They Love to Sing!

Well, the girls love to sing. They sing ALL the time. I am not in their cubbies class at church, but my sister Jessica teaches their class during sunday school, and then my mom teaches their class during the church hour, and I have been told that Kaylee especially sings as loud as she can. Tonight I finally got them on video. It is so cute. They are both singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! so, enjoy them:
Kaylee Singing:



Kelsey Singing:



Lastly, the ladies in our church like to make meals for new mom's for a week. So, this week we made meals for Rachelle Christner. Tonight was my night, so, i made her a meal and me and my mom brought it to her. Of course, the nice thing about that is that we got to see the baby too. I did find out that he was 9lbs. 4 oz. and 20 in. long. So, here are a couple of pictures of Lucas Michael:




So, congrats again to Mike and Rachelle, and of course big sister Molly! This officially brings the baby count to 9 born, and 2 to go. One of those of course being my sister. Wow, has it been a year of babies! That's all for tonight, very short I know, but I hope you enjoy it!

Well, to be honest, we really did not enjoy our trip. Don't get me wrong, the kids loved it, but it was not a parent friendly place. I think we could have done alot of things differently that would have made it more enjoyable, so we may venture and do it one more time. Anyway, Jordan had preschool on Thursday so we did not leave till he got out at 11:45 (mistake #1). We actually did not leave till about 1:30. We drove to Casco Bay Lines in Portland without getting lost which was a releif. We got there and parked in the parking garage. It was about 92 degrees so we knew it would probably be miserable, but we went anyway (mistake #2). We had to wait about 30 mins. for the next ferry which was fine. The kids liked watching the different ferry's come in. The ferry we went on is actually a car ferry as well as a passenger ferry, so they loaded 4 vehicles on and then loaded the passengers. So, after a 20 min. ferry ride, we arrived at the island. First thing we realized is that there are no changing rooms, they did however have one bathroom for everyone. I had the kids put on their swimsuits under their clothing, so Doug and I were the only ones who needed to get changed. After getting changed, we set out to find the beach. We asked a couple of people and took a couple of wrong turns, but finally found some place to swim (notice I didn't say a beach to swim). There was a ramp that went down a VERY steep hill. The place we found to swim was not very parent friendly. There was very little sand and was mostly rocks. The rocks went ALL the way into the water. There weren't just a few rocks here and there, there wer piles and piles of rocks and boy did they hurt to walk on. I had remembered to grab all the kids swimming shoes when we left the house, but forgot them in the van when we went on the ferry. Thankfully, I had them all wear their crocs (including me), so we all wore them in. The water was shockingly cold, but the kids stayed in for a while. Anyway, we stayed about 2 hours and then packed up and headed back up the hill with 7 soaking wet towels full of sand in a bag (mistake #3). This bag literally weighed about 50 lbs. We were told later that we should have brought junk towels and threw them away after, this is a tip i will remember. Here is a slideshow of our trip. Although we didn't really enjoy it, I got alot of nice pictures as it was a nice area.

So, in hindsight, here are a couple of things we will do differently:

1. go earlier in the day so we don't feel rushed
2. go on a day that is around 80-85 degrees
3. bring junk towels so we don't have to carry around a 50 lb bag of wet, dirty ones.

Last, I want to say welcome to yet another new baby. Another lady in our church just gave birth to her second baby. Mike and Rachelle Christner welcomed a baby boy, Lucas Michael, into their family on Thursday night. I do not have a photo, but I was told her was a little over 9lbs. and 20+ in. long. If I get a picture, I will surely pass it along. Congratulations to the family!

Swimming and Ebay

well, the kids went swimming a couple of days ago and i got some cute pictures, so, here they are:

Kelsey & Kaylee

Kelsey getting a drink
Kaylee driving the boat
Playing in the pool with cousin Kylie

next, i have been extremely busy posting all my ebay things in the past couple of days. i beleive i posted somewhere near 67 of them. i can't wait to get all of these things out of my house! you can chek them all out here: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZds4nierQQhtZ-1. i have already sold and shipped a couple of auctions that had buy it now on them.


so, that is all that has been going on around here lately. i also got my hair cut finally and will put a picture on later. tomorrow we are going to a little island for the day. it is supposed to reach the 90's so we will spend the day swimming on the island. we will have a 20 min. boat ride so the kids will love that. the website for the island is here: http://www.peaksisland.com/

here is what it says about the island

Welcome to Peaks Island, Maine!

