A Mega Update! Forgiveness needed! :)

This last month I shared with you all our exciting news of the new baby we will add to our family mid January. I am now at the beginning of my 12th week and feeling great! Life is crazy as always. I have been taking my daycare on field trips every week to get out of the house and weekends we are occupied with the boys playing baseball, church, homework and cleaning. Needless to say once again I have fallen very behind on updating the blog! I have so much to share too! So forgive me for this long winded post but I promise you a bunch of pictures at the end! So bear with me! :)

First of all we got a new front door this spring and love it. Tony let me paint it a brick red color, which I have always wanted. So that is a quick bit of homeowners news. Then we celebrated Tony's 27th birthday. We didn't do too much. After we celebrated Tony's birthday we celebrated Owen's 5th birthday. He has been a little obsessed with Mario Bros. video games lately and wanted a Mario party. So we threw a Mario bash. We played games like Pin the moustache on Mario (drawing courtesy of Tony's mom Holly), a mushroom toss (with real mushrooms), bowling down pins with coins on them, and more. I made a toadstool cake and star shaped cupcakes. I have to say, that I am very impressed with how my cake turned out, I'm not trying to brag!:) Owen got a bunch of gifts which he loves, including two rats (one for him and one for Raymond). They are both girls, and very cute but being pregnant my midwife has advised me to err on the side of caution and avoid them during pregnancy just in case. Owen named his rat Lala and Raymond named his Toekey. I have NO IDEA where they came up with the names, but they had them decided before they even left the pet store. We thought 5 was a good age to have his own responsibility for a pet. He helps Tony feed them and play with them and clean their cage once a week.

Right after Owen's party we were bombarded with a super crazy week of me teaching Vacation Bible school at church, so that was a very busy and long week, but fun and ultimately worth it. I had never taught vbs before and had volunteered to teach the 5 and 6 year olds. But since the 3 and 4 year old class had only 7 kids and I had 25, we combined classes so the other teacher could help me out. It was fine, the activities were comparable for the ages.

After VBS, the boys started playing t-ball, which Tony is coaching this year. They play for the YMCA, so it is very laid back and introductory. Tony is doing a great job as the coach, and I think the parents are overall impressed with his ability. The boys started out timid, but have made noticeable progress in their ability as well. Raymond is obsessed with baseball and plays all day every day at home, and Owen just is there to have fun. They are the red team this year and they are called the Angels. Appropriate name for our new dedication to being more active in church and Tony getting confirmed, I thought! :) We play for an hour and a half every Sat. until Aug. 1. I don't help Tony with the team or the boys much, because I have to wrangle Judd during the game because all he wants to do is run out to the outfield and play with Owen, Raymond and Daddy, so I have to hold him down.

At the end of May my parents and sister Kelly came to visit for Tony's confirmation into the church and to celebrate both his and Owen's birthday. So I have some pictures of that too.

We have found out a couple of weeks ago that Tony was denied for his vacation that we were planning in July to go to Gillette for the high school reunion and hang out with old friends. I am super bummed about that, but I'm not going to attempt that trip without Tony and it just wouldn't be the same. It was supposed to be our family vacation for the summer. So now we are left with maybe one weekend in Aug. to visit my parents, hopefully. I haven't been to their house in Missouri in a year and a half!

Owen is now 5 and will be entering into Kindergarten in Aug. So that is his big update. Raymond will be 4 at the end of Sept. and he is as headstrong as always. He is mister independent and everything has to be a fight with him, but he's still super cute and cuddly and I love him. Judd is my little bug still. He is climbing EVERYTHING! He climbs up on step stools, on the couch, on the bed, stands in his high chair, and today I watched him climb up a big slide and when he got to the top he went down the ladder. (Raymond taught him that one). He climbs up the ladder and slides all by himself. He loves to play and even though he started out being scared at the sprinkler park, he is now the one at the swimming pool that will go under water!!!!! Owen and Raymond won't do that. He is very active and independent, but not in a fighting way like Raymond. He still doesn't talk too much, but says a few words. He babbles non-stop (he must get that from his mommy), but he does say Gabba Gabba, for his favorite t.v. show Yo Gabba Gabba. I have to admit, I used to HATE that show, but Judd is so dang cute when he watches it that I have to let him. He gets so excited and dances and sings and claps his hands. He loves it. He just started saying Choo Choo for train and Woof Woof for dog.

