Welcome Baby Max

We welcomed Max Alan VanHorn on Monday December 12th at 8:20 am!

He weighed 6lb 10oz and was 18.5 inches long!

He is such a cutie and we are enjoying him so very much!  God has truly blessed us this Christmas season with an extra special gift!

 I love this picture because you can see how huge Barry's smile is!  

 Here he is!  So happy to meet our little boy!

 Three other people who were anxiously waiting to meet this little guy... his big sisters!  

 A pretty great Christmas present!

 Snoozin'.  He is really good at that right now!

Welcome to the family Max!

Making Room for Baby

One of things we needed to do before our precious gift arrived was to make room for him!  Molly and Baby Max are sharing a room.  I took a picture of the 'before' and a few of the 'after.  We have never had a newborn in with a "big" kid, so hopefully it will work out okay!  

 Molly's room getting ready for a new paint job!

After:

 A fresh coat of paint called 'cabbage green'.  We had to pull out some good colors for both a boy and girl out of Molly's pink teapot bedding.  I used blues and lime greens for Max's bedding to tie it all together :)

I am still adding some things to the walls so they look a  little bare right now.

 Max's side of the room :)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I hope you all had a wonderful day of thanks.  Here are the girls with their cute turkey shirts that Aunt Julie and Aunt Carmen made for them.  We got to spend a wonderful Thanksgiving Day with the Tweed Families. This family holds a special place in our hearts and it was so great to spend a whole day visiting and watching all the kids play together!

 Our girls and all the David and Melissa Tweed kiddos.

Molly, Iley, Abby, Sydney, Ian, Liam and Gracie.  

David and Melissa came up to see us last Monday and we enjoyed such a wonderful day with them and the kids just played hard all day!  

 Barry and Dave.  Friends since they were 11... enough said.

 

 Thanks for coming to visit us!  What  a great day we had!

Barry and I and... one of the very few pregnant pics you will see of me!  

We had a great Thanksgiving week, celebrating friends and family.  God has truly blessed us!

I hope your heart is happy and full of God's many blessings too!

Gracie and Julie

Gracie saved up all her birthday money so she could go pick out her own American Girl doll.  She chose the doll Julie from the 1970's era.  I think mostly she just loves that she has long blonde hair :)

 All of us girls outside the American Girl store after Gracie got her doll!

 We love this store!!  

Gracie turns 6!!

Gracie turned 6 on Oct 17th!  She took Krispy Kreme doughnuts to school for her snack!  She was really excited about that :)

 Showing off some of her gifts, new hat and gloves and a new purple soccer ball from Daddy!

 Gracie at her family birthday party... she always thinks she needs a princess crown!  

 Celebrating her birthday with a friend!

 Gracie's horse birthday cake made by Grammy!

Happy 6th Birthday Gracie!  Love you!

Soccer!!!!

Sydney and Gracie have both played soccer this fall.  This is Gracie's first year and she is loving it!  I thought I would post a few pictures of the girls playing!

Enjoy!

Gracie at one of her games!  She loves soccer!

Gracie taking a break.

Gracie and her first trophy!  She is so proud of that :)

Gracie's soccer team, The Green Ninjas!

I have no idea why Sydney's picture ended up at the end... but a good action shot nonetheless!

A New York State of Mind

I thought I better finally add something to my blog about my New York trip.  I had a great time and thankfully had lots of energy to keep up with all of our planned activities.  Maybe those who do read my blog have seen all the pictures on Facebook but I am putting some out here anyway.  

I got to have a girl trip with my sister, my mom and my aunt to go visit my cousin and do all the tourist-y New York things we could do :)

 Molly asked me who drives the plane so when we got off in NY, I asked the pilot if I could take a picture with him to show my girls!  He was so nice and I even got to sit in the cockpit!  I tried to document all kinds of things for the girls, from the plane I was on to the  type of tour bus we rode on to the boat we took our sight seeing cruise on.  It was fun taking all the pictures of things I thought they would enjoy.

 We got to enjoy some New York style pizza!  I could have eaten at least a slice a day while I was there!  So Yummy!

 One of Molly and Gracie's souvenir's was a wall hanging of their name done all fancy.  I had these done in Chinatown.  Sydney already has one, so i thought it would be cool if the other girls had one too.  It only took this guy about 10 minutes to do both of their names.

 Me at Rockefeller Center!  Sorry you have to look at me in the pic :)

 Checking out the huge binoculars at The Top of the Rock.  What a gorgeous view of the city!

 The Empire State Building!

 Another great view from The Top of the Rock.

 The Freedom Tower, now at Ground Zero.  Also now known as World Trade Center 1.  I couldn't get enough pictures of this, it is just beautiful!

 Me and my sis on our little tourist cruise, we had beautiful views of the city skylines and buildings from the water!  And of course, The Statue of Liberty in the background.

All of us on our nice cruise.  Even though my cousin lives in NY now he did a great job of being our tour guide and being a tourist right along with the rest of us!

This, of course, is the perfect end to my trip.  What was waiting for me when I got off the plane!  My wonderful family with homemade signs!  It was a great weekend but there is no place I would rather be than with Barry and my girls :)

Beach Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

First Day of School!

Here are the girls' first day of school pictures!  I think they were all really excited to get started!  I was ready to get back to our school schedule... and two weeks later we are still working on it :)

Sydney's first day of Fourth Grade!  I still can't believe I have a fourth grader!  

 Gracie's First day of Kindergarten.  She was so excited and is having a great time and loves her teacher!

 Molly started preschool this year, she goes three mornings a week and is loving having her "own school" to go to!

I hope your school year is off to a great start!  

It's Time for School!!!

School starts on Monday for Sydney and on Wednesday for Gracie!  I went school supply shopping for both of them this week and this is what I came home with!  I am pretty sure that this time of year is the only time you need to buy glue sticks in bulk.
Happy School Year!!!

It's true!  We are having a boy!  It might just turn this household upside down :)  So I guess that means I need to get busy and clean out a bunch of girl clothes to make room for some boy things!!  We are all very excited about this little boy and look forward to meeting him in December.