The Porterion, or, an experience in being a Porter: Ramblings, Park days and Teddy Bears

Sorry for the delay in posting. Seems like time has gone by so fast this last month or so... You know I say that, but time seems to have sped up exponentially since we had kids. It's always fun to go back and look at the beginning of this blog. I still cannot believe we have had this thing for 4 years now. Alexa was the same age then that Erika is now. It still amazes me to look at the photos. I could swear those early pictures were Erika and vice versa... they look so much alike.
As I was looking through and reading some of our early posts, it occurred to me that we have posted a lot of the things that go on here in the Porter house, mostly good. There have been a few rare glimpses into the bad or crabby, as the case may be. :) It made me think about how things *really* are here in our house. Yes we have lots of good times, but there are hard times too. We have had our share of sadness, anger, frustration, loss and any other number of adjectives along those lines. We have experienced financial difficulty, lost jobs, broken bones and hospital stays.
Through it all there have been two things that have been constant through out. The first being God. We never could have made this far with out our faith in God. He has been gracious, and merciful all these years. Mike and I do realize that God has protected us even during our hard times.
The other consistent has been our family. We are EXTREMELY grateful to be so blessed with great parents. We both have heard stories of people that do not get along with one side or the other of their families. We do not have that problem. Both of our parents have gone out of their way to help us out when they could (and sometimes made things work even when all appeared lost). I just wanted to take this opportunity to say "THANK YOU!" We could not have gotten this far with out some help, you all mean the world to us!
Not sure where all this is coming from, I guess I have been thinking a lot, and just really wanted to get all my thoughts out.

Ok, sorry for the rambling beginning, now on to the good stuff... PICTURES!
We have has some fun days with our home-school group, but it was fun to watch the kids do PE. They have had to do push ups and run relays... it's pretty fun to watch.

I mentioned in the last post that Tim had some loose teeth. He finally lost one just this week. He was so excited that the tooth fairy came and left him a whole dollar under his pillow. :)

He still has one more loose in the front, should be any day now for it to come out as well.

Erika is now officially 11 months old. I cannot believe that in one more month she will be a year old. It really does not seem like that much time has passed. She is still cruising the furniture, but loves to grab hands and walk all over the place. She finally has some top teeth in as well. She is now in the mimicking stage. She loves to watch her bother and sister and try to do the things they do.

It cracks me up about the bear. every time I try and get a picture of her with the bear she would put her feet up (see what I mean about mimicking... LOL). She really is such a good baby though, for the most part she is pretty content and she is just generally a happy child. We are so blessed.