BFF's

It's amazing the memory that my girls have! We have some great friends from college that live within visiting distance that we see a couple times a year. They have two beautiful children, one including a daughter close in age to my oldest 2. Even with as rare as it is that we get to see each other, my girls always remember visiting with them and talk about them regularly. Makayla even wanted to invite their daughter to her birthday party (too bad for the drive!).

Unfortunately for us, our friends have obeyed God's call and are moving to Kansas to help out with a church plant. Since Kansas is not within visiting distance, we wanted to get one more visit in before the move (and before baby #4). Let me tell ya, 5 kids in the house is a handful!! We might not have had room to all sit around the table or fit in the same car, but we had a great time together!

One must do activity was go to the beach. Since we only like 1 1/2 hours from the beach, this was a great day trip! We were having such a blast I only was able to snatch one really good picture. But believe me, we were there all day playing in the water and sand and having a fun time enjoying a beautiful day at the beach.

The men proved to be true dads and took the kiddos (minus Sydney) to Marbles Kids Museum for the day. That is one of our absolute favorite places to go (especially with our family membership!) I think my kids could live there!

And finally, we have a tradition of putting a the girls in the tub together and taking a pic. You can view and old picture in this post! It's neat watching the kids grow up and grow older together!



In other Bradley News:
Sydney's 1st birthday is on Saturday, so be anxiously awaiting a post with pictures of her special day!

I am 36 weeks pregnant! Where did this pregnancy go? I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to... I'm not quite ready to have a baby in the house again, but I'm not sure how much longer I want to be pregnant! The Lord has truly blessed me with a comfortable end of the pregnancy. I am amazed everyday how little my body is bothering me as compared to my other pregnancies. This will definetely help me be patient for this last month or so.

My T-Ball Star

Up to the Plate

Smack the Ball!

Run to First

My Star Player

It's hard to believe that T-Ball season has come to an end. We had a little rough start with some coaching issues, but I ended very pleased with Makayla's experience this summer. She even got upset about her last game, wanting the season to keep going. Next stop - Soccer!

Joyful Chaos Giveaway

My favorite blog to keep up with is the story of a former Amish woman and her stories from growing up. She is having a cute giveaway this week of a daily calendar with Amish pictures. You can enter it by clicking the here.

This Too Shall Pass

God is merciful! One week ago today I passed my kidney stone; the one the Doctor told me that I wouldn't pass! It was so wonderful! Although there was no immediate relief since I still had the stent, I cherished the emotional relief! The stone isn't dead on in the picture, cause I know I measured it at 5mm. I called the new urologist the next day at got an appointment for 12:30, which I was amazed by! He was impressed with the stone and said that since I passed it we could take the stent out. I responded with, "How about in 5 minutes?" He laughed and said we might get an appointment later that day because they needed a special room with special equipment. But do you know what? The room was ready RIGHT AWAY! I would like to say relief was immediate, but they did put a scope up my urethra. Within a couple of days I was feeling as good as new, or at least as good as someone who is 33 weeks pregnant! It has been wonderful! I feel like I am back to being part of the real world again, I was in such a stupor from the Hydrocodone and just my sour mood for 3 weeks! Of course, now is the wake up call - we are having a baby! How did we miss that? It's still not quite a reality yet that our worlds are going to be rocked in about 6 weeks. Are we really going to have baby #4? Are we that nuts? I know she will be a blessing. I've created a mental image of her and am curious to see how she matches up to what I have pictured.

In other Bradley family news:

Makayla has her last t-ball game this week, so I guess I'd REALLY need to take some pictures then, huh? It's been a fun season and I've really enjoyed her coach. Now the countdown begins for soccer, at least both Makayla and Caroline will be playing together. Makayla has also been making a point that Caroline stop calling her Kayla and to call her Mak (which is my preference for a nickname. We also bumped Makayla up to a "big girl" carseat. It's a high-back booster. She is just never gonna weigh enough for just a booster, but at least she gets to use a real carseat and can get herself buckled and unbuckled, which will be essential when Julianna gets here!

Caroline will get her booster soon. We wanted to test out Makayla's before getting two. Although, Caroline is able to buckle and unbuckle herself in her carseat. She keeps getting comments about her haircut, I guess I will have to take a better picture of it to show it off. It just really fits her face so well.

Sydney is reaching the point where she is not a baby anymore! We are weening her off of the bottle! Woohoo! She loves milk and does great with her sippy cup. Of course now, if she can't feed herself she almost rather not eat. So we are having to be creative with the foods we are serving her. Who knew mac n' cheese was a finger food! Tonite we worked together using a spoon with some fruit sauce. I had totally forgotten about this messy eating stage and am not to excited about it, but this too shall pass :) Her signal for "all done" is to throw everything on the floor, but we are working on some better options. She is also taking off with her pulling up. She's starting to "cruise" a little bit and can speed crawl with the best of them. I'm not sure that I'm ready for a walker though....

Julianna is doing great! She's running out of room, so although she is less active, she still packs the punches. Tuesday I will be 34 weeks! We are getting to the point where we actually have to think about birthing this baby (I say "we", Josh is still learning his part of the "we") Our birth plan is due at 36 weeks, but I still have some questions about the whole process. You would think by baby number 4 I would have this down....

Josh and I are doing great. He continues to be the best husband in the world. Work is still a little stressful, but we enjoy his time off together.

My Princesses and an Update

It's been a while since I posted pictures of the girls, so I thought I would post the latest pics of the girls. Makayla and Caroline thought it would be fun to put a crown on Sydney. It was too cute so we snapped some pictures. You can also kind of see Caroline's new haircut. She has a cute little bob that fits her well. Makayla wants her hair to grow down to her toes so we skipped her haircut. Sydney is not yet one and doesn't have any hair to cut yet, although she sports the best looking mullet I've ever seen!

I wouldn't say that not much has happened since I've last posted since technically I haven't been doing much except being in pain. This kidney stent is not much fun at all! To say the least I am uncomfortable and in pain ALL the time. It makes it very difficult to be a mommy, so I have been checking out my options. I went back to the urologist to discuss some options and didn't get the response I was hoping for. So I decided to go to a different Dr. for a second opinion. Although I pretty much got the same answer (you're stuck with the stent for the rest of the pregnancy) he was such a nice and informative Dr. I went away feeling satisfied. There is a procedure that I can choose to have done at 36 weeks when they switch my stent. I will pray about it and see how these next few weeks go and then make a decision. I was glad that he was at least willing to give me the option to have the procedure that I want. Let me tell ya, bed side manner really makes a difference, especially when you're a hormonal pregnant patient. So I chose the second Dr. to recieve all my money to switch the stent, he just made me feel better.

On top of all my exciting health problems, Joe, the dog, has been going through a terrible struggle with allergies. Poor thing! Well, really poor us after we pay for all the meds he needs! And then we continue to build our pediatricians vacation fund. Sydney has her second yeast infection in like a month. I didn't realize that when you use cloth diapers you have to kill the yeast in the diapers as well as treat the baby. It makes sense, I just didn't know! So we've got that added to our plates now as well.

Can you say stressed??? I am working REALLY hard at remaining peaceful, but it is very difficult. Josh has been a superhero these past three weeks, I am so thankful to have him as a husband. We're looking forward to Julianna getting here so things can calm down a little bit ;) Oh my!