8 Year Anniversary

     It has been eight whole years since Joel and I got married. Joel and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary earlier this week. I had a dream a couple of times that our baby was born on our anniversary but I am kind of glad she waited. I didn't really want to celebrate a birthday on my anniversary. Joel ended up having to work really late on the day of our anniversary. He really needed to get this house tiled and finished. Since we knew that might happen Joel took me out to dinner on Saturday and he took me for a tour to see the house he is working on. That was kind of fun. I love getting to see what he is working on during the day while he is at work. After that we stopped at Walmart where we picked up some diapers and some groceries. It was a pretty romantic date. Haha. Really it was just some great relaxing time spent alone together. We got this book on tape from the library that we have enjoyed listening to together so just driving around was fun. I love Joel a lot and I sure am glad he married me. Here is to many more years with this good looking guy.

38 Weeks

     I reached 38 weeks of pregnancy on Sunday so I am now officially 38 weeks and five days. At this point baby could come any day but I am planning on being pregnant for at least another week. I kind of hope I have another week because I still have so many things to do before this baby gets here. I washed and put away all of her clothes but other than that I haven't done anything. I washed the car seat cover but I need to disinfect and clean everything else. There were lots of mice in our old storage area so everything is pretty gross and covered in mouse droppings. I am seriously dreading that job. Joel said he would help me but we will see if he ever has the time. I had the kids use my camera to take some pictures of me last week but they didn't turn out that great so I did one on my own on Tuesday. Kyla woke up from her nap and was not in a good mood so she got to take a picture with me. Here are the best picture I got. The second picture was taken by Brynlee when I was 37 weeks.

     I don't think I have ever thrown up as much when I have been pregnant as I have these last few months. The combination of heartburn mixed with smelling anything with a really strong smell has me throwing up. The mornings are the worst. The sweet smelling cereal the kids like to eat is terrible for me. I can hardly throw things in the garbage or change poopy diapers first thing in the morning without throwing up. Sometimes even just looking at something gross has the same effect. I have also been pretty tired and uncomfortable but I am still doing pretty good. I have had some contractions but not a lot.

     Lately I have been making weekly visits to see the doctor. I went on Tuesday and I was dilated to a 1 and 1/2 which is what I was dilated to the week before. I have the group B strep again so my doctor had advised me to head to the hospital fairly quickly once labor starts so I can be sure to get enough of the antibiotics I need. I will also have to stay at the hospital for at least 24 hours and possibly for 48 hours after baby is born. We will see how that goes. Right now I am trying to look at it as a short break and some alone time with the baby.

     The girls are all getting pretty excited for this baby to come. Joel had to put in some crazy long hours at work but he finished the big project he needed to finish so he should be able to take a week off when the baby comes. Kyla is still not so sure about this whole baby thing. Whenever we talk about the baby she tells me she is a baby and then she pretend cries or begs to be held like a baby. We will see how she does. I keep coming up with new names for our baby but so far Joel doesn't like any of them so I have resigned myself to the name we picked out months ago, it just isn't my favorite name so I keep hoping to find something else. At this point it just doesn't seem like there is enough time to come up with anything else. The good new is that I finally came up with a middle name that I like with it. There are times when I feel really anxious to meet this baby (and to not be pregnant) and I find myself begging her to just come as early as possible and then there are times when I just tell her to stay right until her due date because I don't feel ready to have another baby yet. Really I am super excited for her to join our family. We can't wait.

Quotes From the Girls

     It has been a while since I did a post with quotes from my kids. I lost my old notes but I am writing a few of the quotes I remember from last year mixed with some recent one. This time there are even some quotes from Kyla. 

     Brynlee came home from school one day and told me "Mom guess what! There is a boy at school who has a "Cush" (rhymes with push) on me."
"A cush?" I asked. "I think you mean a crush."

"No mom. He has a cush. It means he loves me and he wants to MARRY Me! But I do not have a cush on him. Now when I see him I have to run so he doesn't kiss me."

     I took the kids into the doctor's office sometime before Christmas and Dr. Bennett asked my girls what their plans were for Christmas. Brynlee was quick to respond. "For Christmas I am going to spend the night at my Grandma Hirtle's house with some of my cousins and then we are going to kill our pig named Peppa and then we are going to Eat Her!" Sounds like some pretty exciting Christmas plans to me.

