Random pictures from fall

This has been one crazy busy fall season. I guess new babies will do that to you, huh? We have been adjusting to life with a newborn again, as well as shuttling the boys back and forth to school, not to mention way too many trips to doctors and dentists. Jorie has also been busy with Premier shows again and Mark is swamped with projects at work. We are doing good, though, we've just accepted that life is going to be crazy for a little while. I'm sure when Joel and Silas start both going to school all day we will look back on these days and realize these are the best times, the times when we get to spend so much time together with our boys.

Lately, we've really enjoyed having Uncle Jason, Aunt Roxanne, and cousin Annikah right down the street at Grandma's house. The boys have gotten in lots of cousin time, and Silas especially loves to play with his little friend Annikah.

First day of preschool for Silas!



Kissing cousin Claire

July & August pictures

Here's poor little Joshua with his I.V. and oxygen (and various monitors) in the hospital.


Joel drew this drawing of his 2 brothers on the nurse's message board in Josh's room. Silas is trying to make Joshua feel better by holding his hand and Josh is crying because he doesn't feel well.


Some more pics of our smiley little guy. He is getting pretty huge. At 7 weeks old, he is too big for anything in the 3 month size. Only 6 month clothes fit him.





We had great fun at the Iowa corn festival a couple weeks ago. The boys loved all the rides and games. Unfortunately, they were out of corn by the time we got there!

Joel's moment of fame

Having baby Joshua around has reminded me of when Joel was a baby and he shocked us all by doing this!



He appeared on both Oprah and Ellen in their amazing videos segments. How cool is that?

A beach in Iowa?!

I took last week off work so that Jorie could get adjusted to life with a newborn. Mostly this meant that I got to go off and play with Joel and Silas while Jorie stayed home and tried to take care of Joshua and squeeze in some precious sleep.

 

Monday we were hanging out with our neighbors, Adam and Kylie, and we thought it would be fun to to the local pool for family swim. Then we found out that's only available on Tues and Thurs, so we hit the beach instead! Palo beach that is, which is about 20 minutes northwest of here. I was impressed! For an Iowa beach, this place rocked. They had a large sandy beach, nice warm water with a sandy bottom, a concession stand where the kids all enjoyed some humungous popsicles and perfect weather.

 

Adam and Kylie brought their tube so the boys could float around in the water, but they spent most of their time building sand castles and rivers and pools. Adam and Kylie and I tried to get a cool shot of running full speed into the water. This is about the best we could do:

 

 

Dill boy #3 is here!

Welcome Joshua Mark, born at 4:49am on 7-8-09, at 9 lbs, 7 oz and 22 inches long. He's a big healthy boy! Here's the pictures!

This is the last belly shot, in the labor room, before all the action happens.

Silas's 3rd birthday (back in Feb - still catching up!)

Silas chose the Dinosaurs theme so here are the boys, decked out in Dino safari gear, ready for the party to start.

The food spread included dino-shaped PBJ sandwiches and dino-jello-jigglers.


We tried to keep it small, with six kids, but it was still totally nuts having six toddlers running around the house, causing mayhem. The big hit of the party was the dinosaur egg hunt in the basement with the lights out and glowsticks.

The cake from Sam's was incredible. The plastic dinosaurs roared and lit up when you pushed their heads.

Ready for presents!

Yes, I know it is March

So here are some pictures from Christmas time!

Joel was quite proud of this very impressive track he designed completely on his own.

Joel played the wise man in his preschool Christmas pageant.

His big line was "We'll follow the star!" His teacher said he was the best wise man they've ever had.

This picture is hilarious to me. Joel is 2nd from the left, having some kind of wardrobe malfunction.

Silas wanted to recreate his favorite Daddy picture from a previous blog post. Silas and I love being dramatic together!

Christmas morning is finally here! Yay!

Remember the pure unadulterated joy of being a kid on Christmas morning? One of the most fun things about parenting is getting to experience all of that again vicariously through your children.



Joel and Silas meet baby Claire for the first time!

Silas is truly adorable with Claire. He just loves babies so much, especially his little cousin. Yesterday, Claire visited for a while and then soon after she left, Silas was telling me, "Daddy, I'm missing baby Claire."