"we will not fear"

Another performance by Leah. This is her favorite song from our church's CD "Glory to Glory".

It's very moving. Don't you feel it??

Leah sings Popular

We gave the girls a little karaoke machine for Christmas and it has already gotten some serious use. Here is Leah singing another "Wicked" favorite, "Popular". At some point I'll get the whole set list from her.

yet another pregnancy update- 21 weeks

After 20 weeks (I am now 21) I feel pretty good. This pregnancy has been a little rougher than the twins were for some reason, with migraines, and morning sickness that seemed to continue forever, and 3 stomach viruses in a month. But I am finally getting some energy and I am guessing I will start to gain weight soon since I was still in the negative a week ago.

This one has been so different in that I can feel him so much more at this point than I could with the girls. I also have much stronger Braxton Hicks than I did this early, but I suppose it is because I know what it feels like. He was measuring big when I went in a few weeks ago but everything looked good.

We have yet to start the first thing with baby preparation. I am hesitant to get rid of the playroom and having 5 kids keeps us a bit busy. I figure we have time.

So I am looking forward to having a few good weeks!

Christmas 2011

I wish I had more pictures, but with my camera acting a little off I did not get too many.

I did take the girls to get their pictures made with Santa when he came to our neighborhood clubhouse. Hannah really did not want to see Santa. Leah, who had already sat on Santas lap at a festival we went to told this Santa that she didnt have to tell him what she wanted because she told the "other Santa" already. Oy.




Pictures or not, this was a Christmas to remember. We had the pleasure of giving a Christmas and most importantly teaching the true meaning of Christmas to our 3 foster children. We also really tried to instill some of this wisdom into the girls who now have a much better understanding of Jesus and God (though their questions of the Trinity tend to baffle us at times).

We spent a lot of time with family and the kids did get to see their mom on the 23rd and Christmas Eve so that was special. Providing Christmas gifts, and making sure all is even and everyone is happy with 5 kids is no easy task however. It has always been so easy, especially with having twins. Its always very even if not identical when it comes to buying and gift giving. I had some help from my wonderful coworkers from years ago at UAB who helped a lot with some of their gifts. We did the main ones.

This is a video of Santa's haul after he stopped by our house. It was the only way he could think of to organize things!




All the kids exclaimed it was their best Christmas ever. Good. Im exhausted :)

And the girls got their ever anticipated "Wicked" tickets, which we will all go see in February. Hannah loves her Elpheba doll. It was an interesting image of her carrying the green witch doll into church with her Christmas morning.


Best Christmas Present ever goes to Matt's parents who surprised us all with a change of plans to our upcoming Disney trip in October. We are now doing Disney World for a week and the Disney Cruise for a week! Pumped!

Mid year performance

Mid year performance a video by tigermatt on Flickr.

They are just too cute

Leahs "Walk"


Hannah's "Walk"


They are loving dance class. It is by far the highlight of their week

We are having a...

BOY!

We found out December 5th. I knew it all along :) Matt was so giddy when we found out that I had to laugh at him. I on the other hand am a bit nervous, but excited to start this new adventure.

We were still debating on names, but Leah decided on a favorite and started telling everyone, so he will officially be Noah James.

Ill get Matt to add the video on here asap

Defying Gravity

We saw "Wicked" a few weeks ago, and I came home and song by song showed the girls the play on YouTube. They quickly became hooked and are now begging to go see it. But we have been listening to the CD. Leah particularly likes "Defying Gravity"

Pregnancy update

The girls were so well documented because that was when my wonderful husband was blogging. I feel like this little one is getting jipped a bit.

But I am a little over 13 weeks and so far all is well with the pregnancy. I am having a hard time getting over this whole no ultrasound every visit (since I kind of liked that when we had the twins) but we did hear the heart beat yesterday and it was 157. I have had a lot of people try to predict boy or girl based on that. This is right where the girls were, but I know a lot of people who had boys with high heart rates. So we will see. We will actually find out on December 5th, which feels like Christmas is coming early!

I am still having sickness, which is frustrating. I gave myself a timeline and am passed it now, so I think I am more annoyed that I am at 13 weeks and still getting sick. I have lost almost 10 lbs, but I had a little more to start with this go around so no worries.

Matt has been AMAZING. I cannot explain how awesome my husband is, but God definitely gave me a wonderful partner. With 5 kids in the house (our 2 and 3 foster children) life is hectic, but he has held down the fort. He has helped clean, cook, and takes the kids to school every morning. Amazing.

The girls have really been sweet too. They love their little brother/sister so much already. They will randomy come up to me, lift up my shirt and kiss my belly.

