Meet Miss Maggie Crosby!!

Born: 4/22/08, 8lbs. 3 oz., 20.5"

Mom greeting Maggie just after the delivery (which went so great!)

Sam is excited to be a big brother again. He keeps saying, "Oh, I just love you baby Ellie". We then proceed to tell him that her name is Maggie, not Ellie. He just tells us, "you can call her what you want, but I am going to call her Ellie". Ok Sam.

These are my most favorite people in the whole wide world. I can't believe that just a few years ago I didn't even know any of these people existed and now they are my life. Creating a family is the most amazing experience I have ever been allowed to be a part of.

And here is a close-up of our sweet little angel girl. We are so grateful that she is here. Thank you for all of your prayers and for all of your help. We love you all and are so grateful for you.

Love, Marc, Tricia, Sam, Kate, and Maggie

The Difference Between Boys and Girls

Here is a video of the typical night at the Crosby household. After dinner Sam loves to wrestle with his dad and Kate loves to kiss everyone better. That is one of the major differences between boys and girls at our house!

Happy Birthday to Sam!

A mother's ode to her eldest son on his 4th birthday:

Sam,

You are the best son I could ever imagine. I love everything about you. You are so much fun and you love life with all of your heart. You are sweet and kind and you try so hard to do the right things. You are a great big brother to Kate. You are smart and handsome and the best 4 year old boy in the whole world. Thanks for letting me be your mom. I will love you forever.

Sam decided he would like a cheetah & great white shark party. Pretty random until you know that they are his favorite land animal and his favorite underwater animal without question! Here is a picture of a great white shark jumping out of the ocean (modeled after a video that Grandpa Crosby sent to us). Thank goodness four year olds are easy to please, right?

(Joel Townsend, Sam, Sam Tyson, Tyler Hansen, Mikayla Hunter, Sadie Townsend, Mike Kam). These are some of Sam's favorite people. He has such great friends and we were so glad they could come. Please take note of the amazing great white shark pinata in the background. Marc stayed up very late making it look as much like a great white shark as possible and Sam loved it!

And a post would not be complete without a picture of our little miss Kate.

She is always ready for a party!

**Not pictured here are two of the greatest people that I know-Amanda Hansen and Jill Hunter. They came and helped me with the party and I don't know what I would have done without them. Thank you guys-you are the best!

Missed Free Throws

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=355591250469095019

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8295131825286548614

Here we are completely missing our free throws.

Jazz Road Trip. The Jazz made their trip through the midwes visiting Chicago and Milwuakee in back to back nights. Thanks to a sweet hook-up from my cousin Scott (Thanks Scott) we had VIP pregame passes and 3rd row seats, got to talk to the players etc. Of course, they killed us so that kinda ruined the perfect night, but still a good time.

A group of us outside in front of the famous Jordan statue. I still think he pushed off. The ought to build a statue of that. Cheater.

Now we're in Milwaukee. Senator Kohl, owner of Kohls department stores also owns the team and since the half or my ward that isn't medical students are Kohl's employees, we got a special hook up to this one too. The seats were in the bleachers but we got post game access to the court to shoot a free throw. Here's Tricia with Boozer in the background. Tricia didn't care about the players. She just hoped to run into Bolerjack. Which she did. And we did win in Milwaukee, thank goodness because Milwaukee is horrible.

Sam does He Man

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2257081819353562779

Here's a video of Sam reciting the intro to his favorite cartoon, He Man. Cartoons today aren't as quality as they were back when I was growing up, so thanks to Youtube, I've introduced Sam to all the classics, like GI Joe, Transformers, and of course He Man. Here's the translation:

Hi. I'm Adam, prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of castle Grayskull. This is Cringer my fearless friend (showing his toy lion). Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, "By the powers of Grayskull" (Sam adding theme music) "I have the power!"
Cringer became the mighty Battlecat (shooting Cringer with magic sword) and I became He Man, the most powerful man in the universe! (punching).
Only 3 others share our secret; our friend the sorcerous, Man of Arms, and Orco. Together we defend castle Grayskull from the evil forces of Skeletor (more theme music).

Kate wears glasses now. She is supposed to wear glasses anyway. She is far sighted, to a different degree in each eye which gives her a problem when trying to see up close and could lead to problems down the road if she doesn't wear her glasses. The only problem we are having now is getting her to keep them on her face and keep them from getting broken. She is currently on her second pair which is hanging by a thread after being bent back into shape repeatedly. We thought we'd hurry and post some pictures now since pretty soon her glasses will both be held together by duct tape.

