The Morrill Family

Testing the Blogger app!

2011-11-14T21:26:00.001-08:00

I just found out that blogger has a smartphone app! I've spent so much less time on the computer lately (and that's not going to get better any time soon, Nathan pulled to standing today!), being able to blog from my phone should make it a lot more likely to happen! It looks like I can load plenty of pictures, but they all go at the end without writing in between. That's sad, but better than nothing!

So here is a set of three pictures I took while making dinner this evening. Nathan had just taken a short nap and needed cuddles, so I plopped him on the couch with the other three who were watching Pink Panther (and luckily David cuddles were enough so I could go make dinner!). I love the progression of Nathan not seeing me, looking over, and grinning at me. He sure is a sweet guy. :-)

Okay, I've tried three times and it keeps posting the pictures out of order. Which doesn't show the cute progression. That's disappointing...

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-10T23:14:00.000-08:00

As with all things in my life (especially cleaning), blogging comes in fits and starts. So it's been two months since I blogged last. Oops. So here is the obligatory Halloween costume picture (only a week and a half late!). Hopefully I find the time, energy, and motivation to blog again before two months pass this time!

Every year since Ryan was born we've had coordinating costumes (with the kind of exception of the year the boys were knights and Katy ended up being a strawberry fairy by day and pink bunny by night...she was supposed to be a princess to coordinate. I say "kind of" exception, because it could be argued that the strawberry fairy fits the theme of Fantasy with the knights...and at least the boys matched if that's too much of a stretch).

Pooh & Tigger

Dash & Jack Jack

Buzz & Woody

Tinkerbell, Captain Hook, & Peter Pan

Princess Leia, Darth Vader, & Luke Skywalker

Princess Peach, Mario, & Luigi

It's been fun, but it's getting harder! Not so much because of the extra person, but because the kids are getting old enough to have strong opinions about what they want to be. Oh, and I'm not forcing them to coordinate, they really want to. We have a few ideas left that will probably work (expect "super heroes" at some point). This year we ended up settling on the theme "Classic Halloween" - we have a jack-o-lantern, a witch, a skeleton, and a spider!

You can tell this is my fourth baby. I found his costume for $2.50 at Once Upon a Child. The head part was way too big and kept falling over his face (despite me having safety pinned part together to make it smaller). As long as I kept adjusting it he didn't mind it, though, and was pretty darn cute!
Smile?

Getting there...

Big smiles!

Dan took the pictures (at my command), so I'm only guessing that she's sampling our candy here. Seems a pretty good bet though! Katy is a pretty witch (easier on the girly girl & her mom than a scary witch). I made her costume (sorry boys, I swear I love you all too!), and it took two very late nights. And I indulged in putting make up on my little girl. Look at those lashes!!! It's a good thing she has so many brothers to watch out for her!

She's a little happy, don'tcha think?

David borrowed this super cool spider costume from my mom. Aunt Hannah wore it when she was his age! He really liked how the costume arms moved when his did.

Ah, Ryan, the hardest one to get to decide. He finally settled on skeleton thanks to his love of Minecraft (a computer game). It glows in the dark! And guess what - so does his face! It was pretty cool looking!

Here we all are, ready to go out! We got a decent haul - everybody still has plenty of candy (especially David). It was fun!

School!

2011-09-01T22:56:00.001-07:00

It's that time o' year again. Time to buy a bunch of name brand school supplies because that's what the list says to get, even though I rarely buy name brand anything. Time to buy the boys nice new clothes and hope they like them better than some of the ugly things they've been wearing lately. Time to start getting up early every day in exchange for many hours with only 2 children. Oh yeah, and maybe time for the boys to learn a thing or two! Maybe. David starts full time Excel this year, so chances are better than they were last year that he'll actually learn something!

Here's the big 3rd grader! I can't believe how grown up he's getting. He has really matured a lot the last few months. Who woulda thought David would ever be the easy one?

There was some ball dropping in the transportation department this year. Rather than contacting us prior to the first day of classes as it stated in bold in the letter, they didn't contact at all. So I called at 6:45ish the morning of, and was told a 7:09 pickup down the road a little ways. So David & I went out at 7:04 and waited. And waited. After a little while I went back to check up the baby, and he was awake so he got to come out and wait some more. Finally after about a half hour we walked back home, I woke up Katy & Ryan (never something I like to do!), and drove David to school, ending up leaving at 7:47, 2 minutes after his class started. I've only been to his new school once, so that was a little adventure in and of itself (my phone sent me into a neighborhood and told me my destination was on my right. Um, no). I walked David in (hadn't brushed my hair or teeth...), and his teacher was really happy and nice about everything. When he was dropped off he brought me a note that said "Pickup between 6:58 and 7:00." So, either she had come but 10 minutes earlier than the time I'd been given, or she hadn't come and was just planning that for the next day. Either way, this morning she picked David up in front of our house at 6:59. Phew!

And here's 2nd grader Ryan! Interestingly, they both wore those matching fleeces for their first day, when it was just a quick random purchase at Old Navy last weekend (on sale, of course!). I didn't think they'd need such warm clothes for August 31st. Silly me.

Well, today was the second day of school, and as far as I know things are going well! Cross your fingers & toes that they keep going that way!

Sidney & Nathan

2011-08-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Nathan is a lucky little guy. He's the only one of my children to have a Smith cousin close in age. It's really fun to have the two babies at the same time! Of course, the size difference being much less than the age difference makes Nathan look a little dumb, but that will pass in a few months.

See, Sidney can sit up all by herself. Nathan needs a bumbo. What did I tell you? It looks like he should be able to do everything she can!

This progression of pictures cracks me up. Here they are sitting nicely next to each other. Now watch what happens next:

Sidney has scooted around kind of in front of Nathan...

"I like your face, it's really soft"

"Can I use this thing too?"

"Mama, save me! This girl is in my space!"

Hot Tub Time

2011-08-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

One of our favorite things about Grandma & Grandpa's house is the hot tub. This holds true for every single member of our family (with the possible exception of Nathan. He doesn't really seem to care, which is surprising when you consider the utter joy he shows about being in the bathtub!) Not being able to go in it while I was pregnant was really, really sad. Sure glad I never have to go through that again!

Katy likes Sidney. 1. She is a baby. 2. She is a girl. What more could you want?

Chubby babies! I just want to squish them!

Nathan was born 6 days before Sidney turned 5 months old. In this picture Nathan is 1 day shy of 5 months, so just barely over HALF Sidney's age! Wouldn't guess it from looking at them!

Most of the Morrills! Including Molly. Stop dropping dog toys/rocks/sticks in the hot tub, ya dumb dog! We aren't out here to play with you!

Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band

2011-08-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the summer I spent some time looking around at all the activities going on around the area - library programs (I think we ended up going to 9 or 10 between 4 different libraries!), cheap movies, etc. I even thought to look at stuff happening around my parents' house, and stumbled upon a good one! Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band was doing a free concert at Lake Meridian, about 2 miles from my parents' house. Dan has been a fan of Ryan Shupe for a long time. We went to a concert at BYU the semester after David was born, so it's been at least that long. So since we wanted to visit Grandma & Grandpa anyway, might as well go then!

I have lots of pictures from that trip. I intend on posting lots of them between several different posts. If I don't follow through with that, I'm sorry. There just isn't enough time in the day or energy in my body to do everything I want to do. I've done a better than usual job of keeping the house clean this week, so I didn't get around to watering the grass at all (bad week for that to happen!). Sigh.

Here's most of the group at the Ryan Shupe concert. My parents, Danny (home from BYU for the summer), Nadine & Scott & Brady (in town for a week), and our family all went!

David played on his DS the entire time. Well, at least he didn't cause any problems that way!

See, we were there!

Grandpa loves Nathan. :-)

Here's the three missing from the other pic - Brady on the far left, Grandma, and Scott. Actually, I just looked at the first picture again, and they're there too, just up the hill! Nope, I'm not going to go change what I wrote.

After the concert Dan & I got our picture taken with the man himself! Yay! If only we hadn't had the recently set sun behind us, it'd be a bit better of a picture. Oh well.

Summer Fun!

2011-08-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Making a Summer to-do list has become kind of a "thing" lately. Apparently it started here, although I'm pretty sure I first heard about it here. We did a Summer list last year, but it wasn't as cute as the one we made this year. I really like the idea. As Kimba says on A Soft Place to Land, "it helps me be more intentional with our time." It helps us remember what we want to do, as well as remind us of what we've already done! It helps keep the summer from turning into an endless stretch of mindless sitting around at home (often having way too much screen time). I was really happy with our experience last summer, so we did it again this year! I looked around at all the other cute lists out there (my favorites being the latest versions of Meg's and Kimba's), took the ideas I liked best, and came up with this:

Two months later, here it is:

I need to check off Pajama Day, we did that on Monday (Complete with French Toast for dinner! It was fun!), we're probably going to Powell's today, and I can check off Crafts whenever since we've done a couple (although not checking it off helps me remember to do more). That leaves Put on a Play (I'd like to do Goldilocks & the 3 Bears or The 3 Little Pigs. Maybe for FHE next week?), Wash the Car (it needs it badly!), Bowling, and Chuck E. Cheese (both of which we will probably skip because they cost money. Besides, we went to Oaks Park Amusement Park, I think that will have to count!). And go to the park one more time. I would like to point out that we've been to the park 9 times since summer started 2 months ago, and of the 9 only 1 has been a repeat park!

Now that I think of it, it would have been really fun to take a picture of everything we did. Maybe make a big picture collage of all the Summer Fun activities. Definitely an idea to think on for next year! Well, I got pictures of some of them at least, and here's the one that I was wanting to post:

When I put down "Make T-Shirts," I was thinking of letting the kids paint on them. Aunt Miriam mentioned doing tie dye, and I'm so glad we did! It was a lot of fun! The big boys in particular love their shirts! We made more at Grandma & Grandpa's house when we were there a week and a half ago for the "family reunion" (When does it become a family reunion instead of just a visit? All 16 members of the Smith family were there, which meant all 3 married daughters brought their whole family from at least a few hours away. Are we old enough to call it a reunion?). We really like tie dying!

Morrill cousins!

2011-08-07T21:55:00.000-07:00

One of the saddest things about leaving Utah is being so far away from Dan's family. We didn't see them all that often while we lived there, but certainly more often than we do now! So we were so excited when some of them decided to come visit us here in Washington! Dan's sister Heather brought her family from Pleasant Grove, and his sister Becky brought her family from Glendora, California, and met up at our house last Sunday night! Between the three families we had 12 kids (10 of which are boys!) running around, so it was a little wild and crazy around here! The kids had a blast with their cousins, and were sad to have them go after only 2 days. :-( We'll definitely have to get together again soon!

I handed Dan the camera and told him to take pictures. He took 10. These are the two best of the lot:

Ryan was cranky and making angry face is most of them. Katy wasn't feeling well and refused to smile. Oh well, what can you ask for with so many kids? Especially when most of them are rather strong willed. Yes, of course I mean that in the best possible way! ;-)

Katy turned 4!

2011-07-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my new quest to blog about things I missed without stressing myself out about doing them in order, I'm jumping back a month and a half to June 3rd - Katy's birthday! Now, Katy is my one and only girl, and that alone often makes me spent extra time, attention, energy, and money on her. Add on the fact that she is truly adorable, and that she really enjoys dressing up and being doted upon, and, well, we have a lot of fun together! A little while before her birthday we went dress shopping. As in "pick out a bunch of dresses that we like and try them on to decide which one to get" dress shopping. We both had a lot of fun! It's not that I wouldn't take the boys clothes shopping, but they would do just about anything to avoid it! And, while there ARE cute boy clothes, the kinds of clothes my boys would choose are not them. So it was fun for me to have a mother-daughter dress shopping experience. :-) Even better, I got a free $10 Kohl's card in the mail, and the dress Katy chose was on sale, so I got a $24 dress for $2.16! Win!

On Katy's birthday she got to wear her pretty new dress! And new hair clips. And birthday girl ribbon. She sure felt special!

So we went out front and took some pictures of the beautiful birthday girl. It helped that it was such a gorgeous day!

How come it's cloudy and rainy now at the middle of July?

One of the reasons this was the chosen dress was because it was good for twirling!

I wish I got that much joy out of spinning in circles!

See? So much happiness!

Then it was time to look at the plants. :-)

One of Katy's favorite things to do is to go have lunch with Daddy in Portland. So on her birthday we went and picked him up and went to Red Robin with him! Yum!

Too bad Katy didn't like the ice cream... :-P

And of course she got a balloon, which also caused much happiness.

After lunch, Katy, Nathan, and I stopped by the OMSI for a short visit. Then we hurried home to be there before the boys got home from school. Then after dinner (chicken noodle soup at Katy's request) we went to the school for the "Family Fun Night." A bunch of little games, a couple inflatable toys, and some cotton candy. I don't have any pictures from that. Odd.

After Family Fun Night we came home and opened presents. Katy was ridiculously spoiled this year, for several reasons. First of all, Katy is happy to get things for presents that the boys wouldn't, as seen here:

That is not the face the boys' would make if they opened up a birthday present to find shoes!

Also, several of her presents were really, really good deals. I found some Littlest Pet Shop sets at Toys R Us that were not only on sale, but had 2 sets stuck together for that sale price. So what was normally $12.99 for one set was $8.99 for 2 sets. And I got her 2 tutus, a pair of wings, and the hair bows using a $40 gift card I bought for $20. Grandma & Grandpa Smith got her the set of Disney Princess dolls when they were almost half off. So we sure stretched the birthday budget this year!

And finally, Grandma & Grandpa Morrill just flat out spoiled her! I called to recommend a particular DS game, and instead Katy got a DS, DS case, pack of multi colored styluses (styli? What is the plural of stylus?), and 3 games. Thanks, Grandma & Grandpa!

That reminds me, I should have Katy send thank you notes. Every time I or one of my children has a birthday I intend on writing thank yous, and keep forgetting until eventually I decide not to do it because it's been so long. How rude of me!

Katy immediately got in her new jammies, put on a tutu & wings, and started playing her DS! Too bad it was already so late because of Family Fun Night!

Then it was cake time! Now, I've made ice cream cakes forever, the same way my mom made them when I was growing up: ice cream smashed into a pan. This time I finally tried doing an ice cream cake with cake in it, and it was so yummy! I have a set of 8, 9, and 10 inch springform pans, so I baked cakes in the 8 & 10 inch ones. After they cooled I wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. Then I put plastic wrap in the same size pans (two long pieces making a cross), smashed the ice cream into them, and wrapped the ends of the plastic wrap over the top. After everything was frozen I built the cake by doing the 10" cake, 10" ice cream, 8" cake, then 8" ice cream. Then I made some whipped cream, died it bright pink, and frosted the cake with it. It wasn't the prettiest thing ever but it was delicious! I'm excited to play around with different flavor combinations of ice cream & cake (and I could even do different flavored whipped cream)!

Katy sure had a wonderful birthday! We are so happy to have her as part of our family!

4th of July!

2011-07-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

Man, I'm on a roll lately with blogging(hopefully acknowledging it doesn't ruin it)! I have plenty of stuff I can/should blog about from the past couple, well, years really. So please forgive me if I jump around date-wise. I'm going to just post what I feel like rather than impose restrictions on myself ("I have to post in order, I can't post that until I do all these other things first) that serve no purpose other than stress me out.

Quick question while I'm thinking of it, has anyone found a way that works for them to have a "hard copy" of their blog? As long as I'm doing this, I really should have something printed out, but I don't know about using so much colored ink. And I don't know that I'd want to just do it in black & white. Any suggestions?

So anyhow, we had a pretty fun, exhausting 4th of July here at the Morrills' house. We had a bit of a leisurely morning, then were on the go most of the rest of the day!

Our first stop was to buy fireworks. I figured all stands were pretty much the same price, so we might as well go to the one put on by the local high school band. On the way there I looked at an ad for a different stand. Started walking around the band one, noticed the prices were often 3-4x what I'd seen in the ad, so we bought a few little ones and went in search of more bang (literally, ha!) for our buck. We found the one from the ad and got some really good stuff! We usually spend around $100, and I think we did a much better job this year of choosing what to get with that money. We've had too many fountains in years past, this year we made sure we had a good variety.

After a quick stop at home to drop off our fireworks, we headed to Fort Vancouver for their 4th of July celebration. It wasn't quite as much fun as I'd hoped. They advertised "traditional family fun games and entertainment all day!" and it was a little lacking, but we had a pretty good time nonetheless.

One of the activities was a children's parade! They gave out the necklaces, glasses, headbands, and stickers, and we got to walk in the little parade through the park.

Now, we would have been ready to leave about a half hour before the parade, but stuck around because Katy & Ryan especially wanted to do it. Well, it didn't take long for Ryan to change his mind. Nice, Ryan.

When I took this picture and looked at it on the camera I thought Ryan had decided to be nice and do thumbs up. Then I saw it on the computer and thought he was making fists at me. Then I noticed the headband in his hands. He's still got grumpy face, but at least he isn't making fists at the camera!

Near the end we spotted some inflatable toys off to the side, so I decided that was as good a place as any to quit being in the parade and watch instead. The entire parade consisted of a band, a bunch of kids, a pipe band, some horses, and a bunch of convertibles. Really, it was nice that we got to do the parade thing without it being a major ordeal. We do wish they had thrown candy though. :-) Nathan was really interested in watching the parade, especially the cool shiny cars!

