Baby Greta is Born!!!

After MUCH anticipation, my sister, Kelli had her baby!  As they did with Grant, they decided not to find out the gender until birth....so fun!  We were all ecstatic to welcome a Baby Girl, who they named

Greta Ann Gorgus

September 16, 2013

8 lbs, 9 oz

20.5 inches

She is perfect in every way, even her big brother thinks so :)

He is so gentle with her!  He's still too young (19 months) to REALLY realize that's she's his forever friend, but oh how fun it will be to watch their friendship grow over the years! :)

As usual, Kelli was SUCH a trooper!  She has two children under 2 and THREE rambunctious dogs and handles it with so much grace and ease!

I think Baby Greta looks just like her paternal grandma, Carol.  She is just beautiful :)

My mom was happy to welcome another grand baby...let alone a GIRL this time!  Her heart must grow each time a new baby joins our family, because she certainly still has plenty of room/time to love on her grandsons! :)

Kelli helped me create a little newborn photo session for Greta taken at the Gorgus Farm to create Greta's birth announcements.

Of course, we had to sneak in a few shots of the big brother too :)

We still lived in Kansas City when Grant was born.  It has been SO NICE to live closer to Kelli now...and I was just saying yesterday that I deeply wish we lived closer to my niece, Cambri.  Especially since Kelli and I are both stay at home moms, we get to spend A LOT of time together and even still, Greta looks bigger each and every time I see her :)

Annual Labor Day Camping Trip

We rejoined our old KC neighbors for our Annual Labor Day camping trip!  We have been looking forward to it since the last one...seriously!  There is NOTHING I enjoy more than a weekend spent unplugged from electronics and plugged into relationships with my friends!  The boys were in HEAVEN playing with their friends on the farm!

Jill's sister lives in Grand Junction, Iowa (EXACTLY mid-way point between KC and Minneapolis!), so it couldn't be a better meeting spot!  Plenty of room to set up and camp, two separate out buildings for meals, bathrooms, etc.  

 No Youngwirth family is event is complete without a craft!

Even a chicken coup and Tom the turkey :)

Grace and Maverick were two peas in a pod during the trip.  They certainly have a special bond, it is adorable to watch them play!  Just today, I was showing Maverick the line up of the kiddos and he named each one by name until he got to Grace and then he said "my best girl friend, Grace". 

Prior to the trip, Grace announced to her family "the next time I see Maverick, I'm going to KISS him."  And, well, she held true to her word! Ha :)

Mitchell was super excited to be reconnected with his best buddy, Luke.  There were lots of silly exchanges over the weekend :)

It was a HOT Labor Day (upper 90's)...not so perfect for the pregnant me, but great for water fun for the kids!

We worked long and hard to talk the Weber family into coming on the trip...and we succeeded!  Jill just had to set up a little campsite joke to greet them for their arrival :)

Jill's family has the funniest sense of humor!  They decided they needed to buy a wheel chair at a garage sale for extra camping seating.  I'll say it was pretty popular :)

Jill's family (she's one of six) has been doing this annual camping trip for 10 years!  They each have families of their own and we were happy that they let our neighbor group "crash" their family camping trip! :)

The below picture is of Jill's sister in law (Liz), her son (Theo - 15 months) and the baby they are currently fostering (Keylan - 3 months).  They also have three older children.....house full!

Keylan was born to a single, homeless mom with a drug addiction.  Liz and her husband (Jill's brother, Tom) have been his foster parents since he was released from the NICU at 2 weeks of age.  We have no idea what his life holds ahead of him, but we all enjoyed cuddling and spoiling this beautiful little thing.  

The theme for the weekend was "Hats Off" in honor of Jill's dad who passed away last Labor Day.  He had an extensive collection of funny, unique hats that he loved to wear.  The hat worn by Luke below is the last hat I saw her Dad wear.

Jill's brother (Joe) and sister (Dawn) got pretty creative with their hats!

