Hello Huck!

The kids were pleased to meet their new nephew Huckleberry John Ceccotti (Crickett's baby for those of you who don't know her new last name). He was a healthy boy born on April 26th and we were excited to be able to see him soon after delivery. The kids were amazing and stayed at the hospital with me awaiting his arrival ALL night. The girls even stayed awake ALL night- well, kind of; you can see that Lydia fell asleep sitting up in a chair only moments before they brought Huck to the nursery for us to see.

Anyways, they all love their cousin and he is quite the cutie-pie. We managed to get back up to the hospital a few times to see him which proved to be very eventful. Tornados were going through the area over the course of his first few days of life, so I had the pleasure of sitting in the hall at the hospital with the proud parents, little Huck and his Uncle Alex. Alex and I traveled back to the Tinney's house amidst fallen trees and lots of destruction, which was more fortunate than Crickett, Adam and Huck. They weren't able to get to their house after they were released from the hospital and even if they could, there was no power. So, instead they spent a week at Lolli's house before getting to go home to their own place (which thankfully had no damage from the storms).

Stay tuned for many new pictures of Huck!
The Proud Aunt Kimberly

Aloha Audrey!

(Before I begin, let me add that I can't find which computer and folder I put these pics in. So for now, enjoy the read, and hopefully I can find the pics to put up soon.)

We had some very good friends come through town a few weeks ago and we were so excited to see them. Jaime and her new baby Audrey were visiting from Hawaii. Some of you may remember Audrey's daddy, Rex, who was formerly in Scott's unit and had deployed with him back in 2006. Rex and Jaime are stationed in Hawaii, but currently Rex is serving overseas.

Audrey was just precious and as you can see from the pics, she seemed to think we were all a little crazy!! Ok, maybe not crazy but definitely overwhelming!! Anyways, thanks Jaime and Audrey for coming to see us. We are praying for her Daddy's safe return and we can't wait for you all to move back stateside!

The mom.

Easter in Augusta

Scott was training in Augusta this Easter, so we traveled there to spend it with him. Friday night before headed down there, we had a big Easter Egg hunt at our house with Mom and Jonathan, Matthew and Christina, and Kristen, Mo and Wesley. The Easter Bunny even visited and hid the eggs in the basement since it was kind of raining outside. Ella enjoyed the same egg for a long time, while the other kids hunted for the 60-70 eggs that were hidden. Lydia was pretty funny...there was a line of eggs on the floor and she would pick up one and say "I found an egg." move onto the next and say "I found an egg." over and over. It was pretty cute, but then she realilzed there was candy inside the egg and she took to eating that rather than continuing to hunt.

After finding what we thought was all the eggs (I have found several since Easter while cleaning up down there), we let the little kids go hide the emptied eggs in the backyard for the big kids to find. They thought this was great and took there job very seriously- we've been finding eggs in yard since Easter!

I once again managed to make the girls Easter dresses and I was very pleased with them. If we keep adding girls to the family I am going to have to start the sewing process about Christmas time since there are only so many late nights I can pull the week before Easter :) I also made them matching hairbows and I thought the girls looked very cute. I was pleased that the weather was warm this year so they could show off their dresses rather than have them covered with a cardigan or jacket.

We woke up at the hotel Easter morning and the kids were impressed that the Easter Bunny was able to get in and hide eggs for us. They enjoyed the candy, cookies and coloring books he left in their baskets and then we began to get ready for church. We dressed and went to a small service on base and then joined some of Scott's army buddies for lunch at Cheddar's. Our wait was kind of long, so the kids decided to sit on a rock and I ended up getting some great pictures. They were so cute all sitting together!!

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Riverwalk in downtown Augusta walking along the Savannah River and enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

We hope everyone else had a wonderful day celebrating that Jesus is ALIVE!

The mom.

Ella is 9 Months

Ella is 9 months old and it sure seems like she's been here all along. She just fits so perfectly in with the rest of us, it's hard to remember that last year, she was still just forming on the inside!!!

She is getting blonder and blonder each day and her eyes still remain brilliant blue. She is cruising everywhere and eats about anything we put in front of her. She wants to walk, but hasn't taken her first steps yet unless she is pushing something around.

Ella is the busiest baby we've ever had and she likes to constantly be on the move. She's not much for toys because playing with them would require her to be still for more than 30 seconds. She follows the kids around the house usually leaving a trail of books from the shelves, cat food from the container, and papers off the end table. She likes to clear tables, empty buckets and pull everything off the shelves.

At her check up, she was 17 pounds and 28.75inches. She is in the 10th and 75th %ile respectively pretty much making her long and lean!! The doctor said she looked great and she didn't even cry when they pricked her finger to check her iron levels!

