Time has flown-Happy Birthday Baby girl

It sure has been a while since I last posted on here. As I was sitting and looking over old photos of the girls it really did remind me how fast time goes by. That we should enjoy each and every day we are here on earth.

Anyways I thought I would share some old photos that I found of Maggie. I can't believe my baby girl is going to be three on August 8th.


This was Maggie's first day home after having surgery on her bottom. That dress was to be her dress that she was going to having her baby pictures taken in. That never happened but we did get this photo. I'm planning on getting it photoshopped so she will never know that she didn't get them like her sisters did.


Here Maggie was 6 weeks old. To us life was good and we thought our health stuff was over. If we only had known that it was just the beginning of life with VACTERL.


This was a cute picture of Maggie that I took.


In this picture Maggie was 4 months old. This was the day before she was admitted into the hospital. Little did we know she was extremely ill. Of course if you can't tell she was very underweight for 4 months old.

This was how we spent Maggie's 1st Christmas and that wasn't the only hospitalization she had. Just one of the few that I had my camera with me. That was a long Christmas because we spent 2 weeks hospitalized to find out she had kidney/urological problems.


Here is a picture of Maggie and her 1st birthday. Of course I think a few days after this she went in the hospital for being dehydrated. But we sure did have a fun time with her first birthday. I even made a homemade allergy free cake for her along with the frosting, and you know what? It was a good cake!


Here is a silly picture of Maggie. She was eating her "ice cream", actually sorbet and wasn't to happy it wasn't the real stuff.
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This was a cute picture of Maggie that I took.


This picture just cracks me up. Actually it was taken as part of a project Marilyn was working on for her American Explorers lapbook. She decided to dress her sisters up into tribal warriors and take some pictures to add in her book. I'll tell you we had fun dressing up and doing face painting. Even if it is during the summer time! LOL







And here is my baby girl now! She is going to be three in 10 days. Happy Birthday to you my Baby girl! I am so proud to be your mommy. You have taught me so much. I can definitely say I am blessed to have such beautiful and wonderful daughters. God has truely blessed me.

PineApple Upside Down Cupcakes

Everyone has heard of Pineapple Upside Down Cake. Well here is our mini version of this famous cake. Each month I get the magazine Family Fun magazine and they always have fun recipes and crafts.
Well we decided to give this recipe a try and we give it two thumbs up and a smile.

First we melted 6 tablespoons of butter with 1/2 cup of milk on the burner. That was Marilyn's job. After the butter has melted set the mixture aside and let it cool while you do the rest of this:
Next we took and cut each tablespoon of butter and cut them in half. Each half went into our muffin tin along with 1 Tablespoon of Brown Sugar on top.

That was Katie's job. She had fun doing this. After adding the brown sugar to the butter we took the muffin tin and slid it into our 350 degree oven just long enough for the butter to melt.
The next part was a little tricky. But it worked out alright. Taking pinapple slices(not chunks) we sliced them into quarter pieces. Taking the sliced pineapple we added two of them in each muffin tin and put a marachino cherry in the middle.



This was Hannah's job. Though it was a little tricky to do. Hannah did a wonderful job putting the pineapple and cherries in the muffin tins.
Last but not least was cake batter.
The dry mixture was 1 cup of flour, 1/4 salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder.Katie mixed this and we set it aside. Marilyn mixed the wet ingrediets , which were two eggs, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla and 3/4 cups of sugar.

After mixing these ingredients we added the wet mixture to the dry, mixing it until all of the dry mixture was absorbed. After doing this we added in the milk/butter mixture. Marilyn stirred this really well. Then my job was to evenly distribute the cake batter into each of the tins. I found that a soup ladle really did the trick when it came to this step.
Then we put it in the oven and waited for about 25 minutes. After being ever so patient we took the muffin tin out and then I took a cookie sheet, layered it with Reynolds Wrap and then flipped the muffin tin over and voila' Pinapple Upside Down Cupcakes:

Now if you have a non stick pan there is no need to take a knife and go around the cupcake to make sure it doesn't stick. If you don't you will need to add this step to make sure the cupcakes don't stick to the tin before you flip it over onto the cookie sheet.
After this step was done we let them cool for a while. Of course the girls just couldn't wait to give them a try, and give them a try they did.


And there you go everyone. Pinapple Upside Down Cupcakes.

Of course I don't want to forget one more picture. Hannah completed the first 40 lessons in Headsprout. She was very proud of herself and we were proud of her also.

Summer and Cheerleading Camp

We sure have had a wonderfully fun summer. This summer Marilyn made 1st runner up for Little Miss Corry. We couldn't be more proud of her that's for sure. I will set up the video from all of that as soon as I can. It takes a long time to download video on a computer. Hopefully someday that process can be sped up a bit.

