Dear God..........

I don't thank you enough. I know I'm quick to complain when things aren't going well. For example recently, I was complaining to my mom about money. I was telling her how we look forward to our tax refund and all the things we can do with it. However, it never fails, something always comes up and we have to use it for something else. Now you know I'm not completely negative, I am thankful we have it for things we need, but it's the other things we don't have the money for that gets frustrating. Here's my point, this year was different. You provided and you will continue to provide because you always do. Thanks to you we were able to use our refund to purchase plane tickets to visit my sister in California, get our season tickets for Mountaineer football, pay our personal and property taxes, give money to the church building fund, purchase bookshelves for Drea's room and the living room, and fix some minor repairs to my car. That is a whole lot of stuff. I know that it is just stuff and it isn't that important in the whole scheme of things. I also know you want us to have an abundant life and you want us to be happy. I just want to thank you over and over, not just for our stuff, but for everything you have given us, because you are good and I should tell you and others more. Amen

I finally did it!

Joined the facebook that is or should I say the fb. Anyway, don't judge me for joining or waiting for so long to join. The bottom line is my beautiful wife asked me to join. She thought it might be another way for us to communicate in our busy lives. I know what your saying or thinking. If you get off the computer and talk to each other that might help. That is true, but with our busy schedules sometimes we don't get a chance to sit down and talk until 9 o'clock or later. So, if it is a night like that where we are running around maybe one of us will be able to check on the other. However, I have thought of some unwritten rules for joining as well.

1. If you are one of my students don't try to be my friend on the fb. (As a rule in class I actually tell them that I'm not their friend, but we can be friendly).
2. If you are one of my students' parents, I will not be your friend either. (there are some exceptions to this rule for example if I knew you before your child was/is my student).
3. Blogging comes first.
4. I will not get sucked into any of those crazy facebook games.
5. If I break any of those rules, I must deactivate my account.

I may come up with some other rules as I go, but for now that is the list. The other reason for joining facebook is this: When your spouse asks you to do something, whether it is joining facebook, helping out around the house, cooking, or whatever, it is a whole lot better to listen to what they are saying. In this case, Stacey was asking me to care about something she cared about and thought it might be fun for us. I needed to put my selfish reasons aside for joining and be considerate to what Stacey wanted. So maybe I'll see you on facebook.

Outside Fun

With all the great weather we have been having in WV the Niessners have been taking advantage and getting outside and playing. Here are some pictures of all the outside fun we are having. We love Spring!

Drea flying her Barbie Kite

Mommy and Charlotte flying the princess kite

The girls really enjoyed flying the kites that they got for Easter, but I'm pretty sure Stacey and I had more fun. Stacey is quite the kite flyer. She had the princess kite all the way out, plus she walked it all the way back to the car without it hitting the ground. I never knew she was that skillful. I guess all the times she flew kites with her Dad have finally paid off. That was the reason Stacey wanted to get the girls kites because she remembered how much fun it was, so thanks for helping to create more memories Papaw.

Drea and Charlotte coloring with chalk. I think Charlotte's goal is to see how many pieces of chalk she can get in her hands. Can you guess how many she can carry?

Pretending to go to Walmart with Tyler

Bubbles and Egg hunt with Nunnie

Papaw and T enjoying an Easter nap

Checking out the tree with Grandma

Play time with the sand and water table. Yes, the sand and water table that needed five bags of sand.

This is a short video of Drea riding her bike for the first time, you will see in the video that she quits because the bike fell over, but she did get back on and try again. She rode it longer, too! I just didn't get that on video. The answer to the question about Charlotte and the chalk is 5.

Thanks Gwen!

I'm a little slow on our Easter blog posts but there were so many exciting things we did around Easter that I wanted to be sure to include them.

My friend Gwen had a wonderful little Easter egg hunt and party for some of our friends and our children before Easter. It was an absolutely beautiful day with weather in the 80s which made a great egg hunt day aside from the melted chocolate in all of the eggs. But everyone knows chocolate tastes just as good melted and it doesn't take long to set back up for enjoyment later. Uuuummm, chocolate....good.

