By the Numbers

Here is an over-view of what we've been doing lately.

4 dentist appointments.
0 cavities.

3 well-child visits.
3 healthy children.

2 rounds of anti-biotics for strep throat.

1 visit to Urgent Care when Chad messed up his back--still not sure what happened--and couldn't move his neck. He had to actually be seen by someone to get prescriptions for heavy pain killers.

105 deg. temperature (really weird... it wasn't that high the whole time, but Claire ran a fever for 24 hours and it spiked at 105 before going down).
4:00 a.m.--the time at which Claire came out of her fever-induced-stupor, with a "Mommy, a read read books?"

1 visit from Aunt Heather--Hooray!! Thanks for coming H!

2 visits to the Aquatic Center.

1 Piano Recital--Caleb played Eine Kliene Nachmusik by Mozart, his favorite composer.

3 fondue dinners--YUMMY!!

1 week off of school for Spring Break.

1 trip to Denver.

2 rides on the Denver Light rail (Caleb wants to ride a train, and we thought this would take care of that, but apparently an electric train doesn't qualify as a real train).

5 tickets to see Mary Poppins at the Denver Center for Performing Arts.

1 trip to Cheyenne to visit Nick and Em and family. It was so great to see them!!

2 OB appointments for Teri--baby is healthy and just the right size to be here the end of May.

Lots of piano and violin practicing.

Countless hours spent in the car, running here, there, and everywhere.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Its a Girl

(Songsty and the kids in their penguin jammies)

We went to Pocatello for Christmas and it was SO FUN! It was great to see so much of my family (but we missed those who weren't there!!) and hang out and talk and eat and stay up too late and put puzzles together and just have a great time. The kids had fun playing with their cousins. But it was also good to come home.

For New Year's Eve we went to Cheyenne to visit Nick and Em, Chad's brother and his family. Also, so fun to see them and visit and eat yummy food.

I mentioned briefly once that we are expecting #4 in May. We had an ultrasound the beginning of the month and it looks like we're having another girl! Surprisingly, Natalie was the one who wanted a brother, and Caleb the sister. I think Nat just doesn't want anymore competition for her stuff around here. Claire doesn't get it, but she's going to have an adjustment when the baby is born because right now she thinks she runs this household. (Okay, maybe she does... but she's just so dog-gone cute!) So now we are playing the name game. At the appt. the dr. said the baby was too small for what we thought was my due date, so she changed it by 10 days, so now I'm due May 29th instead of May 19th. I feel BIGGER than I have with my other 3 pregnancies, so that she moved it to LONGER is annoying! But I guess I want a healthy baby, so I'll deal.
(Me at 19 weeks. Terrible picture, but you can see my baby!)

P.S. I am terrible at remembering to take pictures.

A beautiful thought

You know how sometimes you go to those blogs and they are beautifully written and inspirational and they want you to be better in some way. This isn't one of those blogs. But I have several sisters (okay really they probably read this more than anything else) who often drop their beautiful words of wisdom into their blogs. Here is a link to one of those. Thanks Erin!

http://myfrontporchlookingin.blogspot.com/2009/12/that-kind-of-wife.html

3 weeks later, Happy Birthday to me part 2

I am 30 years old. I am officially middle-aged. Ok not exactly but I may as well be! When you are 20 you are still almost a teenager. At 25 you are in your early 20s which is still almost a teenager. At 27 you are looming closer to 30, but still only in you 20s which is almost a teenager. But at 30 you are, well 30.

I had a good birthday. I honestly didn't think I was going to get anything on my actual birthday (see previous post) but Chad surprised me with some kitchen stuff I have been wanting.

I guess I should be okay with this milestone. I do have 3 fabulous children, with a 4th one the way (I may have failed to mention this before... I'm pregnant. 18 weeks. Don't know the gender yet but OF COURSE we will find out.) I have a house in the suburbs and drive a suburban. My husband has a career. I get to stay home and be a mom. These are all great things. But 30 is such a big number! But at least I'm not 40.

Happy Birthday to me, part 1

So a couple weeks ago I was attempting to tackle my piles of laundry. I was actually making progress. ... I was down to my last batch. I went in to the laundry room to change the batch and realized there was water standing in the bottom of the washer. It had quit in the middle of the cycle. Oh dear. I called my mom... she told me to see if I could at least get it to spin the water out. I could, so I went ahead and dried it. Then I told Chad I had a great idea of what to do for date night... go shopping for a new washer! Yea!! So fun.