Poor baby boy in a pink & purple stroller. I'm tempted to get a manly one since they're pretty cheap, but just can't justify buying a new one when this one works fine. He doesn't mind (yet)!

After the parade we went to the inflatable toys. Nathan decided he was hungry, so I sat in the shade and fed him while the kids did these over and over again. Despite the expression on David's face, they all loved it!

Even cranky Ryan perked up!

And beautiful Katy was thrilled to get to go so many times!

Baby's hungry, gotta wrap this up. After that we hiked back to the car and headed home. We had some down time, grilled some burgers and hot dogs, watched a bit of a movie, then did fireworks. Fun was had by all. The end.

Jump! Jump!

2011-07-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

My family got a trampoline a really long time ago. I have a picture of me with baby Hannah on it, and she's 17 now, so it's been around a while! It is amazing how much use we have gotten out of that thing! And since the youngest member of my generation (Hannah) is only 8 1/2 years older than the oldest member of the next (David), it's been used constantly the entire time. My kids spend a LOT of time on it whenever we visit. I wondered if that would change since we got our own last Christmas, but it doesn't appear to have lessened its appeal at all! When we visited last month I don't think the kids even went inside before running over to jump!

I also must say that digital photography is wonderful. I'm just old enough to really remember having film cameras and all the stress of balancing trying to get a good shot with not wasting pictures. I frequently feel grateful that I can just snap away and delete later!

When I saw Uncle Danny out jumping with the big kids, I ran out and took a bunch of pictures. I love trampoline pictures. They're often quite entertaining! Of the pictures I took, here are my 7 favorites, and the reasons I like them:

Katy's arms, and everyone in the air at once

Ryan's height! That's some serious air!

Katy holding hands with Uncle Danny, and Ryan's arms - what the heck is he doing?

Uncle Danny about to touch the ground!

David looking like he's about to land on the others and Ryan booking it out of the way

Again with the air, Ryan!

Everyone in the air at once, and Uncle Danny holding Katy. She was just over a year when he left on his mission and didn't see him for two years, and has only seen him a couple times since he got back. It's nice that she isn't taking any time to bond with him!

Nathan

2011-07-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I uploaded these pictures, then totally forgot about it. Losing my mind! Anyhow, I figured that since the big kids had had their pictures taken outside, I should take some of Nathan as well. He gets his picture taken ALL the time, of course. But I wanted some outside to coordinate with the siblings, in case I ever get around to printing some(Ha!)

Poor Nathan. He really only has two positions for now: flat on his back and on his tummy. I knew that I prefer tummy time pictures, so I took a couple with him on his back and flipped him over...

This could have been so cute! If only Little Man would stop freaking out about the grass and push his face up instead of into it!

Please?

Look at that face! He's totally saying "Mom, I don't like this! I'm trying, but I hate this stuff!" Nice try, little one. I guess we'll do the "on his tummy on the grass" shot in a couple months!

trying to get a picture in which all 4 children simultaneously look nice

2011-07-08T22:05:00.000-07:00

After my somewhat successful "photo shoots" with the 3 big kids individually, we went to the park. Then we came home (to Grandma & Grandpa's house) and had dinner. Then I tried to get one of all 4 together. It had been enough time that the kids weren't antsy from their individuals, but MAN ALIVE was it hard! Here are the most noteworthy:

We start off with Molly in the way, which the kids think is hilarious. Good, now just get the dog out of the way and capture those nice smiles!

Well, the big kids are all smiling pretty nicely. But the posing isn't great (is it just me or does Ryan look huge?), and Nathan is looking the wrong way.

It mostly went downhill from there. Not 1 person looks great here. Although I do love the expression on Nathan's face!

Really nice of Ryan & David, Katy smiling but in the wrong direction...and I finally notice the girl on the trampoline who has been there for a few shots (Aunt Hannah was babysitting at the house).

So I switch directions, and now Ryan is extra huge! Gotta rearrange...

Nah, let's try moving somewhere else...

Whoa, that's quite the fake smile Katy!

As I'm going through these I'm really enjoying Nathan's expressions. He needs some thought bubbles or something. You can just see him thinking "Sigh...I sure wish these crazy people would leave me alone."

Nom on those fists, buddy!

Finally, a fairly decent one. All 4 children looking at the camera, and the 3 big kids with fairly nice smiles. Well, I'll try again sometime. That's the great thing about digital pictures, I can just keep trying til I get something nice!

Katy

2011-07-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

Katy was the next one I took pictures of. By the tree again. Clearly I am very imaginative in my choice of background. Hey, find something that works and stick with it! So, at this point the kids were starting to rebel ("I thought we were going to the park!") and I didn't want to waste too much of Nathan's nap time before leaving, so I only took a few of Katy. Also, she is really pretty so they turned out nicely without having to take lots!

I'm so jealous of her hair. Mine doesn't curl even when I put effort into it, hers dries this way!

Like I said, in a hurry. Perhaps if I want to have home shots substitute for professional ones I should learn a bit about posing!

My sweet, sweet little girl. How everyone does love you!

David

2011-07-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

Next up in my spontaneous, unprofessional "photo shoot" was David. That kid has a weird assortment of teeth right now. Two permanent teeth halfway through in the middle, a space on one side, and a dangler on the other. I don't know about you, but it draws my attention every time I look at him or a picture of him! Love you, David!

So we started off in the bright red Old Navy shirt. At least it matches Ryan.

See what I mean about the teeth?

Okay, now I'm 80% sure that Ryan spontaneously posed with his arm up on the tree and I liked it so I recommended David do something similar. But in execution...this picture sure makes me giggle! Looks like he's sayin' "Heeeyyyyy ladies..."!

Caught a decent smile

Then this one is my favorite of his face. Not the best composition ever with the tree right there like that, but at least he looks pretty good. Also, I just noticed that he's wearing an Old Navy shirt in this picture, too. We really don't shop there very much, I swear!

Ryan

2011-07-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

While I was in Kent I wanted to take the kids over to Clark Lake (where my talented brother-in-law took our family picture that's here on the blog) to take some pictures. I haven't ever had any training or anything, I just wanted to play around and hopefully capture some nice "real" shots of them. Then we were on our way out to the car one day when I realized my parents' yard is just about as nice as any park, so I spontaneously had Ryan go stand by a tree and started shooting. I'm really happy with the cute smiles I got of him! They're pretty decent pictures, if I do say so myself! Then I did a very, very brief editing job (just brightened them up a bit) using Picasa. I'd love to learn Photoshop someday, but Picasa works for now.

He started off not all that smiley...

Then he got into it! There's a really good chance I just said "toot" or something to get such a happy laugh from him. Whatever works, ya know? Oh, and I didn't tell him to do that with the branch, he just randomly did it. I like how it looks though.

Yup, I probably said "toot" again.

Then he decided he wanted his sweatshirt on. Which is a little sad, because it looks like an Old Navy ad from now on...

Decided to try again for a few vertical shots.

I like this cute face, even though it isn't a big smile!

So all in all, I think they turned out pretty well. I think I'll print out one of the close ups (pre-bright red sweatshirt) and see how it looks on the wall. Oh, and I have pictures of the other kids as well. You'll just have to wait to see them! ;-)

Teaser...

2011-07-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

I've been taking pictures of the kids lately using the "good" camera. I took a bunch while we were in Kent last week that I'm really pleased with. I have all 3 kids that can talk trying to get a turn on the computer, so here's a teaser for now. This is now one of my favorite pictures ever!

Nathan's Blessing Day

2011-07-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the day sweet baby Nathan was blessed. It was May 1st, I'm only 2 months behind! Not too bad for a mom of a little one!

Ready to go to church!

Here's everyone from the family that was able to come. From left to right we have Aunt Nadine, Dan, cousin Brady, Nathan (duh), Great-Aunt Patti, me, Great-Uncle Jim, Great-Aunt Peggy, David, Great-Uncle Steve, Grandma Smith, Ryan, Grandpa Smith, Uncle Danny, Great-Grandpa Smith, and Great-Grandma Smith. Whew!

After church most of the family came back to our house for lunch. I was able to get a picture of Nathan with each of the grandparents/great-grandparents that were there! Here's the little man with Great-Grandpa Smith (Sorry you're blinking, Grandpa! I couldn't tell on the little screen!).

Here he is with Great-Grandma Smith. I like how he's looking at her. :-)

Here's Nathan with Grandma Smith.

And here he is with Grandpa Smith.

Our family of 6! Katy sure loves her brother!

Later that night, trying to get a good picture of the little man. I just love those cheeks! Want to squish them!

Got one of him smiling! It's so hard to do! He is an amazingly smiley baby most of the time, but hold up the camera and he turns straight faced. He must not have seen the camera to be smiling at me so happy!

Happy Easter!

2011-06-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

(Feel free to pretend it's several weeks ago and I'm totally on top of things)

Here are my cute kids all dressed up for Easter! Why yes, I did make their ties/dress & accessories! Katy has really pretty fabric flower in her hair, and a matching purse. Sorry boys, it's not that I love her more. It's just a lot more fun to make girl things! Be glad I made you ties!

I've been seeing tie onesies all over crafting blogs, and I was excited to give it a shot. I made it a bit too big, so it looks like it's tucked into his pants. Oh well, it just means I can make his next one the exact same size and have it be right!

We usually celebrate the secular aspect of Easter on Saturday, but this year it didn't work for us since Dan had an early voice lesson and the boys had basketball games. I'm sure their Primary teachers were thrilled to have them hopped up on candy Sunday morning!

Tolerating Tummy Time

2011-06-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

Please forgive the abundance of pictures. I love babies, especially when they're mine. :-)

Nathan has recently developed the upper body/neck strength to not mind tummy time for a few minutes at a time. It's cute!
Look how strong I am!
Whoa, check out those trains!
Look at that one over there!
And that one, it's a different color!
Whoa, this is fascinating!
And...now I'm tired.

Later that evening, pretty much the exact same thing happened.
Totally digging these trains again!

Mom, do you have to take pictures of me all the time? I'm busy here!
Wait, I'm not sure I like this so much...
Nope, I'm definitely done!

We shoulda gotten one a long time ago!

2011-06-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

I have a real love/hate relationship with Black Friday. I love getting good deals. It's probably an addiction. But the early morning, the crowds...yuck! It tends to be a pretty miserable experience. And yet every year I go.

Last Thanksgiving there were some stores doing things even EARLIER than the usual 5 am. Walmart had some midnight sales, and Toys R Us had some starting 10 pm the night before (aka Thanksgiving). I carefully made my lists, planning on going to Toys R Us around 10 and getting to Walmart around midnight. It was not to be. I wish I had written down the specifics 6 months ago, but suffice it to say it took FOUR HOURS between arriving at Toys R Us and driving away with the goods. Four. Hours. I got there a little after 10, but didn't get IN the store until around midnight I believe. Then I had to, you know, do some shopping, followed by standing in line for an hour and a half. Ew. Ew. Ew. I will not be doing THAT again. I saw on Facebook that a friend of mine saw the line outside her Toys R Us, turned around and went home, and ended up getting the same deals online. Doh!

Okay, big tangent there. Anyhow, one of the beloved items that I got at Toys R Us was a big trampoline! Dan & I both grew up with one, and the kids love jumping on the one and Grandma & Grandpa's house, so we've been wanting one for a while. The good Black Friday price was the opportunity we'd been waiting for! Merry Christmas, kids!

Only then it took us a few months to put it together. The typical soggy Northwest weather, plus me being pregnant and tired all the time, plus not knowing how hard it would be, made it hard to get started. We finally got it up a little while after the little parasite was out of me.

I wish we had bought one sooner, or at least put it up sooner. The kids LOVE it! I am frequently amazed by how nicely all 3 big kids play together on it! They spend much more time outside, and much more time playing together without fighting. It is wonderful!

So here is some evidence that this is true! They love it, and they play nicely! Awesome!

Smiles for Daddy

2011-05-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

(I still have plenty of pictures I intend to blog about between the last post and this one. But I took these just this evening, so it feels good to get them posted already!)

Nathan has gotten progressively more smiley. At this point (10 weeks old!) he tends to have a nice smiley period a couple times a day, where he likes to smile at and talk ("a goo" being the favorite, of course!) to somebody. It's usually Mommy, sometimes siblings, and occasionally random other people. Daddy hadn't been the recipient of a really good smiley period yet because they seem to always be during work hours. Today he got one! So of COURSE I ran over with the camera. :-)

I love all the rolls on his chin/neck!

"Nate-win!" (how nearly 4 year old Katy pronounces his name)

Sweet little guy :-)

Then I remembered that my mom has been asking for a vertical picture for Grandpa Maughan, so I turned the camera...

...just in time! I got a good one!

More Pics of Nathan: 4 weeks to 5.5 weeks

2011-05-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

Here are my favorite pictures from the middle of April:

Tummy time has been universally disliked by all of my children. I'm pretty sure that's true of the vast majority of babies. Nathan will tolerate it for a couple minutes sometimes, then he gets tired of it and cries. Look at the size of that noggin, it's quite a work out learning to hold it up!

I love love LOVE this picture! Until Nathan starts smiling easily, this will be hands down the best picture of the four of them! All three of the big kids have nice, genuine smiles. I'm pretty sure I said "toot" or something like that. Whatever I did, Katy found it hilarious!

Nathan always gets fidgety when I lay him on his tummy to take a picture (due to his dislike of tummy time), so I sometimes use that to try and wake him up if he's sleeping when I don't want him to be yet. It didn't work this time.

Nathan likes having his little hand up next to his face. It looks like he's posing. :-) On a less cute note, the poor guy sure had yucky skin for a while there.

One of many things I have learned from having babies is that pacifier desire varies greatly! David & Nathan both loved their pacifiers from day one, Ryan & Katy gagged on them and hated them (although Ryan eventually took one a little bit). After having the last 2 not want them, I sometimes forget that this little one often just wants to suck on his "fi." It's especially true when he acts like he wants to nurse, then gets fussy once he gets started - he wants to suck without eating. He's really good at keeping it in, too. And while I think it looks ridiculous for an older toddler (like 2+) to have a pacifier, I think it's absolutely adorable on a little baby!

Apparently this was not a time that he really wanted his pacifier, though. Check out those cheeks and lips! I just want to kiss him!

Oh, to be that comfortable so easily!

Nathan is just now as I write this (at 8 weeks) starting to be a very smiley little guy. I got lucky and caught one back at 5.5 weeks though! Nothing is as cute and sweet as a baby smile. :-)

Spring Break at Grandma & Grandpa's House!

2011-05-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

The boys had spring break this year the first full week in April. Nathan was only 2.5 weeks old when they got out the Friday before, but I've never been one to slow down much "just" because I have a new baby. So as soon as school was out, I picked the boys up and headed to Grandma & Grandpa's house. I had planned on leaving earlier, but packing, just like everything else, takes longer when you have a little one. So we ended up hitting some traffic and having to stop to feed Nathan, but it wasn't all that bad.

The day after we arrived was General Conference. I had the kids come out and watch when President Monson spoke. Here's Ryan with Grandma & Grandpa.

And here's Katy with Aunt Hannah & Sadie. Sadie is a bit big to be a lap dog, but Molly is far bigger and tries sometimes too!

Monday, April 4th (Nathan is 3 weeks!) we went to the Pacific Science Center, specifically to see the cool Star Wars exhibit. While we were trying to get out the door I came across this scene - David & Ryan admiring their baby brother. It sure melts a mama's heart. :-)

3 week old Nathan, starting to lose the brand new look

All the Morrill kids at the Science Center.

And here they all are with R2-D2 and C-3PO. Nathan sure looks like he's enjoying it, huh?

Gotta go in the butterfly house! Every time we go at least one of the kids claims to not want to, but they always end up excited!

Here, some proof that I was there too!

Katy joined Nathan on the floor for tummy time. Awwww.

Ryan had an ENT appointment scheduled for later in the week, so we actually only stayed for part of Spring Break. The kids still managed to go in the hot tub a lot! Seriously, they were in there twice a day most days. Here's a picture of Molly's favorite thing to do while they're in there - drop a toy or rock in. Naughty pup.

Here's a shot of the kids looking, if not smiling.

One night I went to the rec room and found this. Sweet Katy had put this little doll to bed on the treadmill. Love that girl!

Nathan got to take a bath in the sink. He looks worried about it.

One of the other highlights of the trip was going to get new baby chicks! They were really, really cute! We picked out six of them - one for each person (except Nathan) that went to Del's. None of them are alive still. I haven't told the kids. Maybe by the time we go again I can just say they've grown up or something.

Well, this is quite the non-eloquent post. Oh well. At least I did it. And during my precious baby sleeping time too!

Pictures of Nathan: age 1 week - 2.5 weeks

2011-05-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

I've had some issues lately with not being able to find the camera, then the cord to upload pictures to the computer, then the camera again. I still can't find the cord (despite cleaning the office quite a bit!), so I had to take the card out of the camera to load them that way. I've had issues in the past with cards getting corrupted that way so I was hesitant and nervous, but it seems to have gone smoothly this time. So, I had nearly 500 pictures on the card. I hadn't deleted them last time I loaded them (worried about losing the brand new baby pictures until I was positive they were on the computer properly!), but there were still plenty of new ones! I'm going to do several posts over the next few days, hopefully I can maintain motivation until I'm caught up!

