Calvin took his first steps.......

His first taste.......

Nearly done with his banana (his own special cake).

Emerald taught him our special sign. Each time we say "I Love You" we do the sign for it with our fingers. When she was too little to speak, we would touch fingers and do a "psssst" sound. Emerald has been doing that with Calvin since he came home and now he is reaching out to do it on his own with all of us. He is quite proud of himself.

Emerald LOVES that Calvin is trying to walk. She held his hand all the way out of church trying to get him to walk with her. Of course I didn't have my camera then.

He is a pretty happy boy facing forward.

An image of what our house looked like just before we moved in the furniture. It doesn't take long for a tornado (aka Emerald) to destoy a room.

Didn't Aunt Heidi do a fantastic job?

He wasn't so happy with the hat.

..........and we are all worried! Yep, he is walking!!! Of course he is still slow going and has that adorable arms out, slow unsteady steps. He has been playing around with one or two steps for a week or 2, but he finally found his balance. Saturday morning he walked from Daddy to Mommy, about 6 steps. Then, Sunday night, after his bath he was taking 6-10 steps several times in row. There is no stopping him now, well maybe not. He still has to maneuver around Emerald and the dog. I am going to try to put a video on here soon.


It is 66 degrees today, in Kansas, with snow still on the ground! How confusing is that? Don't worry we won't get too spoiled, it is supposed to snow by Thursday :)

Calvin had his one year well-check and weighs in at a whopping 21 pouns 9.6 oz. He is also gettg taller and is up to 30 1/4" long. No wonder he isn't fitting in his clothes any longer. It was fun visiting our pediatrician because Dr. Mike & Jenny (his wife) watched the kids for us on Saturday. They had so much fun dancing and building forts. Emerald thinks they are pretty cool, and we love having them in our life.


We are trying to clean out the rental house so that we are only down to taking care of 2 homes! Not that we have been doing much with the Texas house, but paying for utilities and considering 3 houses at once is not very fun. We haven't been getting much done on the new home. It has been difficult to do and we are hoping to get more done soon. We were able to take the kids and dogs (we were dog-sitting Zane, Jeff & Heidi's dog) out for a walk around our new neighborhood yesterday. It felt nice. We also attended a quaint "country" church yesterday. I will have to take a picture of this cute, old church. It is out in the middle of no-where and is so old inside. It has a school associated with it, so there were kids doing the readings in honor of Catholic Schools' Week. Made me miss my SMG family. I hope you all have a fun week.

Calvin is ONE!!

I can't believe my little man is ONE already! We forced a moving time-out to celebrate his special day on Saturday evening while moving. His actual birthday wasn't until Monday, but we had family and friends and felt like celebrating. I can't quite post pictures yet because we haven't yet hooked up our home computer. It will happen soon, and then you can see Calvin digging in to his banana cake. Aunt Heidi made a monkey cake for him, and then added a special side banana just for Calvin to dig in. He thoroughly enjoyed it! Emerald seemed to enjoy singing Happy Birthday to him and kept asking if we got more cake each time she sang to him.

We are in our new home. The weather was bitter cold, but we survived. Thanks to all those brave souls who helped us.

It is a large house and seems to have a ton of storage. Of course most of our stuff is still in boxes in the garage waiting to get unpacked. It doesn't happen so fast with these two crazy munchkins running around in an un-baby-proofed house yet. On a super big positive note, we got our sweet Laney-girl back with us. We are so happy to have her home. I think she has been quite spoiled at Nana & Pop Pop's house the last few months. Emerald keeps hugging her and saying "I love you Laney-girl". Calvin also enjoys saying "dog" each time she comes around. It is too sweet.

Special note to the sweet family from Texas who sent the beatiful clock--Thank you! What incredible craftsmanship. Your card made me cry and I miss you guys even more. I have always loved your girls and now I will think of them each time I see the gorgeous clock. You guys are awesome!

I'd like to wish a Happy Birthday to Nana, Jessie, Great-Grandpa, Lisa, Aunt Carmen, and Andrea in the upcoming weeks. Know you are thought of.

"Baby It's Cold Outside"

That is the song of the month! Emerald walks around singing it all the time. Today she sang it loudly while "making footprints" in the snow. Truly speaking, though, we are moving Saturday and the high is supposed to be 10 (that's degrees, not the time of day)!! They are saying the windchill might be NEGATIVE 15!! What were we thinking?? We are so sorry to all those wonderful people coming to help us move this weekend. Bundle up, it's going to freeze your tootsies off!

