How much can you squeeze into one trip?

I think we won that contest. We packed in a lot of events, visits with friends, meals, good talks, late night laughing, and more!

We feel like we went non-stop for 3 weeks in CA, with a quick trip back to Georgia squeezed in there. Here are a few pictures of our fun times...

Sadie turned 5! We had a birthday party for her in Lake Tahoe with all of the Fishbein side (we missed you Shane!)
After being in CA for a wedding, we hurried back to GA for Dave's graduation. It was great to have Dave's mom with us at graduation!

With being far away, it is always so special to go as a little family to the cemetery.

Dave and Chris got a chance to play the guitar a couple times and loved it! We loved listening to them play while the kids ran around the backyard at night. It felt like we were camping! The cousins had sooooooooooo much fun playing together.
Oops - I forgot to rotate this picture. Oh well, you can turn your head if you want to see it. When you turn 5, Grandma Shelly takes you on a "5-year-old-date" where you get to go to the mall to ride the carousel, pick candy from the candy train, pick something out at the bookstore, and then finish off the date with the treat of your choice! Sadie was a happy girl going off on her date!
We had so much fun in Lake Tahoe with my family! I think our favorite part was playing razzle-dazzle and the hand game at night when the kids were all in bed (don't know how they slept through our laughing and screams)! We loved going on Sean's home-made canoe in the lake.

It was so great to be at Jason and Krista's wedding and be with Dave's family. Uh...the highlight of this day was most definitely the photo booth with the sisters-in-law.
Lindsay - we LOVED being there for your baptism! What a special day that was for us.
It had been too long since we had seen the Wests...our good friends from dental school! We LOVED catching up, seeing Jeremy's new practice, and of course...enjoying Michiko's culinary expertise.

Missour-EE or Missour-UH?

That's what a pilot asked us as we were boarding the plane for Missouri. Which will you call it? Ashlyn decided that she will switch off. I haven't yet decided.

After three fun weeks of vacationing in California, we are now settling in to life in Missouri. Just a few quick snapshots from our first couple days in Missouri...

We think we have a little deer family that has made our backyard a home. Two days in a row, we have seen a mama deer with her two babies. We love watching them run across the yard and play in the trees.

On our first walk through the trees in the backyard, I looked back at Ash to find her slowly crouching to the ground to catch this baby frog.

Other than a swim at the little neighborhood pool, we have been cooped up in our house unpacking box after box. We have met some really nice neighbors, and have heard that there are about 30 young kids in our neighborhood.

Rolla looks much prettier with leaves covering the many trees here. I hardly recognized our house with all of the trees surrounding it when we pulled into the driveway.

Forced Fun

So we had another "forced fun" activity. All the residents went rafting at the Chatooga river in South Carolina. It was pretty fun...except for the helmets. I wasn't real thrilled about the helmets. Our raft was the 3rd years plus to 2nd years.I guess the helmet wasn't a horrible idea...but I still didn't like it.

Nate is on the go

Nate is so happy to be getting around these days on his own. He is just figuring out how to slowly crawl, but when he really needs to get somewhere, he scoots.

Sadie is trying to teach Nate how to ride her scooter. How did two of our kids get blue eyes when both of us have green?

The girls are showing off the hail they picked up from our yard. The other day we had the wildest storm. I was seriously worried for our roof as the hail pounded down so hard. A few were a little smaller than a golf ball...but most looked like marbles. It dumped buckets full of hail in about 5 minutes and then moved on and that was that. It was a very odd weather day here in Georgia.

Dave rescued this tortoise (and one other) as it was about to get hit on the road the other day. Ashlyn was having fun balancing money on its back.

Sadie loves to serenade anyone who will listen. She will usually make up a song about your birth and life. It's pretty entertaining. Nate was her audience this day so she was singing a song about Nate being born.

Nate will never know...

...the days of his daddy being in school. So we took this picture to prove it. This was at the Medical College of Georgia's graduation where Dave got his Master's in oral biology. Most of Ashlyn's pigtail was out by the time Nate was done pulling at it. Nate has 3 heads full of hair that he LOVES to get his hands on. Way to go Dave!

If you look carefully, you can see Dave's right cheek is a little puffy from a root coverage surgery he had done just 2 days before graduation. I think if you look close you might even be able to see a suture (not that you want to look close).

This picture sums up Mother's Day. The girls busily prepared my throne to sit in while they gave me presents. I think the highlight of Mother's Day was sitting in church with Nate tight in my arms, watching Ashlyn and Sadie beam at me during the primary's M-day songs. I think Sadie had trouble focusing on the songs because she was so busy smiling at me...and I loved it.
This sums up how we feel this week. Nate just finished his first avacado and LOVED it. He is so happy eating regular food again, although he is my most picky eater so far. As long as it is a banana, avacado or sweet potato, he's happy. We are also smiling because we have a contract on our house here! That "under contract" sticker slapped across our "for sale" sign is a beauty! We are relieved to be able to leave here without a house to still make payments on.

And last, but not least. Today was the big "Bookworm Party"!! A while back the girls wanted to do reading logs where they could earn things for reading a certain amount of books. So together we made a plan, but I let them pick the prizes they wanted to earn. Their big prize after reading their goal of books was to have a book party. I secretly hoped they would forget, because we sort of have a lot going on right now, but they didn't. So today was our party.
They invited just a few girls and had the best time. Ash and Sadie made bookmarks for everyone that we got laminated so they looked "professional". We played "book-walk" (like a cake-walk) and each time someone won, they got to pick from a pile of books we got from the bargain sales at Border's. We played "name that book" where I quoted a book (I did some homework ahead of time), and they had to say what book it came from.

For a snack, they made a "bookworm treat" with dirt dessert and bookworms hiding inside.

"Food, Glorious Food"

Nate went to the doctor this morning and got the ok to eat solid food again! I could hardly wait to feed him real food! As soon as we got home, I shoveled his favorite food, sweet potatoes, into his mouth as fast as I could. He loved it. I don't have a picture of it, because I was busy feeding him on my lap because we don't have the highchair out yet. But, I just had to let you all know (those of you who have been anxiously awaiting with us for Nate to be able to eat again)!!

Something I DO have a picture of...Smoothie Sadie


Yesterday I made our first summer smoothie (it's been in the 80s here and it is smoothie time). Sadie was up on the counter helping me. The blender was a little too full and I wanted to add a few more things, so I put a little bit in a tupperware to make more room in the blender. Well, Sadie wanted to do some of her own mixing, so she sort of put the tupperware lid on, but it wasn't tight. She started shaking full force and the smoothie went everywhere. You wouldn't believe how high berry smoothie flew in the kitchen, on the fridge, counter, walls. It was quite the mess. We all had a good laugh over it and had to take a picture. The girls were in their swim suits ready to take their smoothies outside and run in the sprinklers.

A week in the life of Nate...in the hospital

The girls went to the playroom down the hall and brought all sorts of noisy toys for Nate to play with. You can't tell in this picture, but he loved it.

The girls decorated a "celebration chair" for Nate with balloons tied to it, toys and books to celebrate his surgery being done!
Nate's face would light up when his sisters came to visit.

The boys got lots of snuggle time.

Nate's eyes were pretty puffy after the surgery (this was the next day). Sadie wore her pink glasses so I would recognize her when she came for a visit.
I love the look on Nate's face. It was a happy day when he got that awful NG tube taken out!

Any votes on who Nate looks like? To sum up what we think...a nurse came in and said "Nate and Sadie look exactly alike." About 1 minute later a guy walked in said "Nate and Ashlyn look exactly alike." I suppose he's a mix?