So I guess that is where I will close for now. I have babbled on and on. We are so busy that we are not preoccupied with the pregnancy which is different than the other three, but good too, so I don't dwell on how anxious I am to have the baby. Instead time is just flying by. We will be able to find out at the end of Aug. what we are having. So start placing your bets! :)

Happy 4th of July everyone, I'm sure I will have a post with pictures for that as well. Enjoy the multitude of pictures!

Stacey and Tony plus 4!

Okay, so not as impressive as Jon and Kate plus 8, but big news in the Coffey household...we will be expecting the arrival of a new little one around Jan. 15! I assure you, the last of our family, but we are very excited.
I am SOOOO behind on my blog right now. I have lots of posts to add with a million pictures, but I wanted to type a short little post to let everyone know our good news! We have been crazy busy lately. I have been working with my 10 daycare kids from 5:30am until 5:30pm when I've been loading up Owen and Raymond this week to teach 27 3-6 year olds at Vacation Bible School until 9pm. Needless to say I am exhausted!!! To top it all off, I started another online class this last Friday, so I had to get all my reading and homework done before midnight last night too!! So tonight is the last night of VBS, and even though it has been so busy around here, it has been a lot of fun. But, I am SOOOOOOOOOO excited to sleep in tomorrow, no matter how scurvy and disgusting my house is from lack of attention this week!
So, watch closely because I will be adding a ton of posts to update other things that have been going on, like the boys baseball, etc. I will also keep you updated on the upcoming baby! And yes, I will most definitley be finding out the gender of this one too. I do not have enough patience to wait until the end, and if it happens to be a girl, I am totally NOT prepared! :)
I hope everyone else is enjoying the beginning of their summer.

Here we go a visiting...

We finally took a trip to Dodge City, KS to visit JB, Amanda and little Blain. We left at 5pm on Friday after Tony got off of work and we drove 7 1/2 hours. It was 12:30am by the time we got there and needless to say we were VERY anxious to get out of the car, or I should say I was since the rest of my family was fast asleep and I was trying very hard to keep myself awake!

We ended up staying up until about 2:30am hanging out and talking until we all felt sick we were so tired! Off to bed.

Saturday we got up and ate breakfast and hung out all day. Tony, JB and the older two boys went to JB's school and ran errands and hung out, while Amanda, Blain, Judd and I milled around the house. I tried to persuade Amanda to let me watch Blain so she could take a nap or something because she had only ended up with about 2 1/2 hours sleep Friday night after Blain had many wakings, but she is very protective and watchful I think because of his first few weeks of life and illness, so she kept declining my offers. I felt bad for her because Blain ended up sleeping for about 6 hours straight, and she could have easily taken a 6 hour nap!

He is very cute and as of Friday weighed 8 lbs. 13 oz. He is definitely going through a growth spurt because he had just gained a lb. in one week and was still guzzling the milk more than usual they said.