Hannah, when I am changing or something will say "OH MOMMY!! You are getting Fatter!!!" Have to laugh at that one. Hannah is also my personal caretaker. When I am hanging over the toilet sick, she is ALWAYS in there to hold my hair back or pat my back. And really, when I am feeling very awful they will lay down with me and cause no trouble. So I am very thankful for my family.

AND I HOPE THIS SICKNESS PASSES SOON!

I THINK i felt the baby move last week. I know it is extremely early, but I have felt that feeling before and it is unmistakable. The tiny little flutters. I was sitting down and my jeans are getting a bit snug and I felt it for a while. I am looking forward to really feeling him/her, and being able to let the girls feel those kicks.

Thats all for now. More on december 5th!

Pregnancy can be scary

To a 4 year old.

This was a conversation between Hannah and my sister (Lala).

Lala: Are you excited about mommy having a baby in her tummy?
Hannah: Well, I want a little girl but I dont want mommy to get fat (did a hand motion of her belly growing)...Because then she will scare me and knock me down.


Thanks Hannah...

Leah's prayer

One night while the girls and I were lying in my bed watching a movie, Leah got really serious.

"Mommy? Can the baby hear?" (sure honey)
"can I pray for the baby?" (of course you can pray for the baby)
she folds her hands and closes her eyes, bowing her head over my stomach.
"Dear God, Thank you for the little baby in mommy's tummy. I love him so much. I cant wait to find out what it is when he falls out" (Hannah chimes in here with "pops out, not FALLS out"). And thank you for forgiving us when we throw up in our beds and for forgiving the baby when he throws up. Amen"

I would like to say I have no clue what she was talking about while referring to the throwing up, but I thought that was the sweetest thing ever.

Halloween 2011

This year's Halloween was really cute because the girls were SO excited about Trick or Treating. Leah immediately said she wanted to be Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Hannah and I went through 100 costumes online, perusing and debating until she too finally decided on Dorothy as well. So i had twin Dorothy's and they were precious.

Pictures with the neighborhood kiddos


And of course we went trick or treating with our favorite cousins :)

2 Dorothy's, "Octopus Prime", Superman/Batman, and Batman with no mask. Adorable :)

I would also like to add, even though I did not get a picture, that we carved 5 pumpkins. 5! we have 5 kids in the house, so 5 it was. Two tinkerbells, Lightning McQueen, Perry the Platypus, and Dora. My hands killed me, but this was Matts first time doing some carving with us :)

The girls turn 4!

We had a big birthday party this year at Pump It Up, and it was extra special because one of our foster children, the youngest, turned 5 a few days before the girls turned 4. It was really nice not having the party at the house, even if it was more expensive. They all had a blast. I cant believe my babies are 4 years old.


This is the best group picture I could get. Ha

And it doesnt help that I kind of dropped my camera and it was acting a little unpredictable.

Each little girl wanted a different princess on their cake. I was too tired to do 3 cakes obviously, so I opted for a castle cake and put all the princesses around it. My cakes arent turning out as well as I would like since I got pregnant because my hands hurt, but they were thrilled.



Even Daddy had fun!



So its official. They arent babies anymore.

Should I change the name of my blog?

Mccaytwins+1? That's right. After 4 years of swearing we were completely done having children after we had our sweet angels, we are expecting. We are thrilled and I do feel like the girls will be at a great age. They are already hugging and kissing my belly.

I am around 7 weeks and so far I am feeling pretty good most of the time. I am nauseated a lot, sick frequently and very tired but I guess that's just how my body handles pregnancy ( I thought I could blame it on the twin thing last time and I would not be sick at all this time). Matt as usual has been a huge help with the 5 kids currently living here :)

I love that I have absolutely no preference for gender this time and cannot wait until May 9th 2012!! Who'd have thought???

Our trip to California

Matt had a conference in San Francisco this past weekend and I got to tag along. It was a great time to get some much needed rest and see my nephews, friends, and bro and sis in law. Since Katy said pretty much everything I wanted to, and has pictures which I havent had time to pull off the camera yet, I am directing you to her blog. Thanks for the post, Katy!

Our Adventure in Fostering begins

Things have been a little crazy lately so I am behind in writing this blog, but we added 3 kids to our family overnight! That is mind boggling. Go ahead - try to imagine the same thing happening in your family. It is overwhelming, and scary, and humbling. But 2 weeks later, we have survived to tell the tale and all is going well.

Over labor day weekend, we got news of a possible placement for a 10 year old boy. No problem we thought. By the end of the weekend, we had taken him, his 6 year old brother, and 5 year old sister in. We had to do some major scrambling and with the help of some very generous friends and family, and the wonderful members of Clearwater Community Church we had enough clothes to get by and had changed our king bed to two twin beds.

Getting everything figured out for them to start back school, out of our zoning, took patience. Then the next week, the youngest was sick. But I think we have started to settle into a routine.

