The witch is in

Do you ever feel like you've been tagged to have lots of little things come your way to make things more difficult. Nothing life altering mind you, but there have been several in my life lately. Today I just kept getting dumb news or having conflict somewhere. I was dealing with some of that "bad news" on the phone today when a friend came calling for Ethan. When I got off the phone he wasn't home anymore. I found him outside down the street. I told him to come home and he couldn't play right now because had broken some of the rules. 1st he has to ask if he can play with friends, and 2nd if he can leave the house and tell me where he is going. He was really mad and I just said "what would you have done if you were me?" his response, "clean the house". Are you seeing a reoccurring theme here? It's moments or days or weeks like these where I try to count my blessings. Today I'm not in the mood. Maybe I will just put on a big witches costume and go with it!

Things to come

I am so excited! In just 6 days is Halloween, and before that on Friday is Rand's work Halloween party and they go crazy all out. On Thursday Ethan has his Halloween carnival at school that I am helping with. Wednesday is my 15 week Dr.'s appointment which is a huge milestone.

Then in 1 month is Randall's Birthday on Nov. 24th with one of my very most favorite holidays, Thanksgiving closely to follow in just 1 month and 1 day! I already have my Thanksgiving dinner assignments and I am so excited. This year we will be with my husband's side of the family and there will only be 3 or 4 of the siblings of the 7 together so it will be comparatively quiet. We get to make pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and bring black olives and celery with easy cheese on top, a tradition from my side of the family.

Then the mac daddy of them all, in just 2 months from today is CHRISTMAS! Can you believe it? Are you ready? I have purchased one gift. Today Rand and I have decided to sit down and go over our Christmas budget. Such a challenge that one. We want to stay within our budget while ensuring that our kids kids are thrilled Christmas morning while not being spoiled and not being dissapointed all at the same time. Is that even possible? I really want to get the must do's done early this year so I can enjoy the fun things. I have decided I want to host my first ever Christmas cookie exchange the first Saturday in December. Won't that be a fun way to kick of the season with friends and yummy things to taste and take? That way, I have no choice but to make some of the cookies I have dreamt about making for years pouring through magazine after magazine, cook book after cook book dreaming about, things other than the typical sugar cookie, like Giant coconut macaroons, chocolate-gingerbread drops, spritz blossoms,oatmeal spice cookies, redvelvet shortbread cookies, the list goes on and on. I figure each weekend we could spend time with the kids making a new cookie each week. Cookies freeze right?

Out on the town

Friday Randall and I went to the Opera to see Macbeth. We initially weren't too excited. We had both had a stressful week and would have preferred to do something low key. Once we arrived down town we were glad we were there. It's fun to get away from the normal things of life and feel like for a moment you are someplace different and a tad more exciting. We even dressed in our Sunday best. People were dressed in everything from jeans to formal attire.

We had planned to just stay through the first intermission thinking we would find it boring especially since it was in Italian. We weren't aware there would be subtitles on a small screen above to help you along. Surprisingly we both really enjoyed it. The first intermission came and we decided we weren't ready to leave yet. The second intermission came and we would have stayed for the 3rd and final hour but it was already close to ten o'clock and had a drive ahead of us.

We're really glad that we took the chance to experience something we haven't done before. We enjoyed it and think should the opportunity arise again, we just might find ourselves at the opera.

Focus!

This morning Randall asked Ethan to say our family prayer before we all went our various ways. Ethan prayed first that he could focus in school and pay attention to his teacher. That he could focus on his tasks and do well. Then he prayed that Randall would be able to focus on his work and get everything done. At this point Randall and I had opened our eyes and kind of quietly smiled to each other. Ethan finally ended by asking "that Mom could please focus and get the house more cleaner". Well I can't argue with that. I'm usually a good house keeper but blame it on the pregnancy or laziness I don't know but I have not been as motivated lately as I probably should be. With Ethan's help, I am determined to focus. I already have the kitchen picked up with dishwasher running a load of laundry going, and the living room picked up ready to be vacuumed. I think I'll ask him to pray that I can be focused more often. It's made for a pretty productive morning. I sure love that guy!

