Little Cuties

Here is a sampling of some of the great pictures Wendy took of my kids. I think this first one might be my favorite of the two of them together, but there are several that I love: You can look at more of her great work or get details for her to take pictures for you by clicking on the link on my blog side bar or by going to http://www.wendymcbridephotography.blogspot.com/

The Graduates

Some may remember this post when Chloe started preschool last fall. I still have some of those same feelings but I have also seen what a wonderful experience this has been for Chloe. She has grown socially and has become, if it's even possible, even smarter - I mean she is my child, right?! Miss Hill has become one of Chloe's favorite people and she loves this little group of friends she has made. I tried to upload pictures from her actual graduation, including cute homemade graduation hats, song singing, and showing off her piano playing skills, but for some reason the computer won't upload these ones. So to make do, here is Chloe's class picture as well as her official preschool picture taken at school. Too cute if I do say so myself (forgiving that these are pictures of the pictures and therefore have a lovely glare)

Chloe's classmates: Top Row L-R Mya, Abby, Cadence, Josh, Miss Hill

Bottom Row: Carter, Jocie, ChloeOur other graduation celebration came in the form of my youngest brother, DJ (most people now just call him David - not me) graduating from High School. Being 13 when he was born, I have been able to watch him grow from infant to this point. He is such a good brother and a good person. My kids love Uncle DJ and I love him too. Even as the youngest he is still an example to me in so many ways. Congratulations little brother!

The pictures that follow are from the yummy dinner we enjoyed in celebration of DJ's graduation. We went to Kobe a tepanyaki restaurant where the prepare the food in front of you. I add these because Noah's reactions to this were hilarious:

We begin: "Hmmm, what is this guy doing? I'm not sure I'm going to like this very much."

"FIRE" (didn't really get that one in time on camera)

"Get me out of here!"

"I'll come back for one more try, but you better keep those flames suurounding the table at a distance!

"Phew, I made it. This place is pretty cool Mom!"

In other weekly news, the kids have really been enjoying having weather warm enough to play outside in. I am constantly begged to invite friends over or to go to a playground somewhere anywhere. One of Chloe's favorite toys is the 4-wheeler she got for Christmas. She is very good to share with friends.

Noah got one too, but has been a little intimidated by it's size and speed. He prefers to roll in is "race car"

I laugh at the things that make kids happy. On a recent Old Navy trip Chloe found this Barbie shirt and declared that she had to have it. They were buy one get one free so Chloe went in search of one for Noah. She didn't have to look far as she found Noah's favorite, Cars, on a shirt as well. These two have lived in these shirts. As soon as they are washed they go right back on - and sometimes they don't even make it that far before Chloe has her's on again. They make me laugh.

Last weekend I finally made it around to having Chloe and Noah's 4 year and 2 year old pictures done. I snapped this one before we left, but you will have to wait another day for me to post my sister-in-law, Wendy's, cute picture taking skills. Certainly doesn't hurt that she had such cute subjects!

Tender Mercies

WARNING: This post my contain a little TMI regarding pregnancy issues for some if not all of you. Proceed at your own risk...

Monday morning, and by morning I mean 4:00am, I woke, 16 weeks into pregnancy, from a dream and rolled over in bed. At that point I experienced what I thought was a minor but normal pregnancy issue-a non airtight bladder- and again it being the minorest of minor and me being the tiredest of tired, fell right back to sleep. When 20 minutes later I felt a much larger "gush" I knew that my bladder was not THAT leaky and something else was going on.

I woke to find myself in quite a bit of blood and after making it to the bathroom had much more exit my body. I called for Joe to wake up and on the third call he finally responded and I relayed what was happening. In the few minutes of discussion of what to do the bleeding stopped. Joe decided to call his mom, the expert of all things pregnancy, and then he called the on-call doctor. The bleeding had remained stopped and so he told us while we could go to the ER right then, unless the bleeding started again nothing would be changed by doing so and we might be just as well to wait the three hours until our doctor made it into the office. Many silent prayers had been said up to this point and I felt at peace about waiting to see my doctor. By peace I don't mean that I thought there was any hope that I was still carrying a live baby inside of me, but peace in terms of this would be an okay choice and comfort that all would be okay.

