A trip to the mall

I decided it was time to take Danielle and Spencer somewhere fun and cheep. There is a great mall here in the area that has a carousel and also a soft play area that is so much fun for the kids to play in. I needed to do a little shopping, so I thought the combination would be fun. Danielle and Spencer had a lot of fun and Nathan slept the whole time!

Danielle was so excited to ride the zebra on the carousel. Spencer was excited until I tried to put him on his horse. I had to have help from the attendant because I was holding Nathan and Spencer refused to get on. Of course once the carousel started and he realized this was fun, he enjoyed the ride.

Texas Fire Ants

Anybody that has lived in Texas or has visited Texas and walked through the grass knows just what I am talking about when I mention Texas fire ants. What a horrible insect to invade this earth! They are everywhere and mean. They swarm. I swear they climb onto you very quietly and once they are all on you, they signal to all their friends, 1,2,3 BITE!!!!! And their bite is what gives them their name. And, once they bite, they leave you with a mark that itches for a week.

While at my parent's house this last weekend, me dear Spencer, managed to sit in a pile of ants. He started screaming but remained sitting in the pile of ants. Camie came running and moved him while Evan took off all his clothes and brushed the ants off. My dad was grabbing the hose ready to spray Spencer down. Afterwards, Spencer kept telling us he had "fire" on him. I doubt he will repeat the same mistake again.

These pictures do not give Spencer justice. He was bit probably about 50 times. He had them up his legs, around his waste, and on his neck. The bites swelled. We put Cortizone cream and Calamine lotion on him, and one of those or the combination stopped the swelling. These bites are a few days old. Poor little boy. It's too bad he had to figure out Texas fire ants the hard way. Danielle did the same thing when she was about his age.

One of my friends was puling weeds and got a few bites on her hand. He whole hand is swollen. These ants are just mean!

Blurb Slurped my Blog

I love to say that title. Blurb is a company that prints books. I had them "slurp" my blog. I then edited the 450 pages down to 200 pages. It took a lot of time, but it was exciting thinking that all this journaling that I have been doing and the scrapbooking that I have NOT been doing will be put into a book. The guilt overload went away. And, UPS brought it to my doorstep today. I like the results, but the books seems too expensive and fragile to let my smaller kids thumb through. So, maybe I should save a little of the guilt in not scrapbooking, because at least with scrapbooks they have page protectors around them and little hands can't hurt them as easy.

I guess this book will have to go up on a higher shelf and wait little hands maturity. It was fun to do and I love that all this journaling is now somewhere other then cyberspace.

Nathan's Blessing

This weekend I traveled to my parents house. Evan has been working some long hours and we haven't seen much of him. He had a day off and we had an opportunity to see him, so we took it. I traveled 5 hours by myself in a car with five children. It was so worth it. It was so exciting to have Evan with us, to watch him interact with our children, to see him hold our new baby. Moments like this remind me how much I love him. His is a wonderful man.

With Evan's work schedule, we were starting to wonder when we would be able to bless Nathan. We didn't know when he would have time off to be at church and if and when he did get the time, it would be at last minutes notice. Nathan was already 8 weeks, and growing. When I found out we would have this chance to be with Evan on Sunday, i decided to seize the opportunity. I called and asked my Bishop for permission, and he said we could do it in my parent's home as long as the Bishop of my parent's ward was in attendance. Well, my dad is the Bishop of his ward, so that was easy.

Evan ended up arriving too late on Sunday, so we blessed Nathan Monday. It was Evan, my Dad, and my brother in the circle blessing Nathan. My sister-in-laws Tonia and Beth were able to be there with some of their children, Maddie and Eden. I have never blessed a baby in a home or even been to a blessing in a home, but the spirit was so sweet. I really enjoyed the blessing and the peacefulness of doing it in a home. There was no pressure of the big dinner afterwards or the show of all the people in the congregation. Just a precious moment where my baby was held by men that I love and given a wonderful blessing. The quiet peace I felt is one of those moments I will always treasure.

Nathan was great. He talked through the blessing. He has just started the baby-jabber, and I love to hear it. As soon as the blessing was finished, I held him in my arms and he started to yawn. I put him down in the chair so I could get some pictures, and he fell asleep. What a sweet baby.

A Glorious Night

Taneal did the dishes tonight! Loaded the dishwasher, handwashed the pots and pans, wiped the counters, and cleaned the sink. Over the last 8 years I have dreamed of this moment. I am a happy mom.

Diapers and Proud of It

All of my children have been potty trained by the time they were Spencer's age. Yes, they were girls and I know from what EVERYONE has told me that boys take longer. I'm okay with that, but If I could encourage him to be potty-trained a little sooner, that would be nice. With my girls, as soon as I had a baby, I pointed out that the baby was a baby because they wear diapers. So, although the older child thinks they are big (as do I), they are still a baby because they are in diapers. Within weeks of that, they soon get potty trained. Well, not the case with Spencer. He is still in diapers and proud of it.