Stay tuned for more posts soon!
The mom.

Hands-On History

Scott was training in Huntsville for 2 weeks in April. We had the pleasure of getting to go out there for a little over a week of his stay and we had a great time finding new things to do around town- anything to get out of the hotel during the day while Scott was at work.

We started by visiting the Visitor Center which ended up being very interesting. The ladies that worked there were really nice and showed the kids around some of the mini-exhibits they had there on loan from various local museums. She gave them stickers and all kinds of brochures about the things we were going to do that week. Most importantly, they issue coupons for 20% off many of the attractions in the area!

The kids and I met up with Gracen and her mommy, Crystal- some army friends of ours that we now regularly see while in Huntsville. We went to Sci-Quest one day and went to visit them in Fayetteville the next day.

Later that week we visited the Early Works Museum which is a hands-on history museum and the coolest place ever!!! I highly recommend it if you are visiting Huntsville and you have children under 12 or so. We started by visiting "The Backyard" which is a play area just for my kids' ages. They have a little town set up with things like a Grocery Store, Post Office, Barn, Treehouse and a water table. I think the children could have played here all day. Ella even enjoyed pushing the cart around and of course pulling all the things off the shelves. After "The Backyard" we took a trip down the Hall of Presidents where you could read facts about all the past presidents. We proceeded to the main part of the museum where you could learn about early life, architecture and work in the Americas. The kids got to dress up and even practice games the children used to play, see a one room cabin, and pretend to live the life we were studying. The museum also had an area where they showed toys dating back to the early 1800's and differnt building materials so the kids could construct their own things. There was a talking tree, a music exhibit playing jazz-style and patriotic songs, and an area to learn about early inventors. We left about an hour before lunch and I expected we would stay for no more than 2 hours---4 hours later we were starving, the place was about to close and I still had to drag the children out of there!! We will definitely be visiting it again whenever we are in Huntsville!!

All-in-all this was a great educational trip that also allowed us to stay and see Scott while he was training. We were fortunate to have great accomodations and plenty of things to keep us busy!

The mom.

School's Out for Summer...

Ok, well our school is not really out for summer, since we'll probably keep going through most of summer, but Co-op has officially ended for the year. So, in honor of that officailly being over, I thought I'd recap some of our school year.

This year we tried a new curriculum that I have recently given up on. The curriculum was neat in that it tried to tie in Scripture with all subjects- for example, when you are studying Noah and the Ark, you may also be studying rain, fisherman, or boat building. However, I felt that the curriculum was not complete and well written and I often resorted to doing unit style studies that I made up on my own. In particular we did unit studies on Volcanos and Caves.

We visited Cathedral Caverns back in January when leaving Huntsville. It's the second largest commercial cave in the US and it's not well-known by many local tourists. We were amazed at it's beauty and by the creativity that the lighting specialist used- you can see in two of the pictures that he used light to make it look like the cave went down forever when in fact it was a perfect reflection in a small pond. Visiting the cave was the perfect field trip to wrap up our cave unit, but also the perfect thing to do on a very cold day- the cave has a year round temperature of 63 degrees, making it the perfect way to forget how cold it was outside!

The kids and I attended a once a week homeschool cooperative this year at a local church. The co-op had about 80 families involved and allowed the kids to get together once per week with other homeschoolers. Harbin was in the Kindergarten class where they did unit studies and had PE. The girls were all in basic childcare although they often came home having learned about letters, shapes, etc. This semester Harbin studied the Human Body and they even put a cute skeleton together, adding different body systems each week. He learned about systems like the nervous, circulatory, and muscular system. It was so cute to listen to him talk about all he learned like he was a little pre-med student!

At the end of co-op they had an awards ceremony as well as a Georgraphy Fair. Families were given the opportunity to volunteer to do a presentation board on a state of their choosing. We ended up having about 35 states represented at the fair and our family chose to do Georgia (a good start for a Kindergardener I thought). Harbin really enjoyed planning out what would go on the board and where. He looked up and typed out all of the facts, but when it came to assembling the board, that was all Catherine. She spent lots of time carefully cutting out pictures from various brochures we'd gotten at the Visitor Center. She helped place them on the board and glue them down. All-in-all the board came out great and no one would have ever guessed a 4 and 6 year-old put it together, but they did and they loved it!

We started a new curriculum in April and it's going very well. It's much easier to stay on task since each subject's assignments are very well laid out and I am still able to add in my own fun as I wish! Harbin is really loving it because we read a lot of books and the girls are doing well integrating into it where appropriate. We will probably school through the summer just because the kiddos don't care and are still at an age where school is fun.

Enjoy the pics and stay tuned for bunch of posts coming your way. The last few months have been super busy, so I am hoping to have some catch up time here soon!

The mom.