Peaks Island is one of over 211 islands in Casco Bay and is home to 1,000 or more year round residents. During the summer months, the population grows several times as people flock to the island to enjoy the island charm and beauty of Casco Bay.

Exploring the island is easy. It's a 20 minute ferry ride on Casco Bay Lines which operates 10-13 ferry runs a day depending on the time of year. The island is approximately 2 miles long and 1 mile wide (at it's widest point). If you keep to the shore roads, the island can be walked easily in an hour or biked in 15-20 minutes.

i think we will have alot of fun, and i will post in the next day or two. have a great week!!

A Day at the Ocean & AWESOME News!

well, today we decided to go to the ocean. of course it wasn't the hottest day, only reaching 77 degrees, so the water was absolutely freezing! the kids had fun, toya and jordan loved jumping the waves, and the girls loved running from them...lol. we collected rocks and saw our first jellyfish, atleast that's what we think it was. here is a picture, tell me what you think. as i said, i have NEVER seen one in my life. we didn't touch it, cause i didn't feel like getting stung,just in case,here is the pic:



the girls LOVED crawling in the sand, i'm not sure why, but in the slideshow, you will see several shots of them doing this. they also loved sucking the salt water off the rocks they were collecting, disgusting i know, but they couldn't be stopped. as soon as i would tell one of them to stop, i would turn around and the other would be doing it. anyway, here are a few of my favorite pictures from today. the rest are in the slideshow:

Kaylee and Kelsey (with their new swimsuits i got at old navy for 6.99)

Kaylee's Footprints

Kelsey's (with aunties going the other way)

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

after the ocean, we went to eat. while we were there, we ran into brendon dunn's (the little boy we collected money for) grandparents. they had just come from the hospital and had some AWESOME news to share. they said that brendon's PET scan came back with no signs of the tumor. it is gone! he is officially in remission. i just received an update from his mom, so here it is:

SATURDAY, JULY 21, 2007 11:09 PM, CDT
We received some very exciting news today... After viewing the PET scan we found out that the tumor is GONE!!! No where to be seen.. It is 3 months to the day since Brendon was diagnosed and the tumor is gone! We are so excited! Brendon is now technically in remission.. He will continue on with his chemo to make sure it doesn't come back, but we know that the chemo is working! Today was the first time that Brendon wanted to see any of his scans and he was so surprised to learn that the tumor was gone. He cried and just kept hugging us. It was a great moment! He called his uncles, grandparents and aunts and told them all the good news. It was a great day! We also were able to leave the hospital today. We were discharged around 8pm because Brendon kicked butt on getting all that medicine out of his system! He's amazing!!

We will put more pictures up as soon as we can. We are all pretty tired, but we wanted to get the word out as soon as possible! We still have unpacking and all that good stuff to do.. Thank you for the prayers and love. We truly believe that Brendon is doing so well because of the support system that we all have... It helps him to know that so many people love him. Thank you all so much!!

Much love and excitement, Amber & Andy

after, we drove home and i dropped ALL FOUR kids off at grammy's house for the night once again. to be honest, i don't usually leave them there till about 8pm, so really i just go home, clean a little and get ready for bed. i don't get alot of free time, but enough. i don't like to be away from my babies for too long yet. the big kids are different as they have been doing it since they were two, but the babies are still my babies. Anyway, that is all for tonight! :)

just a quick note too, my sister sarah (the one having her first baby) has a new post up and is looking for people to help with baby names. if your interested, go look at the list she has and let her know what you think, plus did i mention she is already 2 cm. dialated!!! i went early with ALL of mine, so maybe she is following into the same pattern (she's not due till 8/19). anyway, her's is the first one listed under blog's i read. next, my younger sister has started a blog as well, so you can check her's out too (her's is the 3rd one down). anyway, i promise that is it now! :)

Visiting with Family & Last Appt. for TB!

