"The Group" Family Weekend 2013

This past weekend our group once again got together for a lovely weekend, although the Schlipf family was unable to make it this time. We all drove to Indianapolis, where a few of us met at the zoo for a few hours, and then we all joined together at a local park in Carmel for a beautiful afternoon outdoors. As the evening rolled in, the women took the kids to the pool, while the guys got together at the Bahlers to talk. After church in Indy the next day, it was the girls' turn-- we walked Broadripple before chatting a bit in a local coffee shop. Only Callum was able to join us on our excursion. Then we all joined up for pizza at Bazbeaux before heading off in our separate ways. The boys did great and loved it, although Aiden sorely missed his usual long naps (and was cranky because of it), and poor Callum was just down-right exhausted from the breezy Saturday afternoon!

An extra bonus was getting to spend Friday night with Morgan and Kyra for a game of Dixit, along with popcorn and blueberry malt shakes (where the two guys stayed awake and caught up with each other until 4am-- thank goodness Kyra and I didn't wait up)!

 So this picture cracks Joel and I up, because Aiden wanted his applesauce (which we wouldn't give him until he ate his chicken), but had drank his lemonade up so fast that he had nothing left when he went to eat his chicken. Poor kid had a mouth full of chicken for probably at least 10 minutes, but couldn't get it swallowed because it had gotten dry in his mouth. We ended up just letting him have his applesauce to help wash down the chicken :)

As for dinner, what does grilled chicken nuggets + applesauce + lemonade = ???

Chick-fil-A :)

You know your husband loves you when he scouts out ahead of time the nearest Chick-fil-A in our route to Muncie, and is not discouraged when he finds out that it is in a mall food court, parks in the wrong area and has to trek it across the mall with our orders, and finally we are driving away and on the other side of the mall is a brand new unattached Chick-fil-A store (that we could have done drive thru in about 1/4 of the time)!!

Yup. He loves me. :)

Gotta love it when these two get together...

 ... and look at surgical photos...

 Aiden didn't want to leave the elephants...

 

 All the children, minus the three Bahlers', four Schlipfs', two Virklers' and a Baner.
So really, I guess that means only 50% of the kids were in the picture :)

 Trying to float

Liam is already talking about how he misses everyone and can't wait to see them again. I haven't told him that the family weekend only comes once a year, poor guy! Luckily we get to hopefully see these couples again this winter!!

Callum- 3 Months

So somewhere along the line I skipped "one" and "two" months... but that is my life, and I figure if I can get the 3,6,9,12 milestones, that will be a great accomplishment! So here is Callum at 3 months...

Weight (home scale): 14.2 lbs
Height (sewing tape measure): 25.5 in

In a Nutshell:
~ He continues to impress everyone around with his hair, and although the back is starting to fall/wear out, the top is still extravagantly long- which should make quite a do soon.
~ Everyone also continues to remark about how smiley and happy he is. I feel like a broken record telling people how completely blessed we are with such a content baby (not that we wouldn't be blessed if he was colicky!)
~ A couple smiles/giggles inevitably leads to hiccups.
~ He graduated to 3-6 month clothes a couple of weeks ago. It probably would've been sooner, but I refused to pull them out, because I'm still in denial over my 85% (65% for weight) growth chart child when my other two were at 5% on the WHO charts. ...A little fun fact for the day: Callum weighs as much at 3 months that the other two weighed at 6 months...
~ Enjoys sitting on the couch (where his bottom sinks in, helping him to balance :), the bumbo, or snuggling in your arms.
~ Loves to chat with you, especially after he's done nursing
~ Still refuses to take a pacifier from me, but will often be found sucking on his fist or a finger or two
~ Created his own schedule of awake/sleep time, taking two 2-3 hour naps and sleeping uninterrupted for 8 hours.

One reason tummy time is pointless with this guy-- he is content just laying on his belly and rarely tries to pick up his head (the earlier shot was a rare moment for him, when he fell over sideways but then decided to look around!) 

 

Call us crazy-- You wouldn't be the first!

**WARNING: Lots of photos will be found in this post

-- more then usual ;)

We've had a couple of pretty packed weeks in our house! We came back from Barb's just in time for a party that evening with the Advocates. Joel was on call the next night, followed by the choir benefit dinner and performance for Woodhaven. That signaled the beginning of VBS week which ended with the picnic (see previous post). We already had lots of plans for this past weekend, but of course Daddy had to try to squeeze in some time at our downtown festival weekend for a ride, animal magic show and elephant ears! I told him there was no extra time, but he did find some (at the cost of a longer nap for the boys!) Friday afternoon with the older two. He's determined to be their favorite parent ;)

Saturday morning we hoped to get out early to arrive at noon for the Freidinger Fry in Valpo. Unfortunately, withVBS and everything else going on, as well as awful traffic (because of the festival parade and freeway shutdowns), we didn't make it there on time. We were actually pretty late (over an hour!). Yikes. Even worse, I left the camera in the car and didn't get any pictures. The boys had fun on the playground though, and quite often through the day, Liam is once again talking about how he misses Trae-- beginning when I told him to get to the car at the park, and he was 10ft in front of Trae and mentioned how he missed him already!

We headed over to Craig and Rachel's where we had a relaxing afternoon, and then had an evening of Chick-fil-A (my husband is always looking out for me! :), mojitos and euchre. We spent the next day at church in South Bend, followed by a drive to Holland to hit up the beach, dinner and tubing with the Alto Sunday School at Warren and Kay R's, and then spent the night with Howard and Kristen P. Monday we headed further north to Nate and Kathy K's cottage where we spent the day with the Widmers, before finally heading home.

You know it's bad, when we are leaving the cottage and Liam asks who's house we are going to go to next for the night...

Thankfully we have a few days "break" (besides dental appts and laundry!) before we do it again!


Craig and Rachel's:

Holland Beach, MI: 

Going to check out the pier and boats leaving the marina.

The closest Aiden would get to the water and waves... as you can tell, he's not thrilled already!

So while the older dug holes, swam, squirted, was tackled, and played with his father in Lake Michigan...

 

 

 

 ... the younger was perfectly content playing "musical chairs" with his baby brother at our little campsite and refused to even put his toes on the wet sand.

Warren and Kay's Picnic:

Howard and Kristen's:

The Knochel Cottage with the Widmers:

 

Lisa and I made fun of them riding the jetski together, so Joel figured he'd play along

An ambush waiting for the guys to get back from the jetski

 Tubing

 

Probably not the smartest thing for a couple of orthopods to try to do...

 Aiden thought Daryll looked a little too dry :)

He loved the hammock

Liam wanted to knee board soooo bad, but we told him he had to wait for a couple of years before he could do it with the boat. So he showed me he was big enough to not only use it as a knee board, but a boogie board and surfboard too!

Aiden wanted to share his hammock with his brother :)

Towards the very end, after the watercraft activity had died down, he finally overcame his fear and went in the water
(unless a near by boat created too many waves on the shoreline)