The last post had pictures up until Sunday, March 20th, when Nathan was 6 days old. Here we pick up the next day, at 1 week old. Check out how yellow the whites of his eyes were! Poor jaundiced baby!

Snuggling with Daddy...and laundry mountain. Just keepin' it real, folks.

Holding the baby is a favorite activity around here. :-)

Here Nathan is at 9 days old. I went to check on him taking his nap, and decided to take some pictures. I thought I might not take quite so many of this child since he's #4, but that hasn't been the case so far.

While I was admiring my sleeping baby he started to wake up. I absolutely LOVE the way new little babies stretch. They stick out their little face and arch their little back...it's just precious!

Temporarily looked like he might go back to sleep...

Then more stretching...

And yawning...

And finally started to get mad, so it was time to stop the photo shoot.

I love how squishy new babies are, how it doesn't phase them to sleep with their head at an angle like this.

My baby and his mama. :-) Yes, I have red eyes. Yes, that's an easy fix. No, I'm not going to go through the trouble of doing it and re-uploading and finding the right place in the post for it. Sorry.

Nathan got to meet Great-Grandma & Great-Grandpa Smith on March 30th, at 2.5 weeks old. They hadn't been able to visit earlier thanks to other great-grandkids giving them a cold. Thanks a lot, guys! :-P

My time at the computer has come to a close, the chubby baby needs to be fed. Again. It takes a lot of milk to grow big and strong!

Some Pics of the New Kid

2011-04-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't loaded any pictures from my camera since Nathan was 6 days old, so I've been waiting to blog until I got around to doing that. Then I decided to just post what I have on the computer already, and I found 10 I wanted to share anyway. Good thing I didn't wait any longer! I'll find time to get more on here one of these days, but hey, I have a newborn to care for!

3/16, 2 days old. This is about all we saw of Nathan's eyes for the first several days of his life. And even that much was rare! It's a lot of work when your face is that chubby!

3/17, 3 days old. Getting loves from the new big sister!

3/18, 4 days old. Looking pretty yellow in the natural light from the window. Probably because he was pretty jaundiced. Poor little guy got his bilirubin checked NINE times before we weren't worried anymore. In Utah the kids got put on lights at lower levels than Nathan reached, but here apparently they hospitalize rather than just send lights to the home. So rather than do that, we just kept checking. Every day. It was fun.

Also 4 days old, also very yellow. Not aware that he is having a photo shoot.

Having good dreams while Mommy takes a ton of pictures. So nice that I can just snap away without wasting film. That's going to be one of those "old people" things, isn't it? "I remember when you could only take one picture and hope it turned out, and then you have to wait to see it." It's especially nice with newborns, because sometimes the pictures turn out scary ugly!

I did more playing around later that night. I actually put the baby on the kitchen table so he could have the kitchen lights on him. Clearly that made for a weird coloring, but I still like the picture of my sweet naked baby!

3/20, 6 days old. Grandma was about to leave. Believe me, this picture does NOT show how the children felt about that! Ryan and Katy especially get really sad when being separated from Grandma. :-(

Our first picture of all 6 of us. Awwww.

Hugs from the Ryan.

And last, still 6 days old, the cute sleepy guy.

So yeah, maybe I'll get around to getting more pictures on the computer sometime soon. And maybe I'll get some laundry or dishes done. It's amazing how little time I have left over for such things these days! Does anybody want to come hold a sweet 1 month old so I can do my chores?

Meeting the Sibs

2011-03-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Nathan was born at a pretty convenient time to meet his siblings right away. The boys get home from school around 4, then bedtimes start around 8. Nathan made his grand appearance at 5:33, so his brothers and sister were able to meet him about an hour and a half later!
Look how happy they were!

Getting their first look at the new one! And no, I was not aware that my entire back was hanging out. Perhaps we should photoshop the hospital gown to be a bit more covering... Hey, just be glad I'm sitting down!

Nothing like a newborn to make the other kids look huge in comparison! When did my little Katy get so grown up?!?

Snuggles from the eldest.

Then Ryan's turn to love on the babe.

We have now experienced a 20 month age gap, a 34.5 month age gap, and a 45 month age gap between a new baby and their next older sibling. And thus far (knock on wood!) we haven't really had a problem with any of them. The 20 month was hard because the big brother still needed so much physical attention (diaper changes, food prepared for a toddler, etc.). Other than that, we've been really blessed to not have jealousy issues or anything (again, knock on wood!). David, Ryan, and Katy have all been really excited for their new brother, and at 1 week post birth they're still very happy to have him around! I've been worried that they will be bothered by all the time I spend on him, but apparently they're pretty used to me sitting/laying around due to nausea/exhaustion/bedrest/back pain/more exhaustion/etc., so it isn't that much different to them than the past 9 months. I forsee lots of jealousy when Nathan starts playing with Katy's toys, but that's still many months away. For now, the sibling adjustment has been smooth and happy!

Birth!

2011-03-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's the moment you've all been waiting for - the story of our latest addition!

After being on bedrest for 25 days, my body refused to go into labor. Not only that, my water wouldn't break (which it has all 3 other times), and an induction attempt failed! I kept thinking it was close/starting, but 20 days after bedrest ended I was still pregnant. We scheduled an elective induction for 39 weeks (the earliest doctors will do an elective induction), and crossed our fingers that this induction would work!

We got to the hospital a little after 8:00 pm the night before 39 weeks so we could start the "miso" (Misoprostol, a cervical ripening pill). They had to monitor me for a while to make sure I met the criteria for miso - basically, not very dilated and not having very many contractions. Both applied to me, and around 10:00 (things sure take a while in hospitals...) we got that started. The order was to repeat miso doses every 3 hours until I no longer qualified, then switch to pitocin. I'd had a dose of miso at my failed induction, and it definitely worked to give me contractions, so I was hopeful it would work again!

Well, I took a nap, read some, watched tv some...no contractions. Finally around 1:00, right before my 2nd dose of miso, I had a contraction! Yay! Then a few minutes later I had another! The nurse said "Let's hurry and give you your next dose before you don't qualify anymore!" She did, and the contractions kept going.

We watched The Blind Side (the hospital had some cool movie channels), then went to sleep. I had very regular, very wimpy contractions for the rest of the night. So at 4:00 am, I definitely didn't qualify for another dose of miso. I did not qualify for pitocin either, though. I was having too many contractions. They just weren't doing anything - I was still around a 1 and pretty thick. We were starting to think we'd be sent home again with the baby still cozy in my belly.

Well, at some point later in the morning I was able to start pitocin. We continued to watch tv and doze off and on. The contractions started to get a little worse, and when they checked me around 11:00 am I was finally dilated to a 3! Yay! We started to think we might finally have this baby!

Around 1:00 pm (12 hours since my first contraction), Dr. David stopped by. He gave me the go ahead to get an epidural. I was a little nervous that it would stop my labor (which seemed so fragile to me after trying so hard to get it started), but he said we'd just turn up the pitocin as needed. In the time between ordering the epidural and getting the epidural, the contractions started to get a lot more painful, so I was very glad it was already coming!

I just have to say here that I love epidurals. There are plenty of things in life that I can at least kind of see why people make different choices than I do. This is NOT one of them! To go from in a lot of pain to really comfortable is just wonderful. It makes the rest of labor so much more pleasant. I don't see anything about doing it natural that makes it worth it. It just seems stupid.

At 3:00 pm I was checked again, and I'd made it to a 4. Interestingly, my water still hadn't broken (again, every single other labor has started with my water breaking), so Dr. David came back and broke it for me. I've always been pretty fast from 4 to 10, so we knew the end was in sight!

Dan and I both dozed off for a little while then (thank you, epidural!). Shortly after 5:00 pm I woke up feeling nauseous and a little weird down there, so I had the nurse check me. I was a 7. Within about 10 minutes or so I was feeling some definite pressure with contractions, so I asked to be checked again, and I was complete! I texted my mom that it was "go time!" at 5:21 according to my phone.

Dr. David & the nurse busied themselves getting ready, while I threw up a couple times, as is my history. Then it was pushing time! I pushed through about 4 or 5 contractions, and the baby was born at 5:33 pm! Somehow my epidural didn't totally numb me for that, and it was really, really painful! Dr. David kept saying things to the effect of "Wow, this baby is NOT helping you at all!" His little head came out cute and round...a little coning would have been appreciated!

Baby's first picture, fresh from my tummy. :-)

He grabbed my finger right away

SO HAPPY to be done being pregnant! Oh yeah, and happy to have a sweet baby boy (name undetermined at that point) to snuggle.

When Baby came out, everyone's first response was to the effect of "He's huge!" I'd been saying that he was going to be my biggest baby, for multiple reasons: bedrest increases baby size, I was farther along than I'd been with everyone but David, and I'd gained 44 lbs this time around (35 with David and high 20s with Ryan & Katy), surely it wasn't all my fault! I was guessing he'd be a low nine pounder. Wrong! This BIG little baby was 10 lb 4 oz! Holy cow! No wonder I'd been so uncomfortable!

When Dan & I were first expecting our first baby, my 2 favorite names were Nathan and Kathryn. Dan vetoed Nathan at that point, and Kathryn didn't get used thanks to that baby being a boy. When we were expecting baby #2, those were still my favorite names, and Dan went along with Nathan until near the end when we changed to Ryan. When we were expecting baby #3 the names were John (the first half of that pregnancy was the football season John Beck did amazing things, so we really liked that name) and Kathryn, and we finally got to use Kathryn. Well, this time we started out with the names being William (probably calling him Liam) or Ellie (possibly short for something). As soon as we found out it was a boy, I changed my mind and read through lots and lots of baby names. I went back to Nathan as my first choice. We asked the kids their opinions, and they all wanted Nathan (I want to say that Ryan came up with it on his own, but I must have mentioned it at some point, maybe even just that it was almost his name). Dan didn't love it, but was okay with it. A few nights before this baby was born, I started questioning if I wanted to use Nathan after all. I considered going with William (still Dan's first choice), and also kind of considered using James (yes, after Jimmer Fredette, who Dan has a huge man crush on). Then the baby was born, and I still hadn't decided that I loved anything else. So since I've loved the name Nathan for a long time (at least 9 years, since that's when we were first pregnant with David), we decided to go with that.

Nathan Daniel Morrill

Born March 14th, 2011 at 5:33 pm

10 lb 4 oz, 21 1/2 inches long

the pendulum has swung...

2011-03-08T16:31:00.000-08:00

Well, after being on bedrest for almost a month, it seems the baby has taken the hint to stay put. I've been back on my feet for 2 weeks now, and he seems very content to stay where he is!

We had a false alarm at 36 weeks 5 days (Saturday 2/26), with contractions getting stronger & closer together...which went away at the hospital when they had me drink lots of water. On bedrest I'd been drinking lots of water because it was there and I was just sitting/lying there. So once I was up, not only was I not drinking as much water because I was busy with other things, I was needing more water thanks to finally being able to vacuum and other physically demanding activities. Oops.

The next Tuesday morning (3/1) at my appointment I told my doctor that I thought I might be leaking amniotic fluid. Since I HAVE had a slow leak with 2 of the other 3 (with Katy being a BIG leak instead), I've been overly worried about that. He checked, got the alkaline pH test (which means yes!), but no ferning pattern (which means no, and is more accurate than the pH test). So that meant most likely I hadn't, but he wanted me back in on Friday to check again.

Meanwhile I was having lots of contractions every evening. Then Thursday I had contractions all day long. I noticed them start at story time at 9:35ish, and they continued at roughly 5 min intervals until I went to bed at midnight. I took a nap, I drank lots of water, I went for a walk...nothing made them get any better or worse. Ugh.

So then I went in on Friday (3/4), and when we checked for amniotic fluid it was the same results - alkaline pH, but he didn't see any ferning. At this point, though, taking all things into account, he decided there was a good chance that my water HAD broken, and I had possibly been walking around with ruptured membranes for a couple days. The thing is, there's risk either way - if it hadn't broken, it's too early to induce without medical reason and the baby could be not ready, but if it had, there's a big risk of infection. So he decided to go ahead and say "Yes, her water has broken, we need to do an induction."

I was so excited! Katy & I went home and met Dan there, I got last minute things packed (like my glasses, that I obviously can't just leave in the bag), I ate a little lunch since I wouldn't be eating for many hours, arranged for the kids to be taken care of (assuming at that point that Dan would be able to pick them up around bedtime, or at least only a couple hours later), and headed in to have this baby!

We got to the hospital around 1:00...and got to wait a while before anything started. Then finally they got an IV in and did a round of penicillin (thanks to the possibility that I'd broken my water days earlier), but still no pitocin. We finally got started on pitocin around 3:00, but were still feeling hopeful that the baby would be born that day.

Then...nothing. And more nothing. They kept turning up the pitocin, and eventually I started having some pretty painful contractions. But I didn't dilate at all. I was still at a 1. Boo. So at midnight (after NINE hours on pitocin) they turned it off to give my uterus a break, and planned on resuming in the morning.

Around 4:30 am my nurse came in and inserted a pill to help make my cervix more favorable. That's supposed to be done 3 hours before pitocin, so at that point the plan was the turn the pitocin back on around 7:30.

So at 7:30ish my new nurse came in, woke me up, and told me she was going to do an amnisure test, which is a 99% accurate in telling if your water has broken. According to her, even the ferning test is only 60% (which I find hard to believe it's THAT low). We knew there was a possibility that my water hadn't really broken, but had been acting certain to avoid the drama of "she probably has, but maybe not, but at this point we think it's better to induce than wait around for an infection to kick in, especially since she's almost 38 weeks, the fetal age is probably about 5 days ahead of that even, and she's measuring large." In hindsight, I wonder if I could've avoided having that test done, but I was too groggy and startled to argue. So she did the test, and it was negative. My water hadn't broken after all.

Now, I wonder if this would have been handled differently in Utah. I'd been in the hospital for 19 hours, been on pitocin for 9 of those, and was really anxious to get this baby out. Add in the complications of childcare (all 3 of my little ones had been at my visiting teacher's house for 16 hours rather than the expected 7 or 8), the cost of being admitted to the hospital a separate time...I wonder if a more family centered and less hippy liberal society would've just let me continue with the plan to start pitocin again. Maybe not, but in my annoyance with the whole situation I think it's possible.

So they decided to not resume pitocin. At that point I was having regular, painful contractions as a result of the pill (I have GOT to find out the name for it, I keep hearing it and forgetting immediately!), so they had us stay until those started spacing out and being less painful. We were finally discharged shortly after noon, just shy of 24 hours after being admitted.

Now THAT was disappointing/discouraging/frustrating! I had no idea that pitocin could fail to work, and even if I had, I sure wouldn't have thought it would happen to me! The end of pregnancy always seems to take forever, and knowing that pitocin couldn't even get me to have this baby is certainly not helping! It's hard to have the motivation to go for a walk or something when pitocin didn't do the trick.

So now I'm huge, hormonal, and cranky. My super strong pregnancy fingernails all broke off. And today at my check up I found out that the baby was back up high (apparently he'd dropped at the hospital), and I un-dilated back to a 1.5 (I'd been up to a 2.5 before we left). Once again, if we hadn't already been planning on being done after this one, we certainly are now! But hey, my other pregnancies have all been way easier, but produced fairly high maintenance babies. So maybe this baby will be super easy to make up for all the trouble he's caused prenatally! Please? It's only fair!

Some Thoughts on Bedrest, Part II

2011-02-22T13:07:00.000-08:00

So, I went to the doctor, only to find out that I've gained another 4 lbs (making NINE in the last 2 weeks), which puts me over the 25-35 lbs recommended weight gain for the first time ever AND at the highest weight of my life, despite starting out lighter. And my uterus, which had been measuring right on with the 1 cm per week, jumped from 34 cm at 34 weeks to 37 cm at 35 weeks, and now to 39 cm at 36 weeks! So I'm as heavy & as big (making me as uncomfortable) as I should ever get...but not likely to deliver soon. The doctor actually said "I don't think you'll be having a baby this week." Waaaahhhhh!

It seems like everyone I talk to has a story about someone being on bedrest, then not having the baby for a while afterwards. Is there a sensitive period for pre-term labor or something? Like maybe I would've had the baby at 33 weeks if not for bedrest, but making it to 36 weeks means I'm stuck pregnant for another month? Or is this evidence that my bedrest was unnecessary? I know, I know, hindsight is 20-20, and it's FAR better to be overly cautious than have a 7+ week premie baby with major problems. But the whole experience has made me feel like the baby's going to come any day now, so I'm getting impatient already!

So, back to my thoughts on bedrest.

One of the other big challenges with bedrest was getting the errands run. I have a notebook where I wrote down everything I thought of that needed to be done, remembered, etc. I sorted the errands (mostly shopping) into things that could wait vs. things Dan had to do for me (then when my mom came I got to give her some of my things that could wait!). Any other time he's had to take care of me & the household, it's been just for a couple days max. So I think he was surprised by how necessary (see Honey, it isn't all "fun" shopping!) & exhausting errands are! He had to go grocery shopping several times - sometimes just for a few essentials like bread & milk, other times he had a much longer list. I sent him to the library a few times (thank goodness for being able to put things on hold from home!). He took Ryan to a doctor appointment, and the boys to the school library night. And there was some other shopping that couldn't wait, like paper plates.

