The Past 10 Months

I don't have much time and I'm supposed to be doing other things but I thought I would do a quick post. I was trying to download AC's dance recital videos but I was having issues so the videos will have to wait. Here are some photos of the kids and AC's recital. So really quick:

The husband has been working hard. He is a huge help with the kiddos and takes good care of our house. Our lawn is looking pretty good thanks to him. He still traps our mice and has recently discovered two snakes that seem to want to live near our doorstep so that is his new project.

I am finally making some sense of the madness or should I say "confusion" in the house. Laundry seems to be getting done, food makes it to the table and the kids survive the day so what else could I ask for?

AC is all registered for kindergarten starting Sept 1st. So she gets to have the lucky job of being my helper for the summer.

Little E is talking up a storm now. Today he told the husband that I was a monkey and climbed trees, he has a good imagination for a 2 year old. And thankfully, he is starting to tone down on the crazy.

Baby B is getting so big. I can't believe he is almost 10 months old. In this last month he has had some major developments. He figured out how to crawl . . . well sort of. He drags and slides and sometimes crawls. He has pulled himself up to standing, and he got his first tooth and then 3 more quickly followed.

So that is the cliff notes version of what we are up to. Hopefully I will get some more posts soon and those videos up.

So Behind- Part 1

The story of my life these days. I can't believe the last post was in July. Lots has happened since which I probably won't have time to blog about most of it but I will try my best. Little E is on his second day of boycotting naps so he is locked in his room for now, but that will only last so long. So the highlights of the past 5 months have been:

-a visit from family from TX
- Baby B was born
- Little E turned 2
- AC turned 4
- Halloween
- Baby B was blessed
-Thanksgiving
- a visit from family from UT and NV
- getting ready for Christmas

There are probably more but my brain power has sufficiently decreased so that I can now barely form sentences let alone remember anything. For me 3 kids has been a lifestyle change. It's great and overwhelming and chaotic and fun all at the same time. I was just complaining to my sister-in-law about it. I feel like we hardly ever get out but yet I can't keep up with anything at home. Laundry is one of my biggest enemies right now. It's amazing how something so little can add so much laundry to the mix. Ok, well enough about complaining lets get to the highlights.

The husbands family came out in June/July which was a blast. The kids enjoyed a bouncy house for the first time. I wish I had one at home, I think this is the one thing that can almost wear Little E out. We had some good food, saw fireworks, went swimming . . . I can't even remember all that we did but I just remember that it was tons of fun and the kids had so much fun with their cousins. I have lots of cute pics that I have to go through so I will try to post them soon.

The birth of Baby B . . . hallelujah! It is great to be done with the pregnancy. He came on August 21st, a day before his due date, I was induced so he had no choice. Although I think I was starting to go into labor anyways so I think he would have come on the 21st or 22nd anyways. Which is good because he was 9 lbs. 3 oz. I'm very glad I didn't have to go any longer. Labor and delivery was good. For some reason I was set on having the same experience that I had with Little E's labor so I decided not to go for the epidural. Later I was totally regretting that decision. Mostly regretting it afterwards because I bled a lot and they had to keep "massaging" my stomach which felt more like punching to me. But everything was fine and we were both healthy and now I have forgotten most of it so its great. Baby B was born with a full head of hair unlike the other 2 and has kept it so that has been pretty fun. He has been the most low maintenance of the 3. He is so happy and calm and he usually is content to just sit around and watch his two crazy siblings. AC made him laugh for the first time yesterday. That cute little baby chuckle. It was fun to watch. AC and Little E love him to death and sometimes I think Little E might really love him to death. Lately he has been paying a lot of attention to the baby. That is my nice way of saying he won't leave the poor baby alone. I can't decide whether he really loves him or if that is just his cover and he is really just tormenting the poor thing.

Well, this post is starting to get pretty long so I better put some pictures in and end it for now.

AC's Dance Recital

Finally getting around to posting about AC's dance recital. She did a tap and ballet number, The Ladybug Boogie and Sprinkle Sprinkle. The videos aren't great, in fact you may feel motion sickness after watching them. I did NOT do a great job. We could only tape at the dress rehearsal and that was the first time I got to see her dance in her costume so I got a little distracted while taping. So the video is all over the place. Anyways she had a great time. I wasn't sure how she would do because she can be a little shy at times but she just soaked up the attention. In fact, the next morning she woke up crying, "I miss my stage." She may be a bit of a drama queen. I know I am biased but I think the 3 year olds stole the show. They were all so precious up their on the stage.

Life has been busy around here. We are trying to finish projects and get settled before the baby comes. Hopefully I will have some good pictures of the house to post soon.

What's New!

It's been a little while, so I thought I would post a quick update. Plus if everything goes as we are hoping we probably won't have time for blogging for a while. We are hoping to close on our house in the next couple of weeks. We started looking again since the short sale house wasn't progressing and we were very blessed to find one that we think will work out even better. Things have been going pretty smoothly (of course the waiting and anxiety of it all is starting to wear us down) and we are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We are hoping to hear in the next week of a closing date. Once we close we mostly have plans for painting. Thankfully the house doesn't need much else. Then it will be cleaning and the ever so fun moving part! Can't wait for that. At least most of our stuff is already packed in storage.

We had another ultrasound, we will definitely be breaking out the blue again. AC is excited about a baby brother. Or at least as long as the next one is a girl. I keep telling her there are no promises. I'm excited to break out the cute little newborn clothes. And I'm pretty excited for this pregnancy to be over, too bad I still have about 4 months left. Although with all the moving I'm sure it will go quick.

I thought I had more to report, but I can't think of what else has been happening in our lives lately. So here are some pictures:

Lots of concentration for the Easter Eggs

Easter baskets . . . even the bubble wand can be used as a weapon.

