Baby

I started to get a little nervous as it got closer to time to have my ultrasound.  Especially after being so sure that it was a girl.  I think part of me just doesn't think I can handle 4 boys, so that was my way of keeping my sanity going into the whole thing. I picked up my older kids from school early and dropped off the 2 younger ones with a friend and headed to the appointment.  I was anxious to see the little one because this time, the placenta is on the front of my uterus (sorry, graphic) which makes it really hard to feel any movement.  I have to lie very still and it is so subtle that Peter hasn't even been able to feel the baby kick yet.  This is very different than all the other times.  After having a little scare with the last ultrasound, I was a little worked up again.  I had vivid baby dreams all night just like last time.  The kids enjoyed being there.  Tanner was very confused by the pictures.  When we looked at the heart, he was sure that did not look like one.  I see his point.  It didn't take long to get a nice good view of the gender though and all the wondering came to an end.  So....

This baby definitely has an outy! I was so shocked I couldn't even say anything. Now that it is real, of COURSE we are so delighted.  Apparently you can't control everything in life, ha ha.  I figure, we are used to active boys.  Even Lily is pretty rough and tough like a boy so bring it on, we can handle it.  I know the Lord knows me and this is just as it should be.  But now that we know, I just can't wait to get my hands on him.  Am I am really only half way there?

Easter 2011

Happy Easter!


We had a wonderful Easter this year. All week the kids looked forward to opening the 12 days of Easter eggs and learning about the last days of Christ's life. They really seemed to get it. What a great experience.

On Saturday, after working outside all day we invited our friends to join us for dying eggs. It was chaos fun!  The kids really got into it, so it was worth it. But really, whoever made this a tradition was a little crazy.










I have the messiest kids in the world!




Easter morning was a blast.  The kids are perfect ages for the fun surprises.  This is the first time the Easter Bunny has brought a bigger gift to each kid.  Dallin is obsessed with money so he got play money.  Eden loves pretty things so she got a bead kit and Tanner, of course got a Spiderman blanket which he now takes everywhere. Carter got some new books with a cd that reads along with them.





Oh yeah!





Checking out the loot.





Hunting eggs. Not sure what Tanner was pouting about, but it is pretty funny.


























I caught Carter placing a piece of candy between each toe!!! Where do they come up with it?


The kids helped peel their egg masterpieces for breakfast.


After church, we made Resurrection rolls to throw in one more object lesson.  They were a hit.  Then we were off the Peter's parents for another egg hunt with cousins and a huge feast.  It was so fun to eat and visit and enjoy the holiday together.




As we loaded our BMW (big mormon wagon, I have learned the proper term) with all of our stuff and piled the kids in, Peter and I seemed to both think that the other had put Carter in the van. I remember asking Peter if everyone was in and he said everyone but Carter.  I came back in  to get him, got distracted with getting leftovers to take home and Peter came in too so I thought he was on it. I guess we both assumed the other had retrieved our #4.  We got about a mile away when Peter noticed that Carter was definitely not with us.  We sheepishly headed back for him.  Peter's dad joked about how many times this had happened to them with all their kids, like leaving one at home sleeping while everyone else went to church and noticing half way through the meeting that they weren't all there.   Ah, well I guess it goes with the territory.

Spiderman

Tanner is quite a fan of Peter Parker these days. He loves to watch a cartoon called Spectacular Spiderman on Netflix.  He adopted these 3T pajamas from Carter which are way to small, but he loves them.  In fact he wears them ALL the time.  The only time I can get them off of him is when we are going somewhere or when they  are peed in need washed. One day when they were being washed, Tanner opted to wear Spiderman swim trunks instead.  Tanner is an expert web thrower with accompanying sound affects.  He loves to find any kind of string to make it even better. Slinkies work great too.  He makes his own action figures out of duplos every day and we almost have him convinced that Peter might actually be Peter Parker in real life, ha ha.

Before

We had quite an eventful week with our yard last week.  First of all, we were noticing how much our 2 pin oak trees have grown since moving here 7 years ago. They were getting so big that they were starting to take over the yard.  Last summer, we didn't get much sun at all. And the millions of leaves that came from these 75 foot trees was crazy.  Our neighbors had both asked us if we were ever going to take them out. We started thinking that we could do a lot more with our yard without these dominating lovelies around.  The first guy that came told me that even though these trees were 40 years old, they were still babies. What!?! They just keep growing for at least 100 years.  I believed him after seeing how much they grew in 7.  These are not yard trees! Now we felt like we had no choice. After shopping around for an estimate we decided it was time to say goodbye. 