For the most part Dan did very, very well! After his first trip I learned to organize my list so he wouldn't be walking back and forth across the store. And I felt the need to tell him what a good price was on the things we needed that weren't on sale, like cereal (low double digits per ounce), whether or not he appreciated it. There were only a couple issues, like getting the wrong kind of hot dogs which cost $4.49 a package instead of the ones on sale for $1.99 with a coupon to make them $0.99 (same brand even, just wrong variety). But I've made mistakes like that from time to time too...I'm overly sad about it when I do it, too! Also, I would not have gotten that large of plastic cups or paper bowls, they have lead to a lot of wasted food & drink by the little ones! And I just avoided having him buy things that we could survive without until I could go (like toilet paper - we were running low, but not out quite yet). Then my mom came and went on a big stocking up trip to Costco for us, which Dan appreciate far more than he usually would!

One of the things we did that was a really good thing for us was going whatever-the-opposite-of-green-is (brown?), and using disposable plates, bowls, cups, and silverware whenever possible. Practically eliminating dirty dishes sure helped keep the kitchen clean! Yes, I said in my last post that 3 different people did some dishes for us (and that didn't count my mom, so 4 people!)...we're just really that bad at dishes I guess!

One of the interesting things to see was how motivation waned in the 3.5 weeks I was on bedrest. At the beginning I was super on top of the kids picking up every single thing that belonged to them or that they got out (which is easier to do when you're lying on the couch than distracted doing something else!). And I really wanted to help, so I did whatever I felt like I could, like folding laundry (which is something I usually really struggle with). And Dan was SUPER amazing at doing the housework. Seriously, our house has never been as consistently clean as it was from a couple days in to about a week later, and stayed really good most of the following week or two. My dear sweet husband was even rather smug about how much better of a job he was doing than I usually do (love ya Honey!)! Then it slowly started to go back to usual. The kids did NOT develop the habit of picking up after themselves like I had hoped. I stopped searching so hard for ways to help. And Dan seems to have discovered how hard it is to keep up the motivation to do the same chores over and over again when they're just going to get undone in a few minutes and the computer is so enticing. So while I would've been nice to have a spotless house that entire time, I feel rather validated that he got to experience that aspect of homemakership (apparently not a word, but it should be)!

One more quick thing, then I should go attack the dishes (some of which have been soaking for a couple days :-\ ). One other thing I learned was how many productive things I could be doing on bedrest. It was rather disappointing, because it took away my feeling of "having" to relax. I found that I could do some mending by hand, I could call the insurance company to try and sort out stupid issues (nope, wasn't successful yet), write thank you notes (I have a LOT to do!), etc. That realization made it so I was procrastinating rather than just enjoying bedrest. Blah. I think that was about the point I stopped doing much help.

So, that was my bedrest experience. As I said several times (and thought very frequently!), it was much better in theory than in reality. :-P I'm glad to be done and back up on my feet. It was definitely not an experience I have any desire to relive.

Some Thoughts on Bedrest, Part I

2011-02-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, February 21st, 36 weeks along

I've been thinking that I really should write down some thoughts about my bedrest experience. Now that I'm back up, I'd better do it before I either forget or have a baby to keep me busy!

So, some things about bedrest are obviously awesome. I read a few books, watched 3 seasons of Psych (one of the few shows that is interesting to me without being inappropriate for my 3 year old companion), and played some Super Mario Bros on the Wii. We had dinner brought in MWF, with 10 total meals that I didn't have to make or worry about (or pay for, for that matter)! I even had several different people come over and help clean my house while I relaxed (attempted to, at least) on the couch. When you first think of bedrest, these are the wonderful things that initially occur to you.

A weekend of bedrest would be really great. Or maybe part time bedrest - do chores & errands in the morning, be on bedrest the rest of the day. But full time bedrest for 3.5 weeks was much less awesome than one might expect.

I've never been a great housekeeper. Over the years I've gotten better at keeping the living room clean...but don't look past that one room! I had 3 different ward members do some dishes when they were over for various other reasons, and I kind of felt bad that they assumed the mess was due to my bedrest! The truth is, it is pretty common for there to be dishes in my sink, piles of laundry waiting to be folded and/or put away, etc.

The irony of the bedrest situation was that then, when I was supposed to do far less than usual, I wanted to do WAY MORE! I've decided that there are 4 main reasons for that:

First of all, I noticed it a lot more while laying on the couch. I don't know where my days usually disappear to (something I hope to be more aware of PBR - post bedrest), but I certainly don't spend much time just sitting there looking at the mess! So even though I had several things to entertain myself with on the couch, I was definitely way more aware of the mess in that part of the house!
Also, I wanted the house clean because of all the people that kept coming over! Most of the people that brought us dinner came in to put it on the table and chat with me for a few minutes. Even though they obviously knew that I wasn't supposed to be cleaning (and probably would've felt bad if I'd gotten up and cleaned while they were making me dinner!), it was still hard to let people, several of whom I don't know very well, see the messiness. Add to that people coming just to visit or something, and we had someone in our house at least 4 or 5 times a week, when it's often not at all or only once.
I think there was some "I want to do it just because I'm not supposed to." Having it feel rebellious to hurry and clean off the table was a lot more exciting than usual! Maybe we should find a way to incorporate that into regular life..."No, Rachel, DON'T vacuum!"
And on top of all that, it's nesting time for this pregnant lady. Sometimes I had a really hard time relaxing (sleeping at night was particularly difficult) because I couldn't stop thinking about organizing the playroom or some similar project. Something about being close to having a baby makes your brain go crazy and notice all sorts of messes that usually don't phase you. So the whole not being allowed to clean would've been hard enough without that nesting instinct, but with it, it was even more frustrating!

I have my weekly checkup in 13 minutes, so I'd better run. Rather than save this for later and end up with a superpost, I'll just post what I have now, and (hopefully) do another one (or two) later!

Katy's Lesson

2011-02-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

About a year or two ago, our kids started to really like having Family Home Evening. We've been really consistent about having it since then (prior to that we probably hit about 50% on average, often going in cycles of several weeks having, several weeks forgetting).

We've discovered recently, also, that the kids, or Katy at least, care(s) a lot about following the usual order of things. A few weeks ago I tried to get by with skipping the conducting, opening song, prayer, kids singing individual songs, and lessons, and just have us play together on the Wii and have a treat. This did not count as Family Home Evening to them/her.

So, I'd had this little chart (yes, it's just a piece of baseboard with nails partway nailed in) partly done for a while, but I hadn't decided exactly how to do the little "icons." I had it in my head that I had to find cute graphics online and mod podge them on or something. Then a week or so ago I just grabbed my paint pens and free handed what you see above. Nothing spectacular, but it works!

Wow, I'm rambling. Day 5 of being stuck at home, and apparently I'm already losing my mind. 20 days to go...oh dear!

So I finally had this chart and all the name things done for last night's FHE. Ryan remembered that he had lead the music last week, so it was his turn for the opening prayer (yes, they've been moved along since last night...by whom, I don't know, I just noticed that when I took the picture!). So I conducted from my perch on the couch, David led us in singing a new song they're learning in primary (I've got to find it online, none of them know the tune very well and neither Dan or I know it), and Ryan said the opening prayer. Then the kids each took 2 turns singing a song to us.

Then it was time for the lesson. We often use a wonderful FHE binder that Great-Grandma Smith made for us a few years ago, and we also occasionally have the kids just pick a picture from the Life of Christ or Gospel Art Kit and tell us about it. But since I was stuck on the couch, and we were running low on time, I just told Katy it was her turn to give the lesson, and waited to see what she did. I don't know what I expected - probably "I don't know what to do!" or something. I certainly did NOT expect what happened!

Sweet, adorable, 3 1/2 year old Katy stood up at the front of the room and said "Don't fight." After a brief moment of surprise, Dan & I asked her some questions like "Why aren't we supposed to fight?" She elaborated nicely, and the boys added to the discussion...and it was the best lesson ever, in about 1 minute or less!

This morning while getting their breakfast, the boys started bugging each other (surprise!) a bit. Sweet little Katy piped up "Remember my lesson!"...and they actually stopped! A little while later, after Katy finished eating and was snuggling with me on the couch, she started bothering David. So I said "Don't forget your lesson!"...and once again, it worked! She stopped immediately!

Now, I have no illusions that all fighting will stop or anything. But it seems that for now, at least, Katy's simple lesson to not fight has actually made a difference! Go, Katy!

One more way this pregnancy is my hardest one...

2011-01-29T13:56:00.001-08:00

Thursday morning I called my doctor to tell him about some preterm labor symptoms I was experiencing, so he sent me to the hospital to get checked out. I'm not contracting & I'm not dilated...but I got a positive fetal fibronectin (fFN) test. If it had been negative I would've been sent home and back to regular activity, because a negative result means it's 99% sure I won't give birth within the next 2 weeks. A positive result is less useful information. From what I've learned over the last couple days, fFN is a protein that acts like a glue to keep the amniotic sac in place. If it shows up at this point in my pregnancy (32.5 weeks), it may mean that the glue is disintegrating ahead of schedule. From my reading, it sounds like most, or at least many, of women with positive fFN tests go on to deliver at full term. But there's a higher likelihood than if it had been negative.

So now I'm on bedrest. With 3 kids (and a few pets) to care for, errands to run, cleaning to do, etc. My doctor admitted that it was probably being overly cautious, but worth it just in case. I'm having a hard time not doing a quick chore or two every time I get up to go potty (which is pretty often since I'm supposed to drink 8 oz of water every waking hour), but I would sure feel horrible if this baby came 7+ weeks early because I couldn't resist the urge to move the laundry along or something! I'm at the computer right now, which I'm not entirely sure is allowed (I tried to call yesterday, but my doctor wasn't in and the person I talked to wasn't really clear about), so I'd better go lay down again. Wish us (all 6 of us!) luck!

David's Baptism

2011-01-20T22:41:00.000-08:00

Well, it took longer than I intended (what doesn't?), but I finally got some pictures from David's Baptism day uploaded!

So, last year we had church 1-4, then David's Baptism was at 5 (on November 21st). I didn't think we should try to make it home and back, so we just hung out in the church for that hour. David wanted to get his white jumpsuit thing on almost right away, so we have quite a few pictures of him in it. I thought he looked really cute! Of course the pictures didn't capture that, he looks kinda scared/scary...

Like here, he looks very unhappy, but it's the best one I got of the three of them.

Katy had a lot of fun having so many grandpas there! Grandpa Smith, Grandpa Morrill, and Great-Grandpa Smith were all there, making Katy one happy little girl!

Passing the time with Where's Waldo.

I'm busy reading, Mom...

Awww, David and his Daddy :-)

And somehow I totally forgot to have a picture taken of our whole family, so here's proof that I was, in fact, present for the festivities. After the Baptism we went back to our house to have spaghetti & two kinds of crock pot sauces (angel chicken & chicken cacciatore) with Grandma & Grandpa Smith, Aunt Hannah, Grandpa Morrill, Great-Grandma & Great-Grandpa Smith, Great-Aunt Patti, Great-Aunt Peggy & Great-Uncle Steve, and my cousin Elena, her husband Kyle, and their kids McKaylee & Marlee. It was a full house! But even with the big crowd, we greatly overestimated how much food we would need and ended up eating the leftovers several times that week.

I ended up typing this up in bits and spurts throughout the day today, hopefully it didn't end up too disjointed!

David's Birthday!

2011-01-06T22:29:00.000-08:00

I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions this year, since they always just end up making me feel guilty. BUT I did decide that I will be better about blogging, as it is the only journal-y kind of thing we have. I have several things from the end of last year to post about, and I'm not even going to really stress about getting them in order or anything. I'm trying to keep my expectations low in hopes of actually achieving them. :-)

So David's 8th birthday was November 17th. I was feeling too (lazy) tired to wrap his presents, so we put them all in bags. It sure made clean up easy! Here he is with his haul (another bonus of bag use - everything looks big!).

David has been asking for this electronic Pokeball for a while, so Ryan got it for him. There was much excitement.

I was sneaky and went to the school book fair on Monday the 15th while the boys were in class and got this for him. Then Tuesday the 16th was family night at the book fair, and he really wanted to get it, but I told them I'd spend $5 each and it was 7 or 8 I believe. So on Wednesday the 17th he was surprised to get it for his birthday!

David had a very boring birthday cake. And we didn't even have it until the day after his birthday. Sorry, buddy! See, these things are part of why this baby is our last. I'm pretty lame at most things while preggo. At least Daddy lit it in a fun way!

Big eight year old David. He's looking so grown up!

So, I thought I'd write a little "David right now" info.

David is very into Pokemon. Playing Pokemon games on his DS is probably his favorite way to spend free time.
When not having "screen time," he usually builds with legos or trio in the playroom.
Lately he's also been very interested in Origami, and is pretty good at it.
He is an excellent reader, and I'm constantly struggling to find enough stuff for him to read. We actually have a difficulty that the stuff at his interest level is below his reading ability level, so he can blow through a chapter book (he really likes A to Z Mysteries right now) in an evening. He also really enjoys Pokemon books, especially the "fact" ones, and world record type books.
David is doing much better in school this year, not getting in trouble anywhere near as often. He enjoys his once a week Excel class, except for the fact that he has to get up so early (I wake him up at 6:20, and his bus comes at 6:48. Other days his bus comes at 8:58, and I've only had to wake him up a couple times ever).
David has recently discovered a talent in art, and has done some really good pencil drawings (mostly Pokemon, of course).
He loves to eat fruit (This is nothing new, I caught him getting himself fruit out of the fridge at 1 year old), and is generally pretty happy with anything I make for dinner. When we go to a fast food place he orders a cheeseburger, ketchup & pickles only, and if we go out to eat he orders a pepperoni pizza if it's an option (cheeseburger if not).
David is very excited to have a new baby brother, and loves to feel him kick. His second fast Sunday since turning 8 was a few days ago, and he told us that he fasted for the baby.

Well, that's David in a nutshell at the moment. Next up on things I plan on blogging about: David's Baptism!

Festival of Nativities

2010-12-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

Dan has decided to become incredibly popular & busy lately. He was asked to sing 1 solo in Relief Society, 1 solo at our ward party, 1 solo at our former ward's party, and 1 solo in Sacrament Meeting. Somewhere along the way (I'm pretty sure it was before he was asked to do all those different solos) he decided to join the stake choir. They did a 30 min performance at the Festival of Nativities last Thursday, then 2 Devotionals last Sunday (Dan did another solo at the Sunday performances, bringing the grand total to 6 if you count the Sunday performances separately).

Thursday evening I told the kids that Daddy had a performance that evening, and they surprised me by saying they wanted to go (I hadn't been planning on it)! We got there just a couple minutes before they sang, so we went right into the chapel to listen. Afterwards, I thought we'd stay for a few minutes to look at the Nativities (the gym was full of tons of them!).

Then we found the children's rooms.

We finally got going more than an hour later, past Katy & Ryan's bedtimes. They LOVED it! There was a cute little craft (baby Jesus made from a short popsicle stick with a button for a head, sitting in a condiment cup), some hands on Nativities (a refreshing change from being constantly nervous as we looked at the beautiful ones in the gym), a story corner, and - best of all - dress up clothes!

Of course, at the moment my camera has a dead battery and I have (once again) misplaced the charger. So all we have are some pretty horrible quality cell phone pictures. The room was pretty dim, which didn't help anything. At least we have something I guess!

First off we have sweet Ryan as Joseph. He stayed in this one for quite a while while playing with Nativities.

Here we have shepherd David & his little lamb, Katy.

Then I got one of all 3. And none of them look good. Oh well.

Katy actually wore 4 different costumes throughout the night, but I didn't get a picture of her as a wise man or an angel. This was the cutest by far, though. Sweet little Katy-Mary, loving baby Jesus. :)

Then we have another mediocre group shot. They had to wear hair nets under the hats, if you're wondering what's going on with Ryan's head.

All 3 of the kids had a really wonderful time. I was very impressed with the whole thing. Okay, so maybe it's just me, but you know how when you go to something like this you notice the things that should have been done differently? There was none of that here at all. It was very well done.

The next day Katy & Ryan both asked if we could go back. It went on for 3 more days...the days we had Dan's work party, our ward party (and the other ward party), and the Stake Musical Devotional. Sorry kids! We'll make sure we plan better next year and all lots of time there!

Fractions?

2010-12-02T15:21:00.000-08:00

So I missed blogging about Halloween and Thanksgiving, and I may come back to them at some point, but I want to just get this down really fast before I take my much needed relaxing time.

I helped in both boys' classes today (hence the much needed relaxing time), and right before I left David's class, his teacher said she wanted to show me something. In math they did something for the first time where they wrote numbers in to make an equation balanced. For this one particular example, they were supposed to make both sides equal 3. So, maybe 1+1+1 on one side and 2+0+1 on the other. I guess the only other option is 3+0+0. The only other option using whole numbers, that is.