     Joel and his dad killed our pig back in November and I made the kids stay home but they went the next day and got to see the dead pig hanging from the back porch. It didn't seem to phase them. They all asked about Peppa and they were eager to come over the next day to help cut and wrap all the meat. Now we have a freezer full of pork. The kids ate some of Peppa and commented about how good she tasted several times. Then Joel was cooking up some of her ribs a few days ago and Annalyn started balling about how much she missed Peppa the pig and how she did not want to eat her. Then Brynlee started talking about how she did not want to eat the pig either. Joel told the kids that next time maybe he should go hunting and then he would get us a deer. Brynlee's eyes lit up so big. "Yeah, that would be great!" she exclaimed. "Then we could build it a fence and keep it in our backyard." You should have seen the terrified look in her eye when Joel explained that we would not be keeping it, we would be eating it because he was going to shoot it. Haha. The kids were still pretty reluctant to eat the meat when dinnertime came around but they both ate a bit and declared it good.

     Annalyn was singing the wise man song the other day and she kept saying "the rain came down and the flower came up." I told her the words are the floods came up, not the flowers and she looked at me like I was crazy. She still sings it with her words.

     We were driving in the car a while ago and I told the girls I was feeling really tired. "You should just go to sleep," Anna encouraged. "That's what I do when I get tired in the van."

Brynlee was quick to respond, "Umm, mom actually I don't think you should do that. Remember what happened to your grandma when she fell asleep while she was driving."

     Before we moved into our new house Annalyn and I were working on this puzzle when she started crying. "What's wrong?" I questioned. 

"I just love my zebra puzzle soo soo much," she cried and sniffled. "I will miss it when we move to our new house."

"Well, we can take it with us." I told her. "We are going to take all of your toys with us to our new house."
"Really? Well what about my bed?"

"We will bring your bed too."

"What about the trampoline? I think the trampoline is too big to bring.

"Don't worry Annalyn, we are taking the trampoline with us. We are taking all of our stuff with us."

"What about my pinecone tree?"

"Oh well, I am afraid we can't take the pinecone tree with us. It belongs with the house."

"Waaaaaa, not my pinecone tree! I love it so much. We just can't leave my favorite pinecone tree."

Annalyn cried about how much she would miss that tree for several hours. 

     Annalyn loves cucumbers so when we were at the store the other day she begged to get some and happily bagged several cucumbers for me. When we were checking out she got really excited when she saw the cucumbers and begged to have some cucumbers for lunch. I told her we could do that.

     The first time Brynlee went to a doctor's appointment with me the doctor was running a little bit late and we got there a few minutes early. I was taking the girls to their swimming lessons right after the appointment and even though I kept assuring Brynlee that we would not be late she was really worried about how long the doctor was taking. As soon as Brynlee met my doctor the first thing she told her was "Dr. umm, you are really late."

     We were checking out our groceries at Walmart one day and they had this display of fingernail polish right by the check out and Kyla kept trying to play with them. I moved her but as we were leaving she managed to grab a thing of clear nail polish and immediately threw it and it broke. I apologized to the check out lady, told her what happened, and picked up the bottle of nail polish. She just sighed and acted like I had ruined her whole day. I offered to pay for it and she said no but then she complained about having to close down her stand and get someone to clean up the mess. "Well, at least it was clear polish," I told her. She was not amused. Since the lady was so rude I really didn't feel that bad about what had happened as I left the store.

     Annalyn was lamenting one day about how much she missed having dandelions to pick. "I hope grandma grows lots in her yard this year," she told me. As we drove up to grandma's house the other day, Annalyn gasped with joy and exclaimed, "Oh my! Look at all of the beautiful dandelions. This is so great!"

     Brynlee has been coming home with all kinds of tales about school. I never really know what happened that day because most of her stories are a bit unbelievable. According to Brynlee there have been several days at school where the whole class gets in trouble, except for her. She is always the only good one. Kids get sent home and kicked out of school on a regular basis. One day she told me that a boy fell off the bus because the driver shut the door on him and Brynlee's teacher, Mrs. Hubbard had to walk him home. There was another day when her teacher sent all of the girls to the nurses office and they had to get their ears pierced. Brynlee told me she was not allowed to show anyone her ears for two days and she was not allowed to do any chores or any work until her ears got better. One day she told me about how she got stuck in a giant spider web with some of her friends. They were trapped under the playground equipment until Brynlee was able to find a rock and help all of the children escape. There have also been days where the kids walk to the middle school and spend the whole entire day watching movies. I sometimes wonder if I should even ask Brynlee what happened at school that day because I never know if I will get the truth. I think she just likes to make her day sound more exciting than it really was.

