Sticky Situation

I must be crazy! I took the kids to the school carnival by myself the other night. Mike was at the final dress rehearsal for the Temple Celebration, (he serves as the YM's 1st Counselor, which means he doubles as a cab driver for the youth, ha, ha).

I let my kids have pizza and soda for dinner. No big deal there, except Bekah spilled most of her fruit punch down her front. And then I let them have cotton candy. Oh what a mess. That stuff should be outlawed! And what they didn't eat I devoured until I realized, "Hey I'm going to give myself gestational diabetes if I don't quit eating all this sugar."

Bekah needed a good hose-down when we got home. And the others were pretty dirty too. But they had fun, that's the point right. Boy I really hate messes. I won't be sad when the messy stage of life ebbs a little.

Finally a Backyard...Well Almost!

We built our house 6 years ago...6 years!! And we are now finally completing our backyard. Granted, in that time we have had 3.5 children, finished our basement, as well as many other little projects that can soon take over your life.

How excited am I? And how ironic is this little situation. Well, I'll explain - I'm so ecstatic (is there a word more descriptive I can use here) that I will finally have a place to put the kids where I don't have to be outside all the time supervising.

Our fence will be finished tomorrow, we have window well covers already in place and top soil and sod are coming this week, yip-ee! And now that I have all this stuff to keep the kids safe, I also have older children (who most of the time mind better than a few years ago) and a toddler (Bekah) who hardly ever runs away from me, (so unlike big brother and big sister).

When Emma and Aaron were younger they took off running down the street every time we went outside to play. Well, I'm still relieved to have a backyard, (no matter it's shortage in space). The kids have been semi-helpful. Here they are riding on Mike's little invention - The Leveler. They had a good time, when we weren't forcing them to pick up rocks. Wow! If I had to put a percentage on it, I'd say our backyard is 42% rocks - yuck. Thank goodness for nice, screened topsoil.

Have I Told You Lately...

Grandma Barker, this one's for you.

I know this is a week and a half late for your 66th wedding anniversary, but when I found this song I just had to blog. I am so grateful for the knowledge of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It is comforting to know that 66 is just a drop in the bucket compared to how many anniversaries you and Grandpa will get to celebrate together. I know that marriage in the temple of our God is sealed for eternity and I am sure that Grandpa is still singing your song. It's #93 in the playlist below.

I love you, Grandma. Happy anniversary!

DIVA

Emma belts out Phantom of the Opera in her aunt's car.

Our Little Diva!

Her other favorite tunes include anything sung by a Disney princess, songs from the Twilight soundtrack, the hilarious Veggie Tale hits and songs from the Signing Time DVDs.

Sometimes in the car I sing goofy songs with the kids. The other day I was singing a song called Gray Squirrel, but I was singing it in an opera voice...oh how I know you'd all love to hear that. It was cracking the kids up, I've never heard them laugh so hard. I wasn't that bad, really.

T-Ball Troubles RE-Visited

And it's a home run, well, not really a home run, mostly we're just happy when they actually make it to first base. Go Aaron!

Waiting for a hit...that I'm not going to run after by the way! Nope, not going to do it!

Remember how I talked about Aaron's non-interest in T-Ball. Well, there was one part he liked...The Snacks at the end.

Fun Stuff For Kids

Where's the fire?!

Aaron hangs out in a fire engine for his preschool field trip.

"Paper or Plastic?"

Hopefully she aspires to more in life...ha, ha, ha.

We do our big house clean up on Saturdays. This last Saturday, Emma's friend was over and they were telling us how they wanted to be maids.

As long as they're happy!

"Does this thing take diesel or unleaded?"

I wonder what gas will cost when Aaron starts driving?

The girls at Wheeler Farm.

My little Beauties.

Stick 'em up!

Won't Daddy be proud.

Bekah swimming with Coco at her condo pool.

The perks of having a sister with a pool definitely comes in handy in the summer time.

Can We Get Some Tissues Over Here!

