Victoria’s 6th Birthday Party

Today we celebrated Victoria’s 6th Birthday party.  It was a lot of fun at the park on a beautiful day here in Wisconsin.  Here are some videos of the party.

Birthdays and a Broken Wrist

It has been a while since the last post. Very busy getting the house ready for sale, job interviewing, and planning our move from Wisconsin to Pittsburgh, PA. We are very excited to be making this move but it sure is a lot of work.

We celebrated Marion and Victoria’s birthdays on Sunday, along with Father’s Day. Yesterday, K-C hosted a going away picnic for Gabe and the family came for lunch. It was a great time but Victoria had a slip on one of the swings and ended up fracturing her right wrist. She has to wear a cast for 1 month. That is a bummer since that is her writing hand which makes everything more difficult. All in all she seems to be handling the whole thing pretty well today, but yesterday she was pretty aggrevated about the whole thing.

Gabe got a new mini video recorder for his birthday, so here are some videos of the kids.

Enjoy.

Rhys ~ 8 months old

It has been so long since I have been able to sit down and work on the blog.  I can’t wait for spring break.  I am hoping to catch up on blog entries and pictures.  I wanted to make sure that I got something on the site about Rhys (especially since I missed his 7 month update).  Rhys is getting so big and his personality is really starting to emerge.  He was 8 months last week (March 14th).  Just before the big day his two bottom teeth popped out.  We were quite surprised!  There was no real crankiness other than one night that he woke up crying.  For awhile Rhys had been trying so hard to crawl.  He could get up on all fours and rock back and forth but he could not seem to make any forward motion.  He frequently would go backward and get himself stuck in a corner.  That made him very angry.  Rhys did finally achieve forward movement sortly after he turned 8 months.  Now that he has the crawling thing figured out, he is venturing all over the house.  Crawling…a blessing  and a curse.  Obviously we are elated that he is developing as he should but having him mobile makes things a little more difficult around the house.  We have to close all doors and get the baby gate back out.  We also have to constantly remind Victoria and Ellie to pick up their toys.   Everythin on the floor goes straight into Rhys’ mouth.  He is also starting to get more vocal.  He will say, “mama” and “dada”.  His other fun trick is roaring.  He sounds just like a little lion cub.  We watch the animated movie, “Into the Wild” the other week and there was a little lion, Ryan, that was having trouble learning to roar.  It was so cute because we all thought that Ryan, the lion, sounded a lot like Rhys, the baby.  Rhys is quite a content little guy.  His face lights up when Gabe, the girls or I walk into a room and say his name.  He has the biggest, cutest smile!  The girls still fawn over him like he is a newborn.  They are awesome big sisters!!!!  Rhys’ food repetoire continues to increase.  He is now feeding himself crackers and cheerios.  He also enjoys eating most of his veggies and fruits.  His favorite food is oatmeal and bananas.  The other day Gabe snuck him some belgian waffle and Rhys was quite the fan.  I don’t blame him!  Here are some pics of Rhys!  

Gymnastics Superstar

Victoria started going to gymnastics in the fall.  She has loved every minute of it and tries to practice at home.  We have caught her flipping over the handles on the treadmill.  Even though we get to watch her every week while she is at class, the gym held a special performance.  Victoria was so excited that mom, dad, ellie and rhys would all be there to watch her routine.  They started out with a floor routine.  Victoria did a somersault, cartwheel and a handstand that she turned into a flip.  She is still working to perfect her cartwheel but she really looked great out there.  They also did a uneven bar routine and a balance bar routine.  I was so impressed with Victoria’s bar routine.  I didn’t realize how good she had gotten until she did a jump and landed back on the balance beam.  After all the kids were done, they each received a medal.  It was so cute.  Victoria was so proud of her accomplishments.  We were quite proud as well.  I am so happy that she is having a great time at gymnastics and has an activity that she can do outside of school.  The instructors said that they are going to start working with Victoria to perfect her cartwheel and work on harder routines in the other areas. Go Victoria!!!