It took 5 guys 4 solid hours of hard work to bring down each tree.  It is quite fascinating to watch.  There was one guy up in the tree and other guys below lowering one branch at a time and sawing it into pieces and taking it out front to the chipper. When only the trunk was left, they guy just started at the top and cut one log at a time off until he got to the bottom. Dallin was home sick the first day and sat and watched out the window nearly the whole time.  We hate to think about how we could have used the money on other things, but we are both glad it is just done, it needed to happen. We used all the bark chips from the second tree to lay all around the back of the yard around the playhouse because it gets really muddy back there. We also kept a small supply of wood for camping. We still have one 75 foot tall evergreen in the corner and 2 smaller breed of oaks on one side and lots of mature landscape to enjoy from the neighbors.


Here is what is left from my cute gardens from last year(below). Yikes.  We threw the boxes away because we learned that you should not make them with pressure treated wood. The dirt was still there under the leaves.  The week before, we went and bought everything we need to make new boxes and expand for this year.  I was so excited to get started.   Saturday was a gorgeous day and I had dubbed it "garden day".  Peter went to run a half marathon in the morning so I decided to get started.  I raked all these leaves first.  Then I laid a huge tarp on the lawn and shoveled all the dirt onto it. Then I had to pull huge heavy bags of new material to add to the dirt that we already had.  I added more compost, vermiculite, and peat moss in large quantities and had to mix it all with shovel and rake like a big cake mix.  Oh man, my body hurts just thinking about it. After 2 hours, my prego body was overdone.  I was determined to get the project done though so when Peter got home, also exhausted, we mowed down the blackberries that sprung up, evened out the ground a little and laid some more weed cloth down.  It cleaned up really nicely.  Peter built the new boxes which are one 4x4 and 2 4x8, quite a bit more than last year.  Once we had them in the right spots, we filled them with our new "Mel's Mix" soil that I had made. Its a beautiful thing.  We got the grids on top mostly done, but Peter decided he had better finish bringing the bark chips back from the driveway. That was about 100 wheel barrels full.  The finished boxes look great and all we need to do now is lay down some pea gravel around them and plant!

Our yard is really starting to come together now.  I need to take the after pictures still so stay tuned.   I loved working out there though, it was so rewarding to see it all come together.  We still have a mile long list of things we want to do with it, but we sure do love our yard. The kids are out there all the time.  
Here are a few things we hope to do this summer. We want it to be nice, but mostly a kid haven: finish up playhouse(I am actually excited about that!)
plant the garden
dec out the inside of playhouse
put down grass seed on baldy lawn
hang cool patio lights on covered patio
get new gravel for side of house and garden area
put swings upmake climbing wall on side of playhouse
install a zip line
hammock between our "little" oaks that we still have
fire pit
clear out and level north side of housegeneral clean up and grooming
spruce up front yard(it is embarrassingly overgrown at the moment)

I hope we will have lots of Saturdays to work out there this year. I have more hope for our yard than I have had in a long time now that the overbearing trees are gone. I love having our own little piece of earth to make our own.

Sugar Baby

If I am not quick to clean up after an oatmeal breakfast, my expert climber will be there to discover the sugar shaker and dump the whole thing out.

And have a great time.


And a tasty time too.





But who could be mad at a cute little girl baby that just happened to be wearing a cute bow and who makes the most delicious fishy faces.

Recipes

Several people have been asking for Meatless recipes, so I thought I would share some.  I have been LOVING Pinterest.com which is a way to visually catalog all your favorite links with pictures that you can click on.  I was happy to finally start putting all my links in one place that you can easily see. 

I have not tried all these recipes, but I must say the Lentil Chile with Corn Fritters is a must have at our house because it is quick, easy, delicious and healthy.  I have made it a couple of times and it is kid approved (for the most part).  I have many meatless meals bookmarked here if you would like to see some things I have found around the web and I will keep adding to it:


http://pinterest.com/pricillad/

Nutrition Progress

(This post took on a life of its own. I am just writing about my food journey. I really don't want to seem preachy, I am just excited. I really hold no judgement but to myself on the subject. And I am so not even close to where I want to be yet.)

I am hooked on nutrition.  The more I study, the more I am amazed at how what we put in our bodies really does matter.  But, the more you learn the more you want to leave your old ways behind. Peter jokes that I need to stop because he is losing some things he likes, yet he does support me. Being educated brings a lot of consciousness to the table.  This is the book I can't keep my nose out of this week. This lady is living with an incurable cancer and a healthy energetic life at the same time.  She definitely has quite a mouth on her, but it is a very easy read with so much information on how the body works.

