Father's Day

Father's first father's day happened to be while the girls' and I were in Ohio.
I had bought cards and had flowers made with the girls' hand prints and was going to have them hidden and then when we face timed, make dad find them.  Well, big FAIL on my part.  I forgot to fill them out.  So fathers day was just another day for Dad.  He did get a grill a few weeks before for fathers day.  We were at Menards and he had picked it out and had his vehicle and I said "lets get it now."  So happy fathers day, Joey.  Thanks for being a great dad!  Josie and Ella will soon realize how awesome you are!

 
 

Baby food

It's time to start the girls on baby food, so I decided that I would make it myself, since I am off work for the summer.  Out came the ole blender from college that was used to make any kind of frozen drink you could imagine.  My how times have changed.  I had gone to the grocery earlier that day and got all of foods I was going to make.  I went for easy peasy!  I bought frozen peas, green beans, carrots, bananas, peaches and pears. 

 

Steaming peas

 

I was told to put all the pureed food into ice cube trays and then freeze them and then you have perfectly portioned baby food servings. 

 

I ran out of ice cube trays to be able to puree every thing I got so I guess I will need to get some more of those.  Also the college blender was a big pile.  So I have ordered a new Kitchen Aid blender.  Maybe the new blender will make me want to continue to do this.  I foresee me just buying food

later,or only feeding them applesauce!

 

 



Just as I was finishing this blog, the new blender came!!!  It is awesome!  I opened it and immediately pureed some food!  It is AWESOME!  I bet it will make some good margaritas too! ;)

Water Babies

Get ready for some cuteness! :)

 

I signed the girls up for water babies knowing Ella was getting her casts off....the same day. 

 

 sunglasses added for more cuteness

We actually got some smiles out of girls while in the pool.  We also dunked them a few times with no tears!  YAY!



New Kicks!

DONE WITH CASTS!!!!!

 

 

Thank goodness, Mom was ready to be done with them.

Now she gets these super sweet shoes!  She has to wear them 23 hours a day for 3 months and then 16 hrs/day or so when she sleeps and naps until she walks. 

I hope tonight isn't awful!

On the Go!

Boy were we busy in Ohio!!  I'm not sure we had even a half day of down time!  Maybe it just feels like that because I was a "single parent" while we were there.  I actually had to schedule times to meet friends because I knew there was going to be so many people to see.  This was our first time home to Ohio since March 2012. 

 

  Between the Shultz family and the Eckert family, we had something to do everyday.

 

On Wednesday, Grandma S. had gallbladder surgery so the girls and I went to the hospital to see grandma and hang out with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Josh during surgery.  I used to work in surgery at the hospital so I also got to see everyone I used to work with.  They were just head over heals for the girls.  They got a kick out seeing me be "motherly"  but they were also very excited to the girls!

 Waiting with Aunt Nancy

 and Uncle Josh

 Other people on the list to see were the Simon girls!!  I call this picture below "13 + 20"  I used to babysit these two girls when I was about 13.  Add 20 years and between the three of us there is 4.5 babies.  I can't believe Nick is almost a year and I am just now getting to meet him for the first time.  Hopefully it won't take that long for his little brother or sister! 

Nick reminds me a lot of his uncle Alex, he resembles him.  I wouldn't have guessed Nick to have brown eyes and Emmett to have blue!  And little baby Emmett is so sweet!  I didn't get enough time to love on these boys, so next time I want longer!  So glad I got meet them both and I enjoyed visiting with their moms as well! 

Another friend I visited was my Erin.  Her "little" girl isn't so little anymore!  Isla LOVED the babies!  She was sharing her letters with them, her Dora blanket and was just trying to snuggle with them.  Boy did Isla have a lot of questions when I was feeding Josie.  HAHA!!  The curiosity of 3 year olds! ;)

 

My friend Jen, who was due about 2 weeks after my due date (but mine came early), I got to meet up with.  It had been quite a few years since I had seen her.  I met baby Eleanor and Jen and I shared mom stories, one of which was Jen thought having a baby was going to be all fun and no work and I thought it would be all work and no enjoyment.  I am surprised at how much I am enjoying my babies and Jen is surprised how much work a baby is!  HAHA!!  I had a blast seeing Jen

 Aunt Judy with her hands full.  She got her baby fix for a while!!

 



Cousin Jeannie came special just to see the girls too.  She hadn't been feeling good but still managed to find time to visit.  Thanks a bunch! 

Someone is worn out from all the visiting!

 

Our friend Adam had these onesies made special for the girls.  They are AWESOME!  They say BGSU Falcons Womens Hockey on the front and on the back is SHULTZ with my old hockey number 9! 

We made sure he saw the girls in the onesies.  Adam actually fed Ella!  She obviously approves of this and must wants KNUCKLES!! 

Hanging out with Josie.  This must be around the time that Ella had the WORST blow out EVER!!  Of course this is at a place that is not equipped with anything baby!  Adam got broken in good, but he did a great job! 