Elizabeth Grace Maentz ~ 3 years old

I am a little late writing this but I still wanted to post something about Ellie’s birthday.  Elizabeth turned 3 years old on January 24th.  She was so excited that it was finally her birthday.  Our family calendar is a picture calendar and the month of the kids birthday has just pictures of the birthday kid.  So, when we turned the calendar to January, Ellie saw pictures from her birthday last year and she started singing happy birthday to herself.  Needless to say when the day finally rolled around she was pretty excited.  It is hard to believe that this amazing little gift came into our lives three years ago.  Ellie has been a blessing since her birth.  On her birthday, ellie proudly wore around her pink tutu, birthday girl sash and princess crown.  Ellie will tell you that she is three years old and try to hold up three fingers but that is kind of tricky so it looks more like 5.  We celebrated Ellie’s birthday with her godparents and their kids….just a small party.  Everything was pink as requested by Ellie.  In November when i worked the bookfair at Victoria’s school, ellie found a book entitled pinkalicious written by sisters named Victoria and Elizabeth.  The story is about a little girl who turns pink after eating too many pink cupcakes.  ellie thought this was fantastic.  She decided right then that she wanted a pink birthday party with pink cupcakes.  Thanks to my wonderful friend, Carrie, we made that happen.  She had a pink cake with a flower drawn on it and then 10 pink cupcakes surrounding the cake.  It was definitely very pinkalicious!!!!  Although our family lives far away and were not able to be hear for Ellie’s party, they sent gifts and called.  Ellie was so excited to talk to Papa, Grandma Mary and her aunties.  She knew it was her special day and I am so happy that she enjoyed it!

My Ellie ~  

1.  Ellie is so much fun.  She sings, laughs, and dances.  Her sense of rhythm is unbelievable.  You put a song on and immediately she is dancing right in time to that song.  She can be heard all throughout the house singing.  Even though she has a tantrum here and there, she is typically a very happy little kid. She loves to laugh and make other people laugh especially her brother. 

2.  She is an amazing sister.  She loves Rhys so much that sometimes she hugs him just a little too tight.  She is always worried about Victoria and Rhys and wants to make sure we know where everyone is.  Just recently she did the sweetest thing…gave money to Victoria to help pay for the dinner that Victoria had promised to pay for. 

4.  She is quite the little runner.  Typically if Ellie wants to go somewhere she runs there.  The cutest sight is sitting in choir on Wednesday nights.  Ellie comes running down the church aisle to say good-bye to me.  She runs so fast the choir members get nervous she is going to fall.  She doesn’t, though.  

5.  She is a very sensitive little girl.  She loves to hug and cuddle especially in the morning.  She loves to be right where everyone is.  It is very rare for her to be off playing by herself unless of course she is getting into micheif (usually involving make-up)

Ellie is a little sweetheart.  I am so truly blessed to have such a beautiful daughter!!!

No Money for the Windy City

This weekend Marion went with the church youth group to their annual winter retreat about 2 hours away.  She took Rhys with her and I got to spend some good time with the girls.  On Friday night, Victoria wanted to treat Ellie and I to dinner at a place in town called The Windy City, that specializes in Chicago cuisine - Italian Beef, Chicago Hot Dogs, etc..  This is something she has been talking about ever since she got some money for Christmas because she knows that I like that kind of food and thought it would be special to go to dinner there.  Victoria is tremedously gracious, and when Marion first told me that this is what she wanted to do with part of her Christmas money, I was very touched.

So the date was set.  Victoria had been talking about going all day long, and now that it was dinner time and we were in route to go to the Windy City.  We first ran a few errands and then quick went home to get her money out of her big bucket.  You see, a few weeks ago, each of the kids got a big plastic bucket to put all of their money in.  We got this idea from financial motivational speaker and counsler, Dave Ramsey, as a way to get kids excited about saving money - the clear plastic bucket helps them visualize what saving money looks like (and what spending money looks like too).  Victoria got out of the car and quick ran up to her room to get the money out of her bucket.  The only problem we found was that when she got there, no money was to be found.  She was confused.  What had happened to her money?

