girl middle name

Since our girl will have such an unusual first name, we'll give her a very normal middle name.

• scrabble score of: 7

additional hints:

• if ethan had been a girl, this would have been his middle name.
• has some family connections on both blake and my sides of the family.
• this name, and its variations, are very common.
• according to babynamespedia.com, this name also has the same Egyptian translation as our girl first name. this seems suspicious. however, in other languages this name also means something about a sea apparently which is kinda like a river...

girl name

One of the fun things about being prego with E&K was seeing what names people guessed for them. Some consider this torture (of the guess-ers) but I think it's great fun (for me)! :D

So we'll start with the hardest first. If we have a girl, her first name will...

• have a scrabble score of 10.

Additional hints (which you will probably need):

• You have probably never heard of this name before. (oooh, look at that, some of you dislike it already!)
• We did not make it up ourselves though, we saw it a couple years ago in a playbill from the 5th Avenue Theater. We both thought it sounded both strong and beautiful. We joked we would name our next daughter that and now... if we have a daughter, we will!
• In a funny twist, Blake had always wanted to name Kaylee "River" and one of the meanings for this name is River.
• Apparently, it has Old Greek, Spanish, Latin, and Egyptian roots.
• More hints to come as needed / as I think of them. :)

Guess away! If you're right we will tell you. :)

catch up post

Now I'm cheating a little and writing this post and setting it to publish later. So when you see it, and until you read that last sentence, you'll think, "see, dana is posting more often" but now you know I'm kind of cheating. I'll take half credit. anyways...

let's catch you up a bit here.

• I am pregnant! hurrah!
• 40 weeks is around May 3-5.
• I have gestational diabetes (which I don't recommend) which means that if I go into labor myself they'll let me try a VBAC, but they won't let me go past 40 weeks (ie they'll give me a C-section on may 5 if I haven't already gone into labor). If my diabetes gets worse they won't let me go past 39 weeks, which is April 28.
• We decided it would be "fun", since we already have a boy and a girl, to not find out the baby's gender until it's born. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes it is not!
• The baby's temporary name is "Peaches"

• Kaylee and Ethan are doing well. They're 3 1/2 these days.
• They're in preschool 5 days a week now (mornings only) but next year we'll just have them in preschool 3 days a week simply because the carpool situation with a baby gets more complicated.
• I'm working 2 days a week; my mom picks them up from preschool and watches them the rest of the day on Mondays, and Blake's mom does the same on Thursdays.

Also, today is my childhood friend Libby's birthday! Happy Birthday!

long time, no blog

I haven't written in awhile. There's no good reason. This post is just to say that I plan to give it another go. Posts will prob be shorter, and although I know everyone loves pictures, they're likely to be picture-less. think of my blog as being a blog/twitter hybrid or something. I'm attempting to make it as easy as possible for me to blog in the hopes that I will. We'll see how it goes!

Huh, this is bad. It's been so long since I've written a post that I can't find where the publish button went. shouldn't that be obvious somewhere? I guess if you're reading this, that means I eventually found it though...

Happy Mothers' Day

Happy Mothers' Day!

I'm spending my second mothers' day away from my children. In fact, I'm writing this post on May 5; I'm about to join up with two of my girlfriends and we're hoping on a plane to Paris (well, technically Germany and then France). There we'll meet up with another friend who's already there. Just us girls, just having an awesome time!

The kiddos are hanging out with Blake and various wonderful "mothers" in the meantime. Blake, then our new nanny Kirsty, then my mom, then blake, then blake's parents, then blake, then Kirsty again, and then I'm back.

Thanks a million to my mom and Heidi: a) for making my trip possible, and b) for loving our kids ALL THE TIME. The kids, Blake, and I are SO blessed to have both of you take such active roles in Kaylee and Ethan's lives. It is awesome, and wonderful, and hilarious to have them come home from a day with one of you having learned new things and repeating your phrases. Just yesterday, Ethan told me that I was going to the "apple tower" due to the brief Parisian education my mom gave them last thursday.

Thanks mom, and thanks Heidi. Our kids are going to grow up to be better people because they have not just a mom, but also two amazing grandmas who love them so, so much.

Tulips

On Tuesday, my mom, the kids, and I went up to see the tulips. Most of the pictures were taken by my mom and I haven't gotten those yet, but here are a few I took on my phone.

 

 

These tulips are called Anne Marie! I tried to get the kids to take a picture in front of them (in front of these, in front of the ones in the field, etc, several tries) but they were not into that idea. Sorry aunt annemarie!

These ones are called Claudia. Anne maries and claudias were my fav single tulips of the day. Grouped together I really liked the "bold" mix of solid red, solid yellow, red/yellow, and solid deep purple. 

Riding a tractor around tulip town. this picture cracks me up 'cuz the kids are so weird looking! (she typed with love)

they grow more than 100 different varieties of tulips at tulip town. amazing to see.

Lunch was a little rough that day (over 50 minutes to get our food) but the kids were AMAZING while we waited so it wasn't that bad, and the rest of the day was fantastic. thanks for suggesting the outing and for driving mom!

katie and brent

I haven't posted in forever, I know. There are many reasons for this, many of which follow the ever-present theme of busy-ness. another reason is that life has been so great and horrible all at the same time and it's hard to feel and wrestle with both emotions so intensely. the great parts of life have been all the fun things we're up to around here. kids are happy, we've done a couple triathlons and whatnot, jobs are going well, life is good. the horrible has been the death and dying. there's nothing that I can write here that can honorably sum up either Katie or Brent or their deaths. The facts are that their deaths were rough, they were un-related, they came so close together, and they both affected Blake's group of guy friends so much. Brent's memorial was wonderful. Katie's is this weekend and I know it's going to be amazing too. The world is a little worse off without them.

It gets you to thinking about all the loss in the world. The boston marathon bombing has been rough as well; I think because although we don't run marathons, both Blake and I run, so it's hit a little close to home. Later this month will be the third anniversary of my cousin's death as well. It's kind of easy to be depressed, and hard to write about how great life is, although really, life has been so great.

So this is my sad, mournful post. Next I'll post pictures of tulips and maybe Easter and other fun, wonderful things. But I also wanted to recognize the loss, and ask for your prayers for Blake, for Ryan, Ryan, Kennedy, Michal, all the boys, and all the families. Thanks.