It's been a while...

A lot has changed since my last post on here, we bought a new house and now have been living in it for almost two months and the kids have finished school for the year and will be starting in a new one this fall. So far we love Valparaiso and all that it has to offer, the kids love the parks and the outdoor movies and Matt and I love that it is a quiet community with a lot to offer for families. We also like that the commute to Chicago is much less for him for work and me for school.

Ben finished 1st grade and he did very well despite some issues with his crazy teacher, I am hopeful that he will do just as well in the second grade in the Valparaiso schools this year.
Lily and Alex finished preschool in May and they both did extremely well there. Lily was ready for kindergarten before the first half of the school year was over, she is a very smart little girl and really loves to learn! She has been begging me to let her go back to school already :). Alexander also did very well in school, he is also ready for kindergarten in the fall, his teacher tested him at the end of the school year and said he more than passed what he needed to for kindergarten! However, he is only 4 so he will have to wait one more year, but he will attend one more year of preschool, he begged me to let him do summer preschool! Makes me so happy to see my children doing well in school!

As for Matt and I, things are still the same, he is still working at Bosch just in Illinois, and I am still finishing school. I am right on track to finish my degree around the end of this year.

So far this summer the kids and I have gone out and discovered some of the parks that Valparaiso has to offer as well as some new and interesting places to eat! This summer is flying by and soon my baby Ben will be 7! Cannot believe how fast the time has gone, seems like he was just this tiny blonde blue eyed chubby baby, and now he is a tall, skinny, blonde and blue eyed young man with a tender heart and a big smile that will just melt you!

Lily had an appointment yesterday with her Neurologist at Comers Children's in Chicago, she has been doing so well and has been seizure free for about a year, so they are going to slowly take her off the seizure medicine to see if it makes any changes with her. The thinking behind this is that she has finally outgrown the seizure disorder! I am hopeful that she has, it will lift so much worry off of my shoulders!

Nothing else is new, so I will leave you all with some cuteness!

Alex on his birthday, in a hat from school.

Lily all dressed up for preschool graduation.

Lily and Carleigh

Lily and Alex sleeping together on my mom's couch

Alex helping me make dinner 

Hope you enjoyed the cuteness! 

April :)

I really do suck at updating this!

So the last time I posted a blog was last march, a lot has happened in that time frame. First off we moved back to Indiana when the lease on our rental house in Illinois was up. We thought it was going to be a temporary move for a few weeks or a month as we had a house in Illinois under contract. We ended up having to back out of the house because the septic was not functioning and would need replaced immediately, and that was just more than we needed to take on. Now we have decided that we are going to buy in Indiana, just in the Valparaiso area, so we would be roughly an hour and 10 minutes from Matt's job and from my school. So the house search is on again ( well as soon as I hear back from the Realtor). As for what is new with the kids:
Benjamin finished kindergarten in Illinois and is now a first grader at Emmons. He is currently doing well in school and loves reading and math, but really dislikes to write anything that requires more than one or two sentences. They write stories in class at least once a week, so we hear from his teacher at least once a week about how she has to pretty much make him write more. He also enjoys correcting her and telling her what to do, which results in a note home several times a month. Aside from his little quirks, Ben loves school!

Lilyana started preschool this year at the First Presbyterian church school. She is excelling at school, her teacher told us at parent teacher conferences in October that Lily is more than ready to go to kindergarten now. She just turned 5 on December 18th, so it was not an option this year. She loves to sing and dance and draw and make confetti out of construction paper.  Lily loves school and would stay there all day if we let her.

Alexander also started preschool this year. He will go one more year of preschool since he is only going to be 4 this year. He is doing really well in school and has come out of his shell. He was very shy around others and was hesitant to participate at school at first, now he loves to participate in everything they do. This is sometimes a problem because his teacher told me at his conference that he does not want to miss a thing even when he goes to the bathroom, so he leaves the door open so he can hear everything and occasionally comes out with his pants off or down and needs to be reminded to put his pants on before he comes out of the bathroom.

Nothing much is new for Matt or I, he is still working in the same job at Bosch and is in Illinois a few days a week. I am still going to school in Illinois as well, I should be ready to graduate by the end of the year. Last but not least we got a puppy, we weren't planning on it, but kinda happened upon it because someone was abusing him and he needed a good home. He is a border collie and terrier mix.

well that is all for now, I will leave you all with some cuteness.

April

They were playing dress up one day after school and Alex found his parrot costume from last Halloween and decided to wear it. 

Posing in the hello kitty dress and my old watch that stopped working probably 10 years ago. 

Bath time, made sure its censored enough to not embarrass them later :) 

Alex took this one in the car one day, didn't even know he had my phone till I found this! 

Our sweet little puppy Wrigley

Being her silly self

Both Boys had to have spiky hair as Ben calls it. 

Alex loves his hair to be like Ben's

My goofy big boy!