     Brynlee has been obsessed with Harry Porter aka Harry Potter lately. She told me she just likes to call him Harry Porter better. We let her watch the first few movies but she keeps begging to watch the rest of them. While watching the quidditch match on the second movies Bryn got really concerned when there was a bludger that was following Harry. She kept on crying out to Harry and telling him to watch out for the bluger.

     For April Fools day (I am not even sure how Brynlee knew about that day) Brynlee woke up and made this elaborate treasure hunt where she had all kinds of items strewn across the hallway for everyone to follow. It lead to her room so she had everyone follow her trail and at the end there was nothing, just Brynlee yelling April Fool's and laughing because she had tricked us.

     Brynlee still likes to ask people embarrassing questions. She asked someone we were talking to how come their teeth were yellow. She also went up to our neighbor one day and told him "wow, you are looking older today." Luckily he is hard of hearing so I don't think he knew what she was saying. She told someone else she didn't think they should be out digging a hole because they were old. You gotta love kids.

     Kyla really wants to like animals but she really just doesn't. She seems to be getting a little less scared of them. We were at aunt Joanna's house the other day and her kids brought out some of their baby rabbits. They asked Kyla if she wanted to hold one and she nodded her head. They sat the little rabbit on Kyla's lap and she threw her hands in the air, scooted as far away from the rabbit as possible, had a slightly terrified look on her face and she exclaimed, "He likes me!'

     When got a nice big pile of  sand for our backyard and the girls have had a blast playing in it. Kyla loves the sand and was sitting out there playing one day when she started to suck on her thumb. Then she took her thumb out, stuck it in the sand and then she put her thumb back in her mouth, only to get a huge mouthful of sand. She sputtered and spit exclaiming, "Yut, dat is yuty." She meticulously wiped the sand off of her thumb so she could keep sucking on it.

     I sure do love all of my girls and hearing all of the funny things they say. 

The Month of March

     I am having a hard time believing that it is already April. We could have a baby at our house by the end of this month and I don't think any of us feel anywhere near prepared. We don't even have a baby name picked out yet. I have started going to the doctor once a week at this point.

     March was a busy month for all of us. Joel worked a lot on getting our yard fixed up. He has half of our fence put up and he has started on the sprinklers. He also found some big rocks that he put up around the yard. The girls had fun getting ready for and celebrating Anna's birthday. The train is still at our house so the kids have gotten their dad to take them on lots of rides around the neighborhood. We all wore green for St. Patrick's day and Annalyn made sure she was completely green. Brynlee also make a leprechaun trap for school. Annalyn was scared of Leprechauns for a few days and had a bad dream about a leprechaun coming into our house. Luckily she seems to be over that fear. Brynlee's teacher ended up getting sick and missing the whole week of St. Patrick's Day and then Brynlee had Spring Break so she didn't get her trap back for a while. When she brought it back she told Annalyn all about this leprechaun that they caught at school. Her teacher made her let it go but it had a pink hat and a pink belt so it was a girl leprechaun that was a nice one.

     During Spring Break I signed the girls up for swimming lessons. The pool was a 30 minute drive from my house but there really are not many options that are closer and it only cost $20 a piece for them to do lessons for the whole week and I could put them in the same class. The girls had a blast swimming everyday and they both gained so much confidence in the water and Brynlee is close to swimming on her own. Annalyn did tell me on the way home after the third day that she didn't want to do swimming lessons anymore because it took too long to get home. I took the kids to Burger King after their lessons the next day and that made it even more exciting for them. My mom watched Kyla on Tuesday for me but the rest of the week she was pretty content to be my buddy and walk around the pool or sit and color. On the last day of their lessons someone ended up pooping in the pool so everyone had to get out. The kids only had a few minutes of lessons left anyways so their teacher took a turn taking each kid down the big slide that they have. My girls loved that. Brynlee got to go down all on her own and she felt pretty proud of herself.