I finally reached the conculsion that her money must have been used for another gift that she wanted - an electric massager.  You see this was another gift that Victoria really wanted, and Marion bought it on Amazon a few days ago and must have went to get the money out of Victoria’s bucket to pay for it.  Needless to say this put Dad into a unique situation.  She had been only talking about taking us to the Windy City for dinner all day, but now there was no money in the bucket.  A lot of stuff rushed through my mind at that moment, and then I finally thought this could stand to be a valuable teaching moment, although it was extremely painful.  I told her that we could not go out for dinner because you need money to do that, and there was not any left in the bucket.  Ouch. That is a hard message for anybody to hear, let alone a 5 year old.  I thought more then once that maybe I was being a little to harsh.

The reality set it.  Victoria was devestated, and let me know by showing extreme emotion.  Crying, Yelling, Plassing the blame on others..”I didn’t want mom to buy that massager, why did she do that and take my money?!?!”  I told her that the massager was something she said she wanted and there was no reason to yell at mom about that.  She was very upset, and then in the midst of her emotion, my five year old came up with a brillant idea - “Dad you can pay for the dinner with your money.”  All of a sudden Dad became the bailout plan.  I thought to myself…”Why not, it worked for the banks?”  I then delivered the hard message that I did not have the money to pay to eat out and so we would have to stay home and make dinner.  More emotion.  More crying.  More yelling.

Not feeling so great, I went to get Ellie, who had been waiting in the car for us to come back with the money.  I said that we we had a change of plans and that we would be eating dinner at the house.  Ellie asked why, and I said that Victoria did not have any money in her bucket.  Ellie then did one of the sweetest things I have ever seen.  She said “I have money in my bucket.  I will give Victoria some of my money out of my bucket.”  You see Ellie’s bucket is looking pretty good after just celebrating a birthday.  Ellie quickly jumped out of the car, ran up to her room, grabbed her bucket, took the money out and handed it to Victoria.

Victoria all of a sudden stopped crying and was very thankful to her sister giving her a big hug.  I told Victoria that was a very special thing Ellie did and Ellie had a huge smile on her face - “Can we go get a hotdog?”, she asked.  Victoria then said she was going to work hard to fill up her bucket so that she could give some money back to Ellie.  We are in the process of starting a “allowence” system with Victoria, where she gets paid for doing her chores so I am hopeful it won’t take long for her to make good on her promise.

Well they are only five and three, but they both taught me a lot.  I hope this small lesson about money will stay with Victoria.  She now tells me - “If there is not money in the bucket, then you can’t do stuff.”  It is not always easy being a Dad and sometimes I second guess if I am doing the right thing especially when it is not the popular thing.  This time it was worth it.  We had a great dinner and evening together, and this moment made my weekend so I had to share it.

The Right Decision

Last week I started student teaching.  I was so excited to finally be at this point in my schooling, however now that I am a week into this adventure, I am really questioning my decision.  I am still excited about teaching and although there have been some challenging moments in the classroom, I believe that this is the right career path for me.  The problem is that I have truly enjoyed staying home with the kids.  I quit working at Kimberly-Clark two years ago.  I can’t believe that it has been that long already.  The expression “time flies when you are having fun” is so true.  The kids and I have had such fun at home.  Of course it hasn’t been all roses.  There were definitely moments of sassiness that resulted in time outs but overall it has been a great time.  It has been especially hard to leave Rhys.  I am so thankful that I was able to stay home with hime for 6 months compared to 3 months with the girls.  It was still so hard to leave him at daycare.  Gabe and I love Carrol and are could not be happier with her home daycare.  She loves the kids like her own.  Ellie loves to go to “school” and play with her friends.  Rhys on the other hand has had a more difficult time adjusting.  He is not eating well at Carrol’s and not sleeping well.  It just breaks my heart.  I know this is only the first week and with time he will adjust but it doesn’t lessen the emotions.  I am also finding it difficult to balance everything again.  I come home and want to spend time with the kids but there is laundry, dishes, lesson plans, etc to do.  Not to mention the fact that I am tired and would just like to put on my pj’s and climb into bed.  I also feel like I had to give up some of my extra-curriculars.  I really miss those things.  I have seen both worlds and I am wondering if maybe being a stay at home mom was really where my heart was.  My life is so different from where I thought I would be.  I was the person who didn’t really want kids and I was very career oriented.  All that changed when I had Victoria.  I am glad that I will have my teaching credentials in my back pocket but I do wonder if I have made the right decision.  I guess that is why there is a constant debate about working parents versus stay at home parents and what is best for the family.  I know this.  I am looking forward to June 5th when I get to be home with the kids again (plus it will be summer)

