"This girl loves horses!" was the saying on a T-shirt that Heidi got for her birthday. She loves to ride and is getting confident the more she does it. Tim took Heidi and Jess to his dad's house where we have one of our horses. The other one is with a friend. Unfortunately our horses don't get rode much since they are 40 miles away from us.

Craig is four months old now and he's such a sweet, snuggly boy. I'm soaking up all of his snuggles, because I'm sure there will be a day when dad takes priority. He's rolling over from his tummy to his back and rolls from his back to his side. We've had relatives visiting recently and his uncle has been able to get Craig giggling so hard that he gets hiccups.

This was the barnyard birthday cake that I made for Heidi's birthday. I found the recipe on the Family Fun website. It was fun to make and wasn't as hard as some of this other ones I've done. She had chickens, horses and cows in her barnyard. Happy 7th birthday, Heidi!

It's hard to believe that my oldest baby is seven. A lot has happened in the last seven years. I remember bringing home our little bundle of joy with my parents and my brother and his family. The wind was blowing 90 miles an hour (which is unusual for our part of AK). The sun was shining but you couldn't see it because of all the dust kicked up from the wind. The snow we did have, melted before I went into Anchorage to deliver and we had lots of ice.

Even though we had unmet expectations of the delivery for our first one, Tim and I were proud parents. It was so fun to see the new Daddy with his daughter.

Since then, we have added a few more and what began as a cozy threesome, has expanded into handful of noise.

Heidi loves to draw and now has started to compose short story books. Her latest...

The Girl and The Dad

by Heidi Hand

(Written as it was written by Heidi. The story was fully illustrated, but I don't have the pictures scanned yet.)

The dad liked the girl wen she was born.

The dad was so happy he took her to playses.

Soon the dad had another baby and that was Jessie.

And the girl felt left out.

Soon the girl andstood that she was a big sister.

Life as the oldest is rough. Hopefully she will find the enjoyment in being an older sister.