It has been way to long since I have updated! (I think I say that every time, and it always seems to go just as long the next time) I guess such is life. We are busy! Not sure with what all the time but we are always doing something it seems! 

Brooke is growing like a weed! She is almost 5 months now! (Will be on sept. 7). :( she is rolling over all the time and can scoot herself wherever she wants to go! I can put her down on her back, she instantly rolls over to her belly then will scoot backwards clear across the room! She can get up on all fours like she is crawling but can't go forward yet. But she is so close!! Each day we notice a huge improvement from the day before so I don't think it's going to be long!! :( not sure I'm ready for my baby girl to be crawling and getting into everything but she will be MUCH happier when she can!! She can get kinda crabby now when she gets somewhere where she needs to go forward :)  She weighs about 15 pounds as of a couple weeks ago. She wears 3-6 month clothes and sleeps about 10 1/2 hours almost every night! She usually takes 4 naps a day and they can range anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours. 

Her and Blake are best buds! (Most of the time) Brooke is much more content when she is in the same room as Blake. She loves to play with his tractors! And I think Blake likes having someone to "farm" with just as much as Brooke likes it. If I ask him to bring her a toy 9 times out of 10 it is a tractor! He is not going to let her like dolls if he can help it :) Since Brooke can move different places now she rolled and scooted around the other day enough that she got to Blake's favorite blue field cultivator to play with it. It wasn't a good move by Brooke! That made her brother pretty upset!! He very quickly yelled at "Booka" and yelled for me to come help him get it away. Then he proceeded to cry on the floor because "Booka" took his favorite toy and she had a pretty good grip on it so he couldnt get it away from her :) so we have made it through the "first" toy fight! I'm just waiting for the day that it happens very 5 minutes :) 

Brooke also likes food! I know that's not an abnormal thing to say but she is completely different than Blake in this area! She grabed Tyler's fork off the table the other day when he was holding her, and proceeded to put it on his plate by his food! This is becoming a normal thing for her to do! If there is any food in her reach you better be watching or else real quickly it is going to be in your lap! So far she has eaten (or more so sucked on): cucumbers, honey dew, ice cream, applesauce, bread, potatoes (mashed and fries form), a couple kinds of meat, donuts, cake (white sheet cake and zucchini cake), cookies, a couple kinds of icing, and I'm sure there are way more that I can't remember!! She eats something with us almost every meal, and if we don't want her to we have to put her on the floor or in the other room. If she can see food and isn't getting any she can get upset at us :)

Blake is growing up fast too! His favorite thing to do is to go to work with daddy! It doesn't matter what daddy is doing if he wants a side kick all he has to do it say it and he goes in a heart beat!! He is talking more and more each day I feel like! It is hard to understand but he has many words that are "normal" and that most people say :) it's not his own language anymore! :) he still says a lot of words in his own language but can say a lot more now than he could 2 weeks ago!! Just don't ask him to say them and you have much better odds at hearing them :) you ask him to say his new word and that is an extremely quick way to get him to be shy and quiet for the next 5 minutes!! Even to Tyler and I that happens! 

Now on to a picture overload from all summer :)

Wheat harvest! The three of us spent a lot of time riding in the auger wagon with daddy! 

Blake had a lot of fun with the two fairs this summer! We had jasper county fair then the next week was the White county fair. He really enjoyed seeing and petting  all the animals. 

Blake experienced his first truck and tractor pull at the jasper county fair. He thought it was pretty cool! 

All dressed up for church one Sunday morning! 

Our annual corn day took place right after the county fairs where over. 

Just an example of Brooke's love for food :)

 Blake is happy to have some more boys his age! The twins, Nathan (beside Blake) and Levi, are just 6 months older than Blake. The twins have 2 older brothers that Blake really likes too! I get the privilege to babysit these boys every once and a while and Blake thinks it's the coolest thing ever!! 

From left to right is Nathan, Levi, Blake, Luke is in the back with the shovel and Joel is one with the green tractor. It's a good thing we have a big sand box! :)

Blake got to go squirrel hunting with daddy the other week! 

This was the outcome :) Blake was all smiles! 

