Sassy little turd!

So I have lots to blog about... Ben's NEW job... we found out what the gender of our baby is... Abbi turned 18 months... Lots going on here, but I need to write down a little about my day.

First of all I have to say that it is sort of a miracle that I made it through the day without stabbing myself with a fork AND all of my children survived.

The day stared out with lunch with Beth at Applebee's. We sit down and the waitress comes to get our drink order. Madie takes one look at her and says

"You look evil! Like your eyes - they are creepy!"

Oh my gosh I was so embarrassed and Beth and I had a hard time not laughing. Madie then proceeded to demonstrate to the waitress what her face looked like.

Yep that is my kid! I am pretty sure we can never show our faces at Applebee's again.

About 5 minutes later I feel something wet and warm on my lap... Abbi's diaper had leaked on me. Awesome. So I go in the bathroom and change her and bring her back out pants-less. I told Beth that I considered taking my wet-pee-soaked pants off too but that I thought that might be frowned on.

The rest of the day was filled with kids throwing tantrums, kids trying to drink shampoo and getting things ready for Slade's birthday party tomorrow.

Like I said... I made it without stabbing myself with a fork.

Still Alive!

I am well aware that I have been an extreme slacker lately. I would like to say I have a good excuse and well... I do, or at least I think it's a good excuse.

You see I have been working on a project. Remember my last post when I said I was going to clean out all of my closets and get them all Pinterest pretty? Well that isn't the project I have been working on.

The one I have been working on takes 9 months and at the end of it you get a cute little baby.

Yep we are having another baby. We are super excited and as you can imagine there is some serious begging going on at our house when it comes to it being a girl or a boy. I guess my kids think we can put in requests and that is what we get.

We are due September 29. Considering that Abbi's birthday is September 27th and Madie's is October 3rd we have been joking that we only have one fertile week a year.

We had a bit of a scare with this baby for a while there. At my 8 week ultrasound they saw what they thought was a molar pregnancy in addition to the baby. Don't know what that is? I didn't either. So I did what any idiot would do and I googled it... I officially freaked myself out! I spent the next month getting a bunch of ultrasounds done and seeing a specialist. They have finally decided that what they were seeing is a bunch of blood filled cysts and not a molar pregnancy. I have one more appointment with the specialist next week (which I will be about 15 1/2 weeks) and if everything still looks good at that appointment then I won't have to see the specialist anymore.

As far as how I am feeling this time around I am feeling much better than I did with Madie or Abbi although I have had some killer migraines. I can actually cook and eat meat with this baby. I also have worse acne than I ever had when I was going through puberty, which is pretty awesome.

Anyway hopefully I can do a better job keeping up from now on.

What Cha been doing?

Kind of a while bunch of blah around here.

It is cold and snowy which means I stay in the house as much as possible. I try to plan all of my outings for the same day so I have plenty of days that I don't leave the house at all. I get so much more done on days I don't have to leave at all. Something about having to get totally ready sure does slow my day down!

 

Anyway we have made some progress around here...

 

Saturday...

I USED OUR SNOW BLOWER!

I know this does not sound like a big deal but this was my FIRST time!

When Ben first took his job in North Dakota my Home Teachers asked me what I was the most concerned about taking care of at our house while Ben was gone

-you know other than the fact that I was 9 months pregnant and having a baby any day-

I told them that my biggest concern was snow.

While I am perfectly capable of shoveling I didn't quite know how to handle keeping the kids supervised while I got it done (now I totally laugh at this because there are about a gazillion things that I have figures out how to take care of while still keeping the kids supervised).

My amazing Home Teachers told me not to worry about it and they had it covered.

Sure enough - the one time it snowed last year they were here plowing out the 2 little inches of snow we got (have I mentioned I love them? Seriously the best!).

So Saturday I got some courage and decided that I was going to go out there and take care of that snow!

I got Abbi down for a nap.

Bundled Madie and myself up (Slade was with his mom).

