My Haley Baby turns 9!

Why do my children have to get older? Why can't they stay this small and cute forever?

My Haley turned 9 on Feb. 13th. I can't believe she's been on this earth almost a decade! Haley is a very helpful, sweet, and reliable girl. She has been an enormous help since Alina was born. I can count on Haley to feed her a bottle or calm her down when she's fussy. She's such a great little mom. Although, she drives her brothers crazy when she tries to be the mom where they're concerned ("Nate, please come put your boots away.") I'm grateful she's in our family.


These two pictures where taken on Haley's actual birthday. The girls were dressed for church and one of the boys mentioned that they were dressed similarly, so of course we had to take a picture!

We had Haley's birthday party on the Saturday after her birthday. We had her party at the Rochester Athletic Club just like Andy. It was such a help for me to have it there since Alina is under 2 months old. Haley wanted a cookie birthday cake. This was what she picked out at Sam's Club. I thought it was kind of cheesy, but she wanted the one with the most frosting on top. She LOVES frosting!

We requested to have Nikki again, since she had done such a great job with Andy's party. She had a lot of fun games planned for the girls. She came up to me afterward and said that we had the nicest kids that she had seen in her two years doing birthday parties. We do have nice kids.

Andy turns 6!

In my excitement to show pictures of our pretty baby, I forgot to post Andy's birthday. Andy turned 6 on January 26. It seems like he was this big only yesterday. I can't believe that my Andy Bug is 6!

For Andy's birthday dinner he wanted to go to "Burger King". When asked why he wanted to go to "Burger King" he said, "Because I want to wear the crown."

After "Burger King" we went home and had brownies and banana splits for dessert. It was a break from tradition, but we enjoyed it anyway!

We had Andy's birthday part at the Rochester Athletic Club. We are members there and it was awesome for me because they plan the games, supply the paper products, and clean up. It was a lot of fun!

We had to bring in our own cake. Andy was having a Mario Brothers Wii theme, but we could not find a store bought cake with that theme anywhere. He had to settle for a Pokemon cake. It was sure yummy!

The RAC employee in charge of Andy's party was Nikki. She was really cute with the kids, especially with Michael.

Alina's Blessing Weekend

We blessed our sweet baby Alina on February 6th. We were honored to have both sets of grandparents visit for the weekend. It was a great weekend!

Isn't she lovely? Isn't she wonderful? She's so precious!
Alina loves to stretch. She will do these full body stretches all the time. So unlike a newborn.

I was blessed in this dress. So it's almost 36 years old. Wow! That's old!

Alina's done with her close-ups.

The Grandpas took the kids out to shovel the driveway. You've gotta love Minnesota snow!

The kids went swimming in the pool at Grandpa and Grandma Taggart's hotel. Grandpa Taggart got in the pool with them. They had a lot of fun!

Isn't he yummy?

We celebrated Haley's birthday (Feb. 13) a little early so that she could celebrate with the grandparents. We asked her what kind of cake she wanted and she wanted me to make her one and then she would decorate it. She did a fabulous job!

A Happy New Year, Indeed!

We are ecstatic about the new addition to our family, none of us more than Nikole, who was more than happy to deliver 2 weeks early. Alina (pronounced A-lee-na; it's Russian) came last Wednesday morning at 4:11 am. Weighing in at 8 lbs 10 oz, she is our fourth largest baby. We can only imagine how big she would have been if she had come "on time" two weeks later.

It was immediately evident that she is a Taggart/Bice baby--bald, chubby and perfect. We expect that she will follow in the footsteps of her brothers and sister as she gradually outgrows her baldness, her chubbiness, and, sadly, her perfection. Enjoy these pictures. (I apologize for my looking so exhausted; I was on call and had been up most of Monday night.)