David wrote 1 1/3+1/3+1 1/3 on one side, and 1 1/2+1 1/2 on the other. Now, we talk about fractions sometimes with relation to food, but I don't think I've ever written them down for him. I certainly haven't gone out of my way to teach him. And yet, he was able to figure out and write that 1 1/3+1/3+1 1/3=3.

With all the times that child gets in trouble, it's nice to have something to pat him on the back about.

the whole "it's a boy" thing...

2010-10-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know I'm kind of a jerk for whining about it. Plenty of people desperately want to get pregnant and can't, or get pregnant but miscarry, or have a baby with fatal birth defects, or something like that. I really do know how blessed I am that we have never had any problem bringing children into the world. I do. And I feel bad that I feel bad about the gender. But all that logic isn't changing my disappointment, so I just need to get this off my chest and hopefully that'll help me get over it. If you are someone who has struggled with any of those real problems (as opposed to my non-problem), please just skip this post so you don't hate me.

***Quick Note: I started writing this on Friday I believe, 3 days after the ultrasound. Today is Sunday, 2 days later, and I'm definitely feeling a lot better already. Just thought I should finish this up and put it out there.***

So, I have never gone to an ultrasound wanting it to be a boy. If I'd had a few girls I might've eventually wanted a boy, but I never got that opportunity! With #1 I wanted a girl mostly for the the-clothes-are-so-much-cuter kind of reasons (hey, I was only 19 at the time!). And because I grew up in a family with 4 girls and 1 boy, I just assumed I'd have mostly girls as well (I realize the flaw in the logic there...). I was disappointed that it was a boy, and I cried about it, but not much. With #2 I hoped for a girl, but I was pretty easily okay with having them both be boys so they could be buddies. When we found out #3 was a girl, I was ecstatic! It was SO FUN to buy pink things after having to deny myself that pleasure in the past.

When we went in for ultrasound #4 I was pretty confident (I told Dan 75-80%) it was a girl. Why? My pregnancies with David & Ryan barely phased me. I wasn't nauseous very much or very long into the pregnancy, I had plenty of energy, and the different hormone balance made my emotions more level than normal. With Katy I was really tired, actually got sick, was nauseous several weeks longer, and struggled with my emotions . This pregnancy has been a lot more like my previous girl pregnancy than previous boy pregnancies - I have been absolutely exhausted, overly emotional, and only within the last couple weeks (I'm almost 19 weeks now) has the nausea subsided somewhat (still hasn't completely gone away). No, I never did actually throw up, but I spent several hours every day for all of August and September just laying on the couch, waiting for the yuckiness to pass. And when I was feeling so miserable, I thought "At least this means it's probably a girl, I'm going through this so I can get another girl, it's definitely worth it."

Nope, apparently my pregnancies are just getting harder (so NO I will not reconsider having another baby to try for another girl!). I've been more nauseous, and it's a boy anyway. Rip off!

I have to say that I have been the most sad about the gender diagnosis this time than ever before. The reason this time is harder comes down to two things. First of all, we're going to be done after this one, so I can't just think "Next time it'll be a girl." Second, we've experienced both genders, and we've really enjoyed the pink one!

It's probably not fair to compare our experience with David as young, new parents with our experience with Katy as seasoned veterans. I know that there are many factors besides gender coming into play here. By the time we had our girl, we'd learned lots of tricks for taking care of babies (loud white noise, "super hold," etc.) . I'd learned how to nurse, and how to survive with a demanding little one (you sure learn to use those nap times!). So maybe it wasn't gender influenced AT ALL, but we definitely enjoyed our girl's babyhood a LOT more than our boys'.

Here's a tacky, superficial reason for wanting another girl: our girl was far cuter than our boys. Even as a newborn. Here's all three of them at 2 days old:

The boys both had the awkward, mushed, newborn look, Katy was already a beautiful baby. Yes, they grew cuter as they aged...and so did she. I still get comments all the time about how cute she is. Yes, it's a horrible & stupid reason to prefer having another girl, but our girl has been just absolutely adorable.

Also, our girl has been far sweeter & more cuddly than the boys. She still asks "Can we snuggle for a little while?" Could be just personality and not gender related at all, but from our small sample size, that's been our experience.

Here's another superficial one - I LOVE the cute girly things. I love Katy's pink bedroom with pink curtains and flowers on the wall, her love of skirts (If you see her wearing pants, either I need to do laundry or I fought hard because it's cold outside!), princess dress up clothes, and her sparkly shoes. I love how she loves dancing, how she picks flowers any chance she gets, and how much cuter her toys are than the boys'!

So I have plenty of dumb reasons for wanting this baby to have been a girl. But I really do have some practical reasons too!

Practical Reason #1 - bedroom situation

We have 3 bedrooms - one for mom & dad, one for David & Ryan, one for Katy & the baby. Katy can share her room with a boy for a couple years, but not forever. They will be 4 years apart, so Katy will probably start caring about changing in private when the baby is only a couple years old. We can have her change in the bathroom for a while, but I really think they should be separated by the time they're 8 & 4, probably even a year or two earlier.

Semi-Practical Reason #1b - bedroom decor

So, Katy will be sharing her bedroom with a boy for at least a few years. Does that mean poor Katy has to have her pink bedroom redone more neutrally? Or that Baby Boy has to spend a few years of his life with a pink room? Neither option appeals to me, but it has to be one or the other!

Practical Reason #2 - baby clothes

When David came along, we were poor college students working part time for ridiculously low pay. The majority of his clothes were hand-me-downs or purchased at DI, garage sales, lots on ebay, or maybe at a lowish quality store if we were lucky. Then David & Ryan both wore them, and neither were exactly easy on them. They're all in my parents' shed, so I haven't had a chance to look through them, but if I remember right we're going to end up either dressing this boy in trashed old clothes or having to buy new ones.

By the time we were expecting our Katy girl we'd both graduated and Dan had a good full-time job. And I'd discovered and started shopping regularly at the outlet stores near my parents' house - mostly Carter's and Children's Place. So Katy had lots of new, good quality clothes, and only she has worn them. Nevermind that they're cuter than the boy clothes, they're in MUCH better condition! Well, lucky for new baby Sidney, she can have an entire wardrobe of gently used clothes!

Another Semi-Practical Reason - pink baby gear

We bought a pink bouncy chair when Katy was a baby (the one we'd had for the boys had vibrated itself to death). And we got a pink bumbo in a raffle last spring. It doesn't really matter, but if I'm going to have a boy, I don't really want him sitting in a pink bouncy chair or bumbo.

And one of the biggest reasons that made me cry in the first shock wave of finding out - having another boy dooms us to many, many more years of scouting! I've been in cub scouts since last March, and I've never been very happy about it. David turns 8 next month, with Ryan following 20 months later. So I'll at least HAVE a cub for just shy of 5 years, hopefully I won't be IN cubs that whole time. Then 3 years after that, Baby Boy will turn 8 and it'll start all over again. And cubs isn't the end of it, that's just the only part I have experience with at the moment. They'll be involved until they're out of Young Men's, right? So we're going to have someone in scouts from next month until this baby goes away to college. Sigh...

Yes, I'm very whiny. I don't know if helps anyone to have all my reasons here in one place. I really AM getting used to it. I don't know that I'll ever be able to say I'm glad it's a boy instead of a girl, at least not until teenage hormones turn Katy into a she-devil. But I'm rapidly getting over the disappointment that I don't get my perfect little 2 boys & 2 girls. And now I'll always have the special mommy-daughter relationship with only my sweet Katy. Uh-oh, this sure isn't going to keep her from getting spoiled...

Ultrasound Pictures!

2010-10-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

I have decided that there are 5 main milestones in pregnancy - getting the positive test, hearing the heartbeat, feeling the baby move (although that one is a bit vague, I always have a couple weeks of "Was that it?"), getting the ultrasound, and, finally, having the baby. And next to actually having the baby, I think I get the most excited about the ultrasound. It's so cool to actually see a little person (at 18 weeks the baby is 5 1/2 inches, head to rump) growing inside you! I mean, you know it's there, but it's so neat to have proof!

David, Ryan, and Katy were all delivered by the same doctor, Dr. Peterson in Orem, UT. With him, at my check up around 20 weeks, he'd call the ultrasound place and have me schedule an appointment for sometime within the next week or so. I don't know if the difference is doctor to doctor or regional, but Dr. David here in Vancouver told me 4 weeks ago to go ahead and schedule my ultrasound for any time on or after 18 weeks. So the anticipation for the date was so much worse, knowing the actual day for almost a month in advance!

So Dan took Tuesday off of work, and he, Katy, and I headed in to see our little one. We were very excited!

Side note - I'm pretty sure we were emailed copies of Katy's ultrasound pictures. 4 years later, this place only gives printed pics. And of course our scanner isn't set up, so we'll make do with pictures of pictures.

Here's the baby! Really, it looks like every other ultrasound picture you've ever seen. But it's the baby growing in MY belly, so we shall oo and ah.

Here's another shot of the cute little profile.

And here's the face. These pictures always look kind of creepy to me, but we'll throw it on here anyway.

I don't know why they always take so long to get to checking the gender. The tech started at the head and moved down the body, taking lots of measurements of everything - head, heart, stomach, etc. Meanwhile, I'm dying to know if my strong suspicion of it being a girl is correct!

So she finally gets near the area, and says "I think I see boy parts." But then looks at something else for a long long time (probably 10 min or less) while I sit there hoping she was wrong. Then she finally gets around to pointing it out to me - nope, she wasn't wrong. And I guess she was worried about me being in denial, so she printed out 3 different pictures to prove it to me (out of 7 total). Yup, there's no doubt about it. That's boy parts.

I'll need to do a whole separate post about the gender thing. I know it's stupid to be upset about the gender when I've been so incredibly blessed to not have to deal with any pregnancy related problem - infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, whatever. And I don't want this baby growing up with a complex because Mommy wanted him to be a girl. Well, like I said, I'll do another post about it soon. Maybe that'll help me process it.

Katy's first day of Preschool!

2010-10-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

My baby started preschool (two weeks ago, of course, apparently I can't blog about anything until it's been a few weeks). I cannot believe she is that old! The boys seemed much older to me when they started preschool. Probably because they weren't the baby anymore by that point.

So, the boys got to go to an official, money-costing preschool. Katy is not so lucky. For one thing, she doesn't need it (David needed it to learn to sit still...we're still working on that with him...). For another, we're trying to cut costs at the moment (oh yeah, we bought a new car...I guess we could blog about that, too...). So Katy gets to do a once a week preschool with 3 friends from church, rotating houses monthly. Which works really well with me being unavailable in March and for a couple months afterwards. She's gone twice so far, and she loves it!

(I forgot to rotate this picture before uploading it, and blogger did it automatically. How did it know?)

Awww. I just love that girl!

When we showed up at the end, they were reading a story. It was Ten Apples up on Top, to go with the A theme. They also painted a picture of an apple tree (brave Teresa!) and colored a letter A worksheet. Katy showed me the things on her paper that start with A - apple, alligator, and rat. That's an armadillo, Honey. :-)

I'm doing the month of October, so I get to teach about the letter C tomorrow (or, rather, today...I have this set up to post tomorrow so you won't miss my beautiful frog post!). Should be fun!

One frog I am NOT willing to kiss!

2010-10-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago we had some pretty big rain storms. We're very used to rain around here, but it's usually the drizzly, don't see the sun for days kind of rain. This was brief (less than half an hour) periods of heavy rain, several times over a few days. And apparently it was too much for the local froggies, because we saw several over those days. Most were hanging out just outside the front door, one was sitting on the front door (perched above the window), and one was just INside the front door:

He was cute, so I took his picture, then took him back outside.

Apparently he had brought a friend inside with him.

I found him yesterday under my kitchen sink.

Now, I have no proof that this frog has only been there for two weeks, and it seems pretty weird that it would shrivel up so quickly. But it was fairly close to the front, and showed up when I was just putting the cleaning wipes away. So it wasn't like I was doing some deep cleaning that would unearth things that had been in there a long time. And maybe shriveling up happens really rapidly to amphibians?

I'm going to choose to believe that it was only there for two weeks. And that only 2 frogs made it inside, both of which have already been found. Because I don't have the energy to do the cleaning I would have to do if I thought there might be more of these lurking in my cupboards!

Back to School!

2010-09-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Now that the kids have been back in school for 2 1/2 weeks, I'll get around to posting their pictures. It's a good thing nobody really relies on this blog to know what's going on in our lives!
David is in second grade now, so that's a number two, not a peace sign. He prefers thumbs up, anyway (see here, here, here, and here, and that's just the month of August!).

And Ryan is in first grade now! For some reason that hits me harder than David going into second grade. Sweet little Rynan, all grown up and going to school all day every day.

And while I was sitting on the porch, watching them at the bus stop down the street, I remembered (from looking at other people's back-to-school pictures on facebook) that I wanted one of both of them. This is what I got. Oh well, at least I got decent individuals!

Katy and I have been enjoying our Mommy-Katy time! She is happy to tag along with me on errands (the boys are cranky and difficult the entire time), and I really enjoy spending time one-on-one with her. We've gone out to lunch twice (both times because we were out running errands and I suddenly HAD to eat...it's a pregnant thing), and it's really cute to sit with her and have a conversation with her. :-)

Swimming Lessons

2010-09-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

Last summer I never got around to putting the boys in swimming lessons. We were living in the apartment still, so we went swimming at the pool there pretty often. For free. So I decided that that counted.

This summer I wanted to make sure they took some official lessons. I decided to take them to the YMCA since they had the schedule I wanted (M-Th for 2 weeks). So I signed the boys up for a session in June. At 50-something dollars each, I just couldn't justify putting newly 3 year old Katy in.

Then I found out about their Y Splash class. It was one week, all 5 days, 45 min classes. The first 15 min was on water safety, then 30 min of swimming in 2 big groups. It was FREE! Not only that, successful completion of the class (showing up every day) gave us a coupon for half off a session of swimming lessons!

I'm not spending over $50 for Katy to take lessons, but I'll spend half that! Also, it made it so I was willing to put the boys in for another session. Everybody was happy!

So, swimming lesson pictures are rarely all that good. I have many where I'm not even sure which is my child. These are the best of them:

The first day (and in the Y Splash class), Katy refused to put her weight on any of the floating things. Then she got brave and learned to kick using the "marshmallows!" She might not have learned to actually swim (which is why I didn't want to put lots of money into it), but she made progress!

I'm pretty sure that's Ryan swimming on his back.

I don't know why I have a close up of David and not of anybody else, and not a good shot of him swimming. Oh well, here's proof he was there!

Well, I got a good movie of David swimming at least! That's him going from the right to the left. I was very impressed with the progress he made. His crawl stroke got a lot smoother, and he started being able to breathe without having to stop swimming.

Here's Katy kicking with the marshmallows. I have to admit, I had a hard time remembering to watch her brothers. They were farther away for one thing, and they mostly just kept going back and forth in various combinations of using or not using the kickboard & swimming on their front or back. Katy's teacher had them do all sorts of cute different things. She had so much fun, and I loved watching it!

I didn't get a good shot of Ryan swimming with his class, so I had him swim for me during their free time at the end. It's dizzying watching him go forward instead of sideways. Or maybe it's how all over the place he is. Believe it or not, this demonstrates great progress on his part as well!

So, to summarize, everyone made noticeable progress and had a good time! Yay!

Smith Family Reunion - Camping on the Coast

2010-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, I did a fairly normal amount of camping. I went to YW camp every year, and we'd go as a family probably one more time each summer. I didn't love it, didn't hate it. Dan, on the other hand, had developed an extreme hatred of camping from his boy scouting years. So in 9 years of marriage, the only camping we had done was one father/son campout for Dan & David (when Ryan was too little), and one backyard "campout" for the boys & me.

Then Grandma & Grandpa Smith decided to have the family reunion at a campground. And we didn't have a good reason not to go, and I wanted to see the family. So we went camping!

Okay, so we slept in a yurt. And there were bathrooms & showers very close by. So as far as camping goes, it was pretty wimpy. However, I found that I have become wimpy in these years of no camping. It really isn't for us. I really don't get the draw. It takes so much more work than sleeping in a motel or at a friend or family member's house (and I didn't even have to do any cooking!), and is so much less comfortable. Also, we never once sat around a campfire, and still managed to have everything we brought reek by the time we got home. Shudder. If we are presented with a similar situation again, we will be one of the families who rents a motel room nearby.

Well, despite the campingness, it was a fun weekend! The kids especially had a really good time!

No real story here, just nice to have a picture of both boys smiling and looking at the camera at the same time.

There was a place with some seriously cool trees and logs to climb on. The kids LOVED it! Here, Ryan is showing us the tree with weird giant roots.

Katy went climbing too, although I only have close ups of her. She's so pretty. :-)

And here we have David showing us the hollowness of this tree. Sounds kinda claustrophobic to me, but the kids liked it!

Friday afternoon I took the kids to the beach. Only when we got there, there was no beach. Seriously, the waves came completely up to the rocks. Which the boys didn't mind, but Katy FREAKED out about. She climbed way up and sat there, occasionally crying about it. Once I was sure the tide was going out, talked her into starting to climb down, and a big wave came right up to the rocks again. We left shortly thereafter.