Pretty exited about this almost crawling business! 

My pretty little girl! 

Melts this moms heart to see this!

If you follow us on Instagram more than likely you have already seen most of these pictures :) sorry for the repeats! 

Have a great Labor Day weekend!! 

Random little bits

We had a mouse problem in our house this past winter so we decided we wanted to get some kittens to stay outside and maybe they would help us out. This is our first kitten Trixie. She couldn't be a better kitten. She lets Blake carry her around how ever he likes and she doesn't act like it bothers her at all! She goes everywhere with him if he is outside playing. He is getting better at letting the cat go when it wants and not making it stay with him. 

We got a second kitten last week. We named her Shadow. At first she didn't like any loud noises and fast movements so we was kinda scared the first couple days we had her. But now she is a great kitten! Beside the fact that when she gets scared she goes straight for the envoy engine! We took her to VBS with us one night, and then the next morning I went to leave and I had to pull off the road and pop the good because I had a kitten riding on the air filter :) but, she is getting a lot better! Now if you call her name she usually comes out of hiding. She is a lot like Trixie and puts up with anything Blake wants her to do! 

Brooke has been doing good! Saturday night was her first night in her crib in her own bedroom! Since she was born she has been sleeping in a cradle in Tyler and I's bedroom. She has always slept good for us at nights. I think the first night she was home she got up twice, ever since then if has just been once. Usually it is either at 2ish or 5ish. So I can't complain! Naps is where we have the problem, not with her but her big brother. He doesn't like her to sleep! He likes her up so he can play with her. So I'd put her down for a nap and go start working in the kitchen or something and it wouldn't go too long before Blake was running out saying Brooke was awake. He would go in out room and wake her up. So Tyler got the idea that maybe if I would put her upstairs then he wouldn't go wake her up because it wouldn't be very handy for him to do it since he would have to go upstairs and if he would it would give me a good chance to stop him. So Saturday afternoon for her nap I put her up there and she left for several hours!! So I decided to try putting her up there at night time too. It went great! She slept thought the night for the first time!! She doesn't go to bed until 11 or 11:30 but she sleeps until 7:30 or 8 when she is in her crib. When she slept in the cradle she  would go to bed at that time, get up once to eat then wake up for the day around 6:30 when Tyler's alarm would go off. So we improved and I am loving it! :) Now we are just trying to get her to go to bed a little earlier :) 

Blake is turning into quite the little helper! Yesterday during Brooke's morning nap I went outside to water flowers and do some work but Blake watered all my flowers for me so I was able to do other work. I'm sure he didn't mind that part that he could get wet while he did it! 

When Tyler came home for lunch yesterday he blew up the pool we got Blake, so he liked that too! He played in it for a long time even thought we both thought the water was freezing! It has been worth it's money and he has only played in it one day! And yes, incase you are wondering he is wearing his rubber boots. Who would want to get their feet wet when they are swimming?! 

Blake is usually a crazy, hyper, always moving, goofy little guy! But when it comes to his sister he is the exact opposite of that! Tyler and I are the only ones that he usually shows this side to but he does have a calm nice side :) he loves to be right beside her! When I feed her her bottle he sits right beside me in the chair and holds her hand or her foot almost the entire time. If she starts crying he is very quick to tell me and if I don't get to her in time he will start feeding her or give her the paci. So it is very helpful! She is the second thing he asks about when he wakes up, the first being Dadda :) he loves to hold her too! She is kinda like the kittens and lets him hold her how ever he wants :) 

I think that is all for now. I'll end with the pictures I took for Tyler for Father's Day of the kids. 

Toy Moving

One of Blake's favorite things to do recently is to move almost every toy he has out of the toy room! It gets to be quite the mess sometimes but it keeps him entertained for well over an hour! So I'll let him make a mess :) 

This is how his toys start out.....

Next, he loads them into a dump truck and moves them load by load, (which is quite a few loads) to the other room. This time they were around the furnace :)

Once he has them there he decides to load them back up and load by load he takes them to......

The back door! But to dump them he had to move the blue rug that is piled in the picture and all our shoes :) 

The finished pile.... I guess he didn't want anyone leaving or coming into the house :) 

 Oh the things this boy does....