I kinda suck at this!

Well I have not posted a new blog since November and it is now late march. I suck at keeping up with this more than I thought I would! To my defense for the last month I have been a little busy. I started back to school in February, so I'll be a little busier than normal for the next year and a half.
Well as for new things in life, best news is Alexander is potty trained! He is beyond proud of himself and only had a handful of accidents at the very beginning, but has been pretty good since then. Still hard to believe the little goober is going to be 3 very soon! He knows some of his alphabet in order, but he can tell you what every letter is, just cant recite them all from memory yet. He can count to 10, and knows a few of his colors, all the ones he doesn't know he just calls them green. :)

In his big boy undies :)

Riding his scooter

Fell asleep outside watching air planes

Benjamin is doing very well in school now. He reads everything that he possibly can and loves to leave me little notes everywhere. My favorites are the little "I love you Mommy" heart shaped notes he just randomly hands me. That little guy sure has a way to melt my heart, he also knows the quickest ways to push my buttons! He tells me that's what makes him Benjamin! He is going to play t-ball this spring, cannot wait to see him play! He also recently started riding his bike with no training wheels :)

Riding his bike with no training wheels

Ben and his best friend Nathan :)

Ben Being a goober. 

As for Lily, she is slowly learning how to ride her big girl bike now that it is warm again. She talks about going to school all the time, she will go to preschool this fall. She is a smart little thing, she knows her alphabet and her numbers, although after about 15 it gets sketchy! She also knows all her colors and has learned that she does not match when daddy picks out her outfit :).

Her friend Lauren did her hair.

riding her big girl bike

messy girl!

one of all 3 :

They are all growing so fast. Hopefully I can keep up the blog to keep track of their summer!

April

So... His hand is broken...

Well after Ben falling on his hand at school and it looking horrible. I had him looked at and the nurse said oh its just a sprain nothing to be concerned about. So she wrapped it and we went home. I noticed he was not using it like normal and he did eat his dinner and just wanted to go to bed, which is not like him at all. Then he was up crying most of Tuesday night so I called the doctors office on Wednesday morning and got him in 20 minutes later to be checked out again, this time by the doctor! Well as soon as she saw his hand and how you couldn't even see his knuckles anymore she immediately thought it was broken... So off we went to St. Alexius for x-rays! As soon as the tech took the first one she said she was sure it was broken. Well they read them right away and I saw them and of course it was broken. We went home and waited for the doctor to call to tell us the next move. Today we saw the orthopedist and he set and casted Ben's hand. Ben was a trooper through it all, he held still for them to do everything and only whimpered a little bit when they set his hand! His only issue was with the rules... No jumping off things, no running, no getting the cast wet, no shoving things down it to itch and no showers only baths! All but one of those he had objections to!

Its been a pretty eventful week, hoping this is the last week like this for a long while! So I will leave you with some pictures of Ben's hand, his x-rays and his cast.

Ben's hand the other day

Both of Ben's hands, you can see the left is quite a bit puffier than the right one :(


His x-ray, the break is all the way on the left on the bone that is under his pinkie just above his wrist. They call this a boxers fracture.




Ben's cast, he was thrilled to get to pick what color he wanted it to be :) He loves stars, so he picked this pattern!

April

Last few weeks and Halloween :)

It has been quite eventful around the Ward house the last few weeks! Between sick kids and school things for Ben and traveling back to Indiana, our weeks and weekends have been filled!
A couple weeks ago we found out that Alexander has asthma. We only discovered this because he had he flu mist and it gave him a pretty severe asthma attack :( He had to have breathing treatments every 4 hours and be on steroids for 5 days which made him angry baby! Now we know that he will no longer be able to get the mist, he will have to get the flu shot from now on :(
Yesterday Benjamin fell at school before he even went in and he hurt his hand, we thought it could be broken it was so ugly looking. So today we visited the doctor and they said that it is just really bruised and sprained. Thankfully no broken bones!
As of right now everyone in our house is finally healthy! I am hoping this will stay that way for quite a while!

Yesterday the kids went trick or treating with Matt and had a blast! Their first time out into our new neighborhood and everyone thought they were adorable and gave them a ton of candy! I got to stay home and hand out candy to all the cute little costumed kids and the occasional teenager who didn't put much effort into a costume!

I think that's about it for now. So I leave you with some Halloween photos :)


Lily's pumpkin


Alex's pumpkin

Ben's pumpkin

Alex carving his pumpkin :)

Ben carving his pumpkin, he really didn't get into it much, he didn't like touching pumpkin guts at all!

Lily loved carving hers! two arms deep, lol

my little parrot and Warrior :)

my warrior

my little Rapunzel with an attitude!

All 3 ready to go trick or treating with daddy!

he loved that I put candles in the pumpkins and lit them!

That's all the cuteness I have for now :) Until the next one!

April