Bev is paying tribute with her fedora :)

 Even the youngest athletes get to participate in the annual softball game :)

 The kids literally played from sun up to sun down....they were dirty, exhausted and fulfilled :)  In the picture below, they were entertained by a game of musical chairs....looks fun, but unfortunately it led to lots of tears from the ejected gamers!

Miss Lilli with her watermelon between meals.

Miss Sadie at Jill's beauty parlor.

Maverick decided that he didn't really need his swimming suit on to get drenched.  Pretty much anything goes on this camping trip!

Here are all of the neighbor kids lined up by age.  Is it typical that only my YOUNGEST is actually standing and smiling at the camera? :)

We MISS our neighbor friends and this camping trip was the perfect way to reconnect.  We haven't seen them since MARCH!  Rumor has it that they might be planning a New Year's Eve invasion on us in Minneapolis this year...we'll see! :)

Mitchell's First Day of Kindergarten!

Well, the time has officially come!  Time to send Mitchell off to Kindergarten!  As you may have expected, this time comes with mixed emotions!  Quite honestly, Mitchell is my best friend.  I spend just about every waking hour with him and his conversation skills rival those of any adult :) 

The thought of him being gone from our house from 8:40 to 4:20 makes me cringe....BUT each time I learn more about his school and all of the fun things that he'll experience there, I grow more and more excited for him!  

And THAT excitement is what helped me put my best friend on the bus this morning!

 His little brothers were almost as excited for Mitchell's first day of K as Mitchell was :)  Maverick had to find his little play camera to take his own first day of school pictures of Mitchell!  

Then they happily accompanied him to the bus stop right around the corner.  Unfortunately, he's the only kiddo at his bus stop.

Mitchell is not one who is usually too cooperative for a photo shoot, but he was today! :) 

He was even inventing his own poses....true to his silly, fun-loving nature! :)

The bus rolled around the corner, right on schedule!

He is only the 2nd child to be picked up, so he picked to sit right in the front seat.  He waved a little goodbye to Mommy, Daddy, Maverick and Macallan and off he went!  No tears from Daddy or Macallan, but Mommy and Maverick were sad to see him go.  Maverick would have LOVED to have jumped on that bus with him!

We couldn't send him off on his very first day without seeing him into his classroom, so we all loaded up and met him at school.  First stop was his locker to unload his backpack.

Next stop was "morning meeting" with his class.  Once seated, he never even turned around to see if we were still there!  Mitchell certainly has his challenges, don't get me wrong...BUT a strong sense of independence/confidence is NOT one of them!  He LOVES new social situations, and I just know he'll thrive this school year!

While he was at school, Maverick helped me make some banana bread.  His request was to decorate it with birthday candles for Mitchell to blow out to celebrate his first day of school :)  He's so thoughtful!

Mitchell was all smiles when he jumped off the bus this afternoon!  He didn't even wait for me to ask how his day was before he said "It was great!"  He has a class "buddy" named Jack, who he seemed excited to be paired up with.  He also brought home a new book, which Jacob read to him and Maverick tonight.  He said "I brought home a new book, but I think you'll be really happy because it was free!  I checked it out from the library."  He may not remember that we used to do that a lot from our local library before we lost two of them and his little brothers began making a game of pushing books off the shelves!  Hence our home library :)

There are many days when I wonder if we aren't getting ourselves into more than we can handle having our fourth baby....but today was NOT one of those days!  I feel like I got a little taste of what it will eventually be like to be an empty nester...and I'm certainly not ready.  As we watched our oldest enter the "real world", I was SO thankful to have Maverick and Macallan at home with me.  Many days it's easy to "live in the blur" created by tending to three young children, muddling through task after task.  I REALLY enjoyed my day with the two little guys today!  

We couldn't be prouder of our Kindergartener!  He has an AMAZING brain and heart and we can't wait to watch them both grow this school year :)