On our way out to church this morning. The snow is finally starting to melt after a record snow season so far and more in the forecast.

Couldn't help but to make a WWII association with this picture which Tricia won't let me mention.

We thought getting her favorite Kitty some glasses would make the process easier. It didn't. She doesn't like Kitty to wear her glasses either.

Making the best of the snow this year with sledding...

snowmobiling...

more sledding...

and grilling.

Now that it's March, we thought we'd finally put up some Christmas pictures. Here are the kids Christmas morning.

Christmas eve.

Sam gets some transformers. He only likes the bad guys. The decepticons. No one else can play with Megatron.

Kate loves kitties. This book gets read often. When we see cats around the neighborhood, she calls them by the names of the cat they resemble in her book.

# 3 has a gender.

Another little girl headed our way.

Thanksgiving 2007

Sam chows down on some thanksgiving dinner. Wasn't a big fan of the cranberry salad. It'll grow on him.

Kate, the big eater in the family, prepares to go at it.

Sam's Latest

Sam usually throws such a fit when its time to cut his hair that we decided just to delay it for as long as possible. Eventually it couldn't wait any longer. Sam actually did pretty well at the barber (Tricia bribed him with a trip to the toy store) and now no longer looks like his little sister.

Tricia went in to check on Sam the other night and found him sound asleep.

What's Sam so happy about? And why is the furniture stacked against the bathroom door. And where is Kate anyway?

Sam lured his sister into the bathroom and then decided to barricade her in. Usually we can preempt his attempts to bother his sister (she's quite the tattle tell) but she apparently didn't mind being left alone in the bathroom and eventually was able to escape.

Halloween 2007

Sam helping his sister find a pumpkin. Kate uninterested in Sam's selection.

Everyone found a pumpkin to match their size.

Sam flexes his power ranger muscles. He had wanted to be a power ranger for months before halloween so we finally got the costume. Sam was excited for weeks leading up to Halloween and we thought we were all set. But the day before it was time to actually wear it, he heard his good friend Sam Tyson was going to be a knight and from that point on the red power ranger costume was a big dissapointment. If you ask Sam a question about what he likes, he usually answers "What does Sammy Tyson like?" Hopefully Sammy Tyson goes on a mission and marries in the temple because if so, we are set.

More peacock. These two pictures happened to be taken in the brief 5 minute period that she actually wore her wings and headband. They spent most of the night on the floor.

I realized I haven't said much about Kate in this blogspedition. Since we only seem to do this once every 6 months or so, I'd better not leave anyone out. She looks a lot like Sam, but she definately acts different. She is definatey more "girly". She is scared to death of being tossed in the air, loves necklaces, and is fascinated with shoes. She is our cuddly baby, the snuggler that Sam never was, and loves to give hugs, crawl into our bed and lay her head on my chest and being wrapped in anything soft and cuddly. Here is Kate on her 1st birthday. She loves the doll she got, as well as her stuffed animals. Sam will usually give one to her if she is sad and it cheers her up. The other night, we decided to let Kate cry it out when she woke up unexpectedly in the night. When we finally did go in there we found her crib full of all the stuffed animals and dolls in our house that Sam had been throwing in there to try to keep her quiet so he could sleep.

Baby #3 is on it's way. We are very excited. Here's the little guy's (or girl's) first photo as a 6 1/2 week old fetus. We both think boy, but then again, that's what we said about Kate. April 19th is the big due date. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I don't learn to deliver babies until June so I won't be performing this delivery. When Sam heard the news, he asked where babies come from. We told him that they come from Heavely Father and he seemed satisfied with that explanation. What he doesn't seem to understand is why we need another baby when we already have one. He is excited though that he and the new baby will have birthdays close together.

So here it is, the family Crosmobile. Thanks to Mike for doing all the research and reccomending the Toyota, we followed suit and joined the ranks of the satisfied minivan owners despite Tricia's past declarations that she would never be a minivan mom. Having the extra car is handy. Now mine stays cheerio free, and Tricia appreciates not having to get the family up at the crack of dawn to drive dad to the hopital, or getting a sitter to come over at night while she picks me up. The extra size has already come in handy when Tricia's family came to visit last week and all 8 of us were able to cram in together. And of course, it will be nice in April when when it comes time for that 3rd car seat.