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.

Wall Decals

When we moved and I had the chance to make some changes to Melanie's room I was excited to try out some of those wall decals I had been seeing in the stores.  I picked some up at Target that would go with the decor we already had for her room and was anxious to try them out.

Well, since I'm just now posting about this, my anxiety to try them out obviously wasn't enough to get me to actually do it in a timely manner.  Part of my excuse was that I wanted to do it when Matt was home so he could keep the girls occupied because I didn't want them to see me applying them and possibly peeling them back off, therefore showing that they too could peel them off the walls.  So they got put up in the closet and were forgotten about until a couple weeks ago when I finally decided to take care of it one Saturday morning as a distraction while putting away the girls' laundry, my least favorite chore, by far.  Not just the girls' laundry, but all laundry in general.  I would truly prefer to iron every day and live out of laundry baskets to the task of putting away laundry (a habit we do fall back in to every so often it seems).  But I digress.

Melanie was quite tickled when she came upstairs to see the new pretties on her walls.  I may go and pick up another set so that when Claire moves in with Melanie I can decorate around her name as well, instead of taking away from Melanie's name.  Anyway, here is little Miss Melanie showing you some of her new wall art.

She really likes that butterfly :)

 

Melanie very quickly informed me that the pink flower was her flower and the yellow one was Claire's.  That's fine with me, glad to hear she's sharing and all.  I just assumed this was because the pink one was bigger, and therefore should be hers.  Then last week Melanie shed a bit more light on her reasoning behind her choices.  One day when we were putting away laundry (Again!  I tell you, it never ends!) Melanie said "The pink flower is my flower, the yellow flower is Claire's flower.  Claire is a sunflower.  I'm a farmer.  I get candy!"  Ah, it all made sense now!  A reference back to Halloween.  Quite the memory our little lady has!

Claire was quite fascinated by the new additions

 

And just because it's cute, the girls lovin' on each other.