Florida Outcasts

Dream Job!

2018-07-18T20:20:00.000-06:00

I started writing this on Instagram, but realized it was a little bit too long of a story. And it's one I want to remember. I just became the newest architectural designer for Ezra Lee Design + Build! This is significant in many ways, but let me just say that I have said I wanted to work for him for years.

Ezra Lee is an awesome design build company. I became aware of him because he usually has a home in the Parade of Homes every year. I always loved his style and how his homes stood out from the standard, boring, Utah home. They were always unique and well thought out. Then, four years ago, I saw him sitting in the office of one of his parade homes, so I decided to talk to him. I told him how much I like his designs and about how I have a degree in architecture. He said I should send over my portfolio because he is always looking for good talent. Of course, at the time, I was barely pregnant with Wes, my oldest was only 10 and it just wasn't the right time for me to work. I didn't send anything over.

I continued to admire him from afar and always had it in the back of my mind that I would love to work for him someday. I mean, I imagined myself working for some architecture firm, but this one was the one I really wanted. I even remember talking with one of my best friends a couple of years ago about how hard my little kids were. She said, "I think you should go work for that Ezra Lee guy, even it's only for a few hours and even if all of your income goes to pay for child care." I remember thinking about it, but it still wasn't the right time.

Throughout those years, I started getting into designing for other people on the side. It started when a friend asked if I could give her some ideas for finishing her basement. I decided to do a 3D sketchup model for her. Actually, I gave her a few different ideas to chose from. They loved being able to visualize the space in 3D. That was the beginning of my doing a bunch of other designs for people. Though I never advertised, I had various jobs through word of mouth. During that time, I got really good at and fast at Sketchup. I also began designing furniture plans in Sketchup.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year. I felt strongly that I should restart my website and put all of my plans, architecture and home projects on it. Jared helped me work out a lot of the website details and I started focusing on Clever Compositions (my website/business name). Then, one day at church they announced that our stake was starting some self reliance classes and for some reason, Jared and I decided to go. We had no idea why we were there and at that first meeting had to chose one of the four courses. We chose the Starting and Growing Your Own Business class and got assigned to a group. We both went the first time, but it was the same night as racquetball, and Jared didn't really have a business idea like I did, so I continued going without him. It was a 12 week course and it was excellent! I really explored so many different thing in that class and got out of my comfort zone a lot. Our facilitators had started 14 companies over the years and were so inspiring! I really feel like I was in the class and with the people I was with for a reason. In the process of the class, I added more things to the website. I thought that I would be able to work on designs for basements and kitchen/bathroom remodels if I just advertised my services, but I never got to that point.

Instead, something entirely different happened...

In June, I went to the Parade of Homes (because I wouldn't miss it for almost anything) and I went through the house of Ezra Lee. I saw him in the garage as I was leaving, but of course didn't talk to him. When I got home that night, I saw a job listing for Ezra Lee for their architecture department (because I follow them on Facebook). It was my perfect job, except that it was full time, so I didn't apply. I kept thinking about the job for a week and finally decided that I should just go back to that parade home to see if Ezra was in the garage again (he was). I just wanted to get my foot in the door for the future and for him to know who I was. He told me he had just filled the job an hour before, which was fine because I couldn't do full time anyway. But I kept talking to him and had a great conversation. I may have mentioned that I always said I would work for him (I still can't believe I said that!) It came up that they use Revit (a 3D modeling program that I haven't used since I was in school over 8 years ago). For some reason, he suggested that I could maybe come in to the office to relearn Revit since they had a couple of extra licenses and an extra desk. He also told me to send my portfolio over to him and Kelly, the head of architecture.

I spent the weekend working on my resume and portfolio and sent it in that Tuesday. Ezra emailed back and said they would get back to me. Kelly called me on Friday and asked if I could come in for an interview that same day. We had a great talk as well. They said they don't usually like to hire people for part time work, but I said it would be ideal to come in Monday through Friday in the mornings (when Hallie was at kindergarten and Wes was at preschool). That seemed to be okay for them, as long as I was there every day. He brought up the idea that I could come in to learn Revit and asked if I wanted to start the next Monday. Then if they liked me after a couple of weeks, they could possibly hire me for part time work.

I came in for a week in the mornings going through training videos and designing my dream house in Revit. The next week Ezra and Kelly decided to give me a design challenge. They took me down to a site and which had a 10'x12' billboard on it. They said they wanted me to design a mixed use office building for that site and that they wanted it to go on that billboard (if it was good enough!) They said they have given people lots of opportunities to show design skills and they are almost always disappointed. They really wanted the very top talent. So, no pressure for me on this project!

I started designing and the next day Ezra looked in on it (even though it wasn't even close to being done). There were things he liked and other things he didn't like. He made a suggestion which I began to implement. By Friday, I had a design but it wasn't that great. Kelly saw it and asked if I liked it. I said no, and he said, "then delete it". That was a really rough day because I knew this was my chance to show them what I could do and either be hired or not. I was kind of stressed. I came home that day and worked all weekend on a design. I put a board together to present to them and Monday morning showed Ezra. Amazingly, he loved it. And so did Kelly. That was a huge relief! He gave me some suggestions and said that I had a lot to do that day. That's when I said, "Or I could just leave because I don't actually work here." At that point, Kelly said he would have a chat with the finance guy and Ezra and give me a job offer the next day. They said they really liked me and were impressed with what I was able to do.

Today I accepted the offer and even got back pay for the work I did last week :) I still can't even believe all that has happened in such a short period of time. It really is my dream job. It is about 8 minutes from my house (did I mention the office is in one of the houses they designed?--it is so awesome!) and I kind of set my own hours, with lots of flexibility. There are four people in the architecture department and three of us are in a room together. They are all really nice and helpful. They just really make me feel comfortable and like I am supposed to be there. They are working on 3 and 4 million dollar custom homes that are so awesome! The job allows me to be creative and use my skills, and it definitely challenges me continually. When I am there, time goes by so fast. We are all so focused on our design work. It is so much more than just a job to me, because I continually think about what I can do to make designs better.

I have felt kind of envious of moms with jobs for a long time. It didn't even matter what the job was, but just the fact that they were doing something with their lives instead of just kids and housework made me envious. I would even look at different random jobs thinking, maybe I could just do that job... But then I would always remind myself that when it was time for me to get a job, that I should do something I love and that I went to school for, architecture. But just the thought of going through all the applying and interviewing process was awful! I always prayed that Heavenly Father would prepare the right job for me when the time was right.

I really feel like this was an answer to my prayers. I didn't even know that I would be getting a job right now, but I feel like Heavenly Father did. And everything seemed to fall into place at the right time. Even if this had happened two months ago, I could not have made it work with two kids at home. The timing of it being summer, when my older kids could watch the younger kids during the day made it the perfect time. And the fact that I had done that self-reliance class and had my portfolio ready to send over was another blessing. And just the "coincidence" of Ezra being there at the exact moment that I decided to go up there. And the fact that they had had a couple of people from the architecture department leave within the last couple of months made them have an opening at this very moment in time. I think about my vacations that I planned. None of them were during this time period, even though they were originally supposed to be. And all of my kids' activities also worked around my morning schedule (Erin's oboe was before work and Alex's band was right after).

Then there was the issue of what to do with Wes while I was at work. I had signed him up for two different preschools back in February, so he would be gone Tues-Fri. The only issue is that he is not potty trained and he can't go to preschool if he's not. I really buckled down at the beginning of the summer, but he would not do it. I was exasperated! You just can not force someone to be potty trained unless they want to. I knew he wasn't ready, but just the thought of being home all day with him again next year was something I just could not go through. He is such a hard kid! I even had a breakdown about it the night before Kelly called me. I just had to figure out something. I started to realize that maybe there was a reason that he was being so stubborn about it, that maybe he wasn't supposed to go to preschool after all. Then one day last week, my cousin came to mind. She has a daycare in her home and she lives in Lehi. I contacted her and explained the situation and she said she could do that! It literally was a huge weight lifted off me and an answer to my prayers. I had been praying so long that Wes could get potty trained, when the answer to my prayers was actually something very different, but something that would ultimately be much better for my situation. If I'd done the preschools, I still would have had to find extra babysitters on Monday and after school (since it was only 2 hours a day). And, this daycare will be cheaper than the preschools. Just amazing!

Even the fact that Ezra had the idea to let me come in without getting paid was the perfect way for me to get to know them. It was so unconventional, and something they had never done before, but somehow it was the right thing. Kelly mentioned to me that Ezra believed in serendipity and that things happen for a reason, and people come into your life or your business at the right time for a reason. This was one of those times. He could have easily just told me he's not looking for part time and that he already filled the position anyway, but he let me stick my foot in the door and I'm so grateful he did!

Just look at some of his design work. It's amazing!

Difficult

2017-06-14T23:47:00.000-06:00

Well, I can't tell you how taxing the last two and a half years have been. These two last kids have been very difficult! Wes, because he has been my worst sleeper as a baby. He only slept though the night 4 times in the first 11 months. He did a little better the next year until he learned how to climb out of his crib before he turned 2. Then it was impossible to put him to bed or give him naps. This is the first kid that hasn't had consistent naps at this age so I don't ever really get a break. Not only that, but he learned how to take off his diaper and clothes so he would run around naked, peeing and pooping wherever he pleased. We tried so many things, like backwards pajamas, onesies and duct tape around his diaper, all of which helped for the time. He is doing a bit better, but it is not uncommon to find him naked, especially outside... in the front. That leads me to another difficult phase, he can open any door so he goes out front all the time (where he could get hit by a car). We have to watch him constantly! He also likes to go knock on all the neighbors' doors, with or without clothes. He is a very active, brave kid so he climbs on everything and jumps off high things (like my dresser the other day). He is constantly doing things to give me a heart attack. So between all of his crazy antics, being naked and not sleeping or going to bed at a decent time, he has really been the most difficult baby we've had. I guess that's why Heavenly Father saved him for last. We may not have had so many kids otherwise.

Hallie has also been kind of a nightmare for the past two years. While she was a fine sleeper and napper as a baby, she has been the worst sleeper by far at this age. She is up the latest out of all the kids (her and Wes), but refuses to sleep in her bed or even her room. She has been sleeping on our floor for the past year or so. Jared and I are so tired that we just don't even care where she sleeps as long as she sleeps somewhere. But it is always a constant, nightly battle. The older kids go to bed when they are asked. Maybe it takes a few times of asking, but they go and they stay in bed. Hallie needs to be tucked in about 4 times and still gets up saying she is scared, or hungry, or not tired, or lonely, or wants to sleep on the couch, or whatever. Between 11 and 12 is usually when she finally goes to sleep. And then she is the first kid up. What the heck? It just makes me feel like the worst parent. How is it that we have not been able to figure this out after all of the other kids? What is wrong with us? What is wrong with her? We have tried everything! Sharing a room, having her own room, sharing with a new sibling, being nice, yelling, putting a lock on her door (which only makes her scream bloody murder until we unlock it)... We are at our wit's end with her. Every night she gets yelled at, unless by some miracle she falls asleep on the couch. But then we almost assuredly have Wes awake due to an untimely nap he takes. Hallie has also been the worst at this age (the 3-5 age). Marissa was really whiney and Connor had a lot of anger at that age. They were both really challenging. But Hallie is both whiney and angry! She is very, very demanding, just constantly wanting things, asking, talking, crying, screaming, being mad... not happy very often. She probably acts even worse because she doesn't get the sleep she needs (see above!) It has been awful! Again, I have tried so many tactics, but ultimately, she is disobedient and unhappy and I feel like a constant failure.

That is why things have been so difficult for me kid wise for the past two plus years. The bad part is that I don't even see it changing for another two years. I dread the next two years, and I hate that feeling. Next year she has three days of preschool, 2 hours at a time. That will be a good break from her, but I will still be dealing with Wes. The next year she will have 3 hours of kindergarten... again, a nice break from her but I will still have Wes. He'll be better by then, right? I seriously pray that he will not give me as much of a hard time at age 3-5 that Hallie has. I don't know if I will survive that.

Anyway, it's just been an exceptionally busy month. June always is. I try to make each person's birthday special, but it is a lot to ask of me in a two week time span (4 birthdays and Father's day). I feel responsible for the success of all of them. Let's do something fun, let's give them breakfast in bed, let's let them choose what dinner they want, let's make them a special cake... overwhelming. On top of that, it has been baseball season for two kids. Last week we had 5 games! It is very time consuming, but they love it. I have fun watching, but I get so exhausted doing all of this. Also, it is the Parade of Homes right now and there is nothing I love more. The bad part is that I only have 4 days to go to it due to busyness and vacations. I have also been doing a 12 week course called uncluttered. I really feel like I need it in my life. I feel so stressed with all the demands on me! All the time! I also feel smothered by stuff. I have been going through stuff room by room and getting rid of a ton of it. But then there are times that you just hit a roadblock. You just can't do any more. It is emotionally exhausting. It is also demoralizing to feel like you have a space pretty good, and then you go back a week or two later to find it trashed. Somehow, because I didn't take out everything, they found a way to make a huge mess. I don't know if I'll ever have a clean uncluttered home/life. I mean, living with kids that is.

On top of all of this, I keep getting asked to help people with different things. I want to serve others, but a lot of times those are the things that are really the straws that break me. One week I was doing things for people every day. Can you help me build something? Can you help me design some graphics for the book I'm writing? Will you make dinner for someone (which by the way, I hate)? Can you help me do a photo book? Can you help me design a bunk bed? Can you help me cut something out on your cutting machine? Can you help me design a poster? How about design a basement? How about teach me how to build something out of wood? These are all things I love to do, but honestly, it is really stressing me out to the breaking point. In addition, I just got a new calling as the YW advisor as well as YW camp director. I love the girls and being in there with them, but again, it is a lot. I did an activity which took hours of prep work this week, I'm having to deal with camp stuff, I have to teach on Sunday, and I am supposed to find a suitable camp location for next year. Yes, I can and will do these thing. But man, I am on the brink...

More about our life

2016-01-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

Again, my desire to record things has been overshadowed by my need to survive. So, here are some things I guess I don't want to forget and some pictures from Christmas.

The annual "stand in order in your new pajamas on Christmas Eve" picture

Christmas Breakfast on fancy china

Wesley is almost 10 months old. He weighs 17.4 pounds (10th%) and is 29 inches (62nd%). He is definitely into everything, as can be evidenced by the daily trail of destruction he leaves. Pulling all the towels and rags out of the drawer and getting into the kid dishes drawer are some of his favorite things to do. He does like to help take all the clothes out of the washer and hand them to me to put in the dryer. It's adorable. The barstool-at-the-bottom-of-the-stairs-baby-gate worked for several months until he learned how to crawl over it. We've moved on to the constantly-climbing-up-the-stairs-while-terrifying-his-parents-because-he-hasn't-learned-how-to-go-down-feet-first phase. It's a fun one. He's getting a lot better at it, but it's still scary. He loves to stand, but hasn't taken any steps yet. He mostly looks like he surfing because of his stance and the way he balances. (Update-since it's taken me so long to post this: Wes took his first step one day before he turned 10 months. A week later he was taking several steps. 14 is his record. I've never had a baby start to walk this early!!)

Wes is starting to like eating table food but still eats a lot of baby food. His all time favorite food is yogurt and probably eats one every day. He still hates drinking a bottle but does it sometimes. The only way I can get him to drink it is when I'm holding him while standing. So it's like I'm feeding a goat with his head looking to the ceiling. When I try to sit down he goes crazy and stops drinking. The boy still hasn't slept through the night more than 4 times in his life. Last week we moved his crib into our walk in closet (since there's no other room available for him right now) and he seems to be sleeping a lot better in there. It's warm and dark and away from a lot of the chaos that could wake him up. He's been taking good naps, but he has been waking up twice a night since then. Still, a vast improvement from some of the other nights he's had where he would wake up 5 or 6 times and couldn't be consoled. I tell you, this baby has two purposes in life right now: 1-to slowly kill me and Jared via sleep deprivation and 2-to make dang sure, even though we weren't planning on it, that we will not have any more kids. You would think I'd be able to figure out how to deal with a baby by now, but I've never had a baby that didn't sleep before. Ahh, Wes. Some day he will sleep.

We all call him Wessie, or just Wes. I also call him Buddy Bud. He sure melts my heart by how cute he is. The other day we asked who wanted dinner and everyone raised their hands, including him. He also folds his arms for the prayer and loves to clap, something he learned the day before Thanksgiving. He shakes his head no a lot and sometimes does yes. He's got a great laugh. He was sitting in his high chair watching everyone carve pumpkins for Halloween and he just started cracking up by how funny one of the pumpkins was. Love to see the wheels in his head turning.

This was the best I could do for Wesley's Christmas picture. He was super squirmy!

Hallie keeps saying really cute things. Everything that has stripes on it she calls wobbly. She loves her wobbly dress and her wobbly shirts. She found some old cups with Dora on them, claimed them as her own and started calling them her "Nora tups". I guess we haven't watched enough Dora with her, or any come to think of it. Breakfast was "fetuss" and now it's "befduss", a movie is a "fawvie", rubber bands are "wubbin bands", ketchup is "teputch" and zip it is "yip it". Other common phrases are "Mom, where is you?" or "Where is her?" Instead of "I know how" she just says, "I how". Whenever we are in the car she asks, "Aw we dohing home? Aw we?" Oh, and I have to "yisten" to her or she will get really mad. If I'm not "yooking" at her while I'm listening then she'll break down and say, "Mom, you're not yistening at me!" When she wants something and I tell her no, she says, "No, I want it." Oh, see had I realized that you wanted it I would have said yes... Her favorite shows are Daniel Tiger (which she used to call Tigga Daniels) and Super Why (pronounced Supper Why). She talks about her friends all the time, especially Isabella. Usually it's, "Mine fends do dis," and then she'll say something crazy that her friends do but you know she's just making it all up. Hallie started Primary last Sunday! She could not be more excited to be in Primary. She just gets really excited and giggles about it whenever you mention it.

I made her some doll house furniture for Christmas and she loves it!

