Christmas 2009

It has been way too long since my last blog. Very busy year for the Casey's. Lauren left for Virginia to College last September, came home in December and is already in her second semester of college. Mike is a junior in high school and gearing up for Spring soccer and visiting colleges. Caroline started pre-school at a very nice pre-school on University property where I can drop her off, walk to my office (kind of far but nice days it is a nice walk) and walk back to pick her up end of day. She has transitioned to her new school beautifully. Her friends, Emily, Anya, Noelle, victoria and Nora are very nice girls. They all like to dress up and pretend they are princesses.

Caroline is a petite princess who likes 100% attention from Daddy. If Daddy is in the house, he is #1. Between Mike and I were are #2, Lauren is down at the bottom, too much competition for Daddy's attention.

She is currently attending gymnastics on Mondays and would love to start ballet. We figured we would start with one activity and see how it goes. At preschool she will start karate and swim lessons. Very convenient to have a preschool at a University!

Everyone else is good, we take day by day and looking forward to a warm Spring and hot summer. We were robbed out of a nice summer last year and are due!

April Showers Hopefully Bring Nicer Weather!

April showers have been among us for several weeks now and we are getting pretty sick of it. Rained all day on our Easter Egg Hunt at Tuckertown Park. Never mind the rain, but it was really cold too! Caroline was eager to collect eggs but was done at the count of 12. Not sure why, but she was very satisfied with this number of eggs. Terry was ready to get more eggs and I quickly had to stop him from pusing other kids out of the way.

Speaking about Caroline, she is doing great, typical 2 1/2 year old going to school few days a week and few days with either Gramma or me. Gramma is in Florida taking a much needed vacation and should be back beginning of June.

Caroline has met all of her targets and has been released from Early Intervention. Speech, fine and gross motor, cognitive and growth are all where they should be at her age. Still tiny at 31 inches and 24 pounds, she makes up for it with her strong personality. She loves teenage boys and watching all sports on TV. When she gets scared from a show or movie she asks us if we can put on the soccer channel.

Halloween

Boy did she love Halloween! Lauren took Caroline out in the neighborhood and collected a whole bag of candy. Not good for us since there is a lot of candy in the house. I guess next visit to dentist?

Fall 2008

Lots of things have happened to the Casey's in the last several months. Lauren is now in her senior year of high school, Michael transferred to private school and Caroline started nursery school three days per weeks. The weeks are very hectic getting Michael to school 6 days per week 30 miles away. With both of us working, we have to carefully plan our days. Usually I bring Caroline to school or her Gramma's house. We have been inundated with soccer. Everyday day this past week we went to see either Lauren's game or Michael's game. Lauren is finally out of PT and is able to play for short periods of time. Knee is still bothering her though. Mike is doing well starting Varsity soccer at school. Both are doing well in school. Caroline goes with the flow and is happy to play with all of her friends at the games. Last nights game was the toughest when the temperature went below 40 degrees. That is when Caroline and I decided to go home and warm up!

Caroline is doing well, can carry on a conversation and most of the time the words are understood. There are still some words she is working on and sometimes i have to translate when others don't understand.

Caroline has been healthy (knock on wood) and besides a cold or two has been well. She is completely done with all of her shots and doesn't need to go back until next summer. It became a burden to bring her in because she knew she was getting more shots. Quite sad when she would have tears coming down her eyes even before we walked into the doctors.

Soon to be our first anniversay of "Gotcha Day", we plan on going out to eat with the entire family. Can't believe it is almost 1 year. Picture to your right is Michael, Lauren Caroline and Nana and P-pa!!

Summer in Rhode Island

Well the older kids are out of school and Caroline is still in nursery school three mornings per week. The interaction with other kids her same age is really important instead of hanging with teenagers all day. Lauren and Michael both had great academic years and will likely take in many hanging days at the beach this summer. Caroline had her first biting incident at school. they tell me that it is very normal two year old thing. We are trying to explain to her at home about how biting is bad (I recall doing this about 15 years ago with Lauren). Work is very busy for me and I thank my mother every day for picking keeping Caroline those extra hours so I can meet our year end deadlines. Scary thought, but next year end Lauren will be graduated from high school and going to freshman orientation! Yikes.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer i am quite happy with the warmth versus the coldness of this past winter!

6 Months

It has been six months since we returned from China with Caroline. I have said this before, but I still can not believe that she hasn't been with us our entire life. Most people ask me, your life has probably changed, hugh? Well it is true, our life has changed a lot. We had Michael and Lauren in our lives for the past 15-17 years and now we have this beautiful daughter - Caroline.

Caroline is walking, running, tumbling, and almost talking. She is starting to put words together like Dadda, Momma, Lo-Lo, yellow, purple (she loves to say purple), most animal sounds, book, cracker. you know those important things. Her sleep is fantastic, she goes to bed at 8:30 and gets up around 7. Since the weather has warmed up, we spend a lot of time outside. She is starting to walk barefoot outside. She doesn't like the feel of the sand, dirt or grass on her barefeet, but now she is getting used to it. Our pool will open this week and it will be interesting if she goes in it.

Lauren and Michael are doing great as big sister and big brother. They are going through final projects and exams for the year so very busy.

I have attached more pictures, her hair is finally growing and since she is deathly afraid of sissors i am expecting more pig tales, and pony tales!

It has been awhile since I have last posted. We are really busy with the teenagers, then Caroline. She is such a trooper going to all their activities. She has probably been to about 10 soccer games in the last week. I am back to work full time, but my friend Sharon and my mother were great and took Caroline for pictures. She really has changed and matured. She has quite the independent personality and is trying so hard to talk. I think she gets very frustrated that we don't understand her, because she understands everything that we say!

Updates....well Caroline has hit the 20 pound mark, 30 inches long and has had all of her shots. She goes to nursery school 3 mornings per week then goes to Gramma's and sleeps for about 3 hours. She loves Barney, Wiggles and Baby Einstein. We rented a van in Florida that had a DVD player in it and she became very addicted!

Florida was great, the whole family went. Not too much longer Michael will be in prep school and Lauren off to college. Hopefully we get 1 more vacation with all of us able to go.

Take care everyone!