This week(July-9.09)the girls finished up Cheerleading camp. This was the third year of cheerleading camp that has been set up at our high school. It began as a fundraiser to help costs for the cheerleaders and has grown to be a huge and popular program in our area. This is also Marilyn's third year and Katie's 2nd year. They truely have a lot of fun with this camp and its great exercise.
The one other thing I realized this year is that next year will be Marilyn's last year of the summer camp and last year of Vacation Bible Schools. I'll admit I feel a little lost as to what to do with her for when she enters 7th grade. Sniff. Sniff. I can't believe we are almost at this stage in her life already.


Summer sure is flying by fast. Before we know it fair time will be here and the start of another year of school. I have pretty much the stuff we need for our new school year. Marilyn and Katie will be homeschooled ,and I will continue with our K12 cyberschool with Hannah because it has worked so well for her. I am excited to be able to use the curriculum that I want to use for the girls this year that will work for them.

Maggie will join along and color in her Kumon workbooks. She loves to play games on the computer. I found a cute Fisher Price game that she can play. She likes it when Hannah 'plays' with her Headsprout so she feels she should do the same. Its so hard because Maggie wants to do everything her big sisters do, yet at the same time I just want to let her be my baby girl.

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VACTERL Conference 2009

Hello everyone. We had a wonderful time in Philidelphia. Other then the fact that we had a small stint of getting lost we had a wonderful time.
We met so many wonderful and amazing families, and their wonderful and amazing children.
Each of our children are just so unique that its truely possible to go to the conference and not find another child like our own.

We did take some video and some photos while we were there. I will say that I'm a little sad because some of my photos disappeard that I had taken. I'm not sure why or how. But what I do have is fun to see.

I am still working on the video of the conference and it will be made available really soon. I promise. Just a lot of work to edit stuff. LOL.

I can truely say that I miss everyone already. I knew that the conference would come soon and it went as fast as it came. We have met so many wonderful families online and at the conferences that our friendships will last a lifetime that is for sure. I really can't wait for the next one where ever it maybe.

Hope you enjoy the pictures I do have.

HeadSprout Reading

Hannah has steadily been making progress with using Headsprout. I am still very happy with the program, and am glad at seeing that Hannah is making progress with her reading now. I decided to video take Hannah reading her stories today. Hannah was very proud of herself and she loves to put her stickers on the chart to see how far she has gone with her reading. I paid for all 80 lessons so I am hoping that by doing the lessons everyday Hannah will be reading at a 2nd grade level by the start of the new school year.
I hope that everyone can hear Hannah reading. I accidently had the background microphone off on the camera and didn't know it.
Hope everyone enjoys:

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Summer Freebie

I'll admit even in the summer I enjoy a good freebie. . I'll admit without the brave pioneers of the couponing and freebie era I don't think I would find these awesome offers without them.
This summer freebie is for the preschool crowd. Not exactly educational in nature but fun none-the-less.
This freebee is from Fisher Price. I'll admit it takes a long time to get it in the mail. I haven't gotten the first one yet that I ordered some time ago, but it should be coming soon. They make great surprises in the mail that's for sure.
This is more of a boy DVD but I can imagine girls would enjoy it just as much. The name of it is GeoTrax.


Click the Link : GeoTrax to take you to the link and be sure to click the country on the upper right hand side to get started on the online order.

I suppose if you have a boy you would be familiar with this Fisher Price toy. Being a mom to four girls I am not familiar with it but I think Maggie and Hannah would like watching it.

This week is our last week of school until the fall. I of course will through in some school work on those days where its raining or if I hear "Mom, I'm bored". I'm excited though because this will be the first year I homeschool the girls on my own, using my own curriculum and not worrying so much about sending in tests and sample school work. We can enjoy our school year and use what works for us.

Summer Fun

I bet you thought I was going to tell you about the summer fun we've been having just by seeing the title of the post. Well I'm not. Just kidding.
Actually we have been having some summer fun. The girls have signed up for summer swim team and we are participating in a free program at the YMCA for swim and gym during the summer season. Can't pass up on free stuff that's for sure.

Actually Hannah and I made a Summer Fun shape book. I had taken some video of it before sending it out to her teacher for her end of the year assignment. We had fun reviewing some of the addition and subtraction facts that she learned this year by doing some cutting and pasting.
I thought I'd share it with everyone because it turned out really cute and also in hopes it spawns off some ideas for other on what to do during the summer if your taking a summer break.
Enjoy:

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com