Caleb is 7!!

                                    For Caleb's birthday this year we took him to the Rain Forest Cafe
                  But the best part of the surprise was we picked up Mema from the hospital on the way!!!
                                  We also went to build a bear and the Lego store!!
                                                        It was a great day!!!

                                     We also did a birthday dinner with Mema and Grandma LeClair
                                         And a birthday party with a couple friends!!



I am so glad that Caleb is a part of my life. I am so excited to watch him grow into a man. He is one of the most sweet and loving person I know. He truly worries about everyone else all the time.

The scariest day of our lives and some things to be thankful for

Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like you are in a movie. I had one yesterday. Bradley, the kids Bailey(the dog) and I headed out around 10am to drive to VT to visit his family. We detoured to Falmouth to visit my Mother who recently had surgery.

We got through Boston and all was going well when it happened. And here it was a moment I felt like I was living in a movie. Our rear driver side tire blew out and we lost control. Our car spun around on 93 north across 4 lanes of traffic on the busiest travel day of the year. I remember being terrified. I remember think things like this don't happen to me. I remember thinking Oh My God my babies!! As we reached the breakdown lane we hit the guard rail and our car flipped onto it's side.

What seemed like hours was seconds! People surrounded our car! My kids were screaming. The baby slept through the whole crash! A gentlemen had Brad hand the kids out to him and then finally climbed in to help.  I was trapped in the passenger seat because of my seat belt. The dog was running around on the highway by himself as I yelled for someone to get him. Caleb finally grabbed him since he would not go to anyone else. I finally got undone by pushing myself up on the steering column. By then the police had arrived and they helped me go out through the tailgate of my van.

There standing on the side of the high were my children with complete strangers who stopped to help! And here is the amazing part of it all. No one had even a scratch on them. Our car was on its side on the highway and my children, my husband, our dog and our unborn baby were completely unharmed! 

And this is where my PSA is, the reason my children walked away without a scratch and my husband and I walked away without a scratch is because of proper seat belt and car seat use!! The baby (14 months today) was rear facing in his Graco Myride. My 5 year old daughter was 5 pt harnessed in her Britax marathon and my 6 year old was in a Recaro Vivo high back booster! I do not follow the minimums for car seat safety! I make sure my children do not have bulky coats on and I adjust straps every time I put them in their seats. Yes they were cold on the side of that highway waiting for their coats out of the car but they did not have a bump or a bruise on them.

So please remember your Children deserve to be safe!! And so do you, set the example by always wearing your seat belts.







The pictures do not do it justice. The frame seems bent but I could not get a good angle where I was at the towing yard.

Names!

Names are a very tricky thing! And the more kids you have the trickier it is. We had Caleb and Braeden picked out before we go married. Kylee we picked out before we were married also but I tried to change it when I was pregnant with her. When I was pregnant with Braeden we had picked out the name Mackenzie Jean if he had been a girl.

When we found out baby #4 was on the way I knew I did not want to use the name Mackenzie. I also knew we had not thought about a boys name in 7 years!! And girls name had always been a battle!  So I started throwing names out. Brad does not usually suggest names but will say yes or no to names. And so it began

Lilah, Lucy, Ava, Eden, and it went on and on and on. Finally after 7 years of being adamently against the name Charlotte I said to him if we name her Charlotte we can call her Charlie like Charlie Sheen and he was sold! Ummm his reason may not have been great but I was willing to take it to use such an awesome name! Then to come up with a middle name. I had a friend who passed away whose last name was Laurie. So to honor him I decided on Laurel. And so if #4 is a girl she will be Charlotte Laurel.

And then came boys names, it was many months Jonah, Seth, Collin, Micah, Graham. His middle name was set we just needed to pick a first name. It finally came down to Graham and Bennett. Before I was born my mom rented a room in a boarding house frome a woman named Inez Bennett. She was like another grandmother to me. She passed away 10 years ago but I wanted to honor her and so his name was chosen. If this baby is a boy he will be Bennett Cahill.

My boys

This morning I was sitting in the bathtub shaving my legs. I had the baby gate at the top of the stairs and Braeden trapped in the hallway(he loves playing there!) While shaving I hear thud thud thud followed by hysterical laughing. Soon Caleb came upstairs to climb over the gate to see what Braeden was doing.

Before too long both of my boys were laughing hystrerically while Braeden threw matchbox cars down the stairs. I love that even though they are so far apart in age they get along so well. I love listening them play together. Caleb is so amazingly sweet and so wonderfully patient with the baby. The two of them are like best friends!

I am so glad that I am their mom!!

And I think it is pretty darn cute that they are identical just 5 1/2 years apart!

The littlest Scribble!

Touch a Truck!

     We went to the mall one day and got lucky! They had touch a truck set up in the parking lot!     '
          The kids got to climb into all kinds of cool trucks and beep lots of loud horns!
                      Kylee loved controlling the air horn! It was so much fun!!

Halloween!

                                                     Every year we love going to the pumpkin patch!
                                       We take it seriously! Finding the perfect pumpkins is hard work!
                                                   This year our normal pumpkin patch was slim pickins!!!
                                                     They were either rotten or wierdly shaped!!
                                                         So we went to The Capeabilities farm!
                                                    It is a local farm run by developmentally delayed adults!
                                           Great cause and much better pumpkins! And they had wagons!!!
                                                   We picked the best pumpkins in the patch!!

                                              And Bradley worked hard to carve them!
                                                   The kids picked what they wanted.
                                   Flash and fish and of course an octopus for my little Octopus!
                                          Bradley did an amazing job! He is pretty talented!

                                             Then of course comes trick or treating
                                              Caleb was flash, Kylee was Rapunzel
                                             and sweet Braedy was an octopus!
                                       He loved this whole thing! Getting pushed around in the
                                       stroller being handed Candy! It really worked for him!