Baby Belly

Well I never thought I would be posting another belly pic, but here it goes!

The pregnancy has gone really well so far! It's flying by and I can't believe that I'm already 16 weeks along. The first trimester was kinda rough with fatigue and nausea. At least it was only at night, so that I could function during the day and at work. I started feeling a lot better around 11 1/2 weeks and have started to get my energy back!!! We are really looking forward to finding out if we will have a boy or girl. Anderson and Aubree are convinced it's a girl. Daddy and Grayson say it's a boy! I am leaning more towards boy as well. Aubree still says she's putting her baby dress on the baby regardless of the gender! :) We will be telling what the gender is, but this time around unlike all of the other times we are keeping the name a total secret! We are kinda excited about being the only ones that will know the name. I think it will be really fun! I go to the doctor on Friday and then I can schedule my gender/anatomy scan!!! Let the countdown begin!

Christmas 2011

Christmas was wonderful! We shared the new baby news with my parents on the 23rd after I had my first ultrasound and they were super excited! A little shocked, but really excited for us! We did our little family thing with David, Bek and Keslynne and mom and dad. The kids got all kind of fun things from mattie, pappy, David, Bek and Kessie.

On Christmas Eve we met Brandon's family at a little State Park outside of Clinton for a Christmas Picnic. It wasn't the warmest, but it was fun. We had bbq and opened gifts! We all got some super fun stuff from Grammy, Papa, Uncle Mike and Aunt Brandy. We even went on a little nature hike. It was a much different way to spend Christmas with them.

Here's Grammy opening her calendar with baby's u/s picture in it. They were very excited for us as well!

After we spend Christmas Eve with my Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle and Cousins we headed back to Lake Wylie to get ready for the big man to come see us!

Here's daddy setting up the xbox! Snow white looks rather uncomfortable!

The sweet babies waiting to come down the stairs!

Grayson loved his Packers jersey!

Aubree opened all of her gifts with her helmet on! It's a dangerous job!

We even got to enjoy some of our gifts outside. It was a pretty nice day.

I'm Back!

Hi there blog world! It's been a long time! I thought I would jump back on the bandwagon since Brandon put our blog into books for me for Christmas. It's a motivator for me to get back in the swing of things. We have had a busy couple of months since I have updated. Teaching preschool is a lot more intense that I had imagined. It makes me super tired to keep up with that and all of the home things I have to get done. Who decided to build a house with all of these bathrooms anyway. Well, soon I will post Christmas pictures!

Lots of Changes Headed Our Way

It's been a while dear old blog!
Our summer has been CRAZY. At the beginning I thought it was going to drag, but boy did it ever go by fast. Anderson starts school two weeks from today! We've been busy with VBS for two weeks at the beginning of summer, lots of trips to Carowinds, riding bikes in the street (I love our little secluded neighborhood) and even a little weekend trip to Charleston with the Holby's. I've been crazy busy the last few weeks with Sew What Mommy. Our little venture has really taken off and right now people are in full "get ready for Fall" mode, which is great!

The Snyder Family is going to have a lot of changes come school time this year! Anderson will be starting the 1st grade and is really excited about it. He ended up in the same class as his best friend Kai! They are really excited about that! I think he will be glad to get back into school, routine and normalcy. The big changes come with Grayson, Aubree and myself.. yes me too!
Grayson got into the Pre-K program at Crowder's Creek which is a state supported Pre-K that starts a week later than regular school but has the same schedule as elementary school. I have my fingers crossed that 7:30 - 2:10 five days a week won't be too much for my little guy. I really feel like he will benefit from it though. He's always been my "challenging" one and the one who I didn't push to learn things too fast, because he gets frustrated. Although right after he broke his wrist this summer, he just started to bloom with handwriting and spelling. It amazed me that even with a cast on his right hand, out of the blue he began to write all of his letters (most the right way) with his left. He learned how to spell his name and loved to write it. He is a child that does things in his own time and does them well. I love that little guy. I'm praying that he will love his new school. It's just going to hard for me to drop off my 4 year old in line and watch him walk into that big school. At least he will have his big bro bro (as he still calls him).

