I just realized that I somehow failed to blog about a somewhat major change in our lives that happened recently. About 6 weeks ago, Jason & I hired a nanny to watch the kids on Tuesdays and Wednesdays while I am at work. It was a very tough decision to take the kids out of daycare as Anya had some good friends and some great teachers there and we had been nothing but happy with the way our kids were taken care of at our daycare. It was really a decision based mostly on convenience for our family–Anya will be starting preschool at our church this fall and will also be attending several day camps at the zoo and science center this summer and it just all works out better to have a someone who can help us run her here and there on the days I work.

So, that’s where we are. We have found a great nanny (Lori) who just happens to also be a substitute teacher and former preschool teacher–it’s like having the best of both worlds! She has an 18 month old daughter that she brings with and Anya loves being “big sister” to her also. Lori does a lot of creative arts and crafts with the kids and takes time to have “school” time with Anya also. It has made our morning routines on my work days so much less stressful–in fact, both kids are usually still asleep when I leave the house! So, after all the worrying we did about making the right decision, we are thrilled that everything is working out so great. We feel very lucky we found her and the kids love her.

Well, we have been home from vacation for 4 days now and are still trying to get caught up on our sleep, get the kids back into a routine and get all that dirty laundry done! But, it was all worth it–we had a blast!

Here is a recap of our trip:

Parks we visited:
1. Animal Kingdom
2. Magic Kingdom (3 times)
3. EPCOT (two times)
4. Hollywood Studios Orlando (two times)
5. SeaWorld
6.Universal Studios
7. Islands of Adventure

Highlights/Lowlights from the Trip:
1. Celebrating G’ma Barb’s 60th Birthday at Magic Kingdom
2. Seeing Anya’s face when she got to meet the princesses
3. Watching Tinkerbell fly from the castle
4. The losing and then finding of the”butt pack”
5. Josiah riding around for 9 days in a pink stroller
6. The night show “Fantasmic” at Hollywood Studios Florida (it was AWESOME)
7. Getting stuck on and finally evacuated from the Pirates of the Carribean ride
8. Eating Disney’s cinnamon rolls and walnut/fudge brownies
9. Getting soaked to the bone on about 10 different rides
10. Seeing the excitement on Josiah’s face when we saw fireworks for the first time at Magic Kingdom
11. Papa Jim getting lost in “Canada” at EPCOT–only to be found shootin’ the breeze with complete strangers
12. Eating the Morrocian food at EPCOT (in case you are wondering, this was definitely a lowlight–YUCK)
13. Papa Jim’s ride on the Haunted Mansion
14. The look of sheer excitement/sheer panic on Anya’s face when she rode Tower of Terror
15. Anya peeing her pants on the Disney bus while sitting on G’ma Barb’s lap after trying to hold it until the hotel (she claims she only “peed alittle bit”)
16. The Lion King show at Animal Kingdom (Anya, Zachary & Noah got to dance in it)
17. The Shamu show at SeaWorld–AMAZING
18. Josiah getting his first haircut at Magic Kingdom
19. Playing charades while waiting for the bus at Universal and drawing a pretty big audience
20. Surviving 10 days of “quality time” with our family

All that in 9 shorts days–so needless to say, we were on the go from sun up until WAY past sun down. We were quite the entourage and definitely provided much entertainment to anyone who was lucky (or maybe unlucky?) enough to be close by–but that is pretty much par for the course when the Miller family is all together. It would be hard to decide who had the most fun on the trip: the grandparents, the parents or the kids….and it was so much fun to do it all together.

I know this is going to be hard to believe but ,as a group, we took over 1300 pictures of our trip Here are just a few of my favorites.

And last, but not least I wanted to post some belated wishes to very special people in our lives: Happy 60th Birthday wishes to my mom (March 15th) and Happy 35th Anniversary to Ron & Jeryl (March 23rd). We love you all!!

We are back from our vacation in Florida and had a GREAT time. When I finally get the laundry done and everything else caught up from our 10 days gone, I will post some pictures of our fabulous time at Disney!

Well, I hope Orlando is prepared, because here we come! See ya when we get back!!!

We had a pretty uneventful weekend. Jason was out of town doing a show in Cedar Falls, so that left me flying solo with both kids. Since the weather was so miserable, I was planning on taking them to the mall so that Anya could burn off some energy, but with our vacation so close, decided to skip it and avoid being exposed to everyone else’s germs. We have enough of our own! Normally, I don’t get too worked up about things like that, but I am bound and determined to get us to Florida healthy!

So, the big excitement around here was giving Josiah his first Oreo. Did he like it you ask? The answer is no, he LOVED it. Like mother like son I guess.

Here are a few pictures of our weekend.

Yay for the sunshine….what a beautiful day! We definitely took advantage of the sunshine and warm weather and spent all afternoon outside. You could tell we weren’t the only ones on the street having spring fever–everyone was outside doing whatever they could think of to just be outdoors! We spent a lot of time at the swing set and watching Anya ride her new “big girl” bike. I will say that she did pretty good riding it–she only tipped it once, and it was pretty minor. She has a little to learn yet in regards to steering, but for the most part, she did really well.

This morning Anya had an eye doctor appointment to evaluate her progress on patching. I am happy to report that her weak eye has improved to 20/30 (20/20 is perfect vision)! That is 2 whole lines of improvement! I was beyond thrilled to hear this!! When we started this process, her right eye (her weak eye) was 20/70 and was at 20/50 at our last appointment in January, so she has really come along way. So, the plan is to continue doing what we are doing (which is basically patch whenever she is awake for the most part) and see if she has any additional improvement in 2 months. Anya’s doctor said that even if her eye didn’t improvement beyond where it is right now, they would still be very happy with her overall improvement. So, I am excited to see what happens in the next 2 months and Jason & I are both very proud of Anya for being so cooperative with wearing her patch.

Josiah is now 11 months and is having another battle with teething. He still only has 1 tooth officially, but the second one is just barely under the surface. Every morning for the last 7-10 days I have been just sure that today will be the day the tooth comes through, but here I am still waiting The good news is that he doesn’t let having only 1 tooth stop him from eating table food–he can eat just about anything–and he does! We have been blessed with another good eating, non-picky child, and boy does that make me happy. Right now his favorites include cheese sticks (yes, he can eat a whole cheese stick), yogurt puffs and goldfish crackers, but basically he will eat anything you put in front of him!

Here are some of the latest pictures of the kids.

Well, it seems the month came in pretty quietly with no blizzard or ice storm. Can we be lucky enough for the month to end this way also? I don’t know about you, but I will be keeping my fingers crossed!

We had a very quiet weekend around here. Saturday we were all having a pretty tough case of cabin fever, so we bundled up and took a field trip to the store (how exciting huh?). Anyways, we ended up buying Outdoor Adventures for the Wii and we had SO much fun playing it all day Saturday. Anya could even do a lot of the games and she had a blast running and jumping–it wore her out (and us too!). Anyways, it was a great way to burn off a little steam and not feel so cooped up.

Sunday morning we headed to church and then had church small group Sunday night. It is amazing how refreshed and inspired I feel Sunday nights after meeting with our group. We really do have a great group of people and feel so lucky to have them in our lives.

Otherwise, we have been busy trying to prepare for our upcoming trip to Orlando. We are heading there March 13-22 with Papa Jim, G’ma Barb, Jason, Jill, Zachary, Noah & Aubrey to celebrate G’ma Barb’s 60th birthday! It should be a lot of fun and we can hardly wait for it to get here. Let’s hope the next 10 days go FAST!