Random February

Matthew the gangster who absolutely loves and devours oranges. He'd eat them all day long if I'd let him.

And he also still loves to wear hats all the time, anywhere. This is probably his current favorite outfit- underwear & a hat. Doesn't he have style? The other day he had on 5 caps at a time, and then had fun lining them up and playing with them.

We had snow days again on Thursday & Friday so the kids were all home with me. Jeff also had lectures until 8:30pm every night but Friday, which means the boys and I had a lot of time together over the week, so we had to come up with some fun things to do. On Thursday they spent a lot of time playing and making fun creations with moon sand.

On Friday, we broke out the blankets and made a massive fort in the living room. The best part was that it was an easy set-up and clean-up. It was pretty much made up by putting cushions and blankets around the couches and piano. The boys were entertained for hours and it gave me the chance to work on making headbands, bows, and fun things for our little girl. :)

Baby Shower

When we found out we were having a girl, I had quite a few friends who wanted to throw a baby shower. I didn’t think it was necessary since it was my fourth baby, but people insisted and on Saturday I was spoiled with a fun shower/get-together with friends. Debbie and Kristen put it together and others helped out with games & things. Jordan did a pretty funny candy bar matching game that had us all laughing. It was so fun to have an afternoon to spend with friends; everyone was sure sweet to give up time on a busy Saturday. The food was great as always and I think everyone had a great time. I’m sure grateful for so many sweet and thoughtful friends. There were so many darling little gifts, and I just appreciated everyone even taking the time to come. And I do think it’s going to be fun having a little girl! Thanks to Jordan for all the pictures, only problem is we missed seeing you in them! :)

Angela M, Ellen, Teresa, Me

Kristen, Kimberly, Whitney, baby Aspen, Noelle

Calli, baby Taylin, Sarah

Debbie, Deborah, Stacey

Kristen, Stacey, Debbie, Teresa

Annette, Tamar

36 Weeks

36 Weeks and counting...

I have 2-4 weeks left in this pregnancy, it would be nice if it was on the lesser side, but it will be interesting to see when this little girl makes her debut. I have an ultrasound & a doctor's visit this week. I've had Braxton Hicks contractions from week 18 on, but they definitely come more often now. While we do have names narrowed down to about 4-5, we're not set on one name just yet.

Jeff laughs at my comical tummy- it just sticks right straight out. The boys are getting excited and Jacob told me that my stomach is starting to get fat. :) All of them, especially Jacob and Caleb, love to watch her move and feel her kicks. Matthew mainly just loves to poke my tummy and say, "baby!" She is still pretty active and it's funny to watch her move around, and feel her common hiccups. I'm at the stage where I have to use the bathroom multiple times during the night & turning over from my right side to my left is a bit of a painful struggle- funny it doesn't bother me turning the other way. I can't eat big meals unless I want an uncomfortable stomachache- with all that baby there's not a lot of room for much else. And I'm definitely looking forward to having my innie belly button back! (Tape & band aids help for now.)

I've got all the baby onesies washed & put away, as well as the collection of girl's clothes that I do have. I have to say that OxiClean is amazing! I was a little sad looking at all of my onesies when I unpacked them because they had the common yellow baby stains, and while I certainly didn't want to go out and buy a bunch of new ones, I also didn't want to put my baby girl in stained white onesies. I decided to look around and got the suggestion to try soaking in OxiClean- it worked awesome! Now I don't have to buy new onesies and the old ones look good as new! (Maybe someone else will find this as helpful as I did.)

We're all getting excited.

Happy Valentine's Day

For Valentine’s Day this year, Jeff wanted to do a special dinner for our family. He planned out the menu and spent a couple hours Saturday morning picking up the ingredients and supplies. I’m spoiled, I know. We decided to do the dinner on Saturday night since Sundays are a little crazy.

Jeff set the table, complete with a bouquet of flowers, goblets for the two of us, and even had candles for a candlelight dinner- much to the boys’ delight. We enjoyed an awesome dinner of authentic chicken cordon bleu in a yummy homemade gravy, salad, sides, and sparkling cider. To top it all off we enjoyed an amazing triple chocolate pudding cake with chocolate glaze, once again, put together by an amazing chef of a husband.

It was definitely a memorable holiday evening. Although it wasn’t your typical romantic couple’s Valentine’s dinner at a restaurant, we sure had fun having such a fun dinner with the kids and they enjoyed it as much as we did. I’m grateful for a sweet husband; it was nice to have the night off- although because he does such an awesome job, I might make him take over more often!

February Blizzards

While we were on vacation, our home city got 28.5 inches of snow in a huge blizzard on Friday & Saturday. School was still cancelled on Monday. Monday afternoon, Jeff took the boys out to build a snowman. They were all pretty excited to build a snowman, along with a snow chair and snow bed.

