Today for church, I dressed Aaron and Evan in matching clothes. Since they were looking so cute, I snapped a few pictures after church!!
As you can tell, Evan wasn't too happy without that binky! :)
Weston and Brian wore these matching shirts when they were younger too. I must say that my 2 little guys looked awfully cute today!!!!
Today after school, we went to Chuck-E-Cheese with our good friends from school for a lot of fun. It was really in celebration for Brian's birthday. (Yes, I realize that his birthday was 2 months ago and yes, I am a lame mom for not getting to this sooner. I keep telling myself better late than never to make myself feel better about it! :O) Anyway, we had a fantastic time together. Brian and Christian are in the same class this year. Him mom, Kim, and I became friends last year when we went to pick up our kids from school, and we were so excited when Brian and Christian were in the same class this year. 4 pm was the perfect time to go to chuck-e-cheese. We had the place to ourselves practically! 
The bigger boys went off and played together for most of the time. Brian, Weston, and Christian had lots of fun playing all the different games together.
Amber thought that this new Kentucky Derby horse game was the best! I would say that she rode this horse at least 20 times. She loved how it went up and down!!! Good thing there weren't many other people around because she pretty well hogged this ride. Luckily, Barth was able to get off of work early to be there with us all. It was nice to have an extra set of hands and Brian was so happy that he could come.
More of the boys playing air hockey.
Here are Aaron and Lexington playing a game of apple munching. Lexington is a year younger than Aaron, but she and Aaron and Amber have a great time playing together!!
At the end of the evening, when it was getting crowded, we sang Happy Birthday to Brian and had some yummy cupcakes! This is everyone except for Amber and Evan. Kim's other 2 kids here are Kennedy (the older girl) and Gentry. 
We all had a fabulous time (and used a TON of hand sanitizer in hopes that we don't catch anything this time around!) with our friends and were glad that they were able to come with us for a fun time in honor of Brian!!!!
Our little Evan is growing like a weed!!! Yesterday I busted out the 6 to 9 month size clothes and they fit him perfect!!! I think that it is funny that he is still in a size 1 diaper and wears such big clothes. He just wants to shake things up and be different than the rest of my kids to keep me on my toes!! :) I love it! Here he is a yawning away!!
This is our little guy this morning just smiling away. He is happiest on the floor....that is why there are so many pictures of him on the floor. If I put him in his bouncer or swing, it is instant screaming!! So, until he likes those things better, you will just have to enjoy pictures of him on the floor!!
He does have a little bit of chub to his cheeks! He is not really skinny, just thinner than my usual chunky monkeys!!! He LOVES it when his siblings talk to him and entertain him!! And Brian....he loves to make Evan smile!!!
Check out how long he is!! And happy too! I love it when he is happy!! Evan is certainly getting so big! What a sweetie!!!!!! I love him to pieces!!!!!
A few nights ago, I got out my camera and the kids immediately wanted me to take pictures of them posing! I snapped away and thought that I would share a few of the pictures from that night!! Lets just say that there is never a dull moment over here!!! :D Gotta love the chocolate on Amber's face from some Halloween candy that she had for snack!
Aaron trying his best to look very scary like his big brothers!!
Gotta love Weston's green tongue from the Jello that he had with dinner! That, in and of itself, makes him look pretty scary I think!! :)
Brian was the one who started it all. He would tell me, "Take a picture of this!" and then run over after I took the picture to see how it turned out.
And Evan, he slept through all the fun!! I guess that he was too tired after the hour of screaming that he did while I fixed dinner. That is one of the downsides of being #5....your mom can't wait on you hand and foot and attend to your every need like she did with #1....there are other people to serve as well. On the upside, you always have someone to play with and look at and to entertain you!!! Just like any situation there are pluses and minuses. The trick is to focus on the upside I think. Or at least that is how I do things anyway!! :) I do love my little Evy. (said like Ev- eee) He is a sweet boy!!! as are all the rest of my sweet kids!
This afternoon we had Evan's 2 month appointment. He looked great and as usual, we decided to wait until the 4 month appointment to start his shots. I just like that better!! :) His stats today were as follows:
So, no wonder Evan seems so much thinner to me than my other kids did. They were usually just the opposite of this, short and fat!! :D with a big head!!!
I talked to the dr today about Evan's very bad reflux. They are starting him on Zantac and we will see if that will help him to be less fussy about it all. I also talked to him about the fact that he stops breathing when he spits a lot of times. He said that unless he was turning blue, it was okay. He also said that since his reflux was so severe, that they recommended sleeping him on his side or stomach (as long as his matress was very firm) all the time because sleeping him on his back could cause him to aspirate. So, all in all, he is doing well and growing! And he is cute as a button too I might add.....although I do believe that I am more than a little prejudice!!! :D
As you know, Aaron went back to the endocrinologist yesterday. This time he grew just over a half inch which still isn't up to snuff. A new concern that came up was that in the last 18 months that he has been seeing them, he hadn't gained any weight. And, as they put it, if you don't gain weight, you can't grow. :D So, to make sure that he is getting enough calories to make him grow, we were asked to keep a food diary over the next 3 days of everything that he eats. The dietitian will then review it. So, today was our first day of recording. You can see all that he ate today. I think that he ought to have more than enough calories to be helping him grow!!! :) We are still waiting on his x-ray and lab results to see what our next move will be. Our little Aaron is a pretty good eater I think. Whatever happens, we will be good with. Even if they can't explain his strange lack of growth, that is okay. There are advantages to being small!!!! :) What did you eat today?
.......that is has already been 2 months since Evan was born?!!!