Sleeping beauty

Brooke loves to be cuddled all up when she sleeps. Blake was exactly the opposite when he was little! So we are enjoying our baby that likes to snuggle! Here are some random pictures that I've taken of our little snuggler :) 

All bundled up at the hospital. 

Being outside on a 85 degree day I didn't cover her up :) she got plenty sweaty without a blanket on! 

When the house gets hot I cover part of her up, she sleeps better when she is 

bundled up at least some! 

Helping me edit wedding pictures yesterday didn't excite her too much :)

She also likes to hang on to something, today it is her burp cloth, yesterday it was the string of my sweatshirt hood :)

She really likes being in the carrier! Thankfully I think I have only used it maybe 2 times in the house so far!! 

Smiles

We love this little girl more and more each day! We are starting to get a few smiles out of her! A couple mornings ago I just happened to catch every part of her smile so I thought I would share :)

Not sure why but I happen to think she is the cutest little girl ever :) 

Brooke Lee Earney

Brooke joined our family on Monday April 7th at 5:21 in the afternoon. Her due date was the 1st so she was a week late. I went into the hospital at 7 am to be induced. I got hooked up to all the monitors, got my iv in and we were ready to go! The nurses told me that they had to monitor Brooke's heart beat for 30 minutes before Dr. Louck (our family doctor) could put me on any induction medicine. About a half hour passed so we were hoping I would be started soon.  We waited a little while longer then a nurse came in and explained that I needed to be taken off my monitors. Another patient had came in and she needed them. Turns out they have 2 delivery rooms and 3 patients. One was there when we got there, she was induced in Sunday night, so she had medication in her so she couldn't be taken off her monitors.  Don't they have a back up monitor?! Yep, it wasn't working :( The patient that came in was having regular contractions, I wasn't. Since I was having no contractions and wasn't on any medication I was the lucky patient that had to wait :) So we sat, and sat, got kinda frustrated, sat some more and sat some more :) Finally we were updated. The lady that took my monitor was scheduled for a c-section the next morning, on Tuesday. Her baby was breech. Since she was in labor they were going to do the c-section as soon as they could. So once that was done we would be able to get a monitor back because she wouldn't need it. So around noon I finally got my monitor back!! Yes we sat there since 7 am without anything happening beside a very painful iv that was in my arm with nothing attached to it :) Now I had to do the 30 minutes of monitoring Brooke's heart all over :) that passed and the doctor came in. Everything looked good, he put me on cervidil. So I laid on my back for 2 hours without moving. This could do 2 things, one, it could make me have regular contractions or two, it might not do much at all. We were hoping for option one :) It was now about 3 pm. If option 2 happened I would have to wait 4 hours before they could start pitocin. Thankful my body listened to me and I was starting to have regular contractions! They were starting to get pretty painful so I asked for some pain medicine through my iv. Not much longer after that and Brooke was in my arms. I went faster than any if the nurses thought I was going to and Dr. Louck about missed it :) He has an office across town from the hospital and was there taking care of his patients when they called him and told him he better come quick. He said he had two more patients to see for the day then he would be there. The nurses told him if you do that you will miss it all. So he came and was in my room for about 1 minute before I started pushing. I only had to push two times and she was out, so he barely made it :) So at 5:21 pm our precious baby girl was born. She was 7 lbs 8 1/2 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long.  We were released from the hospital Wednesday evening. 

Daddy and his little princess! 

Blake wasn't too sure about things when he came to the hospital on Monday, this picture was taken on Tuesday. It didn't take him long to start liking her! 

Her coming home outfit! 

On Thursday morning this was Blake's favorite thing to do! He would sit for several minutes at a time and hold and kiss his baby sister. 

Daddy's first time brushing his little girls hair! 

Brooke went on her first tractor ride when she was about 3 weeks old. Daddy was hauling hog manure so when we delivered lunch we rode for a couple trips. Blake thought it was pretty cool to have his sister on a tractor ride as you can tell :) 

Brooke does not lack entertainment around this house!!

My favorite picture of my beautiful baby girl so far!!

