Catching up

When I started this blog, I had every intention of keeping it updated at least weekly, if not more. Well, that hasn't happened. I barely have time to get pictures downloaded, let alone write a whole post for this blog!! It seems like there just aren't enough minutes in the day. Our life has gotten a lot more busy now that Emma has started school and Awana started up again at church! I suppose it is more important that I spend time with my kids instead of just writing about them. We have been up to quite a lot of new things since I last posted though. Be prepared for LOTS of pictures! I wonder how many one post can hold??? Hopefully I won't ever have to find that out! I don't plan to go this long again without getting some new ones on here. So, enjoy the pictures of our life over the last 2 months! These are a little out of order, but oh well!







This past Saturday Ryan went out of town for a conference with Jody and Aaron, so my parents and I took Collin, Emma and cousin Analise to Post Family Farm for the afternoon. It was pretty chilly, but the kids all had a good time! Poor little Collin just can't seem to get past this yucky cold he has, so he didn't like it quite as much as the girls. I had to break out his halloween costume because his winter coat is a 12 months and WAY too big for him. So the pumpkin kept him nice and warm......and obviously SO CUTE! Collin sure loves his papa and made sure he held him for most of the time at the farm!

Emma loves riding the pumpkin barrels! I should post pictures of her in them for the last few years. What a change!! I was just looking at some pictures of her from this time last year and she looks like so much more of a baby! I think that this year (3 yrs-4 yrs) has been almost as big of a change in her as her first year was! She's definitely growing into a little girl and absolutely NOT a baby anymore. She'll be the first one to tell you that! She actually won't even refer to herself as a "little" girl, only a big girl!

Grandma with Emma and cousin Analise (with the kitty face...she sat "purrfectly" still the whole time she got her face painted!). Both of these girls are Grandma's girls and tend to even choose Grandma over mom! Do I detect a little bit of spoiling on Grandma's part? I THINK SO!!!

Emma loves hayrides and was so excited to get to go out to the pumpkin patch and get a pumpkin! This coming weekend we have two hayrides coming up, so she's looking forward to that! I think this picture is adorable of her and makes her look so grown up!

We had to get a picture of Collin on a pumpkin since he was dressed so appropriately! He wasn't too sure of what we were doing with him or what all of those big orange things were, but he's pretty laid back and just goes with the flow (unless you take away something he wants or try to get him to go to sleep). :)

Since Collin had his picture taken on a pumpkin, Emma thought she needed one too. She's holding one of the little pumpkins that she picked out for Collin and Analise.

After much anticipation, Emma finally started school in the beginning of September! She's been wanting to go for SO long! Now she's looking forward to when she's old enough to ride the bus to school. I'm very pleased with the preschool we chose for her and she seems to be thoroughly enjoying it and learning a lot. She always comes out singing the songs that they sang that day. If you know Emma very well, you wouldn't be surprised by that. She LOVES to sing and dance and is actually pretty good at it! The other day when I picked her up her teacher said, "Boy, that Emma.....she's right on with all the songs! She dances and sings like crazy!" That's my Emma!! I'm not at all surprised by that!

Emma loves the new backpack that she picked out! They need to have one for all of their papers to go home in, so she was so excited to get to go to the store and get this backpack for school. I was excited too......Meijer had them on sale and then when you bought $10 in Kelloggs products (that we need anyway), you got $10 off, so I paid $2 for it!!! I love a deal!

Emma posing for a picture outside the door to her school before she went in for the first time!

After I picked her up, we went out and took a picture by the school sign. I love this picture! She's sure growing up fast! Can't believe she'll be 4 in 2 short months!

We went to the Ringling Brothers circus a few weeks ago and Emma's showing off her clown nose. We love Ringling! We've taken Emma for the last 3 years and she looks forward to it every year! The first year we even took her twice!

We had a Boger family reunion this year with my grandpa's side of the family and Collin got this balloon hat. He did prefer to chew on it over wearing it, but we didn't let him do that!

We took the kids to their first Whitecaps baseball game this year. They both loved it! Collin seems to already have a love for baseball! He was pretty much smiling like this the whole time! It made his daddy and papa proud!

Emma loved the game too, but more for the entertainment and people than for the sport. She was in a crazy mood that night, but loved the fireworks at the end. She slept through the 4th of July ones, so these were a special treat!

I just had to throw in this sweet picture of Collin snoozing on his daddy! It's so cute! He's really turned into a daddy's boy lately and he gets SO excited when he sees him! A lot of times he'll even pick Daddy over me!

Emma was able to go to three amusement parks this summer (Six Flags, Cedar Point & Michigan's Adventure)! She loves them! She's a little daredevil and goes on all the rides she

can! This picture was at Michigan's Adventure. She loves the motorcycles!

