Post-it # 161

Staying in bed longer than kids often has serious repercussions. Like when they decide to surprise mommy with a breakfast of their own invention. I was the recipient of meals like this several times, and since it's a nice gesture, I had to be nice about it. But being nice about it meant the kids thought I welcomed it and would welcome it again. A horrible cycle. 

See what I got to eat? Fruity pebble sprinkled lunch meat draped over cold leftover spaghetti. The other slice of ham, I believe, encased fish crackers, cheese, and ketchup. And what goes better with marshmallow topped peanut butter bread than a pickle? 

To be honest, I shared a lot of my breakfast. I did happily eat the Nature Valley peanut bar. 

155th Passage

Here are some adorable Alli pictures from May.

Alli used to do an adorable crooked smile all the time. It got more crooked than this, but here's an idea of it.

Allison is a cuddle bug. She used to want to take her pillow and blanket around and sometimes would end up cuddling up in the most random places.

 Just because she's cute.

It's come to my attention that Allison likes to perch. She used to climb up on top of the toilet all the time just to sit there.

Don't you love it when toddlers "help" with the chores?

Allison does this funny thing (still does it) when she gives herself a hug and swivels back and forth while saying "happy". A lot of times she does it after she's been grumpy or naughty to show us that she's happy now and ready to be good. I think she's in the middle of saying happy in this picture.

Alli always wants to get into the car by herself.  Lately she then might climb into her own carseat, (which takes FOREVER) but she used to make a beeline for the backseat where her older siblings always sit. To humor her one day we buckled her into a booster seat. Still not big enough. :) 

(P.S. she did not stay there for the car ride. We moved her into her own carseat.)

Cuddling her juice.

I think the wrong end is sticking out of the blanket.

Alli is so proper she even uses a fork to eat veggie straws. 

Silly selfie.

While I was teaching Lydia her letter sounds, Allison would repeat them right along with her, so I tried to get some of it on video.

154th Passage

Here is some outside fun in the month of May.

Alli had her first experience with a sprinkler.

Alli also learned how to get on the trampoline by herself using the wagon. Smartie pants. 

We took the kids to a park on cool May day. They had fun.

 Oh man, she's cute!

I LOVE this picture of those two. 

David ran over the tricycle that the kids left right behind the mini van in the drive way. He did a thorough job of it.

 We bought a little kiddie pool that was well used over the summer. This was it's first use.

 Just having dinner outside. For some reason it's a lot more fun to eat sitting in the grass than at the table.

 Allison is most adorable.

153rd Passsage

After I called Alli a pretty girl, Lydia said: wait a minute, are me and Alli pretty?

Me: yep

Lydia: oh, well, I look prettier.

William: can I go to Jupiter's house?

Me: whose?

William: jupiter. I don't really remember his name.

Me: Jupiter is a planet.

William: fine, I'll just say, can I go to Billy's house?

(Billy is JARED's little brother)

Me: yes, but you should probably ask your friend what his name is so you don't do something like call him Jupiter.

Lydia: what day is tomorrow?

Me: Sunday

Lydia: Sunday was a few weeks ago!

Owen: Morgan, I dare you the next time we have fire I dare you to eat the fire.

Me: I'm so tired and energy lacking.

Lydia: well you can go night night when you're done. But first you gotta get me a piece of cake.

William was making a healthy meal plan thing for a Cub Scout requirement. He chose chicken for a main dish.

Me: what kind of chicken?

William: pork?

Me: CHICKEN. what kind of CHICKEN?

William: beef.

Me: William, what is chicken made from?

William: turkeys?

I bought Popsicles for the kids. Owen chose a yellow one.

Owen: this smells like banana; is it mustard?

Lydia looked over Morgan shoulder as he was looking at flash cards if bugs. She saw a praying mantis and said, "that's a hypocrite". Maybe she knows something about the mantis that I don't know.

Owen: my long fingernails meant everything to me.

Me: what is soil?

Owen: gray stuff that you can pretty much build anything out of.

David: say dada

Alli: dada

David: mama

Alli: mama

David: say grumpy old man

Alli: dada

Owen: can I have a donut now?

