6 Months

Here I am with my pregnant self. :) I really started to pop out around 19-20 weeks, right after I announced my pregnancy. I'm 24 1/2 weeks in this picture, in my 6 month. I feel great. I love being pregnant and feeling her move inside of me. I'm lucky to have gotten pregnant so many times with having PCOS. I realize that. Now when it comes to the baby stage, I'm a little more hesitant! You know people that would be pregnant and skip the baby stage or people that would skip being pregnant and take the baby, yeah I fall in the first category. :)

Lately, I have been having heartburn at night. I take a Zantac and that seems to do the trick. Sleeping has been interesting lately because I can't sleep on my back or stomach and when I sleep on my sides my arms/hands fall asleep. So I sleep with lots of pillows to kind of prop myself up. But overall, I can't complain. This may be our last baby (never say never, right?) so I'm enjoying it. Kate is excited for the new baby girl to come. Preston kind of knows and Lindsey has no idea what's in store for her. I need to figure out the room situation too. I have the two girls in one room and Preston in his own room. I need to decide if I'm going to put all the girls in one room or let the baby have her own room and put the other 3 together. Mainly, I'm concerned about nap times. So we'll see.

My Little Ballerinas

Kate still takes ballet once a week and I've noticed she is learning a lot more positions and techniques. She is often in dress-up or ballet clothes dancing around the house. Lindsey has been copying her and will want help putting on a leotard or a tutu. I was looking for a swimsuit in a 2T box of clothes in the garage and came across this pink leotard that my Mom made for Kate. It is so little and cute. I pulled it out knowing Lindsey would wear it. Here they are dancing around together to classical/ballet music.

I love this picture of Kate dancing and of Lindsey trying to copy her. "Tutu" cute! :)

Great Wolf Lodge

We've heard a lot about the Great Wolf Lodge from friends that have gone and loved it. I talked Kyle into going over the kids' mid-winter break from school. We haven't stayed in a hotel since December of 2008 when we went to Jeff & Sadie's wedding! We avoid it like the plague because we have Preston. Preston has head rocked himself to sleep since he was probably 9 mo's old. It's loud and annoying. He will wake up through the night and then head rock to go back to sleep. Supposedly it's this soothing mechanism, like sucking a pacifier, but if you've ever seen him do it it does NOT look soothing! It looks awkward and I keep saying he should be a wrestler or a contortionist. Anyway, we decided to get a room that had bunk beds and was separated from the main bed. I think it was a good choice. It ended up not being too bad except he did wake up at 4:15am rocking and finally after an hour I tried scratching his back/leg/arms to get him to fall back asleep. He eventually did, but then Lindsey woke up making sounds so it wasn't the best sleep, but amazingly I wasn't too mad about it. (I like my sleep!) I wish he would stop rocking all together...then we could travel more, Disneyland maybe?! :)

Our room, the Wolf Den Suite, with the kids' bunk beds. Their little room even had a TV in it.

Every night they had story time where the kids come in their pajamas. They had this presentation and these animals, trees, kid in the tree trunk and Indian girl would come to life and sing and share a message. Then they had story time and you could meet the wolf at the end.

Preston loved this purple slide and another green slide. He would go down it over and over. He had a hard time sharing the slide the 2nd day, but overall he didn't do too bad. I just had to watch him closely. He would get frustrated when other kids beat him up the stairs to the slide.

Lindsey loved the water and slides. She thinks she's a big girl. :)

Kyle, Kate and Preston are in the wave pool. Kate LOVED the wave pool. It was her favorite and we had to beg her to go down the big slides with us. Every so often the waves would turn on and then they would have a break and then turn on again.

It was kind of nice not having to do hair and makeup while there. haha! But the next day I was super excited to wash my hair and put make-up on. :)

This tall green thing going up to the ceiling is awesome. It has a conveyor belt thingy that takes up the huge tubes that you ride for 2 of the rides. That way you don't have to haul them up all those stairs. The other 2 slides you had to carry tubes, but they were smaller and much easier to carry. Kyle and I liked the howlin' tornado slide. You sit in this 4 person tube and go through a dark tunnel, down a steep hill (we both went down it backwards!) and then you are in this huge half pipe thing and then go down a small tunnel (reminds me of a funnel) and out. It was awesome.

Exhausted after a fun trip!

