Since my last blog post we have...

 ... announced the upcoming arrival of our 4th little one (a boy!) when he was about 17 weeks along...

 ... trick-or-treated as a giraffe, chicken, and a butterfly...

 ... said what we were thankful for...

 ... ate "macky-cheese" dressed as a chicken...

 ... and celebrated Christmas.

 Amelia had her first piggy tails

 and her first "morning after sleeping with piggy tails" hair soon followed.

 We rang in the new year with a low key family game night with my parents and some tasty snacks 

(that Claire and Amelia are helping themselves to).

 We transitioned Amelia to a toddler bed for a short time to get her used to the idea of not being in the crib anymore (since there would soon be a baby in need of the crib)

and celebrated her birthday with a Very Hungry Caterpillar cake.

 Claire had her first trip to the dentist,

 helped decorate birthday cookies to share with her classmates at preschool,

 enjoyed unseasonably warm weather in February with an al fresco birthday lunch,

 and celebrated her 4th birthday with a Rapunzel cake.

 We then had several days of intense snow that coincided with mommy getting an awful bout of the stomach flu, so dad took time off to care for the kids so mom could sleep like a dead person.

The snowmen the girls built with Matt after the second snowfall covered them up.

And of course we had to make snow ice cream for the first time .

The spare room was painted to become Amelia's new room, and she got her own "big girl" bed

 so the nursery could be decorated in a more boy-friendly fashion.

 Claire got her first haircut, which consisted of about two 1-inch curls that were longer than the rest of her hair.

 I finished crocheting the blue baby blanket...

 ... so we could have our baby boy, Blaise Anthony, on March 10th.

 The girls were immediately in love

 and we thoroughly enjoy being a family of six!

We came home from the hospital, only to go back the next day for a 2 1/2 day stay in the NICU due to what turned out to just be some very tricky boogers that caused some breathing problems for our little man.  Armed with some saline solution and a bulb syringe, we headed home for "Take 2" of  life as a family of six.

 The second trip home was successful, and the girls dote on their baby brother to no end

 He's still not too sure what he thinks about that, but I'm sure he'll get used to it.

 We celebrated Blaise's baptism on Palm Sunday

 and Easter the following Sunday.

 We took the first trip to the ranch of the year to plant potatoes.

 Blaise gave us his first smiles the day before he turned one-month-old.

 Melanie celebrated her 6th birthday with a Rapunzel cake.

 Matt had facial hair

 and then he didn't.

 Spring finally came to stay (but not without a final dusting of snow)

 Claire had her final day of 3-year-old preschool

 Melanie had her first dance recital and loved every minute of it!

 And finally there was Mother's Day.

Now you're all caught up with the Stockemer family and I can resume my irregularly scheduled blogging program.

Fun with Balloons

As I've mentioned before, last year for Christmas the girls gave Matt a DVD on the basics of balloon art (because what dad won't need this vital life skill in his parenting career?)  The girls will periodically ask him to watch the video and make a balloon creature or two for them, and they are amused by his creations for several days afterwards.  I snapped a few pictures one of the last times they begged Matt into creating some things for them and thought I'd share the fun they had afterwards.

 Melanie getting decked out in some wearable balloon art.  Some of the stuff on the video is rather bizarre.

 Balloon hats and swords were the requested items this particular occasion.  There was quite a bit of swashbuckling going on that afternoon!

(Please excuse the baby in the middle of the swordfight.  She was happily making a mess and wouldn't move out of my view, and I was much too comfortable to move in search of an unobstructed shot.)

 Melanie is obviously a more enthusiastic swordswoman than Claire is.

 Claire does throw in a bit of panache from time to time though.

 When Claire grew tired of dueling, Melanie decided she needed to ham it up for me.  Enjoy scrolling through her series of poses (Sidenote - it would be nice if Blogger gave the option to make a slideshow on our toolbars instead of having to go to another site and imbed one from there.  Just my personal opinion.)