This was a DIY fort kit that we made for our kids. They made lots of fun forts in the living room (this is why we need our basement to be finished)

Connor is a funny kid. He was the only kid who told Santa what he wanted when he sat on his lap and what was it? A tiny Santa. I asked him what he meant afterwards and he said, "Ugh, Santa knows." So, he got a tiny Santa in his stocking and yes, it is his favorite present. So crazy how the littlest things make them the most happy. I got a text from the mom of a girl in his kindergarten class asking if Connor ever talks about how she kisses him every day. He was pretty embarrassed when I asked him and denied it happening, but did say that she (Eliza) chases him and tries to kiss him every day and that she has a crush on him. When I told him she wanted him to come over he said, "I'll go, as long as she doesn't kiss me." Then, come to find out, Connor is the captain of the boys, since Landon moved that is. After all the digging I've done I've only gathered that the captain is only the captain when the girls start chasing them, that he is the one who makes the plans, and that the dumbest plan they made was "Run!" Also, the reason he is the captain is because he is the skinniest. He says this stuff so matter-of-factly too. All I can do is laugh.

Besides that, he is really taking off with reading. He got the Elephant and Piggie books for Christmas and thinks they are great. He had the longest part of all my kids in the Primary program and he did a great job memorizing it and saying it so clearly. It had some hard words too like begotten, whosoever, perisheth and everlasting. Last week we remembered that he had the scripture at the end of Sacrament meeting. Jared looked one up and read it with him once. He read it great in Primary and then said it completely memorized after church (after only two times reading it!) Another funny thing he said yesterday was, "Mom, you're old" and after I started laughing he said, "Well, not that much old."

Marissa has been loving gymnastics, even though her best friend quit taking classes with her. You know this because she is always doing hand stands and cartwheels all over the place, like in the hall, the kitchen, 2 inches from Wesley's head, etc. She is getting pretty good at them. I took her to be evaluated at another gym and she made it into level 2 (she is already on level 2 the current gym). Hopefully there will be a spot open for her when I try to sign up, mostly because it is half the price and will give her a longer class. Marissa was a very grateful girl this Christmas. She loved getting the Crayola cling creator which produced a good 15 slimy window decorations to be displayed right by our front door. She really did love that gift. The other thing she got was a camera, which she also really wanted and loves. Her best friend at school is Brooklyn, who really, really likes Marissa. Her mom told me that she was so grateful that Brooklyn had found such a great friend because she has a hard time making friends. Needless to say, both parents hear a lot about the other friend. It's nice to be able to find someone like that.

Alex has been loving basketball right now. He is on a team with his neighbor friends and has made a basket every game. He has also been learning some really fun songs on the piano. Over Christmas he learned and memorized a few on his own and a bunch of Christmas duets with Erin that they performed on Christmas Eve. I love hearing them play together! Now they are working on Linus and Lucy from Charlie Brown and it is so fun to hear. Alex will sit down several times a day and just play songs and is starting to learn some chord progressions. He is persistent and talented with it. Alex and Erin also performed a couple of times with the school choir.

Two of his favorite Christmas gifts were a pocket knife (which came in handy opening stuff on Christmas) and a Rubik's cube. All six of the neighbor boys his age got one in their stocking (random, right?) so they all carry them around trying to solve them. He is getting good at it and only has to look it up on certain parts. This year the class field trip was skiing and snowboarding! He chose snowboarding because it looked cooler, even though I tried to convince him that we are a skiing family. They gave him lessons and spent the day up there. He loved it! Now if only we could find the time and money to take him and our other kids up some other time.

Erin has been enjoying her music dance theater class and did a really fun performance at the Festival of Trees, that I have no photographic evidence of due to our other kids being crazy cranky (in their defense, the performance didn't start till after 9 pm) Erin was challenged by her Primary teachers to ready the Book of Mormon this year. The first week she was supposed to ready 50 pages, about 7 pages a night. Instead, she started reading 7 or 8 chapters a night. It's only been a few weeks and she is already in the middle of Alma! She comes down and asks questions about it and is really enjoying it. She said that she wants to read all of the standard works this year. I'm amazed by how ambitious she can be when she sets her mind to something. She has also read all 20 battle of the books titles and is starting to reread those.

Erin was really ambitious with her Christmas presents this year. She made a doll quilt for Hallie, a doll rug for Marissa and made a car mat for the boys. It's really cool because all the roads are moveable. She spent a lot of time cutting and gluing in her room. Just before Christmas I taught her how to use the sewing machine to finish the projects, and that night she stayed up late sewing a little purse that she designed. Awesome. We found out that 4 of her Refelctions projects went to the district and 2 of them went on to the region. I received an email saying that one of her projects went on to the state level! We'll find out tomorrow which one. It's cool to see her succeed at things, especially since she worked so hard on Reflections the last two years and didn't get anything. Erin also just got her second phase of braces on. Hopefully this phase won't take too long and she will have perfect teeth by the middle of 7th grade.

Jared has been gaining a lot of momentum on our basement. We realized some time in November that he had a lot of vacation days that he hadn't taken, so he took two weeks off in December. We decided it was time to finish the basement (since we started the framing over two years ago). In that time we have paid for my Lasik surgery, purchased two new cars, gone to Disneyland, had a baby, had some medical bills and basically haven't had much time to work on it. We hired out the HVAC and Jared has done 75% of the electrical so far. He also finished up the framing, so we are making some real headway. I can't wait to have it done! I'm glad Jared is so handy and talented at figuring stuff out. Even so, there are so many little details to think about as far as lighting and framing that it takes us a long time.

This is obviously my favorite gift I gave to Jared. I LOVE it when MY WIFE lets me play racquetball. This was also week 2 of his 3 week Christmas beard.

I, Laura, have been staying alive and keeping my kids alive. That's about it. I feel like this year has been a big blur. I am not depressed, which is good, but I am basically doing what I need to take survive. Someone once said to me that she heard that anything after three kids is easy (this was coming from someone with three kids). Totally not true! While I do remember three kids as being quite challenging, I have to say that having the sixth has been completely exhausting. Sleep deprivation has been pretty brutal. I think it has been most challenging physically, as I haven't had much time to exercise. But I know this phase will not last forever. I am almost done nursing Wes, though he still goes crazy in the middle of the night without it. Being done always makes me feel more like myself again. He is also really hard to leave places because he just cries, so I mostly have him with me all the time. I am leaving on a 3 day girls trip this weekend and I'm hoping Wes will be okay without me. I am looking forward to a fun break.

I got a laminator and Jared and I got really nice new phones for Christmas! I'm excited to be able to take better pictures from my phone.

And this was our Christmas card this year. So basically, I managed to do something last year.

Two Birthdays

2015-12-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Hallie turned "fee" on Sept. 30th. Ever since then she says, "I'm bigga" (bigger) over and over again... probably a good 30 times a day... to which I have to say (over and over again), "Yes, Hallie, you are bigger." She still says she is "happy birthday", something that started a year ago when she turned 2. In the last couple of months, Hallie has really gotten the hang of potty training, something which I am extremely grateful for. So no more pooping in her underwear, no more sloshing poop in the toilet--Hallie-luiah! My life has gotten better by a good 65% I would say. And amazingly, she has never wet the bed. That girl has some great bladder control.

I baked a chocolate cake in the morning and then went upstairs to take a shower while it was cooling. When I came downstairs, the cake had been completely cut up as you can see in the picture. I guess Hallie wanted to cut her own cake? Who knows why kids do the things they do? The point is that I had to turn the cake upside down and frost it the best I could, despite it being cut into pieces. It was a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake with all the characters, fitting since she has watched the one episode we have about 100 times since last year.

Apparently, I was not very good at taking pictures that day. We hung out at the children's museum for a while and then my parents came over to give her some presents. She said she wanted clothes when they asked her so they gave her some cute things, including new underwear. She also got new underwear from me and now thinks that any time she changes her clothes (which is multiple times a day) she also needs a new pair of underwear. Since she loves Minnie Mouse, she got a Minnie dress up and a Minnie stuffed animal.

Hallie also loves to say the prayer. Whenever someone else gets asked to say it, she immediately says that she will say the prayer for dinner or for bed (whichever is the next one). She also doesn't like to go to bed (just like her mom), so we always have Hallie and the baby up for a couple of hours after the other kids have gone to bed. Sweet Hallie is sure growing up! And we love her so much!

On Oct. 10th Alex turned 9. Since Alex is usually the first one up in the family, we made him turn off his alarm so we could bring him breakfast in bed.

Erin made this awesome card and homemade basketball for him. So creative!

Alex has a fun personality. He wanted a cheese cake this year... like a wedge of cheese made out of cake, not an actual cheese cake. I'm not sure if anyone remembers the racquetball racquet/fly swatter cake that I made for Jared a few years back. The one in which I declared that it wasn't my worst cake ever, to which Jared asked which one was worse than that one? That cake is infamously known as my worst cake ever... that is until this one.

This is what it was supposed to look like...

...and this is what it actually looked like.

All I could do was laugh about it. Since it was chocolate, all the dark crumbs came through like it was a piece of cheese dropped in the dirt. And all the holes we tried to put in it just made it look that much worse. It has been affectionately named "The Cheese Touch" cake and "The Pinterest Fail". Oh, and then there is the writing. It kind of looks like it says "Alex is 91. Alex was such a great sport about it and just thought it was funny. I love that he does things just to be funny or ironic, like wanting to be Santa Claus for Halloween.

Anyway, we rounded up whatever part of the gang of boys that was lurking around our house at the time and gave them each a piece of the Cheese Touch (it was delicious, in my defense)

He got a new basketball, a circuit making kit (something that Jared loves) and the second Harry Potter book. Alex just finished the first one and loved it.

Since it was a Saturday and since we weren't having a friend party for him this year, we went downtown for a family day. We spent hours at the Leonardo museum. We had never been there and it was so fun. They had tons of things to play with and build, as well as paint and create. The best part was that there was hardly anyone there. I feel like if we had that museum in our neighborhood, it would be packed all the time. Anyway, it was a really fun family day!

Head Above Water

2015-09-28T14:55:00.001-06:00

Wow, life just keeps going faster and faster, and keeps getting busier and busier. I suppose having 6 children would explain this phenomenon. My kids love reading out of the blog books that I had printed several years ago and there is so much that I don't remember until they read it. I know there's so much going on right now that I will completely forget because I'm not documenting it. It's okay... I don't have to document everything, but I would like to remember some of what's going on right now. So here goes...

Wesley is such a great addition to our family. He is incredibly happy and has a giant smile ready for anyone he sees. We had to go back to the doctor every month for a while to get his blood tested (for his neutrophil levels) and now they are back to where they should be. Yay! We have been so blessed that he has not gotten sick at all since his hospital stay. He is growing and developing just as he should.

Wes has not been the best sleeper. He went through 3 weeks back in May when he slept for 6 hours at a time, and then he went back to waking up between 3-5 times a night. I think this is one reason why I've been so drained and exhausted. Every now and then he sleeps a little better (like only waking up once a night) and I always feel so much better the next day. So it gives me hope for him eventually sleeping through the night. Nothing lasts forever, so I know he will do it some day and that I will be able to feel better. Napping isn't much better for him. Some days he takes great naps, and other days he only sleeps for like 10 minutes at a time.

He also refuses to take a bottle. He was fine in the beginning, but since I was homebound with him for so long and also dealing with the PICC line antibiotics, it was just easier for me to nurse him. He doesn't know what to do with a bottle besides chew on it now. I started giving him baby food at 4 months so that I could have some freedom to leave him, if only for a short time. He does love most foods, which helps me see the end of the nursing tunnel (more food=less nursing). I always feel so much better when I'm not nursing. But I also know that this means I will no longer have a small baby, and that's very bittersweet.

He started sitting up well at 5 months and going from his tummy to sitting at around 5 1/2 months. Wesley was 6 months on Sept. 13. That week he started to scoot around (army crawl style) and get up on his hands and knees. This week he has really started crawling and getting into everything. Time to baby proof stuff again. He also cut his first tooth last week. This child is a big drooler (just like Alex and Marissa), and not just because of teething. His shirt is always wet from drool, but I know this will end too.

I try to enjoy the sweet moments nursing him, holding him and watching his milestones, but there is also so much other stuff going on that it makes it hard. And thinking about him being our last baby is both happy and sad. I want to remember the good stuff, but there's also a lot of trudging through the hard stuff that makes me want this phase to end (like sleeping through the night and getting my body back to myself). Anyway, I love this baby so much! His sweetness, his happy demeanor, his non-cuddly nature (like me), his cute laugh, his soft bald head and big blue eyes, his squishy thighs and so much more.

Such a sweet, happy boy!

Hallie has been quite the challenge for me lately. I've been getting flashbacks of how hard age three is with each kid (she'll be 3 next week). But, eventually they turn into happy, non-whiney kids so I know this phase will pass too. The kids going to school has been a big adjustment for her. The mornings are okay because she has Connor to play with, although most days they fight too. But after he goes to kindergarten, she doesn't know what to do with herself. I don't think she has ever had to play by herself before, and I of course don't know what to do with just one kid. So she follows me around everywhere I go. She's like my shadow, which would be perfectly fine if the shadow didn't yell at me all day... or poop in her underwear every other day.

Which leads me to my next point, potty training. What is strange is that she can go all night without wetting the bed, but has all sorts of accidents during the day. I bought a 140 count pack of suckers to motivate her to poop in the potty. She thinks that every time she pees in the potty that she gets one. Sometimes I try to hold fast to the sucker=poop rule, but most of the time I give in so that she stops yelling at me. It is not worth the battle... I guess what I'm saying is that my nerves are worth more than her rotting teeth. I know she'll get it soon and this phase of me sloshing poop out of underwear while gagging will barely be remembered. But I tell you, every time I find myself sloshing poop out of underwear I take a good look at what my life has become... parenting is not always pretty, people.

Most of the time she gets something in her head and won't let it go all day. Like one day she insisted that I take her to piano lessons. I tried all sorts of reasons why we couldn't go, like the fact that she doesn't have a teacher or that she is 2, but she continued to cry and yell about not getting to go. Hallie does love going places. It doesn't really matter where, but she needs to get out. I take her to the babysitting co-op often and I set up a weekly play date with her friend. I also take her with me to the store and she is usually good while we are out, but I feel like I have so much to do at home or need to give Wes a nap, that I can't always get out every day. I do feel bad that I always took my older kids to the park or different museums, but I don't do that with Hallie. Why? Shouldn't she get the same life that they did? She should. I just don't have quite the motivation or desire to do it anymore. Maybe it's partly because I feel like I should take all of them if I'm going to go somewhere fun so I wait until they're all home. Maybe it's because I'm too tired as a parent. Either way, I will try to start making an effort to do fun stuff with just her.

On Labor Day, we were at the park doing some old fashioned games for the Lehi Heritage day when she got a bean stuck in her nose. The game was to put the bean on your nose and drop it into the bottle. She heard "put a bean in your nose" and so she did. We couldn't get it out, and at her age she sucks in instead of blowing out when we tell her to blow her nose. My dad was smart enough to go talk to the police that were there and they called the EMT's (which were just a block away). The fire truck and ambulance came. They said they didn't have the right tools to get it out and that we'd probably have to go to an instacare, but then one of them came up with the idea to use the oxygen tube on reverse and suction the bean out. Thankfully, it worked and we saved the hassle of going to the doctor.

The bean in the nose incident. They gave her a stuffed animal that we call "Bean"

This was a temper tantrum right before the picture above (poor Hallie)

Connor started kindergarten this year. I wasn't sure this was so great at the very beginning because the first day I put him on the bus and he ended up going into the wrong class. Then he kept leaving things that I sent to school in his backpack. He has figured things out since then. He comes home every day singing a new song or reciting a rhyme he learned, so I suppose things are sinking in. He is the only kid to get on the afternoon bus at his stop, which is kind of weird. I never know if I have missed the bus or not since nobody else is ever waiting there. On the way home, he gets to walk home with all the big kids and does great. He is really growing up.

He just finished his first real season of soccer. It was cute to see him play. I know he'll love it as he gets older.

Connor has also been into hearing and repeating all the cute things he used to say when he was little. This is another reason why I should keep up this blog a little better, so I can remember all the cute things they say.

First day of Kindergarten

Marissa is loving piano. She also does great in school and loves the social aspect of it all. She did another season of soccer this year and did really well. She is not afraid to get in there and kick the ball. I think she liked being with friends and getting treats the most though.

She has been dying to do gymnastics and just started a month ago. She takes it with her best friend Aurora. I always think the progress is so slow at the beginning, but I know she is learning things and getting stronger. She definitely has a lot of fun doing it.

Hallie moved back into Marissa's room this summer when she transitioned from a crib to a toddler bed. For the most part, this arrangement works, although things are a bit more tight in the room than before. We put up a reading lamp and got her a clock to put on the top of her bed so she can easily read at night. She has been reading up a storm lately, which is great to see.

On another note, the permanent tooth finally grew in in the space left from the one she knocked out 5 years ago (when she was barely 2). I'm sure she will be getting braces some time in the next few years. All of the kids will at some point, I'm sure.

First day of 2nd grade

Alex is looking so much more grown up lately. One reason could be his hair. He had me cut it super short a few months ago, and then one day at the beginning of the summer, he came out of the bathroom with his hair in a faux-hawk and has worn it like that almost every day since. This cracks me up because I always suggested that he spike his hair or do something different with it (like on crazy hair day) and he never ever wanted to. And then one day he just decided to make the change. I also think it's funny because the faux-hawk kind of makes him look more rebellious in a way but he is still such a kind, sweet kid.

On Tuesday he had 3 more baby teeth pulled (for a total of 6!). When we went to the orthodontist and looked at his x-ray, the orthodontist said he didn't even know what he was going to do with this case yet. Because he had the ectopic molar removed and because of losing a baby tooth on that same side, his teeth have been sliding together making an impossibly small space for 3 permanent teeth to fit in. That's why the other 3 baby teeth were pulled, to get the permanent teeth in sooner, to have something to anchor to to push the back molar further back... anyway, it's a mess. I have faith in our orthodontist. Alex is so easy going about everything. No problems at all getting his teeth pulled.

