Hormones must be raging over here because Robert and I have both gotten teary eyed over missing our GCC family the last few days.

Thanks for the call Mike, email Ted and Millicent. We love you guys!

We were going to go to church today but (ready, Mom of the year moment here)....Hannah has a cold! Yup, my three week old. Apparently I wasn't quite strict enough on the hand washing rule when returning home from the world. So, we are keeping her upright when she sleeps, trying to help her breathe....which means no sleep for Mommy and Daddy. Good times. She is so cute though. She's chubbing up in her face and thighs....I'm hoping that means my face and thighs will hurry up and slim down. I'm ready to be done with the baby pudge for a while. I weighed a week after delivery and had lost 17 of the 22 pounds I put on with Hannah, so I really don't have alot to complain about. In other news, Hannahs belly button stump FINALLY fell off on Friday. Three weeks and one day, a record for my kiddos. I thought that thing would never come off. She's also starting to smile, so cute. It isn't often or predictable enough to catch in a pic yet, but hopefully soon.j

We went to an Apple Cider Festival in Horton OH yesterday. I was hoping for more, but it ended up just being a small town street fair. It was nice to get out of the house though. I wore Hannah in my Maya Sling the whole time and we got all kinds of attention. I forget that slings aren't really mainstream. Why, I don't know? They are the handiest things! We did buy some apple cider from the Lions club and some homemade ice cream from a big John Deere wagon sized ice cream maker. The drive there was GORGEOUS!!!! The leaves are just starting to turn colors here. I'll stop and take pics on our outing next weekend. It is so pretty. We drove thru an area we will consider buying in next year. Pretty pretty pretty. It is closer to Akron than Cleveland, which cracks me up.

Baby crying!

OH YEAH! Our highs don't get out of 60's next week.....lows in the 40's. It is getting chilly here. We all wore long sleeves comfortably yesterday.

If you need a good laugh, check this out. My friend Sandie posted about a conversation her husband had with their three year old daughter. Crack me up! So glad it wasn't me, lol!
http://spa.typepad.com/mamas/2008/09/the-big-v.html

I'm having a doozy of a time getting on here to update. Things are going really really well here, but I spend most of my time sitting nursing a baby. Very little time for the computer. Robert brings his laptop home for me in the evenings, which would be great, but Hannah cluster nurses all evening and then fusses for her "witching" hours before bedtime.

We did end up going out to dinner on our anniversary. We just went to Longhorn Steak House, since it is close we could escape home quickly if we needed to. Hannah was perfect adn slept the entire meal, and we had some surprisingly great food. A man came up and was oogling over Hannah and went to pull out his wallet, we were expecting to see pics of his grandkids, but instead he pulled out an origami elephant made from a dollar bill. He said that elephants bring good luck and gave it to us...isn't that sweet. It is a cool little guy. We had a great time!

I would say that I am about 95% recovered from this birth....and she isn't even three weeks old yet! WHOOP! I can't believe this. Now I know why all of you lovely GCC ladies don't seem to have quite as hard a time birthing babies every two years as I did before. This is awesome! I'd still be ok if we have a little larger break before the next one arrives, but if I don't have it, I won't go into a major depression this time. I feel so good! Exhausted, new baby and all, but really good. Of course, having Sarah here makes a HUGE difference as well. I have gotten tons more sleep than with Joshua and Leah combined. Hannah is a super star sleeper so far. She even sleeps for 4-6 hour stretches at night....it is awesome! Now we just have to get Robert some sleep and we'll all be doing great.

Robert, Hannah and I went to an Indians game on Sunday. Sifco had a luxury suite and so we decided to chance Hannah and I going. It was awesome! Good food, nice couches to nurse on and a private bathroom! I told Robert that it was the only way to watch a major league game.....he thanked the GM for ruining me, lol! I told him the only thing that would have made it better was if we were there with all GCC fams. Ted and David Young would have LOVED it! Awesome seats and no stairs to climb. Oh, and I'll just make a little mention of the PERFECT weather! I think we even won the game, I'm not positive because I sat inside and nursed and watched the Ryder cup for most of it. It was a great day, and Hannah was perfect again.

I'm lining out our October calendar. We are hoping to hit alot of the Amish harvest festivals and such. Should be fun! Of course, as I keep having to remind Sarah, all things a tentative with a new baby....you just never know how the nights will go or days for that matter.

I'm working on some more picture slide shows to get up, but first I have to go check on a sleeping baby.

Anyone want to do some surfing for me? I want to find some fun fall fastivals to go to around here....some Amish harvest festivals or something like that. Ready, go!

:-)

Hit Twice by Ike...wheee

Well, I wonder how many people can say they were hit twice by Ike....other than us? Yesterday we had winds gusting to almost 80 mph and I would guess sustained winds of 40-50 mph. It was pretty crazy. We lost power for about 9 hours, it came back on about 3 am this morning. There are still over 300,000 people in the Cleveland area without power. Pretty crazy stuff.

Today is our 7th anniversary. Won't be the hippest, hottest celebration we've ever had, lol! I think we are going to 'try' and go to dinner with Hannah. Not sure where yet. Also not sure if I'm even up to getting dressed to go out, we had a really really bad sleep night last night....oh yeah, and I don't have any clothes to wear, since I'm in the live in sweats phase of this whole process. We'll see what we feel up to when Robert gets home from work. No matter what, I am exponentially blessed in a beautiful marriage that God has graciously given us. Seriously, we know that God ordained our marriage and He has been faithful to grow and protect it. We seriously have never had a "bad" time in our marriage. Not to say that we never will, but 7 years of bliss is what we've had thus far. Thank you Jesus.

We are all here and doing good. Our house came thru Ike ok. Robert's parents evacuated there. We have large sections of our roof gone and parts of our fence down and apparently something happened to our back door because rain blew in threw it the whole storm, so it will need to be replaced, but all and all, not too bad. Thankfully we have lots of friends we can trust to help us get it all fixed correctly without us being there supervising. Still waiting on news for Robert's parents house. We think it didn't flood based on what we've found on the internet, but there are lots of trees down and such in their neighborhood. They can't go back until Tues at least.

In other news, yesterday our baby turned 4 years old. Can ya'll believe that? Joshua woke up and told me he wasn't 4 because he wasn't big and grown up, and we'd been telling him he'd be a big boy when he turned 4. So literal, lol! He is a big boy though. He's grown up so much. We all got up and went to Dunkin Donuts and he had his first donut ever. He couldn't finish it, too sweet....ha ha ha, my evil plan to sabotage his bad eating habits is working, ba ha ha ha ha.... After breakfast we went to Target to get his birthday present. First, we let him pick out his helmet and then his first big boy bicycle!!! He loves it and has ridden it all through the house. It rained for three days straight here, so he hasn't got to ride it for real outside yet, but hopefully he will today. Last night, the Tomec's came over and had birthday dessert with us. It was a great 4 year old birthday! I can't believe it has been and only has been 4 years. Seems like he's always been a part of us and other times, like he just got here yesterday. He's still our sweet boy and definitly takes after his Daddy in the overly sentimental side of things. He'll be a great Daddy someday, he's got a good example to watch. He loves his little sisters and is a happy boy.

I'll post pics later of our birthday bicycle boy and our sweet little Hannah, I'm sure Leah will sneak in there as well.

Introducing Hannah Cole

Please keep my family in your prayers. We have a big family get together every year over Labor Day weekend at our farm. One of my cousins was just killed on their way home in a wreck. She is younger than me, married and has small children. Her name was Laura and her husbands name is Vic.