Isn't she lovely...

Last Mothers day I blogged about the fact I had purchased my own Mothers day gift (weird, I know, but so glad I did!), which was a oil painting of Emilia, from a former NICU graduate's talented mother, Natalie. The proceeds she earned for this actually was donated to the March of Dimes, which was so generous of her to do! She managed to get this painting accomplished in the midst of a long bedrest, having a baby, and moving states away... impressive, right? I thought so too! She did an absolutely amazing job, and I was so excited to get this in the mail today, and I am even more excited to hang this in our home! Thank you Natalie for painting this beautiful picture... you are an amazing artist!

Alice and Wonderland...

My niece, Hannah, was in Alice in Wonderland for her spring ballet. She also was super excited to got her point shoes recently. I cannot believe how fast she is growing up...

PS look closely and you might notice Heather has another bun in the oven! She's barely showing at this point, but our family is super excited to have a baby in the family again!

Omaha

After graduation I had a few weeks off before I officially started working... the first week I opted to spend it reorganizing my house, and then we headed to Omaha for a quick weekend trip to Emilia's favorite zoo! This time we took a few more kids with us, though! My 10 year old niece, Hannah, 7 year old nephew, Garrett, and 4 year old niece, Lily, and then our own Emilia kept us busy on the trip, but it went well with only a few mishaps... more on that later, though! After checking into the hotel, we went to the Children's museum, which is like a hopped up version of kaleidoscope and Science City... this time I opted not to get my face painted, much to the kids dismay!

                                                                Garrett mid air!

  Garrett wanted his face like Batman

                                 Emilia was standing inside a huge bubble, preparing to blow bubbles out at us!

Our first night we went to the downtown area to get dinner and go to the candy shop. The kids of course all wanted balloons on their favorite animal, or sword in Garrett's case!

Garrett actually met his match with these two little boys, who were equipped with their own weapons!

See how its nice and sunny here? This lasted about 20 more minutes, and then a huge storm rolled in while we were eating dinner. Chris decided to be nice and run the 5 blocks back to the hotel and get the car to pick us up in, because at this point it was pretty much pouring. We were waiting in the candy store for him when Chris came back much later then anticipated with a horrible limp and already black ankle. Apparently the stone stairs he took by the water were slippery and he twisted his ankle pretty badly. Although many suggestion were made to "run by the ER," he opted to go to Target for a wrap and some ibuprofen.... Stubborn? Nope. So I took the kids swimming in the hotel pool while he iced his ankle. He still insisted on going to the zoo, and I didn't mind since I just figured we would rent a wheel chair, but once we arrived he refused to get in one and walked around the zoo ALL DAY LONG! Needless to say, his ankle got worse before it go better! Anyways, the kiddos enjoyed it...

Emilia had 3 butterflies land on her in the butterfly garden... she was so excited!

We found some monkeys just hanging around...

And others were reading the daily news!

It was a fun weekend... not a whole lot of relaxing, but fun none the less!