A view from up above. Off to the left is the wave pool and another pool for basketball and other activities.

We survived! It was fun and we are all glad we went. Kate asked me if we could live there. She is already asking when we can go back. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I would have pictures, BUT I can't find my camera! ugh! I know I had it in the office on Friday, but now I can't find it anywhere. I'm sick about it. Why do I keep losing stuff? It drives me nuts.

Valentine's Day is a low key day in our house. Kyle and I exchange cards and I give him candy and he gives me flowers. It's an overrated holiday anyway, kinda forced and I don't like heart shaped jewelry so it's a win-win. We had red heart shaped pancakes (well actually I forgot to make them into hearts until the last pancake, Kate had to have that one). Then for lunch I made heart shaped PB&J sandwiches and Kyle brought home my favorite subway sandwich. I've been craving subway lately. Then for dinner we made individual heart shaped pizzas and ate by candlelight which is a family favorite. So it was a good day and now Lindsey is eating all the kids' chocolate while they are at school. I better got put it up high. But I better not lose it!

Shoe Fetish

Little Miss Lindsey has a shoe fetish. She can't stop putting our shoes on and these boots of Kate's are hard for her to put on, but she's determined. And don't mind her lovely hair or the messy room. That's how we roll sometimes.

New Beginnings

You are My Sunshine

Arise & Shine Forth

We held our young women New Beginnings on Wednesday for mutual. We introduced the new theme: "Arise and shine forth, that thy light may be a standard for the nations." (Doctrine and Covenants 115:5) The youth nowadays have to face so many challenges so this theme is perfect for them. They have the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives and can be an example to all those around them. We wanted to have the girl's remember that they are the Savior's Sunshine, they can serve others and let their light shine to those around them. We had a guest speaker (the stake Pres wife), a musical number "I Will" (LOVE that song) by Hilary Weeks, and a couple other short speakers about the values, introducing the classes and their meaning. Then we had dessert afterwards and visited. It turned out really good and was a success.

Since the theme was "You are my Sunshine" we decorated with yellow. I was in charge of the dessert table and yes, I made everything. And yes, I may take on too much. I tend to do that. But I was trying to be super prepared and had made a couple desserts the day ahead and so it wasn't too bad. The car was packed, thanks to Kyle, and I was set to go to the Church early to set up. BUT, when I got the balloons out of the car (I had gone 2 hours earlier to get them from a party store) 2 of the balloons were FLAT!!! I was so sad/mad. Kyle didn't want to get new one's for me, he said I should just use the one I have. I wanted the 3. So I was mad at him for not going and raced to Party City, which was in the opposite direction as the Church. On the way there I had to stop quick and a tray of twinkie cupcakes slid onto the ground, luckily only 2 had fallen out. Then the lady at the store was nice and quickly filled up 2 new balloons for me (even though I was this crazy rushed lady). I raced to the Church and got there around 6:30, the thing started at 7pm. Thank goodness for all the other leaders helping me because we got the desserts set out in record time. I think it turned out good and once I calmed down I enjoyed the rest of the night.

I made these sunshine cake pops after seeing them on a blog. I was so excited for them. They were perfect for our sunshine theme. Well, the first 9 turned out, that's what you see. Then after that the cake balls were too soft and wouldn't stick to the lollipop stick and it was a mess. It was too time consuming so I just kept the 9 I had and stopped. The bakerella lady on You Tube makes it look wayyy too easy to make cake pops. They are overrated. ;0

Then we had rice krispy treats (thick ones), lemon bars and mini cream puffs with pudding/cool whip inside.

My Mom would make these homemade twinkies growing up and I loved them. I have never made them, but thought of them for this since they are yellow. They were easy to make and yummy. I also had a lemon bundt cake, lemonade, some lemon heads and peach gummy rings.

Angie decorated the front with sunshines and put the girl's names on them and made cute tissue paper puffs.

Christina, she's the yw president, made these frames with all the values on them. They turned out cute. She's so crafty and talented that way.

Erin made these handouts for the girls where they had a picture of Jesus with a girl on one side and the theme on the other side. I thought they were cute too.

Yummy!

How messy do you get when you eat Oreos?!

