This year was interesting as far as weather goes. We had bought a bike and helmet from DI for Jason for his birthday, but it was so cold and rainy that we never really got a chance to give it to him on a sunny day when he could use it. Then the kids were gone for almost 3 weeks once the weather warmed up. (Thanks Katie and Cindy for watching them!) So, over a month after his actual birthday we finally were able to give Jason his birthday presents.

Here's Jason with a different bike, apparently when you buy a bike from DI you should check the air in the tires.

Emily enjoyed pushing Jason's bike around - the flat tires didn't hamper pushing, only riding.

Hershel's Mission Shower

Hershel got a mission call to serve in the North Carolina, Raleigh mission. The Clingers will throw the outgoing missionaries a shower to help them get all their supplies for their mission. We went to Hershel's even though Annie was less than two weeks old. Mark was working, so I got the kids ready, loaded them up and headed out, hoping and assuming that there would be help there if I needed it.

Here's 11 day old Annie, at her first party.

She's bored before it even begins...

The kids had a blast on Aunt Nila's swing set.

They didn't want to get off.

They fell off instead. Jason got off just after this picture, and then walked right into the double swing next to it - with Shelly and another cousin going full force. He had a good collision. Bruised the side of his torso, his arm, and took a good layer of skin off his temple.

Shelly had fun on the tramp - until others wanted to jump too

Flying hair!

She's jumping pretty high for a 5 year old who's never been on a tramp before.

Jason took a turn too, but he didn't last long.

Emily waited until everyone else was off and then hopped on. All by herself. Climbed up the ladder next to it, and got stuck trying to climb over the springs...

Grandpa was nice enough to keep an eye on her.

And help her bounce a bit too.

This is Hershel, the one the party was for. Unfortunately we didn't get to stay for the presents.

Jason fell off the swing again (the second time it was my fault. I was pushing him and pushed the swing right out from underneath him. Those are not the most sturdy swings around.)

And then Emily fell out of her swing. I was pushing her (again, sorta my fault), and she started slipping out of the safety swing. She slipped all the way out at the top of a swing (all the way forward) and did a back slap (is that a term?) on the edge of the pavement where it hit the grass. I tried to catch her - I was pushing her from the front - but only slowed her down. It's a good thing I did that much though, because her head would have (and did a little) hit right on the edge of the cement and we'd probably have been in the hospital with her if she'd hit that the way gravity wanted her to.

The kids were self destructing, (with a little help from their mother...) and it was time to go.

Happy Mission anyways Hershel!

Holding the Baby

There's something about a newborn that seems to trigger a 'hold-me' instinct in everyone nearby. And there's something about kids holding babies that triggers Grandma's desire to pull the camera out and start snapping pictures.

Ethan

Ahh! The light!!



Everyone wanted in the picture

Jason has gotten into this scrunch-up-my-face-into-an-unrecognizable-squinty-blob-and-say-'cheese' phase. It's great.

But we still love him

Shelly really likes Baby Annie

And is constantly asking to kiss her.

It's only a little bit awkward when I'm nursing...

Grandpa loves his grandbaby

And also the camera happy grandma.
It's a good thing too, or we could all be in trouble.


Aunt JB


Great-Grandma Schofield

Annie's First Videos

Here's some video from Annie's first few minutes.


Just hanging out


Crying


Pre-Bath


Bath Time


Washing her hair

We're Home!

And the kids are already fighting over who gets to hold the baby!




I love his cheesy grin!

Suzanne Elizabeth aka Annie (for now)

We've named her! Suzanne Elizabeth. We'll call her Annie.

Naming kids is always an adventure with us. We have a hard time naming a baby before we've seen it. Part of that comes from not knowing the sex of the baby, but even the one time we did know - it didn't help. So, we've given up naming kids before they're born. Even thinking of names doesn't really work. We're able to eliminate several, but that's about where it stops.

So, the night after the baby was born I was laying in bed thinking I wanted to call her Annie. I didn't want to name her that, just call her that - I'm not sure why. I like nicknames and how do you nickname a nickname? (That sentence sounds much stranger than I meant it to) I forgot about wanting to call her that by the next morning though and we went through our normal 'what do we call this thing?' routine. We had a few ideas, but all that really sounded right was to call her Sunshine. (Each of our kids have their own pet name. Shelly is Baby Doll, Jason is Mr Man, Emily is Munchkin, and now Annie is Sunshine)

We had been thinking that since the baby was born on Katie's birthday, it would be fun if they had a similarity in names as well. We couldn't use the nickname 'Sue' since Emmie Sue already had that one, so we dropped that idea. I still wanted to call her Annie, so we started looking at names that would nickname to Annie. None of them seemed quite right.

We had laughed at Robby's post on our family's page about traditional naming of kids. (Matt and Sabrina are expecting a boy, and they weren't going to follow tradition and name the baby 'Matt,' after the father. Robby said they could go with the other tradition of naming their baby 'Jason' since he is the only other grandson on that side - it was hilarious, but I'm horrible at re-telling stories). We had joked at the time about how we could go with tradition and name a baby Elizabeth and use Betty or Eliza as a nickname. (I do like that name, at least in part because of all the nickname possibilities - I do like me some good nicknames!)

Finally we realized that, while it was a stretch, Suzanne would nickname to Annie. So we toyed around with naming her Suzanne. It doubly fit since it's Katie's middle name. Then came the trouble of finding a middle name. We tried several different names, but the one that we thought sounded the best was Elizabeth. Since we had joked about it earlier it took us a while to decide if that was actually a smart thing to do. We finally decided to go with it, smart or not, we liked the way it sounded.

Once we had gotten Suzanne in our head, we thought that Annie really wasn't the best nickname from that. So we thought of calling her Suzie. Suzie Q for fun (Mark thought it would be fun to have an Emmie Sue and a Suzie Q). It was super cute in our heads, but somehow that didn't quite seem right. We went with that for a day or so, but it didn't stick. I still like the nickname, and might switch back and forth, but with Emily being so closely related to Sue in my head, it throws me off. Of course Emmie and Annie aren't exactly the least similar sounding names around either... One positive of sticking with Annie is that Emily can say Annie really well, and Suzie not at all - but that's just an added bonus.

Mud Pies

I'm not really sure on the timing of this, but apparently the kids got to have a birthday party, visit the hospital, and make mud pies all on the same day! I'm glad they had a good time while I recovered from labor. I would not have been able to entertain them nearly so well!

I both love and hate how dirty they get on the farm.
Love that they're having a blast and are building their immune system and are just plain being kids.
Hate cleaning it up...

But watching them makes all the clean up worth it.

Well, maybe not that clean up.
Painting the garage with mud?

Really?
Was that necessary?

Shelly is not even a little bit afraid of getting filthy.

It has made clean, unstained clothes that fit her hard to find in our house.

She's a girl after my own heart.
Except for the dirty part.

Swinging! A great, clean, thing to do!

Thanks Cordell for helping to keep at least one child clean for a few minutes!