Look! It's a post!

I'm pretty sure I have adult ADHD. I've suspected as much since David was diagnosed 4 years ago, but never got around to going to a doctor or anything. I've taken an anti-depressant most of the time since having PPD when Ryan was born (these topics are connected, I promise). When I went to my doctor last December for a well check (the last one before stupid Aetna no longer accepts our beloved Dr. David as "in network"), we decided to try adding a new medication - Wellbutrin. Then over the course of the next few weeks I changed A LOT in my ability to be organized, clean the house, get around to things like doing Katy's hair, be on time (two weeks in a row to church!), etc. I didn't initially remember the medication, because there are a few other factors that have changed - I'm also taking Calcium Citrate to help with low vitamin D levels, and I've been eating healthier lately to try and lose that darn baby weight. I don't remember what made me think to look, but I checked the info on Wellbutrin. It's mainly prescribed for depression & smoking cessation, but also for a few others, including adult ADHD! So I'm now pretty confident that we have accidentally treated my undiagnosed adult ADHD, and that's why I'm finally able to be a decent homemaker! Hooray!

I'm doing a good job of not trying to do too much and burning out, so I've been making slow and steady progress in the overall organization of the house. The office has long been the most cluttered room in the house, and I finally started to tackle it yesterday. And I found the cord that connects the camera to the computer! It's been missing for months, and I hate using the card reader instead. So I uploaded pictures for the first time since September or October. I have quite a few I'd like to post (although I did go quite a bit of that time only using my cell camera and the "fancy" camera, which I have not uploaded yet), but for tonight we just have a few from today:


I had the boys take a picture right after church today, mostly to remind me of something that happened during Sacrament meeting. In our ward we sing Called to Serve as the closing song whenever someone leaves on a mission, so we were doing that today. I had a really nice moment while we were standing there singing. Ryan was directly to my right, and David was to the right of him (Nathan was actually behind Ryan, being held by a young woman). I was looking at them singing, thinking about how they're future missionaries. Then I looked to my left at Katy, who was standing on the pew with her arm around me. I was feeling so happy with them all.

Then I looked back to the right, and Ryan was swinging his scriptures at David. Of course. Well, it was nice while it lasted!


And, because we should include the other two offspring in case I don't get around to blogging again soon:

Happy Halloween!

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!

Hot Tub Time

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

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!

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!

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! ;-)

4th of July!

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!

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!

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

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!