A look back through years of finger sucking...now a distant memory!

Before Gloria had all the hand-to-face control as a baby...
"Yo Yo Yo! I'd like to say 'what up G?' to all my homies out there."
The startle reflex in new babies is always fun...

Finding the fingers

With her aunt Lynn (Granddude's sister)

With her great grandmother Nina (Granddude's mother) in Maryland, who passed away this past month, God rest her soul

With Gramma Shell, who made the princess towel that she still wears today.

On our couch in Virginia.

Even while eating!

On my brother, Jonathan's, visit while he was stationed for a little bit at Quantico while we lived in Virginia.

In the White House courtyard! Too bad she won't remember it...

With Gramma Shell, aunt Adrienne (Gramma Shell's sister), mommy, and brother JB

In our apartment in Altus, OK. A temporary seating arrangement.

Looking guilty after coloring her face...

Reading with the grandparents...

Disheveled hair with blankie of course...the finger-sucking and blanket began to go together. So it was Gramma Shell's making of the soft-knit blankie that actually perpetuated it! :0)

After a good, but tiring day riding ponies in Colorado...All she needed was her blankie and her fingers...

And last, but not least...at bedtime in Derby, KS!

...And here's the big non-finger-sucking 4-year-old...princess!

Gloria decided on her own accord that she was going to be a "big girl" and give up sucking her pointer and middle fingers. She was very proud of herself and told me I had to tell Gramma Shell because she was Gloria's biggest advocate of giving up the habit.

So this is a memorial of pictures to Gloria's dual-finger sucking. In addition, it was a fun time of looking back through pictures of Gloria and the rest of our family!

We don't have any pictures of her sucking her fingers in AL, even though she only quit in the past few weeks, but I think it's because we figured she was old enough NOT to be sucking her fingers while a pictures were taken.

Kid Pile

A Satisfied Look

Tough Guy Series

Benaiah's first tattoo. He kept calling it a sticker.

4-wheeling with 2 babies

Hunting for blackberries again

Yesterday was a beautiful day here - not too hot, not too cold, and not humid...in the lower 70s. We thought it would be a good day to go out looking for blackberries again. We didn't find as many ripe ones as we were hoping, but we found enough to tide us over until we got home for dinner. We left at about 4:30pm and got home at 6:30pm...it was a wonderful afternoon. We found new places to pick blackberries although we usually only found them in bunches of 5 or 6 ripe ones at a time, at most. It looks like there is another variety of blackberries that are not ready yet. They are much smaller and some are still white. Maybe in a week or two we will be going back for those. The bushes with those were full of berries, so I hope they are good and will ripen soon!

Benaiah's Language Explosion

While JB's progressing in learning to read, Gloria's progressing in learning her letter sounds, Benaiah is learning to talk. He says "ta too" (thank you) on a regular basis even after I change his diaper! Yesterday we had calzones, but he calls anything with tomato sauce "pizza". He wanted to eat dinner outside in the rain apparently because he said "eat pizza outside" very clearly to my ears.

Then last night as Max was putting Benaiah to bed Daddy said his regular "Dooooooooon't let the bed bugs bite!" Max has been saying this for at least a year whenever he puts JB and Gloria to bed although he often changes it to something silly like "Dooooooooon't let the wolfies bite!" (because of JB's pajamas being his wolf suit) or "Dooooooooooon't let the Zephyrs bite!" The kids think this is pretty funny and try to correct him by saying "bed bugs!". As soon as they say this Max sticks his head back in their room and exclaims "bed bugs! Where? You have bed bugs?"...of course this causes even more laughter. Anyway, Benaiah last night as Max was closing his bedroom door sweetly said "Doooooooon bed ugs bite!" He just gets cuter and cuter even when we think he couldn't get any more cute.

Rare Prof Photos of the Bremer Family

A good one of the kids. Benaiah was only happy because he was sitting on my lap. I am sitting sideways leaning against Max who was standing behind me..all in the name of a good picture of Benny.