Dates

Kate has been begging me to take her back to the American Girl Bistro for dinner. She had some Christmas money that she was willing to spend to eat there, but Kyle thought that was mean to make her use her money so he told me just to go on a mommy/daughter date. So we did. She was in heaven, got the cheesey mac and cheese and I got the tomato soup and grilled cheese on sourdough (totally random for me to get that, but it was cheap and nothing else sounded good and it actually was really good!). There was an extravagant birthday party going on while we were there and this girl got a leap pad, tons of AG stuff and other fancy things. Kate was watching the party the whole time. I made her talk with me and we answered some questions they have in the pink box. After dinner, we walked around the store and Kate decided to spend her Christmas money on getting her dolls ears pierced and some earrings.

Saturday was gorgeous and we went to the Zoo. I only took pictures of the kids with the penguins and those aren't even our favorite. Preston likes the elephants, I like the siamangs (loud monkeys), Kate likes the play areas and Lindsey and Kyle are indifferent. ;)

A cute story about Preston. He was outside and said to my neighbor who has a dog, "you like dogs, Darbi?"

Darbi says, "Yeah, do you like dogs?"

Preston says, "no, I like elephants." And he said it like 'duh?'.

Lindsey was trying to catch the penguin as it swam by. I thought it was adorable. She is such a fun girl and makes us all laugh.

Then Kyle and I were able to get away for a quick dinner date that night to PF Chang's while a young woman babysat for us as a service. We ate our yummy food, did a little bit of shopping and got home and put the kids to bed.

Rah Rah!

We went to my parent's a couple weekends ago to watch Jared's last basketball game, the last one that we'll see. He only has a few more this season and then it's over! It's crazy to think that after all these years of watching and playing sports at Wahluke High School we will be done when Jared graduates in June. Sniff, sniff. Well, Jared will be playing baseball in the spring, but that's not as exciting as football and basketball. :) Right before we were leaving, we couldn't find our iPod touch, so we think it either got stolen or it's lost forever somewhere in our house- we have looked everywhere. Sad day. I was upset and it wrecked my night. I was in a bad mood on the way over to my parent's. Looking for it made us leave later than planned so I couldn't go to Sara's to get my hair done that night and then I couldn't sleep that night because I was upset over it (mainly thinking about if it was stolen, I hate stealing/lying, ugh!). But then the next day, after talking with my family they made me laugh and get my mind off it and I had a great weekend.

Preston and Lindsey were both playing the iPad, well Lindsey thinks she's playing. We usually take it away, which I did after the picture.

My Mom tries to spend a day with each grandchild and do something fun with them. Since we were coming over my Mom decided to do a cooking show with Kate, since she loves cooking shows. So here is Kate with the "Kate's Cooking Show" sign that she made and her doll, Kaley, to make us lunch. We recorded it and my Mom wants to make a video out of all the clips we took from the different 'segments'.

Voila! Kate made us pigs in a blanket, ants on a log, ambrosia salad and apple turnovers. It was delicious and we snarfed it down. Thanks Kate!

Paige and Kate got to be in a cheer camp that was being held up at the High School on Saturday when we were there. They were SO excited. We curled their hair, put makeup on and Jeni sprayed them down with glitter. My Mom even made them cheer skirts in Wahluke colors. The cheer camp was for a couple hours and then they got to perform during the girls and boys varsity games half time. They did such a good job!

Getting ready to start their cheer camp!

Waiting to perform...

This picture of Kate made the front page of the Mattawa paper, the MAN! I thought this picture was too cute. She had a blast!

Our cheering squad! Thanks Marci and Sara for looking. :)

Sara was so nice and highlighted my hair right before the girl's game, then we rushed up to the gym (me with wet hair pulled back into a pony tail, I was looking pretty bad) then after the girls did their cheer performance Sara, my Mom and I along with Lindsey and Preston went back to my parents so Sara could cut my hair. It was rush rush! Sara did it though and I was able to fix my hair, freshen up and show up in time for the boy's game looking like a new person! Jeni asked who I was when I got back to the boys game. haha.

Jared is such a good kid! He is funny, nice, smart and strong. :) I'm proud of you Jared! They played Royal City and won by 1 point! It was super stressful to watch, but oh so exciting. It was a sweet victory and a good game to see.

All us sisters with Jared. We try to embarrass him by yelling and cheering for him super loud, but he says he isn't embarrassed. I would be!