That night, he did the pine wood derby. His car looked really awesome again. Alex had definite ideas of what he wanted it to look like. Jared designed the car to ride the rail and go really fast on the regulation track, but when we got there we found that it was not a regulation track. It was a plastic one with no rail. We were annoyed that the track was different. Anyway, Alex took 5th this time.

Alex had a really great soccer team this year. The field was huge compared to what he has done in the past. They won every game except their last one. Alex was a great runner and great on defense. It's so cool to see the skills develop as they get older. It makes for some really exciting games.

He still sets his alarm for 7:00 so he can wake up and eat, pack his lunch, do his homework, practice and still have plenty of time to play or just relax before he has to get on the bus at 8:45. Now that Marissa has an alarm clock she does the same thing. So funny. I love to see how independent they are about getting their homework and other things done by themselves. There's just not enough of me to go around so I think they are forced to be independent. The way I see it, I'm doing them a favor.

First day of 4th grade

This was his Utah cake he made for school, and en example of the faux-hawk

Pine wood derby and his smile showing his missing teeth

Erin started 6th grade and is now ruling the school. She has a great teacher and is doing some really fun things this year in school. They had an assembly about reflections and she came home determined to enter in every category (except dance). So she's been working really hard on entering 6 different things. The deadline is next week. So far she has done 3D art, 2D art, wrote and illustrated a book, composed a piano piece and started a movie. She has an idea for photography as well. I really hope that she will win something this year.

Right before school started, she cut off 10 inches of hair and donated it. I think she looks so cute with her new haircut. She is so good at making up different hair styles as well. She loves to look pretty (and she is!)

Her activity this year, besides piano, is a Music Dance Theater class that she started at the Alpine Community Theater. It's once a week for an hour and a half and she does it with her best friend Emma. The first day the teachers couldn't remember their names. Emma wore stripes the first week and Erin did the next, so they kept switching their names that week. Yesterday, they dressed exactly the same to try to trick the teachers again. Funny girls. I'm excited to see what they learn this year. I think this is one of Erin's talents. It's definitely a challenge to try to find out what talents your kids might have and then to know how to help them develop them more.

I love this girl, Erin. She is very sensitive to other people's feelings. She always asks what's wrong and is someone I can now talk to about how stressful this parenting thing can get. I'm so grateful for her and for the other older kids. They are at such great ages.

First day of 6th grade

Jared came home from a work party one day with a first place trophy. It was for go carting (that was the team's party). I said, "Why am I not surprised that you won first place?" He said, "That's exactly what I told my team that you would say." We know each other so well. Jared just kind of wins at everything of this nature. He is very competitive, which helps, and also watches others to see how to do things right, then he makes changes and improves his own performance. This is why I am never surprised about him winning.

Racquetball season is in full swing. I have no doubts about him doing well again this year. Right now he is ranked 17th in the state.

There is quite a stir in our surrounding neighborhood about the new Family Search building that has been proposed to go in on the Thanksgiving Point driving range. We, of course, are ecstatic about Jared's work moving 3 blocks away (the plan is to consolidate the Salt Lake and Orem offices to a central location--one big reason why we moved where we did, the hope of this happening here). The problem is that the building is on the West of the tracks. Perfect for commuters, but not perfect for the homes trying to leave the neighborhood at rush hour. There are only 2 exit points and they get really congested with all the new offices already in place as well as the Front Runner letting off tons of commuters around 5:00-6:30. In other words, it's already bad, but putting the new building there will only make things worse. There was a big community meeting opposing the project. We hope that it will still happen. How great would it be to reduce Jared's commute by 2 hours a day? He could walk to work and come home for lunch. Very exciting.

The other exciting thing about his work lately is a thing called FH5. The is where the management has been focusing on the employee experience. They've been implementing some great things. The newest is that they are letting people work four 10's and have every Friday off. Jared decided to do nine 9's and get every other Friday off. He works an hour more a day, which is a small adjustment. Hopefully we will like this change.

I, Laura, have been trying to keep my head above water, probably since school started. In the summer I could leave my kids home and go to the gym literally 2 houses down (she converted her garage to a gym). Now all I have are the hard ones home with me all day. Sometimes it feels like I am in a circus and that I have to keep juggling a whole bunch of balls. Most of the time I can keep them all in the air, but without fail, a ball will drop and then another and another. I try to keep everything going, but then I forget something or fail one of my kids in some way. I was watching the movie that we made in 2008 called "My Life 24/7" where I showed how fast the dishes, laundry and messes piled up as well as dealing with 3 demanding children. When I watched it this time, it made me kind of sad. I am still dealing with 3 demanding children, plus have 3 others to keep up with. Not only that but my piles of laundry and dishes are even bigger than they were back then. It's just overwhelming.

Jared was telling one of his friends that he plays racquetball every Thursday night and they asked what his wife does. He said that I have my things too, like Bunco every month and another monthly GNO with the pin-up girls. He said, "You're happy with your life, right?"... I guess it was the wrong day to ask that. I mean, overall, yes, I am happy with my life. I always wanted 6 kids (and here they are), I have a great home, and friends and so many blessings... but... I clean up poop and pee multiple times a day, I get yelled at by an almost 3 year old all day, I have to give my body to a baby every hour or two, I have to break up fights and clean up messes, and watch things that I like get broken or dirty... I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in months and I hardly ever get anything that I want to do done... No, this is not the picture of a happy life. It's hard when this is all I do. If I can just get one thing done for myself, one small thing, then I feel like I've done something useful. People will say, but what you are doing is so good or so important, and I know. It just feels so... hard when I'm doing it.

It hit me one day when my friend with one baby posted a picture of her 8 month old who had pulled all the toilet paper off the roll. Just one baby with an empty TP roll and a pile of toilet paper on the floor. Not that that isn't annoying, because it certainly is. But, I had just scraped a pile of poop off my bathroom floor and sloshed poopie underwear in the toilet while my baby screamed and threw a whole container of baby food on the floor. The older kids had reduced a chocolate cake to crumbs and were taking handfuls of it, licking their hands and spreading the crumbs all over the downstairs, smashing it into my just cleaned carpet. Dishes were all over the table and counter, and books, toys, papers and random pieces of garbage were evenly distributed throughout the space. A gang of 7 boys had just run through the house raiding my pantry and leaving various new cups of water on the counter as they ran back outside. A glass jar had been broken, book pages had been torn out of book, nail polish had gotten on the walls, and I had dealt with 3 baby diaper blow-outs and 3 toddler accidents that day. And amidst all this, I let a ball or two drop. I notice that one or two of the kids has long nails with dirt underneath them, or I'll notice a buildup of earwax in someone's ear as I drop them off for school, or I'll realize that Connor hasn't done 20 minutes of reading a day all week and I'll have to lie on his homework about it, or I'll send my kids to piano without having done their theory (because they won't do it unless I remind them to), and who knows the last time any of us showered... and then it seems like all of the balls I was somehow keeping in the air are now on the ground, the poop-streaked, baby food slimed and cake crumbly floor. It's intense.

It won't last forever. The baby will start sleeping, I won't have to change diapers for the rest of my life, and heck, I may even get to go to the bathroom by myself some day. I may get to work on projects without putting my baby on the dirty garage floor. But that day is not today. And that's okay. There is plenty to be happy about. There is plenty to take in and enjoy.

I do love this family of mine!

Erin's Birthday and Camping

2015-07-29T15:58:00.002-06:00

Erin turned 11 on June 18th. Eleven! She is growing up so fast and is such a wonderful girl. She has become very responsible and can be left with all the kids if we need to go somewhere. That is a game changer for us. We spent years having to worry about babysitters, and now we have Erin. It's amazing! She is so great with the baby and taking care of Hallie. She'll will often just make Hallie lunch or get her dressed without being asked. The other day I left for some reason and as I was leaving she asked if they could watch a movie. I told them to clean up a little and then they could. When I came home, everything was cleaned up really well. She said that she assigned everyone a job and set the timer for 15 minutes. If they weren't done by then, she would set it for 5 more minutes--but everyone was done after 15. They are obviously motivated by watching TV. I was impressed that Erin would do that on her own.

She got the now traditional birthday breakfast in bed, home made waffles, pears and juice.

Erin wanted roller blades for her birthday. They were sent to us a week before and she was dying to open them right away, so she got her present a bit early. On her actual birthday, she wanted to go to Classic Skating with the family. Looking back on that day, I was really stressed out. First off, Jared couldn't find his keys that morning so I hastily gave him mine so he wouldn't miss the train. Then I looked everywhere for Jared's and couldn't find them. I had to go and pick up some chicken that I had ordered before 9:30 that morning (and by "some" I mean 80 lbs.--yeah). I was panicking a bit. I asked to borrow my neighbor's car and as I was leaving, I reached in my bag and found the keys. Nice. For the rest of the day I was canning chicken. The first batch turned out fine, but the second one took over an hour and a half to get to the right pressure (it's supposed to take 10 min). I didn't know whether I should stop cooking it or continue trying to get it to pressure. It was taking forever! By the time Jared got home, it was super late and it still had to cook for an hour. Jared fixed the problem (just like he fixes everything for me!) and it finished cooking. He took the kids to the skate rink and I met them when the chicken finished.

Anyway, the point was I didn't make Erin's birthday that exciting. I did bring home a treat for her for babysitting and some new earrings for her birthday to make up for it. I think she had an okay day despite my frustration.

These three had lots of fun!

Gotta love skate rink carpet. Connor is pretty cautious about skating/trying new things.

And this is Jared making sure that he had a sufficient amount of fun himself. He stayed on for a long time and would have been able to go two more times if his hands and legs hadn't gotten so sore the first time he rode. It's so funny that he wanted to do that.

This is to prove that Wesley was there. No proof that I was however...

Due to the chicken incident, there was no time to make a cake. Erin got to pick this one out from Harmon's on the way home.

Erin really is an amazing person. As she has gotten older, I feel like I have more fun with her. She has a great sense of humor and is a great actress. She can recite funny lines of movies and shows that she's only seen once. I don't know how she remembers them exactly right, but she has always had that talent. I love her creativity. Lately she has been working hard in the basement with her best friend Emma on their invention business. They draw out different ideas then pitch them to each other. There's even a patent on the wall. Now they are working on building a prototype for one of the inventions. I think it's a pet habitat/home? I don't know much about it except for the times when they come up asking for pvc pipe, a glue gun, a needle and thread, and other random items.

Erin is still doing great with piano. I love to see them get better and actually enjoy playing. Luckily, their teacher is really great. Since she has a waiting list, every student has to practice 6 days a week or they will get kicked out of the studio. I like it because they have to practice. Erin also really loves to read. Yesterday we went to the library and I told all of the kids to get a lot of books and fat books so that they would last longer. So far, Erin has read 2 1/2 of hers. That's not exactly going to last that long. But I love that she likes to read.

Here's just another example of Erin's creativity. We went on a little camping trip right before her birthday and she was the brains behind these little fairy houses made of moss, sticks, flowers and rocks.

And can someone tell me how I am just now hearing about these amazing campfire eclairs? We borrowed these dowels from my neighbor, then wrapped a crescent roll around one and cooked it over the fire. Once cooked, you add vanilla pudding with cool whip and put it inside. I even added chocolate frosting on mine. Umm, delicious! I liked them so much more than s'mores. I'm going to have to make me some dowels for future campouts.

We went camping with Jared's brother Brian and his sister Rachel and their families. It was definitely a fun and relaxing time to get out of the heat and into nature. No technology or screens is always a needed break. Sure, we got poured on the first night. It was raining so hard that water started dripping through the rain fly as well as seeping through the bottom of the tent. There was a river flowing under the whole tent that made it feel like a water bed. The kids thought it was great until their stuff started getting wet. We lived. Come to think of it, I kind of always feel like I narrowly escape disaster/death every time I go camping. I still love it though.

We played four square and spike ball. Not sure if you can see this, but Marissa and Olivia were dressed just like twins. I kept mixing them up all day. Even though they are two years apart, they are exactly the same height. Marissa is a little on the short side:)

And here's the photographic (though very far from photogenic) evidence that I was indeed on this camping trip.

Connor's 5th Birthday

2015-06-25T10:34:00.001-06:00

Connor turned 5 on June 14th. In case you weren't aware that June 14th is also Flag Day, Connor made sure to have everything flag themed. We made a flag cake, got little flags and decorated the house with red and blue crepe paper. Every time Connor sees a flag anywhere he yells, "It's my flag!" because it is his day after all. We also got him a green balloon because green is his favorite color, and Hallie popped it before Connor even woke up. Sad.

Connor also got breakfast in bed (technically he was under the table on the carpet in his room--for some reason), but since he is such a late sleeper, there was no rush to get up and make it before he woke up. It was a Sunday though so we had to hurry and get ready for church.

Later that day we had cake and opened his presents. He got money from his grandparents and a soccer ball and soccer nets from us. He is signed up for his first real season of soccer this fall. I'm really excited to see him play because he has always loved sports and balls.

We had this box from Amazon with Connor's present in it for over a month just sitting by the door. The kids wanted to wrap it, but I told them to decorate the box instead.

Connor and Alex playing soccer. These boys really love each other!

You may have noticed the cast on in the birthday pictures. The last week of May Connor broke his arm. He tells the story way better than I do. And he takes his time telling about it. It is really important for him to be heard and to finish what he is saying without getting interrupted. "I was jumping off the A of my swing set and I fell and landed on my chest and I pinched my bone." This is the story he's told over and over. I didn't see it so I'm not exactly sure how his arm was if he landed on his chest. He came in crying and saying his wrist hurt, so I had him just lay down and ice it. He seemed okay after that so we went to pack meeting, played and went to bed. The next day we went to a preschool party at the park and he played just fine all day. That night Alex was playing and grabbed his wrists. That's when Connor started screaming. Jared took him in to get x-rays and they revealed that he had a little buckle fracture on one side of his bone. Since it didn't really crack the bone, it looked more like the bone was pinched (which is why he always says that he pinched his bone).

He got this cast on a few days later. It is his favorite color and is also a waterproof cast. What will they think of next? It was a little bit extra money but way worth it. He can shower and go swimming without having to worry about it stinking and getting all gross. He loves getting people to sign it (it has way more on it now than in this picture).

Connor did great with his online preschool this year. I'm happy that he will start kindergarten knowing how to read. I think he will do great next year. He also had tons of fun with the Joy School that we did with his friends. This is a picture of him getting his preschool diploma at the park. Again, he is making quite a speech when he was asked what he liked about preschool this year. He went on and on about everything he liked. Such a funny kid.

Connor also gives really great prayers. He will always ask that we can be respectful of other, and follow Jesus, live the gospel, feel the spirit, have a missionary 'sperience, etc. He has some great friends on our street. He plays with Hunter almost every day, but he loves playing with Hadlee, and Andrew and Alan from across the street too. Alan is a year younger than him and he adores Connor so much, a little too much for Connor sometimes.

He has really turned into a mellow kid who is really fun to be around. He also shows love by giving hugs and kisses and is always aware of when he thinks I might need one. We love Connor so much and are grateful for what he gives to our family. Happy Birthday Buddy!

Marissa's 7th Birthday

2015-06-25T09:19:00.000-06:00

Marissa turned 7 on June 6th. She started the day by getting breakfast in bed, which has become a bit of a birthday tradition in our family. It was definitely her year to have a birthday party. She really wanted an American Girl (and I use that term loosely seeing as she got a knock off and not the real thing... it's like saying Kleenex for tissues, right?). She got to pick her doll out and she really loves her. Her name is Sadie. Then we had an American Girl doll themed party.

I made these adorable little party hats for each doll and we just laid out some paper with some fun sayings on top to decorate. I thought it was cute.

When the girls got there, everyone got to make a tutu for their doll. Everyone was so quiet and well behaved. It was pretty much the exact opposite of Alex's party which was insanely out of control with all those boys. We played American Girl doll bingo and then played Don't Eat My Doll with Smarties.

Here they all are with their dolls, tutus and hats.

They got to decorate a cupcake for them and then a mini one for their doll.

Hallie was quite the sad child due to me taking her doll's tutu and giving it to a girl that came late. I told her we could make her doll another one right after but that just put her into hysterics. It's hard to be two sometimes.

It was a really fun party. She got some great presents from her friends too. Marissa is really growing up. She did really well at school this year and loved her teacher, Mrs. Blair. She really took off with her reading and loves to read different chapter books. She likes Junie B. Jones, Magic Treehouse and the Rainbow Fairy books most. I'm really impressed at how she has been able to catch on to things with school. A couple of weeks ago I asked if she wanted to learn multiplication and she learned 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10 and 11 in just a few minutes. She can also be really diligent, especially when she wants to go play with friends. She will do her jobs, clean her room, do her workbook and practice before anyone else has even started theirs.

Marissa has been wanting to take piano lessons for a really long time, but she's been on the waiting list forever. I finally had the thought that we should take Erin and Alex's two spots and rotate the kids' lessons so that they each have two weeks on and one week off. This would give Marissa a chance to take lessons and wouldn't be more time for their teacher. Their teacher, Mrs. Hawks, said she would try it out for the summer and so far it has been great. Marissa just loves piano. I just hope everyone can progress well even though they don't get it every week anymore.

She is still a very social child and loves playing with friends. She is so lucky to have her best friend Aurora next door. They play every single day like they are sisters. She's got some other good friends that she plays with in the neighborhood. Marissa has lost 6 teeth and has 2 more that are loose. She loves wearing make up and dressing up. She is a very loving child. She always remembers to give hugs and kisses to me and Wesley and I know she needs lots of love back.

We do love Marissa so much! Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Hallie-isms, Wesley and Mother's Day

2015-05-20T14:40:00.001-06:00

Hallie-isms

Happy Birthday- whenever we ask if she is happy, she says she is happy birthday (and has for months)

A'cause, for a Christmas- she says this one whenever you ask her why, or she just says "a-cause" (because)

Whenever I try to call the baby Wessie or Westerly she says, "No, it's Baby Wethley!"

Whenever she goes to bed she says, "Wuthu too, night!" (Love you too, night!) We've all started saying it. She says it to the kids when they go to school. So cute.