Calvin is turning ONE on Monday! Can you believe that? Aunt Heidi is awesome and is planning to make a monkey cake for him. I know he will enjoy that. We are planning to celebrate Saturday afternoon/evening while we have the Harts here, and with the Pankewich family. We will post pictures later, as I am sure they will be too cute. Calvin has been so cute lately, repeating almost every sound he hears. He is beginning to categorize all animals in two ways, either "dahhhh" (dog) or a deep throaty growl (for all dinosaurs, alligators, etc.). He shows his tongue, tries to moo, and LOVES facing forward in the carseat. As far as walking, he is close, so close. He will let go of one item and turn to grab another. He still doesn't quite have the balance. I am ok with him not walking until we get gates put on the stairs at the new house. Both of us agree that he won't start by walking, he will just go straight to running.

Please understand that we are shutting off the computer tomorrow and won't have access until ????? The little engine that could, keeps reminding me that we are almost there--chugga, chugga. Soon we will be all settled in our new home--I can't wait!

I am going to post a few favorites of Calvin in honor of his special day. Ok, so there are more than a few.....I just couldn't decide between all his adorable smiles.

New Year, New Day, Newness!

Emerald had so much fun playing with Jessie. They played dress up for hours! Thanks all you Texas dance girls for the costumes!

The boys had more important things to do in the kitchen.

Like father, like son. Noah looked so cute in his hat, and so did Brian! :)


Happy New Year from our little angels!

Well, we knew it would be a big day for us, but it is better than we thought!

We officially get the keys to our new house at noon today. We closed on Wednesday with no problems (yeah) and have the van packed to take our first load down to Spring Hill as soon as Skip gets off work today. As we were loading the van last night we had to take Calvin's car seat out. When putting it back in, we decided to turn him forward facing. He turns one in 10 days (can you believe that?), which we know isn't exactly yet, but close enough. If you were with him in the car, you'd know he doesn't really like it, so maybe this will help. He difinitly has the 20 pound thing down. So, he will be sitting forward facing for the first time on the way to our new home. Emerald has also been acting like a big girl this week and has been in a pull-up and dry all week! This morning she insisted on getting out of her diaper the moment she woke up. I know change happens, but all this in one day? Really proves how fast these kids are growing up.





I am including a couple of pics from New Year's Eve.

Congratulations to Tommy, Tracy, & Ellie on Baby Eden!

Recognize that wall from our pics with Emers and Calvin? That is the standard Gladney placement picture we Gladney parents are so proud of!


Isn't she precious? I just want to drive down to Texas just to kiss those cheeks.


That looks like a proud mommy & daddy.


Happy Big Sister, Ellie.

I had to share pics of one of the cutest babies I have seen in a while (beside my own of course). Our friends, Tracy & Tommy added a beautiful baby to their family yesterday. Yes, another wonderful Gladney baby. Her name is Eden and we can't wait to meet her! Congrats to Tommy, Tracy, and Ellie. Ellie looks pretty happy as a big sister. Congrats to baby Eden, too, on getting placed with such an awesome family.

Emerald the Photographer

Nana was happy to pose for her little photographer.

I don't think either of these 2 turned out that bad for a 2 year old!


Maybe we need to work on distance from our subject.


Our daughter is starting to take after her mommy. Although she still dislikes getting her picture taken, she is in love with actually being the one behind the lens. She will now ask me to take a picture of her and Calvin, and then try to take the camera away and force Calvin to "stay still and smile". Over Christmas she had some fun subjects. All of these pictures were taken by Emerald!

We have been working hard at changing all info for our new home. It amazes me how long it takes to make a simple phone call to update a few pieces of information. This whole moving twice in 3 months is a little difficult. Especially with 2 busy little ones running around. We tried to spend our first "looking" date today with looking at new furniture for the house. Neither kid was very helpful and the worker in the store looked terrified that Emerald would touch any of her prize furniture. Maybe we will get a babysitter before we go looking again! We were successful in obtaining a new phone number and will soon have a new email address. Yes, we are aware that ours hasn't been working this week. We decided it wasn't worth sending out our temporary address for 2 weeks, as we aren't able to have AT&T/SBC in Spring Hill. We will be sending out a mass email soon sharing this info. If you need it sooner let us know by leaving a message here, or call us. I don't feel comfortable saying personal info on this public sight.

We close on the house on Wednesday, take possession on Friday and plan to move all our stuff on the 19th. Of course that is hoping for the best with weather in January here.