And went outside.

I looked at the snow blower...

Read the directions...

Had no clue what buttons the directions were talking about...

Called Ben... No answer

Called my Step dad (we inherited the snow blower from him when they got a new one)...

and then Face timed with him.

Success!!!

Totally got it started - that is half the battle right?

Then I used it to clear out the driveway.

It didn't look great, not nearly as clean as Ben get it but better then not doing it at all and way easier than shoveling!

However now I know how to do it which means that since it is snowing today - I will have to do it again today.

Ugh!!!

After we did the driveway Madie and I shoveled off the back deck and then shoveled all the snow off of the trampoline. It was hard work but we had a good time working together at it.

 

 

Sunday...

I think that any of us that have had a 15 month old has had plenty of Sunday's where they do nothing but walk the hall at Church the entire 3 hours.

Abbi will usually let me sit through sacrament meeting.

After I finally convince Madie to got to primary and stay with her class I usually get about 10 minutes of Sunday school before Abbi has decided that she has had enough of this sitting thing. We then spend the rest of the hour walking the halls and standing in the doorway of the primary room (because by then Madie has escaped down the hall or her teacher has brought her to me because she refuses to sit without me standing in the back). 

I usually try it again at the beginning or Relief Society but by the time we get through the song, prayer, and announcements we are back in the hallway.

Does this sound like anyone else's Sunday?

Well this last Sunday Abbi sat all through Sacrament, played quietly during Sunday school, and then fell asleep during Relief Society!

AHHHH - can you hear Angels singing?

It was amazing! I totally needed that opportunity to sit with other adults and listen to an uplifting lesson!

 

Monday...

Lunch with Beth! Need I say more?

So my kids were pretty much wild apes all through lunch but Beth just lied and said she didn't mind.

Because she is awesome like that!

 

Tuesday...

My house needs some major reorganizing done! I spent all of December doing Christmas stuff so no additional projects got done. Then we had Ben home for 2 whole weeks. In general only the bare minimum gets done when Ben is home so I had a lot of cleaning catch up to do.

So now that our house is looking more like normal I am working on projects. My project for the next couple weeks is cleaning out closets. I feel like if I only plan to get through one a week that I can totally stick to that goal. It always blows my mind how much junk we accumulate.

Tuesday I didn't do a closet but I cleaned out my misc. cupboard and plop spot. Am I the only one that has that? I have this extremely awkward spot that just accumulates crap. It drives me crazy! Right above it is a cupboard that has random things that I need to keep in it. Below it there are some cabinets that I keep all of our games, kid crafts and homework stuff in.

I totally reorganized it all!

Yay me!

(Tried to attach pictures here but no luck - Sorry!)

 

Wednesday...

Slade had an eye doctor appointment at 8. Now I know that 8 is not a big deal to most people but being somewhere at 8, with me and all three kids dressed and put together is kinda a big deal for me. You can judge - it is OK. We were there - 5 minutes early!!! That is some kind of record for me!

It turns out that Slade needs glasses for reading. We picked out some cute frames that he looks super handsome in! I know the suspense is killing you but you will have to wait a couple of weeks until his glasses come in.

When we were leaving Slade got pretty upset.

Why?

He is super mad that I kept him home from school, they dilated his eyes and he can barely see anything - he still wanted to go to school because they might do an activity that he will miss.

He is also mad because the eye doctor checked both of his eyes and Slade says that only one of them was a problem.

To top it off I think he thought he was going to get his glasses today. He is a bit disappointed about that.

As for the rest of the day we have some cleaning to do and then parent teacher conferences tonight.

 

But for right now I need to feed these little monkeys. Apparently you have to feed kids because they are all begging for food - who knew?



Back to Normal???

 

We had two amazing weeks of holiday celebration.

We had a great Christmas and were able to go visit family in Utah for New Years.

We had our Daddy home for two whole weeks!

It was AWESOME!!!

We spent lots of time together as a family.

