Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, I did things other than spend most of my days and all of my evenings snuggled under my University of Utah blanket in the corner of my couch. It's true. And tonight, I'm going to show you a bunch of photos to prove it.

This is the time that my brother in law's parents were super cool and invited us to stay at their cabin up in Bear Lake. The kids all loved the 4-wheelers, but I think that Lizzy liked them most.

This is a photo of how I felt the time that we drove to Kelseyville for my grandma's 90th birthday party and Charlie threw up fruit snacks all over his car seat. It grossed Jane out so much, that she, too proceeded to throw up in the car. We were in the middle of nowhere (aka northern Nevada) and only had wipees to clean up the mess, so we ended up leaving the carseat on the side of the road.

This is a photo of the shame I felt as we left our defiled carseat (aka, the black speck at the top of the photo) on the side of the road and drove away.

This is the time that we ran into a snowstorm whilst trying to cross over Donner Pass in an effort to get to my grandma's 90th birthday party. What the photo doesn't show you is that it took us a good 4 or 5 hours to make it through the short stretch of freeway and how incompetent we found the California Department of Transportation to be.

This is a photo of Lizzy that Brent took while we were on vacation that week. It reminds me of how much I love Lizzy.

This is the time that Jane got her hair cut by our Aunt Mel.

This is the time we drove an extra 2 or 3 hours into Northern California to visit the Redwood forests.

This is the time that Davie wouldn't get out of our family photo into front of the drive-thru tree.

This is the time that Cameron wasn't in the group photo because he was too busy taking them with his nice camera.

This is the time I stole a bunch a photos from Cameron's flickr account because they are so cool.

This is the time Charlie crashed in the car while sitting in Jane's carseat (because we left his on the side of the road).

This is the time I took a photo of Jane because she reminded us of Ellie.

:)

This is the time that Jane drew a picture of the kitchen she hopes to own one day. I find it interesting/funny/a little sad that her shelves include rice flour and corn flour. The girl might never learn how to make a proper cookie.

And this is the time we found out that we were having yet another baby girl.

When its time to change, you've got to rearrange

I'm still here. Still here, and finding myself in a bit of a holding pattern. You know the pre-baby holding pattern? Like, you know that, eventually, your life will change so quickly and so dramatically that you'll never actually recover from it, but there's almost nothing that you can do to prepare for it in the meantime. This, my friends, is why we decorate. Call it nesting, if it makes you feel better. I call it keeping my hands busy because I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING other than sitting around and waiting for my life to never be the same again.

Anyway, I'm still here. And I've been nesting. Which initially required uprooting and displacing my existing three children.

We knew that we were going to have to move the childrens' rooms around to facilitate the addition of another child. And I knew that I was going to have to redecorate each room, because that's just the way I am. All of these realizations were made before Christmas, so we came up with the great idea to give the kids their new rooms as Christmas presents. I think that they all questioned my better judgement when they came running down on Christmas morning, only to find that "Santa" had brought them new bedding, picture frames, and lamps, but we didn't have the budget for a full blown Christmas AND new rooms, so it had to be.

I took these pictures of Charlie's new room a few weeks ago, but they turned out so bad that I couldn't bring myself to post them. I've been sitting around, waiting for his room to become spotless on the same day that I happen upon either amazing lighting OR a DSLR that someone forgot on my doorstep, but the stars haven't aligned for me, so I'm just going to suck it up and show you my bad photos.

Charlie now finds himself in Lizzy's old room/bed. The bed actually happened to be Jane's old bed. And before that it was my brother's bed that he used when he lived with us. My sister also slept in that bed when she lived with us. And before that, I believe Brent slept in it in college. And before THAT, it was a childhood bed. I'm thinking that no matter what his parents paid for that bed, it was worth it.

He's also using Lizzy's old dresser. And her old shelves. I can't pass down clothes to him, but when you're the third kid in a family, there's always something that you'll have to inherit at some point.

I know what you're thinking.

Yes.

Those stripes wrap around the entire room.

No.

I didn't dare total the number of hours it took to paint them.

Yes.

It was totally worth it.

I bought the giraffe and hippo prints before we even had kids, and they have served us well. I love the pops of color they give in there.

I spray painted Lizzy's old pink shelves and then put them back, using the exact same holes we had used to hang them before. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

I made the pillow cases. Even the chevron one. Making those chevron pillow cases is not for the faint of heart, but I just love them so very much, I couldn't help myself.