Tuesday was a fairly normal day, except that we knew there would be another big storm coming on Wednesday. After going to the gym, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things. Just as expected, the store was completely packed- even at 9:30am. I had to drive around for quite a while waiting for a parking spot. Here on the East coast, people go crazy the day before a storm- swarming the grocery stores and emptying the shelves. If you don’t get there soon enough, you’ll find the shelves empty and completely out of things like milk, eggs, bread, and meat. It’s a phenomenon we still laugh at even after 8 years. I hated going to the store with the crowds, but we had just gotten back from vacation the day before and needed a few basics. It was a good thing we were all stocked up and ready because the 2^nd blizzard was a doozy. We ended up getting another 16 inches on top of the 28.5 previous inches(which luckily had already started to melt a little). That put the total at 70 inches for the season, which broke the previous record of 65 total inches & we still have a few more weeks of winter; but I admit I wouldn’t be disappointed if we didn’t get any more snow! I think I’ve had my fill.

Jacob taking advantage of our indoor-time to teach Caleb & Matthew how to read.

The snow started to come down late Tuesday night, it didn’t look like much then, but it didn’t take too long before it was coming down hard & we had some pretty good white-out conditions. In fact, we had a thunder snowstorm! I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced thunder & lightening during a snowstorm. It was crazy.

Tuesday night, Jeff and I had a movie night after putting the kids to bed. He ended up getting not one, but two days off work since all surgeries were cancelled and the offices were closed. The mayor declared a state of emergency and almost everything in the city was shut-down, even the busses and public transportation.

On Wednesday, we spend most of the day inside just watching the snow come down. It didn’t stop until late that night. Jeff went out to check on our car and remove a huge branch that had fallen on it. The snow was so heavy and wet that it was making the trees bend clear over and even causing some trees and branches to break. Luckily there wasn’t any damage to our car.

The snowstorm/thunderstorm was fun to watch for a day, but on Thursday I was happy to see a beautiful blue sky. It’s funny how staring out a window at snowy gray skies for a long time, and being inside all day can make you feel a little stir crazy. I think everyone was excited to get out. We dug out our car, and of course the boys were able to get in some sledding on top of the huge mountains of snow that were all around.

Caleb & Jacob thinking they're pretty funny throwing snowballs at Daddy!

Jeff took these pictures so you can imagine how tall the snow piles were. A couple girls from our apartment complex gave them some old swim tubes that ended up being perfect for going down their hill; it was pretty entertaining to watch them. They had fun playing outside for almost 3 hours.

On Friday I figured everything would be back to normal, but they ended up canceling school again. Jeff had to go back into work, but the boys were home with me. It’s kind of funny to think about, but between our vacation, holidays, and snow days, Jacob will have only had school 1 day out of 12. When he finally goes back to school on the 16^th, he will have only been to school 3 days of the entire month. I’m kind of glad we’ve been able to have some fun days at home together! This has definitely been a memorable winter.

Mid-Winter Vacation

On Wednesday, Feb 3rd, our family took a little trip out to the Midwest for one of Jeff’s job interviews. Normally he goes alone, but the company insisted on flying the whole family out. An almost-free, details-planned vacation sounded good to us! They took care of booking the flights, hotel, car rental, meals at the hotel, and set up an itinerary of events for a few days, leaving us a couple free days as well.

I finished packing and loading up the car on Wednesday, then we picked up Jacob from school, Jeff from work and headed right to the airport. The kids were excited to be on an airplane again, I made the mistake of telling Matthew a few days prior that we were going to ride on an airplane. When we came back home after picking up Caleb from preschool, he just started to cry because he thought we were going right then.

The first flight was almost 3 hours long. Jeff sat with Jacob and Caleb while I sat with Matthew a few rows up. It’s definitely a busy age to fly with, but he did pretty well even if he didn’t fall asleep like I was hoping. We had about an hour layover, and then one more flight just over an hour. We arrived at midnight (our time) and the boys by this time had all fallen asleep- it was tough waking them up! It was nice though, the hospital Jeff was interviewing with had sent out a person to meet us who had already gotten our rental car warm & ready, and showed us the way back to the hotel.

The boys were excited to see the surprise present that the company had left for them-filled with books, toys, coloring books & crayons, and to see that they had their ‘own’ room & bed. It was nice for us too! One of the big perks of this particular hotel was its huge indoor water park with multiple pools, Jacuzzi, and big water slide; and our hotel room overlooked it. It may have been wintry, cold and snowy outside, but it sure felt like summer inside! The pool was open from 7:30am-10:30pm every single day which was nice, but also tricky since the boys were ready to go swimming at 7:30 in the mornings! I couldn’t tell them it wasn’t open because they could look out the window and see other people swimming. We went every day and had a blast getting our fill of swimming and playing in the water. Jacob took right to the waterslide from the very start and spent most of his time on it. He was perfectly content to go run up and go down it over and over. Caleb thought it was alright at first, but really started to love it when Jeff came and went with him. I wasn’t able to go on the slide, so Matthew didn’t get to try it out until the 2^nd day when Jeff was able to go with us, and it also became his favorite. I loved being able to watch them! It was also nice to be able to go from the pools to sitting with our legs in the hot tub. I think that was Matthew’s next favorite activity. He doesn’t have a lot of fat on him, so it didn’t take too long in the pools before his lips would turn purple. 10 min in the hot tub would warm him up and he’d be ready to go again. We really enjoyed having the pool, it was a lot of fun!