Her favorite knock knock joke is the boo-who one, only hers goes like this, Knock, knock. Who's there? Don't cry, s'a joke. (she leaves out the boo part)

She gets really mad when we turn her shirt towards her tummy to put it on and yells, "No, it's backwards!" She doesn't get that it will end up the right way and usually puts her shirts on backwards because of it.

Putday Pawty (Birthday party)- She got invited to her first birthday party a couple of weeks ago and would not stop talking about the putday pawty that she went to. She even slept with the invitation.

Mickey Mouse Tubhouse (clubhouse)- this has been her favorite show for months. Unfortunately, Netflix only has one episode (the road rally) so she watched it over and over again.

Real and Fake Remote- Since Hallie always wants to hold the remote, Connor gives her an old remote that doesn't work and tells her that she has the real remote and his is the fake remote. It seems to work. Sometimes she asks where the fake remote is.

Up... Pie (up high) and Apples... Sauce- said with big pauses between the words

Sit on Santa's Yap- ever since she sat on Santa's lap (and screamed while she slid off), she always talks about it. At first she would say that Santa is really scary. Now she always says that she got things from Santa, like her belly button.

He is so tute- referring to baby Westhley

Tose a door (close the door) and Oh-oh it (open it)

Yelling "YA-YIN!" in the middle of the night. She shares a room with Erin now so she often wakes her up yelling her name.

I asked Hallie to go get a diaper and she didn't want to. After a little bit she said, "Fine" and went and got one.

This picture cracks me up. I came home one night and all the kids were in their pajamas. I didn't recognize the shorts that Hallie had on until I looked a little closer and saw that they were Wesley's 0-3 month size pants! You know your two year old is skinny when she fits into her newborn brother's clothes.

She loves getting her picture taken. Whenever I want to take one of Wesley, she insists on getting hers taken too. She is such a cute, funny and sweet kid and is growing up so fast.

Wesley

Wesley is two months old! He started smiling a couple of weeks ago and looks so cute when he smiles. He is growing a lot and is a very solid/chunky guy. He weighs almost 11 lbs. now. He eats really well and acts happy, but his immune system is still compromised. His poop has been really runny since he was a week old (not normal newborn poop), which is an indication that his gut hasn't built up the good bacteria yet after the antibiotics killed it all. We still can't take him very many places because the doctors are worried about him getting sick. We've been lucky so far, especially with so many kids around him constantly. I would hate to have to give him another round of antibiotics.

He is an okay sleeper, but is not on any sort of schedule. He takes all of his naps in the swing or snuggling with me on the couch. Nights are pretty random. There were three nights in a row that he slept a solid 4 hours and the fourth night he slept for 6 hours! It was amazing (though I do recall still feeling like a zombie all day). After those great nights, he started waking up every 2 hours again. What can you do?

I love this little guy so much! I am looking forward to being able to take him more places and to feel like his immune system is more solid when we do.

Mother's Day

I completely forgot about Mother's Day until Jared and 5 of the 6 kids came and woke me up with breakfast in bed (Connor has been sleeping in super late recently). I got some great home made gifts including a hard bound book of poems about me from Erin. So great. I got to go to church and see the kids sing for Mother's Day. We took some pictures after church. All of a sudden this looks like a lot of kids! They are all so amazing and interesting. I couldn't imagine not being a mother. It is the greatest blessing in my life. Even though it can be challenging, there are so many moments that make having them around so great. I feel so blessed!

Easter

2015-05-01T18:28:00.004-06:00

Okay, I have to admit, it's hard for me to even remember Easter. Everything is kind of a blur right now for me. Although, last night was the first night that I have slept for 4 hours in a row since the baby was a week old. It was glorious. I didn't have much time to prepare for Easter, so we had it a week late. The girls got to pick out their dresses and the boys got new ties.

Somehow we managed to dye eggs. Not a complete disaster this year.

And then there was the annual Easter egg hunt/lunch at my Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Bud's ranch. My kids look forward to it every year. I sent Jared with the 5 kids while I stayed home with Wesley. He had just gotten his PICC line out the day before and had a compromised immune system (he still does).

As if the kids didn't get enough candy with the egg hunt, there was a piñata that my kids loved.

Riding horses and exploring Bud's collection of sheds is always fun.

Wesley's Hospital Visit

2015-04-07T12:12:00.000-06:00

When Wesley was 7 days old, he started to feel a little warm to me. I took his temperature with our usual ear thermometer and it didn't show that he had a fever. Besides, Jared said that he felt fine so I figured it was just me. The next day, he was really sluggish and was sleeping a lot. But, you know, newborns do that... they sleep a lot. I took some amateur newborn pictures in the morning and he slept a lot the rest of the day. It seemed like I had to wake him up and kind of make him eat, but he did still eat. Finally at around 9:00 pm when I woke him up to eat, I knew he felt extra warm.

That's when I remembered that they had told me to take his temperature under his arm pit and not his ear. I don't know why I didn't think about it the day before, but you know, sleep deprivation. And all those papers they give you when you leave the hospital about when to call if your baby has a problem? I always just brushed those aside because my babies have never had any of those problems. Until this one. When I finally found the right thermometer and took his temperature it was 102.2. That's when I really started getting worried. I called our doctor and the after hours nurse said to take him to the Emergency Room. That is what I thought, but I wanted some validation.

I took him in at around 10 pm and said that my baby had a fever. How high? 102.2 How old is your baby? 8 days... that's when they immediately took him back to look at him. They began sticking things in every part of his little body--a rectal thermometer, a urine catheter (twice), a nose swab, an IV in his little arm and worst of all, at least for me to watch, a lumbar puncture. I almost passed out when they did the lumbar puncture. Ew. Thankfully, the fluid was clear and didn't look infected. They also did a chest x-ray and gave him two types of antibiotics. At some point the doctor came in and said that it was looking like it was probably a UTI, but that we needed to be admitted to Primary Children's Hospital. It was 3:30 am before we were able to leave the ER. Luckily, they let me drive him myself instead of transporting him in an ambulance (like we need any more medical bills).

Once we got to Primary Children's, everyone that entered the room took great care to wear a mask, cover and gloves every time they saw Wesley. And there were lots of people coming in to look at him. That lasted until the next day. The first time they took his temperature up there it was 104.2! Yikes. At least I felt validated in taking him in. He really was sick. They gave him some tylenol and the fever started coming down. I was so extremely tired after staying up all night with him. I was so thankful when one of the techs offered to hold him so I could sleep a bit. I got 2 hours of sleep that night. When I woke up, Wesley not only had all the monitors on him, but they also had oxygen going. Poor little guy!

For the rest of the day he did not want me to put him down. This was especially hard because I couldn't move much further than the uncomfortable rocking chair because of all the cords he was hooked up to. My phone had died and I didn't have a charger, so somebody found something that would plug into the computer across the room to charge it. But I couldn't reach it while still holding Wesley. The phone in the room had a tiny cord so I couldn't reach that either. Frustrating, especially since I needed to let people know what was going on.

Later that night they moved us to a different room with a more comfortable bed for me. Unfortunately, Wesley still didn't want me to put him down much so I held him most of the time. We ended up being there for four days, and I felt like I couldn't leave him because of nursing. He also seemed to want to nurse every hour for like 5 or 10 minutes. So he was basically just snacking and not getting a full meal. It was so exhausting to me to have to feed him so often. I would sleep with him in the chair as much as I could, but it was very tiring. I was so happy to have Jared and the kids visit, as well as my parents and sister, and some good friends and a sister-in-law come. It definitely helped pass the time and give me a break. Jared took the whole week off to take care of the rest of the kids at home and our neighbors were so kind to make our family dinners that week.

They found out on Monday morning that his blood culture came back positive for E. Coli. They think that he must have first gotten the UTI from stool getting into his urinary tract, and then because he was so little, the infection got into his blood stream. However he got it, I was so grateful to have caught it before something worse happened. The infectious disease team said that E. Coli is one of the most common infections they see in infants and that it would be pretty routine to treat with the right antibiotic. But they wanted to make sure that the bacteria wasn't reproducing and so they needed two new negative blood cultures in order to let us go home. Since each one took 24 hours, we had to stay until Wednesday.

He was definitely responding to the antibiotics because he hadn't had a fever since Sunday and everything else looked good. We were able to take his oxygen off on Monday, but still had a bunch of other wires and cords to deal with. They had to give him the antibiotic through an IV, and since they don't last that long, they had to give him three different IV's.

Before we could leave, they were going to put a PICC line in his arm so that we could give hime the antibiotics at home. PICC lines last longer because they go directly into the main vein near the heart. Since he was so little, they had to take him down to a special area in the hospital where they could look at the line with an ultrasound while it was going in (the vein they used was only 1 mm in diameter). They also weren't sure if they were going to need to sedate him or not. Because of that, he couldn't eat for 4 hours before the procedure. That is so sad for a newborn, especially one that wants to eat every hour! Two hours before he could have 2 oz. of Pedialyte but that was it. Then, when they tried to give the last dose of antibiotics through his IV right before they took him down, his IV started leaking. They called the IV team up to get him a new one and within 5 minutes the team of 3 were there and done. That's all they do all day so they are pretty good at it.

Anyway, it was not easy to leave little Wesley when they were putting in the line. Luckily, they didn't have to sedate him. They only gave him a little sugar water on his pacifier and he stayed still. If they had needed to sedate him we would have had to stay another day in the hospital. He's my only baby that has ever taken a pacifier, even though I tried with all of them. This was a huge blessing in the hospital when he really needed comfort during some rough things he had to go through.

Once we got home, a home health nurse came to teach us how to give him the antibiotics through his PICC line. It was going okay until Friday when we could not get anything through his line. That was kind of scary. We had about 5 nurse visits to resolve the problem. We ended up putting some Cathflow into is line (1 ml was $100!) and then had a nurse come take it out 8 hours later. It is supposed to break up anything, like blood clots, in his tiny line. After that it went a bit smoother. We found that if he is in certain positions or if he is tensed up or or moving at all, then nothing will move through his line. We are very ready to be done giving them to him! Over all we have to do 33 doses, one every 8 hours. Hopefully when we are done, he will be good to go, although they say his immune system may be a bit compromised for a while.

This kid! He really is such a sweet piece of heaven in our home and a very good baby. We all love him so much (but probably nobody more than me!) and hope that he will be healthy from here on out.

Newborn Pictures

2015-04-06T15:05:00.000-06:00

These were the pictures I took of Wesley when he was 8 days old. That night was when we took him in to the hospital. I guess I'm glad I got these when I did.

Wesley's Birth

2015-04-01T12:03:00.000-06:00

I guess I would have to start off the story of Wesley's birth at the beginning, when I found out I was pregnant. In the past, I have always had an early ultrasound due to various reasons to tell me when my due date was. Those are usually the most accurate. With this one, I happened to know the date of my last period, but since my cycle is longer than normal and since I always go past my due date, I wanted to get an early ultrasound to find out what the due date actually was. The result of that was moving my due date from Mar. 2nd to Mar. 8th. I know people thought I was crazy for wanting a later due date, but psychologically speaking, I needed the later date. Oh, I still went crazy in the last few weeks, but I wasn't expecting him until after the 8th.

Fast forward to Mar. 9th. I went in to my appointment where the midwife asked if I wanted to have my membranes stripped. YES, anything to get this labor going! Evidently, this is a pretty great way for many women to go into labor. She even called the midwife on call at the hospital to make sure they'd have room for me that day. Ha! I got excited for a little bit, but to no avail. That didn't work for me at all.

Two days later, on Wednesday, I got a stomach bug and felt horrible all day. This was also the day that my neighbor down the street was having her baby, a week before her due date. I always hate it when that happens. But that day, because I was feeling so sick, I couldn't even imagine trying to have a baby in that state. I went to bed and felt much better the next day, even though I was still pregnant.

I had another appointment on Thursday. As I was pushing the button for the elevator, I felt a little trickle (which I now know was my water breaking). But it was the tiniest trickle, so I just chalked it up to the baby pressing against my bladder and me peeing a little. Hey, these things happen. Luckily this was the first day I decided to slap on a panty liner for whatever reason before I left. I went though my whole NST (which I'd been getting weekly) and appointment like normal. At this point I had progressed to 3 1/2 cm and about 70% effaced, which was good progress in my mind. But, I was still only 4 days past my due date. My other babies were 4 days, 8 days, 9 days (induced) and 10 days past my due date. I thought I still could have a ways to go.

After my appointment, I stopped at Wal-Mart for some last minute necessary items, like razor refills, eye make-up remover and a king sized Twix. It was while I was debating over which eye brow pencil to buy when I felt the water dribbling out quite a bit. It wasn't a gush, which was good, but it was definitely more than a little pee, I was pretty sure of that. But my water had never broken before on its own so it was an unusual phenomenon. Since I was in the toiletries section anyway, I thought it would be a good time to grab some pads, make a quick decision about the make up and get going to the checkout and then the bathroom.

The funny thing about my water breaking at Wal-Mart is what happened the Saturday before. I was returning something when the clerk asked when my due date was. I told her it was tomorrow and then she said, "What are you doing here? I'm always afraid you pregnant women are going to have your water break at my check stand or in one of the aisles of the store when you come in here." I told her that would be great because it would mean I'd actually be going into labor. Of course, I never assumed my water would actually break on its own... but that's exactly what happened just days later, in one of the aisles at Wal-Mart. Funny.

I called the midwife on call and told her that I might sound like a total airhead seeing as this was my sixth child, but that I kind of thought my water may have broken. She said that labor usually starts pretty soon after that happens and to give her a call in a few hours to let her know of any progress. But no regular contractions ever began. She called me back later and we discussed our options. Since there is a risk of infection when you go too long with your water broken, we knew something would have to happen pretty soon. She didn't want me to have to come in at midnight to start labor because I'd probably be too tired at that time, so she told me to come in whenever I could that afternoon. I also didn't really like the midwife on call for the next day, but I loved this midwife (she was the same one that delivered Hallie). I told her it would be great to have the baby on the 12th, if possible, since I didn't want Friday the 13th. I thought I would get there at 5 and be able to have the baby before midnight, since my last induction only took 4 hours from beginning to end.

That's not exactly what happened though. By the time I got all settled in the room, it was 5:45. They had to ask me all sorts of questions and stuff, and then they finally checked to see if indeed my water had broken. They have a piece of paper they can stick in it to tell whether it is or isn't amniotic fluid. But, of course, by the time I got to the hospital, it had completely stopped dribbling out and so it showed no amniotic fluid. Nice. I felt really stupid at this point. But, I knew it was happening before. I am not that crazy. I realized that every time I sat down, it stopped, but when I walked around, it would start coming out again. That's when they had me walk around and do some squats, and that's when it finally started leaking out again. Phew. I could not have imagined getting sent home after all that. So at this point, they knew they had to induce with pitocin since I still wasn't having contractions. But, since I was a VBAC patient, the midwife had to get the induction approved by the attending doctor. That took a long time as well. By the time they finally started me on the pitocin, it was almost 8:00. The pressure was on to have the baby before midnight.

I began having contractions every two minutes, but they were definitely contractions that I could talk through. My midwife, Claudia, was really fun to talk to the whole time. She, and HGTV, helped pass the time quickly. Even though the contractions were consistent, I was only progressing 1/2-1 cm per hour. I definitely think they needed to pump up the pitocin faster than they did (it was on a 4 for a long time, and then 8 for a long while), but again, because of the whole VBAC thing, they didn't want to give me more. I do think it's kind of dumb to think that my uterus could have ruptured after I'd already done 4 VBAC's before, including an induction, but protocol dictates sometimes.

At some point, it was clear that I would not have the baby on the 12th. My midwife even left from 11:00-11:40 to help with a C-section because I wasn't that close (I was maybe 5 cm at this point). I could still talk through all the contractions, but I was getting tired. I think it was around 1:00 that they decided to pump up the pitocin past 10. But in order to do this, they had to put an internal monitor next to the uterus to make sure things weren't too strong. Once they pumped it up to 18, that's when things really started getting hard. I rolled over to my side as I entered transition. Here's my philosophy about labor (for me anyway). Nothing is ever hard until transition, and transition only lasts for half an hour. I figure I can handle 30 minutes of pain, and then it's over.

I looked at the clock just after transition started and it was 10 minutes to 2:00. I told myself that I could do 30 minutes. The problem was that it lasted way more than 30 minutes. It just kept going and going and going. I kept expecting each contraction to be the last one, but then it wasn't. I had never experienced transition this bad before. I had never wanted an epidural more.

The midwife began pushing on my knees while Jared pushed on my lower back during the height of the contractions. This was actually sweet relief, kind of. The real relief didn't come until 3:00 after an hour and 15 minutes of transition. I'm convinced that this baby just wanted to be born on an odd hour as well as an odd month, day and year. He had to wait until 3:00. I was so relieved to have pushing contractions instead of transition ones. I pushed 3 or 4 times and he was born at 3:05 am. Jared got to catch the baby for the first time, and he said it was really awesome to do that.

As I was pushing, the midwife realized that the amniotic sac was still stretched over the baby's head. Evidently, the sac had broken up higher and it had to be broken again at the bottom. Kind of weird.

So, despite my weird obsession with even numbers and the fact that all of our other kids have been born on even months, days and years (with one month as an exception), sweet Wesley Owen Daniels was born on March 13, 2015 at 3:05 am... all odds. I guess he's our little oddball. But, I'm pretty sure he has turned Friday the 13th into something lucky.

I think because transition was so long, Wesley's whole head was bruised when he came out. They had to put a little sign on his basinet that said, "I'm bruised" so that the nurses wouldn't think was purple because he had stopped breathing. He was 8 lbs. 12 oz. and 18 1/2 in. long, our second biggest baby. I immediately noticed his chunky thighs and biceps. So cute and squishy. He had some trouble breathing at the beginning so they called one of the nurses up to do some suction. After snuggling with me, he did a lot better. He has a quiet little cry and loves to be held. He seems like such a calm and content baby.

