Lily's New Outfit

Lily got this cute outfit from our friends, the Wellard family. We thought that she might have to wait a while to wear it, but with the cool weather we've been having, it was perfect for today!

First Day of School!

Trying to post a collage of pictures from the first day of school, but it looks kind of small. If you click on the pictures, another window will come up where you can see the pictures bigger!

Camp YES!

Well, I drove the three older children to camp YES located between London and Chatham, Ontario, on Monday. http://www.campyes.ca/ They were all so excited. They will be spending 5 nights there and I'll be picking them up on Saturday morning. This is Luke's 4th time, AJ's 2nd time and Victoria's very first time to go to camp. Victoria seemed to be equally excited and nervous.



Here are Victoria and Lily on Victoria's bunk for the week. She is right by two big windows, so that should be nice. And she even has some shelves beside her bed.

Here is Victoria and the other girls in her group. Her counsellor is at the back and her name is Brittany.

One last BIG hug before Mommy has to leave her baby girl -----I don't know who was more nervous, Tori or me!!!!

This is the building where all the girls sleep. They are broken down into groups of around 4 girls per counsellor.

AJ is unpacking his snacks already. Here is where he is sleeping.

The boys are in a nice area of the building by a whole wall of windows. AJ canNOT sleep without a fan (in his opinion), so when we walked in that part of the room, there was a fan on one of the beds and AJ said, "AHA, MY FAN!!!!" Funny boy.

My big boy Luke unpacking!

Luke, his friend Austin, Titus (a boy from Austin's church) and Lily-Bug on Luke's bed.

One more quick picture before it's time to go----and of course, AJ is incapable of a normal look on his face. At least he was being himself!

And here's our sweet little Lily sleeping on the long drive home. It was a 3 hour drive one way. I'm not sure why I thought it was only 2, but I was wrong.

It is Wednesday morning now, and we haven't received any phone calls from any homesick children, so that's good.

If you want to send the kids an e-mail while they're at camp, you can go to the camp website and go to the contact page and there is a form you can fill out to send them a note!

Lily "crawling"

Lily's First Birthday

Today is Lily's first birthday and Jeff's 42nd birthday. It's hard to believe that it was a whole year ago that I got to hold Lily - just a few hours old - at the Welland hospital. What a sweet, little baby we are privileged to love. For the first time today Lily really figured out how to get where she wanted to go. She's not crawling yet, but she can pull herself, completely lying down, forward to where she wants to be......it won't be long now!

The day started out as normal with breakfast and some playtime, then off to the doctor for Lily's one year checkup. I didn't think she had any immunizations scheduled, but she did. Poor Lily got shots on her birthday. She cried, of course, but wasn't the least bit fussy all day. The doctor said that she needs to stay drinking 3 bottles of formula a day still for the next little while. I guess until she gets more teeth and can eat more table food. She has another appointment in three months and they'll reevaluate then.

I love Lily's dr. so much that I moved our children to her practice. She sees the girls (Victoria and Lily) and her husband sees the boys (Luke & AJ). Luke woke up this morning with a terrible ear ache. These doctors work in a clinic that is also a walk-in clinic. So when I registered Lily for her appointment, I registered Luke for the walk-in clinic, just in case he could be seen then, too. By the time Lily's appointment was done, Luke was already in to the doctor, and he was able to see his regular doctor. The doctor flushed some big chunks of ear wax out of his ear (lovely, I know!) and then could see the inner ear. He said that it is a bit bulging, but to treat with Advil today and see how it is tomorrow. It's so nice to have doctors that just don't prescribe antibiotics at the least sign of an ear infection!

While the boys helped Jeff hand out some flyers about our new church location, Victoria, Lily and I did some banking and I took the girls to the Ontario Early Years Centre - a place for kids to learn and play. The older three are all too old to go now. I took them at least once a week until they started school. Once they're 7, they have to be "helpers". Well, I don't relish the idea of having 3 "helpers" with me, so I hadn't taken Lily yet. We didn't realize what the summer schedule was, though and arrived with only 20 minutes to play. The girls had fun, though, and that's what matters.

After that, we picked up Jeff and the boys and we let Jeff treat us out for lunch to McDonald's for his birthday. We went to a nearby park and ate there. Luke made himself nauseous by going on the merry-go-round right after eating two jr. chicken sandwiches and some root beer.

Then we took Jeff back to church to get some more work done. I then took all of the kiddos to the library and then to another park for a while. Then we went to my mom and dad's so the kids could go swimming and stayed and had pizza for supper.

Jeff got home from visitation just about the same time as we did and he opened presents and we had cake and ice cream Dibbs (which Lily loved and made a huge mess with!!)

How wonderful to celebrate this day 42 years ago when Jeff was born and 1 year ago when Lily was born. Two people whom I love dearly celebrating their birthday on the same day!

Lily standing up in her crib!

Today while I was getting ready for church, Lily was sitting in her crib playing with her toys. I heard her making noises and looked over and she was working on standing up. For the very first time she pulled herself up into a standing position in her crib.

Then after church this morning, Jeff was playing with her on the floor and Lily crawled one crawling version of a step! How exciting. Yesterday while I was practicing with our organist for today, Lily was playing on the floor and she got into the crawling position by herself for the first time.

Our beautiful little Lily will be a year old on Thursday. She is such a sweetie pie. Everyone who meets her immediately falls in love with her. Everyone says that she is the Church Baby. Victoria was the same way as a baby. She instantly has everyone in the church wrapped around her chubby little finger.

New Hairdo

Well, I finally had had enough of my long hair and got it all cut off this afternoon. AJ was the most critical. He kept making comments the whole time, like "she sure is cutting a lot off!", "It sure is short." "I liked it a lot better long." "You look like a teenage boy!" He is such great moral support! But I don't care. I like it and so does Jeff, so that's all that matters. Victoria likes it, too! Luke hasn't said anything, but I don't think he really cares one way or another.

New Family Picture

Last month we had our very first family pictures done with Lily! It's taken me this long to scan one to post. In this picture the children are the following ages:

Luke - 9 years old

AJ - 8 years old

Victoria - 7 years old

Lily - 10 months old

Eleven Years of Wedded Bliss!

Eleven years ago today, on Saturday, August 1, 1998, I married the love of my life, Jeffrey Michael Harris.

Each year on our anniversary I try on my wedding dress and watch our wedding video. It was such a perfect day....the beginning of the rest of my life as Mrs. Virginia Harris.

Yea! It still fits. Not quite as well as it did 11 years ago, but at least I can still get it on! :-)

It was amazing watching our video at how much the children have grown up. Our ring bearer just graduated from high school and our flower girl just got her driver's license. I am so blessed to be married to my wonderful husband!

Trip to Ohio

This week we made a whirwind trip to Ohio to visit Jeff's parents and sister. The trip was great and we enjoyed getting to visit. None of them had ever met Lily, so that was nice, too.


Here is Grandma Harris with her newest grandbaby and me!

The girls

The boys

Jeff and his baby girl who is just growing up way too fast!

Grandpa with Tori

Jeff roughhousing with AJ (who loved it!)

Jeff helping Lily practice walking.

Lily at the Big Boy breakfast buffet. She enjoyed some cottage cheese, scrambled eggs, yogurt, applesauce and cereal (very small portions of all, of course!!)

The three older munchkins with Aunt Jody - they spent the night at her house while Jeff, Lily and I stayed in a hotel. They had lots of fun playing with Aunt Jody's Star Wars action figures and Playmobil. Aunt Jody is a lot of fun!