We haven't gone and changed everything all at once, but the few changes we have made are awesome.  I no longer buy refined partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.  They are bad for you! We have switched to mostly olive oil, flax oil and unrefined coconut oils which are good for you.  We use a small amount of real butter too, but very moderately(mostly for toast).  I am not afraid of fat as long as it is healthy fat in moderation.  Your body needs fat to absorb the nutrition in your food.    

Meat is another thing we have nearly cut out at home.  I promised Peter that I would still cook with meat once or twice a week, but by becoming educated about it, it has not been hard at all for me to put aside. Meat that we eat now days is so full of hormones and unnaturally farmed it is gross and the bad outweighs the good.  And pork is the worst thing ever!  Wow, that stuff stays in your system for up to 3 weeks, rotting away. ick! I will stop there, but trust me it gets worse. I am definitely more open to spending the big bucks for organic meat now, if at all.

I am not a vegetarian but happy to save it for when we are not at home.  I know it makes sense, but living it I have realized that when you cut out meat from your meals, you replace it with super healthy(less expensive) stuff instead.  Lots more beans, whole grains and veggies just comes naturally.  And even though I had been overwhelmed about it in the past, here is the secret to eating less meat: Start with anything meatless you already do and add one recipe at a time!  Just try something that sounds good and if it is a keeper, add it to your new meatless meals recipe folder. I also realized that this way of eating is natural for me.  I grew up eating less meat and that has come back to me. Bonus: If you are trying to eat healthier and think it is too expensive, start eating less meat and it will really even out the budget.

Processed lunch meats are no longer an option at home.  They are among the worst offenders, next to hot dogs.  I have discovered how to make fabulous veggie sandwiches now.  Who knew the sandwich could be so good without meat(I am a veggie lover though).  My favorite is cutting up a green onion and mixing it with cream cheese for the spread and adding cucumbers, tomatoes, and avocado with a little salt and pepper. Just thinking about it makes me hungry, yum!  I am imagining adding spinach and sprouts and trying it with hummus or making yogurt cheese instead of cream cheese.

Dairy is another thing all together.  I am almost to the point of cutting out cows milk as well.  It causes problems.  I was slower to warm up to this idea, but last week we made a big discovery. Poor little Lily has a permanent rash on her little face and diaper area that has been a mystery to us.  We ran out of milk for a couple of days and it started to clear up.  We decided to withhold milk for a couple more days and it cleared up completely.  So when we started giving her milk again....you guessed it, the rash came right back.  Now I am starting to get that milk does not do a body good. It causes mucous in the body and the protein in it is hard to digest. And back to the hormones, there are too many issues there to go into.  It is attributed to many health issues that my family currently suffers(eczema, asthma, skin problems, constant green runny noses). And for those convinced that we will die of osteoporosis if we don't get our 3 glasses a day, studies show that vegans have bone density just as good as omnivores. In the US we drink more milk than any other developed country yet we have the highest amount of this dreaded bone disease.  Wow! How do you explain that?

But oh, the cheese.  We LOVE cheese and eat a lot of it. I don't know quite how we will tackle that one. One step at a time. I am not even close to there yet. 

Oh, and grains, I love whole grains.  There are a lot out there that are not in the every day typical American diet that are fabuloso.  We were already eating mostly whole grain, but are doing even better now. 

I am also trying to get closer to eating more raw food.  We need the enzymes in food that is alive and cooked food is dead. So I am trying to be more careful about lightly sauteing and keeping it crunchy. It tastes better that way anyway.

We are eating smoothies more than ever, but I am still not to the point of having them every day yet.  I get good mommy feelings every time I watch my babies sucking them down though.  In addition to all the greens, we have added raw flax oil and liquid D3 to the mix.

Change is fun, I am enjoying all that I am learning about the body and nutrition immensely.  I am also enjoying learning how to cook all over again.  I never knew I could enjoy this journey so much.  I know I might sound like a crazy lady.  I never would have guessed that these things would be part/not part of my life so I even sound like a crazy lady to myself.  But I am okay with this brand of crazy now. 

Mama Wagon

I woke up in the night to help a kid and realized, it wasn't a dream.  I walked past our front window and jumped a little bit, since I am not used to seeing this!  It really happened. We finally took the plunge and got me a Mama wagon.

We have talked about getting one of these for a couple of years, so it is surreal that it is here. We had waited until it became a need instead of a want. I love it! After weeks of researching, yesterday as I was browsing the internet, this one that I have seen many times before just called to me.  It was the one!