Potty Pro!

She did it! Kate is officially a potty pro! We are only 11 days in and she has done amazingly well. She has had only one accident in the last 4 days. She is very independent and never has to be asked if she needs to go. I do ask occasionally if it seems that it's been awhile, but she acts annoyed that I'm asking and either goes on her own on the little potty or asks for help to go on the big potty.

We are so proud of her and how well and quickly she has basically mastered such a huge thing. Oh, how I was dreading this process but it has proven to be fairly painless. Now we have a good six months of no diapers(well other than at night for now) until the baby arrives. Way to go Kate, we our so proud of our big girl!

Broken ankle

Ok, so don't panic I haven't broken my ankle, let me explain. This morning was one of those mornings were it was only 8am and the day had been rather down hill from the beginning. Nothing completely out of the ordinary, and maybe it was just my attitude but not great just the same. As Randall was leaving for work I asked him somewhat in jest to pray for me to have patience today. His reply, "No way, because then you'll break your ankle or something terrible today."

It reminded me of about 4 years ago when Anna was a baby. She was a very, very hard baby. Basically she awakened at 5am every morning crying and that was basically the day from then on. Keep in mind there was also a 3 hour stint of crying every single night too. I was completely exhausted emotionally and physically. I was having I guess you could say an adult temper tantrum complaining about how I had just had it with our life and taking care of babies and "really needed a vacation". Rand was in graduate school at the time and money, leisure, dates or anything of that nature were fairly non existent. Well not more than an hour later my "vacation" came. I was holding Anna trying to quiet her crying and trying to dose her some medication and gave her the plastic syringe to hold for a minute while I reached for something. She turned and with much force stabbed me in the eye with the syringe. I'm not exaggerating when I say the pain was immediate and intense. Long story short I ended up in the ER and after hours of waiting in horrible pain not being able to see anything The Doc said I had a severely gouged my cornea. Needless to say this gouge in my eye made it necessary to sit on the couch for 3 days doing nothing. With an eye injury the other eye acts sympathetic and I could not open or use either eye for those 3 days. That eye proved to have nerve damage and bother me for years. I quickly learned my lesson. I wasn't going to be asking for a vacation anytime soon.

Rand had a similar experience once. When he was in the missionary training center getting ready to go to Albania he was really struggling. I don't know why exactly but he was praying for patience or to get through the experience there a little easier. I believe it was that day he was playing basketball and severely sprained his ankle and ended up on crutches for a few weeks. He quickly learned that things weren't really as bad as he had originally thought.

So,I guess what I am saying is that on those days in the land of Motherhood where I feel like it's groundhog day over and over loading and unloading dishes, and clothes, cleaning, bathing, I have learned that the best thing I can do at that moment is count my blessings. I consider myself completely blessed to live in a nice home where I stay with my children and don't have to work, 2 reliable cars to drive, a husband with a great job, 3 beautiful children, wonderful family and friends, health and strength and baby #4 on the way. Today I consider myself very blessed indeed.

Let's go swimming

This week I was either brave or dumb to decide to start potty training Kate. She has made great progress and I am excited to be on our way to no more diapers. Yesterday Kate kept saying "I wanna go swimming". She was out of the room so I didn't know what was making her think of that. She finally wandered into the room with the potty ring from the toilet around her waist like a swim ring. She is a funny little thing. The only problem is she has decided she is a big fan of being in the buff so now we are having a hard time keeping even panties on her. Hopefully this week we will have success with the potty even with clothes on.

