"who loves ya, milla?"

"wana does!" 

wanda was miller's preschool teacher this year. she is from new york and is a die hard mets fan so we had planned this picture since fall when we started school. so, the day after opening day, a preschool day, miller proudly wore his yankees hat for "wana" as he calls her. 

now, about wanda, i have to tell you . . . she was a blessing to our family! working at the preschool, i knew who wanda was, but carter did not have her when she was in the ones. she had another set of wonderful teachers who we love (and one who we miss dearly as she and her family including one of carter's first friends, libbi, have moved away!) and, honestly, i really wanted miller to have the same teacher/room/etc. but God knew better. He placed miller in ms.wanda's room. (side note: we team teach at hope. each class has 2 co-teachers. wanda's co-teacher had to leave after christmas and another teacher joined her. we love them both too, but miller has a special relationship with "wana".) so, let me tell you about wanda, she is loud and crazy and miller loves every second of it! everyday she asks the kids, "who loves ya?" and then teaches them "wanda does!" they shout it back and forth and it is adorable. 

working in the same environment as my children attend preschool has been a blessing from day one. i knew the second carter had a high fever, saw the first time she dressed up and adamantly wore the sequined top all day, knew the second miller had an allergic reaction, nursed miller through mastitis, evaluated carter's "first" haircut by a little boy in her class, and on and on. knowing my children are loved by who takes care of them is more important to me than believing in the preschool's play based curriculum, loving teaching in my own classroom, loving the people i work with, etc. it just so happens i have all those things too, so like i said hope has been the place for us since we started three years ago!

but back to wanda, oh how we love her! so, if you get the blessing of a loud new yorker shouting "who loves ya?" to your child, consider it just that-a blessing! we love you too, wanda!

a family tradition

we have a family tradition every spring to celebrate the changing seasons. no, not the seasons of winter to spring, but the seasons of football to baseball. that's right, baseball! every year on the  yankees opening day, josh comes home for lunch and we have hot dogs while watching the game, or this year, the rain delay! miller really enjoyed the "game" while eating his hot dog, one of his favorite foods. and carter ran around chanting, "let's go, yankees!" 

oh, blog!

so, this blog was supposed to be a place for us to share photos and stories with all of our family since everyone lived out of town. at the time, josh would send photos by email and we would get a plethora of comments that we loved to hear and wanted other family members to be able to view. the commenting never really caught on with the fam (honestly, i don't think they know how!), most comments have come from friends. and over time, we have totally slacked on posting because we didn't feel like anyone was reading or viewing. occasionally, someone would comment to us that we hadn't updated the blog, and occasionally, josh would go into turbo mode and post the highlights of the past several months. 

then, in the april (after much harassment), josh made a decision, he was going to keep our blog up to date and post regularly, but as you can tell, that didn't pan out. he did it for a couple of entries, but now he is too busy with his own blog and photography business to even think about posting here. people say, "why don't you post?" well, because all of the photos are on josh's computer, and let's be honest, you come to look at cute pictures of my kids, not read the witty remarks i post. so, i am trying to update our blog, i will back up to when josh last posted, so . . . . stay tuned! and, feel free to comment (hint, hint)!