Lilymei's Baptism...We are so blessed!

We had a great day on Sunday as we enjoyed Lilymei's Holy Baptism! It was a beautiful day on Guam and Lilymei was in a great mood. Father Theisen performed the mass along with the help of Nate and Drew as altar servers. Steve and Carleen, Lily's Godparents, joined our family in celebrating this sacrament and great day.

Here are a few pictures of Lilymei with her Godparents and Nate. The last picture is of the North Shore in Hawaii. I thought I did a good job on the photo, probably just the new camera.

We miss you all, thanks for looking.

Double Digits!!

Scott and I are in amazement. Not in the fact that we have 3 beautiful children. Not in the fact that we are so very blessed. What is amazing to us is that our 'baby boy' is 10 YEARS OLD. Drew was born 10 years ago Sunday, October 26th, at 5:37am. He was 16 days early and he hasn't slowed down once in the past 10 years. At birth, Drew was 21" long and weighed in at 7 pounds, 2.5 ounces. Now Drew is 4' 10" tall and weighs 83 pounds.

Drew was able to spend his birthday afternoon doing something he has wanted to do for a very long time.....play paintball. On Andersen a brand new paintball field opened up just about a month ago. Minimum age to play....10. How old is Drew now?....10! Scott, Drew, and Nate suited up in whatever long-sleeved, long pants old clothes they could find and headed out in the heat of the day for 2 hours of paintball fun in the sun. Lilymei and I stayed back in the air-conditioning, napping (Lily) or lesson planning (Jean). All 3 boys came back excited, exhausted, and extremely bruised! What a wonderful day ~ Drew said he didn't remember having that much fun in a long time.

After the boys all showered, again, Drew was chomping at the bit to open some birthday presents. Below, Drew is holding the movie he received from Gram. We have a rule in our house... you can't watch the movie if you haven't read the book yet. Every night, if possible, I try to read aloud to the boys. Right now, we are reading the 5th Harry Potter book. Looks like Drew will be able to watch his new movie as soon as we finish it.

For dinner Sunday night we took Drew out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Al Dente, located in the Hyatt Hotel, downtown Tumon. We invited Lilymei's godparents to join us. We had a nice dinner. Drew was able to eat his all-time favorite food ~ pizza from the brick oven. He was surprised with a double portion of chocolate cake for dessert, complete with candle and birthday singing.

Drew is such a wonderful, loving son and brother. We are so proud of him. Congratulations on your 10th birthday Drew! We love you!

Our new First Class Scout!

We had a busy weekend and now we have lots of news and photos to share. Even though I should be in bed sleeping by now I wanted to get Nate's update on the blog. Saturday evening was the BSA Court of Honor. Since the last Court of Honor Nate has earned 2 ranks; Second Class and First Class. Yippee! Nate has been working very hard to earn his ranks along with 4 more Merit Badges and we are so proud of him.

Andersen's Boy Scouts have unofficially adopted Lilymei as one of their own and she is the proud owner of a Pack 20/Troop 20 t-shirt with hot pink lettering. She loves it! She wore it Saturday night~ it was the cutest thing! She also clapped for each and every boy receiving their awards.

Lilymei with her Boy Scout/Cub Scout t-shirt on. Of course she wears a matching pink bow!

Nate receiving his recruiter patch from his Scout Leader, Tom. Way to go Nate!

Lilymei after our family photo shoot on Friday afternoon. I don't think she smiled for the photographer but she always smiles at home! Thank you Christine for the beautiful dress!

Check back soon....we have lots of photos to share from Sunday....Drew's 10th birthday and Lilymei's baptism.

Can we exhale yet?

"I love these apricots Mom! Can I have some more?"

Where has the week gone? It seems like I just unpacked the suitcases.....oh yeah....I just did! Actually, I haven't even put the suitcases away yet, but in my defense, in order to do that I have to pull off our mattress and box spring and gently place those large suitcases under the bed frame. I can't wait until we have a "little" bit more room.

On the bright side Lilymei has had a couple more "firsts" this week:

• She will no longer lay nicely when I am changing her diaper. She squirms like crazy!


• She will attempt to stand on her head like her loving brother Drew taught her to!


• She will show her "frown" or "smile" face on demand! Too cute if I do say so myself.


• She will "Patty Cake" all the hand motions over and over and she is learning "Itsy Bitsy Spider" now too.

and last of all but most exciting......

• Lily can stand alone and she took 5 steps all by herself!!! She is so proud of herself as are we. It won't be long now before she is running~I know....look out.

Tomorrow we are having a family photo taken. Poor Lily is suffering from her first cold (with us) and Drew has some sort of impetigo on his chin. I wonder if we can have all of our faults airbrushed out of the picture. Maybe I should reschedule but I just wanted to have it done on base and not have to drive "all the way down town" to have it done. We'll wing it and see what happens.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I took Lilymei to the pediatrician the day after we arrived home from Hawaii to have her spots looked at. Even though the spots were healing up nicely I just wanted another set of eyes to take a peek at them. Lilymei's doctor feels that she did indeed have a mild case of the chicken pox. At least she had them before Halloween. I would hate to think of how many more children would have been exposed had those spots come out 3 weeks later!