All in all, I'm really happy with how it turned out...

... and Charlie seems to be pleased with it too.

A Story

So, today, my kids were upstairs, entertaining themselves with the usual shenanigans. You know the drill. Loud noises. Slamming doors. Running feet. The occasional cry. The basics. When, not so surprisingly, Jane let out a shriek. Oh how I hate when the shrieking starts, but given long enough, the shrieking will always start.

Upon investigation, I found that Charlie had taken a toy power drill and pummelled Jane over the head with it. Typical. Charlie's been on a hitting streak lately, or a beating streak, if that's what you call it when one hits another person with a weapon. That drill has been his favorite weapon for too many days now and quite frankly, I was sick of it. So I did what every rational person would do.

I opened up my second story window and sent the toy drill hurtling towards the unforgiving pavement below with all the strength that my surprisingly weak and underutilized right arm could manage.

I know. It's not all that impressive a picture. I thought about running over the thing with my car before I took a picture to create a more dramatic scene, but that would be a little crazy. And since I think I've proven with the last couple posts that I am certainly NOT a crazy person, I couldn't do something like that.

Basically, I threw the thing out the window. And it broke. And Charlie knew it. Point made. I put him in his room and turned to see Jane looking up at me with wide, surprised eyes. By the look of her, I believe she was actually touched by the lengths I went to to protect her.

"Um, THANKS, Mom." She said.

"That was really nice of you."

"It's fine, Jane. I'm sorry he hit you again." I replied.

"You DO know, though, that that was Ben's drill, right?"

No. I did NOT know that.

Oops.

Christmas Wish List

Fact: Most days, I consider myself to be a pretty good mom.

I know that there's a lot that I could for my kids that I don't, and I know that there are a lot of moms out there that could be considered "better" that I am, but there are also a ton of them that are a lot worse. Point is, I think that I'm the right mom for my kids and, for the most part, the days flow by with relative peace, love and understanding.

But amid the great days, and good days, and ok days, and bad days, there are also "those days." You know the kind? The kind where the chemistry in the house is just off and no one is getting along and by the time bedtime rolls around, you had needed the day to end hours ago? Those are the days when I have the potential to full on lose it. Those are the days when I genuinely believe that wolves could do a better job caring for my children than I can.

Yesterday was one of those days.

It might have been because my kids were all feeding off each other's bad attitudes, or it might have been because Brent's been needing to work late each night this week and I was getting sick of doing bedtime by myself. It might have been the half bottle of lotion Jane pumped onto the bathroom counter or the childrens' refusal to unload the dishwasher. It might have been because of the severe sleep deprivation we're all suffering from or the stress of the holidays or the fact that I'm pregnant and moody. It might have been the lunar cycle, for all I know, but whatever the cause, war broke out upstairs last night as I was trying to get the kids in bed. War, I tell you.

After I'd had more yelling and screaming and crying and verbal abuse (on all parts) than I could handle, I told my kids that I was done. They could tuck each other into bed and I'd see them in the morning. I went to my room to spend some quality time feeling horrible about myself. I was sitting there, riddled with guilt, but still too angry to summon up the strength of character to go apologize to my children, when Jane showed up at the door. She had a note for me. I was informed that it was a revised Christmas list and that I "really should read it."

In case you can't make out her handwriting, allow me to translate.

Dear Mom,

I know that I said I want other things, but not anymore. All I want is for you to treat me better. And for Christmas, I want all love.

To: Mom

From: Jane

Uhg.

Who's the worst? Ya, that would be me.

Where are a nice pack of wolves that would like to adopt your children when you need them?

So at that point, I started to cry. Again. I cried for, what seemed like, a good long while. And then I sat. Just sat on my bed, half seething and half wanting to find a rock to crawl under, when Jane came to my door again... with another note. I braced myself, and read.

Dear Mom,

I want other presents than love. A CD player and other things. I love you. I hope you have a good Christmas.

To: Mom and Dad

From: Jane and Lizzy

Someone teach her how to spell backpedal.

And all of a sudden, I started to feel better. Better and HIGHLY amused. In fact, I still I laugh every time I think about it.

I don't quite know how the retraction alleviated so much guilt. I mean, for all intents and purposes, the damage had been done. My kids aren't going to remember that I was pregnant and tired and pushed past my limit that night, they were just going to remember the way I had made them feel. Not to mention that my daughter is clearly more motivated by her selfish desires than altruistic ones, but I still felt better. Maybe it's that she obviously hadn't been damaged beyond her ability to connect with her inner materialist. Maybe it's that I obviously hadn't pushed her far enough up into her pyramid of human needs for her to forget the frivolities she's come to expect.