Things are going great with 2 kids! Blake loves her so much! He comes running from wherever he is if she is crying for very long. He likes to help me out a lot. He gives her paci to her, he has fed her bottle to her, he covers her back up if her blanket falls off, he makes sure she has toys if she is laying on the floor, and he gives her way more kisses than he gives Tyler or I :) He likes to play on his own a lot during the day so that helps me out a lot! When I feed her bottle to her he likes to sit on my lap and help me or just to enjoy some snuggles with both of us :) Brooke is an excellent baby! She only gets up once every night around 3 am. She started that when she was around a week old. She has spoiled me! She likes to be awake and lay on the floor and look at books or toys. She also likes laying in her swing. I just can't believe it has been almost a month since she joined our family!! 

Myrtle Beach

This post will mainly be about our recent family vacation to Myrtle Beach but I will also add the recent winter news from around here. Not because I am complaining about how bad it is or because I want people to feel sorry for us; but because I want to remember it when I get caught up on my scrapbooks :) Which right now I am over a year behind.....so it could be a while before I get to this and I forget things easily!

The last time I posted we were living at my parents while they were gone. Well when Tyler came back to check on our house on Tuesday we had no water! We went to my parents on Sunday and no one had been to our house from Sunday to Tuesday. So we were hoping things were OK but couldn't get out on the roads until Tuesday. Our water lines had froze due to the cold weather. I know I'm crazy but I kept track of the temperature while we were there and lowest I recorded was -14 degrees with a -40 windchill!! This was off my parents weather station so I'm sure other people have different recordings but either way it was cold!! So it was no wonder why our pipes froze. Tyler and my grandpa tried thawing out our pipes on Tuesday but couldn't get any water to flow. So they tried putting a heater blowing into our crawl space. Tyler came back to my parents and a little later grandpa called and said he shut the heater off because he was afraid of leaks and if they thawed we would have a muddy mess! If they had to redo all our plumbing they didn't want to work in a mud hole :) So Wednesday morning Tyler and I both went home and we had water!! They thawed out on their own! Tyler crawled under the house and we only had 1 little leak! We were SO thankful!! Grandpa was able to fix it for us and we moved back into our house Wednesday evening before my parents got back! 

So that was Wednesday, fast forward to Tuesday morning and we left at 3:30 AM for Myrtle Beach!! It was a much needed break! We had a 13-14 hour drive down there so we wanted to get an early start so Blake would sleep the first several hours. We bought a portable DVD player for trip and it was a very good thing to have! That was about all he did on the way down and the way back! We got to our hotel and checked in around 5:30 that evening. We didn't do a lot of stuff while we were there but we stayed busy and relaxed a lot. We checked out some state parks that were in the area. We went to a Bass Pro shop and then walked around a mall that was connected to the Bass Pro. We went out to eat about once a day at different places that we found. We went to a Ripley's aquarium that was there. It was a lot like the one in Gatlinburg but smaller if you have been there before. Anywhere we went that had a beach we would walk and look for shells. Blake loved to play in the sand so he did that while Tyler and I looked for shells. We went swimming in our hotels indoor pool a couple different times. We went to a couple flea markets and checked out a Children's Museum but we both agreed that it was a little more like a kids activity center. Blake really enjoyed it though! They had a lot of different things for kids to do and Blake could have spent all day in there doing the different activities. We went bowling one night at our hotel. We had a lot of fun! Blake got fussy and actually fell asleep while I was holding him and bowling at the same time. It was quite challenging to be holding a 30 pound kid and bowl at the same time. Thankfully we were able to lay him on the floor after a little bit and Tyler and I had good evening with just us since he was sleeping :)  That pretty much sums up our vacation! We left our hotel Sunday morning around 8 and drove until 7:30 that evening then stayed in Louisville for the night. Then on Monday morning we went to Cabela's then headed home. We got home around 1 in the afternoon. We were very thankful for the time we were able to spend together!! As you will see in pictures we didn't have just overly warm temperatures :) But it was warmer than what we would have had at home!! I don't know if it got over 60 degrees at any point of our trip but it felt warm compared to the week before though! Now for an overload of pictures :)

The beach right out our hotel was very nice! It was the beach we spent the most time on.