Apparently, there were a lot of babies born in the days before me so there were no rooms for us downstairs. They moved me into a labor and delivery room that night that was hardly ever used. The clock was out of batteries, the computer didn't work, the TV didn't work and the phone didn't work (so no ordering food). Plus, the bed was super uncomfortable. Luckily, they gave me a big foam mattress to put on top. Oh, after I delivered I was starving, but wouldn't you know it... there was no food left for me either. I ate some little graham cracker packets but was still so hungry. They found some cereal and pudding, which I also scarfed down. Right after that they found a real meal, but I wasn't hungry anymore. Since he was born in the middle of the night, I only slept for maybe an hour and a half. So that was the first night.

They had some people leaving the next day so I was able to move down to a regular maternity room. We had our kids visit that afternoon (they had just lifted the restrictions for kids 14 and under the day before--yay!) Everyone just loved little Wes!

Because of the visits, we didn't get any sleep that day either. After dinner, I started feeling kind of sick to my stomach. I kept burping up my salmon dinner and it was so gross. I tried to sleep as much as I could, but feeling sick just kept waking me up. I finally realized that I needed to get whatever was making me sick out of me. I really, really hate throwing up so I prayed for it to come out the other way if possible. Right then, I felt my intestines start gurgling... and I spent the rest of the night and a good part of the next day in the bathroom. I felt so awful! Usually being in the hospital is so great because you can order as much food as you want, but all I could eat was toast, applesauce and Sprite. I let Jared order whatever he wanted instead of me. I just wanted to get home. We broke out of there on Saturday afternoon.

The dumb thing about it was that Wesley slept almost all night and I got no sleep. Then he was up almost every hour the next night when I had hardly had any sleep in a few days. I guess it was nice that I didn't have to deal with feeding him and being really sick at the same time.

Because Wesley was bruised, they told us he would probably be at a greater risk for Jaundice. We took him into the hospital the next day to get his blood drawn and measure his bilirubin. They told us that he would either need to be under the lights or get some real milk in him. Since my milk hadn't come in yet, we fed him some formula to try to get some liquids in him. We had to go in the next day, and the day after and two days after that to repeat the blood draws. Luckily, he was always on the border of needing lights but never actually required them. And finally on Thursday, we verified that his bilirubin levels were going down and not up. No more hospital visits... (at least for two days. But that is another post).

So it definitely wasn't my easiest birth, or recovery for that matter. But we are all so glad little Wesley is here and love him so much!

I was so tired, but nothing beats newborn snuggles!

Waste of Space

2015-02-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here in a quiet house in the middle of the day. That never happens, and when it does, I scramble to do whatever I can without interruptions. But not today. Connor and Hallie went across the street to play and I have already taken a pretty substantial nap. It's only 2:00. Thing is, I cannot get myself to do anything today (or for the past week). This pregnancy has been so very good, up until a few weeks ago. Now it just feels like I am in constant pain. Lots of pressure, back pain, etc. And if my past pregnancies give me any indication of when this one will come, I still have a good 4 weeks left. Ugh. I told Jared to put me in a coma for a month, but he just laughed. He could have at least looked into it for my sake. I feel like such a waste of space right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know 4 weeks is a relatively short time to have to be pregnant and this is my last time and I won't even remember how bad it was and look how good it was at the beginning and blah, blah, blah. But, my last month is miserable!

Where is that nesting instinct anyway? Here's what I've done to prepare: went downstairs and brought up a box of baby boy clothes, then left the box right by my bed, made a short list of meals I want to freeze, then bought some aluminum pans for the eventuality that I might ever make the said meals--that I don't have ingredients for anyway. And that's it. This is the point where I should be tearing apart and organizing every nook and cranny of my home because every pregnant woman knows that you can't bring a baby home if the linen closet is a bit messy, not to mention the baseboards or the inside of the oven. But here I sit alone in a house full of to do's and have no desire to do any of it.

The good news is that I fulfilled my only two New Year's Resolutions (I thought I'd be realistic this year): nail down the baby's name and buy a new car that would fit our family. The name part was fairly simple because we had already kind of decided on one when we found out it was a boy. But come New Year's, Jared said he wasn't quite sure about the name so we went through the top 500 boy names eliminating them for our various reasons and ended up with the exact name that we had before. I always feel like our babies kind of name themselves, like even though we'd never thought of the name before, we just know that's what the name should be.

The car issue was a bit more challenging. I began really searching at the beginning of January. I know there are plenty of 8 passenger cars out there, but I also know that there are a few 9 passenger cars as well. Even though we aren't planning on more kids, I just thought it would be nice to have one extra seat for a friend or family member, I mean as long as we were getting a new car anyway. Every time I went back to thinking about an 8 passenger mini-van or SUV, I just couldn't see us in it. And so many of them have no space at the back. Sure, I wouldn't take my whole family to Costco (I'm not that crazy), but I also didn't want to have to fold down the seats and move car seats just to fit a box of diapers in the back. A lot of them wouldn't even fit my single stroller, let alone the double one. So that left me with the Yukon XL or the Suburban. Originally I was searching for the Yukon, but just so you know, you can't do a search for "9 passenger vehicles" because it doesn't work that way. You have to click on each car's picture to see if it has the 9th seat (the bench in the front). I would say for every 50 cars I clicked on, only 1 would have the 9th seat. So frustrating. Finally, I started looking at Suburbans and found a few more 9 seaters than with the Yukons.

Once we began going to look at them, I felt like I was dating. Some of them just didn't feel right and some of them got sold before we even got to look at them. We called on what seemed like the perfect car and as we were getting off the freeway, they called back and said that someone just bought it. That dashed our hopes. And the guy who bought it was a smoker (ruining our car!--even though Jared tells me it was never actually ours). Then there was the one where the salesman acted so desperate. We were obviously not interested (because it just didn't feel right) when he said, "I'll take $500 off... What can I do to the car to make you buy it?" Um... take off 80,000 miles? He even called back to tell me that I shouldn't buy this other car that we were thinking about because he had looked at the Carfax for it and found some issues, that we already knew about. Seriously! This other salesman asked us to pay half of a repair that the car needed. So pay for something that we haven't even bought yet? No thanks. Where do these people come from anyway?

It was a very frustrating ordeal. I was a bit like a part time job doing this car search. I couldn't think of anything else. I would get online multiple times a day to see if anything new popped up. Finally, I found a Suburban on Thursday night and called to see if it was available. Jared and I went down right then and liked it. It was clean, had the 9th seat and even had a DVD player (something that wasn't on our list but that we knew our kids would love). It needed a small repair so the next day when it was done, we went down to buy it. It was stressful because there were other people on their way to look at it and one guy even offered to buy it over the phone. Sheesh. We traded in our van that night, for a very small trade in value. But, I was so happy to get rid of it. It was a great van, but it had been leaking steering fluid on our garage floor for years, even though we'd tried to get it fixed in the past. I did not want to sell it privately so I was overjoyed to have someone just take it off our hands for $1000.

The day after we bought the Burb, the check engine light went on. We called the dealer back and he said he would take care of it, which he did (catalytic converter?). The day after we got it back, the engine light went on again. The dealer was so nice to continue to work with us and not charge us anything. This time, they had it for over a week so they gave us a loaner car. I hated it! It was a Honda Pilot and it was just not the car for us. They fixed that problem (some timing issue?) and two days after that, guess what? The check engine light went on again. This time all that it required was a new gas cap. Even though all those issues kept popping up right after we bought it, I never felt bad about our decision. You know that kind of sick feeling you get when you know you've made the wrong choice? I never felt that way. Now I feel so grateful that the problems happened so soon after we got the car so that the dealer could just take care of it. And we do love our new (well, 2007) car. Our only problem now is that we can't fit both the Suburban and the truck in the garage at the same time (major first world problem). But, we can fit all of our kids, a stroller and a load of groceries in the car at the same time... and a friend, which is exactly what I wanted. So glad that process is over!

Now I just gotta get through this pregnancy...

Halloween, Park City and a Bit of Christmas

2015-01-11T21:19:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure "Blog" has showed up on my To Do list more than a few times in the last couple of months. Shows how much of my list I get done. Well first up, Halloween happened. We didn't carve pumpkins and I didn't go out of my way with the costumes. That is probably apparent by Hallie's way too small ladybug costume that she wore last year (I think it's a 12 month size). It basically consisted of a trunk or treat, a piano recital that Erin and Alex dressed up for, dressing up for school and then going out Halloween night to replenish their stash that was majorly dwindling after the trunk or treat.

Erin and Alex used the Mr. and Mrs. potato head costumes that I made several years ago. Glad those are coming in handy again.

I thought it was cute that Marissa and Connor also ended up matching, Batman and Bat-girl. This was only because all the Elsa costumes were sold out and this was the best I could do for her. I actually think it's a pretty cute costume.

Hallie wearing Marissa's costume

We did take a really fun little trip to Park City in October. When I was at the parade of homes last summer, I signed up for one of those time share deals where you pay $99 for two nights/three days, have to listen to their schpeel and then they give you $100 on a Visa card. I normally don't go for those types of things, but I also seem to never get away so I decided to do it. The place was so nice. We had a huge, luxury bathroom and enough beds for everyone. On the morning of the presentation, there were a million people there. When Jared and I told them what time our presentation was, they told us that they had us scheduled for the next morning, but I had written confirmation that it was that day. After a few minutes with the manager, they told us not to worry about the presentation and that we should just go pick up our $100 Visa card. What could be better? So it ended up being a free stay with no time share presentation. Coolest. Thing. Ever.

We did some fun things while we were there, but we also got to just relax. We were all about to go to the pool when we realized Connor had a fever. I volunteered to stay in the condo with him while everyone else went swimming (did I mention that I actually don't like swimming?) and I got to watch three hours of HGTV while Connor slept. What could be a better vacation? And we had two TV's so I got to watch much more of it while the kids watched whatever they wanted, stuff I usually can't sit through.

Here we are taking a little hike and poor Connor feels so sick.

One day Jared, Erin, Alex and Marissa did the Alpine Slide. While we were waiting for them to come down, a bigger man got to the bottom. Connor yelled, "Mommy, I see a fat man!" and yes, everyone around me heard. Oh, to be four.

The next day we went up to Olympic Park. Jared and the three older kids did a rope's course that they had there. They had a lot of fun on that, especially the zip line at the end. Overall it was just a nice little get away for the family. We should probably do stuff like that more often.

November was a really busy month. Not sure why except I know that I had one thing after another. Thanksgiving was spent at a church with Jared's side of the family. That was great. I somehow managed to convince Jared that we should set up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Hey, all he had to do was get the tree down and set it up. The kids pretty much did all the decorating after that, which is why all the ornaments are bunched together near the bottom. It makes me smile. Oh, and I didn't have to do it. That also makes me smile.

When Dec. 1st came we began doing our advent calendar. It's basically a scripture a day (that we may have only read a few times), a piece of candy and a daily activity. Some of them were pretty simple and some were more effort, and sometimes we just didn't get around to doing the daily activity--which I was perfectly okay with. Sure, we don't have to make the holidays harder than they already are with this advent calendar, but at the same time, we did a lot of things that we never would have gotten around to doing (since we are actually kind of boring people). Jared even mentioned that we should have some sort of advent calendar like this throughout the year. It would force us to do more fun stuff I suppose.

We saw someone do an ice sculpture, we went to see cool Christmas lights set to music, we wrote to our missionaries, we went to see Elf at the theater (a big treat for our kids), we made up Christmas skits, we delivered gifts to the neighbors and even caroled for them, we made a fun Christmas craft, we decorated cookies, we made a gingerbread house (which by the way, the kids are still eating a month later--ew!) and we took a trip to temple square to see the lights. We had such a warm December that we actually had an enjoyable time walking around to see all the lights. Usually we are too cold to see anything (but we still go, dang-it). We even ran into Santa in the hall at City Creek and he asked if we wanted to take a picture with him. Uh, yes! That just saved us two hours of standing in line to see him. I thought the activities were really some fun times with the family.

This was our craft. We put our names in glitter on lights and hung them up, just like an elementary school classroom. We're classy like that.

The gingerbread house

Decorating cookies

Here are the kids sitting on Santa's lap at our ward Christmas party (pajama party). It's safe to say that everyone was excited about it...

...except Hallie. I love the whole sliding off Santa's lap business...

...followed by the crying. Since then she talks about sitting on "Santa's Yap" all the time, and how much she loved it. Go figure.

Dec. 1st also brought the start of my homemade Christmas. I'd been planning it for a long time, but I really didn't start until December. I don't know why I have this insane idea every 3 or 4 years, but this was the year I decided to make all the presents. The kids even got on board making presents for each other. The boys made bows and headbands for the girls and the girls made marshmallow guns for the boys. Erin and Alex made these bead geckos for everyone and the younger kids drew pictures for the older kids. I thought it was great.

I made three different doll beds for the girls and I think they turned out so cute. I love the bedding too. I feel like these types of gifts are so much more meaningful than some plastic thing I could buy and then be rid of in a year. I hope they feel the same way.

We made a checkerboard for Alex. Overall I think it is cool, but I wish I had used a different type of wood for the lighter color. It was birch plywood and because I had to sand it down so much, you can see through to the lower layers. Oh well. Jared made the checkers out of a pine block and a lathe. Way cool.

Jared made two catapults for Connor. They were fun until they broke on Christmas day. So they may need to be tweaked a bit, but whatever.

Jared also made a tether ball stand for the boys. I think all the kids & neighbors will have fun playing with that once it warms up a bit.

I designed a doll house and had a lot of help from Jared putting it together. It is huge and sturdy, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high. I wanted to do more on it, but I kind of didn't have time. We were painting and assembling on Christmas Eve. I thought it would be fun to make furniture and put on the shingles with the kids after Christmas, not that I've done any of that yet. I seriously think it is amazing that all the kids play with it all the time, even without furniture. They each got two people for Christmas so I guess that is really all they needed. I remember getting a doll house for Christmas one year that my parents put carpet and wallpaper in. I loved it and played with it far longer than I should have. I really wanted to make one for my kids before they got too old to play with it.

School, Calling, Baby and More

2014-11-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

I feel like ever since school began, life has not really slowed down. Oh, did I mention that school started? In August. It's November so I'm just a bit behind. Here are the kids' first day pictures.

SCHOOL
Erin got the teacher she wanted. She is fun and young and loves Erin. Funny story about how young she is. When it was 9/11 she told the kids that she was in school when it happened. I was thinking like college or high school at the very least. Then Erin said she was in 4th grade! Jared and I just started laughing because it doesn't seem like it was that long ago, yet I was graduated from college at the time. So yeah, she is a reminder of how old we are getting and how young 23 actually is.

I'm still not quite sure about Alex's teacher. I think he likes her fine, but he doesn't say a whole lot. She is very strict about behavior and academics. I know a bunch of students are struggling with her and I talked to a mom whose son hates school this year because of the teacher. I guess I am lucky that Alex is so good at school and well behaved. It just doesn't seem like the best year for him either. Just a hard one for me to figure out.

Marissa got a great teacher. She is new this year, but she is really nice and friendly to the kids and parents. Marissa does really well in school and is on her fourth chapter book at home. I know this because every time she starts a chapter, finishes a chapter or is part way through a chapter she tells me, and likes to give running updates on the plot. She is good at making lots of friends, probably because she is not afraid at all to talk. When I was helping at her Halloween party she would just ask the teacher things in front of everyone without a second thought. So different from when I was a kid. The other day she came home and said that three boys were in love with her. Oh boy.

Connor is doing two preschools this year. One is Upstart, a free online preschool that he does for 15-20 minutes a day five days a week. It is helping him so much to learn to read. I am very impressed with the program, especially since he couldn't string any words together in the summer and now he is reading short, easy books. His other preschool is a joy school that I'm doing with him and two other families. I originally wanted to get more people, but everyone else was already doing some sort of preschool. I was a bit concerned about having to teach so often, but with only three kids, it makes it a lot easier. We decided to do one week at each of our homes and then the fourth week go on a field trip. So we're only teaching one week a month. I don't know why, but I really like doing it. We do a letter a week. I think it's fun and fulfilling to think of creative ways to teach different things or make different crafts. The kids get along so well too and they love free play. Anyway, it's a good year for Connor getting ready for kindergarten, and though it makes my life a bit busier, I am glad I'm doing it.

This was Apple Art for the letter A.

A is also for Airplane

This was the day we made Green Goo for the letter G. It was also the day before Halloween, which is why they're dressed up.

This was the field trip I planned where we got to take a tour of the fire station. It was awesome! I'd been wanting to do it for a long time. We also went to story time and had a picnic in the park.

This was our next field trip to the planetarium. I'd never been there either and it was pretty cool.

Hallie is liking being involved in preschool with Connor, though she can't do everything that the older kids can. She is just a sweet, cute little girl. (Notice the two different shoes in this picture?)

CALLING
I've also been busy with my calling as the relief society weekday activity leader. The one in September was so much work for me. It was a craft night where we did holiday wood block decor. I took all the orders, made some spreadsheets to keep track of it all, cut all of the wood and put them together in little kits for people to pick up at the activity. We had lots of people sign up for two crafts each, so about 600 pieces of wood. I also got vinyl cut, bought other supplies and paint... it was a lot of work! I tried to delegate as much as I could, but in the end, I wanted to make sure that people had everything they needed when they got there so I made sure of it myself. It was a huge success. We'd had an average of about 20 people at previous activities and this one brought 65, including a bunch of non-members. So apparently when you say "craft" and "free" then people start coming out of the woodwork.

I told the RS president that after the November activity I would be happy to be released. We had a huge dinner and bingo night this week and it was also a big hit. This time I delegated so much to my committee that all I had to do was bring two things and show up (I couldn't even help set up because Erin had a performance right before). It is so nice to have such a great, reliable committee now. They've called some new people and it is such a relief to me. Everything got done so smoothly. Anyway, they had already told me the Sunday before that I would be released the Sunday after and gave me a new calling. It's Activity Days. I've done it before and I loved it. Erin is actually really excited to have me as her leader, which kind of baffles me. It feels kind of like the same calling as RS activities, except that the girls will actually come and be excited no matter what I decide to do.

