Maecy and Abby visit us!

Maecy and Abby, my sister and her daughter, just flew back to Utah yesterday after a wonderful visit here. Maecy was kind enough to ask for THREE WEEKS off of work to come hang out with Millie and I while Kyle got through the last stretch of school and was gone a lot. She helped me to FINISH MY INTERNSHIP!!!! YEAH! (if you want to see a sample of some of my internship work, you can visit my other blog, annarborwellnessgroup.blogspot.com), Maecy also helped me organize and de-junk A LOT! She helped me with grocery shopping and every day house cleaning and was a reinforcement to me when I was feeling too tired to enforce the rules of the house with my sweet Millie. This pregnancy has been a rough one, that's for sure, and it was so so so wonderful to have Maecy and Abby come and be with our family for a while to help us through some difficult weeks.
It was fun to have Millie and Abby play together and get to know each other better. By the time Maecy and Abby went home, it felt like our two little stinkers were sisters- they did everything together, from taking baths, playing play-dough, to laughing about everything imaginable, kicking each other under the table, fighting over stickers, harassing each other during quiet time, hugging each other after disagreements, reading together (Abby would read to Millie in the morning when nobody else wanted to get up with her at 6:30 am and Millie felt quite special about this), building forts inside with blankets (it eventually became a rule that they could not build forts together because Millie would always destroy them and Abby would be devastated that Millie would destroy something she put so much work into and she'd get emotional about it), learning to share with each other, the one particular night when Millie refused to go to sleep until really late when Maecy was kind enough to put her to bed (I was teaching yoga) and instead of sleeping she resorted to throwing books at Abby's head while Abby was sleeping, playing hide and go seek, pretending to be mommy's to Millie's 2 babies, Leo and Bitty (something that is not common for Abby to do), and finally Millie crying and missing Abby so much when she went home. When we dropped Maecy and Abby off at the airport, Abby gave Millie a hug and kiss and Millie immediately started crying- she completely lost it! She was just as much of a basket-case as I was! We decided to go to Greenfield Village on the way back from the airport so Millie and I could get our minds off of how sad we were that Maecy and Abby had gone home. The whole way to Greenfield Village, Millie and I could not stop crying and Millie kept on saying "I need Maecy and Abby, Abby, Abby, Abby, Abby...." Once we got there, Millie and I had red eyes, but we cheered up as we did fun things with Kyle. Millie took a really long nap when we got home and when she woke up, she was playing was her toys. I wanted to talk to her about something, so I yelled "Millie, where are you?" She responded, "I'm in Abby's room." This was funny- She was in her closet, but the whole time Maecy and Abby were here, they slept in Millie's closet, so Millie thought of it as their room. It may sound very un-hospitable of us to stick them in the closet, but it was Maecy's idea, and Millie's walk in closet is big enough to fit a futon mattress, so they claimed they were comfortable and had plenty of room. We definitely miss Maecy and Abby, but we are glad they can be with their husband and daddy Kenneth again- I'm sure he wanted them back, so we had to surrender them.
I hope you enjoy the many pictures below. I was sad that we never got a picture of Abby reading to Millie- that would have been cute. And we also don't have pictures of when we went to Greenfield Village with them (we went with my friend and she took a bunch of pics but we needs to get them from her).

























Millie and Abby enjoyed having their bodies traced and then coloring these papers.

recipe for laundry detergent

A while back, several people wanted us to share the recipe for homemade laundry detergent. We just got the recipe from this website: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm
...Hope you make it too- it cleans our clothes and it might as well clean yours!

Flash Back

Hello family and friends,

We never had the chance to post a blog about Millie's B-Day party so . . . we thought we would do it now.

Here is Millie and Elle munching on some pizza at the Party. Got to love the hats:)

Millie and her friend Haru

Here is Tye missing a picture of Millie blowing out her candles, but getting a lovely profile shot of Kyle.

Millie loved the cupcakes we made for her birthday (well . . . at least she liked the frosting on the cupcakes).

Here is Millie with her good friend Lannie being silly as always.

Here is Millie looking at all the cards she received on her birthday. She was quite pleased.

The next two pictures are of Millie doing crafts and eating lunch with Tye at the U of Michigan Botanical Gardens.

As always, thanks for reading the blog and catching up on our lives. Life's a roller coaster, but it's always so much fun with Millie.

Love,

The Reeders

Funny Millie

Well, the days pass and Millie is a funny 3 year old and I pretty much don't ever record the funny things she says. So here's a few funnies...

So, we are having a baby girl around July 26ish and we are think about naming the baby Savannah (but don't start calling it that yet- we're not quite sure). We've told Millie about the idea of this name and she's seemed excited about it and has started calling my tummy "Bannah." Today she was talking to Bannah and I wanted to see if she could say the full name so I said, "Millie, can you say 'Sa-Vannah'"? So she repeated "Sa-Bannah" and I told her good job. After this, she looked at me and asked, "Mommy, why Sa?" I told her that "Sa" sounds pretty as the beginning of the name Savannah. After this she commented by saying, "Momma, I Sa-Millie." She looked very happy about this so I played along with her and said "Yes, Sa-Millie does sound pretty too!"

Also today, Millie was on the toilet taking care of some business. I was sitting on the stool next to her waiting for her to finish. She was close enough that she could easily touch me. She reached over and very gently put her hand under my chin and oh-so-carefully lifted it up. Then she proceeded to gaze into my eyes and caress my face. After doing this for probably 30 seconds, she said very seriously, "Momma, you very special to me." This was a cute and it's nice to hear that she loves me :)

A week or so ago, Millie was sitting at the table eating lunch. She looked at me very seriously and said, "Momma, do you love me?" She seemed to really need to know this so I talked to her about how much I love her so she would be sure of it.

Well, there's a few Millie moments for you. I hope to post them more often so we don't forget what our sweet girl is doing and saying from day to day.

Disney world

Hi friends and fam-

We went to Florida March 4-6 and made a stop at Disney World. Here's some pics of the trip. We also drove almost 2 hours to Gainesville so Kyle could talk to a professor there and see the law school that he'll be attending in August for an LLM in Tax program. The Florida trip was a lot of fun but it was hard to come home to cold Michigan. But this week is supposed to be a nice one, so
I'm looking forward to that. Here are some pictures from our vacation.

Millie loved eating breakfast out on the balcony.

As we crossed the lake on the ferry to Disney World, Millie was so excited to see the Castle. She said that she wanted to wake-up Sleeping Beauty, which (as you see in the next picture) she did.

Millie's favorite ride was Dumbo! She had a blast!

We thought Millie would be afraid of a big Winnie the Pooh, but she wasn't. She ran right up to him and gave him a hug.

Millie also loved the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House and Tom Sawyer Island.

Millie was so pooped by the end of the day that she fell asleep on Dad's shoulder.

We really liked the resort we were able to stay at. It had a very nice pool area where Millie, Mom, and Dad had a ton of fun (you can see Tye's pregnant belly from this wonderful side shot, yes its a girl).

Millie was really excited to take pictures by Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty at Downtown Disney.

Millie made some really great friends while she was there:)!