Getting Ready for the wedding!

In case you didn't know, Rose was the flower girl and Max was the ring bearer for Chris and Ania's wedding last Saturday. My Dad was one of the Best Men. (David was the other one).

^^Trying on his tux!



^^Ben is always infatuated with shoes, and Max's shiny tux shoes, never ceased to fascinate Ben!




^^At the rehearsal, Rose was a little nervous, but then happy!



^^Early Saturday morning we brought down the picture albums of when Cecilia and me were flower girls, to show Rose. Ben liked the pictures too!






^^This is Rose's favorite goofy face!






^^Our Aunt Elizabeth is a hairdresser, and she came over and did Rose's hair! At first Rose wasn't happy about the curls, but then when they were done, she was thrilled!



^^We even added some Baby Breath for a final touch!




^^In her Flower girl dress! She was so happy!



^^Goofy face!



^^Our handsome ring bearer!



^^Our Little Prince and Princess!



^^Outside ready to go to the church. Rose took her dress off for the trip, because the dress was too plump (as she called it) for her car seat!

That morning Grandma and Aunt Beth came over to help us get ready for the wedding. We had a little trouble with Rose's dress, it was too long. So Grandma ran to A.C.More and got the iron on hem stuff. She and my Dad saved the day by quickly hemming Rose's dress up a little more!

P.S. This is Teresa talking - Mary Kate was very charitable. The truth of the matter is that I began freaking out in major McDonnell fashion, with visions of Rose tripping over the dress all the way down the aisle. So my mother in law and Scott were true heroes in the midst of a Teresa induced stressful situation. Yeah Scott and Peggy!!! And in the end, Rose and Max were beautiful par excellence.

Easter Egg Hunt and Picnic with Grandma Anthony!

Well it has become a family tradition to have a big Easter Egg hunt at my Grandparents house on Easter Sunday. But this year my family was sick, and my younger siblings were greatly disappointed. So our loving sweet Grandmother came over last Thursday and with my help, hid eggs all around our yard. Another special thing about Grandma's Easter egg hunt, is, she doesn't just put candy. In some of the eggs there are coins! My siblings were so happy! After the Easter egg hunt, Grandma took us kids to a park for a picnic! It was a beautiful spring day!

^^One of Ben's favorite things to do outside, is get on the swing. He loves it!














^^Driving to the picnic




It was a wonderful day! Rose got the most money of my siblings, with a little over $2 in change. Ben was very cute on the Easter egg hunt, finally getting tired of the egg hunt and begging for a turn on the swing! Thank you Grandma for such a fun day!

If you're working and you know it, clap you hands *claps hands* If you're working and you know it, clap you hands, *claps hands*....

Luckily the stomach bug was a quick thing, 24 hours really. So by last Tuesday, John Paul and Cecilia were up to coming to the new house and working. It was Cecilia's first time working there, and as she declares, her last. She is of course welcome back, but I don't think she realized exactly what we were doing. She said she prefers to stay home with Grandma!



^^In the basement my Dad with Uncle Jim's guidance and help, framed the wall around the furnace. We are having a closet there so that nobody accidentally ran into the furnace.




^^In the upstairs bathroom we now have to scrape off all the glue where the peach tiles were. Ugh!! John Paul is a hard worker when it comes to things like this!




^^Cecila busily sandpapering the wall in the upstairs hall. Hey that rhymes, wall, hall. Sorry really random. :)




^^Another picture of John Paul hard at work scraping off that glue!




^^Last Monday my Dad took the plastic back of the tub out. The wall behind it is disgusting! It is really hard to imagine that upstairs bathroom looking nice.



^^Hey, no sinks!

Today we ran over to the house real quick to drop off things for the attic. We have been filling up our van with boxes of clothes from our closet upstairs, almost every time we go to that house in the van. We bring them up to the attic. I wish I had brought my camera today, but I didn't think to.

First of all, now the cabinets are out of the upstairs bathroom. Uncle Jim finished cutting out my door in the basement, and he framed the door from Grammy's apartment to the family room already. But the biggest, coolest thing, was with the concrete. Uncle Jim jack hammered the concrete in my mom's office and Grammy's apartment today, and my dad dug it up. Not all the concrete, just where the plumber needs to connect the pipes for Grammy's kitchen and bathroom! But it looks so cool. Oh well!
I am finally beginning to feel like it's coming along!
Oh, and we discovered wild raspberry or black berry bushes along the edge of our property! Yum!!

Glorious weather and Easter

We have had glorious spring days lately, blue skies, warm weather, a nice breeze... I guess the nice weather makes up for the Easter we had. Unfortunately everyone in our family except for me, my parents, Ben, and Grammy, were sick on Easter day. And then later that week Ben, Grammy, and my Mom took their turn to be sick. But thankfully we were all better by Saturday for the wedding.




^^Ben has inhearted the McDonnell sweet tooth. He LOVED his basket! Chocolate, yum!!!





^^John Paul and Max, love this website called, Club Penguin. You don't have to pay anything to join and get a penguin, but if you become a member you can do special things, like get into certain places and buy clothes for your penguin and decorate your penguin's igloo. My brothers have been dying to become members and were SOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited to find Club Penguin membership gift cards in their Easter baskets. They each got one month, and since they share a penguin, they have two months total! They were so happy!




^^After some Club Penguin excitement that drained the few drops of energy left in John Paul and Max, they flopped down on the couch or floor and watched TV.






^^Poor Cecilia wasn't feeling well either.





^^ "You can't catch me! I'm not letting go of my basket!"






^^ "Hey, I want more chocolate!!!" (That's Ben's "mad" face!)




I couldn't resist these pictures. Grammy pointed the tree and blue sky out to me from her bedroom window and I went outside to take the pictures. God gave us a beautiful Easter day! There wasn't a single cloud in the sky!!











^^I went on our shed roof and took this pic. I loved how the shadows captured the flower shapes!!!


^^This last picture is just a pretty vase of flowers.

Playing outside!

Okay, we have been soooooo incredibly busy in the last few weeks. I have been so tired that I'll load up the pictures and then have no energy to post, which is pretty easy! But I have taken a lot of pictures mainly because we have done a lot of things lately. So I will try to post them in the order we did them, have patience with me, there will be a lot!!!

So first of all, last week, (actually I believe it was Good Friday,) anyway, it was a nice day and I went outside. Of course I was followed by Rose and Ben, (who LOVES outdoors!) The rest of my siblings were doing something inside.

My mom was looking at the pictures onetime and was teasing me that Rose and Ben were my favorite siblings since I had the most pictures of them. But honestly, you always take the most pics of the littlest ones, they're the cutest!!!













^^I couldn't resist this last one, Ben is just too cute!
((And by the way, it wasn't really that dark outside. It was twilight and the flash made it dark.))