I've been doing the RS activities for almost three years and definitely had my ups and downs with it. When I first moved here, I was going through a really bad depression and had a hard time making friends, like good close friends, which is what I needed. That made the calling a bit challenging. I remember having to hold back my tears going to meetings in the beginning. The committee was really great back then and had been doing it for a long time together, so that made things easier. Our ward split the day Hallie was born and I immediately got called to the RS activities committee. That was such a good calling because I could do whatever I was asked but I wasn't ultimately responsible. A year later, our ward split again and I got called as the leader again. Since our ward was so small, we had an almost non-existent committee. Those first activities were a bit rough. I remember feeling like such a failure because no matter what I did, it seemed like very few people would come (our ward was small at that time). There was one big one we did in March where we made freezer meals to take to anyone in need in the ward. That took a lot of coordination and preparation, and there was some miscommunication between me and the counselor I was working with. We both bought ingredients for the same recipes! Ugh. But even though I was so frustrated, I felt prompted to start talking to her and she really opened up to me. Now we are good friends. (One reason to be grateful for this calling)

There was another time when a new girl got called who was really struggling at the time. I wanted to get released a few months before, but the bishop said he thought I should keep doing it. I tried to reach out to this girl and help her feel welcome, but it wasn't until after one activity that I began talking to her and realized that we had been through some of the same things. I just really felt like she needed to hear some of my experiences, things that I don't tell very many people. I feel like those experiences were why I had to be in this calling for so long, and I'm glad I didn't quit.

At the beginning, someone's husband was making all the posters & flyers. At some point, he couldn't do it anymore so I reluctantly said I could do it. I got so many compliments on the first few posters I did, even though I was not at all confident about doing it. After a while, I realized that I liked making them and was pretty good at it. I don't know why I was so reluctant because I had put together a lot of layouts in architecture school, but it took doing it month after month to bring me the confidence I needed. I've even made them for the whole stake. Here are some of them:

BABY
Today I am 24 weeks pregnant, so less than 4 months to go. I have been really excited and happy about this one, probably because I feel like it is our last one. I have also been feeling pretty good, physically and emotionally, which I am so grateful for. I felt like it was going to be a girl since before I got pregnant (and yes, this one was very much planned in advance). Everyone else thought it would be a boy, especially my kids because we just couldn't break the pattern--but really, how can you keep up this pattern with so many kids? I was so amazed that it actually was a boy when we found out a few weeks ago. Our midwife was too and said that girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy just doesn't happen. I love that it evens everything out. I always have liked balance and even numbers. This is how I announced it to people. And I've always liked the Brady Bunch! Now if only we could get ourselves a maid.

The day we got the ultrasound, our kids wanted us to do something creative to tell them if it was a boy or girl. We kind of wanted to trick them, so when they came home, we had a bunch of pink balloons that they could see when they walked in hanging from one blue balloon that they couldn't see. They immediately thought it was a girl until they saw the blue balloon. Then I told them they could find out when they bit into the cupcakes that I had made... only half of them were pink and half were blue. Next, we had them go into the pantry where it was completely dark and we gave them each a glow stick to break. Two were pink and two were blue. Finally, we told them that they could go outside and spray some silly string that we had taken the caps off of. If it all came out the same color, that's what it was. It finally came out all blue and everyone was so excited (including our neighbors who were there). It was really fun!

CO-OP
Another thing that I've been doing that I love is the babysitting co-op. It is a bunch of people in our neighborhood that each have a regular daytime shift and then we rotate for Friday and Saturday night shifts. We pay in popsicle sticks, one stick per kid per half hour. I absolutely love the freedom it gives me. I can go to doctor's appointments or run errands kid free anytime I need to. We haven't needed to pay a babysitter for a long time either because of the weekend co-op. We usually leave Erin and Alex home and drop the other three kids off at the co-op. The older kids love being home alone (without having to watch younger kids) and we don't have to pay as many sticks. I love it!

My shift is Friday morning and it has been super busy every week. I always have tons of sticks, more than I can usually use in a week. I used the co-op 4 times last week alone and I still have 25 sticks left. I really don't mind watching kids once a week for a few reasons. One is that my kids have other kids to play with, thus canceling each other out. Another is that I get enough sticks to leave my kids when I need to. And the last reason is that it forces me to clean my house at least once a week. I mean, you can't have people coming over to leave their kids in a pigsty. It's a win-win. I also love teaching preschool for the same reason, I get a clean house out of it.

PRIMARY PROGRAM
One more thing, last Sunday was our ward's primary program. There are almost 100 kids in our primary so they were all squished onto boards that they laid over the seats. All the kids did really well and sang great. Erin, Alex and Marissa all had their parts memorized. Connor needed some help. After Connor said his part, he ended up sitting next to Hunter, who is his best friend and who was purposely not supposed to be sitting next to him. All of a sudden, we noticed that Connor was doing some really crazy things like making funny faces and pretending to sing like a crazy person. Then Hunter started pulling on his tie and pretending to punch him. There was some sliding up and down the bench and squishing each other. It was utterly hilarious! There were some adult teachers up there, but they didn't do anything to try to stop them. I was waiting for one of them to get hurt, but luckily there were no incidents... that is besides being the worst behaved kids in the entire primary program! We were laughing so hard. I have never had a child act that way in a primary program before. I asked Connor why he was doing those faces and he said that he was just trying to make Hunter laugh. Anyway, it was really awesome.

Alex: Eight is Great!

2014-11-03T10:27:00.001-07:00

Alex turned 8 on Oct. 10th. He really wanted breakfast in bed on his birthday, so we told him not to set his alarm (because he's usually the first one up) and we woke him up with breakfast. I'd say he was pretty happy about it.

We wanted to get him his own scriptures because he was getting baptized, so we met Jared after work one day and picked them out. That day was a bit crazy. We had to take Erin and her friend up to West Valley for her acting class and it was right by a Deseret Book. Jared gets a discount on things there for working at the church so we thought we'd pick him up at the nearest train station and go there as a family. Traffic took forever and the train was delayed so by the time we got there, we only had 10 minutes to pick everything out. It was a bust for two reasons: 1. that we found out later that there was a Trax station right next to Deseret Book (which we didn't know) and that would have saved us a lot of time instead of driving to a further one, and 2. it turned out that Jared doesn't get a discount on scriptures like we thought, only on other merchandise, so we only saved a couple of dollars on the scripture bag and markers and paid full price for the scriptures. Oh well. It was also kind of a bust because I didn't think about the fact that we would have to drive Jared home from there with an extra person in the van (because we carpool). So we had to double buckle a couple of kids and endure screaming and fighting the whole way home in rush hour traffic because they were squished. Sometimes I wonder why I do the things I do...

But back to Alex. He also wanted roller blades for his birthday and had been wanting them for like a year. I told him I couldn't get him much more than the scriptures, but surprised him with roller blades as the other "little something". He loves them and spent the next few days on them constantly. Luckily, because he already had roller skates, he had no problem switching to blades. Oh and this is the outfit he refers to as his Finding Nemo outfit. It had to include the orange shorts, not just the striped shirt.

He likes his scriptures too. It's been great to have him and Erin follow along in their own scriptures for family scriptures. He's also excited about doing Faith in God and keeping his book in his scripture case.

Alex kept telling me that he wanted a party, but I kept trying to avoid the subject because... they're just a lot of work. But two days before his birthday I thought we better nail this party business down if we were going to do it. He originally wanted a movie party, but I didn't think 10 8-year olds would sit quietly for a movie. Instead, we decided to do some games in the back yard and call it an Olympic party. I only had 10 minutes before the bus left to whip up some invitations, but I got them done. Phew. The games were pretty fun but there were some really rowdy and loud moments (sorry neighbors). Jared was gone, but Erin and her friend were there to help with the Olympics. With 10 boys, and my other kids and their friends, I had 16 kids there by myself. Yikes!

The games were pretty fun. We did 3-legged races, egg on the spoon races, roll the hula hoop, standing long jump, pass the hula hoop, hold the balloon between your heads races, pass the sponge and fill up a bucket race and wrap the mummy. Here is Alex and another boy getting wrapped. I think Alex enjoyed being the one to get wrapped.

All the games were done before the first hour was done and we still had an hour to go. We did spin the bottle to open presents. Of course that never takes up as much time as you expect. So after presents, cupcakes and ice cream, we still had 45 minutes and I had to think of something else to take up the time. I decided to have them watch Studio C and it was a huge hit. They were all glued to the TV for the next 25 minutes. Yay! After all that, they all wanted to put together the Lego sets that Alex had gotten. He got a bunch of little sets so they split up and did them all. They were enthralled and quiet for the rest of the party. I should have just done a Lego party and they would have loved it! Alex got so spoiled by all his friend gifts. They are all really nice boys. I'm glad he has good friends in the neighborhood and at school.

The week before he got to do his first pine wood derby (even though he wasn't quite 8 yet). Jared got really into the building of the car and how to make it go fast. I got to help with the flames and numbers. Alex had all the ideas of how he wanted it to look and helped Jared in the garage with sanding and grinding screws (and whatever else Jared did to it). In the end, Alex got fourth place. After the races, Jared tweaked the wheels a bit and did some races with the first place winner and won a couple of times. It was kind of a bummer because if he had done that before Alex's car probably would have gotten first or second. Next year... It was a really fun night and fun process to make the car. I think it turned out really cool looking.

Last week, Alex went into the orthodontist and got his top braces off. He'd only had them for about 6 months so that was pretty awesome. He should get his bottom ones off next month. After looking at an x-ray, they found that one of the bottom tooth roots was angled enough that the permanent tooth next to it could grow on the wrong side of it if it was not angled back. Anyway, that's why they kept the bottoms on. I can't tell you how glad I am that we did an early intervention on him because he had quite a few issues that would have been harder to fix in the future. Now I think his second phase will be way better.

Alex got baptized yesterday. It was a really special day for him. Jared baptized and confirmed him. Since it was a stake baptism, there were a lot of people there. There were four kids from our ward and they did all the confirmations together in the cultural hall. I was so hoping they would plug in a microphone because it is so loud and echo-y in that room. They didn't. Errr. It was the same thing for Erin's confirmation and I couldn't hear a thing. Since Jared was going last, I told him to talk really loud. His was the only one that people could hear. It was a good blessing. One thing I remember him saying is how Alex's kindness is a beacon to those around him. This is very true!

My parents flew home from their mission for the weekend to be here for the baptism. It was really neat to have them here. We also had Jared's parents & Matthew, Jason & Kristine's family, Brian and Callie's family, Rachel & her girls, Dave & Becky's family, Emily and my neighbors come. I think we had 39 people at our house afterwards. I get so stressed out when I have things at my house, which is why I try to avoid it as much as I can. We'd been preparing for weeks, deep cleaning and trying to finish projects (many of which never got finished). In the end, I know it didn't really matter that much, but at least I know that the pantry, mud room, blinds, baseboards, laundry room, couches, etc. are all clean... or were a week ago. And the bonus was that we found two library books that had been missing for months. I guess it's good to have things at my house occasionally if nothing more than to clean the house really well.

We had yummy breakfast casseroles, muffins, bagels, fruit and juice. The morning was also a bit stressful for me. I was trying to get the casseroles made, get the kids ready, get myself ready and get the last minute cleaning done. I may have yelled at a couple of kids. Erin helped me so much that morning. Thank goodness for older kids! I got to the church later than I wanted still having to do Marissa's hair and put Connor's shoes on, but we made it. By the time I sat down and started singing the opening song, I just started crying because of how frazzled I was. But it was a nice baptismal service. I kept thinking that if we still lived in Florida, we would have had a simple service just for him and we would have actually heard the confirmation. We wouldn't have had anything at our house, just some cookies & brownies afterwards at the church. It just sounds a lot less stressful. I am so grateful to have family here to support us, but I can see the perks of living away from here too.

Here's our family picture of Alex's big day. It's a good shot of "Billy Bob Joe" too (me pregnant at 22 weeks).

Alex really is one of the kindest people I've ever known. I don't know how I got to be so lucky to be his mother. I don't know if it was something that could have been taught to him, he just naturally sees the needs of others and shows kindness. This makes him such a good brother and friend. He is a deep thinker and remembers everything you tell him. He does very well at school, even though his teacher is not one that everyone liked. He is very talented at the piano and really impresses people when he plays because of how young he is. Alex is obedient and tries to do the right thing. He doesn't always talk a lot. Sometimes it's hard to get things out of him (as opposed to Marissa that tells me every last detail of every little thing), but when he wants to start talking about things, he will open up to me. He really is a good boy. I could not imagine our family without Alex being there to bring peace and harmony to our home. We love him so much. Happy 8th birthday Alex!

Hallie Lou is Two!

2014-10-21T00:41:00.001-06:00

Hallie is growing up to be such a cute little girl. I love this age when you can start to see their personality more and more. Some exciting changes for her include giving up her bottle and moving bedrooms. The bottle was a bit of a tough one. I knew I wanted her to stop drinking them around age two and it just so happened that we kept losing them. I suppose we could have searched the house and car (or gone back to Toys R Us for one), but it left us with a good excuse to not give them to her. She wasn't too happy at first and kept asking for her "uh baa" but now she doesn't so much anymore. Yay! Now she just asks for "uh foo" (which means food).

The other change was moving her crib from Marissa's room into Erin's. Erin thought this was very unjust, seeing as she was the oldest and was entitled to her own room. Marissa had a hard time sleeping in her room with Hallie crying and waking her up, so we thought it was time to let Marissa have her own room. Erin is really good with Hallie. She's good at ignoring Hallie constantly yelling "Yahyin! Yahyin!" to try to get her attention and get her out of her crib. Eventually they both go to sleep. It's not ideal for either girl to have a baby in their room, but it is better than putting Erin and Marissa together.

Recent accomplishments:
-Growing enough hair to put it in little pigtails (so cute)
-Turning her car seat around
-When you ask her who's cute, she will always point to her tummy and say "Hi-yee", which is how she says her name.
-When she wants to tell you to be quiet, like when her babies are asleep, she puts her finger on her nose and says "ssss"
-Saying a lot more words. My favorite saying of hers lately happened when I asked if she was happy. She responded "happy buhday" (happy birthday) and the way she says it is so cute. She calls her monkey "ah ah" and can say all of her siblings' and all the neighbor kids' names. She used to always say no for everything, even if it meant yes. Now she says "yeah" a lot. She says now after a lot of things, "doh now" (go now), "foo now" (food now), "pop now" (meaning pop it in the toaster). She also says "sis'un" meaning this one. She knows very well about going to the bathroom, but doesn't do it quite yet. She says "poop and peep" whenever someone needs to go. She says "ya ya peas" for water please. And then she just talks and talks without anyone understanding her. I'm sure she will have a lot to say when she learns how to say more.

Things she hates:
-She hates it when the sun gets in her eyes in the car. She will start screaming in the car whenever it happens. I've never had a kid do that before. We got her some sunglasses, but she refuses to wear them. Funny child.
-She is still taking one long nap during the day. If it's too late then she will stay up really late. She doesn't love going to bed. Sundays are the worst because church is during her nap time, but she can't make it till bedtime without a nap. This means a super late nap with her waking up at like 8:00 pm and not sleeping again till midnight. Someday we'll have a normal church time again.

Things she loves:
-She loves her baby dolls and has one in her hand almost constantly. She always sleeps with one or many dolls. I haven't had a child that loves them as much as her.
-She loves it when you trace her hand and asks for you to do it over and over again.
-She loves eating cereal with milk. I think she is being kept alive by it right now.
-She loves playing with my hair and gets mad when someone else wants to.
-She loves playing with the other kids. They all just love her.

Growth:
-She has grown a lot lately, mostly in height. She is still skinny, but she definitely looks like a normal sized child now.
-Right before her 2nd birthday we took her to the doctor and she weighed 24 lbs (20%) and was 34.25 inches tall (59%). Six months ago she was only 14% in height so she's grown a lot! Besides that she looked perfectly healthy.

Her birthday was kind of a busy day. I was teaching preschool so she got to participate in that. She was pretty cranky during it and wouldn't let me do anything with the other kids, so I put her to bed at 11:30, which is way early for her nap. That night was the pine wood derby which we all had fun at. Afterwards, we came back home for her family party. My sister Emily came and our neighbors. We had a gumball machine cake (because I can do what I want when they are this age--hey, it turned out pretty cute) and opened her presents. I was going through a little dilemma about what to get a two year old who already has a million things to play with and like 12 hand me down baby dolls already. She loves babies so much that I let her pick one out at the store. She loves it! I also got her a doll couch that folds out into a bed, some new pajamas, sunglasses and new underwear (that she probably won't use for 6 months--but she was going to need them at some point, right?) It was pretty simple and a good day for our sweet, happy Hallie! I just love this girl so much!

Monday, Monday

2014-09-08T11:15:00.000-06:00

It sounds like a couple kids are up this morning, no fighting though, so Marissa's probably still asleep. Ouch, my neck hurts. It always does when I sleep on the couch. I wonder how Hallie slept? Is she still on the floor beside the couch? Oh, there she is. Guess she slept okay. Wait, that sounds like... no not on the carpet! Here, throw up on my blanket instead. Stop pushing it away. Seriously, I like this rug.

All right, I guess I'm awake now. I should probably get the girls up. Where is Marissa anyway? The hall? The boys' room? Our floor? Nope, she's in the living room. Why do we have all these beds anyway if no one wants to sleep on them? Does that mean I can turn their room into a craft room? Maybe that would clear off some of that clutter from the dining room table. I should probably clear that off today, right? I mean, we're going to probably want to eat dinner on it at some point. Ugh. Does this mean I need to make dinner tonight? Again? What is there to make anyway? What even sounds good? Ever since I got pregnant things don't sound so appetizing anymore. Too bad we don't have any tortilla chips. That sounds like a good dinner to me. I wonder how much chips cost at the gas station. I wonder if you have to be dressed to go to the gas station.