Tearing through my drawers, they found my MP3 player

Had to include Little E's cute smile since most of the time it is a mischievous little face

Can't Sleep So Why Not Blog

I made the mistake of falling asleep on the couch, always risky. Then I went to bed and started "thinking", even riskier. Now here I am a few hours past my bedtime and blogging. We had an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago and they are 80% sure we are having a boy. This ultrasound was at 12 weeks so my doctor will do another one to confirm but I think they are right. So far this pregnancy has been a lot like Little E's. Even though it was early the technician seemed pretty confident about the gender. AC still says she only wants a girl, which I hate to say, was my feeling too for a while, but I have decided that I am now excited for another little boy. The husband keeps reassuring me that it's not possible to have another boy as crazy as Little E so that makes me feel better too. So it looks like us girls are going to be out numbered for now. In Little E's defense I THINK he may be toning down a LITTLE. I am kinda tired right now though. It's funny how different kids can be. I am finding that I know very little about parenting and what worked for AC does not seem to work with the little guy so I have been trying to change my approach. I wouldn't say there has been a huge change but I think we are both happier with my new epiphany. Which is sad to say that it is a NEW epiphany because everyone always says how kids are different so you would think or hope that the epiphany would have happened a little sooner. Oh well, better late than never.

We are still waiting about the house and really haven't heard anything. Which is now starting to eat away at us. I think we did pretty well for the first 4 weeks of waiting but now it's driving us a little nuts. I guess their bank now has all the paperwork they need to start the approval process but I guess it is still a 30-90 wait. Hopefully we will be hearing more on the sooner side because patience has never been a strong point for me. We have still been looking at other houses but we haven't seen anything we like better so far.

I am 14 weeks now and the morning sickness has greatly improved. I even thought I was starting to feel like I had energy again but that only seemed to last a little while. We have had some fun enjoying the snow. We got out and sledded some more so I now feel good about the snow pants purchase for AC. Money well spent. And the kids have enjoyed some fresh air. Poor Little E must really be going stir crazy inside because I have had to drag him back in kicking and screaming every time. He also likes to try to make a break outside any time the door opens and lately he likes to bring his shoes and AC shoes and my shoes over to me all the time. I think he is trying to tell me something. I guess it's not good for little boys to be cooped up.

Anyways, those are the latest updates and I should probably try to go to bed now.

Not even sure what this was, maybe pudding?

Daddy was working so this was the best we could do for a snowman without him

We also tried AC and Little E snowmen, AC wanted to do a snowman for Daddy and the extended family but I told her we didn't have enough snow

Night sledding

Rosy cheeks

The Plan for 2010

So it looks like our New Year's plan for 2010 is to spend as much money as possible and here are the main three culprits:

- a house
- a new/used van
- a baby

And hopefully in this order but we will see what happens. We put an offer on a house and it was accepted but it is a short sale so their bank has to approve it which we hear takes about 4-6 weeks. So we won't know what is going on with that for a little while. The baby is supposed to be coming towards the end of August. The due date is August 22nd. And we are pretty sure that we can't get three car seats in our tiny car so the van will probably need to come before that baby or the husband and I will be driving separately everywhere . . . not very realistic.

We are excited for the new addition coming although I will be honest I am getting a little nervous. Little E has recently become a little crazy person and so I am hoping that he tones down in the next couple of months. I think he is my biggest reason for the lack of blog posts. Basically because I can't even blink without him getting into trouble. So far since we have been at my parent's house he has: broken a dish, colored on a couch, dented the coffee table, ripped part of a chair, found the door to the china dishes (thankfully he seems to forget about this one) and figured out how to open the drawer with my mom's nice silver. And his favorite activity seems to be walking on the dining room table and playing with the chandelier. Of course, we will be happy with this next baby no matter what the gender, but secretly (or not so secretly) I am hoping for a nice, calm girl. Unless the boy can be calm and then that would be ok too.

AC is going through a mommy phase right now, which I hope passes quickly. She is excited about primary and sunbeams but doesn't want to stay and is having issues being separated from me. Which I can't quite figure out because she spends ALL day with me and I am not that fun, especially in these first few months of pregnancy. Overall she is being a good girl for me and a good helper. She tries to keep her little brother in line.


Here are some random pictures from the past few months.

Playing the Wii. The red eyes were better than the "fix" which were scary silver.

If we had done a Christmas Card this year, I think we would have used this picture.

Parent's day to watch dance class.

I think this was the one day we made it outside. I forgot how much work the whole layering process is. I think we spent more time getting dressed then playing outside.

My little trouble maker.

And that sums up what has been going on with us for the past couple of weeks. Now I'm going to try to catch up on all of your blogs.

Happy New Year

I can't believe it is January already and I can't believe that I haven't posted since October. Poor neglected blog. I haven't been good at taking pictures lately either so there will just be no memories of the last few months. Hope everyone had a great holiday. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my parents and the kids enjoyed being the center of attention. We spent the rest of the day with the husband's family where the kids had tons of fun playing with their cousins, Grandma and Grandpa and their Aunts and Uncles. We had a great time with both families and missed the slackers that didn't come home. I don't know why so many planned to have babies around Christmas?? Just kidding! We are very excited to meet all the new arrivals.



Here are their Christmas outfits

My parents have always had the kids act out the Nativity on Christmas Eve. This year our kids had to play all the parts. Don't worry, that is NOT a real baby.

Christmas morning. Phones are one of Little E's favorites.

AC was all about unwrapping the presents. It didn't matter who it was for, she was an unwrapping machine.


Here are some of the cousins getting ready to watch a movie. We are very blessed to have a lot of family close by.