Family Night 1/5/2015

Today was the first day back to school after Christmas break.  Everyone had wonderful days, but by the time family night came around, some people were tired.  

We did our lesson during dinner to try to speed things up.  Liam is often in bed by 6:30 now that he doesn't take a nap, and Enoch follows soon after at 7:00.  

Daddy gave the lesson.  It was on Drive.  He is reading a book called Drive and told the kids about how important it is to work hard at something you enjoy.

We sang scripture power for our song, and Shadrach gave the opening prayer.  He was very thoughtful.  We played Dixit for our game.  We love Dixit because you don't need to know how to read to play.  I love Dixit because I can often say things that are over the kids' heads and only Greg knows causing me to get a lot of points.  :)

Since people were tired, we only played to 15 points which made the happy people sad. :)

Liam loved the dessert.  Vanilla pudding mixed with cool whip over an Oreo cookie crust.  But not real oreos of coarse.  Aldi oreos.  I love Aldi. 

 Enoch was very disappointed that it was not his favorite dessert.   He had to leave for a while to cry upstairs.  He came back though to finish the game.

 Mom and Liam teamed up to play and turned out to be the winners.  

 Andrew didn't get any pudding dessert.  I am pretty sure he is allergic to milk but I am not ready yet to really check it out.  We will wait until he is 1 and hope by then that he has out grown it.  He instead got a baby granola bar all over him.  

My dog jumped off our two story porch!

                                      This picture was taken 5 min. before chewy jumped off our porch.

4th of July 2014

Andrew and siblings

The boys introduced Andrew to Skylanders.

Then Shadrach read him a book.

Andrew Craig Hamlin

Baby Andrew was born in Kentucky on June 25, 2014.   Greg's mom came a few days early to help out.  She stayed for almost ten days.  She was a great help and the kids loved having her around.  Every thing went really well with him.  He was born by c-section just as planned.  This doctor even let me see him right away.  The first four I didn't get to see for around 20 min.  I was really curious about what he would look like.  Ali, Enoch, and Liam all look very much a like when they were babies.  Shad was my lone wolf.  BUT Andrew looks like Shadrach.  It makes me happy inside.  Ten min. after he was born, I started to feel pain.  It is hard to describe.   I know it feels bad.  It is hard to breathe, and it makes me cry.  They tell me that it is because the spinal stops working or gets stuck.  It is awful.  I don't recommend it.  Lots of pain and 4 hours later this top picture was taken.  My face was swollen from crying so much.  He is a very sweet baby.  I love him to pieces.

Liam's third Birthday

Liam turned three 2 and half weeks after we moved.  He never seems to be wearing clothes on his birthday.....

Moving

So we moved.  6 weeks ago.  We know live Georgetown KY which is just a little North of Lexington KY.  It was crazy.  I hate moving.  I don't like doing new things, and when you move, everything you do is new.  However, I really tried to stay positive through out the whole thing.  I knew it was going to be stressful and I knew some unforeseen things would come up.  I tried to tell myself that over and over again while it was going on.  I tried to laugh a lot instead of crying when I felt overwhelmed.  I allowed myself to cry with my kids when they cried about missing their friends.  I told them it was ok to cry and be sad.  It is always hard to say good bye to friends.  Both Ali and Shadrach wrote me many notes expressing their feelings.  It made me happy that they were able to write about their emotions and express themselves so well.  Shadrach often wrote how he was "willy, willy, willy, willy sad" ( just because he is a genius, doesn't mean he spells well ).

My emotions have been hard for me to understand.  This move was easier than the first move.  I didn't feel like I was moving away from "home" this time.   So that was easier. I don't have anger like I did with the first move. However, we only lived in West Chester for 2 years and 1 month.  I finally felt like I had a few things figured out and then we decided to move. :(  I tried really hard to make friends in West Chester; however, I still wasn't super close to anyone by the time we decided to move.  Part of that is just me because I would rather hang out with Greg in the evening than friends.

Greg loves his new job.  It makes me really happy to see him be so successful.  I know it is important to him, and I know he likes how it feels to be the boss.  I am proud of him for working so hard, taking calculated risks, and providing so well for his family.  Funny thing is, I never thought my husband would be successful.  I thought he would be smart but under paid for how hard he worked.  I just always assumed money would be tight.  It is hard for me to deal with in a weird sort of way.


Oh yeah, baby boy Hamlin is due 6 weeks from today.  More on him later. :)