Collin loved his first carousel ride! He was so excited on that horse!

Riding with Daddy on the train. This picture was taken before the operator of the train told us that there is no photography permitted on any ride at Michigan's Adventure. Even on a train going maybe 10 mph???? Come on!!

Collin just relaxing in the stroller after playing in the water at the waterpark.

Emma loved the waterslides! She wasn't tall enough for any of the big ones, but they have some decent ones in the kiddie area. I can't even count how many times she went down that slide! We had a great time there, but these pictures do remind me of our 20 minutes of horror when Emma went missing in the waterpark amoung thousands of people.....so scary! Praise the Lord He helped us find her and kept her safe! See my previous post if you want more info on that day.

The sun kind of washed this picture out, but I just had to put it in here. All summer long at other parks Emma just could never figure out how to get one of these airplanes in the air and keep it there. She finally got it and was so proud of herself!!!

Emma LOVES the frog hopper ride! The one at Michigan's Adventure is the best beacause it's the most bouncy of them all. She screams, laughs and smiles the whole time!

Collin & Papa at the end of the day while we waited for Ryan, Emma and Jody to ride Zach's Zoomer roller coaster.

You can't see them very well, but this is Ryan, Emma & Jody on Zach's Zoomer. Emma and Ryan rode in the front car! Emma had her hands up the whole time! Is she really MY daughter??? When she got off she said it was so much fun, but just a little scary! The coaster camera took a really cute picture of them that we just had to buy!

Collin loves Emma's hula hoop! It's his favorite toy to bang on the ground! It looks funny when he does it because it's so much bigger than him!!

Emma loves to hold Collin! You can see how thrilled he is about that. :) Aren't they a cute brother & sister?? At least she loves him and wants to be by him. We'll see how long that lasts!

Sitting on the John Ball statue ay the zoo. Can't go there without one of these! This was Collin's first trip to John Ball Zoo. Emma has her purse (one of many) of course!

Emma and Collin at the zoo.

Emma loved playing in the train at the zoo and stuck her head out to pose for a picture.

Collin loved the goats! They tried to nibble on his little toes a few times, but he still loved the anyway!

Emma was so excited to go into the birdhouse and feed the birds. She wasn't quite so sure though when one one of them got up close!

After a couple seconds she was ok though. After that she LOVED the birdhouse! My parents and her actually spent quite a lot of time in there! Ryan, Collin and I only stayed in for a few minutes....I'm not that excited about birds flying all around me. My dad never seems to learn his lesson about being around too many birds. He was pooped on once again! At least this time it was just on his shirt instead of by a seagull on the head in Florida!

Although I think this is one of the worst exhibits at John Ball Zoo, Collin's favorite part was the penguins. It seems like every winter they work on improving some part of the zoo to debut in the spring....maybe soon it will be the penguins! Usually they're one of the best exhibits in a zoo, so that's why it's so disappointing here. I think he just liked how close he could get to them. If he could have, I think he would have dove in there with them!

Emma wanted to go on a camel ride. We didn't want to pay for one of the adults to ride with her though, so she ended up going all by herself. The workers tried to get some other kids to go with her, but they were all in too big of parties. Didn't bother Emma in the least though. She got right on that camel and rode with a big smile!

Doesn't she look so incredibly cute on that huge camel??!! It was so adorable to watch her. I was so proud of how brave she was. It shouldn't be a surprise though. She's not usually scared of the things I would have been scared of at her age!

We went camping for the last time of the season over Labor Day weekend. Since we were close to home this time, we brought bikes and the bike trailer. This was Collin's first ride in it since he wasn't able to sit up most of the summer. He loved it! It's supposed to be a 2-seater, but it did look a little snug in there for the two of them.

We put Emma and Collin together to swing in the baby swing. Emma looked funny in there with her legs dangling so much farther than Collins! They loved it though!

Collin spent a lot of time in the swing. He loves to swing! Fortunately his baby swing has a bigger seat than most and can hold up to 30 pounds because he still spends time in it every day at home! He just LOVES swings in any shape or form!

Emma and Collin swinging together at the campground.

Around this time was when Collin really started to raise his arms in the air to say "so big!" He loves to do it and it's so cute to watch him. He raises those arms as far as he can and squishes his little face in the process! Aunt Angela brought her nice camera out to the campground to take pictures of all 3 grandkids. They turned out really cute! I'll have to get some posted on here soon!

Well, I guess that about sums up the pictures from the last couple months for us. I do have many more, but this is just a good sampling of them! Hopefully I can get on here again this week to do an update on Collin. He's turning 8 months tomorrow! Where did the time go???

It's been a while...

