Lucy

Lucy goes to kindergarten this year, I can hardly believe it. She is very excited to go and to walk home with Jack and Ellie. She went to preschool last year and did great. Everybody loves Lucy, her teacher said all the kids, boys and girls, wanted her to be her best friend. She is very sweet and kind and is tender hearted. She gets her feeling hurt more easily than Jack or Ellie.
Lucy likes to play outside, and is excited to start sports this year. She will play soccer this fall. She took dance last spring and was so cute at her recital. (Videos are on youtube, if anyone is interested).
Lucy loves to talk and tell stories. She talks kind of fast and will take kind of a gasping breath in the middle of a sentence when she runs out of air and then just keep going. She is funny and likes to tell jokes. She is picky about what she wears, but not how it looks, how it feels. Certain clothes feel itchy to her, and she likes everything tucked in and her pants pulled up really high. She is definitely unique and we love her!

Ellie

With Ellie there is never a dull moment, there is always something going on in her little brain. She loves to read and on the end of her 1st grade STAR test she tested at a 6.3 grade reading level. She has a big vocabulary because of all of her reading so she says a lot of interesting things. She has a lot of friends and is a good playmate to her sisters, but definitely likes to be in charge of whatever situation she is in.
Ellie started piano lessons and is doing really well. She did gymnastics during the school year, but decided to switch to dance this summer. She loves to sing and perform for people, and was the star of her 1st grade play acting as the queen bee. She likes to film herself making movies and takes tons of pictures of herself on the computer.
Ellie is always helping out with Audrey, and tries to get Audrey to call her "mom". She is excited for the new baby, and wants him to sleep in her room, so that she can take care of him.

Jack

Jack is a sports nut. Every morning when he wakes up he has to check espn for the latest scores. He loves to watch sports on TV, his favorites being basketball and football, but he will watch anything sports related. During the school year, he stayed home from school sick one day. I let him watch Rudy, Remember the Titans, and Pistol Pete, he was duly inspired. He has played soccer, basketball, baseball, football, and taken golf and swimming lessons.
It is crazy how fast sports get competitive these days. This next year Jack wants to play tackle football, AAU basketball, and Cal Ripkin baseball. They are all more intense and expensive then the Park & Rec versions, and he is already narrowing down the sports he wants to stick with.
Jack's favorite sport by far is basketball. He spends hours a day playing and just finished up a 4 day camp at CSI.
I have mixed feelings about it all. I like that he is active and having fun and he is quite a natural athlete, but I'm not sure I want my baby playing tackle football. It also gets really time consuming and as I already mentioned expensive.
Jack is so excited to be getting a brother. He is a great big brother to his sisters and I'm grateful that our new baby will have such a great example to look up to.

A Boy!

Today we found out that baby #5 is a boy. We are all very excited, probably Jack most of all. Everything looked good, it is always a relief to get that scan done. He is due 11/11/11 and the due date stayed the same so we'll see when he makes his debut!

Another Try

We'll give this blogging thing another go. Since it has been over a year, I am not updating anything just starting fresh. One more try!