Me: yeah.

A few seconds later. Owen: can I have a donut now since you said "yeah"?

Me: put that gross thing down...

Lydia: no! It's not gross, it's my pet fly.

Today for school Owen was supposed to write a poem. He's been learning about it the past few days. Or has he?

This is his poem, titled "those".

Those tose nose lose those tose nose lose Those tose nose lose those tose nose lose Those tose nose lose those tose nose lose

And that's it.

Lydia: mommy, I love you.

Me: I love you.

Lydia: mommy, you're supposed to say "I love you TOO" when I say I love you. Let's try it again and when I say "I love you" you say "I love you too."

I love you.

Me: I love you, too.

Lydia: good job!

Today Allison handed Lydia a toy phone. Lydia put it to her ear and said, "bring me some candy, husband! Love you."

Me: do you guys know what daddy is doing?

Owen: last I saw he was fixing the bathroom ceiling.

Me: he's outside.

Owen: the bathroom ceiling is outside??

Me: ...no...

Lydia is playing with the play mobile nativity set. The shepherd is a zombie though and killed Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Then he asked a wiseman, in a very creepy snake-like whisper, what he wanted for Christmas so he could write it down. The wiseman replied with "a lady bug, rolly-polly, and a moose!"

P.s. I do not condone the zombie massacre of the holy family.

I told Lydia that she's fired. She broke down in whiny tears and cried, "why am I fired?! I don't want to be fired all the days!!!"

Lydia, picking at her dinner: I'm full...but I won't be full if we have ice cream

Lydia: mommy, this time I peed standing up and I didn't even get my pants wet!

Alli likes to shake my tummy and say "baby wakey!" I hope this doesn't continue when the baby is born!

Me: oh man, I have bad breath.

Lydia: then you better brush your teeth! Or daddy will never want to smell you again! Or love you.

Me: why does it smell like poop?

Lydia: it doesn't. Anyways, kids don't smell what moms smells.

Lydia: is your middle name May?

Me: my middle name is Dawn.

Lydia: whose middle name is Dawn?

Me: mine...

Lydia: what?! You didn't say that!!

Post-it #160

Flowers from David May 12, 2015

152nd Passage

Since I'm so far behind I think I'll just make one big April 2015 post with lots of pictures of things that happened in that month.

Easter was very low key last year. I'd just had a miscarriage and had to go to the ER because of the excessive bleeding and then was very weak for many days. I didn't even get to shop for the Easter treats, which I really like doing. Instead I sent David on that errand. He was really great about helping out. But Easter morning David and I were both really sick with a horrible stomach bug. David never remembers being so sick in his life. These were the only pictures of Easter morning that I got. I think all the kids trickled in at different times, often when I wasn't there.

Just some cute Allison pictures.

Lydia was still in dance lessons in April. They had an observe day where the parents actually got to be in the room. I got some photos of my pretty ballerina. 

Allison went through a phase where she would always lift the vent in the living room and throw things down it. Her favorite things to throw down there were shoes. In fact, you can see one of Lydia's all time favorite shoes in the vent; her sparkly red Dorothy shoe. Guess which pair of shoes suddenly went missing awhile ago? I couldn't figure out what could have happened to Lydia's shoes. I figured they'd turn up when we packed the house to move, but nope. After seeing this picture today I have another suspicion...

David and I had a fun date where we had an archery lesson for an hour. We learned the proper way to shoot a bow and arrow, which came in handy for the bows and arrows David made.  

More cute Alli. She looks so different now. 

This is David's marshmallow roasting method for when the fire is too hot to be any closer.

Top ten of 2015

I interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to write my Top Ten of 2015.
If you'll recall, the top ten is a list of the ten things in 2015 that I think has most impact on our lives, or are most noteworthy. Not all good, not all bad. Most memorable or noteworthy. I shall post them in chronological order, or as close to it as I can remember.

1. Early in the year I became pregnant again. This pregnancy was only a few months after my previous pregnancy ended when I delivered our 16 week along baby boy. Because of that, I held off with hope or much excitement about the current pregnancy.