To all those working moms out there:

If you have any good advice or even encouragement, I am all ears! 

Christmas Journey

We decided to take 2 1/2 weeks and travel to PA and then Connecticut for Christmas.  It would be the first time that many of our family members saw Rhys in the flesh.  We drove through the night and arrived at my grandma’s house in PA just before a major ice/snow storm started.  Everyone did great on the trip including Rhys which is a miracle since we realized as we were leaving that the DVD players were not working.  We love driving through the night…less traffic and the kids sleep.  We stayed in PA for four days visiting family.  My dad drove up to spend a few days with us and so did my sister and her family.  We had an early Christmas dinner and all opened presents.  It was great to see Rhys playing with his little cousin, Luke.  My sister’s baby is just 2 weeks older than Rhys.  One of the highlights of our time in PA was personal visit from Santa Claus.  He showed up at Grandma’s front door. The kids were so excited that Santa came to see them.

After Santa’s visit the girls got to decorate sugar cookies with nana and open presents with Aunt Helen.  These were the most heavily frosted and sprinkled cookies I have ever seen!!

The excitement was only beginning.  Jessica and her family along with Grandma Whitlow and Papa showed up shortly after that.  We got to open presents with them and Luke met his cousins.  The girls loved all their gifts.  Ellie got a crocodile from Papa who she named Alligator.  I guess we will call him Al for short.  The most special part of the night was Victoria’s gift to Gabe and me.  She brought it home wrapped from Kindergarten and was so anxious for us to open it.  It was a beautiful pillow.  On the front she used her hands to make a wreath and on the back she used her foot to create an angel.  It is my favorite gift. I loved seeing her excitement in having something special to give to me.  It reminds you of what the season is really about.  

It was time to leave PA and head to Connecticut.  This trip was a lot scarier than our trip out to PA.  The kids were still excellent in the car and such troopers given no dvd players and the trip lasting 9 hours instead of 6 1/2.  There was a bad ice storm the night before we left so we were headed up the mountains in PA very, very slowly.  Gabe was slipping all over the road and we saw semi trucks that couldn’t even make it up the mountain.  It rained the whole way which is better than icing but the roads were horrible the whole way.  We are so thankful that we made it safely to Connecticut even if it did take longer.  We had an awesome stay in Connecticut.  We hadn’t been out there in 2 years so it was great to see Gabe’s family and for them to meet Rhys.  Gabe’s sister Amy lives in Connecticut and Sarah drove up from DC.  Even with all the issues that develop in being with family in tight quarters, it is so worth to spend the holidays with loved ones.  Victoria left cookies and milk for Santa.  She worked very hard on her note.  Santa even left her a note thanking her for the yummy cookies.  Now we know why he is such a big, jolly guy.  Santa brought Victoria a barbie with wings and ellie got the handy manny tool kit….just what they both asked for.  After opening all the presents which took forever we went to church. It was a beautiful service.  it is so nice to be able to go to church on Christmas and celebrate the real reason for Christmas.  It is so easy to forget about Jesus’ birth when you are surrounded by way too many presents.  One of the best gifts we got for Christmas were tickets to ride an old train to the North Pole.  We all (and I do mean all of us) dressed in our pj’s and santa hats to ride the train.  What a fun time.  Santa and Mrs. Claus both came on the train to say hello.  Victoria looked right up at Santa and said “thank you for my barbie with wings”.  It was the cutest.  Gabe and I took the kids to Mystic, CT to meet up with my roommate from college, Mary Beth and her husband Brad.  I am so glad we had the opportunity to see them even if it was only for a few hours.  Gabe and I also got to take advantage of having grandma babysit.  We went out with Amy and her fiancee, Shawn for New Year’s Eve.  It was so much fun dancing into 2009.  Unfortunately, our camera battery died so we don’t have many pictures from the train ride or our activities after that.  That is okay since this is definitely the longest blog I have ever written.  It was a long trip, though.  On New Year’s Day we started our journey back to WI via PA.  The drive went well and we arrived home safely ready to get back to all of our many activities.  