Okay, these kids need to get to school. Where is Marissa's homework? It's due today. Why can't they make all the homework due on the same day? Oh, here it is. Now how many minutes did she read this week? How can I make this add up to 100 minutes? Why can't she fill this out herself? I'm pretty sure she read some stuff at the beginning of the week. And scriptures count, right? Let's see, Thurday... nope, didn't read scriptures that night. That was the night the I lost my voice yelling at Marissa and Connor for fighting instead of coming down for scriptures. That wasn't my best moment. But I had been up till 4:15 the night before, taught Joy School that morning, ran to the school for a performance, took kids to piano, then soccer, then straight to a planning meeting that I was in charge of, and Jared was at racquetball so I had to put them to bed myself. It wasn't the time for kids to be fighting. They should've known that.

I should really clean this place up. I'm pretty sure all the bowls the kids are eating out of are only rinsed, not washed. Too bad the dishes didn't get done last night. It probably won't kill them. Unless that's why Hallie threw up. Could have been me trying to make her drink sour milk. Ew, I should've opened that bottle sooner. No wonder she kept asking for more milk. She needs to stop drinking bottles, when she turns two, in three weeks. Cold turkey. Poking my eyes out sounds easier than taking her bottle away.

Oh by the way, you kids should probably change your shirts before you go to school, I mean since you slept in them and all. Oh, and picture day is this Thursday. Do you think you can get that front tooth out by then? You know, so it's not all crooked and scraggly. Can I please wiggle it? I just want to see how close it is. Ok, stop screaming. I'm not going to pull it out. Woah, look at those nails! I've been meaning to cut those for, well a long time. Today's the day. I don't want a note sent home from school that my child's nails are too long. That wouldn't happen, right? Where are those nail clippers anyway? It's not like we only have one pair. There should be some in the downstairs drawer (nope), the kids' bathroom (nope), my bathroom... yes. Here we go. Now where is that child?

Yes, I will fix the zipper on your lunchbox. Sure, I will cut strawberries for you. What else are you having in your lunch? I know you never eat sandwiches when they're in your lunch, but it just seems weird not to have one. Fine, you can just have pretzels, granola bar and strawberries. And no, you can't dump out a perfectly good water bottle to put apple cider in it. I don't know why your older sister did that because now all of you want to. And by the way, you need shoes on.

Come here so I can do your hair. Wait, you say your stomach is hurting too? What exactly does that mean? Are you going to throw up? Did you not eat enough breakfast? Was it the dirty bowl? Just tell me if you need to stay home. If you're really sick then stay home. Are you sure you want to go? All right, fine. Everyone quiet, I can't hear what Alex is saying. I hope it wasn't important. Erin's getting really good at the piano. I'm glad she likes it. Maybe I shouldn't have taught her the Black Forest Polka because she plays it 400 times a day.

I still can't believe that Alex's teacher corrected his homework and sent it home for him to re-do. Doesn't it seem a little extreme for third grade? Does he really have to be perfect at his homework? This only means that I have to do more work making sure it's all right before he sends it in. What the heck? At least he's really smart and doesn't have a problem doing it. I can't imagine trying to do the same thing with someone that struggled in school.

Whose turn is it to say the prayer? That's good enough, right? Makes up for not reading scriptures. Love you guys! Have a good day at school. I probably should've made them brush their teeth. Tomorrow. The dishes are almost done. Although that pan in the sink with 5 day old mac-n-cheese mixed with water and probably sour milk looks a little too much like barf. I kind of feel like barfing. And here's another knife with nutella all over the handle. I'm not buying that stuff again. That's all these kids eat.

I should probably put all that salsa that I canned in the basement. Too bad we don't have those chips. Still not sure if two full days of work was worth it. I can't believe I quadrupled the salt the first time, then had to wait for our garden to produce 22 more cups of tomatoes to fix the recipe. It's no wonder I hate cooking. Too bad tomatoes sound disgusting when I'm pregnant, along with anything in the garden really. And next time, I'm wearing gloves when I cut the jalapenos. I thought my hands would never stop burning! I must've tried 20 different things to get them to stop burning. I was already playing out my amputation because of it.

"Moooomm! Can you wipe mine bum?" Sure. Three minutes later a naked baby comes down, "Uh, bum." Okay, I'll wipe your bum too. I sure hope she leaves her diaper on today. I wonder where the duct tape is? Did the floor ever get mopped after she peed on it twice on Friday? I think so, but the four year old did it so it probably doesn't count. Yep, still sticky spots from apple cider. Maybe I'll mop the floor today.

But first, I should go put that throw up quilt in the wash. I hope I can get into the laundry room. I had no time for laundry this week. Maybe if I did, we wouldn't have spent 20 minutes looking for a soccer shirt last Saturday. I shouldn't be responsible for that though, I wasn't the one that took it off and left it on the bathroom floor. I hope I can figure out which clothes are clean and which are dirty. That's kind of a pet peeve. Oh, why did I just smell that pair of underwear! I need to sit down. If there's a question, just wash it again. Why don't I learn? Hey, at least the dryer is fixed so I don't have to hang everything in my closet again. Jared sure is handy. I was already planning to buy a new dryer when he came up and took that thing apart. I guess it's good that I know the inner workings of the dryer now. And it only cost us 11 bucks for a new belt. I'd probably be in an institution without him, or at least out the cost of a new dryer.

After the laundry I need to finish up the basement plan that I was working on. Just a few tweaks so it shouldn't take too long. That was pretty awesome when we hooked the laptop to their TV and showed them three options in a 3-D model. They were impressed. They told me to keep track of my hours, but that's pretty much impossible. Let's just stay that it took over the last half of my week. I still don't know how much to charge them. Sometimes I think I should take more jobs like that. Sometimes I wonder if I can handle anything else besides my kids.

That reminds me, Connor never did his 5th day of online preschool last week because I was on the computer all day. It wouldn't be a big deal except the state is paying for it and we're required to do 5 days a week. They wouldn't kick us out over one day would they?

Here comes a naked baby again. I should put a new diaper on her... and she just peed on my purse. Last time it was a library book. Oooh, I hope I can find those three missing library books before next week. Maybe they're under the pile of laundry. Maybe the fort in the living room? Could be in the house the kids made in the basement. Anywhere really. Too bad I get so tired every day from being pregnant. Is 10:30 too early to take my daily nap?

I guess I should call the four people that said they were coming to the committee meeting and didn't. I'm dreading it. I don't know why I still have this calling. I'm not good at it. I hate announcing the activities. I wish I could just slide through this life without anyone noticing me. I bet there are people out there that would love it. You know, people that like attention. I just have to get through this next activity. I thought we would have two Sundays to announce it and get people to sign up for which crafts they want to do, but realized during church that next week is stake conference. Now how are we going to get people to sign up? Stupid crafts. Crafts that took me 3/4 of the day to make on Saturday so we'd have examples to show on Sunday. I stress myself out too much over this calling. After November, I'm done. Do you hear? It's been almost three years, I can ask for that, right?

Okay, fine. I'll go play Blokus with you, even though you really don't know how to play. And you, stop hitting your brother on the head with blocks!

Summer Shenanigans

2014-08-27T11:03:00.000-06:00

This summer was a good one. I feel like time always gets away from me before I can document anything. We didn't do a whole lot as far as trips and such, but we had a fun and relaxing summer. The first week was our family reunion and the last weekend was a little camping trip. Other than that, we were home the whole time. The kids loved not having a schedule and just being able to play almost all day (after they did their jobs of course). Here are some of the things we did that I actually got on camera.

We dressed like cows and stood in a long line to get our meal, but it's always worth it and fun. Saved us over $30. My nephew was with us that day so when my brother picked him up I made him come too, complete with a cow marked garbage bag.

The same day happened to be 7-11 day. Free Slurpee's. Still a line, but definitely not as bad. I love how Hallie is trying to use the straw.

Then, of course, there was Lehi Foam Day which was fun. It's always a bit crazy and there's always tons of kids crying, including our younger ones, but it was great to see Erin and Alex really get into it this year. You can't tell from the pictures because Alex had soap in his eye at that moment, but he really did have fun.

We went to Thanksgiving Point for a jell-o fight. Let's just say that next year Jared and I may go alone or just take one kid. The only kid that had fun was Alex, all the other kids hated it. Like REALLY hated it. And when Erin gets mad about something, it's not fun. Just to describe the event, you basically have 5 or 6 kiddie pools where they dump several 5 gallon buckets of jell-o and then about 350 rowdy people, mostly teenagers, charge the jell-o and smear it all over whoever happens to be next to them. This is fun if you don't care about getting sticky and jell-o-y and if you can get to the pool and do it back to someone. Erin never got to the pool and kept getting attacked with jell-o. Same with Marissa. Alex could see the fun in it. Once that jell-o dries, it's super sticky so you have to get hosed off or rinse really well in the sprinklers when they turn those on. Jared and I loved it.

(I'm holding my hands like that because of how sticky they were, FYI) I love Connor's face. Not. Fun. At. All.

We got invited to a party at the Lindon Aquatics center one night and they had this cool surfing place. Erin went on her belly and did really well. Alex was barely tall enough to go but didn't quite weigh enough so he just flipped right over the top, twice. Jared did the belly twice and then tried surfing a couple of times. It was not a surprise that he caught on to surfing really easily, even though it was his first time. He did awesome. The video I took was the second time so I missed him wiping out.

We had a fun block party one night in the cul-de-sac. It included good food, pickle ball, a bike parade and a bike wash, face painting, cotton candy, popcorn and an outdoor movie. I love our neighborhood! For some reason, I volunteered to do face painting even though I'd never actually painted a face before. I guess I just figured that it couldn't be that hard. And because we had 4 of us doing it, it didn't take all night to do the whole neighborhood. These are the ones I did on my kids. Marissa wouldn't be photographed, but I didn't do her's anyway.

We went to the Ogden Temple open house. It was really pretty. Hallie was such a cute kid the whole time. She had her little booties on over her shoes and walked almost the whole way, and then she waved to every single worker that she saw. She is such a friendly, social little girl. It's so cute to see her personality come out as she gets older.

There was lots of dress up going on this summer. Actually, I'm pretty sure Connor wore his Spider-man outfit every day at some point.

Here are some shots of the kids at the new Children's museum at Thanksgiving Point. It's pretty fun.

The zip line is awesome.

Like I said before, we finished off our summer by going camping. We have all this great camping stuff and hardly ever use it. And I actually like camping a lot. So I reserved a campground up American Fork canyon because it was so close. Once we got up there it was like we were in a different world and it just felt so good to be up there. I even kind of like cooking while camping. Maybe it's because Jared does most of the cooking. I just have to give him the ingredients. We made some delicious tin foil dinners one night, had yummy omelets, pancakes that Jared did a great job not burning (aren't they always burnt when you camp?) and chili pie one night. Delish. The first night was a bit of an adventure because it starting raining a bit during dinner, then stopped. We left everything out while we walked to the bathroom. While we were gone it rained a lot and got all our stuff wet. Then it stopped again so we could do some smore's, then in started again only really hard this time. It was almost 9:00 so we all just went to bed. Hallie had had a long nap that day so she was the only one that didn't want to go to sleep. She was kind of keeping everyone awake until she finally crashed. We survived that rainy night. I was impressed by our tent keeping us so dry, especially since a pole had blown through our tent the last time we used it and that part was patched.

I think this outfit on Hallie was picked out specially by her. She has her own ideas and you can't change them.

The next day was beautiful, so we decided to go on a little hike. And here's what I mean by "little". We were given a small pamphlet with a bunch of hikes mapped out. There was a key telling you distances so we measured out a hike that looked about right for us, about 2 miles or so. Well, what the map didn't show was that the hike we chose was super steep with lots of switchbacks making the hike way longer than we thought. To make matters worse, since it had rained the night before, there were some really muddy parts. We kept expecting to make it to a certain sign so we could complete the loop and it just never showed up. Finally, after we had literally climbed to the top of the mountain (remember how steep it was?), we rested while Jared went ahead until he found the sign. Luckily it wasn't that far because with Jared's persistence, he wouldn't have stopped till he'd found it even if it had taken hours. We were so happy to find that sign and to begin our descent down the mountain. The worst attitude of the day went to Marissa. She would not stop complaining! She kept hanging on our legs and bending her whole body over because of how horrible the whole thing was. Hallie was on Jared's back and I was holding hands with Connor the whole time. He was such a good sport and pretty much talked the whole time. Funny child. It ended up being over 4 miles and took us 4 hours. A big feat for our family. It was definitely an adventure. There was a small period of time where I imagined all of us dying up there, but we made it.

These pictures were take right before the hike.

This hike brought back some memories of growing up in my family where we would set out to do a 3 mile hike that would turn into a 6 mile hike, or a 6 mile hike that would turn into a 12 mile hike, getting lost, running out of trail mix and water 8 miles in. I don't know how, but our hikes always seemed to double. This tradition was fondly known as our Annual Fourth of July Deathmarch. I'm not sure why we kept hiking knowing what usually happened, but we did. There was one year that I remember very clearly. I know we were lost and I'm pretty sure we came out in a different canyon than we started off in--and not intentionally. I literally thought I would die up there. Well, I guess we are just carrying on the family tradition.

Goodbye summer.

Erin's Birthday

2014-07-17T11:34:00.000-06:00

Erin turned 10 on June 18th. Her dream was to get breakfast in bed on her birthday. She was so happy to get it. And how is it possible that she looks this good when she first wakes up? She is so photogenic. She had some pretty specific things she wanted to do for her birthday, and she'd been planning them for about a year. One thing she really wanted to do was make a glass flower at the Thanksgiving Point art center. It was awesome to see how they do it. The glass was 2000 degrees! We also got to walk around to see all the workers making stained glass for different temples around the world. It was so cool!

This is what her glass flower looked like once it had cooled. It's so pretty.

She had planned a pool party on her birthday, but the weather was looking cold so we postponed it till Friday. It was kind of good because after the glass flower, we had a get together in the park for what would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. Erin was born on her 90th birthday. It would have been way too busy on that day. She also wanted to get her ears pierced that night. She has wanted her ears pierced for so long. I never set an age that she had to be, but just asked her when she thought a good age would be. She always said on her 10th birthday. She was so happy about it. She picked the pink butterfly earrings. Erin loves butterflies. I'm glad she's old enough to be able to take care of them by herself.

The next day Alex got braces on. He has quite the metal mouth now. Not only does he have braces on the top and bottom, but he has an expander on the top and another space holder on the bottom. He hated getting them on, but he is a brave child to do it, especially since he is only 7. I think it makes him look so much older.

My kids are all growing up so fast!

Back to Erin's birthday. On Friday she had her party. Only one girl couldn't come but she had a great time with everyone else. They are all from activity days. I was actually surprised that she wanted to have a party with so many girls. Usually she only likes one or two friends at a time. I think she is branching out a lot with friendships lately, which is good to see. Her best friend, Emma, has been gone almost all summer, so Erin has been playing with other girls a lot. And since she is older, she is able to go farther to their houses by herself.

She loved all the presents she got. They know her so well. She got lots of art supplies, necklace making kits and candy. Happy girl!

Eating cake. Since it was during the day, I was doing the pool party on my own. Luckily, Connor had a birthday party at the same time so I only had 4 of my own kids to watch, plus the other 8 girls at the party. Luckily they are old enough to swim. It sure is nice to have a pool in our neighborhood.

Erin decorated her own cake again. She is so artistic and thought up this whole design herself. I think she really wanted like 5 tiers, but this is what she got. It turned out cute.

Erin is really growing up. This summer we've been able to leave Erin home for short periods, like during Hallie's nap, and she can watch the kids. It is so liberating to have a child that old! She is very responsible and is great with the little kids. When Erin is happy, she is such a joy to be around. She is so creative. She still loves art, writing books, reading and acting. She loves wearing make-up and dressing up. She is definitely a girly-girl. Once she can change her earrings I'm sure she will love wearing new ones. She has gotten good at doing hair, her own and others, and is pretty creative with what she ends up with. We love Erin!

Connor's Birthday and Father's Day

2014-07-17T10:34:00.000-06:00

I'm a little slow with the blogging lately, but Connor turned 4 (over a month ago). When he woke up, we surprised him with his present: a see-saw that I built for him. He knew I was building something for his birthday in the garage (thanks to a certain child who told him), but he didn't know what it was. He was a bit scared of going too high at first, but I think he is more used to it now. The other kids and the neighbors love it. And I can cross off another project on my long list of "things to build someday".

You can see more about the project on my other blog Roadside Rejects.

It was a Saturday so Alex had his last baseball game. He had lots of fun doing baseball. He likes playing all sports and just has a good attitude about learning and playing them. And the good thing about watching them is that they are all way better than they were two years ago. It's fun to see.

After the game, we all went to the store so that Connor could pick out his own birthday present (besides the see-saw). He was a bit hard to shop for this year because he kept telling me different, but very specific things that I had no idea if I could find, like spider man socks and another spider man glove and other random things. He is very decisive and knows what he wants (it's just that nobody else does). That's why I had him pick it out. He ended up getting a spider man glove that shoots silly string and then water when the silly string runs out. He had so much fun with the silly string and was laughing so hard. He got a ton on our ceiling before we made him take it outside to shoot other people. That lasted about 5 minutes, but it was fun. Oh, and even though he picked it out that very day, we wrapped it and he was so excited when he opened it. Funny kid.

After the game and shopping, we went to the new Discovery Museum at Thanksgiving Point. We love living a minute away from Thanksgiving Point! It's a fun museum with lots to do.

That night we had cake. He wanted a ninja turtle cake and this was my best attempt. The mouth would have been better if I hadn't run out of black, but I think he got the idea. At least it wasn't my worst cake ever (which is still Jared's flyswatter cake).

Connor is a really funny child and always says funny stuff. Too bad I can't remember most of it. He is the child that tans most easily and with his light hair it makes him look even more tan. He likes to tell you and show you how strong he is. But for how strong he is, he is definitely not the most brave. He doesn't like to try new things, especially if he thinks they will be too scary. He stood at the side of the fence watching all the kids jump on the neighbor's trampoline for a year before he finally got on this summer. When we went to the water park, he didn't want to do any of the slides, even the baby ones. We forced him to go on Jared's lap on one slide and he screamed the whole way. I took him to the children's museum on a one on one outing and he wouldn't go on any of the rope bridges or slides. I'm sure he'll grow out of it, but it's funny to see what a strong personality he has but how cautious he is at the same time, especially when the younger girls are almost fearless when trying new things.