     The girls and I spent lots of time outside. We wrote a lot with sidewalk chalk but we discovered that we can't write on our slanted driveway without our chalk rolling away. The girls also rode on their scooters and jumped on the trampoline lots this month. We played games inside and they spent plenty of time playing with toys and doing chores so they could watch a movie. We went to the park a few times and our ward does a play date once a week that we went to a few times. The girls have really enjoyed helping me cook dinner and make all of our meals. We went to Wahooz one night for family night because Brynlee got a free ticket from school and we all had a blast playing some arcade games, the kids played in the little play area they have, and then Brynlee and her dad got to go through the laser tag maze that they have. We tried to get Anna to do it but she was too scared so Joel took her place. Brynlee loved the maze and really wants to do it again. 

     Joel and I both gave a talk in church and got new callings at the end of February. Joel is the second counselor in the Young Mens organization so he gets to work with the 14 and 15 year old boys. He teaches almost every sunday, goes to the wednesday night activities, and he even went on a campout and a 20 mile hike this month. There are only about 5 boys in his group and he enjoys working with the boys but it takes a lot of work and time. I was called to teach the 9-10 year old primary class. This is the first time I have ever taught the older kids but I am enjoying it so far. I am not sure how it will work once I have the baby but hopefully we can figure something out. 

     Joel also got a raise at work at the end of the month. He is now on salary and Joel is going to start doing all of the tile work. Joel was getting tired of framing so I think he is excited for the change. Now that he is on salary there will be times when he has to work a lot of long late hours but we are hoping it will even itself out and there will also be slow times when he doesn't have to work as much. We will see how it all works out. March was a pretty good month and we are excited to see what the future brings. 

Easter 2016

     Easter seemed to come early this year. Brynlee had her spring break the week before Easter and Joel had a campout and a 20 mile hike with the scouts from church that he went on the day before Easter. Of course the night he was gone poor little Kyla ended up getting sick. She was throwing up all night and pretty miserable. I had planned on taking all of the kids to the community Easter egg hunt but since Kyla was still sick and throwing up there was no way I could take her. Brynlee was devastated. She kept begging me to call someone to come and take her. In the end my grandma came to the rescue and she took Brynlee and my cousin Ryder with her to the egg hunt. I kept Anna home with me because she has been extra naughty lately. The last time I tried to take her somewhere she ran off right in the middle of the road and then she threw a big temper tantrum when things didn't go her way. I didn't want grandma to have to deal with that. Brynlee had a blast at the egg hunt and she came home with several prizes that she won, including a stuffed bunny that she loves.

     When grandma got back she took Brynlee and Annalyn both to her house where her and my mom put on a little egg hunt for the kids. Grandma fed them lunch and kept them for a few hours while I took care of Kyla. By then Kyla seemed to be feeling a little better and she was able to eat a little bit and keep it down. Kyla was pretty jealous when she woke up from her nap and saw all the candy her sisters had. They were good to share with Kyla but I did not want her eating all of that candy after she was just getting over being sick. She kept taking their candy out of their baskets too so I had to take it and hide it from Kyla.

     The kids and I decorated eggs the Thursday before Easter. Joel had a lot going on so he was not able to help me out. We went over to grandma's house and decorated our eggs with Ryder but it was a lot of work to supervise all of my kids with their eggs. Kyla needed lots of supervision. Brynlee decorated more than her fair share of eggs and most of them were green. Ryder dropped and broke several of his eggs while he was decorating them and Kyla spilled the yellow dye all over her clothes. Luckily it came right out and the kids had fun. They put lots of stickers on their eggs when they were done and were pretty excited to show them to their dad when he came home from work.

     On Easter morning the kids woke up early and Brynlee helped me to set up a little Easter egg hunt. We just did it in the living room but at least Kyla got to find a few eggs this year. I didn't buy a ton of candy. My grandma found some old stuffed bunnies that she had and she brought them over the night before so all of the girls got stuffed bunnies. They were pretty excited and they ate quite a bit of candy that morning.

     The girls all got ready for church and then we came home and went to visit Joel's parents where we had a yummy Easter dinner. Kyla acted like she didn't feel well all that night and she ended up throwing up again in the morning so she must not have been completely better from her sickness. Or maybe she just ate too much candy. It made me grateful for our health and for the atonement of our Savior. I truly am grateful for all he does for me and I know he lives.