I Love...

I just had to share a couple of pictures from Valentines Day.

The chocolate marshmallow fondue was a hit!

Hailey worked so hard on her valentines for her brothers and I was actually quite impressed. 

In case you can not tell this is Darth Vader, complete with his red light saber.
This is Yoda, Noah was quick to point out that his light saber should be green and not red.
I love my family and am grateful that they are still putting up with me, especially Mike!!!!

Oh Boy, Oh Boy, it's a GIRL!!!

So I had my ultrasound today and it's a girl.  Everything looks good!  Hailey is really excited!  She came to the ultrasound and told us on the way there that if it was a boy she was going to scream at the top of her lungs.  Luckily this did not happen.  She can be a little dramatic!

I have an excuse!!!

So the longer I go without updating my blog the more guilty I feel. Not because I think that all of you are dying because you don't know what my family and I have been up to, but just because I feel like I am not keeping up with the things that I want to.

Anyway I have an excuse for the long break in blogging. I have been sick and am now getting back to a life that does not involve sleeping most of the day away and feeling nauseous all of the time. Yes you guessed it I am expecting #4! I am currently 15 weeks so most of the sickness is gone and I kind of feel human again, thank heaven!!!

So now on to the many things that we have been up to over the past 2 months, this is going to be the abbreviated version!

I have always loved Christmas and I will continue to do so but this year I mostly wanted it to be over because that meant I was hopefully closer to feeling better. I know that is a horrible way to feel at Christmas time but it was what it was. Don't worry I did not let my kids in on my scroogeness. They were happy and totally oblivious. We tried to keep up all of the regular traditions. Here are a few pics from the season.

We made our annual trek downtown on the train to go and visit Santa. The kids always look forward to this and this year was not exception.

What would Christmas eve be without new PJ's?

Before:After:We decided to tell the kids on Christmas that they were going to have a new brother or sister. We saved these gifts until the very last and had wrapped them in baby paper. They opened the baby food and pacifiers, which confused them a bit at first but Hailey soon figured it out. They are excited and Hailey says that it was her favorite Christmas present! When asked if they wanted a brother or sister Hailey responded- sister, Jackson-brother, and Noah insisted that he wanted a dog baby. When we told him that I would not be giving birth to a dog he responded that he would get it himself. Never a dull moment with that kid!This past weekend Mike had a conference in SunRiver so we rented a house and went down to play on the snow for a long weekend. We already new that Jack was into skateboarding and surfing, but now he has discovered snowboarding also. I personally do not love the cold weather so I made sure to make an appt. at the spa for a pedicure. Thanks Mike!!!
So that sums it up in a nut shell and now that I am caught up I will be able to cross this off my to do list!

Has it really almost been a month?

So I must post today so that I will not go one month without posting. It has not been for lack of things to post, almost the opposite. Where has the time gone? Can there really be only about 11 days left until Christmas? I have not gotten Mike one thing yet, and Hailey is really hard for me to shop for this year. I really am not into buying just to buy(Although it is fun!)

The past month has been filled with lots of family filled good times. For Thanksgiving we decided to make the trek to Utah to see family. My family knew we were coming but we did not tell Mike's family. A surprise is always nice. It was fun to see lots of family and a new neice and nephew.

Jackson really took a liking to his new cousin Mason who was just a week old. So precious!!

Jackson was busy as he helped to make the pumpkin pie with his very own sugar pie pumpkin that he got on his school field trip to the pumpkin patch. He was very determined to use it to make a pie, so we made one from scratch. As always there was lots of good food and family! Here are the boys hollowing out the pumpkin.

What else, we made our annual trek to the Christmas tree farm to find our tree. This year we made sure to measure the opening of our Christmas tree stand so that we did not pick a tree whose trunk was too wide thus requiring a lot of work to get it to fit. We are learning!!

All decorated! This is known as the "Adult Tree" to my kids. Meaning that Mom gets to decorate it. Their tree is up in the bonus room and has all of their ornaments on it. I did not help decorate this one at all, it was all them!Hailey had here first choir concert this morning, it was really cute to see her doing what she loves! Here she is with her cousin Cecilee!

Halloween-Better late than never

So I am a little behind,yet again. We had a fun halloween which resulted in way too much candy, which resulted in too many raids on my kids candy. Why is it that I can eat 10 fun size candy bars but would never touch a full size one?

Hailey wanted to be Dorothy this year and I was having trouble finding an appropriate 7 year old Dorothy costume. It seems that all the ones I found wer way too grown up, if you know what I mean. So Grammie to the rescue! My Mom made Hailey a costume and it turned out great.

I was hoping thatI could convinve the boys to go along with a Wizard of Oz theme, but they were having none of that. So Jackson was Bumblebee the transformer, and Noah was Spiderman. As he says the red spiderman. I guess there is a black spider man? Who knew?

Potty Training, Ughh!!!

So you would think that by the 3rd child I should have this potty training thing down, I don't. I just don't understand the fear that Noah has of pooping in the toilet, and why a better option is to do it in his underwear. Can anyone shed some light on this? Any advice for me to help him get this. We have the pee thing down but #2 is a different story. Sorry about the gross topic but I would really like to figure this one out!

I have to say accidents and all this kid can make me smile at the drop of a hat. Cute little guy!

October Madness

The fall is always busy in our household. Between school starting, soccer, birthdays and just living I never seem to sit down and relax. Not to mention that this October we added a trip to Boise, family pictures, weekend trip to Utah, and a marathon. So I thought I would try and catch up a little bit before I need to go make dinner for the missionaries.

Jackson and Haileys b-days are the 14th and the 19th. A few years ago I decided that they could have a friend party ever other year so that I could keep some sort of sanity. It was Haileys year to have the bash but Jackson did get to invite 2 friends to a little b-day celebration. We went to Out of this World Pizza, they had a great time. In Boise the weekend before he got what he wanted, the Big Bumblebee transformer. He is crazy about super heroes, Star Wars and skateboards right now. I can't believe that he is 5!

Hailey played soccer again this year. It was a more enjoyable season than last year, I think because the boys are 1 year older and I was able to actually watch Hailey a little and was not constantly chasing the boys everywhere.

Hailey wanted a TinkerBell party this year. She made her invite list and it had 13 girls on it! I like to throw parties at home but this was too big, so she opted for Out of this World Pizza. Come and visit we will go to this place, it is awesome. Whenever we go we are usually there 4 hours because the kids just love to play and I can just sit and relax. Not like Chuck E. Cheese where if you look away for a second it takes 1/2 hour to locate your child again! The kids had a great time and Hailey was so excited about her TinkerBell Cookie cake! On Sunday, her actual b-day, I was feeling like a loser Mom because I did not bake her a cake. Yes, we had b-day pancakes in the morning but I still felt bad. So around 7pm the doorbell rang, it was cousin Cecilee and family who had baked and decorated a cake for Hailey! Thanks for relieving some of my guilt!Just had to add this picture of Noah, sorry Mike! (Dan I don't want any comments!) We gave my neice Avery dressups for her b-day and Noah thought that they were so pretty!This month was tiring to me and obviously to Noah too! Watch out November, here we come!