That night Dan joined us. After dinner we went back to the beach, and this time there was a nice big stretch of sand.
The lens isn't dirty, it was just quite foggy right there. We took several pictures before figuring out what the heck was going on.

Friday evening was also when Uncle Danny showed up! This was especially exciting because this was the last time we saw him:

Yup, it had been 2 years. All 3 kids, even Katy (who obviously had no memory of him), were SO EXCITED! He came to the beach with us, and the boys loved playing with him!

Katy was still traumatized with her beach experience earlier that day, and refused to be put down, so she didn't get to have fun with them.

Saturday morning we went to the beach one more time. I had put the kids in swimming suits the first time we went, and they hardly got wet. So this time I didn't, and they went way in. That's just the way it works with kids, isn't it?

Oh, and we broke the rules and let Molly run free for a little while. She loves the water and had lots of fun!

Silly boys.

Ryan is difficult about smiling for pictures, so I really love this one of him. He looks so happy!

Katy continued to be afraid of the water, but had a good time collecting shell pieces. Hey, at least she wasn't insisting on being held this time!

Oh Molly, you probably think we're about to throw a ball for you. Too bad you chewed it up within the first few minutes of being there...

Look, I'm there too!

Oh, and I finally took a picture of the kids with someone else in the family (besides the silhouette of Uncle Danny) right as we were leaving! Here they are with my Grandma Smith, so their Great-Grandma. They don't know how lucky they are to have so many Grandmas & Grandpas!

So all in all, it was a fun time. I will never again choose to go camping if I can possibly help it. But the beach, trees to climb on, and time with family were all very enjoyable. Oh, and the stars Friday night were incredible, the best I've ever seen! Dan even said they almost made it worth it. ;-)

Utah trip: the final post

2010-09-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Now that we've been home for a month, I will finally finish blogging about Utah. I have plenty of other stuff to blog about! I was going to be so good at being up to date, but MAN I've been exhausted lately. Of the 31 days in the month of August, I took a nap at least 25 or 26 days. And I've spent a LOT of time just lying on the couch with no energy to do anything (even sit at the computer). Sorry Dan.

***I would like to clarify that I while I frequently use the term "old" in this post, I am not referring to anybody's age. It's just way easier to say "old friends" than "friends they used to play with when we lived nearby."***

So anyhow, the last couple days in Utah we got to visit some friends! We spent two nights with Dan's good friend Joey & fam. Sadly, his oldest son Keaghan was visiting his grandparents in Idaho, so the boys didn't get to see him. But Katy & Kinoah got to play! The first time I met Joey (Dan met him at work) was at Keaghan's 4th birthday party when Kinoah was a teeny tiny baby and I was just barely pregnant with Katy. When we left Utah almost 2 years ago, the 9 months age difference was still pretty significant. Now that they're both 3, they were fast friends and had lots of fun playing! So when we finally made them go to bed, they wanted to sleep together in Kinoah's bed. I didn't think it would last more than a few minutes, but it worked! So I didn't get a picture of them playing together, but at least I got this:

Friday we rounded up some of our old neighbors - the Lows, Smiths, and Hulls (who also happened to be in town) - and went to the park. The kids had a great time playing with their old friends! It was so hot and yucky outside though, so we didn't last all that long. Even sitting in the shade of the neighboring house, it was pretty horrible.

Then we visited the bookstore that our friends the Weists opened since we moved. It was cool! We let the kids all pick out a book to read on the drive home. David tried to pick some really easy ones. He easily passed the level 40 (end of 4th grade) reading test last year (1st grade), so we insisted he get something harder. We "won"...but he still hasn't read it. Maybe I should instead.

After that we drove up to Sandy so Dan could hang out with some old co-workers. I had a hard time deciding what to do with the kids. I wanted to do something fun, but my lack of energy decided that we'd go see Toy Story 3. Which was fun, just not quite what I'd been hoping to do since we could easily do that here. On the way back to Joey's house we stopped at Arctic Circle for ice cream & to play. We used to go there fairly often, so it fit in with my plan to do lots of things we used to do.

Saturday was our day to hang out with my best friend, Gayelinn! We were supposed to stay that night, but her air conditioner wasn't working, and I just couldn't intentionally sleep somewhere hot when there were other options. Some best friend, right? Sorry Gayelinn! So anyway, we played at her house most of the day. Dan took David to go get his IQ tested by Auntie Jen (which confirmed our suspicions that he is very smart, thankyouverymuch), so Gayelinn & I went on an outing with the remaining 5 kids. We had to get Lehi bakery donuts (it was on my list). Then we went to Wines park for a little bit, but it was yucky hot. So we went to Emmett's & Ethel's for cheap ice cream sundaes. There we discovered that they changed how they do their french fries (they used to be soooo gooooood). Sad. Then we went back to Gayelinn's house.

That was when the raining started. It was CRAZY! There was a lot of major flooding on the east side of the neighborhood.

Gayelinn's house is higher uphill than where the flooding was...but her backyard got nice and muddy! Katy & Kyson played in the sandbox after the rain. Ewwww.

The big kids had a good time hanging out together. Ryan said it was his favorite thing about our trip to Utah.

Well, since I'm too picky to sleep in a hot house, we went and spent Saturday night at Auntie Jen's house. She hadn't had room for us earlier in the week, so it ended up being really nice to spend that night there instead.

Sunday morning we got up, packed up the car AGAIN, and drove back to Eagle Mountain to go to church. We were late (when are we not?), then we took off immediately after Sacrament meeting, so we really didn't see that many friends. It was funny to be back in our old ward though. There are SO many kids, so it is SO loud! It wasn't like people were letting their kids be noisy, just the tiny bits of noise from fairly reverent kids added up!

So we were in such a hurry to get on the road after Sacrament meeting, we didn't count the hours very well. We made it to our hotel with a little while before bedtime (usually we get somewhere and immediately everyone crashes). I took the kids swimming in the pool, then we watched Home Alone 2, which happened to be on TV.

I thought Ryan was looking cute while watching the movie. I like the Lovey-on-his-head look.

Katy, how is that comfortable?

Katy all snuggled up and looking sweet. Thanks for the photo bomb, Ryan.

Not too long after this picture, we knelt down for family prayer. Katy said that she thought she was going to throw up. It was out of the blue and she'd been acting totally fine, but I grabbed her and ran. We made it to the bathroom...but not to the toilet. Ewwww (Lucky for me the maid came and cleaned it up! That was a nice change!). Poor thing. I'm sure glad we decided to stop (there was some debate about trying to drive straight through), otherwise we would've been in the car when sickness struck! After that, she was fine for like 28 hours, then threw up one more time in her bed at home. Poor little girl had probably just had it with all the junk food and heat and travel!

Monday we drove the rest of the way home. It was pretty uneventful, other than a short parking-lot-on-the-freeway experience due to the road being temporarily closed, and later some construction traffic. Which at the time was very frustrating, so this probably would've been much angrier if I'd gotten around to posting this a month ago.

Well, that's it for our trip to Utah. I'm not sure why I felt the need to go into such great detail. I'm sure it's boring. Oh well.

Oh Where, Oh Where Has Our Dodge Neon Gone...

2010-08-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

(Dan & Baby Ryan with our car 6 years ago on 8/31/04)

I interrupt my ridiculously long winded and slow in coming Utah trip postings to bring you the sad & frustrating news that OUR CAR WAS STOLEN! Our nice & reliable Dodge Neon is currently being enjoyed by somebody else!

Friday morning, Dan drove to the transit center, parked his car, and rode the bus into Portland. Like he has almost every day for the 18 months that we've lived in Vancouver. I happened to drive by the transit center that afternoon around 1:30 or 2, and pointed out Daddy's car to the children. Sometime between then and 6:12 that evening, somebody decided to take it!

We bought this car brand new when we were pregnant with David, 8 years ago. While we have seen the stupidity in throwing away money on a brand new car, at least we got a really reliable automobile. In 8 years we have NEVER had ANY problem with it. We've filled it with gas, gotten (not all that frequent) oil changes, done our safety & emissions as needed...and that's all the money we've had to put into it besides the original cost.

So at this point, I think the chance that we get our perfectly reliable car back is pretty slim. There's probably a fairly good chance it will be found, but with some level of damage. Or we won't ever get it back. We had pretty minimal insurance on it, so that'll be just money out of our pocket. Good thing we didn't decide to pay for central air last weekend!

I have to say, I am SHOCKED at how many people have had this happen to them. It seems like the vast majority of people have a similar story involving either themselves or a member of their immediate family! Ridiculous! Who is raising all these children that grow up to take someone else's car?!? What am incredibly selfish thing to do!!!

So for now (while we wait out the week in which they supposedly find most stolen cars), we are a 1 car family. Dan drove my car today (and he drove into the city so had to pay for parking...he just couldn't park in that same lot again yet), so the kids & I are stranded. I said that was fine since I have no plans to go anywhere, but I still hate the idea that I can't change my mind. Our only other option at this point is for us to wake everyone up and drive him at 7 a.m. Which will result in crankiness for everyone and extra nausea for me. Fun.

I thought that the first picture was of baby David, and when I couldn't find it I started looking for a more recent picture. I found this one (5/11/08), which shows off where I turned too close to the curb and lost the pretty silver thing. Sorry Dan.

Utah trip day 3 - BYU, Fuddruckers, and Auntie Jen's House

2010-08-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday was the day we planned on lots of Morrill family time. But it turned out that 2 of the Tolen cousins had concerts that late morning/early afternoon, and we weren't feeling like dealing with the try-to-keep-the-kids-quiet thing. So we went and wandered BYU a little! Really, we only made it to the Wilkinson Center and the HFAC, but that's where we spent most of our time anyway. We went to the bookstore and bought everyone t-shirts (the $5 ones for the upcoming football season!). We went down and saw the hall where we met. Awwww. Then we went upstairs to see if either of our instrument teachers were available (they weren't). Then the kids got antsy and I got tired, so we left. We were almost to the car when I remembered that we should take a picture, so here we are in the parking lot. Hey, at least we got the Y in the background!

From there we went to the Creamery and got ice cream cones (I got Bishop's Bash, which was what I usually got back when Dan worked there before we got married). It would've been a more enjoyable experience had there been somewhere to sit out of the sun. We all ended up standing right next to the building in order to use the shade.

So then we went back to Nadine's house to do some laundry and pack up. It took a long time. That was one of the biggest problems with our staying at several different places, it was always a pain to unpack and repack the car.

Finally at dinner time we met up with the Morrill clan at Fuddruckers! The kids had a good time playing with the arcade games, mostly without even using money.

Ryan and his cousin Ciel had a good time playing together. It was cute.

Katy & David played on the non-working machines. That probably doesn't say much about their smarts, come to think of it...

Dan started giving investment advice to the older cousins, who were actually quite interested. Which surprised me, because I'm usually not. :-P

And here we have the whole group. Gary Spencer Ryan David Tony Zach Dan Katy Ciel Maddie Grant Tayler Becky Brie and Kathleen. Wait, where'd Jacob go? Okay, we have almost everyone. And obviously I'm the photographer. Hey, I was already in one picture that day!

After dinner we headed to Auntie Jen's new house. And when I say new, I really mean new, as in recently finished being built. Her future neighbor's house is currently a giant pile of dirt, which provided lots of entertainment for the children! Poor Katy hadn't been allowed to yet since we don't trust her outside on her own, so I spent a little while out with her. And of course I took pictures.

Tried to get a nice group shot. Shouldn't these kids be old enough to smile nicely? We've got David looking good, Ryan looking like he's in pain, and Katy, well, I guess Katy IS smiling, but not looking at the camera.

Suddenly they're much more obedient when I tell them to stick their tongues out!

Seriously, giant pile of dirt.

Then I needed to go sit down (this pregnancy has made me wimpy! I have no endurance for anything!), so Katy got to come play in Auntie Jen's "backyard." She made a fun game out of trying to jump over the weeds. Is it wrong that I find most everything she does so very adorable?

Utah trip day 2: Thanksgiving Point Farm Country & Tucanos

2010-08-23T17:11:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a week since posting about the first day. I'm really lacking motivation to accomplish anything lately. The pregnancy is responsible for most of it, then the heat just takes whatever is left. Blah. So, I'm trying to be a good girl and do this, at least it doesn't require movement.

When we lived Utah we had a membership to Thanksgiving Point two different years. The farm was a really fun thing for us to do, and we would go fairly often. Well, either the boys got sick of it and maintained that feeling for two years, or they've just outgrown it. They weren't all that interested in taking their time and enjoying the animals. Katy was much more interested and probably would've happily stayed longer without cranky brothers. Well, and it was hot, so we were all kind of cranky. Weeeeee...

Katy liked letting this little goat lick her finger. Luckily she didn't learn that goats often bite!

Aunt Nadine was able to have a free day off work the week of our visit (because her birthday had been on Sunday, and her boss usually gives birthdays off), so she & Brady came with us to the farm. Brady liked the animals a lot!

You gotta have a "kids in jail" picture. It is the rule of Thanksgiving Point. I have a lot of these scattered among my picture folders.

Brady wasn't willing to conform to the "rule." I never got a good one of all 4 kids together.

Ah, the highlight of Farm Country, the pony ride. They give a ticket to everyone who pays admission, and they can use it either for a pony ride or a hay ride. Which is an irritating way of trying to get more money, because the only way to go on a hay ride as a family is to either skip the pony ride or buy more tickets. So we skipped the hay ride, leaving 6 tickets (since Brady was free) for the 4 kids. Thought that was going to be a problem. Then, in a very grown up move, David volunteered to only go once and let Ryan & Katy go twice! It was very sweet. :-)

David likes to give Katy piggy back rides. She likes to get them. If only sibling relationship were always so smooth...

Ryan got to ride the big one on his second turn. This made him very happy.

And Katy got to ride the black one, which was a big deal to her! I meant to crop the picture so you can see her face better, but I'm just too lazy at the moment. Believe me, she looks very happy!

After the second pony rides, 5 very hot Morrills left to visit with the Mecham family for a little while. We stopped and got everyone drinks to avoid dying of dehydration. The gas station cashier gave Katy a sucker because she is really cute and was being sad (for no apparent reason). Poor boys. We try not to give preferential treatment, then perfect strangers do it instead!

After a nice visit with Gayelinn & her family, we drove back to Provo to have dinner at one of our all time favorite restaurants, Tucanos!

It was convenient that Ryan had had a birthday that month, and for some reason they still send us the free meal birthday cards. He even got sang to & some ice cream, which was a fun treat with it being almost 2 weeks past his birthday!

Here we all are at dinner. Except for me, taking the picture. Should've asked a waiter. Oh well.

Utah trip day 1 - Clark Planetarium & Discovery Gateway Children's Museum

2010-08-18T22:10:00.001-07:00

One of the things I wanted to do while we were in Utah was visit some of the places we used to enjoy when we lived there. And since we have a (somewhat sneaky) membership to the Boonshoft Museum that gets us into members of the ASTC (science & technology centers) & AZA (zoos), we got to visit the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum and see a movie at the Clark Planetarium for FREE!
We watched a movie about space pirates. It was silly, but the kids enjoyed it, and there was plenty of learning squeezed in. Also, I don't know when David started doing thumbs up in pictures, but you'll see it a lot in the coming days.

The Morrill children on the moon. You gotta take a picture on the moon. We have the same picture from almost 2 years ago when we went right before moving. Although it didn't have the same girl walking on the footprints in the background...

And here they are on Mars. See Ryan looking like he's gonna snap? I think this is the last picture I have of him smiling all day. In fact, I have a couple pictures of his back from him spotting me and running away.

After the movie and a brief look around the planetarium we made our way over to the children's museum. Here we, once again, were reminded that gender differences are natural and very real. Katy spent a lot of time playing with the housekeeping, while the boys built with giant foam blocks. None of this I bothered getting a picture of, you'll just have to believe me. Then we went over to another area, and David climbed the rock wall...

...while Katy went "shopping"...

...and Ryan worked as a cashier.

Then we went upstairs and outside to check out the helicopter. Tried to get a cute picture of Ryan. He did this instead. Lovely.

We found a way to keep David contained! Unfortunately, it was uncomfortably hot out on that deck, so we couldn't use it long.

Then we went back inside and played with these cool magnet shapes. Dan built this cool helmet, but David was the only willing model. Katy was busy playing, and Ryan was, well, you know.

So, that took up most of our first full day in Utah. It was kind of silly to not spend the time with family, but the boating activity the big cousins desperately wanted seemed unlikely to be fun with the forecasted thunder storms. Then it ended up being hot & sunny all day. Oh well, we had a fun day. And most of the Morrill family grownups went out to dinner that night, so we got to spend some quality time there. And our kids got to hang out with Aunt Nadine & co., which they really enjoyed. So all in all, a pretty good day.

Ribit!

2010-08-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

So remember how I couldn't find my camera charger for the week we were visiting Grandma & Grandpa Smith? Well, I just sat down to start blogging about our trip to Utah, and I found the one and only picture I took with our camera while we were in Kent before the battery died. It deserves a post. If the battery had survived a few days, we would've had many, many pictures like this one. Can you see what's on Ryan's arm? It's a frog that he & David had caught all by themselves! This was a skill that they practiced repeatedly all week. I think by the end of the week they'd figured out how to do it without having to get in the pond, since ewwwwww they shouldn't be in that water!