At least I did know one thing for sure. I knew I had something on those wolves. I mean, how could they possibly provide her with a CD player for Christmas?

Halloween

So, I might be a week and a half late getting around to posting a Halloween photo, but that seems to be the time zone that I'm working in lately.

Thanks to Leslie and Cam for hosting us. And to Cameron for actually taking pictures. And to the men (including my dad) for taking the kids out. And to Daybreak for providing the most efficient place to trick-or-treat that I've ever seen. They filled their little pumpkin buckets to the rim in no time. Not that any of that candy still exists now.

I think we're still coming down from the sugar rush.

Visual Confirmation

So... ya. It's been a while.

It's been so long that I've actually felt like I couldn't post anything. I mean, how lame would it be to NOT post for like, a month, and then come back and just post something my kids said, or a recipe that I liked, or something equally unimpressive. No, I got to the point that I felt like I had to have some big news in order to justify breaking the silence. Like, I needed to be able to announce that I was pregnant or something. But today, here I am, posting.

As it turns out, I'm pregnant.

And, I've finally got visual confirmation. Wanna see?

Can you see it's little face? and little hand? and little legs? Aw, babies are cute.

This is actually a really good thing for me, because if I weren't pregnant, I would have a really hard time explaining away the fatigue, moodiness, and expanding waist line that I've been suffering from for the past several weeks.

When I went to see the OB this week, he declared my due date to be May 20th, which puts me at about 12 weeks. Ah, 12 weeks. The beautiful time when all your first trimester ailments are magically supposed to come to an end. (Let's just say that it's possible that my husband deserves a really cool award for putting up with me lately.)

Four kids. Is four kids as many in real life as it seems in my head? Cuz it's starting to seem like a lot of kids. I promise this all sounded like a really good idea in theory.

But wait, there's more!

I bet you thought I was finished with my documentation of our trip to Alaska, but I couldn't leave you hanging, wondering what exciting thing we did next. I would never do that to you. I haven't even shown you the whale!

We saw a whale.

Actually, we saw several whales, none of them particularly close up, but I'D never seen a whale before, so I thought it was pretty cool. See?

Cool, huh?

Anyway, the morning after Ketchikan, I woke up cold. Like, winter, I need another blanket, can someone please light a fire in here cold. I got up and looked out the window, which explained everything.

We were floating through icebergs. We were doing some "scenic sailing" up the Tracy Arm Fjord, which, I must admit, was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.

It was stunning. The water really was that blue green color.

And there really were icebergs. Not huge -sink the Titanic- icebergs, just lots of little ones.

Either way, it was cold.

Painfully cold.

Or maybe I'm just a wuss. In this photo, I'm wearing a shirt, sweatshirt, down coat... and a blanket.

We were on our way to see this. The glacier. Apparently the ship broke a record that morning and got closer to it than they ever had before.

Closer......

Closer...

Closest!

The crew seemed to get a little giddy about it and opened up the helicopter pad so that we could go out and have a little look-see.

It was pretty deluxe. A couple of Brent's sisters and their respective husbands came out with us (one of the is behind the camera)

After that, we docked in Juneau, which was also quite amazing.

It rained ALL day, which gave me an opportunity to walk around with my cute, dainty umbrella. The locals didn't seem to mind the rain. They were ALL wearing big rubber boots. Our tour guide said they call them Juneau tennis shoes.

Just like Ketchikan, we got to see a lot of things...

We got to see another glacier. It's back there, I promise. I didn't have any other pictures of it on my computer, Brent must have taken them with his phone.

We saw more salmon. Lots and lots and lots and lots of salmon.

Brent's sister saw a bear, but no one else did. :(

I wouldn't have been particularly interested in seeing a bear, except that everyone who lived there seemed to think that it was perfectly normal to run into bears, like it was no big deal or something. They actually recommended that we fight them, if we felt threatened. I'm kinda giggling just thinking about it. Like, they seriously said that you should punch a bear in it's face and charge at it and stuff.

Ya, I'm not going to do that. It's probably best that I didn't see one.

But we did see a Bald Eagle, sitting there all majestic in the tree tops.

It was the icing on the cake before we hopped back in the tour bus and headed back to the ship. For the record, I loved Juneau.