The past few weeks

we have had many visitors. Here is some of the action!!

The group from Antigua. Notice I am not in the picture because I was in my pajamas! (It was early in the morning.)

Nadia and Jonathan with my kiddos. Hope loved Nadia and would go to her over me or her Daddy sometimes!
Hope with her cousin Ana. Hope is such a lover. She loves to hug and kiss all little kids!
Isaiah with his big cousins!

Isaiah and his new girlfriend Mia. They were jumping off a big air mattress to a little one. They had a blast!
Marko, Joanie, and Hopey!

Marko, Matteo, and Isaiah.
Isaiah with his new buddy Michael. He is great with kids. He gave Isaiah so many rides on his shoulders!

The Socha's with all their grandbabies!

All the Socha's together again after 18 months!
Aren't they cute??

The Falls...so beautiful! We loved having the Fiore's here. They were so great and so our their kids. They are all so helpful, funny, and loved to play with my kids! :) Isaiah and Hope are going to miss them!

Great Video

My aunt just sent me this video by one of my favorite bands that I haven't heard in awhile. I definitely needed to hear this song today. Isn't it funny how He works.

Updates

We are still in the midst of visitors so this will be a quick update with some things that have been going on.

* Our 1st group of 14 have come and gone. It was great to see Boris and Teresa and their family. It was a little crazy seeing as how we only moved in 10 days before they arrived. But everyone seemed to have a great time. Isaiah loved all the kids and had a blast. He loved Nadia his new friend and Hope's.

* My Aunt and Uncle arrived from Georgia and stayed with y Mom. They are always so much fun and make me laugh!

* Our second group of 10 arrived whom we haven't seen in a LONG time! The Fiore's! They are such a great family. They are our friends with 9 kids. They make us want to have more and have such a close family like theirs. Isaiah loves all the kids. Him and Mia are so cute together. They follow each other around and hold hands and play so nice together. (Uh oh Presley you may have some competition ..ha ah). Hope loves Mia to. She loves to hug and kiss her. She is such a lover!

* All of Dave's family are in town for the big celebration tomorrow.

* We spent the 4th in Tonawanda at the river house. I actually played Nintendo 64 with some of the Fiore boys. I was not so good. I used to be great at Nintendo back in the day, but I couldn't work the new controller very well. The kids also started to play charades right before the fireworks and they had me laughing so hard I was in tears. We had a great time!

* Isaiah didn't watch the fireworks. He was EXHAUSTED and just wanted to go home. He sat in the van the whole time since we were blocked in and had to wait for the road to open.

* Hopey is not feeling well. She has a terrible rash (we think it is a yeast infection). She was in so much pain she couldn't stand up, you couldn't hold her, she wouldn't take a bath or do anything. I was in tears because I couldn't help her. Finally, we rinsed her off, put on a show while I ran to the store, and then put on her medicine. Please pray she feels better in the morning and that the rash will go away. She is so miserable. It is so sad.

Hope you all had a great 4th of July!

Big Boy

Isaiah is becoming such a big boy...in some ways. The bed only lasted two nights and now he is sleeping with us but...the past two days he has wanted to use the toilet to go poop! Wow...YEAH Go ISAIAH! He still wants his diaper and we have talked about underwear but he tells me he will wear them in a little bit. He is funny. So my question to you is...do you push the toilet training or just go with what he wants?? Right now I feel to go with what he wants but I have never potty trained before. Any advice??

Hope has been fighting her second nap so we just started pushing off her nap until later so she will only take one. We will see how it goes. Of course when I went to put Isaiah down for his nap, she was just getting up. Will they ever nap at the same time?? Ha ha! Probably not!

We had some guests here (well 14 to be exact) a couple days last week. It was great. I was still running around trying to get stuff done on our house while they were here. It was nice to have lots of kids entertain my kids. They had so much fun with them and we are all looking forward for them to come back on Sunday.

Anyway....Here are some long overdue pictures.

These two love to play together. Hope always wants to do what her big brother is doing.
Swimming in Rochester. They had a blast. Hope LOVED the pool. Now we just need to heat ours:)

Thanks Cindy...they love their new maracas!!Isaiah's has the moves!

New Bed

Since we arrived here in Buffalo, Isaiah has not liked bedtime. I just thought because of being in a new place or because there have been so many people around. But....the past few nights he really has fought going to bed. He wants to be rocked to sleep or sleep on the floor next to you (need I remind you that they are hardwood floors....so uncomfortable.) But as soon as you pick him up, he wakes up and wants to be rocked more or put back on the floor.

So it hit me yesterday....he is 2 1/2 and probably ready for a big boy bed!

We went today and made a big deal about getting a new bed. At first he was not excitedat all, but he has been furniture shopping with us so many times since we have been here that I told him we were going to look at the kids rooms (boys and girls rooms....that is the area he always loved going to) then he was excited.

First we went to Raymour and Flanigan and the beds we liked, he didn't (and why buy a bed he doesn't want to sleep in!). So on to Ashley Furniture....same thing. Our last resort, Toys R Us. We went and they had a "Cars" bed (for all of you that haven't been around him lately...he LOVES this movie and knows all the characters, has a bunch of the cars, knows parts of the movie, loves the song...). He was very distracted with all the toys, but picked out the one he wanted.

Dave asked the clerk if she believed in miracles...she looked at him funny and said yes I guess so. And he replied....good because it will be a miracle if this bed doesn't get returned.

We brought it home, put it together and....

yup he is sleeping in it....for now. But that is a HUGE step. He actually wanted to go in it and was very excited about it. I am sure he will be in our bed in the middle of the night....but who cares...it is a big step for him and I hope he loves his new bed. :)

(That is the best picture I could get on my camera phone trying not to wake him up!)

Company

Yesterday we had some friends and family over. We are finally getting settled here and are ready to see more friends and family. The joke since we got here is ..."Call us when you move to Buffalo" (because we were so busy with the house we didn't see anyone.) But now...we are ready for company and we better be. We have some friends from Antigua coming with a group of kids (about 15 people) this Wednesday. We are still working out where everyone is going to sleep, but we will figure it out. We are excited to see them and meet everyone.

Then in a couple more weeks we will have more visitors. Dave's side of the family are coming into town to celebrate his parents 40th wedding anniversay. We can't wait to see everyone. It has been way too long! We used to see everyone more often but with this move....we have been slacking.

And some more of our friends are moving into town at the end of this month! Yeah!

The kids have been having so much fun. Yesterday Isaiah played with Sam and Macy and had a blast. He is always sad to see his friends go. But hopefully they will be back soon!

Anyway ....we would love to see more family and friends so please call and stop by.

I am also having fun baking for all this company. The people that lived here left a huge double oven and now I am testing it out. Yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin bread and muffins....and for today eclair cake! I love baking when company comes so I can have a little and they eat the rest. Ha ha!

Sorry for the long silence

We are finally in our house. Yeah!!! We moved in last Saturday. There is still a lot of things going on here like finishing our kitchen and dining room and LOTS of painting (inside and out). But we moved in and LOVE it. We are still getting adjusted here and so are the kids but they are doing great.

I did not have a computer until this morning when verizon had to come out (AGAIN...that was like the 3rd time) but now we are all hooked up! Yeah. So expect more blogs coming soon. :)

Right now I have to run and get some food while Dave builds the grill. We are having some people over. It was supposed to be a pool day but it has been raining all day! Just wanted to let everyone know that we are OK and I will start returning emails soon!