Also, notice Katy's interesting attire? She discovered the dress up clothes - mostly my sisters' & my former dance outfits - and wore them all the time! Those same bins of dress up clothes have been in the rec room since the rec room was made 12ish years ago. And I don't think the boys have ever shown any interest in them. Our little girl has certainly not lacked for girliness because of having only brothers!

Grandpa's Boat

2010-08-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

We did several fun activities the week we were in Kent, in the afternoons after Dance Camp. However, because of the missing camera battery charger, I don't have pictures of our fun outings to the Pacific Science Center or the Woodland Park Zoo. But I did get some pictures on my phone of the day Grandpa came home early to take us on a boat!

Everyone had to try on their life jackets while Grandpa was getting everything ready to go. Katy looked especially cute in hers! I found a picture of Aunt Miriam wearing this life jacket on 7/9/91. I thought it would be cute to put it here. But apparently the scanner part of our printer isn't set up or something, so you'll have to take my word for it!

It was hard to get the kids to take a nice picture because it was so sunny they wouldn't look at me. I kept switching everyone around, and finally we got most of their eyes open...

Aunt Hannah came with us for a little while before needing to leave for dance. She took Katy on the tube with her! Katy was quite upset about the whole thing. I made her try for a little while, but when it became clear she wasn't going to start enjoying it, I let her stop. See, I'm a reasonable person!

Once Aunt Hannah was gone, the boys got to go. It had been several years since we got to go out on Grandpa's boat, but they took to it immediately! The LOVED it! One time we stopped and started pulling them in to see if they were done, and before we even asked they said "Do we HAVE to stop?" So I taught them thumbs up & down for faster & slower, and kill it for, well, kill it. They went out together for a while longer, then each took a turn by himself. It was fun to see them enjoy it so much! Oh, and their favorite part? The bumps! Once we learned that, Grandpa did all sorts of fancy driving to get them some big ones, and they loved it!
Hey, the picture I found with Miriam wearing the yellow & polka dot life jacket has Danny wearing the one with a seagull & clouds, and me wearing the blue one! First of all, why is Danny wearing the bigger one than Miriam? Second, how have these three life jackets survived for 19+ years?

Here's a funny story - when Ryan was getting pulled in from his solo ride, he asked if he could just jump in and swim. Sure, that's fine. I wish I had a picture of his face when he did that! It was a little colder than he expected! It was really funny!

Oh, and after the boys were done I finally decided I'd take a turn. I wanted Katy to go with me, and she bravely came over to me while whimpering/crying a little bit. Grandpa took us for a nice, slow, uneventful ride (once I figured out how to position myself so we wouldn't fall in when he started going!), and she decided it was okay after all! I was very proud of her for going again even though she was scared! She even told me later that she had fun when she went with me. Big girl!

Dance Camp!

2010-08-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

Man, I have gotten be-HIND! It's only been a few weeks, but they've been busy ones! Ryan's birthday was July 16th, the next day was the stake activity (I was in charge of face painting, that could be blog worthy), the next day we went to Grandma & Grandpa Smith's for a week, then the day after that we went to Utah for a week! Whew, I was ex-HAUST-ed by the time all that was done! Now that I've had a week to recover, I guess I should get around to documenting our exciting experiences!

Today, I'm starting with the reason for our week in Kent - Barefoot Ballroom Dance Camp! The ballroom dance studio my sister Hannah is actively involved with has a class for 5-7 year olds. When we were living with them a year and a half ago, the teacher offered to let me put the boys in for half price. But I didn't feel like committing to something like that when we were hoping to sell our house and move any day. Then when we went to Hannah's concert a couple months ago I saw that they were doing a week long dance camp! The teacher said she would do buy-one-get-one for us since there were so many girls and only one boy signed up already!

I thought this would be a fun thing for the boys, I really, really did. I've watched a few scattered seasons of Dancing with the Stars, and they tend to like watching with me and grooving along (remember this?). Turns out that didn't carry over. And while Ryan was mostly well mannered and adorable, David made everyone's life a lot harder. He'd be grumpy and refuse to participate, and occasionally be rude to people. The teacher ended up making me stay part of the time (class was 3 hours long, I thought I was going to get a nice break, take Katy shopping, and have fun!), and even pick him up halfway through one day for fighting with Ryan. Now, having been a mom to boys for almost 8 years, I think the teacher (who has 3 girls) should've handled the situation differently. It sounded to me like when he got into a mood they spent too much time & energy trying to get him to participate, rather than just giving him some space. Were it an ongoing class, I would've talked to her about it, but it was so short we just tried to get through it.

Okay, that was sad to just pass over Ryan with half a sentence. He was really, really cute dancing. He occasionally got bored, but he was very good at staying on task and learning the moves. It was very adorable to watch! David is funny to watch - half cute, half awkward.

So, my camera battery charger went missing that week, so I took a bunch of pictures of the kids dancing...on my dad's camera. I'll have to get those from him eventually. For now, I have a few movies I took with my phone. These are from the day I got to stay the whole time - Wednesday. They were reviewing the 4 dances they'd learned so far. Ryan's in his new red Bakugan shirt (which he was quite mad at me for getting "too big!"), and David is in a white shirt & jean shorts. You'll notice in one of them Ryan is dancing with Adam, the male assistant. Apparently girls fighting over who gets to dance with the boys comes at a later age. :-)

Lest you think I exaggerate...

2010-07-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

Here I am, five weeks along today. Not that my tummy is usually completely flat, but there's a definite baby bump growing. It's gonna be a looooong eight more months!

Top Ten Reasons

2010-07-18T22:29:00.001-07:00

Top Ten Reasons We Tell Really Early:

10. It’s going to be awfully suspicious when I suddenly stop going in the hot tub.
9. I start showing within mere days, and I don’t want people to think I’m just getting fat.
8. I also have all the classic signs of puberty – acne, excessive sweating, roller coaster emotions – and need to explain why.
7. We have to tell the kids so they understand why Mommy gets Taco Bell when they get leftovers.
6. Secrets aren’t safe with children, and we want to do the telling rather than just have them spill the beans. (For example, today in primary David made an announcement....)
5. I accidentally tell almost everyone I talk to, and family really should know before random ward members.
4. Then I can complain when I feel yucky.
3. So people understand why I get all emotional about everything.
2. I want to sleep in a yurt at the family reunion, and apparently pregnant ladies get priority.
1. We’re just so excited we want everyone to know!

Katy's birthday celebration weekend!

2010-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

So, remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned I wold blog about the rest of Katy's birthday weekend? I'm not a liar. Here it is!

Friday June 4th (the day after Katy's birthday) Grandma & I took the kids to one of Katy's favorite places in the world - The Bouncy Place. A big warehouse full of bounce houses, slides, etc...what's not to love?!? These kinds of places are all over the place now - where were they when I was a kid?
Tried to get a picture of how excited she was. I succeeded, just not in holding her attention!

The kids like to go down together. This particular time, Katy was NOT waiting! I love how David & Ryan are still sitting at the top, looking a little confused.

So then they went down just the two of them. I'm pretty sure going down headfirst is against the rules. Whatev.

This time all three went at once...but Katy is the only one who looks like she's enjoying herself!

Friday night Daddy rode the train up so that we could have Katy's birthday party Saturday morning. He frequently stays home when we go up for a couple days, but this was an important event!
Grandma & Grandpa got Katy this cute dress to wear for her party! Yes, I picked it out and put it in the cart without asking. I guess I deserve it when my kids do that!

Isn't this adorable? The nice lady in the Sam's Club bakery added her name & age for us. It really was the perfect cake for Katy. Cupcakes? Check. Pink? Check. Princesses? Check. Yay!

LOVE this girl!
Then that night we went out to Red Robin for Katy's birthday dinner (even though on her actual birthday we got McDonalds on the way up to Kent)! Red Robin is one of my favorite restaurants, but it was totally her choice! Ryan wants to go there for his birthday too. I have trained them well!

Ryan got an owie :-(

2010-06-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

Now that summer vacation is upon us, the boys get to join me when I go jogging. We go out to the main road, go for a ways, turn around and go home, then I finish the distance I want to run by doing laps around the neighborhood while the boys stay home. This week they both started going way ahead of me, so we went further than I had planned - we made it a mile away from the house before turning around!

Well today, a little while after turning around I noticed Ryan sitting on the sidewalk a ways down the road. I figured he was being cranky about being forced to ride his bike (he frequently starts out that way but usually snaps out of it). Then I noticed someone jogging towards me, assumed that they were out for a run like I was, and that Ryan was in his way. Then this guy stops to talk to Ryan, and I assume he's just being nice before continuing to run. Then as I get close to them I notice a car pulled over just a little ways down the road - turns out he saw Ryan crash on his bike and pulled over just to help him!

Poor little Ryan had quite the scraped up knee, and couldn't really ride his bike home. I was trying to figure out how to get Ryan, Katy, Molly, Ryan's bike, and the jogging stroller all home when a police officer pulls up beside us! He just wanted to see what was going on, and he offered to take the bike to our house. I had piled Ryan & Katy into the stroller, so I jogged the remaining .7 mile with both of them - hoo boy was that a lot harder than just Katy!

Well, we made it home, and the police officer was there waiting to make sure everything was okay. He gave the kids the junior sheriff stickers, which they were all excited about!

So then it was time to clean up the scrape. I sat him on the bathroom counter to wash his knee. He was very sad while I was doing this.

Pretty decent scrape there! Poor guy...it's just part of being a kid.

The bandaids miraculously cured him, and he felt much better. Well enough to start being happy about the dime David found & gave to him in an effort to cheer him up.

So here are all the kids with their star stickers. And all 3 of them with the extra little piece of sticker on their forehead. Silly kids.

So all in all, it was an awful lot of drama for just a scraped up knee! But it sure was nice to have a random stranger & police officer both stop to help!

Katy turned 3!

2010-06-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

Our sweet little Katy turned 3 on June 3rd! I can't believe she's so big! I tried to get a good picture of her out by our flowers, and this was the first attempt:

I told her to put her shirt down and be modest, and this is what I got instead:

We needed to get going to help in Ryan's class, so those were all I got. Oh well, it kind of captures her being a silly three year old. :-)

Katy & I have been helping in Ryan's class for an hour every Monday for several months. Katy mostly plays quietly with the dollhouse or housekeeping area, but sometimes lets the kids read to her or something like that. They all really like to see her. So we came in to celebrate her birthday! Katy's birthday was on Thursday, but Monday had been a holiday anyway, so we got to come in. We brought little ice cream cups to share, and they sang to her! Mrs. Konzek had the usual birthday stuff for Katy (which was very nice of her!) - a crown, a pencil, and a card! This is Katy being sang to - I think she was happy!

After that we drove downtown and had lunch with Daddy. We were leaving that afternoon to go to Grandma & Grandpa's house, so we wanted to make sure Daddy got to spend some time with the birthday girl! We went out for Thai food, which was so yummy! Katy is very good at trying new food, and she really liked the chicken curry!

Right before we went to see Daddy, I thought it would be nice to get some cupcakes and sing to Katy with Daddy. So we stopped at Safeway, and I showed her the different cupcakes we could get. She decided that she wanted donuts instead. Fine with me, they looked yummy! But by the time we filled up on Thai food, I didn't have room for one. And neither of Dan's coworkers that were there at the moment wanted one either (one is training for a triathlon I believe, one is getting married soon). So we had lots left over, so we took them with us to Grandma & Grandpa's house! It was late by the time we got there (it took me a long time to get ready for some reason), but we had to have one more singing of Happy Birthday to the beautiful birthday girl!

Katy had such a fun birthday - birthday weekend, actually. Friday we went to the Bouncy Place, Saturday we had her party - posts to follow! It was fun to celebrate our precious little girl! We love having her in our family!

Lunch with my Princess

2010-06-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Or the alternate title, How Many Tries Does it Take to Get a Good Picture of Katy?

Last Monday Katy & I had Chinese food at Safeway. See, we were running errands, and stopped to go grocery shopping. Then I realized I was really hungry. So it probably would save us money to just buy some food and eat it before shopping, since hungry Rachel sometimes buys weird food (3 lb container of potato salad last time, most of which didn't get eaten).

I really have enjoyed our Katy Mommy time this year while the boys were both in school. She is almost always really really good when it's just the two of us, so most errands are actually more enjoyable with my Katy girl than alone. It would probably be similar with the boys, but I just never end up going with one of them. If I have to run errands with one of them, it's usually all three of them, and the naughtiness increases exponentially. I'm not really sure how we're going to eat this summer, because I don't ever want to take all of them grocery shopping ever again...

Anyhow, so Katy & I had our impromptu lunch date at Safeway, and I started snapping pictures because she is really adorable and there are never enough pictures of her. And these are how they came out, in order. Silly, silly girl!

Katy's new song

2010-05-14T13:54:00.000-07:00

Katy loves Mommy...and Mommy's gum. :-)

Poor Puppy Molly!

2010-05-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

See this? This is Molly not wanting a bacon dog treat. She's sitting on the futon in the playroom, which she usually only does once every couple days in the late evening when she is tired but we aren't going to bed yet. I put a blanket on her an hour prior to this picture, and she clearly hadn't moved. I also tried offering her chicken broth, cheese, and bread. Nothing interested her.

I noticed last Thursday or Friday that Molly wasn't hungry (which is weird). I figured it was just a bug and forgot about it. It seemed a little better on Saturday, she hung out with me outside while I worked in the yard. But she still has the food in her bowl from the middle of last week (and she didn't want my steak bone last night), so clearly something isn't right.

For some reason I suddenly got really worried about it this morning. After trying all these different foods that she would normally jump about all spazzily for, I finally called a vet. The lady on the phone asked several questions, but no, I don't think Molly has gotten into anything lately.

"Is there any chance she's had salmon or trout?"

Yes. We almost never have fish. I haven't bought any since Utah. But our neighbor brought over some fresh trout that he caught on April 27th. I didn't make it that night because Dan isn't home for dinner on Tuesdays (Portland Mormon Choir practice), so I made it the next day. And I threw Molly little pieces as I cut it up. I always do that with whatever seems like okay for her to eat. Apparently trout is NOT in the okay-to-eat category!

Google "trout poisoning in dogs," and a whole bunch of stuff comes up. They all basically say this (copied from here):

SPD (Salmon Poisoning Disease) is an acute, infectious disease that affects dogs, wolves, ferrets and foxes, when they ingest uncooked salmon, trout, steelhead, and similar freshwater fish. While the disease is typically more prevalent in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon and northern California), the disease has surfaced from a dog ingesting raw fish in Southern Calfornia.

Symptoms of SPD include vomiting, loss of appetite, fever, diarrhea, weakness, swollen lymph nodes, and dehydration.

“Most people in this area are unfamiliar with the symptoms of this disease, which appear within five to seven days after eating infected raw fish. Left undiagnosed, SPD can be fatal within several weeks,” explained Mike Moore, DVM, at VCA All-Care Animal Referral Center.

“SPD is treatable if diagnosed quickly. If your dog has been around raw fish or you are unsure of what they have ingested and symptoms appear, consider SPD a possibility and see your veterinarian immediately for evaluation and treatment,” he added.

I'm 99% sure this is what happened! My poor, poor puppy dog! I poisoned her with raw fish! I'm sorry Molly!

We have a vet appointment at 3. Hopefully it's still easily taken care of!!!

Run for the Animals!

2010-05-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

Molly and I ran in a race today! Only, it ended up not being a race. There were no numbers, no timers, and the "5K" ended up being 2.87 miles. But boy did Molly love it! See, this was the Walk or Run for the Animals, with proceeds going to the Humane Society of SW Washington. And the vast majority of participants brought their pups with them! It was Molly's dream come true!

The run began & ended at Esther Short park, with lots of booths set up with people selling pet-related supplies. I've never been there before, so I drove by it before looking for parking. And I could tell the instant Molly spotted it, because she went from happy to be going for a car ride to oh-my-goodness-look-at-all-those-other-dogs excited! She wasn't very patient while we parked. Luckily we found a spot pretty close, walked back, and the other dog smelling began! She smelled the nose and/or tail of lots and lots of other doggies!

And if that wasn't exciting enough, about 20 minutes later we got to run, too! Seriously, Molly was in heaven! I hadn't run all week thanks to a yucky cold, and I haven't run very consistently since moving last fall, so I kept a 10:07 pace, finishing the run at just over 29 minutes. My goal was to do it in less than 30, so it was lucky that it was almost a quarter mile short!

I should've taken a picture of the excited Molly, but I didn't. So here's a picture of Molly & me when we got home. Oh well, better than nothing.

fashion sense?

2010-04-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's another post all about Katy. I swear we like our other children as well. Anyhow, a little while ago she came downstairs to go somewhere, looking like this. And let me tell you, it was way worse in person. The skirt is actually very red (I got it in the after Christmas clearance) with sparkles. Match that with the purple/periwinkle shirt, decorated tights, and brown Dora shoes, and you have one winner of an outfit!

Yes, I let her wear it out. It was painful though!

Awwwww

2010-04-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday out of nowhere Katy told me "You're the best mom EVER!"

It was wonderful. It made me very warm & fuzzy. I gave her a very big hug. :-)

And I want to record it for all the times in the future that she doesn't like me so much. Now I will always remember that once, my sweet two year old girl told me I was the best!