Joe's mom meanwhile chose not to wait for our call to come but got right in her car and headed over. This also happened to be a night where Chloe's bad dreams led her to sleep on our floor in our room. With all that was going on, all of us except Noah were up and wide awake when Diane arrived at 5:00am. This was a blessing in that I had other people to talk to to distract myself from what we all believed was the inevitable conclusion - we had begun to have a miscarriage. Now I have never had a miscarriage and have experienced nothing but perfect pregnancies so far. I have never taken a negative pregnancy test. So this feeling of loss was a first for me. With Diane already here we were able to head out as soon as Dr. Lesser's office was able to get us in - which was FAST.

As we drove I had several mixed feelings. This pregnancy has been different in that I hadn't yet quite wrapped my head around the fact that we were having a third baby and because of that I felt guilt that maybe this had happened because I hadn't loved or wanted this baby enough. I also was clinging to the fact that everything COULD be okay. In seeing that blood and feeling that loss I KNEW that I did and do want this baby and I wanted everything to be okay. We arrived with Joe and I expecting the worst but hoping for the best.

To our surprise, the best is what we got. The doctor examined me, found no more active bleeding and in fact found that my cervix was still completely closed. Then came the moment when we, Joe for the first time, heard the heartbeat of our sweet little child - strong and healthy. YES! When we questioned the doctor, she replied that sometimes these things happen - it could have been a random vein that burst and resealed, but it was in no way related to the pregnancy. I breathed a sigh of relief that I could maintain my normal activities and not worry that this was a sign of a hard or lost pregnancy. Just a fluke that I had never heard of before.

As I reflected, tiredly, on the events of that morning later that day, I couldn't help but be grateful and that is why I post this - to remember the tender mercies of a loving Heavenly Father. After the initial shock wore off, at no point was I in a state of fear. Through prayer I was blessed with a spirit of peace and comfort that, no matter the result, I would be okay. There are so many wonderful blessings to the gospel in which I believe and one that I am most grateful for is the knowledge that we are led and guided by a Heavenly Father that loves us and will guide and protect us as much as we allow him while we are on this journey known as life. I am grateful that this little child inside of me is alive and kicking (literally, I felt those flutters for the first time this week) and that we have the opportunity to add a child to our family and to have the opportunity to teach our children the gospel! Although maybe I would have preferred not to experience this scare, especially at 4:00am, I am grateful for experiences that put things into perspective and show me how much I, one tiny person, am loved.

April-May Lessons Learned

More than a month has passed since my last post and my excuse is not that I have been too busy, it is that I have had zero motivation to sit at this computer and type anything. Add to that my camera being left in the car and unavailable at cute kid moments and there you go. The sad part is that three of the last four lessons that I have recently taught at church have touched on the importance of keeping records and journals. As this blog serves as a journal of sorts, the first lesson I have learned is that I need to be better at doing this even when I don't want to. I don't want to miss recording something that someday I or my children will want to look back on fondly. So there is lesson number one. Other lessons learned include:

Taking a picture of your cute little girl cannot for long hide or make disappear what the smile is intending it to - the disasters that await in the kitchen behind at the hands of two little rascals. Childproofing cabinets can work wonders for my sanity

Short family get-a-ways are fun and the kids love indoor pools in cooler spring weather...

...however on those trips under no circumstances should these two be put in a bed together and have it be expected that they will:

1. Go to sleep when we tell them to

2. Sleep through the night

3. Allow us more than an hours sleep at a time

They are lucky they are so stinking cute!