2. In February David and I kind of spur of the moment decided to go to McCall for a night for the ice festival. Our kids stayed with his parents and we had a lovely get away for just the two of us. The sculptures were all pretty much melted, but that's okay, we had fun anyway.

3. The end of March after a routine doctors visit when I was 13 weeks pregnant I learned that my baby once again didn't have a heartbeat. A couple weeks later I miscarried another baby boy. This time there were complications. Apparently I didn't deliver all of the placenta and so the bleeding was heavy for a prolonged period of time. I felt awful and weak, but thought it would naturally pass. However, after passing out in the middle of the night on the way back from the bathroom, (luckily my knight in shining armor was there to catch me) we finally decided to go to the ER. I'd lost a lot of blood and maybe even had a heart attack. They were going to do an EKG to find out but we complained about lack of insurance and the cost of tests so they didn't. But looking back at the symptoms I had, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. Anyway, they filled me with fluids and removed the placenta and hours later we got to go home. My recovery wasn't swift.

4. Some time in the Spring, when I'd kind of given up hope on buying a house, I decided to put some of our savings toward paying off our car. And I did! And it got paid off! After that our only debt was David's student loans. That was a nice feeling.

5. In June I found out that I was pregnant again. This time it was after we had expensive test done to try and determine the cause for my recurrent miscarriages. Nothing was ever learned and we debated on whether or not to try for another child. Ultimately we decided to go the faith route and if God wanted us to have another baby we would. I'm still pregnant and into the third trimester and we are anticipating a healthy baby in March.

6. Early in the summer I got a new calling at church. I was released from nursery and called to the presidency in the YW. I really liked having that calling. I even got to go to girls camp, which I loved as a youth. It wasn't the same experience as an adult, and the weather made for some less than ideal camping situations, but it was memorable nonetheless.

7. We finally bought a house! We tried for so long and I thought we'd never be approved, but suddenly that changed. And sudden it was. We found out we were pre-approved for a loan, we began to look at houses and the second house we looked at was the one we loved. We thought it would be out of our price range, so we looked at a few others after that, but then decided to put an offer in anyway, below the asking price. It was countered, we went to as high a price as our lenders said we could, and it was rejected. But the next day we were informed the sellers had changed their minds. Then there was the whirlwind of inspections and everything, but on David's birthday, Aug. 31, we got the keys and were officially home owners! Yay!! We moved in the next day. There have been huge problems with plumbing, leaking roofs, broken water pumps, leaking water heaters, and a plethora of other problems that have been expensive to deal with, but we love the house, love the yard, love the shops, love the location, etc. So happy here.

8. My brother, Jason, got married in October. Finally. :) His wife is a delightful, spunky sort whom we call Kendra. It's exciting to have another member in the family. And the wedding was fun. We got to see relatives from out of town, I even played hostess for the first time to over-night guests in the new house, and David and I sang a duet at the reception. One of the coolest parts was being in the temple with my husband, parents, and all of my siblings for what I think was the very first time.

9. This school year started as normal with all the kids being homeschooled. That has changed. William was pushing and pushing to go to public school, since, you know, homeschool and step-mom are the worst things that could ever happen to him. It was a big struggle for everyone since his tantrums took a lot of my attention and focus and I couldn't focus on the other kids who needed a teacher/mom as much as I'd like. William clearly wasn't enjoying his time in our home which made David decide he'd rather have William like his home life than have him get the, what we believe is, superior education and training through homeschooling. So, William and Owen started public school. Owen didn't want to, but the poor kid was the collateral damage. Now homework is the worst thing that could ever happen to William in his life and he still tantrums and fights the majority of his time here... :(

10. David and I were once again in the Tender Mercies Choir that performs at the prisons in Boise for their LDS church Christmas services. It takes a lot of weeks of practice that can feel inconvenient, but the payoff is nice. The Spirit really does accompany us to the prisons. And to top it off, I got to do it not only with my talented husband, but with my other talented family members. This year my mom, sister, two brothers, and new sister-in-law were also in the choir.

2015 was another mostly good year for our family. There was also sadness, frustrations, lessons in patience, etc. but mostly good changes, growth, fun, and happiness.