well, yesterday started with our last dr. appt. for kaylee's TB. she needs to finish out the month and then she is finished......finally! i will be so happy to not have to give her medicine every night now. only 12 days to go :) we only need to go back should her lumps get big again or anything out of the ordinary happens....yeah! most will remember the post i did on her tb, and the picture i took of the lumps on her jawline, if you don't remember what it looked like, here is a link to it http://the-fournier-six.blogspot.com/2006/09/tuberculosis.html. anyway, since she is about done the medicine, i took a picture of the lumps last night. as you can see, they are barely noticeable anymore and there really is no more "lump", just a couple of light pink surface spots. here is the picture from tonight:


after her appt., we went to visit doug's brother, his fiancee, and their three kids. we ate lunch with them and visited for about 1 1/2 hours. we haven't seen them since rilee was born and she is now 10 weeks old. she has grown so much as have the boys. it was nice to see them. after, we made the one hour drive back home. here are some pics from our visit with them:

we had made plans a few days ago to get together with my aunt joan and cousins, joleene and sue, and joleene's baby boy, benjamin. we had planned on going to the beach and then having a barbecue. wouldn't you know it, it decided to rain yesterday. we still did a "indoor" barbecue and hung out for a while. the girls are really enjoying all the babies lately, but jordan will hold them for a minute, ask if we can keep them, and when i tell him no, he loses interests....lol. here are some pictures from our visit with them:



for those who have looked yesterday, i fixed the slideshow from my earlier post (see below), for those that haven't looked at my posts entitled "a goodbye get together" posted yesterday, please read below. have a great week!

A Goodbye Get Together!

i actually had planned on doing this post two days ago, but we had a minor set back. see, i was sitting at the computer fixing the photo's i had taken at the party and getting ready to upload them, when my sister (who was still staying with us) said "stacy, there's a bat in your house" in this really freaked out voice. sure enough, as i got up to check it out, it came flying into the playroom (where the computer is), so i ducked. every time i went to get up, it would dive bomb my head so i would scrunch down real low again. it did this several time to me and my sister. if you are not laughing right now, use your imagination, because (in hindsight), it was very funny. so, anyway, hubby was still at work, so my sister called our dad to come over. in the meantime, i grabbed a broom and went on a hunt. we knew he had gone upstairs (where we sleep), but he was no where to be found. he hasn't been seen for the past couple of days so we assume he got out where he came in. i am on high alert every time it gets dark now though.

go back to earlier that day, right before we left for the cookout, i got a call from the garage saying that hubby's car was fixed. i went to pick him up at work and drove him to the garage to pick it up. it costs $180 to get it fixed, that's it! i was so excited. he does get a discount because it is the cheif of the volunteer fire department where doug is a firefighter that fixes it. so, he has his car back now, and it seems to be doing well. some people have asked why i laugh when i tell the story about his car cathing on fire. well, it's either laugh or cry, and i find the whole thing quit funny. how ironic that the car that catches on fire belongs to a firefighter who has ALL of his fire gear in the trunk, but doesn't have a fire extinguisher. a passer by called the local fire department (not doug's) and it gets called in as a FULLY involved fire, so the whole firestation shows up at 11:30 pm. anyway, it's over now, but i do think it was pretty funny now!

so, on to the cookout. my cousin, josh, is going into the army, so his parents decided to throw him a going away party. it was a last minute thing, but it was fun. i got some good pictures of him and some of the other family. he left yesterday and the party was on tuesday. i was able to send the pictures from my computer to walmarts photo lab and have his parents pick them up and put them in a album for him to take with him. his mom said he was happy to have pictures of his family to take with him. here are a few, and then the rest are in the slideshow:

Josh and his parents

Josh and his brother Jeremy (only two kids in their family)

our grammy and josh
kaylee, great grammy keene, and kelsey
with all 4 kids

kelsey (L) and kaylee (R) reverting back to their baby days. they used to fit so much better!

now, i have to share a pet peeve of mine. i HATE when people i do not know try to tell me what my kids should and shouldn't be doing, excluding their doctors of course. how many of you let your older kids (mine is 5) ride on the back of the cart while you are grocery shopping? there is one lady in walmart (a worker) that for the past couple of times i have been in there, will tell me that "your son cannot ride on the back of the cart". ok, this irritates me. no, actually it makes me REALLY furious. i went shopping by myself last night with all 4 kids. i let jordan ride on the back of the cart, because it is much easier to keep an eye on him when he is right there in front of me. toya pushes the double stroller and i take jordan and the cart. it's either that or have him walking which leads to wandering. i've heard them call for "code adam" too many times to want that to happen to my child. as soon as we walk into the store, that is the first thing she says to me (like she is talking to a 5 yr. old). i finally had enough and replied "he is MY child". she didn't say anything. to top it off, she had given all the kids stickers except jordan. jordan realized it and went back to get one, so toya tried to give him hers (as she doesn't like them anymore) and this stupid lady PUSHES latoya's hand away and says "NO, i'll give him one". excuse me, don't touch my child!!!! i was going to look at her name tag when we left but she was gone. next time i am getting her name and putting in a complaint. to me, this is RIDICULIUS!!!! maybe i am just over reacting, what do you think?

