are into WEBKINZ...(in case you live in a bubble and don't know what they are...they are stuffed animals that come with codes to log on to the internet, into a virtual pet world, where you can play games and take care of your pets.) The kids each have 4 but have hopes to get many more than that. They "collect" them. Anyway, Jessica got a turtle Webkinz for her birthday and one of her friends has a turtle also. The new thing to do with them is to have them marry each other. Jessica decided that her's was a boy, named Squirt (after the turtle in FINDING NEMO), and her friend, Nehama, has a girl turtle named Shelly. So they cooked up a Turtle wedding for a playdate after school. They went all out. I asked Nehama's mom if I could do anything to help (I heard she was going to get way into it), but I was reminded that "Traditionally the bride's family pays for the wedding." So we merely made a top hat for Squirt and showed up. She had indeed done a bit of preparation for this wedding, including a veil for Shelly, punch/tea, flower petals, a videographer (Nehama's older sister), and....cupcakes that had real roses stuck in the frosting. There were about 15 kids and each of their 5-8 Webkinz in attendance, and, oh, I almost forgot, Courtney's Chocolate Lab Webkinz was the officiator of the ceremony. So, we had ourselves a little stuffed animal wedding. There were also people who brought presents (including a log for the turtles to sit on) that Nehama and Jessica had to try to split up. It was clever, it was fun for the kids, but I would never have thought to do something like that. Here is a picture of the bride and groom. The picture doesn't really due justice to the outfits, but they look happy, don't they? :)
The kids had a number of birthday parties to attend over the last couple of weeks. One was at Club Libby Lu at the mall where kids can get their hair all done up like rock stars and sing and dance.

They also had an interesting last week of school. Due to "excessive heat advisories", they were released from school around 12:30 on Monday and noon on Tuesday. It got up to about 95 degrees, but with the humidity it felt hotter. The main problem was there is no A/C in the school building so it makes it pretty tough. I think they would have cancelled school, except they didn't want to have to make those days up this week. Friday was the last day and they had a 1/2 day then too. We celebrated with some friends by going to lunch and then the birthday party at Libbly Lu later that day. This is the girls before school on the last day! YEAH!
We have high hopes for the summer! Lots to do! We sat down today and planned our routine and activities. We have to have some sort of routine or else all heck breaks loose. Jessica wants to always play, Courtney always wants alone time to read....that is a recipe for disaster. We have to have some order! We also want to be productive but lazy too! Gotta strike a balance somehow. We shall see how it goes...stay tuned!

(I do need to mention that we finally got a new digital camera...one that will transfer pictures to my computer! YEAH! so pictures will be coming by the dozens, I'm sure! I also finally figured out how to enable the comments thing...so leave comments! I love hearing from you!)