I met up with Peter at the dealership and we felt really good about it. Negotiations went really well and we got a great deal. We even traded our minivan in, which was totally unexpected for me. How easy is that? They will even mail us our new plates and take care of the DMV stuff. I was not  expecting to actually buy it yesterday either so it all just happened so fast (well, over a 4 hour span). We even had Dallin and Lily with us so we were not prepared for doing so much business. The other kids played at Peter's Mom's house.

It is not new, it is a 2006, which feels pretty dang new to me. Thanks to a great tax return we were able to keep our commitment to each other not to take on car payments.

So here it is, Ta-dah!

Don't laugh, I know it is not the coolest car on the block.  But to me, it is just what we need and when I see it I think of all the fun we will have with it. "Oh, the places we'll go!" I think its pretty so that's good enough for me.  I love the feel of such a powerful engine and sitting up a bit higher gives me an ego boost (short complex anyone?).  But alas, I will be the one driving like a granny to try to save gas mileage.  I will be keeping my foot off the gas as much as humanly possible.  Although the MPG is a lot better that I was expecting(15/19).

So to break it in yesterday, we got back to Peter's parents house, picked up our whole family, Peters parents, brother and sister, and Peter's cousin, maxing out the 12 person capacity with ease, and drove to the other side of Portland to celebrate Grandpa H.'s 96th birthday. It drove so smoothly even with such a full load and didn't struggle a bit to go up big hills with it's 5.4L engine. I had imagined feeling like a bus driver, but it really doesn't feel different then driving a minivan. And the coolest part, we watched a movie all the way there. Super bonus for me, that is not a common feature for these cars!

Driving around, I felt a little sad about leaving our minivan behind, we had a lot of fun with it. Okay, I know I am not normal, but then I said to myself, "I have arrived!" My life dream of a full sized family is finally here and this is the car to go with it. I could have predicted this for my life when I was 3.

I hate spending money on cars and the whole process so I am planning to drive this baby until it will go no more. It's kind of like settling into a house that you plan to raise a family in, except a car.

It is very easy to drive (it is actually an inch or two shorter in length compared to a suburban, just more of a big box). Although I haven't had to back up much yet. I think I will avoid that as much as possible. But it is very comfortable. I like the color. I was just hoping to avoid white so I am happy. I am just tickled about the whole thing.  I am grateful for this blessing and what it means to our family and it is more than I could have hoped for.

I had to hold my camera way above my head to take this. The light part on the bottom is the back bench. Holy hugeness Batman!

Easter Countdown

I was looking through some stuff that I bookmarked for Easter last year and found this great website full of ideas.
I am most excited about this 12 day countdown. The kids will get to open and egg each day and we will have an object lesson from the last days of Christs life.  The last egg is empty to represent the empty tomb.  I am excited to make the holiday more about Christ.   Click here for the link. There are other ideas as well including a recipe for empty tomb rolls. 

A few months ago I read in the Ensign an idea for memorizing The Living Christ document as a family with pictures.  I have been meaning to gather pictures to go with it so we can do that, but found that there is a post on this blog with downloadable flashcards all ready to go!  yay!

Conference

What a great General Conference weekend (When the leaders of the church give semi-annual televised talks).  I was left feeling humbled, inspired and feeling much work to do. 

With so many talks on marriage, I realized something more than ever.  After being married for 10 years, I am still so very immature.  Hence the humbling part.  Having children has given me unbelievable growth, I can see that, but I could be so much more than what I am. I am in my infancy of where I hope to some day be.  I want to shake off this selfishness that is part of me and grow into something more.  Someone who tirelessly serves her family and friends while not being concerned with herself.  I believe there are so many blessings in store for living a life of selflessness.  More joy, meaning, fulfillment, purpose.  And I especially want to use my life as a living example to my children.

I can't wait to go back and review all that was given, it was way more than I could take in at once. So much inspiration.  I especially loved the topics on personal revelation, trials, marriage, and parenting. Everything was so in sync, so amazing.  These men and women are such spiritual giants.  It is so inspiring. 

The kids were in and out, but overall I think they did pretty well.  During one of the sessions, we did a project that kept them in the room with their hands busy.  That helped a lot.  We laminated and cut out all of our Accountable Kids cards.  They were really into it. We didn't have any conference packets this time so we just let them color in color books the rest of the time.  That kept them around a little more.  Sometimes it was too noisy to hear much, and other times, they lost interest and left to go play.  I think they are getting it more each time we have conference though.  One speaker Dallin recognized all on his own which was fun. It was Dallin H. Oaks of course!