Happy REAL Bday!

To celebrate the big 1 today, we headed to Chuck E. Cheese's for pizza Lincoln mostly gagged on, rides that are way too big for him and prizes he could choke to death on. Okay, I confess it was mostly for the siblings, but Lincoln had some fun too. :) He got a total kick out of the little rides...

Happy Birthday, Lincoln!

I know I say it every time one of these rolls around, but wasn't this kid JUST born?! We had an Old McDonald birthday party on Easter weekend since my family was in town. Lincoln was so sweet, trying his hardest to open his gifts (with the help of his siblings, of course). But the highlight was the cake. He was hilarious, investigating it slowly, touching it cautiously, then diving right in until he nearly ate the whole dang thing. I stopped him at the point where I was sure I'd be cleaning up red-tinted puke in a matter of minutes. After shaking him off and scrubbing the shortening-based frosting off of his entire body in the bathtub, he took a great nap; undoubtedly dreaming of cake. Happy Birthday, little buddy!

Dinosaur World

So we heard about this place called Dinosaur World and knew we HAD to take Reese there. From morning til night, all we hear about is dinosaurs (mixed a little bit with sharks). So after making arrangements for Lincoln and getting all ready to go, we realized as we were about to hop in the car that it was 3 1/2 hours away (we thought it was in Louisville). We knew better than to crush Reese's hopes and dreams... we buckled in for a very long day of 7 hours in the car to be at Dino World for 2. Thankfully it was a totally gorgeous day, the kids were well behaved (thanks to our borrowed DVD player) and we made 2 trips to Sonic for cherry limeades. And every night since, when we pray at night and tell God what we're thankful for, you can imagine what Reese's is. :) The scrapbook pose for Mommy
And they're off...

Future paleontologists

His face says it all. This was one of 150 life-size dinos they have!

"Are you SURE we can't take him home?"

Reese and his worms

One of Reese's favorite things to do is go outside exploring for worms. After a recent rain, he went outside sporting rocket pajamas and Emma's rain boots... and couldn't quite control himself from peeling half-dead worms from off the sidewalk and proclaiming them still alive. Boys will be boys.

First Picture

My ultrasound puts this little munchkin arriving around October 8th. Emma came along and was excited to see the heartbeat and was reeeeally hoping we could find out that it's a girl... :) In her (more joking than serious) words, "I'll just SCREAM if it's another boy."

Surprise!

I had no idea that I'd ever be making a post about baby #4, but we're confident God has known all along. Stay tuned as we keep you updated on our newest Nottingham addition! :)

Lincoln's Baptism

We were so blessed to have Lincoln baptized at our church this Sunday. We had family there to celebrate with us this marking of Lincoln as God's. We pray that he will come to know Him.

"Baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our engrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord's." (The Shorter Catechism)

Blue Eyes

Just another cute pic of a cute kid!

Our first BIG snow!

Last week, we FINALLY got our first big snow- over a foot! Emma got 3 days off of school, so we had plenty of time to "enjoy" being snowed in! Our friends Brooke and Grace West were in town, so Grace ventured out into the snow abyss with Emma and Reese. :)

Check it out! The untouched winter wonderland!

Thank goodness for my dad and his snowblower- we were trapped!

Letterboxing... in the snow?

We found out about this super cool activity you can do called Letterboxing (www.letterboxing.org). It's great for families, it's free and awesome for the treasure-hunter in us all! And if you know anything about my husband's obsession with the movie National Treasure, you will understand my daughter's fascination with finding treasure of her own. The gist- you read online clues to a letterbox in your area (there are tons of them all over the country) and you follow the clues until you find the hidden box. Inside you find a stamp and a notepad. You mark their stamp in your notepad and vice versa as a log that you found it. It's super fun and we've done about 5 in the freezing snow and Josh insists that we wait for summer to do any more. :)

One of our first clues took us to the Fishers Train Station!

Find the treasure and making her mark!

Binkin's Giggle

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Being with family is, of course, one of the greatest parts of celebrating Christmas. Due to many different circumstances, we saw no extended family on Christmas Day! We celebrated early with my family and late with Josh's. It was actually quite nice to have the kids just be at home and go at our own pace without any worries of packing bags or rushing off somewhere.

The kids got up and were surprised with their one big gift- a new table and chairs with art supplies for the play room!

And a tasty breakfast of monkey bread...

Then the stocking explosion! We mostly just do lots of fun stocking stuffers for everyone and enjoy opening lots of little things. The kids are into quantity over quality if you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down. :)

Happy Birthday cupcakes- Reese the dinosaur enthusiast specifically requested that we make parasaurolophus cupcakes. Only the best for Jesus! ;)

And Lincoln's gift from Grammie Bev bearing his best nickname- Lincoln Logs!

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve was nice and quiet- just a nice dinner with Josh's parents and Mark and Sarah, and a Christmas Eve service at church celebrating Jesus. We came home and each got to open one gift and were off to bed for the long-awaited Christmas morn...

The PERFECT tree!

It's become a family tradition for Josh and the kids to go pick out our family Christmas tree. You may be picturing a trek through the knee-deep snow on a tree farm, axe hoisted over the shoulder... nope. Just the Marsh parking lot at 116th and Allisonville- $20 from the Boy Scouts. Hey, it works for us. Josh is NOT a fan of winter and doesn't like to be cold, so this 5 minute task is just perfect. They did a GREAT job and it was a beautiful tree. :)

And Winnie's Birthday, too!

And straight from Iowa... to St. Louis! How could we miss Winter's 5th Ballerina Party?? What a precious party with all her little girl friends (and her dashing big brother to welcome the guests!) doing crafts, dancing and eating ballet cake!

Ballerinas? Or supermodels striking a pose?

Paige's 1st Birthday!

I can't believe I'm just now getting to posting the pictures from the beginning of December until now... but better late than never! We all packed up again for the Iowa journey to celebrate precious Paige's 1st Birthday! She was sooo sick with a double ear infection, but the little trooper managed to look as darn cute as ever. It was a great visit and we wish we could do it more often!

Could you not just EAT that face?!?

The ridiculously adorable and time-consuming cakes Heather made for the party!

Craft Time!

All the Gross grandkids (hehe!)

One thousand, four hundred and forty

So I've always thought it would be amusing to count how many times I hear the word "mommy" in a day... but I now know that it would be humanly impossible to accomplish such a task. I decided from about 8:35-8:50 to count how many times REESE ALONE said it.

It was 36.

At this rate, I am on a path to hear this word spoken 1,440 times today alone... from ONE kid.

Can I change my name? ;)

Tag

Okay, so I wasn't actually tagged, but I thought I'd play this easy game my friend Brooke did... since I've been a super lame blogger lately. See, my computer was broken and then gone getting fixed and then life took over and now I'm totally overwhelmed with the task of sorting and posting Christmas pics... eek!

Anyway, here's the 6th pic in the 6th folder. It's a picture of my mom and 3 of her siblings (my mom's on the far right) :) I used these old photos for a wall in my house of old family pics- and I love it!

Look Alike :)

Emma got a new build-a-bunny for Christmas from Grammie Bev that has adorable glasses just like hers... how could I resist trying them on Lincoln? And the resemblance was uncanny. :)

I know, I know!

Okay, I'm pretty far behind... but my computer has decided to quit on me... and the holidays... I promise to update soon!