Ainsley Marin is 1 year and almost 6 months old. Expanding her vocabulary each day and loves to sing too (la, la, la, la) for long periods at a time, and starting to tack on two words in a row.  Also liking "no" (too much!) and shaking her head to make and pointing he finger to make her point well known.  She loves freezer pops and is nearly strong enough to pull open the freezer door as she screams " more pop-pickle!".  Her language is really coming along, new words include "bebe" for her baby doll, "water" and "purple" (she says those perfectly!), but the sweetest sounds of all are still "mama" and "dada".  She's just starting to connect two words together "bya mama".  She's always going to the kid's closet in the foyer and grabbing her shoes, then taking them to one of us and pointing outside. She loves being outside these days, especially with the weather getting up to nearly 90 last week. But, she has a little aversion to grass and freaks out when she has to walk on it barefoot--while all three of the other kids love going barefoot (they always start out with their shoes on...but five minutes outside, then they're off).  She's picking flowers, especially the yellow dandelions (and we have a lot of those!) and giving them to Mommy.  Of course, now that spring has sprung, the kitchen is covered with cups of water and a variety of different flowers, weeds, grasses, etc. in those "vases".  She loves riding the scooter down the driveway and really speeds.  She's also a really quick runner and catches up to the others very quickly.  Ainsley definitely knows how to get attention. She's sweet as you can imagine, but when she wants you, she'll go up to one of the other kids and give them an oh so gentle push, then turn and smile.  She still targets Aidan and has been known to sneak up behind him when he's drawing and make her own mark or two on his artwork.  But, you can't stay mad at the little girl who gives the best kisses and hugs in the whole world!

Aidan Kane is 2 years and 11 months old going on 5.  He enjoyed the one very short morning we got to go to the lake down the road to fish and can't wait to go back. Now that the weather is nice, he's been outside with Daddy a lot continuing the fixin' on the house. Finally starting to get some paint up and get rid of that yucky yellow color and Aidan has been there every step of the way, with his tools, climbing ladders, nailing, etc.  The past few weeks Aidan has had this idea in his head that he's going to marry Mommy and several times a day, just out to the blue, he'll say to Mommy "will you marry me" and to Daddy "I'm goin' marry Mommy" and then proceeds to put up his dukes (like he's a fighting man).  He made a wedding ring out of tin foil (and a rocket ship and other crazy items as you'll see from the latest pics), and wears it around the house. It's very, very, cute (well Mommy thinks so anyway!), except when he gets mad at her (oh say...in he middle of a store when he's acting up...) and yells "Mommy, I'm not going to marry you!" and a number of on-lookers either look confused or burst burst out laughing.  Star Wars, Rockets, Space Ships, Outer Space...he's our little astronaut and continues to be very interested in space. His small area of the play room is beginning to grow larger and larger as he begins to get want to go from the unisex toys to the really boy toys.  He's very opinionated these days and will clearly let you know..."that's not fair!" and "Keeley and Kaelin did it....". He's got a great memory and will recall things from

Kaelin Avery is 4 years and 1 month old!  Horses, animals, horses, animals, horses, horses, horses.  What else can we say.  She is a crazy animal lover. We went to a wild animal farm for her birthday and she got to ride the ponies and a camel too, Nana made her a pony cake and our party hats were ponies.  We found another horse show on TV and now "Horseland" in addition to "Saddleclub" are her favorites. We've been stopping in pet stores almost on a weekly basis lately. Partly just to view, but also to let Kaelin play and to think about whether it's actually a road we want to go down (with any animal at this point in our hectic lives. She's cared for a nest of a few baby birds that fell out of a tree and a couple baby bunnies whose mommy dug a hole by the pool house and covered it with bunny fur. Kaelin was leaving carrots next to the babies every day and they would disappear (maybe from the chipmunks...).  Now that the warm weather is hear, she loves exploring nature outside, and catching lighting bugs and dragon flies (she recently rescued one that landed in the pool and couldn't get out--she lifted it up and kept it in her hand blowing on it until it's wings dried and it flew away).   Kaelin has always loved doing craft projects, but was never really into drawing until recently---just overnight she's gone from drawing things that weren't totally recognizable to creating mini-masterpieces and pages that come together as stories.  She's now interested in writing words and is constantly asking "how do you spell....".  She's not much of a "public" singer, but we often catch her signing tunes with such a pretty little voice.

Keeley Shea is 5 years and 5 months old.  Sorry to say that we are officially in Hannah Montana land with Keeley. One 23 minute show is what she's limited to, but we're not really sure she can understand even half of it at this age--too old for her, but she's convinced us since all of her other friends are watching and talking about it. Peer pressure has officially begun.  She wants to be a singer when she grows up but we keep reminding her that she should learn the music first and practice, practice, practice piano.  We often find her sitting at the keyboard with a pen and music pad, writing down the notes to songs she's made up (her favorites are what she's entitled "Bee", "Balloon", "Soft", and "Pretty").  She's even got Kaelin singing them with her when she plays them.  Every time we take a picture of one of the other kids, she tends to get upset and wants her picture taken more (you can see her model in the photos, that's her wanting to strike a pose, not us instructing!).   Soccer started again a few weeks ago and although it was off to a slow start with all the kids on the team being pretty lazy from a long winter, the last few games have been great. Keeley gets at least two goals a game and got 4 the last two games!  It's a coed team at this age, but she can still hold her own.  Keeley is really enjoying learning to read, has a couple favorite early reader books she can read from start to finish and now it takes three times as long to get through every other book because she insists on us pointing to each word as we go along (no more skimming or skipping to make a quick read at bedtime!).  Clothes are a big issue every morning with her as well (despite Mommy using the Mon-Friday closet organizer to put outfits in that everyone agrees to on Sunday night...). Keeley is a clothes horse and has a better sense of fashion than Mommy or Daddy, she hates wearing pants, so that will be a problem come winter again...

Sooo glad spring is really here! What a long winter.  We took the pool cover off last week and the kids have been averaging 4 hours in the pool daily. Thankfully the solar cover brought the water temp from a winter 61 degrees to a warm 80).  Jeff and Uncle Tony have been working on the house every weekend. Mommy's hoping that the painting will be done soon (or at least the three sides that the people can see!). We've been out and about a lot lately with tons of the kid's activities--preschool and pre-k graduations, class trips, soccer games, piano recital, and have Grandma and Grandpa's visit coming up and also Keeley and Kaelin's Ballet Recital and Gymnastics Show, and Aidan's 3rd Birthday.

Just for kicks....we are now paying about $84 dollars to fill up our minivan gas tank, our average weekly food bill is about $400 (of which we are paying $3.29 for a gallon of milk and we now go through 6 gallons a week!  That's two full shopping carts and two full refrigerators and freezers at home.  Stamps just went up to 42 cents, luckily we do everything on-line and rarely send mail...then again, with the cost of what the kids eat, who's worried about a 42 cent stamp!), $39 for a box of pampers diapers, luckily there's only one of you still in those because we go through those quickly, uh hem, Ainsley...), dinner out with the family at our favorite mexican restaurant - a very reasonable $80 (including a margarita or two for Daddy and fried ice-cream for the kiddos...okay and Mommy too).  Also, gotta love our monthly trip to Target for "just a few things" that turns into $400 of stuff ($350 of which we didn't really need!).