Blake had fun trying to catch the seagulls, he never got one. He would come back to us and say "uh oh".

This is his new face he likes to give us a lot :) 

Blake really enjoyed having Daddy around for a whole week!!

My 2 boys! Blake never let daddy get very far from him.

Swimming at our hotel. Blake started to like swimming a lot on the last day :) He had fun jumping off the side to us in the pool.

Petting the sharks at the aquarium. I missed it on camera but Blake actually did touch one!

He enjoyed sitting in a fish mouth and sliding down the tongue.   

One morning we woke up early to go to a state park and look for shells. It was 33 degrees that morning so Blake and I watched a movie in the envoy while Tyler looked for shells. I got out a couple times though to get pictures of this beautiful sunrise!

They had a train station at the museum! It didn't take Blake long to find it.  

A big bubble maker that Tyler had more fun with than Blake did :)

An example of daddy couldn't go to far. Anytime Tyler would walk down to the water Blake would be running after him yelling "dadda".

Tyler digging a hole as Blake fills it in :)

Blake enjoyed bowling for a little bit before he got fussy!

Then this is how he looked for the rest of the night :)

This is looking off the balcony of our hotel room. We could see the ocean through the trees.

During the warm season Blake would love this place! Our hotel had a big swimming area for kids outside. 

This is our hotel. Our room was on the part that sticks out on the left of the picture.

The last night on the beach before heading home.

That sums up our vacation, now onto this past week. My parents left for Grand Cayman a couple hours after we got home from vacation. They picked pretty good times to be gone didn't they?! :) My sister is home this time though so we get to stay in our own house. But that doesn't mean we didn't have troubles :) We had a pretty normal week until Friday. Yes it has been cold, windy and snowy which isn't always fun but on Friday when Tyler was home for lunch he went to wash his hands at the bathroom sink and there was no water!  Yes our pipes had froze again!! Our house doesn't have the best heater or insulation anyways so we have always had a couple space heaters floating around the house. There is always one upstairs for Blake's bedroom and there is one that stays in the toy room because those windows don't latch and there is a breeze through there when its windy. But we have 3 other ones that we use where ever they are needed. So we turned one on in both bathrooms trying to warm things up. Thankfully the kitchen sink always had water but we put one in the kitchen to try and keep it warm so those didn't freeze too. We have two bathrooms and between the two of them we had one toilet and one sink. Neither shower worked! The sink that worked was in one bathroom and the toilet in the other bathroom :) On Saturday morning nothing more had thawed out. So we washed our hair in my kitchen sink for the day :) But by mid morning everything had thawed out by itself! So since Saturday we have had constant water running out of every faucet and shower that are in the house and I flush the toilets every 20 minutes to keep those from freezing :) It is only supposed to get colder these next couple days so we hope that nothing freezes again but with water running it shouldn't.  On Saturday Tyler and Josh piled snow up along the whole south side of our house trying to insulate the crawl space a little more so hopefully that helps. We are also very thankful that no pipes had leaks this time!! We keep the space heaters on as needed but they aren't always on. Then to top everything off last night we lost power :) Around 9:30 Tyler and I were heading out to do the chickens and the house went dark. We went back in to be with Blake so he wouldn't be scared as much. He doesn't like it when it is dark. Tyler headed back out to do chores while I sat with Blake because it had flickered about 4 more times before going out for good around 9:40. Thankfully our natural gas heaters still worked with no power. So we all stayed warm. Blake ended up sleeping in our bed for the night because he was certain there were bears in the house and wouldn't get too far from one of us. We had 60 mile an hour winds at our house so it was a nasty night to be out of power. Around 1 this morning we got our power back on! I am very thankful for the workers who were working up in a bucket truck in the winds on the telephone poles that were beside our lane!! When I got up to check stuff out once the lights came back on they were just leaving.
I think that is all the interesting stuff we have had this winter so far. I know it is hardly any trouble to most people and a lot have it worse than we do!! I just wanted to get stuff wrote down for the scrapbook so I figured I'd do a blog post about our winter so far and vacation. Off to flushing the toilets again :) Have a good week and stay warm!!