My girls are loving it so far, especially their new roomie. They all get along very well, and aside from having to tweak my time management skills I feel like Matt and I are a great team.

Many ups and downs face us, for that I am sure. But, I know we are doing Gods will, and that fels wonderful.

Pray for us and our family of 7!

Tingling feet and other stories

Tingling Feet (feet fell asleep)
Hannah- (crying) my feet are tingling!!!!
Leah- (calmly) my feet are tingling too, but I am not freaking out about it.

Taking orders
Hannah told me that I was the "order maker" (aka cashier?) she orders chicken and fries. I give her the invisible food and Leah yells "Hey! you forgot my diet coke in a medium cup!"

Playing Baby
The girls play mommy/baby a lot (A LOT!) swapping out who is the mommy and who is the baby. Somehow I got dragged into it one day and Hannah asked me to be the baby. I pretended to cry.
hannah: dont cry, honey. Mommy has to go to work!
Me: No! (Ive had some experience knowing what the proper reaction from my girls would be)
Hannah: I have to go to work. I am on call today. But if you dont cry Ill bring you a special treat!"

Think I have said this before?

follow up to "the stubborn child"

After Hannah bit her Daddy, and refused to apologize all day she decided to recap the incident later.

Hannah: "I pinched daddy"
Me: "you did?"
Hannah: "yes, remember? On his shoulder?"
Me: "you mean when you bit him last week?"
Hannah": "No, I didnt bite him. I pinched him. with my teeth."

Technicalities. Or denial...

Conversations: why leah's younger, auburn, and cousins

Some days I could sit back and listen to the girls talk all day with very little input. This was one of those days.
3 conversations stuck out in particular.

Convo 1: Leah's youngest-

(Random comment by leah- nothing even led up to this topic. )
Leah: mommy, Hannah came out of your tummy first.
Me: yes, so that makes her the oldest.
Leah: yeah, I was sleepy in there.
Me: oh really? Is that why you came out after her?
Leah: yeah, I waited a little while.

Convo 2: auburn

Hannah: mommy? Where are Brayden and Caroline? (neighbors)
Me: I think they are at Alabama Adventure (local theme park)
Hannah: ?!? You can't say that word!!!
Me: what word??
Hannah: Alabama!!!

( yup- where we come from any mention of Alabama is bad. I can't get her to distinguish between the state and football team. Well, war eagle )

Convo 3- cousins

Hannah: I sure do miss walker and Eli (cousins who recently moved). We can't see them because they don't live on earth anymore.
Me: they don't??? Where do they live??
Hannah: California.

The stubborn child

The age of 3 is a wonderful, trying age. It's the age of pushing limits and decision making and mood swings. I love it and would keep my girls this age for a lot longer if I could. And then there are days when their stubbornness shocks even me, a very stubborn woman who married an even more stubborn man. We joked that we were sure to parent the Mecca of Stubbornness by combining our gene pools. We did.

Hannah won the stubborn award for today, though it changes up. While hugging her daddy, she bit him. I don't know why. Made no sense. She wasn't upset or anything, more just playing around, but matt now has what looks like a hickie on his shoulder. Of course she got in trouble. And stayed in time out until we had to leave for dinner because she refused to apologize.

All we wanted was an apology. After dinner we went to tcby, her favorite. But we told her she couldn't have anything until she said she was sorry. She still refused. She sat herself at her own little table and Sulked while we ate our yogurt. We prompted her a million times and gave her one last chance. Nothing. She left with no ice cream.

It took her until she was about to go to bed. She finally said she was ready to say she was sorry. 4 hours later. Was it so hard?? Really???

A talk about Heaven

The other day I mentioned to the girls that I also had a Nana. (my mom is their Nana, her mom was my Nana who passed away about 7 years ago). They asked a lot of questions about where she was and I did my best to answer. I didn't realize how much they were listening until today.

Leah said to Mimi:

Mimi! Did you know mommy had a nana? But her body got tired and she was old so she died. And Jesus came down and scooped her Nana up and took her to heaven. And she gets to live with Him! And see heaven which is soooo beautiful and sparkly and has rainbows! "

I love my children's innocence. When we had had the conversation they were exclaiming how they wanted to see heaven and they wished it wasn't so far away. It was a great time to tell them about the Lord and loving Jesus.

Discipline can be hilarious

Leah came running out of the playroom crying that Hannah hit her. So immediately we brought said perpetrator out into the den for a talk. Hannah then told us that Leah hit her also. Leah was adament that she did not. Hannah was determined she did. Well someone was lying and we were going to get to the bottom of it. Leah started really defending her case, at which point I sensed the potential for it to get good and flipped on the video camera.

Daddy had to go out of town, and so he was gone when the girls got up from a little nap. They were not happy. I dealt with this for hours. TCBY helped.