Yeah, me neither!! Boy time is sure flying by. In some ways it seems like our little Evan from Heaven has been here forever, and in other ways, it seems like just yesterday he was being born!! Funny how time is, isn't it?
We do love our little Evan. We are happy that he is a part of our family. We are so lucky indeed!
I have been telling Aaron since before I had Evan that I would be doing a preschool with him at home this year. So, yesterday I finally decided to start on our little preschool. Aaron had a blast!! I printed out some sheets online that Annette, Angel and I had used when we did preschool with Weston, Kate and Maya! Aaron had so much fun practicing his upper and lower case A's. He did a fantastic job and can't wait until Wednesday when we will do "school like the bigger brothers" again!! :)
I also printed out a few pages for Amber to do as well. She is looking more and more grown up to me these days! I am so glad that I can stay home with my kids and do fun things like this with them!! As a side note, tomorrow is Aaron's endocrine appointment. I am anxious to see how he has grown these past 6 months.
Evan is quite smiley and coos all the time. This morning he was in a smiling mood so I thought that I would capture and post a few pictures for you to see! It is hard to believe that he will be 2 months old tomorrow!!! His well check in on Friday!
I sure do love my little Evan, even when he is crying!!! :) He is finally filling out a little more!
Because Barth has been out of town for the last 3 weeks in a row for the majority of the week (only home on the weekends, and hopefully home for a long while now), we left the pumpkin carving until the last minute! So, Saturday after the boys games, Barth and I set out to help the kids with the pumpkins! In years past, the kids wanted nothing to do with scraping out the pumpkins, but this year I was pleasantly surprised at the good job that they did!! I cut off the tops and they set to work.
Even Brian, who has a weaker stomach, did fantastic with cleaning it out. He has kind of a low tolerance for smells that he doesn't like, so I am particularly impressed that he cleaned out his entire pumpkin....with a little help from Daddy. After the kids had cleaned out as much as they could, Daddy finished scraping the pumpkins out.
Doesn't Brian look so big in this picture? He is in desperate need of a haircut!! :) Now that Barth is home, hopefully I can get it done since he will be available to hold our little fusser!!!! :D
I think that Aaron and Amber had the most fun of all! Amber was really focused on all those cool, slimy seeds!! She was a girl after my own heart!!!! :) Her tongue is out in this picture because she is concentrating so hard on her work! Aaron loved every minute of it too!!
I don't think that I have seen a finer bunch of pumpkin carvers!! After the pumpkins were all cleaned out and faces drawn, Barth did the actual carving of the pumpkins while I ran a few errands! That night we set them out along the walk to our front door for trick or treating. Barth took Weston, Brian, Aaron and Amber out trick-or-treating while I stayed home with Evan to pass out candy. It is amazing how being one house off the beaten path effects how many trick or treaters you have. Our next door neighbors whose house faces the main street got roughly 200 trick-or-treaters. Our house, which is one house in on the cul-de-sac, got maybe 30 and I even sat in the driveway to pass out the candy!! It was COLD that night but still a lot of fun!
And here are the finished spooky pumpkins that the kids carved. The carvers of the pumpkins here from L to R are: Weston, Brian, Amber and Aaron. They did a great job!!! It was a fun family activity!!!
Over the last few days the leaves have been falling like crazy! So this afternoon, after we got the boys from school, we decided to go out and have some fun in the leaves before the rain started back up again!! The kids had a grand time. :) Weston made Amber her own "recliner" in the leaves to relax in. He called for me to come and take some pictures, so I happily obliged!
Isn't it so pretty?! I decided after today that we need a few more rakes! :O And yes, Aaron is in his pajamas. He spent his morning throwing up, but was feeling a little bit better by the afternoon.
Brian was the one that started the whole raking business this afternoon!
Momma, I included this picture so that you could see that the maples that were red have lost most all of their leaves! About 90% of them were lost in the last 3 days!!!
Weston and Brian had TONS of fun throwing leaves at each other. As you can see, not all the leaves have changed yet. There are still quite a few trees with green leaves.
Aaron in his leaf pile!
Look closely, the boys are burying Aaron. He is sitting in that pile!! The boys had fun with this burying each other game that they came up with.
Once they were done with Aaron, they moved on to Brian.
Make this one big and look very closely....you can see Brian's hair if you really look hard!
Do you see Brian's hair? It was a really fun day in the leaves today. Isn't fall time fun?!!!
This past Sunday we had our traditional FHE Halloween party!! We did it on Sunday since Weston has basketball on Monday nights and I had parent teacher conferences after school. We had a lot of fun as usual. The kids have been excited about it for weeks!! :) After dinner, while I was cleaning up, the kids decorated bags for the pumpkin bowling. Weston and Brian really decorated theirs up with funny sayings on the back.
Here is Brian trying to give Amber tips on how to get the pumpkin bags knocked over!! I like to keep the bags and bowling ball in the hallway so that the kids can keep playing all week long!! :)
I think that if this was all that we did, the kids would have been happy. I must say that we didn't have as many activities as we have in years past, but that is just because I am too darn tired! That is just what happens when I have a new baby! :O
After that came bobbing for marshmallows! I thought that this was a cute picture of the kids. Evan was screaming his head off at this point and Barth was busy holding him.
Brian figured out how to pull the string down with his head so that he could gobble his marshmallow up and win the game!! Aaron and Amber decided that they should use their hands instead of just their mouths. I think that if they hadn't, we might have been there all night!! After that we decorated Halloween cupcakes for treats!! It was a lot of fun for everyone! I really do love traditions. They make things fun!!!
And here is Evan at the end of the night. He had fallen asleep and Barth had put him down, but he woke right back up!! But he certainly is a little cutie isn't he?!! 