Easter with the Morrills

2010-04-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, I realize I am still quite far behind. But I am feeling very good about myself for blogging so regularly (LOVE the scheduled post option!), so don't ruin it for me. I'll catch up someday!

Our ward had an Eggstravaganza party at the field behind a church building. Looks like a nice day, right? It was SO windy! We showed up without jackets, and sent Daddy home a few minutes later to get some. Luckily it was very close. So we had some yummy food (Hot dogs! Always a good idea! Kids love them, and they're minimal mess!), then an egg hunt. Every age got to go out alone. And each child was to pick up 7 eggs. That worked out really, really great! After the wild Eagle Mountain Easter egg hunts (and there are pictures of David crying from a year or two before that), it was nice to have it be civilized. The kids all had a good time!

The plan was for the kids to get all dressed up the next morning and take Easter pictures. Only Ryan had thrown up the night before, so he & I stayed home. And since it wasn't all 3 kids, we didn't try too hard on the pics. Well, they look decent. Grandma & Grandpa bought the boys new suits the next week (yes, we went to their house...we'll get to it!), so perhaps I should get them all dressed up in those for a nice picture! If only we could all be healthy enough for church on the same Sunday...

After the Zoo...

2010-04-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

One of the repercussions of finally getting in the zoo so late was that we were ready to go at 4:45 PM. Oops. Didn't think that through. So at that point our options were to sit in traffic with hungry kids, or go to dinner and wait out the traffic. And since Daddy works in Portland on the way home, we met him for dinner!

We went to Buffalo Wild Wings. I like it pretty well most of the time. But after spending a few hours at the zoo, it was SO yummy! Everyone ate a lot!

They gave the kids cute hats. Katy made this nice cheesy face for me.

Had I posted about this on or shortly after March 24th when it happened, I probably would've known why Ryan is making that face. I don't. It makes me laugh though!

An Adventure at the Zoo

2010-04-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

The week before our Spring Break, I decided it would be a perfect day to go to the Zoo. David had a half day, so we could leave at 12:35, and still have lots of time. And it was a GORGEOUS day. Great idea, right?

Probably 1/2 a mile before the exit traffic completely stopped in the exit lane. And I suddenly remembered that the night before Dan hadn't had choir practice (he's in the Portland Mormon Choir). Because it was spring break for the Portland area schools.

Dun dun DUN

It was absolutely crazy packed. The parking lot was full, with no other options of parking on the road or something. So we drove slowly through the parking lot, hoping someone would leave. So did everyone else. It was insane. Finally, an hour and a half after leaving the school (should be a 35-40ish min drive), we happened to be the closest car to a spot someone was leaving!

So we finally got to the gates, waited in line, and found out that our passes, which are to a place in Ohio that is reciprocal with the AZA (zoos) and the ASTC (science & technology centers) recently started getting only got half off. Boo.

At this point, it's not looking good. We're all cranky from sitting in the car so long. I'm bugged that I have to pay half when I thought it'd be free. And there are a bazillion people.

Oh, and remember this post about the super cool birds that would land on us to drink nectar? Yeah...not so hungry after a day like they'd had. And certainly not hungry enough to fly onto kids' hands. The kids got the birds to drink a bit if they held it right up to them. After a while, though, I finally coaxed one onto my hand. And things started going more smoothly!

Despite the crowds, we were still able to see lots of animals. Everyone was especially excited about the penguins. The bats, zebras, and elephants were among the other favorites. By the time we left, I was really glad we went. It ended up being a nice, fun time!

Tried to get a group shot...didn't work out this time.

Kids love to climb around in this car looking out on the cheetah exhibit. Not sure why it's so fun, but they love it!

Here's a better group shot. At least we all look kind of happy. Oh, and I'm pretty sure Ryan is making that face on purpose. What a nut.

Ryan Morrill, Rock Climber

2010-04-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

One of the fun things here in Vancouver is a pretty good Parks & Rec department. The Firstenberg fitness center is about 10 minutes away, and has lots of fun stuff. The pool is almost as cool as the Lehi Legacy Center, and the rest of the gym that I've seen is just as good! We had Ryan take a rock climbing class during the month of March, and he LOVED it! He would count down the days every week!

See the red arm? That's Ryan's friend, Peter. It was extra fun to take it with a friend!

This is about as high as he went. Every week he went this high, and didn't want to go any higher. He kept talking about going to the top (there was 1 little girl in their class of 5 that did a few times!) , but this was the height where it got scary for him. No big deal, I'm just happy he's burning energy!

Reading Time

2010-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

As a mother, one of my favorite things to see is my kids being nice to each other. Since these pictures are a couple months old and my brain cells have seen better days, I don't remember exactly what is going on here. But I do know that my oldest child is reading to his little sister, and she loves it! And that just makes my heart happy!

The OMSI!

2010-04-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

We went to the OMSI with Grandma & Grandpa Smith and Aunt Hannah. It was December 29th (the one day it DID snow here this winter). I got the pictures ready to post, then didn't get around to it. And every time I think about just deleting them instead, I decide not to. So, almost 4 months later, here is our OMSI trip!
One of the nice things about going with them is the high grown-up (semi-grown-up in Hannah's case :P ) to kid ratio. Lots of hands for holding!

Here, I got everybody in one picture. Grandpa is just a dark shape at the bottom, but they're all there.

Sweet little Ryan really loves Grandma. They are buddies.

Katy was clearly not pleased with me for preventing her from playing. I just wanted a girl picture!

My dad is an awesome Grandpa. I mean, how many grandpas get down on the floor and do a silly puppet show with their grandkids?

To be honest, this was the picture that most of all convinced me not to skip this post. It just cracks me up!

I tried to get the kids to pose for a nice group shot. Fail. They had better things to be doing, man!

Revenge of the Slush

2010-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

You know you're a good mom when you're relieved to find out they spilled all over themselves instead of the car.

And you take a picture before saving them.

(For the record, I told her not to take off the lid!)

Nice weather we've been having, eh?

2010-04-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

The first winter after we moved to the Northwest was not quite as temperate as I had talked it up to be. Seriously, lots of snow and ice and general yuckiness. Dan thought I lied about the weather, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

This winter, however, has been a much different story! Several times a week I think to myself "ah...this is why we left Utah." Especially with all the snow my Utah friends have been complaining about.

See, these pictures were taken on March 6th. Yes, the beginning of MARCH! The children are playing outside in short sleeves! I would like to explain that the reason Katy is wearing a snow hat is because David came outside a hat. So Ryan went and got a hat. So of course Katy had to get a hat, and that's what she found!

Of course, it hasn't been consistently this beautiful, but there have been days like this fairly regularly. Yesterday Ryan came up and asked if he could go play outside. Um, the answer for that will almost never be no! Have fun!

Oh, and yes, our yard looks horrible. Much, much work to do. Thanks for reminding me...

Jog Blog Ramble

2010-04-20T20:44:00.001-07:00

You know when I think about blogging the most? When I jog. Which, luckily, has been more lately. You know, I did really, really well at consistently jogging during the time we were in the apartment. Then around the beginning of September last year I stopped jogging to save my energy for packing. Then painting the new house. Then unpacking. Then it was rainy, and I didn't know where to run, and it was the Holidays...it's been hard to get back into the routine. Two weeks ago I ran three days and felt great about it, so I signed myself up for the race on May 1st. Then within a few days I forgot, and started skipping it again. Thursday afternoon somebody asked me how my training was going, so I got back in gear! I ran 2 miles on Friday, 3 miles on Saturday, and 3 miles on Monday. And after being sore & achy after Friday & Saturday, I felt fine after Monday! Yay! I might survive running a 5K in only a week and a half!

I have to say, one of the hardest parts of running for me is how bored I get. I listen to music, and it helps a lot, but I still find myself wanting to be doing other things. And not always goof off things. Sometimes I start thinking about all the many jobs that need to be done around the house, and I start feeling all anxious to get started. There's a lot of things that need to be done to our yard within the next few months (since we moved in last September, we haven't really had a chance to do anything yet!), and that comes into my brain a lot. Sometimes I'll see a nice looking yard, and it motivates me to get to work to make ours look nice too. Sometimes I'll see a yucky looking yard, and I want to work hard to have ours not look like that! When I have a good jog, it's usually followed by me getting something good accomplished, time permitting. Monday, for example, I took down our Christmas lights! Yes, they were still up. Yes, it was very embarrassing. The desire, motivation, time, weather, etc. just hadn't lined up. Now they're down!

So, as I said at first, I've been thinking about blogging while I've been jogging. It's becoming a stressful why-am-I-sucking-at-this thing. The thing is, I have a folder on the computer with several posts worth of pictures. So I'm going to hurry and do some, and set them to post one a day for a while. Many of them will be a couple months overdue. But they will be done, and I will feel good about that. And tomorrow when I jog I can think about how great that is!

Green Eggs & Ham Breakfast!

2010-04-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, it was over a month ago. I've been a bad blogger. If I'm going to count this as my journal, I better start recording more things in it!

So, pretend that it's the afternoon of March 4th and I rushed home, uploaded the pictures, and posted them.

Dan & I both got to go with David to the Green Eggs & Ham breakfast at the school! David brought home information about it a few weeks before, and there was a form to send back in to let them know if 1 or 2 people were coming with them. He had circled 1, erased it, and circled 2. So Dan took some time off to go with him.

Here's the cool Dr. Seuss hat David got to wear!

I tried to take a nice father & son picture. This was my first try...

...and this was the second. Very nice, supposedly grown-up Daddy...

So, we got to sit with David & his classmates in the cafeteria and eat green eggs & ham. Surprisingly, it was really quite good! Then we got to go back with David to his classroom to do some reading. I tried to take a nice picture of David with his best buddy, Jonah. No luck with getting a nice picture of them, either...

Well, at least they're both looking at the camera. Sometimes that's all you can ask for, right?

And actually, I should get this printed and put on David's wall. He thinks it's a great picture!

You can all breathe a sigh of relief...

2010-03-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ta-da! Crisis averted! After blogging yesterday I continued to think of places to look for the beloved Baby Magic, and came across Babies R Us. On their website they didn't have the yellow kind, but they did have some other ones, so I decided that warranted further investigation. I hadn't been to Toys or Babies R Us since moving here, because the closest one is about a half hour away. I routinely drove that far to them in Utah, but, well, everything was pretty much that far. Here there are so many options so close (Last week I drove to the store, bought eggs, and was back home in EIGHT minutes!) that I haven't felt it worth the drive. But I was seriously panicking about the potential lack of Baby Magic, so I hurried and got ready to go and headed over.

At first I only found yellow with pink lids, which was "Original Baby Scent." It smelled close, but with a strong sunscreen-y smell on top of it. I was going to get a few anyways, since it was better than nothing. Then I found the "Soft Baby Scent." I was SO EXCITED!!! I told Dan I was going to buy 3. He said "You mean 10?" He told me he needs a guarantee that we wouldn't run out. So I gathered up all 5 there, and a lotion to make it a multiple of 3 (there was a coupon for $2 off any 3 baby bath items)!

Then I was feeling SO HAPPY that I let the kids talk me into buying some other stuff too. Oh well, it was worth it!

So, why was there that post that said Baby Magic wasn't being made anymore? I've decided it's one of several possibilities.

1. It stopped for a little while, then started up again.

2. Babies R Us is just using up some huge supply that will run out eventually.

3. It never stopped, the person was somehow misinformed (I couldn't find anything else to confirm or deny it).

4. That post didn't apply to the specific kind we love (looking at it not without the panic I was feeling yesterday, I think it doesn't apply to all kinds).

Reasons 3 & 4 don't explain why I can't find it at Target & Walmart anymore. But now I'm thinking it's probably #4, and I was all worked up for no reason.

On the plus side, now we have 195 more ounces of Baby Magic (since the 30 oz bottles came with 9 oz travel ones), and wouldn't it be silly to have all that if we don't ever have another little one to wash with it? Katy can't use it forever, it's getting hard to comb her wet hair without some sort of conditioner or detangler (which at the moment I am forbidden to use because it ruins The Smell).

And no, I'm not pregnant (yet?!?!?), thanks for asking. I will be in the hot tub in 6 days as proof!

Oh, and thanks Whitney for the comment! If I hadn't kept looking and found it there myself, I would be eternally grateful!

Baby Magic GONE?!?

2010-03-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh! Okay, so we LOVE Baby Magic baby shampoo. It's what we have always used on our kids, exclusively. I love the smell, and, maybe more importantly, so does The Daddy. He really doesn't have an opinion about many baby-related things. He doesn't care which brand of diaper (although he did comment when I tried out some really cheap-o ones) or anything like that. But one time I tried buying a sweet pea scented baby shampoo, and he was really sad/mad. You just do NOT mess with the Baby Magic!

We always buy the big bottles of it, so they last quite a long time. Like many, many, many months. I finally was due for a new one while we were living with my parents just over a year ago, and my mom bought one. When it was time for us to move out I asked if I could take it, and she said no. :( So I dumped some (okay, probably like half of it...) into our container, to tide us over until I got some.

I've checked at Walmart a couple times with no luck.

I asked my mom where she got hers, and she said she thought it was Target.

Yesterday Katy & I went to Target. We couldn't find any. More upsetting? We couldn't even find a spot where it should've been!

I woke up thinking about it this morning, and went online to see where I might be able to find it. And I found this that says that IT ISN'T MADE ANYMORE!!!!!

You can still find some on ebay and amazon.com, and that's about it! Not Target, not Walmart, not Walgreens...even drugstore.com has it listed but says it's out of stock!

Dan, it's time we made a decision about whether or not we're ever going to have another baby. Because if we are, I need to start hording Baby Magic!!!!!

look what I made!

2010-03-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

So I've been seeing pretty Easter wreaths all over the place lately. Nice, elegant looking ones with the eggs painted to look like real eggs. I thought about making something like that. But first of all, it sounded like quite a bit of work for something that could only be up for a couple weeks. Second, there was a good chance I'd screw it up, and it would look like I tried to be elegant but failed. And third, there just wasn't enough color for me! So I decided that instead of trying to make something that looks pretty according to the current decorating standard, I would just make something fun that I like! And I did!

I bought this grapevine wreath a few weeks ago for $3.50 during a fit of "I need to learn how to decorate." It's been sitting on the piano, waiting for inspiration to strike. So I busted out the bin of Easter stuff, stuck Easter grass all over the wreath, and hot glued on some plastic eggs. Then when I was running to grab another glue stick, I saw a bag of pom-poms in an open container (yes, sitting in the middle of the floor...see, something good came from me being homemakerly challenged!) that matched perfectly, so I added those as well. Then I stuck it on the wall! And it makes me really happy!

What I Miss About Utah

2010-03-07T10:59:00.000-08:00

First off, I must say that I LOVE living in the Pacific Northwest again. There are MANY things I like better here. Maybe I'll blog about that later. For now, here's a (short) list of the things I miss most about Utah:

This was our house. There are a few things I miss about it. I miss the newness of it. It's going to take a lot of time & money to make our house here have pretty white baseboards & doors, nice new carpet, nice kitchen appliances, etc. And I miss having a central vac.

I miss some of my friends, especially Gayelinn. I really enjoyed walking with her, doing fun things together (this picture is from Cornbellys), and just spending relaxing time together. I've had many friends before & since, but nobody I feel as totally comfortable with as Gayelinn.

I miss being close to most of Dan's family. Not that we saw them all that often, but at least the option was there, right? Look at all those cousins (okay, so a few of them aren't from Utah, but they visited fairly often) to play with!!!

I miss Thanksgiving Point! We loved the Farm Country! It was like going to a little, close zoo with slightly less exciting animals. It was great for stopping by for an hour, not a whole day ordeal like the real zoo. And riding the ponies was FUN!!!

The other part of Thanksgiving Point I miss is the Dinosaur Museum. It was really well done for kids, lots of fun hands on stuff! And lots of fun activities on Monday evenings, like the Halloween one we went to in this particular picture!

I MISS Burgers Supreme. It is my all time favorite place to eat. They make my favorite cheeseburger, my favorite french fries, and my favorite fry sauce! All at one place! Mmmmmmm...

I also miss Lehi Bakery, especially their maple bars. They are to die for! Other places make good other kinds of donuts, but nowhere else have I found the flurry maple frosting. I will definitely be going there next time we visit Utah!

I miss Chilis. We used to go there fairly often, and there isn't one anywhere near here. Sad.

I miss all the fast food places with playplaces. Here we've got McDonalds. In Utah there was Arctic Circle, McDonalds, Burger King, and Carls Jr. And it seemed like a higher percentage of fast food places had playplaces. I guess there's an obvious reason for that!

Two more quick ones, then I gotta go get ready for church!

I miss our doctor, Dr. Peterson. We've found a pretty good doctor here, but we went to Dr. Peterson since my prenatal care for David, so we'd developed a good relationship with him.

And I miss having a close DI, both for dropping off stuff at and buying new stuff. I've been frequenting blogs lately where people take something old & ugly and made it new and pretty. I guess there are other thrift stores I could try, but I just love DI!

And...that's about it. I may think of more later, but these are the main ones. Is it sad that so many of them involve food? Maybe that's partly due to it being Fast Sunday....