Apparently Barbara Walters isn't the only one who can get the people she interviews to cry.

Emma plays TV reporter while Bekah crys over a boo-boo.

Let's Go Out With a Bang!

Aaron's graduated from his 1st year of preschool & Emma's first year of school is coming to an end- Just 2 weeks left until kindergarten becomes only a happy memory.
To commemorate said events we have had several family outings. One of which was a trip downtown (on Trax even) to visit the Children's Museum. This was on a Tuesday late-afternoon, we pretty much had the place to ourselves, which I loved. And the kids love riding Trax anytime we decide to do that.

Here they are holding up their tickets. They stayed in their seats (for the most), Bekah was actually the one I couldn't convince to stay seated. When she wasn't flirting or playing peek-a-boo with the people sitting behind her, she was switching seats. It reminds me of my trip with Emma to NYC where she couldn't sit still on the subway until the bumpy thing landed her on her butt one time. Then she believed Mommy...ouch.

Working hard or hardly working?

I'm taking a break from working to write about working. How sad is that?

Being part of a global organization has its pros and cons. One con is that few of my colleagues actually work in the same location, so putting a name to a face is difficult. About a year ago we started a tradition of including head shots of the speakers in business update presentations.

This month my boss is preparing the presentation and wanted to spice it up a little, so he came up with a "turn back the clock" theme. So he turned to me, the resident tech geek. He wanted to put the head shots on yearbook photos from recent decades. As a tribute to his “graphic artist” he wanted my face on a mullet, so I picked one of the most recognizable mullets from the early 90’s: Uncle Jesse. Here you go.

Before

After

Mother's Day Cuties

This year I splurged, (much to Michael's displeasure) on the girls' Spring dresses. A friend of mine was having a dress sale in her drive way where we could buy really beautiful dresses for a fraction of their original price. Normally I don't spend this much even when it is a "sale price" Each dress was $39 dollars. I'm fine with a nice dress from Target or a sale at Kohl's...etc. But I thought this year I'll get these dresses and we'll get their pictures taken too.

Well, Bekah's dress is a size 2T - that's what she is, but it won't fit around her next month, she's growing too fast. And Emma hates hers. Which I find incredibly hard to believe because this dress is the closest things she's ever owned to a real "Princess Gown". Usually she runs around in the cheesey stuff you buy for Halloween and dress-up.

Oh well, I forced her into it for Easter, I got her to wear it for 1/2 of Mother's Day, (see she didn't wear this dress to church, only for our park pictures). The park pictures didn't turn out exactly like I had hoped, so I think I may be able to BRIBE her into it one more time for studio pictures. What do you think? She likes quarters, quarters work really well. And if she gives me any trouble she likes one dollar bills even more. Bribery... is this how low I've sunk? I guess so, if it works and I get great pictures out of it than I'm okay with it. If it doesn't then I'll sneak the dollar out of her piggy bank while she's sleeping. I'm kidding...yah kidding.

Mother's Day Was A Smash!

Mike made me pancakes for Mother's Day. He's so sweet. I like jam on my pancakes so I got out the peach jam and the strawberry jam. Bekah likes to take off lids and then put them back on, she's very good at it. Well, she dropped the bottle of jam on Daddy's plate and as you can see, shattered plate everywhere.

After we started cleaning it up, I realized I really needed a picture of this one. So we carefully placed her back at the table to capture my very smashing Mother's Day. I won't forget this one, thanks Bekah. And thanks to Emma and Aaron for the artwork, beautiful cards and my special bookmark. I love you kids so much!! And thanks for the pancakes Mike...they were delicious.

Aaron's Crown

So you may not really be able to see it but it's in there. Aaron has one silver crown in the very back of his mouth. The other "problem areas" only needed to be fillings and as I mentioned before we are now much better flossers. Aaron refers to his new crown as his "metal tooth", it's really kind of cute how he goes on about it, like he thinks his mouth was being enhanced instead of repaired. The slight defect in his front tooth was also repaired and he has his gorgeous little smile back.

