I've been a little behind on posting lately. I've spent the past few weeks getting pictures of all the kids old clothes and listing them on ebay and then getting everything that sold packaged up. It's a very time consuming process, but worth it since then I get to buy more clothes! We leave tonight to drive to Miami for our cruise. Here are a few pictures of the kids we did on Labour Day. I'm not sure why all my pictures lately are looking like they're really bad quality pics when they get posted. They look normal in real life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHAD!

We're not really doing anything for Chad's birthday today since we leave for our cruise on Friday. But we couldn't do without some kind of cake to celebrate Chad's special day. We got a cookie cake and when I picked it up in said "Happy Birthday Chaz" even though I spelled it for the lady and she said chaz and I said no d like dog, somehow we still ended up with Chaz. They spelled Kennedy's name Kenneey when we got her cake there a few weeks ago. Guess spelling isn't their forte. Oh well, let's hope it tastes good!

I saw a quote somewhere today, can't remember where or who said it but I thought it was so true.

"I was a great parent before I had kids."

I know it's true for me. Before I had kids I knew exactly how I would parent. My kids would never watch TV, never eat sugar, fast food or meat products, never be the child in the store having a tantrum, they would be perfect because. I was going to be the perfect mother, after all it's the only thing I ever really wanted to do with my life. And then I had kids. Enough said I think.

I often get comments about the number of kids we have which I don't really understand. We only have 3! I know many people with three kids. I know a lot of people with 4 or currently expecting their fourth. Today at the grocery store a lady looked at me and then the kids and said you're a very brave woman. Now the kids were behaving well at the store today so I wasn't really sure if she meant brave for having 3 kids or brave for taking 3 kids to the grocery store? That was not a rude comment, but I've gotten quite a few of those too. A friend of mine, who has three kids, was recently asked "did you do that on purpose?" by a complete stranger. Anyways, I just don't really get the comments since there are plenty of people in the world with 3 kids. Now if I were expecting my 19th like the Duggar family (which is more than the 10 I would personally like but I think it's great for them!) I could understand the comments.

We went to a pink and brown themed ice cream birthday party last weekend for the 1 year old birthday of the daughter of a friend of mine (who has 4 kids!) and I just happend to have the perfect dresses for Kennedy and Emerson that I had been saving all summer. I wanted to get pictures of them eating ice cream in them but didn't want to ruin the dresses so they've just been hanging in their closets. Well, Emerson wore it for a couple of hours to Kennedy and Parker's party. Anyways, they looked so cute!

We'd been using this truck to keep Emerson from going up the stairs because it was easier for the rest of us to get over than a baby gate. Unfortunately our little mountain goat just figured out how to climb into it and then over it to get up the stairs!

I tried to get a picture of everyone before we went to church last weekend but we were in a hurry and it didn't turn out so great.

Parker looks like such a big boy to me in this picture.

We didn't get many pictures of the kids' party. Here are a few.

Their cakes (as usual) didn't turn out quite like I was hoping, especially the castle. The kids seemed happy with them though

I love this picture. These two have entered a phase of what seems like near constant fighting most days, well wrestling/play fighting that inevitably leads to someone getting hurt and then real fighting. It's good to know that they reall do love each other.

Happy 5th Birthday Kennedy

I can't believe my baby's 5 years old! A few pictures from the past 5 years.

Congratulations Jana & Patrick

Congratulations to my sister Jana, her husband Patrick and their daughter Hannah on the birth of Charles Asher Crisp! Charlie was born at home yesterday morning and everyone is doing well. We can't wait to meet him.

an update on the kids

Emerson is still in to everything! She loves to pull all the books off the shelves. She's recently learned to open the cupboards and absolutely delights in pulling out everything from every cupboard. She loves to chew on vegetables. Cauliflower, broccoli and celery are her favourites. She loves to eat her food. She's still been very slow gaining weight though. I weighed her yesterday and she weighed 17 pounds which was exciting. She has an appointment in two weeks. If she isn't about the 4th percentile in weight they're going to start some metabolic testing to see what's going on. Not that there's anything wrong with the 4th percentile if that's where you started out. But she started in the 80th and dropped and the other two have always been really big for their age, in the 90-100th percentile which is why the doctor is concerned.
Well actually, she loves to chew on everything. Definitely going through the put everything in the mouth stage. She got her first tooth last week and she's also started to wave. She's just started bouncing to music too.


Parker got his hair cut the shortest it's ever been. Shorter than we asked for it to be cut. I don't know why hair people do that. I miss his longer hair, hopefully it grows quickly. We're going to speech therapy 2x/week. His progress hasn't been as fast as I was hoping but apparently it's going as they expected. He's picking up a few new words every week and has started putting 2 words together more often. He recognizes some letters and colours and loves to point those out.

The big news on the Parker front is that he moved to a bed last week. It's gone much better than anticipated. Especially considering he was crying and yelling while I was taking his crib apart. He was trying to put the screws back in as I was taking them out. I was crying too. It was said to say goodbye to our beautiful round crib that Bob made for Kennedy. We loved it! It almost just made me think about how fast the past 5 years have flown by and how soon it's going to be that we won't have any babies in the house. Makes me so sad to think about. Back to Parker, the first night he just got in his bed and went to sleep. I was so relieved. He only got up once in the last week to ask for the light to be turned on. Last night he got out several times so we'll have to see how things go. But overall, a much easier transition than we had with Kennedy. I think waiting until he was 3 was a good idea. Kennedy had just turned 2 when we moved her to her bed and that was a complete disaster.


This is Kennedy's first sentence that she sounded out by herself and wrote all on her own and then illustrated. The only sound I had to help her with was "i". Yesterday she just sat down on her own and wrote a sentence. I'm really enjoying homeschooling her.


On a sadder note, one of our neighbours died unexpectedly last week. This family has been through a lot. They had three sons, one died in a car accident, one died from cancer. The other son lives at home. For the dad and the one son to now have lost their wife/mom as well, I just can't imagine how hard that is for them. Pray for them if you have a moment.