Happy 5th Birthday Anna

Today was Anna's 5th Birthday. It has taken some convincing on our part to make her believe that she is 5 and not 5 and a half. Always in a hurry to grow up. Speaking of growing up, as a gift and a reward for good behavior as of late, Anna earned the privilege of having her ears pierced. She has been asking to have them pierced for the last two years. I was 5 when I had my ears pierced and my Mom had to bribe me to stop crying in order to get my ears pierced so it seems only fitting that we had to do the same with Anna. A few weeks ago she was in the middle of a full blown tantrum over only having two candy corns instead of 3. She was so upset flailing around and screaming that she took her glasses from her face and snapped them right in half. I was so shocked I hardly knew what to do or how to react. We decided she no longer deserved to have her ears pierced but that she would have to "earn" the right to be a big girl, just as I did so many years ago. Anna did great the last few weeks and I think we all learned that she really can be a lot more in control than we all thought. She rightfully earned her earrings.

It was just the two of us as we headed to the mall to have them pierced. She told me up front that she wasn't going to cry. I told her that she could cry because it was going to hurt. We have been telling her for some time that it was going to hurt a lot to make sure that she was ready and really wanted to have it done. She wasn't at all worried. No surprise when the ears were pierced and she didn't even flinch. I was holding her hand trying to comfort her, but she needed no comfort. Not a tear. She was a amazing. She really is so tough. She has not cried for a vaccination probably since she was 2 or younger. When she had her tonsils out at 2 years old they said she would have to be hospitalized over night. She was so brave and doing so well that we were discharged within hours. She is amazing. She proves to be a challenge at times but with that said she is also one of the most loving people I know. She loves to be showered and shower others with affection. She wants nothing more than love, approval and affection. She is very nurturing and loves to play with small children. We recently watched a neighbors new baby for a few hours and she didn't leave the baby's side. She loved every second. Anna is such a sweetheart and we are grateful that she came to our family 5 years ago. We count her as one of our greatest blessings.

For weeks she has been asking that she have breakfast in bed for her birthday. This morning she was still counting on it even though she had already been awake for an hour or more. When we asked her to hop back into bed to have her special breakfast as requested she didn't want to do that. She even insisted that she hadn't asked for that. Such a funny girl. I think truth be told she realized it would be more fun to have breakfast while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

After breakfast and some more cartoons, we headed down to the Big, red barn to pick this years pumpkins. This has been a birthday tradition for the past 3 years. We rode a tractor pulled hay ride down to the pumpkin patch to pick the best we could find. After finding our pumpkins the kids picked out treats, doughnuts of course. For dinner we had Hawaiian pizza, Anna's favorite, and had to do with a little Dora cake from the store since our attempted Princess cake that was originally meant to be a pink pony cake didn't cook in the middle and turned out to be a huge mess. After dinner the kids watched "Happy Feet" as Annas pick. Anna was sure to remind us several times a day that it was "her special day" She even got to pick out her own pack of gum at the store. I think it was a special day indeed. We sure love our Anna.

Fall Fiesta

Last night we had a fun,fall, family party. We convinced Anna it was to celebrate her birthday the next day as well as a pre Halloween bash. We had lots of food including the traditional hot dog mummies, chili, veggies, hot cider, and fruit with carmel and chocolate dip. What could be finer?

We played some fun games like wrapping the Daddies in toilet paper to make them "mummies" and "Boo am I" in place of Charades and then the best thing ever, eating a doughnut on a string without hands. I haven't done that since I was a little tiny girl at a neighborhood Halloween Party. It was hilarious. Everyone who participated was covered in sugar or chocolate when they finished.

It was a fun way to celebrate the up-coming Halloween holiday. The kids had a great time running around and playing in the balloons. Not one child cried the whole night. We ended the evening with the spider pinata. I think kids and adults had a fun time. I can't believe we are just weeks away from the full blown holiday season. Yikes!

Disneyland Trip August 2009

It has been so fun to look back at the pictures and remember what a wonderful time we had at Disneyland. It was one of the first "real" full blown vacations we have taken just as our family. We loved every minute of it.