The boys really liked him and Raymond said that he liked Blain's little head, while Owen liked his little feet. Owen tells me that Judd likes his little hands. It's unusual for me though that Blain has such a little head, because all three of my boys had bigger heads. He is definitely cute and cuddly. We got lots of good pictures, of which I will post for your viewing enjoyment. I have to say that in my opinion he is all Amanda. He definitely takes after more of her side at the moment. Whereas my boys are ALL Coffey, no me. :(

Amanda is very dedicated to pumping breast milk and feeding him from a bottle, which I have to tell you is very time consuming and takes a lot of effort, but she says she can't bring herself to just nurse him again after his turning blue that one time. So she does an awesome job at staying on top of it along with JB. Way more dedication than I could muster with the time it takes to do it all. I'm just glad she is committed to the breast milk cause. I am SO Pro-breast milk. I can't say that I blame her, but I am always one to opt for the more convenient route and would give in and try nursing again! :) I wish there was something I could do to help her not relive those images over and over and keep worrying that he will be sick with every little thing, but nothing I say will change her of that. That's being a mom I suppose. I would just like to make it easier for her.

Anyways...we left Sunday around 11am and got home at 6:30pm on the dot. The ride home was much easier and quicker, but still a very long drive!

So without further ado, I present my family and Blain, the newest addition!

Summer Vacation!!!

So sad... last Friday was Owen's very last day of preschool EVER! Thursday was Raymond's last day for this year. I did well however at Owen's program. I did not cry and only once got a little moist eyes! Not too bad. I guess I'm saving it all up for his first day of Kindergarten! Oh no. That might not be a good day for me! :)

Anyways...both of the boys' end of year programs involved them singing songs from the year, reciting a bible verse that they had to memorize and eating cupcakes and receiveing a diploma. So I simply wanted to share some photos with you and maybe a little video clip of each. Hopefully those will load more quickly than they usually do! So enjoy! It's now officially SUMMER VACATION!

Early Birthday Present!

So about a month ago I was able to buy two tickets to the Jason Mraz concert that was coming to Omaha/Council Bluffs this last week. I wanted to tell Tony so bad because we both LOVE Jason Mraz, but I really wanted it to be a surprise!

A little bit of background information....Jason Mraz's song, "I'm Your's" is kind of like our family theme song. If it comes on the radio Owen and Raymond start singing it at the top of their lungs and dancing around, while Judd will come running to the radio and start dancing and snapping his fingers, and Tony and I of course sing and dance around too. It's been like that since the very first time we heard it, so it has some sentimental value to our family!

So back to the original story. Despite my desire to tell Tony, I held out for over a month! I even had the whole thing planned out. I cancelled my night kid that I normally watch on Tuesday nights, I had all of the daycare kids picked up by 4pm so they'd be gone before Tony got home, I had Holly lined up to babysit, and I had the car all loaded up and ready to go when he got home from work. I even watched the weather so closely because it was an outdoor concert, that when I saw that the only rain for the week was on the night of the concert, I took the boys to Wal-Mart and bought two rain ponchos! (Luckily it did not rain and we did not need them)

The ONLY downfall of the night was that I forgot to tell Tony to get a sweatshirt and he about froze sitting on the grass in the chilly damp air for almost four hours! Oops.

The concert opened with some random new female singer touring with Jason. She sang two or three songs and then the Plain White Tees came out and sang for an hour! They could have been a concert all on their own. Then Jason came out and sang for 1 1/2 hours, then an encore. It was awesome. You know how sometimes you love an artist and then you get the chance to see or hear them live and you are gravely disappointed because they just weren't as good as in the studio? Jason is BETTER live! I think he's awesome on the radio, but his performance was SOOOO smooth, his voice was awesome and his songs are so fun! I love how he mixes different genres of music like caribbean, folk, jazz, funk, rock, rap, big band with his brass section, to make such awesome sounding music! He is a very talented singer.

Overall it was a very fun night just the two of us. We had dinner at Chili's before the concert and and we got to stay out until midnight, which NEVER happens with three little boys around! :) I have a couple of pictures to post (the ones of him singing are not very good. Our digital camera sucks at night!) and a little video clip of our "family song". The clip was mostly for the benefit of the boys because we knew they'd love it, but on our digital camera we don't have a lot of space to record an entire song! So enjoy. It was Tony's birthday surprise, and he had NO idea!! I'm so proud of myself because I usually can't contain myself and give all surprises away! :)

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there!