I noticed that it's been a while since my last post, so I thought I should give a brief update on what we've been up to lately. I do have a bunch of pictures to post, but I haven't gotten them downloaded off the camera yet. In the last few weeks we've gone to Binder Park Zoo, Michigan's Adventure and John Ball Zoo and I have pictures from all of them. Well, not too many from Binder Park since I forgot to put the memory card back into the camera after downloading off of it. OOPS! Ryan was a little upset about that. He was wanting to get a lot of pictures of the kids feeding the giraffes. Even Collin fed one (although it would have prefered to grab his little hand with it's huge tongue I think)!

We had a scary little incident while at Michigan's Adventure a couple weeks ago. My parents and Jody, Aaron and Analise all went with us. When we went to the water park, I stopped to get something for Emma to eat and she went on with the rest of the family. Apparently everyone thought that someone else had her and when I met up with them (about 15 minutes later) they asked me where Emma was. At first I thought they were kidding and when I realized they weren't, it sent me into panic mode!! Thankfully, we had put her lifejacket on her when we first got into the waterpark so I didn't have a drowning to worry about!! Jody's quick thinking sent her to a food booth to ask for help and they directed us to the first aid station to let the lifeguards know she was missing. When I was running over there (surely looking "beautiful" running in a bathing suit...oh those poor people who had to watch!), I saw her being held by one of the lifeguards and crying her eyes out!!! WHAT A RELIEF! Apparently she had remembered how we've taught her to find someone in charge if you can't find us and she found a lifeguard and we were reunited after only 5 minutes (that seemed like hours) of realizing she was gone. God taught me an important lesson that day though. I'm often worried about making sure the kids are safe and watching everything and doing everything I can to keep them safe. God taught me that I can't do it on my own, on matter how hard I try, but that He is more than able to do it for me! A lesson I was in need of learning lately. Needless to say, EVERYONE kept her close to them the rest of the day. It was a good lesson for Emma too because she does tend to wander quite often and she learned what can happen when you don't stay by mom and dad (or grandma and grandpa or aunts and uncles). Overall, it was a good day with some much needed lesson learning involved!

Today Emma had her preschool orientation. She's SO excited to start going without us next week! She told me tonight that she can't wait to go to preschool and for me to "leave her there and not stay with her." She's in a pretty good size class of 19 kids. It's quite unique because the class has 12 boys and only 7 girls. It usually seems like it's the other way around most of the time! I'm excited for this new phase of life for her and all the things that she's going to learn. I'm also looking forward to 2 afternoons of quiet around here!! I love Emma very much, but lately we've been in great need of some time apart. I think this will do both of us a lot of good!

Anyway, better get to bed. Jake and Rachel are coming tomorrow, so it'll be a busy day! Friday we're off camping for the holiday weekend, so that should be fun. I just want to end with a picture that my sister-in-law, Angela, took of Collin last week. I just think it's super cute with the little face he's making. He sure is a cute little guy. Can't believe he'll be 7 months in 10 days!!! Time goes by too fast!!!

6 month pictures!

We got Collin's 6 month pictures taken at Target today. He did pretty well, except for the fact that he's hesitant to smile for people he doesn't know. We got some cute shots, but none of his big smile. He just stared at the photographer like, "I don't know you!" Had to get some of the big girl and the kids together too. I think they turned out pretty well. They kind of uploaded on here in a weird way, but at least you can see what they look like! Enjoy!!

Collin is 6 months old today!!!!

It's hard to believe that my baby is already 6 months old!!! Where did the time go?? I can barely remember that tiny little baby he started as already! He's turning into the sweetest baby boy I've ever seen though!! Boy has he changed over the past 6 months! In about 30 minutes it will be exactly 6 months ago that Collin joined our family (4:42pm on Friday, February 13). He weighed 6 lb. 3 oz. at birth, but was 5 lb. 9 oz. when we brought him home. Such a little guy!!! He was at the doctor yesterday to get his ears checked and weighed 16 lb. 13 oz. He's growing great!! He goes Wednesday for his 6 month check up and shots. Over the past week, Collin has really started to grow up!! Saturday he started to really sit on his own. We can pretty much trust him that way....until he gets excited or sees a toy that's out of his reach. He's found his voice. It gets louder every day!! He's now rolling across the living room and loves the phone!! I can barely even talk on it while I'm holding him!!! Last month we started cereal and introduced a few new foods. So far he's had bananas, applesauce and sweet potatoes. He LOVES to eat!!! He's doing great with solid food, but has decided that he does NOT like the bottle and will not take it!!! It's neat to see the personality developing in him and how different he is from Emma. They may look alike, but they're night and day different in their personalities!! Collin is much more timid than Emma was and is a bit more wimpy than her too!! On the other hand, Emma was too busy for me to ever cuddle her and Collin would be happy as can be if I would hold him and snuggle with him all day!! I'm hoping that he doesn't decide that he wants to crawl and walk as early as she did!! He sure loves his big sister though, so I don't know how long it will be before he's wanting to keep up with her!! Collin has brought so much joy to our family and I can't imagine life without him. It's been a great 6 months getting to know this sweet little boy!!! The following two pictures are of Collin and of Emma at 6 months. They do look a lot alike, but he's smaller than she was. Emma was 18 lb. 6 oz. at 6 months! They also have different eye and hair colors (not that either of them has much hair at this age)!!!