last but not least, my mom has started a blog as well. please check it out and comment her. because my sister and her hubby are having their first child and they live in n.c., she is looking for tips for how to be a long distance grammy. any ideas?? please leave any suggestions on her blog http://proudgrandparentsoffour1tocome.blogspot.com/. My sister has put pictures of the baby's nursery on her blog as well. Have a great week!

The Moxie Day Parade!

Today we went to the parade. We met Miranda and her two kids there too. It was actually a really good parade with lots of candy! We got there at about 8:30 am (parade started at 9). There were mobs and mobs of people. We ended up parking and walking as we couldn't really get near the place. We ended up sitting at the very beginning of the parade, but it was actually nice that way. We then walked a mile to where all the booths were supposed to be set up. It was quit dissapointing, there really wasn't much there. We found a vendor that was selling Dora the Explorer blow up toys so i got the girls those, and Jordan and Toya each got something. We then found another vendor and had some chicken and french fries for lunch. Dom (Miranda's son) got his picture taken with a huge snake (picture in slideshow). I tried to get Jordan and Toya to do it, but they were chicken. Of course, I wouldn't have done it either :). My mom and sister stayed near the vendors with the kids and Miranda and I made the one mile trek back to get the vehicles. We got back home at around 1:40 and I put the girls down for a nap and I laid down for a little while. This bringing Doug to work and then going to pick him up at night is really taking it's toll on me. I am exhausted ALL the time now. Because of the vehicle situation, Kelsey and Kaylee are spending their first night away from me tonight! All 4 kids are sleeping at grammy's tonight. She always takes the older two every saturday, but tonight is the first for the twins. I'm not really sure how I feel right now. I am too exhausted to really think about it, but I think it will hit me when I get up tomorrow morning and they are not greeting me. It's making me sad already :(. Anyway, here is a slideshow of the parade (not very long):

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

An Old Friend, And A Missed Friend!

I have to say that besides me having to bring my hubby to and from work, it has been a pretty relaxing week. We haven't done too much lately, i found a little tykes pool with a slide and a sprinkler on craigslist for $5. The kids LOVE it, even the older two as you can see from the pictures. I love watching them play in it. Today, my sister washed them all up and washed their hair in it (they kept their swimming stuff on) when they were done playing. It's not something I will do every time, but it worked today! :) Here is a video of them in the pool (Jordan was at school), and then a couple of pictures (please forgive the messy hair, we lost power that day so they hadn't been bathed yet):

Free MySpace slideshows, photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Kelsey

Kaylee

After the girls woke up from their naps, we went to the hospital to see one of my mom's half sisters. I think it was Flo, but I'm not sure as there are twenty something kids (seriously). Anyway, she has a set of identical twin girls that are now 51, so my mom wanted her to see the girls. Before we headed to the 4th floor, I made a stop to the 3rd floor to visit the NICU and see if any of the girls nurses were there. The girls had lots of nurses, but the two main nurses were Elaine and Sarah. I never thought we would catch either of them there, but sure enough, Elaine was there! Sarah was supposed to be there as well, but there were not enough babies so she got to stay home. The kids loved seeing Elaine, words cannot express what our family feels for her. I know many will say that she was just doing her job, but she goes way above and beyond doing her job. She treated my kids like they were her own, even Latoya and Jordan. She was there taking care of my girls when I couldn't, and she did an AWESOME job. We don't get to see her enough. I also know that she would not like me bragging on her, but I consider her a part of our family. What better gift can you give then to take care of two tiny precious babies for a mom that can't be there 24/7, and do a GREAT job at that? Anyway, like I said, ALL of the nurses and Dr.s were great there, she was just the one that took care of the girls the most, and then Sarah. The girls acted like they remembered her too, they were running up to her and kissing her and hugging her over and over again! I had forgotten my camera, but I was glas that Jessica had hers. Here is a picture with Elaine and the twins and then Elaine with Toya and Jordan:

Kaylee, Elaine, and Kelsey

Jordan, Elaine, and Latoya

Anyway, after that we went up to visit my mom's half sister. She enjoyed the kids. I got a little surprise when her Dr. walked in to chat with her. I knew she looked familiar, and then she introduced herself. As soon as she said her name, I knew where I knew her from. Turns out she used to deliver babies and she was my Dr. when I had Latoya. She delivered her! I hadn't seen her in 8 years! Last I knew, she was leaving the practice to go out of state. I guess she is back. I should have taken a picture of Latoya with her, but I didn't think about it till after we left. Anyway, it was pretty cool to see her.