Bountiful Baskets are the best things ever! $15.00 and a somewhat early get out of the house time gets you this harvest of fruits and vegetables. This week we received:

-6 corn on the cobs - 8 limes - 2 bags of petite carrots - 1 head romaine lettuce - 1 dozen large brussel sprouts - bag of apples - 7 mango - 8 bananas - a small watermelon - 2 butternut squashes - 10 peaches - 7 tomatoes-

Again, all for $15.00! This co-op is great often locally grown produce with the option to purchase organic and although you never know what exactly you will get we have so far had fun with experimenting with things that we maybe wouldn't otherwise buy. So if you live in Utah, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, or Arizona, you seriously need to check out the link above. Starting can be a little confusing so if you have questions, let me know! LOVE IT!

My last lesson is one that is learned daily in my house - no matter how much these munchkins send me scrambling daily, no matter that I sometimes get scared about adding a third to the mix, no matter that my house rarely stays clean for more that 10 minutes, I love my life! There is nothing I would rather be than a wife and a mom to these two boogers!

Oh Baby!

With excitement and a little fear we announce that we are expecting baby number three to make it's debut sometime around November 2, 2010!

Easter Conference

With it being conference weekend and Easter, we had quite an eventful couple of days.

During conference, we have the opportunity to listen to the prophet and apostles share testimonies and teachings about the gospel. This can sometimes to hard for young kids to sit through (all told the conference is about 8 hrs long over the course of 2 days), so we came up with lots of activities to keep them interested in the room happily! Add Easter excitment to the mix and here is a sampling of our excitement:

Can you tell these kids are excited about the idea of decorating eggs??

Easter morning we made a yummy breakfast of cinnamon rolls (a conference tradition), bacon, and these so so good hash brown bakes. I couldn't find the link to the online recipe, so it follows the picture for anyone interested.

Hash Brown Bakes:

Ingredients:
20 oz refrigerated (or thawed frozen) shredded hash browns
1 1/2 cups shredded or diced ham
1/2 cup chopped green onion
2 1/2 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 large lightly beaten eggs

Combine first four ingredients. Add eggs. Toss well. Heat at medium and add 1Tbsp oil to large skillet. Scoop by 1/4 cupfuls and flatten slightly. Cook 3-5 minutes on each side or until browned.

These are best served warm and we had tons of leftovers so if you have a family the size of our small eaters, maybe just do half.

If you have kids, you know the day is not complete without a visit from the Easter bunny. The kids walked right by these when they first woke up but they defintely did not miss them the second pass by.

My kids participated in about four egg hunts this year, with one still set for this upcoming weekend, and they just as excited for the one coming up as they were for the first one.
I love Noah walking into the house and dumping out his haul right on the kitchen floor - good thing it was clean!

A couple of our other weekend activities:

Making strawberry jam. Chloe LOVES to help me cook, and is actually a really good little helper. She was so happy to get to help with this!

Making egg carton flowers. Although I was going to wait to do this while Noah was sleeping, we painted these with his help as well and I am glad it worked out that way because he really enjoyed it - and with washable paint, even though he ended up with it all over, it also came off very easily as well! The stems weren't as sturdy as I thought they would be, and I am still a newbie at things of a crafty nature, but I think they turned out pretty well!

I love that Easter fell on conference weekend and that so many of the messages focused on making our families and our homes places of strength, and places where testimonies are grown, the gospel is loved, and the spirit can dwell. I am not perfect in these goals, but I am grateful for the encouragment and renewed commitment I receive when I hear such council. I am grateful to know the true reason we celebrate Easter - that it's not about the Easter bunny, and egg hunts, but about our Savior Jesus Christ. I am grateful that because of his life, atonement, death, and resurrection, I - with my family - can have eternal life with those I love the most. There is no better message or goal than that.

Carboard Cars Creation

It is no secret that Noah loves Cars. He loves the movie, his soft blanket, all his diecast cars, if it's a car it's perfect for him. We had a huge cardboard box that Joe, being the ever creative dad, decided it turn into Radiator Springs.

Chloe loved being dad's dirty little helper in this project

I never cease to be amazed at the fact that often the kids have more fun with these homemade toys than the one's we pay good money for, but either way I am glad that so far this little creation has brought them lots of entertainment!