I spent the next several hours looking on-line at information on washing machines. I narrowed it down to a GE something-or-other. We dropped the kids at a friend's house for a couple hours, with a bargain that we'd bring pizza back for dinner. Then we went to 2 stores. I didn't get the GE something-or-other. I ended up getting a Samsung something-or-other. I LOVE it! It is faster and cleans better than my old one. And it spins the water out better, cutting down the drying time. We are going to get the dryer in a few months because my old dryer is still functioning.

So this isn't exactly what I was hoping to get for my birthday, but, as it turns out, I love it. Oh, and Claire loves it too. Last night she discovered that she can open it and put her baby's clothes in it, and push all kinds of buttons and it will make all kinds of exciting beeps. So Chad went ahead and turned on the "child lock" feature. (I hope I can figure out how to turn that off when I do my laundry today.)

A new post

This new post will just be an overview of the last 3 months of craziness. Long but with pictures.

--2 soccer games, 2 nights a week for 6 weeks. Good thing they had fun, and Caleb got to be much more aggressive (which is a good thing in soccer).

--First grade is going great--Caleb loves math and recess.

--I'm doing a preschool co-op for Natalie. She loves it, and it gives me time to get some errands taken care of with only one child in tow.

--We all got a stomach bug. On different nights of the same week. I was SO tired by the end of that week!!

--Claire had swine flu, and fortunately it was a really mild case. No one else has gotten it, yet. (Knock on wood...)

--Claire is mostly potty trained. Hooray! The others were well past their 3rd birthday before they were. It is so wonderful, although I do spend more time in public restrooms than I would like to.

--Halloween was fun. Caleb was an indian. Natalie was super-girl. Claire was going to be a clown, but that was the weekend she was sick, so she didn't actually didn't get to go, which was sad for me because I'd made her a really cute costume. Sorry I didn't take pictures.

--Natalie turned 5. She is such a girl. And spoiled, which is mostly my fault. I made her cake, and used fondant for the first time. It was fun.

--Chad and I celebrated our anniversay--8 years! I'm so glad we got married because we are a great team. For our date that weekend we went out to dinner and then to the high school football game. It brought back a lot of high school memories for me. Weird. But we had lots of fun.

--I planted a few things in a garden this Spring. We got a pumpkin, some zucchini (is there anyone in this world that CAN'T grow zucchini?), and some carrots. I'd planted lettuce but none grew, I think because I planted it too late. Anyway. We got some HUGE zucchinis.

--My mom made this adorable tutu for Claire and she loves it! She puts on the leotard and the ballet slippers... the whole 9 yards. She cracks me up.

--Natalie is taking violin lessons... We've started on the "Twinkles" and she's loving it. Caleb is taking piano lessons and has already had his first recital, where he played "Old McDonald."

Thats all I can think of for now.

P.S. I am horrible at taking pictures. On the rare occassion I remember to get the camera out the pictures just aren't that great. Sorry. But at least you can tell my kids are cute.

Whats up.

It has been such a crazy summer that blogging has fallen thru the cracks. Here's an update. I'm pretty sure I am the world's worst picture taker. Even when I do happen to remember to take my camera, and actually pull it out at opportune moments, the pictures never turn out decent enough to actually share. Sorry.

A couple weeks after the trek Chad and I went up to Girls Camp for one night. It was so much fun. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Girls Camp. Always have. Pretty sure I always will. While there, the ward camp leader and I caught three of our young men trying to toilet paper the cabin. Haha. It was really funny.

The end of July and the first of August the kids and I went to Idaho. We hung out with my family for a while. My sister Karianne had baby #4. Yeah!! Baby Emily looks like a Perrenoud and is very sweet. Claire couldn't get enough of that baby, and now she's obsessed. Every child under 2 is a baby, and she exclaims at the top of her lungs "BABY!!" Its pretty cute.

I also got my hair cut and colored. I'll post a picture when I get a decent one on my camera.

The first week of August we met Chad in St. Anthony, ID., for the Comin Reunion. It was lots of fun to see them and get to know some of his cousins and stuff. They are so great. There was a little pond there and a couple canoes, so we went out for a paddle one day. The kids loved it--even Claire--and now Chad wants a canoe even more.

After that we went to Boise to visit with my oldest sister, Kelli. Chad was awesome and helped her husband move his garage to their new house. We also went white-water rafting. We left Claire and Kelli's little one with another sister (Thanks H!!) but took the rest. I admit, I was really nervous. I inherited my mother's fear of water, especially where the kids are involved. But it was a BLAST!! and no one went out the boat unless they had planned to. We really want to go again another time. Thanks, Cole Family for such a fun time.

A couple days later we came home. It was so great to be back in our own house, even though we had a great time. Thats there is a brief update.