Now this was our first experience at Primary Children's Hospital. Other than Mike and I getting a little slap happy-tired as a result of the worry and waiting we all came through it pretty okay. Aaron did have a hard time when he came out of the anesthesia, which the doctors and nurses had told us to expect. It was heartbreaking to see my little boy crying while nothing we did, (absolutely nothing) soothed him. The nurse came over and gave him something to help calm him down and to help any further nausea. About 3 minutes after she did that Aaron passed out in a deep sleep. Mike said, "She gave him a sedative! She just didn't want to listen to him cry anymore." And she most likely did, he was probably starting to scare the other children. We thought for sure once he woke up from this little nap he would be thrashing about again, but he didn't. He just sat straight up and said, "Okay, I'm ready to go home." Amen! So were we. We gathered his things and took him home.

Of course I forgot my camera. But I bought a disposable one in the gift shop and I captured almost every moment of his first trip to the hospital...so more pictures coming soon. Once we got home I made him his favorite meal...mac & cheese, (yuck! I really hate that stuff) and we watched a movie I rented from Red Box, (I love Red Box!). By the way, if you haven't already seen it, Bolt is hilarious, our entire family laughed our heads off...Two Thumbs Up!

So here's my sum-up - Flossing...Good, Mac & Cheese...Gross, Red Box...Awesome, Bolt...Hiliarious, Aaron...Very Brave!

1 Down 2 to Go!

One of my sister-in-laws published a post in her blog entitled, "How I Survived My First Trimester." I got a huge kick out of it and since we are due within a week of each other it's now my turn to describe how I survived MY first trimester. (Thanks for the inspiration sis.)

With each pregnancy my nausea gets worse! This is my fourth and it nearly did me in. I literally felt like I was going to hurl ALL the time. It came in the morning, you'd expect that...hence the term, "morning sickness" and it stayed for lunch. I was still feeling sick by the time dinner rolled around, so here's a big "shout-out" of thanks to a sweetheart hubby who took over a lot of dinner making so I could avoid looking at any raw meat. In the evening, guess what? Still feeling pretty crumby, I mean talk about overstaying your welcome, didn't anyone ever explain to this brand of nausea that that is incredibly rude. I welcomed bedtime just so I could go to sleep and stop feeling sick.

Every now and then I'd get a craving for something off the wall, (and just like with the other pregnancies) that was the only thing I could possibly fathom eating at the time. So there were a couple nights we all ate chili cheese dogs, or fried eggs and toast. Thanks family for putting up with me. Oh and let's not forget the night I just had to have a slice or 3 of watermelon. Mind you this was in early Spring. Watermelon is expensive at this time of year...thanks honey.

Energy or the lack thereof was a huge issue. So much that one day Mike compared me to a cat and we all know just how productive they are! I usually responded by reminding him I'm trying to grow a baby here and that is a full time job - I'm even working while I'm sleeping!

Ahhh, sleep. It would be so nice to sleep a whole night through without those interrupting calls of nature. But I must say it does prepare you for those late night/early morning interruptions the baby will bring. I really like my sleep and Mike nows just how useless I am without a decent night.

So all in all I really don't know how I made it through my first trimester, I felt sick and tired ALL the time, I spent most of the time looking at the calendar while calculating how much longer... Oh and I complained a lot, sorry Mike. Maybe we should ask him how HE made it through my first trimester.

T-Ball Troubles

We put Aaron in T-Ball this Spring. I thought he'd love it...so much for that mother's intuition. He played two games, the last one he actually spent part of on my lap. To his credit, he's a really good hitter, but he doesn't like to chase after the ball while in the outfield. So we had a big talk and we decided to trade him for his sister, who as it turned out was very anxious to play and enjoys it! She's already had a turn with dance and soccer, but Aaron doesn't mind a bit as she subs for him in T-Ball. I asked Aaron what he'd like to do instead of baseball and he's very interested in swimming lessons - all my kids LOVE to swim. So we'll be making a deal this time. If I pay for swimming lessons you're going to every single lesson and then if you hate it after that, you don't have to take them again. There are some really great pictures of Aaron playing T-Ball, unfortunately they are on my sister's camera, (duh, I didn't bring my camera - I thought I'd have plenty of future games to take pictures of...not so). I'm waiting for her to e-mail them to me. Then we can post pics of our little guy.

