The Daintys

These three are going to have lots of fun together! (And probably cause a decent amount of trouble! )

Leah had her first tap dance recital last weekend.  Her class danced to a song called rhinoceros tap! It was too cute. We weren't allowed to take pictures during the performance,  but here are a few!

As you may have already heard, our newest little guy, Asher Francis, is here!  He was two weeks old yesterday; his birthday was February 17th, a mere 7 days after his due date.  :)  He weighed in at 8 lbs, 10 oz, and was 20.5 inches long. We chose the name "Asher" because it means blessed, or happy, and we are certainly blessed and happy that he has joined our family.  Asher was one of the 12 sons of Jacob in the Old Testment, and was thought to be a peacekeeper among his brothers.  The New Testament prophet Anna, who recognized the baby Jesus as the child who would bring redemption, was a descendant of Asher.  Our Asher's middle name, Francis, was chosen because St. Francis of Assisi is one our favorite saints.  Francis was also Ryan's grandfather's middle name. Leah and Wyatt have both taken to their new brother and are quite smitten!  He gets lots of hugs and kisses each day.  Wyatt likes to get him his blanket and tries to share his f...

We are enjoying our winter, despite the ridiculous amount of snow that lines our driveway!  It has truly been a crazy winter; we've had some six or seven snow days already.  We laugh that we have a fenced in yard, because the snow is so high Lucy could easily just hop right over the fence and be on her merry way.  But I think she appreciates having a warm house and hopefully has no plans of running off anytime soon!  Ryan is gearing up for baseball season to begin in a few weeks.  He is currently teaching Hamlet among other things, which means we are hearing a lot of Shakespeare quotes at home... :)  He has also been cooking lots of delicious meals lately and teaching himself all kinds of fancy kitchen tricks!   Leah continues to enjoy pre-school - she is learning so much!  Just today in the car she taught me all about various species of penguins, explained to me that "Q" and "U" are best friends, and is learning about the items we see on t...

A few weeka before Christmas we took our third annual trip to Indianapolis for the Big 10 football championship. Grammy and Papa Dainty met us there again. We visited the children's museum during the day and they graciously hung out with our rugrats during the game. Which was AWESOME. Even Ryan, my SEC snob, cheered for Sparty!

We have so much to be thankful for this time of year, and always. We are so blessed by our kiddos, and blessed to have another one joining the pack in a few short months! We are blessed by all our family members both near and far. We are blessed to be teachers, and to walk into our classrooms each day with a chance to teach young people and to learn from them. We are blessed with wonderful friends as well. Happy thanksgiving! A few pictures from our thanksgiving weekend:

This past weekend Miss Leah turned FIVE years old.  Five seems so grown up - it is hard to believe!  Leah got to pick the restaurant where we went out to Brunch for her birthday.  Then, we did a little shopping and she traded in some of her birthday money for a new book, a purse, and a bow and arrow set at the Disney store.  Yep.  That's Leah in a nutshell right there, hah!  She is delightful, and says the funniest things sometimes.  And then at other times, she says such insightful things.  The other morning in the car on the way to school she said to me out of the blue, "Mom, do you want to know what I think about this whole big wide world?" (I said yes, obviously!)  Then she told me, "Well I think that the whole time we're in this whole world we're actually really in heaven already.  And it's like we're dreaming the whole time we're on the Earth.  And then when we wake up, we're in heaven!  We don't even have to go anywhere!...