Benaiah was not into taking pictures this day which is one reason we don't usually do professional photos, the other reason is that Max has a very good camera and often gets really good pictures. However, it's not always that we get a family pictures because we are just not that organized.

I love this picture of Gloria.

JB hair is a little out-of-place, but then again, that's JB.

I am pregnant in this picture, but I don't think the photographer knew I was pregnant so he tried to hide my bulging belly behind Max. These pics were taken at the beginning of April when I was about 20 weeks.

A good pic of the whole fam...although this is going to have to be updated in only a few months!

Picking wild blackberries...just a 4-wheeler ride away

Benaiah ready to be shipped

Good thing he's got his blankie with him!

Making Light-up Bugs

Gloria touching the antennae of the "bug" together to make its nose light up.

A key is a good conductor.

JB touching the antennae of his "bug" together.

-Cute little electrical bugs.

Today we decided to do an experiment with electricity - partly because they didn't get to go to the Pinnochio play in Montgomery...a paranoid mom story (there's at least one confirmed case of swine flu in Montgomery public schools and others being tested and I didn't want to bring all three kids plus pregnant mom to a theatre full of kids from both homeschooling families and Montgomery public schools...not worth the risk even though Pinnochio would have been a fun play to watch).

Max helped us by soldering the light bulbs to the D size batteries and the electrical wire as well. I tried with poster tack to secure, but it just wasn't working. We have a book of fun science experiments to do and they had these batteries, bulbs, and electrical wires turned into bugs with light-up noses, so we did the same thing.

The kids are having fun testing out which things cause the light bulbs to light up by touching the two antennae of the bugs to various metal things...paper clips, safety pins, and keys are great conductors.

A Caught Bird

This picture is just before the bird flew away to freedom...

This little bird was trapped in our house unknown to me when I shut all of the doors in the house when it was time for the kids to rest. JB and Gloria were resting on the couch listening to Hopalong Cassidy when they spotted a little hop-along birdie. Max caught him in our bedroom so that the kids could see the bird and touch it, then brought it outside so that the kids could hold it for a few seconds (that's how long it took before the bird squirmed away from Gloria's hands) and then we said bye to the little visiting birdie.

Date night

You can see how pregers I am. I think I'm somewhere between 23 and 24 weeks.

This was Michele's last evening with us (Thursday) and she offered for us to go out on a date while she take the kids for the night and we were all over that. We had a whole weekend to ourselves last weekend house-hunting in Altus, but it was exciting, busy, and stressful (in a good sort of way), not like a relaxing, take-it-easy date together.
We also opted to go to Lowe's after dinner instead of a movie, partly because there were no movies playing that we really wanted to watch and partly because it was fun to look at potential upgrades for our future home in Altus. We also looked at packing materials because we are seriously considering moving ourselves this time!

Pregnant and packing...that would be me for the next couple of months.

I like the idea that I can pack my own stuff and sort the stuff at the same time and hopefully get rid of a lot! It also might make it easier to find things at our destination if I pack it myself. Max and hopefully some guys from the youth group and church would help Max move things into a truck that someone else (the truck company) would drive to Altus. The Air Force would pay for it either way and we may even end up with some extra money because the AF would pay us the difference that they would have paid a moving company to do everything.

Pictures of our Future House in Altus

You can click on the title of this post or you can go to "links" in the margin of this blog and click on "House Hunting". It's been a while since we posted pictures, but that 's because it's been a while (for how much we move) since we bought or sold a house.

This house in Altus we consider somewhat of a fixer-upper, since the owners have not been living there for probably almost a year. The trim needs painting a different color than royal blue, the yard and front walkway needs weeding, the back garden needs trimming and fixing up a bit, and the trash around the place needs to be picked up. Also, we are probably going to tile all or some portion of the master bath and add a wall for some privacy.

So, here's hopefully our future home come move time. We have a contract on the house, but it's contingent upon the inspection as well as making sure we get definite orders to Altus, which is highly likely.

Benaiah Birthday Video #2

Guess he hadn't learned his lesson about fire yet...