I think the party was more for us moms than for the kids because Gwen made this awesome spread for lunch and that means we all enjoyed the afternoon out in the sun watching our kids play and eat food that we didn't have to make. So thanks Gwen for all of your hard work and the wonderful food and hospitality that went into making a great egg hunt party. The picture above is all of us enjoying our lunch outside, except the picture was taken before Beth and baby Lily arrived. We were so glad to spend some time with the new mom and baby. What a fun day!

This picture makes me laugh. Not sure if Drea is swinging or doing a dance with the swing. I will bet on the latter. And Isak must be just chilling out watching her or he had just fallen down. Who knows?

Reese, Emma and Drea - who finally retreated inside to

enjoy dessert after roasting a little too long in the warm sun.

Character Breakfast

On Saturday morning my friend Diana invited us to a character breakfast at Trinity High School. Drea is always thrilled to spend time with Madison no matter what is involved but she knew when there was mention of princesses that it would definitely be a good day.

So we ate breakfast and then the parade began where all kinds of movie characters came out and walked along this balcony, down the steps and around the room. Drea loved all of the princesses, most of the disney characters but none of the "boy" characters. It probably didn't help that they come out to the music from their perspective movie which for some of them was intense. She buried her face in my arm so she didn't have to look at Batman, Spiderman, Jango Fett (from Star Wars), yes, and even......Shrek.

Yes, my daughter is scared of Shrek. Andy and I love these movies. She won't watch them. Shrek even came out with Fiona his princess. Didn't matter. She wouldn't even acknowledge their existence. Oh yeah, and she was afraid of the Cat in the Hat. To give her the benefit of the doubt, he was a little wacko running all around crazy being a very good cat in the hat. And the Incredible Hulk was supposed to be there but wasn't. Thank goodness. That might have become really bad. Hey, she did like Superman and Buzz Lightyear, though.

I digress. Drea, of course, loved the princesses. When Cinderella came out, you would have thought she was a teenager and it was Miley Cyrus or something. Star struck. After the parade is over, you are allowed to go take pictures with the characters. Below are some of the pictures with her favorite princesses. Great event! I'm so glad we went. Thanks for inviting us Diana!

Cinderella, Madison and Drea

Look, Drea can't even take her eyes off of Cinderella for the picture.

Drea and Tiana, from the Princess and the Frog
That is the first movie I took Drea to see in the movie theater that she wasn't begging to leave.


Snow White, Madison, Drea and Belle

Madison, Tinkerbell, and Drea

Year one rite of passages

Charlotte Eve Niessner - One year old

Yes, Andy already blogged about Charlotte's first birthday party. This blog post is about the changes that occur in our family when you turn one. It saddens Andy and I that are little baby has already had a year blow by and like every parent says "where did it go." So we choose to get excited about the rites of passage that Charlotte gets to incur when turning one. Even though some of these thing may seem silly to others, they are things we think are fun.

Here are a couple of things we celebrate:

1. Turning the car seat around!

Since our girls are always over 20 lbs. when they turn one, we get so excited to turn the car seat around. Even more so since Drea is in the seat beside her already facing forward like the rest of us. So we knew that Charlotte probably dreams about being the same direction as her sister. And they both love it!

2. First haircut

I know, if you are like the rest of the world who was heard anything about Charlotte's first haircut you are saying...what hair are you cutting?

Okay listen, you have to forget about that part. In my family you get your haircut on your first birthday...it's a rite of passage. It's a special day when your child gets to have their first haircut. And if you were the daughter of a beautician, you would know that when you give the hair a snip it makes it grow and get thicker. Or maybe that's a myth but it's a myth I buy into!

Anyway, the first few mintues of the event went okay and then it all starting going downhill. Luckily, when you don't have a lot of hair, your first haircut only lasts about 5 minutes.

3. Milk!

Yeah! Charlotte's other rite of passage...getting to drink regular whole milk. This one might be a little more closely related to what mommy gets out of this deal even though it makes me sad. No pictures of this one because I guess it's kind of boring but we were excited about giving Charlotte her first bottles of regular milk. And what was the best is that she liked it. (I've heard of children who hated it when they first switched.)

Random Pictures

Thanks to my friend Lorrie's blog, we borrowed her fun edible craft project for these first beautiful sunny days we have had. We made bird nests with pretzels, chocolate, peeps and jelly beans (for the eggs). Drea really enjoyed it especially the eating part of it. Thanks Lorrie! Oh yeah, and Charlotte greatly enjoyed her first Peeps.