December Fun

Of course I am behind on my blogging! So many memories we are making and never enough time to record them all. Here is a run down of our December so far...

Pictures with Santa

Cutting down our Chritmas tree

Celebrating with friends

Mr. Turkey Struts Around

During the month of November, Braden walked around singing two songs constantly, Mr. Turkey Struts Around and T-H-I-N-K, Think About the Wonderful Things God Made. He was absoultely precious and we were super delighted to see him get to sing them with his classmates for his school Thanksgiving presentation. They also sang America the Beautiful and led us in The Pledge of Allegiance. After the presentation, we all headed to the fellowship hall to eat vegetable soup and pumpkin pie that the students made.

Halloween 2011

I love Halloween. Not the spooky and scary stuff, but I love what Halloween is to our family: fun with family (great grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins), chili and hotdogs, hay rides, apple cider, candy, and LOTS of laughs!

Braden's Halloween Party

Braden loves his school, loves his class and really loves his teachers this year, which makes me super happy! Since I am still on maternity leave we got to attend Braden's school party as a family. They call it a Let's Pretend Party, instead of Halloween and discourage scary costumes or dressing as witches. All of the kids were really excited and they played a few pumpkin games and then had a snack. Several of the students, including Braden, kept talking to each other about this being the BEST party they have ever had! It was really funny!
Braden loved showing off his little brother!

Parker loved being a Braden's school!

Mater

Friday night was the PERFECT night for carving a pumpkin! The air was crisp and cool, Emersyn actually slept the entire time we worked on the pumpkin, and I swear I could actually smell the scent of apple cider and pumpkin pie. This year my intention was to carve 3 pumpkins, one for each kid, but Braden's choice was Mater from the movie Cars and it kicked my booty, so I stopped after the first. Next year, I'll set my goal to carve two pumpkins! Emersyn can wait a few years to have her own pumpkin! Each year I get stuck cleaning out the pumpkin and Brad usually carves it. This year I was glad to have little helpers that didn't mind scooping out the guts!

Parker was really excited about helping!
The boys played while I carved...it took me a LONG time!

Waiting...

I haven't written about this yet because for some reason it is hard for me to write about it, but I just made a telephone call and all of a sudden I knew I needed to record this part of of our lives right now, even though it breaks my heart as a mother.

My sweet Parker has done everything early...rolled over,crawled, walked at 9 months, could feed himself with a fork and spoon early, but I just kept waiting for that magical time when he was going to sing along with me at bedtime, or holler for his brother to come play or tell me his favorite food or say the character on his favorite tv show...but we are still waiting because these things haven't happened yet. It's not that he doesn't talk, Parker says "momma" constantly and I have to say it the most beautiful sound I hear everyday. And he says, "grr" for my mom and he has said "dada" and "palpaw" and a few other words, but then they seem to disappear and we only hear them every now and then. For the most part the only two consonant sounds we hear from Parker are /m/ and /g/. I tried not to be too concerned, but I have been since just before he was 18 months. Brad kept telling me I was freaking out over nothing, but then he started to be notice it too.

Parker has been to the audiologist twice now. They have said that there may be minimal hearing loss...maybe. They did notice what we noticed- he seems to have trouble locating sounds- he will be alerted by the sound, but can't determine the direction of the sound. Dr. Cote noticed that he follows instructions and understands vocabulary, though he doesn't use it himself. We have the option of having a more extensive hearing test done, but it won't be until December and we are just not sure since it will mean that he has to be under anesthesia again and I am just not comfortable with doing that if it is not absolutely necessary. And if it just going to show no hearing loss or minimal it won't change our route at this point anyway. Dr. Cote suggested we contact Babies Can't Wait for speech therapy, so that was my phone call today. It sounds like it could take a little while to get it going, but I am hopeful that it can help. So that is where we are now...waiting to hear back from Babies Can't Wait, waiting to decide on an invasive test, waiting to hear Parker tell me his favorite color, his favorite food, his favorite toy...just waiting.

My Three Babies

I cannot even begin to express how much I love my three little blessings. Thank you Jesus for my precious babies!

Emersyn Rose is Here!

Emersyn Rose Hoffman made her grand debut Tuesday, September 27, 2011, at 10:13 pm. She weighed 7 lbs and was 19 inches long. As you can tell we are ALL in love with our precious baby girl and completely in awe of the little miracle that God has blessed our family with. We love you Emersyn!

What Were We Thinking???

I can't stop....I have this issue with always having to be doing something or having some project big or small. It is a little bit of an issue, especially at 39 weeks when I have edema in both ankles, yet never get off my feet until usually close to 10:00 each night. Yet, here we are 4 days away from checking into the hospital and today we had new counter tops put in, which is great except that it created about 10 more projects for me!

But tonight when I look into our kitchen and it looks like home, it feels totally worth it! It feels like me, like the Hoffman house instead of us living in my grandparent's house and that makes me happy. So I have to say a HUGE thank you to my husband for putting up with nutty projects and being the muscle behind my madness and my parents for ALWAYS helping with our projects! The only thing we have left to do at this point is put the stove back on and add the back splash. The stove will be on tomorrow afternoon, but the back splash won't be on until after Emersyn arrives and I want to wait to show the final pictures when the kitchen is COMPLETELY finished!

Here is a look a the work we've been doing!

How I loathe the purple flower wallpaper!

It took a million steps and several days to paint over the wallpaper, but it was so much easier than trying to remove the wallpaper like we did in the boy's bathroom!

The old countertops and the old gold hardware at the very top. Brad already put the new hardware on the bottom cabinets.

Trash Talking...WHAT???

Braden is on his first soccer team and he is loving every minute of it! We have had a great time watching him and he has gotten better with every game. He is not super aggressive on the field, so he hangs back and just follows the crowd back and forth down the field, but so do half of the other kids! At his first game we caught him trash talking on the field. He was so loud adn he called the other team cheaters becasue they took the ball from him before he could kick it into the goal! A few minutes later the other team cornered him a the goal and called him a cheater and then later Braden called them stinky chicken turkey legs and they called him poo poo face! There has been NO trash talking since then! He has gotten MUCH quieter on the field since Brad had a chat with him about sportsmanship!

Parker wants to play too!
Braden's first practice with his new teammates!
Parker watching from the sidelines!

Showers Galore!

We are SO very thankful for all of our wonderful baby showers and very generous friends! In the last month I have had two baby showers, one at school and one at church.

My school baby shower had a diaper theme and I got a TON of diapers in all sizes and a GAZILLION baby wipes! It was truly a gift from heaven and we were so excited to come home with my Expedition loaded with diapers!

My church shower was so sweet and everyone was so excited to shower us with precious girly clothes and goodies! It was so much fun to come home and look through everything and put it all away in Emersyn's closet!