The view from our hotel window

Thursday was a pretty laid-back day for the boys and I. We ordered room service breakfast, played games, colored, watched cartoons & went swimming. Jeff, on the other hand, had a pretty busy schedule on Thursday. He left at 7:30 in the morning and was gone with the interview/orientation process until about 3:30 in the afternoon. He had a little time in the afternoon, and then the company even arranged for a babysitter so Jeff and I could have dinner with a couple of the doctors and their wives. It was nice to be able to meet and get to know a few of them. The food was excellent too. I about died when I first saw the menu though- I’m so used to always ordering the cheapest item on the menu, but on this particular menu the cheapest items started at about $25. I guess that isn’t too bad when choices include $75 lobster. I still felt guilty even ordering food! It was a fun evening though, and we enjoyed the wining & dining.

The next morning we had a 2.5 hour tour of the city by a realtor who quickly became a friend. He was such a great guy, much like everyone else we met in the area. Everyone was so friendly and thoughtful; they made us feel so welcome. It was fun to drive around seeing the area and learning a lot about the homes, city, etc. I wondered how the boys would do, a 2.5 hour trip just driving around can sometimes get a little boring for kids- but Paul had a DVD player in his car so they had a great little set-up as well, and Jeff and I were able to enjoy the tour. After we got back, we had lunch and that afternoon we went swimming for a few hours. That night we enjoyed dinner, and watched a movie together.

Saturday was more of the same. We didn’t have any commitments, so we lounged around in the morning, went swimming, played games, took naps, and went out touring the city on our own. We also spent some time watching the weather channel since our home city was supposedly getting a big blizzard- we were just hoping it wouldn’t affect our return trip. We even picked up some chains for our car because as we’ve always seen in the past, the stores are sold out right after a storm.

Sunday, we packed up in the morning and then went to church. It was nice to meet the people in the ward and enjoy a sacrament meeting. Church really is the same wherever you go, and it’s nice knowing you’ll always have a ‘ward’ family. After church we had just enough time to go back to the hotel, have some lunch and finish packing up before we headed out to the airport.

We arrived with plenty of time. There was a big storm blowing into the area, and luckily we were leaving just early enough- they thought flights would start to be delayed and cancelled later on and during the next day. Of course once we got on the plane, we had to wait for an hour before taking off because our connecting city was delaying flights to take care of the runway, and they also had to de-ice our plane. I think that’s the worst- when you just have to sit on the plane on the runway without going anywhere, especially when the kids are tired. Luckily we had a full row to ourselves, and all three boys fell asleep as soon as we took off. Too bad it was the short flight! We were lucky to make the next flight, because we had had to sit on the runway for so long, we landed & only had 10 minutes before our next flight took off. So we had to book it through the airport and were just about the last ones on the plane. This happened to be the tricky flight- the flight was packed, and none of our seats were together, we were scattered randomly from rows 11 though15. Fortunately there were some thoughtful people who were willing to move. (Either that, or they just realized they might be sitting next to an unsupervised 2-year old! J) Jeff was able to be on a row with Caleb & Matthew, I sat across the isle, one row behind them; and Jacob sat a couple rows back. Once again we had to wait on the runway for an hour while we waited in line to be de-iced before the flight, but we were just glad our flight wasn’t cancelled due to the weather. Caleb found a little buddy sitting right across from him in the isle & the two of them struck up a lively conversation that entertained quite a few people in the area, both of them were pretty animated & love to talk.

It was nice when we finally took off. The flight went okay and the boys did pretty well. They didn’t fall asleep this time, even though it was late, but they were all pretty good. The people who sat by Jacob just raved about how good he was- I wasn’t too surprised; he really is a good kid. I will say that I was pretty happy to see home when we finally got there. We picked up our baggage, which came amazingly quick! Then took the shuttle back to the parking lot where we dug out our car from the 28.5 inches of snow that had fallen over the weekend and drove home at about 2am. (I was happy to learn that school was cancelled on Monday due to the storm, so we slept in without feeling bad) It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun too. We don’t know for sure yet whether we’ll take the job- we had been excited about it, but didn’t really get an overwhelming confirmation that it was the right place for us. So I guess we’ll just have to finish up a few more interviews, look at all the different options and make a decision from there.

Card Club

I have a friend who is always coming up with fun ideas, Teresa did the gingerbread houses back in December and this month she brought up the idea of doing a little card club. We had 13 ladies who all made cards & then did a card exchange this month. Our theme for the month was Valentine's Day and it was so fun to get a bunch of cute cards from everyone. Plus it's always fun to have an excuse to get together for a couple evenings to make/exchange cards.

Paper Bowl Fun

Our ward held their annual ‘Paper Bowl’ competition on Saturday the 30^th. Despite a snowstorm, there was a good turnout and it was a fun activity. The dinner was great, and the kids always enjoy getting together with everyone. Both Jacob and Caleb won their 1^st rounds- we let their competitors advance to the 2^nd round though. I did alright, but Jeff really did well this year and ended up placing 3^rd out of the whole group. It was fun to cheer him on and he was nice enough to share his victory prize with everyone.