When we got home we still had the gifts from mom and dad to open.  These girls are going to think that Christmas lasts 3 weeks and they just get lots of gifts.  We will be changing that for next year.  

Do They Have A Conscience?

Recently Gabe and I found out that someone or some persons hacked into the main computer system of our bank.  They stole up to 50 customers credit card numbers and were using them in Illinois.  Unfortunately, Gabe and I were one of those fifty.  Thankfully, the bank’s fraud department contacted us to verify the charges.  I checked our voice messages the other night and heard this message to call the bank’s card processing department to verify charges immediately.  Gabe was already in bed so I called.  The customer service rep said that the charges were linked to Gabe’s card and she needed to speak to him.  I asked if it could wait.  She responded with the question, “has your husband been out of state today”.   When I told her no she told me to wake him immediately.  She explained that there were charges totalling $500 (which by the next day were up to $1,000) on our account from a Wal-Mart in Addison, IL.  After confirming that those were not purchases that we made, she deactivated our cards.  So now we start the process of getting new cards and filling out paperwork to dispute the charges and hopefully get our money back.  

That night I couldn’t sleep.  I was so sick to my stomach over the ordeal.  Obviously I am pissed about the $1,000 but what has me more upset is the fact that there are people out there with no regard for others.  Gabe works so hard for our money.  We budeted for Christmas and didn’t even spend near this amount on gifts for our family and friends.  Now someone has the audacity to take our money along with 49 other people’s money and spend it.  Does this person(s) have no conscience?  You know that people like this are in the world but when it hits so close to home, you feel so violated.  What makes me even sadder is that many of the customers of our bank have recently been laid off.  Several companies in the fox valley (like the rest of the US) have had major lay offs in the past couple of months.  Those could be some of the very same people that had their credit card numbers stolen.  I am just sick thinking about that.  It is sad.  

Rhys - 5 months old

I know that this is so cliche but it feels like just yesterday we were bringing this little baby home from the hospital and today he is 5 months old.  He is such a good baby.  All three of my kids have been awesome babies.  I am so thankful and feel completely blessed.  Of course, like every baby, he has his moments of fussiness.  He does love to be held a lot.  He is getting better at napping.  I can put him in his crib and he will talk himself to sleep.  He only naps for about an hour but that is getting better.  I am sure all of that will change when we head out east for Christmas.  That is what did it for Victoria.  She was thrown off her schedule when she was 6 months old and we travelled.  It took her another two years before she was sleeping through the night and taking decent naps.  I am going to try very hard this time to keep all three kids to their normal routine when we are travelling.  Anyhow, Rhys is a pretty content baby.  He loves when people talk to him.  He has the biggest, most adorable smile.  Today he was laying on the floor singing and chatting with me.  Still no rolling.  He tries hard but just can’t seem to manage to get his whole body over.  He will sit unsupported for a few minutes now.  He just loves grabbing for toys, hair, blankets and anything else that he can put in his mouth.  His newest trick is sticking his tounge out.  It is the funniest thing I have ever seen.  That’s my “Rhysie J”.