So, that is all for the blog for tonight. We are going to a parade tomorrow, the moxie day parade/festival (yes, it is about the soda). It is supposed to be the biggest parade in the state of maine. Pretty sad that it's all about a soda, huh?....lol. I am meeting my friend Miranda there with her two kids. I also wanted to end with a couple of blogs for you to check:
http://www.jsbernard.blogspot.com (my sisters ~ john has finally written a post)http://www.ourbenjaminjames.blogspot.com (my cousin ~ she has the cutest little boy)http://www.mybernardboys.blogspot.com (cassie ~ john's brother's wife) Please feel free to leave them some comments welcoming them to the blogging world. I know how much I like comments to see that people are actually reading my blog.

Well, I hope everyone has a great week! Hubby's car will be fixed, but it is number 7 in line so i may be bringing him to work for a while :)

It's Been a Long Week!

well, i have alot to update......go figure! on tuesday night, john and his brother slept in a tent at my mom's house. they were reliving their childhood i guess. they kept jordan and toya as well as justin (john's nephew). i think they had fun. we roasted marshmellows and then they went to bed. On wed. july 4th, we went to a parade here in turner, then we went to john's aunt's beach house and had a get together. it was mainly just his family and me and my younger sister. it was nice, and the kids loved that they could swim. we then went to the fireworks at night. here is a slideshow (no videos):

on thursday, we got up and went to york's wild kingdom. we arrived at around 10:30 and went to see the animals. the kids of course loved it. we went out to have a picnic at around 1:00. we were waiting for the guys to come back from bringing the food back to the cars so we decided to change the girls diapers. my sister changed kelsey and told her that when we were all done we would go on the rides which are located right next to the picnic area. we all got to talking when someone asked where kelsey was. she was no where to be found! there were about 5 of us that split up to look for her. we knew she must have gone near the rides, but wern't sure which ones. it seemed like forever, but must have been only about 5 mins. and bob (john's brother) came around the corner by the big slides carrying her. he said he found her underneath the slides. goes to show how much they understand (she was told when we were done, and she was done), and just how quick it takes for them to dissappear. there were 7 adults right there, including me! it was scary, and had she been gone any longer, i think i would have lost it. things happen, what can you do. anyway, after that, we took the kids on just about every ride at the park. there were my 4, bob and cassie's 2 boys, and then johns' other neice and nephew. i think they all had fun! after that we went to eat supper, around 6:30-7. then we went to a park and the ocean for about a half hour. we didn't get home until 11:30 i think. here is a slideshow of that day:



on friday, sarah and john went to john's mom's house for the day. me and my mom and younger sister and kids went shopping per our normal routine on friday's. we went to the dr.s for kaylee's birthmark. we had noticed on tue. night that the bottom portion of it had turned black which scared me. then that same night she was crying that it hurt. we were told to bring her in just to have it checked out. we didn't get in till friday because of how busy everything was. turned out it must have been bumped somewhere along the way as the dr. said it was just bruised. after that, we did some shopping for the baby shower we were planning for my sister on saturday. baby showers are expensive! anyway, we went to the dollar store where kelsey got her fingers shut in the door of my mom's truck. what made things worse was that my mom had locked the truck and then as the door was shutting, kelsey put her fingers in the door. we had to wait for the truck to be unlocked, but we couldn't open the door as it was jammed. my mom had to crawl across the drivers side and into the passengers side to push the door open from the inside. she was quit tramautized by the whole ordeal. her fingers were fine though! on saturday, we had the baby shower for john and sarah. it was a coed shower. it turned out really good and they got quit a few things. mostly they got some gift cards as they flew home and were flying back so were limited with what they could get for gifts. i did a "daddy diapering kit" for john. it went something like this (as sarah read the poem, john had to do what it said), you can see pictures of him doing it below):