A conversation about dance class... oy

I meant to post this a while back, but at least I write things down even if it takes a while to do the actual blog entry...

A typical conversation between Leah and I. I can't win.

(me) so Leah, are you excited about dance class tomorrow?

(L) yes! But I don't know any of the ballerinas' names.

(me) Well you can ask them their names...

(L)after we dance?

(me) Or before. You just say "hi! My name is Leah. What's yours?" ok? They won't know your name either

(L)Well... We'll just see if they know my name.

(me) No Leah. They won't know your name. You'll have to tell them.

(L) Well... I think they'll call me "Be-ah"

(me) Beah? Why would they call you beah?!?

(L) Because that's what they'll call me when I am bad or cry.

(me)Leah, you are not going to be bad or cry.

(L) Well, I may cry

(me) No, you are not going to cry.

(L) I may cry just a little.

(me)No, not at all.

(L) Well, maybe a little squeak then.

Playing in the rain

How fun is this? I remember these days.

Fun in the sand

What a good Daddy Matt is to let his wife and daughters put a mermaid fin on him. And the girls insisted on adding shells. Not every man would allow this. And of course then it was leahs turn!

Following in Mommy's footsteps

Or swim strokes I suppose. The girls this year have really done well in their swimming. Next year I hope to work on stroke development more. Leah has even learned how to dive with very little coaching from me. Since I used to be a swimmer and love the water, naturally I am proud,
These videos were from fourth of July weekend in destin.

Leah passed the swim test

Leah was extremely proud that she passed the swim test at our neighborhood pool. She told everyone she saw. And I will put in that Hannah could do it. She swims far enough but she refuses to actually take the test in the designated spot. The swim test is there to let kids swim in the deep ends by themselves (or in the shallow end without me within arms length. Well, she isnt allowed to swim in the deep end without me at age of 3, but shes happy nonetheless.

The girls start dance class (finally)

I have been hearing about them wanting to start dance class since they chickened out on a little "bring a friend" day last August, so I signed them up for a little 5 session class this summer. They loved it. LOVED. Especially Leah. They listened very well and got excited about going. Of course we picked out their leotards for class and Leah screamed at me that ballerinas dont wear leotards without fluffy tutus. So they got fluffy tutus. They were the only ones in the class with the fluffy tutus but they were happy.

At the end of the 5 classes they did a little dance for the parents and a princess walk. We had terrible spots to video them but leah is in the front in the hot pink and hannah, bless her, is in the back on the far end.




They are now signed up to start in the fall for the year.

Disney world

nevermind that I should have written this post in May. Its now July and I am finally getting around to it. Its been a busy summer!

We went to Disney in May and, now being members of the Disney Vacation Club we actually got to stay in Bay Lake Towers so we could walk to Magic Kingdom. It was fabulous. And we took advantage of that convenience. The first night we were there we were going to let the girls dictate when we left MK, and we got pictures with Mickey at 1:50am. They were angels and wanted to keep going.


This trip was all about the girls, being our very first family trip without my in laws (was not the same) so we saw every single princess except Pocohontas and Tink, plus the main characters.
. The girls just kept insisting we see more friends!


Matt was the Daddy who stood in line for 2.5 hours to see Repunzel while i took the girls to see some other characters. But it was worth the wait because the girls were in Heaven. And Hannah had a bit of a crush on Flynn Rider that was exposed at their encounter. Just look at that face! she couldnt decide who she liked better.

I figured I would let the pictures tell our trip. We had a wonderful time and can not wait to go back!

Almost summer fun

Anyone else which they were 3??

Spraying water on the trampoline while the cousins were over


homemade water slide


running in sprinklers

Not liking the car wash...

Beach bums

Our last day in Destin we hung out under the beautiful sun all day. We found large holes random beach goers had dug, and helped fill them back in against their will, saw dolphins, had other random beach goers want to take pictures of the girls because they were off the charts on the cuteness meter, got buried in the sand (them NOT me)and found yet another sandbar to play in (aka the fun water by Hannah). GREAT day. They were exhausted.

in the big hole

see the dolphin??

being cute

they are definitely my children

beach photo shoot

some favorites




and sometimes little girls must twirl while wearing twirly dresses

Out for Ice Cream

We do this a lot when in Destin. The girls take 5 years (using Hannah's time frame reference because to her, everything happened 5 years ago, or will happen 5 years from now) - anyway they take 5 years to pick out their ice cream flavors. And Hannah normally ends up with vanilla. Leah chose Mango this time - I was not a fan. I got coconut which was wonderful, and Hannah wanted to try it. She did not like it - as is obvious by her face.

Leah is so cute with her ice cream because whatever she gets she will eat tiny bite by tiny bite until it is completely gone. Precious stuff. She is such a sweets fan.