Tamina Lynn Swainston

Tamina Lynn Swainston joined our family Wednesday, July 25, 2012. She weighs 6 pounds 13 oz and is 18 inches long. We all love her very much and are so glad she is in our family. Elora and Taylan adore her. Taylan is very excited to be a big brother and loves to give his little sister kisses. Elora is excited to have a sister to play with now.

Summer Fun

Well, I thought I'd try to put up a post from the iPad for the first time, but I can't figure out how to post pics from my iPad. I have a cute pic of the kids playing in the pool, but I'll have to keep playing around and see if I can figure it out later. This summer has been fun, but not very eventful, yet. The kids and I have been enjoying time together and we have managed to keep somewhat busy. Tuesday mornings we go to story time at the library and Thursdays are picnic in the park. The kids loved going to the free school lunch that they offered during June, but it is now over. We are now just waiting for baby Tamina to make her appearance. Elora is keeping the countdown to her due date. We have 18 days left. I really hope it is sooner, but who knows. Both Elora and Taylan are very excited for their sister to come. They ask about her several times a day. I'm glad they are interested. They sure love to help out with their new little cousin Bryce. They like to hold him and help feed him bottles. I hope their excitement keeps up. Zach is working on finishing out the semester and his internship. It has been a lot of work for him, but he keeps working hard. He has a lot of projects and presentations coming up as well as several tests, so we wish him the best of luck. Well, my battery is about to die so I'm going to post this. We will try to put up pics of little Tamina when she comes.

Wonderful Happenings

It has been a long time since we've posted, but life keeps going on. It seems like just yesterday but we have been in our home for just over a year. It doesn't seem that long. We are loving it!!! The kids are growing and growing. Elora is always loving to learn and read. We can't believe it but she will be starting kindergarten in the fall. It is amazing how fast they grow. Taylan is growing as well. He loves cars and trucks and especially trains.
We are really excited to be expecting baby #3 in July. Taylan and Elora seem to be excited. Elora thinks the baby will be a girl because she said she can only draw baby girls. We will be happy with a boy or girl. Zach is doing his internship this semester and loving it. He will graduate in July about the same day as Lynnette is due to have the baby so we will see what ends up happening.
We are loving life and enjoying every moment of it. Sorry that there are no pictures but they will come later. Hope all is well!!!

Update

I decided that I needed to put up an update on things that are taking place in our lives.  This summer has been pretty busy.  At the end of the school year, our computer got a virus and we temporarily lost all of our pics, but we were very lucky and the computer tech guy at the school was able to find them for us.  So these are the pics that were on our camera before we had the crash.  I do have the other ones, but they are now on our external hard drive and we haven't sorted through them, yet.  We have 12 gb of random pics as well as our other ones, so that will be a later project.

 Elora has long been over mid-day naps, but once in a while she crashes in the evening as a result.  I thought that this was a pretty funny place to crash!

 Elora playing on our swing set with our neighbor Jeremy.  They are good friends and we will be very sad when they move. :(

 The kid's hand prints in our new driveway.

 This is our driveway before we had it done.

 This was our sidewalk.  We had it replaced as well.  We would get the most terrible puddles right in front of the stairs.  I don't think it will be a problem ever again! :)

 This pic was of a FHE lesson that we had.  We were talking about how important our ears are in helping us to obey, so we all made a pair of "Obey Ears".  Elora still remembers it because of how funny we looked.

 Elora on her birthday.

 Reading a story with Daddy.

Taylan's birthday.  I still can't believe the snow storm we had that day!  I was so annoyed!  Glad it's gone now! :)

 This is what has been taking up most of my time this summer!  We have squash (pumpkins, zucchini, and another kind that we haven't identified) in the back, corn, green beans, peas, carrots, beets, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  I can't believe how much it has grown since I took this picture!  It's sad to admit that the weeds have grown a lot as well, but such is life!

 These are the kid's new play toys that I bought at a neighbor lady's garage sale for $85.  They have been such a blessing in keeping the kids busy while I work in the garden.  The little house has two chairs inside it as well.

 I think that this pic is so funny!  We were downstairs at grandma's house when I found Taylan like this.  He said that he was putting on sunscreen! (We have some sunscreen sticks in the baby bag.)  It obviously wasn't sunscreen, but my lip gloss!

 Here is a pic of our new sidewalk.

 A different view of the sidewalk.  No more puddle at the bottom of the stairs! :)

Here is our new driveway!  We absolutely love it!  It is so much better than the old gravel. 

We went picking raspberries at Grandma's house the other day.  I couldn't believe how long it took and how many we got!  Elora and Taylan loved the idea, but didn't help for long.  I think that Taylan put a total of 3 berries in the bucket.  All the rest he picked went into his mouth!  He loves them!  We now have 3 buckets in our fridge that we need to make jam with.  Every time we open the fridge Taylan will come running over, force his way in, and start chomping down the raspberries as fast as he can.  Then, when we tell him that we need to close the fridge, he says,"one more"  over and over and keeps going until we pick him up and move him.  If we didn't keep our fridge locked, he would eat them all! He is such a funny kid!

Elora continues to show just how smart she is.  The other day I asked her to tell me the sounds that she could hear in the word frog and she managed to sound out the entire word and spell it for me!  This summer she has really gotten into rhyming words and is always telling me what words rhyme.  She does quite well with it. 

Well, I hope to post again with more details of the rest of the summer, so until then, enjoy!