Connor loves ninjas, spider man, superheros, and doing karate moves. He dresses up in his spider man costume daily and also asks me to put a ninja headband on a lot. Here's an example of his ninja headband. The kids have been loving the dress-ups lately since they dug them out of storage in the basement. Ah, more messes to clean up.

Connor talks really loudly, which I find very interesting since I am so quiet. His normal voice is just loud, even if I am standing right next to him. The day after his birthday was father's day and it was the first time he went up to sing with the primary kids (he wouldn't do it for mother's day so I was surprised that he did it at all). When he came down he yelled, "I was awesome up there!" Everyone was laughing so hard. I love this boy so much! Our family would not be the same, or as loud without him.

And speaking of father's day, we celebrated it the next day. I always get stressed out the first two weeks of June so father's day is never a big event. I made Jared breakfast in bed. He was coming down right as I was about to bring it up to him so we made him go back to bed to eat it, while the kids sat there watching him. That night he asked for taco pie, his favorite meal and we ate it on the new picnic table that I built, but haven't stained yet. The only thing he got for father's day was a new watch battery. I don't think his watch has worked for over a year. It's like getting a new watch, right?

Funny faces

Guess which kid didn't want his picture taken?

Jared is a great dad and our kids are lucky to have him! (and just look how strong the see-saw is :)

Family Reunion and Two Birthdays

2014-07-07T17:05:00.000-06:00

The first week of June, just after school got out, we had the Daniels family reunion. Originally we were going to rent a big house in Zions, but just a few weeks before we all decided to change it so that it wouldn't be that expensive. We ended up staying in Perry and doing an activity every day. Our family got to stay in Jared's parents' camper in their back yard. Everyone liked it except Hallie who did not want to go to sleep in there. She would cry and wake the other kids up. We finally put her in an extra room inside and we all slept great.

The first day was also Jared's birthday. So, lucky for me, I didn't have to do much for it. (We went shopping the next weekend for some clothes for him.) We spent that day at This is the Place park. There was a lot to see and do. Of course my favorite part was seeing the cabinet maker's shop with all the old tools and how they used to make things.

There were some fun games to play, crafts and of course pony rides (which Connor was too afraid to do at the last minute)

The next day we went to the pool up there. They had a couple of fun slides and sand volleyball.

For the third day, we rented out a bowling alley that also had mini golf. It was pretty fun to be able to bowl on more than one lane as much as we wanted. Alex got really into the bowling, as well as Jared and his brothers.

The last day was Marissa's sixth birthday. That was the day that we got a big bounce house with a water slide and set up some other slip and slides in the Daniels' backyard. I don't think she could have asked for a better birthday party (I would probably never rent a bounce house like that). Everyone else was awake in the morning except her, so I thought it would be fun to go into the trailer to sing Happy Birthday and give her her presents. She got a new razor scooter (because her other one has been mysteriously missing for over a year), a slip and slide and some rubber bands to make rubber band bracelets--they are all the rage at our house right now. It was a good long day and I hope she enjoyed it.

And since I never wrote about it before, Marissa also had her kindergarten graduation at the end of May. There are so many kids at the school. Even when we go early and get a pretty good seat, I still can't see my children because they are always on the front row. Joys of being short. I find it very stressful to have to take a video or pictures all the time too. I feel like I enjoy things more if I don't have to capture everything. Anyway, I got this shot of her afterwards. She did great in kindergarten and made a lot of friends. She is reading a lot better and faster now. She hardly needs help reading scriptures anymore.

Other random things about Marissa at age six: favorite food is pizza, favorite thing to do is play with friends, favorite TV show is A Second Chance (I've never heard of it, but I don't usually watch their shows), her friends are Aurora, Autumn, Emma, Sienna, Addy and Emery, Azure, Brinley, Lindsay, Camden, Hayley, Andrew, Kayla and Daphne, favorite place to go is Disneyland, favorite subjects in school are art and computers.

Marissa is a fun girl who loves being social. She has no fear of being in front of people or talking to them. She is very loving and needs a lot of love too. She will always give me hugs and tell me how much she loves me and always asks to play with my hair (which I love). She recently learned how to do a braid. She doesn't seem to get into playing with any toy or doll and would be happy to get rid of all toys in her room. She loves playing games on the computer or my phone (which she hardly ever gets to do). She doesn't like going to bed or sleeping in her room. This is partly because Hallie has to go to bed at a different time than her or she'll just cry, and Marissa doesn't like being alone. She will usually end up in the living room, our floor or the boys' room. Marissa and Erin are two very different personalities and are the ones that fight more than anyone else. It always makes me sad for Marissa and I can only hope that they will be friends when they are older. We do love this sweet, loving girl. She is really growing up!

Easter

2014-05-19T09:12:00.002-06:00

Easter festivities were good. It was pretty low key this year. This kids claim they had like 5 Easter egg hunts (which may be true), although I didn't have to do much for any of them. This is good if you are me and don't like to plan stuff like that. At least one of them was put on by them in the back yard. One of them was with the Daniels side of the family over a month ago when we said goodbye to Jared's brother Alan and his family. They moved to South Carolina. This is especially sad for Erin because Kimberly is her closest cousin on that side. There were probably a couple at school that I am not really aware of. The last one was the day before Easter at my Aunt and Uncle's ranch. It is a yearly tradition that my kids have come to look forward to. There are tons of kids and tons of eggs to find. And then there's the pinata. Good times.

My sister Emily was here the day before Easter so we decided to dye eggs. I think Connor and Marissa were playing with friends somewhere and Hallie was sleeping, so it was just Erin, Alex, Emily and me. The kit I bought had bags that you put dye in, and then you just roll the egg around until it's colored. Definitely not the usual egg dying tradition that takes place, but it was easy and only took like 5 minutes in all.

They each got a basket and church clothes. Everyone also got sandals in their baskets. I figured since their feet keep growing, it would be a good time to give them something they already needed.

Here are some shots of Easter Sunday.

That night we had a fun dinner at Emily's house. Yay for no cooking for me!

Alex had to make an Easter hat for school and decorate a hard boiled egg for an egg roll. I love that he used his St. Patrick's Day hat as part of his Easter one. He also recently learned how to make eggs and toasted cheese sandwiches. Yesterday he just made everyone eggs while Jared and I were asleep. I love independence.

Marissa lost her first tooth, the traditional way at least, at the ranch the day before Easter. Her first real tooth she lost was when she was two and it got knocked out. She lost her other bottom tooth a few days later. She will get her flipper out the next time we go to the dentist so she will have three spaces pretty soon. Exciting times for her!

Luckily, the weekend after coming off of their Easter candy sugar high, there were four birthday parties the next weekend that replenished their candy stock. I know at least two of them had pinatas. Ugh, candy. It kind of never ends, does it?

Erin performed their play, Neverland, last week. It was very entertaining. I was amazed by how expressive Erin was on stage. I've always known how dramatic she is, but I wondered how she would be in front of a lot of people. She was great. I think she may have a future in drama. Next year Erin, Alex and Marissa want to do the play. (It's only 3 times as expensive, no biggie) I'm sure they will love it.

Hallie has become a big climber lately. She climbs on our play set and all the way up Marissa's bed (Connor doesn't even do that). She also has been loving our neighbor's trampoline, as long as big kids aren't jumping too high.

Connor seriously says the funniest things. Here are some:

-"Please bless that we won't fall in hot lava."

-"Please bless that we can get a trampoline and a play set, but we already have a play set, and I want a trampoline like Emma, because she is getting one for her birthday, and she is Erin's friend, and Aurora is mine and Marissa's friend. Jesus Christ, amen."

-Today he wanted to play the stop light game, meaning he calls out all the green lights and I call out the red lights. At a red light he yelled, "Mommy, SAY IT!" I told him not to be so mean about it and he said, "I'm not being mean about it, I'm just being the boss."

-Earlier, he was singing, "I am so strong, but Alex can totally still beat me and Hunter up."

-"There's only three of us left at the table, and that's how old I am. I want to get bigger so I don't have to be your servant anymore." What does a servant do? "Put dishes on the table and stuff" How old do you have to be to not be a servant. "16"

-One day I wouldn't let him have bread before bed and he yelled, "Ahhh! You are a naughty mommy!"

-Last week he came home crying and I thought he was hurt. I asked what happened and he said through his crying, "We were running home and Marissa was running faster than a Cheetah and she beat me."

-"Can you open this? Open these graham crackers. OPEN THEM!... pause... Can you open these PLEASE?... Whooo, I almost whined."

-I bought him some pull-ups to wear at night and he started calling them fruit roll ups. I was only confused for a bit the first night he yelled, "I have my fwuit woll up on!" Love that kid.

In other news, we bought a new truck... and by "new" I mean that it is still 10 years old, but 5 years newer than our other two cars. I've vowed for years that my next car would be a truck to haul all the wood and furniture home for projects. The more we looked, the more I realized that I wanted a full crew cab that would seat 6. It still wouldn't fit our whole family, but at least if one parent is alone with the kids they would all fit. Jared felt pretty strongly that he wanted 4 wheel drive. I was starting to feel a little stressed about trying to find the right truck at the right price and not really knowing where to go. We just felt a little overwhelmed and confused by everything. I told Jared that we should start praying about it, I think it was on Sunday. The next day, we were at our neighbor's house for FHE and we told him about what we wanted. He works at a car dealership and sometimes gets trade-ins. We had mentioned it to him before but he didn't have anything for us. A couple of days later he called and said that he had our truck for us. We went down to look at it on Friday and bought it that day. It's a white Chevy Silverado crew cab and it is literally exactly what we wanted. I feel like it was an answer to prayer. I get kind of stressed out when it comes to big purchases like cars, which explains why we haven't bought one for 7 1/2 years.

We sold our Mazda 626 two weeks later. We bought that car when it was 5 years old, right before we had Erin... 10 years ago! It's been a good, reliable little car for years. It was just getting old and starting to have issues. Jared replaced the fuel pump in January, or should I say December-January? The car was in pieces for like 5 weeks. That was a really hard one to fix because just getting the fuel tank out was a big pain. Jared is pretty amazing to even take on something like that, but I had no doubt he would be able to fix it. There was another repair that we had done a month later. I was so happy to sell it. We didn't get a whole lot for it, but it was a relief to not have to worry about it anymore. The kids love the riding in the truck, because of the novelty and all. I am looking forward to buying some plywood for my next project and throwing it in the back, you know, because I'm weird like that.

Life As We Know It

2014-03-24T09:21:00.000-06:00

Life seems to pass by quickly at times, so I feel the need to document some of it.

Marissa has done some eventful things lately. She learned to do the monkey bars (and does them constantly now), she learned to ride a bike without training wheels (which took her less than 10 minutes to master--amazing!), and she stopped sucking her thumb... all in the same week. I am so proud of her for all of her accomplishments, but I'm especially happy about no more thumb sucking. I thought it was going to take a lot more than it did. She hurt her thumb somehow and had to have a band aid on it. The first night she could not sleep for hours because she was so used to having her thumb to suck. But after a few days, she just stopped, all on her own. No nagging or reminding, it was just time and she did it on her own. Love it. This is one of those times when having a bunch of kids is good because I just don't have as much time to focus on each person all the time, including the negative things like thumb sucking.

Erin stopped doing gymnastics in January and started doing Up With Kids, which is an acting/singing group. They will put on a play in April and she loves it. Probably mostly because she's with her best friend. She also did Battle of the Books this year and read all 20 books (it's a national list). They were put on different teams and competed against all the other fourth grade teams. Their team won. Then they got to compete against a team of teachers in front of the whole school and they won that too! She got a trophy and a book, and she was so proud. So was I! She loves reading. I wish I was more like her.

Alex has enjoyed doing different sports. He loved this season of Jr. Jazz Basketball and made some baskets during the games. It's fun to watch how much better second graders are compared to the first graders last year. They're getting pretty good. After that he wanted to try indoor soccer, which we are still doing. He definitely goes after the ball and gets lots of exercise each game. The last game I went to was great. They were tied 3-3 when the coach yelled, "There's only 20 seconds left, we just need one more point!" And so at the last second, someone passed the ball to Alex and he kicked it in the goal. It was pretty sweet, even if they don't actually keep score at these games.

Connor sure is a funny kid, without trying to be. He usually says something interesting in his prayers, which he still insists on saying at dinner every day. Sometimes he blesses us to not die, or that we won't do jobs, or that Jesus will come alive again. He usually does not bless the food, however. I guess blessing us to not die probably covers whatever we might eat. He has a great vocabulary and will just use different words that I didn't know he knew, like, "I'm basically done with my dinner." I wish I could remember all the funny things he says. The other day he said, "Mommy, let's play house. Let's pretend that you're the mom and I'm the kid and Hallie is the baby. And pretend your name is Laura but I just call you mom." That's when I told him I was going to do laundry, in the game of course. The other night I kissed him twice and he said, "Don't kiss me two times, only once or fwee times, because I'm fwee. It's like I'm FWEEE!" (as he waved his arms like he was free). He's also been so polite and good with asking nicely for things. Sometimes he asks for something and then says, "Wait, I forgot to say please!"

Hallie is just so cute. Everything she does is cute or funny. Everyone just loves her. It's so nice to have a baby her age because she still wants to be near me and doesn't get mad at me about much. Okay, maybe if I don't let her climb into the car by herself she gets mad, but that's about it. About a month ago, she started saying, "Uh huh" for yes and "Uh uh" for no. It was so quiet and subtle, but so sweet. She has since dropped the "Uh huh" and now just says "Uh uh" or "No" for everything, whether she means yes or no. You'll ask her if she wants breakfast and she'll say, "No" while running to the kitchen so excited to eat. She also understands a lot and will say "Kay" after we ask her to do something. It's pretty cute. Since our kids, like every other kid in this country, are obsessed with the movie "Frozen", Hallie now actually sings (belts out), "Let it go, let it go!" Funny. She will also be starting her first official week of nursery in one week. That is a pretty big and exciting day for all involved, mostly me and Jared. We've been taking her there and staying with her for a couple of months so I know she will love it.

My baby turning 18 months is also weird for me because I've always been pregnant (or just about) by the time my kids went into nursery. Not this time. It's the first time I have felt like it would not be okay to have another baby at this point. Who knows what will happen in the future (since I always imagined I'd have 6 kids), but for now, it is nice to have my own non-pregnant/non-nursing body back and to get a full night's sleep. And you know, everything else that goes along with little babies.

So, I turned 38 in February. Yikes. It's better than the alternative, but still, it's pretty old. You know that also means it's my 20 year high school reunion? Yeah, I have absolutely no desire to go. I vowed to never go to another one after my 5 year reunion. Wasn't it awkward enough in high school? Why would I want to go through that again? Plus, I already get together with the friends I would want to see anyway (and Facebook stalked everyone else I would want to know about).

On my birthday, Jared made me compete in my first racquetball tournament. It was kind of fun, but I lost every game. I did another one this weekend and lost every game again. It was not that fun. Failure is rough. Cheryl did this one with me and did way better than me. She had more fun than I did and will want to do more tournaments. I think if I actually practiced every now and then, I would get better and not lose every game, but we'll see if I can get over the "being a failure" feelings enough to sign up again. I have been really struggling lately with feelings of failure. I had a series of failures beginning in January that all added up to basically a big setback for me. It was rough. I won't go into the details, but it makes me want to close myself off into my little cave to avoid rejection and failure. I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I do. It's something I need to work through, I suppose.

Jared got me my first smart phone for my birthday. It's nothing too fancy, but for me, this is a big step. It's nice to be able to take pictures and send them to people. And I'm starting to get used to the other perks of a smart phone. Welcome to like 5 years ago? The week after my birthday we went to St. George for my other present, the St. George Parade of Homes! There's probably nothing more in life that I like more than a good Parade of Homes. I dragged my whole family to three days worth. They were troopers, for the most part, even though they think it's really boring. We tried to break it up so that we'd see some in the morning, go back to the condo and swim or watch movies, then go to a few more that night. Cheryl and Lincoln came down and stayed one night, so that was fun. There were some really amazing and memorable homes. I loved it!

Jared just got a promotion at work, which is always exciting. People really like Jared and the contributions he is making at his job. This doesn't surprise me at all. I've always known what a genius he is and how he can (and will) fix anything, and who wouldn't like him? This promotion came at about the same time as his yearly raise so it is significant, for us anyway. I feel so blessed, and at the same time feel a greater responsibility to use our money in the right way for the right things. There was an excellent talk at stake conference today that basically talked about being in danger of becoming rich, and what that could do to us. Jared and I have been thinking about this a lot in the past year, about King Benjamin's counsel to give to the poor and what this really means. It is so easy to be stingy, or selfish, or think about all the other worldly things that our extra money could buy. Or to adjust your lifestyle so that there isn't any extra money anymore. I feel like it's human nature to want money and things, and I definitely feel this tendency. But I know that all that we have, everything, is from God and that we do need to use it wisely. It's definitely a balance to figure out needs vs. wants and I am constantly trying to master it.

One last (kind of) funny story. Last week, our heater stopped working. We were lucky it wasn't the middle of winter, but it was 64 degrees in our house, just a bit chilly. Jared went and fiddled with the furnace a bit before work, but we decided we should call the furnace guy. Since it is still under warranty, we would only have to pay the $75/hr. service charge. The guy took it apart and found pieces of a branch wedged in a tube that came from the intake tube from outside. He put it back together and it still didn't work. We started on the second hour when he took apart some more of the furnace and cleaned out some sawdust from another tube. When he put it back together, it still didn't work. He couldn't find anything else wrong, so he traced it outside where he saw a yellow, plastic bat sticking out of the intake tube! Apparently, my kids were using that as the perfect spot to store their weapons. In their defense, it was at the perfect height for them. And also, apparently, your furnace won't work if the air intake is blocked by a plastic bat. So, we paid $150 for the guy to take the bat out of the air intake. Sheesh! Lesson learned.