Your Eyes Will Stick That Way

Is there really any truth to what us Mom's threaten sometimes? Emma is in a crossed-eyes stage. Any time we try to take her picture she thinks it's hilarious to pull this face.

Party Time

I had a birthday...shout hooray! Can you tell I'm serving in Primary these days? Emma eyes the present, Aaron trys to grab a comfortable seat, and Bekah hangs out.

Mommy's Birthday

Okay the kids have found me - if you read the "Crackers" post you'll know what I'm talking about. So, I 'm trying to compose this recent
B-Day Blog and Bekah is insisting she spin me in the office chair. "No, no, no. I don't want to spin - I want to Blog." I whine. But, she doesn't understand. Oh, all right I'll go for a spin or two, not too many though I am still in the last stages of morning sickness.

Okay now they're coloring, this might buy me a couple minutes. Oh no! Aaron just scolded me - "Why did you only give us 2 pieces of paper?!" Here Aaron have a stack of paper, that may even buy me a half an hour. Thank goodness they love to color!! Oh, shoot I'm letting them use my old scrapbook markers, and Bekah loves to color on herself. Maybe this whole 'blogging while the kids are awake' really is a hopeless cause. Wish me luck, I'm going to try to keep going. I'm post pictures of her latest marker tattoos later.

TEETH

The kids & I recently visited the dentist for our 6 month checkup. It was quite the procedure getting us all done on the same morning, but I preferred it that way - rather than spacing out each appointment. After Emma and I were done I ran her to school and Daddy stayed with Aaron and Rebekah. This was little Bek's first dentist appointment and she did wonderful. She let them count and even clean her teeth! So cooperative!

This was not Aaron's first dentist appointment obviously, but it was the first one were he sat in the chair alone! Good job Aaron! Unfortunately he didn't come away with good news. He has a couple of concerns and our dentist referred us to a pediatric dentist.

We saw him the other day - He's a great guy, and he'll be performing Aaron's upcoming outpatient surgery. Poor boy. Aaron needs two baby crowns and a deep filling that possibly could become the third crown. This will be our first visit to Primary Children's. Please keep Aaron in your thoughts and prayers.

Oh and don't ignore your flossing, apparently it really is that important. We are avid flossers now!

Don't Eat Crackers In My Bed!

Well, this morning I thought I'd run down to the computer to catch up on some overdue blogging. I wanted to accomplish this small task without the kids saying, "I want to get on the computer!" Mike isn't home to run interference for me (he's out playing in the rain with the Scouts - Service Project/Fundraiser.) So I carefully distracted all of them. I made some hot chocolate for Aaron - one of his favorite snacks to waste. And Emma is currently plugged into Saturday morning cartoons and Bekah is watching Dora (gag-me) The Explorer in my room. Hooray, I've been on the computer for about 10 minutes now without interruption, I spoke too soon...Ding! Time to go switch the laundry, so after catching up on many of my friends and family hilarious reads I dutifully go grab the clothes from the dryer.

When I come upstairs I see Bekah sitting on my bed in a mess of cheesy cracker crumbs. Ugggh! Of course she had an explanation. "Aaron brought me crackers in bed." Well to that I patiently explained, "Yes, but I don't like crumbs in my bed, look at this mess." She had a response for that one as well, "I love crumbs, yum." So I guess my payment for a little alone time on the computer is bedding full of cracker crumbs combined with cute quips from my 2 year old. I can handle that, the sheets needed to be changed anyway.