Aubree and I are going to have an adventure of our own. I haven't really announced yet, but after 7 years of not officially having a "money paying" job, I now have one. I was offered a preschool teaching position at our Church/Grayson and Anderson's old preschool. I'm really excited about the opportunity to teach little ones again, although they are a lot smaller than my 4th graders were. Aubree will be going to the 3's class since she turns 3 at the end of August. She will be the baby which I'm a little nervous about, but I think she will love it! It makes me feel better that I will be there with her though if she needs me.

Brandon also continues with his MBA program after taking a few weeks off to enjoy the end of the summer. He's doing really well in it! He's a little straight A student so far.

So, this Fall shall be interesting with all of us schooling! Now off to enjoy the last two weeks before all of this starts to happen.

I love this Girly Girl!

I love this little girl! She's so much fun! I always wanted a little girl who loves clothes, dressing up and princesses! I took some pictures of her this morning in a new outfit that I made for her and she hammed it up for the camera. I just had to share them.

Trying to twirl

Only Grayson

Our little Grayson took after his mama... I'm very clumsy and he got the clumsy gene. On Wednesday evening we were outside and Grayson was on the playset, saw a tree limb, tried to swat it away and fell to the ground on his head, shoulder and then wrist. He was pretty scratched up on his head from the fall, and very scared. His little heart was beating out of his chest. We got him calmed down and tried to get him to move all of his limbs to see if they were all working properly. They seemed to be, but he was still saying he was hurting. We thought we would let him watch a cartoon to see if he could get his mind off of it. He did well during that and then we took him up for a shower. He was still upset but seemed to be getting better. After the shower he wanted some crackers, so we got some for him and when he pushed himself up from his seat with his right wrist, he cried out in pain. I quickly got him ready and took him to the Steele Creek ER. They are so great there. They got him in quick and brought the xray machine into the room for him. He has two buckle fractures in his right wrist. They put a splint on it and told us to call the orthopedic the next day. He got really upset when they put the splint on and in between tears said, "but we have bandaids at home."

He didn't like the splint and tried to take it off several times before his appt. at 1 the next day.The doctor said we had options on how to treat him. Since it was a fracture, we could do a velcro splint thing or cast him for three weeks... His next question was, "How rough is he..." and we both looked at each other and said, "Let's cast it." He is one rough little boy. He now has a beautiful red cast.

He's been a real trooper over the last week. The white part of the cast isn't so white anymore, but he is a 4 year old boy! Only Grayson!

Operation DWD

I've been doing it for 6 1/2 years non-stop. For several months two seperate times I was double teaming it!!! What was it? Diapers.... We are offically Done With Diapers!! My diaper duty started back in September 2004. I had never chaged a diaper before having Anderson. One quickly learns! Once I had Grayson in 2006 , I had two in diapers until March 2007 when I got Anderson trained. So then, I was only down to one! Aubree was born in 2008 and I had two in diapers again until April 2009. Then I was only down to one again!
I attempted to potty train her over Christmas break and that ended up with us both in tears and me needing a "chill pill." Needless to say I gave up and thought I would attempt again when she was more willing. She was my baby anyways, so why rush her right? She showed me some signs along the way, but no real, "I'm ready" signs, so I kept putting it off. We were so busy anyway, who has time to sit at home on the potty. I kept toying with the Spring Break idea, since I didn't have to shuttle kids back and forth to school. We were busy the first part of the week, so we opted for the second half to "try" it again. She was ready this time!!! It only took her a day to get the pee pee part down and only one or two big accidents to get the other part down. I was glad of that since I was leaving her with my mom just a few days after starting to train her. Mattie taught her how to use the big girl potty and even a potty out in public. She trained amazingly fast. She is even wearing panties at night now! She will scream if we attempt to put a diaper on her. I'm pretty proud of her for being so easy, once she was ready and I'm pretty proud of myself for potty training all of my kids. It's one of sthe most intimidating things about parenting, I think. Hooray for being Diaper Free!!!!!!!!