Our house was completely trashed and dirty but we were all together and it was the greatest!

 

Today Ben went back to work.

So I guess things are back to... Normal???

I hate it that normal at our house doesn't include him here. Hopefully some day normal will change. We miss him tons. There were a lot of tears when he headed out today, it is always a hard day when he leaves but today was really hard.

 

I feel like I have gotten the hang of this doing it by myself thing at home. I have a schedule and as long as I stick to my schedule things go OK for the most part. What I can't get used to and I hope I never get used to is being away from Ben. I miss him. When he left today I felt like I couldn't hold him close enough, I wanted to soak as much of him in as I could because we don't know when the next time we will get to hold each other is.

 

He is such a good man and I am so grateful for all that he does for us but I am sure glad that this work arrangement is not a "for the rest of our lives" deal.

 

Hurry home babe!

 

So anyway I cleaned my house a bit, until it was time for Abbi to nap and then I sat down and lost all of my motivation. Oh well the dirt will wait for another day.

 

We got pizza hut for dinner tonight because it is Monday and Monday is pizza night.

 

Did today and tomorrows homework because tomorrow is a crazy day and I didn't want to have to worry about it tomorrow.

 

Bathed the kids, read a couple chapters of Slade's Junie B. Jones book to the kids, said prayers and put them to bed.

And now I have sat here at the computer for a couple hours catching up on our Christmas activities (so if you want to go back and check out what we all did feel free) and eating cake.

 

Tomorrow is filled with doctors appointments, errands and church stuff.

 

Normal I guess.

Christmas Day

The kids let us sleep until 7 Christmas morning - Shocking!

Usually they are up at four begging to open presents.

 

Santa left the kids a lengthy list about how he gave them a freebie but if they want to be on the nice list next year they are going to have to work harder at being good.

 

I always love to see the tree with all of the gifts around it before it is touched.

I know they are totally spoiled

(no these are not all from us, my family sends gifts for me to wrap for the kids too.)

 

 

Madie got her blue hula hoop from Santa.

She also got a purple Barbie Unicorn from us.

Slade got his Bladewheelz from Santa.

 

And he got a remote control truck from us.

Santa brought Abbi a musical flashlight.

Abbi's big gift from us was a toy lawn mower, but this Tinkerbell chair that her Uncle Mike and Aunt Monica got her is by far her favorite.

She does just about everything in this chair.

She totally freaks if either if the big kids sit in it. She will sit there forever looking at books or playing with her toys.

 

The kids got Ben a photo book for him to take in his semi that has a bunch of pictures of them in it and I got him a Sirius radio with a years subscription.

 

I got a bunch of stuff for the kitchen and some new clothes. After Christmas Ben also got me some awesome boots.

 

We took our time getting ready and then headed over to Ben's Mom's house for the afternoon.

We had a great Christmas and it was so nice to spend it together.



Christmas Eve

The morning of Christmas Eve the kids found Ralphie hanging on our Christmas countdown.

We packed a lot into Christmas Eve. Ben got home the day before so we ran to Idaho Falls so he could finish up his shopping.

 

We got home and the big kids played in the snow and spread their magic reindeer food.

Every Monday night is pizza night at our house so we made homemade pizzas.



We let the kids open their Christmas Eve presents.

We always get them new jammies.

 

This year superheros are a pretty big deal at our house so Slade and Madie both got Batman PJ's with CAPES!!! Seriously why didn't jammies have capes when I was a kid?

Then we made some Grinch juice and watched the Grinch.

 

Santa really Struggled to get into our house this night.

THESE KIDS WOULD NOT GO TO BED!

After Madie got up for the third time Daddy had to lay down with her so that she would stay in her bed long enough for Santa to come - not an easy task when the Christmas tree could be seen from her bed.

23 Days of Christmas

This morning the kids found Ralphie in the pantry drinking maple syrup through a straw.

 

 

That night we made some magic reindeer food for Christmas Eve.