Collin at exactly 6 months old....taken today!! Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen??!! :)

This is Emma at 6 months, but almost 7 months. For some reason I couldn't locate a better picture of her at this age, although I know I have them! This is with her cousin Adam at a wedding reception for Ryan's cousin Heather.

Over the past few weeks, Collin has started to stick his tongue out ALL THE TIME!!! It's so cute, so I had to document it on here with a picture!

Emma thought that Collin would love to wear her pink sunglasses. He did actually like them, but daddy wouldn't let him wear pink glasses for too long!

Big sister Emma just LOVES her brother and he thinks she is the best person EVER (besides mommy and daddy)!! When she comes in the room, he gets so excited and pulls her hair to get her face close enough for him to "kiss." She's a very good big sister and Collin is fortunate to have a sister who loves him so much!!

Family Camping Trip

This past weekend we went camping with my parents and Jody, Aaron and Analise. My parents have a membership to American Campgrounds, so this place is really nice!! Unfortunately the weather wasn't the same!!! Friday night and Saturday were pretty yucky!! It rained more than I've ever seen while camping!!! Fortunately we were in campers, not tents, so it only flooded outside, not inside. It was a cozy day with all of us crammed in Jody and Aaron's trailer....or my dad's "poop van." If you wonder why it's called the poop van, ask me later!! Once the evening rolled around on Saturday it had cleared up and things were drying off. It got HOT then!!! Sunday was VERY warm and we were glad to pack up and get into the air conditioned vehicles!! It wasn't the best camping weekend ever, but we still had fun and it's always nice to get away from home for a few days!!


Analise and Collin in their strollers. We went for a walk once the rain cleared off on Saturday.

Emma plays so hard that she fell asleep right in the lawn chair. She actually slept there for a while Saturday evening before we woke her up for dinner!!

When we were stuck in the camper Saturday morning, Collin started to REALLY sit up on his own!!!! He'd sit for about 5 minutes at a time!!. Ever since then he's been doing great!! He basically only falls over when he gets excited because he smiles with his whole body!!! He hasn't even been using the boppy to help him sit since we've been home!! What a big boy!!!

After the rain Emma and some other kids found frogs by the lake!! She had to bring one back to show us (in a bucket, not her hands, of course)!

Papa showed it to Analise. She would have gladly touched it or eaten it, but her mommy was freaking out a little!!! :)

Emma with her frog and her Papa. She finally got brave enough to touch it with 1 finger!!! Despite the weather, we had a good time with family!! I'm excited about all the memories my kids will have from these times!!

Daddy's Company Picnic

On Saturday, August 1, we went to Ryan's company picnic. It wasn't as big as it has been in past years, but the steel industry is hurting right now and we're just glad that he has a job at all!! It was pretty fun though and the activities were much better for kids Emma's age! We went to a park and had burgers, hot dogs, brats and other picnic items. They had bounce houses for the kids (even a bouncy slide...Emma loved that), airbrush tattoos, spin painting frisbees and a few other things. They even had a police car and officer so the kids could sit in the car and see what it's like. It was fun! We planned to head over to the zoo since our children's museum membership gets us in the zoo for free this month, but it started downpouring, so that idea didn't work. We ended up going to the $3.99 movie theatre instead. Emma has seen a few movies in the past and likes it. I wondered how Collin would do, but he was just in awe of the huge screen and sat and stared the whole time....until he fell asleep!!

Emma's airbrush tattoo. We made sure to get one in good colors so that when she wouldn't want to wash it off before church the next day it would be ok.

Collin's first (and hopefully last) time in a police car!! Let's hope he doesn't take after his Daddy!!! J/K

Emma wasn't too thrilled about sitting in the police car, but me made her sit in there just long enough for a picture. Can you tell how thrilled she is of this idea??

Emma loved all the other kids at the picnic and had a great time! She brought her digital camera to take pictures. We got a lot of them. I'll have to post some of her pictures on here sometime. She actually takes pretty decent pictures.....well, as decent as that camera can take!!!