 

We all enjoyed our visit to Ohio and I am very glad that we spent a longer time there so we could see everyone.  Wished I would have taken more pictures, but I was living in the moment!  LOL!  It's hard to do it ALL when I have twins by myself.  Next time..

Safe Travels

To Ohio:
I decided to make a trip to Ohio since I am off work for the summer.  Ella had an appointment in Iowa City where she was to get her Achilles tendon cut and then be in her last set of casts for 2 weeks.  Since I didn't have to be tied to Iowa for 2 weeks and we are already about 2 hours into Ohio direction, I decided we would continue on.  Dad didn't have enough vacation so it was just me and the girls!  Am I crazy?!!!  Driving 9.5 hour trip with 2 infants that are teething, one just having surgery, by myself.  My thought was I need to take advantage of my time off. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ella's feet before her LAST set of casts!!!!

Ella's appointment was at 8am, we left at 6am and then got on the road to Ohio after appointment at 11:30 am.  The girls pretty much slept the whole time in the car.  I made a stop at a McD's just outside of Chicago about 2:30.  We did a feed and bathroom stop and gas up, which took about 1hr 15mins and off we went.  We made it to Ohio at 10:30pm Ohio time.  The girls did GREAT!!

Grandma and Grandpa E were waiting anxiously. 

From Ohio:

 

I was going to leave on Friday getting up at 6am, however, things didn't go as planned.  Ella was over tired and over stimulated so she had a hard time going to sleep on Thursday night.  I finally got her to sleep at 11:30pm only to have her wake up two times.  I hadn't fallen asleep yet and at 1:30am still wide awake and working myself up about lack of sleep, I decided to just leave.  If I left then I would miss Chicago rush hour, so I woke my mom up to tell her I was leaving.  Most of the car was packed, but the things we needed that night, so my mom helped me get the girls and the rest of things in the car.  I pulled away at 2am and drove until I got tired, about somewhere in Indiana.  I fell asleep with a boppy and the girls in the rest area.  About an hour and half nap, I was off to the QC.  I talked to a friend and asked if I could pit stop there with the girls. 

 



Her girls were SUPER excited to see the babies!!!

The girls got some stretching in and A LOT of attention!

:)

Thanks Lynn for the coffee, pie and house!  The coffee did me a lot of good and we made it home before dad got off work!

 

So glad the girls traveled well and we were all safe!  I see many more trips to Ohio so I hope they continue to be good little travelers!!!

Color Run



We FINALLY made it to the QC for a very quick visit!  There just happened to be a color run 5K that day so we went to the QC to visit some friends and then run this race.  We went up for the day, which just wasn't long enough.

 

At this race, as you run you get blasted with COLORS!!!  Along the course there are certain color areas that you run thru and people blast you.  So my white shirt that I was wearing was going to end up looking tie died.

 

 

 



The beginning with the spray of yellow.

 

The run itself was awful.  I was slow and outta shape and my time reflected that.  I enjoyed the color part, but that was about it.  I tried not to breath as we ran thru each color because I didn't want to inhale the color dust.  It didn't work.  My teeth were red and I have blue boogers!

 

Here I am at the end.  You can see I got "colored!"

All of us girls that ran it--well not the little cutie in the front :)

 

After the run we went back to our friends house for some pizza and hanging out.  Joey and I hadn't seen the "Deere clan" is such a long time.  It was very nice to see them all.  In 5 years, we all went from seeing people get married and no kids, to 5 couples with 12 kids!!  CRAZY!!!

Josie and Ella were, of course, were spoiled.  Here are the Schulte kids spoiling them.

 

Glorianna was in baby heaven! 

 

 

Talking to miss Ella

 

Not all the kids enjoyed the babies!  Xavier needed some "man time" so he and Joey are watching Star Wars.  Right up Joeys alley! 

It was a fun day and glad that we were able to see everyone and visit.  I just wish it was longer, but there's always next time!!!

 

 

Memorial day weekend

For Memorial day weekend we traveled to Des Moines to spend the weekend with friends and hang out.  The weather did not cooperate AT ALL!!  We got major rain storms all weekend.  There were severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flooding warning and tornado warnings.  We pretty much did nothing due to the weather.  We hung out at our friends house and watch TV and chit chatted. 

Ella getting kisses from Cohen

 

The boys did smoke some meat all day long.  So although the weekend was a wash, we ate really good, and Ella got some smooches!

 

Rice Cereal

We got the big OK from the doctor that we could start rice cereal on the girls.  So I decided that I would give it to them with a spoon rather than put it in their bottles because I figured it will be easier to clean up rice cereal than beans and squash and other foods.  So once they get the hang of using a spoon and swallowing we will move onto other delicious foods like beans and peas!  YUM!!

 

 



Josie is all ready to go!

 This is pretty much what Ella did the whole time.  She was sooooo not into this.

Hahaha!!  Oh Ella, what are we gonna do with you!

Josie all messy! 

 

Ella didn't get an after picture because she was screaming and crying WAY too much.