Chunky Boy!

About two weeks ago I was at the doctors and I weighed myself (amount not disclosed) and then held Nathan and weighed myself again. The baby is a whopping 12.5 pounds! That was at five weeks. He doubled his weight in five weeks. He is now seven weeks and out of all his 0-3 months clothes. At the rate he is going he will be as big as Spencer in no time.

Aftermath of Ike

School has been out since Friday, September 12th. It resumed again today, September 24th. That is 8 days off of school due to Hurricane Ike. The biggest part of the problem in resuming school has been all the power outages. Many people around here still do not have power. I think I heard that 14 schools in our district still do not have power.

Just a little update of what effect Ike had on the area:

• We weren't able to drink the water for almost a week. It was strange making orange juice from water bottles.
• We had a curfew from dusk until dawn that ended on Friday. Strange. I haven't had a curfew since I got married.
• Church was cancelled one Sunday and the following Sunday we only had Sacrament Meeting
• No school for 8 days
• Most restaurants and stores closed
• Long gas lines or no gas at all
  
• Grocery shopping was a joke. Yesterday (a week and a half later) was the first time I was able to go to the store and see food in the dairy, meat, or frozen food section. I was shocked when one week after Ike and I went to Walmart and was not able to find ANY food. I could buy chips and canned goods, but my pantry was already stocked with those. I'm so glad I listened to the council of the church to have a good food supply. I REALLY would have been in trouble had I not.
  

My friend, Stacy, took her camera to the store and got these pictures. I was so disappointed that I didn't bring mine, so thanks Stacey for taking these pictures:

And utility trucks have been all over the place working hard to restore our power. It was great to see lines of them driving on the highways.

We Survived Ike

Hurricane Ike was unbelievable. I think the hardest part about Ike was listening to the winds and the rain crashing up against the windows completely in the dark. I thought the windows were going to break from the wind alone. The trees by the windows were slamming up against the glass. I don't know what kind of glass those windows were made of, I am shocked they didn't break. Wind was howling through the front door. It was so dark. I couldn't look out the window and see anything. Spencer, Danielle, and Nathan were awake through several hours of it. It was so dark that Spencer climbed onto the bed with me and didn't realize the edge of the bed was there and crawled right off and bit his tongue in the fall. Camie woke for part of the storm and Taneal slept until her normal awake time of 6:30am. I've been through several storms growing up and I kept praying that this storm wouldn't produce hail. The winds were so intense and kept going on and on and on. When it finally got light outside to where we could see, the rain was horizontal. It was literally raining sideways! And it went on and on.

Finally around 4pm, I had Troy take me home. We spent the night at Troy and Becky's house (Evan's brother that lives about 10 minutes from my house) so that we could turn this intense storm into more of a party for the kids. I was amazed at the damage and the amount of water as we drove home. Tall pine trees were snapped in half and hanging in the power lines. Water was covering the roads and all the retention ponds filled to their brims. My house weathered the storm well, my fence had snapped in a few places and was laying on its side.

As we were out of power i didn't hear the warning not to go out sight-seeing. So, I did and I got a few pictures. Huge trees had fallen on homes. I had to turn around on several street because trees were blocking the roads. Of course once we got power, I turned on the tv and saw the damage Ike left behind. Wow! the power of Mother Nature.

I was only out of power for a day. I really can't complain because most people don't have power back on yet. But the day I went without electricity was soooooo HOT! I think my house only got to 81 degrees, but with the humidity, that night was almost unbearable. I hardly slept. I had all the kids sleep on my bedroom floor. We lit candles around the room to provide some light (4 different kind of scented candles doesn't go too well together) and each of the kids had their own flashlight. We put wet wash clothes on our necks and I read Harry Potter to them using my flashlight. The kids thought it was great and were pretty bummed when the power came on the next day. I was so excited. They asked if we could still light candles that night and read more Harry Potter. We did.

Not everyone in my subdivision has power yet. I was so impressed with all the people that stopped by to make sure we were okay. Our phones just started working a few hours ago, so we couldn't contact each other that way, we had to either walk or drive and communicate the old fashioned way. It was nice. So much more personable. I am glad to have the phones back up and working though. And, we had a nice excuse to have some of those without power over for dinner.

And so tomorrow I will go online and see more of the damage of Ike. With what I saw on my drive no further then 2 miles from my home, I realize just how blessed my family was. No major damage, no one hurt other then Spencer's bloody mouth from falling off the bed in dark of the night, and only two hot and sleepless nights. Some will be out of power for weeks. I am very blessed to be back to normal within three days of such a storm. And, I get to have all my kiddos home with me this week because school has been cancelled.

These are some of the pictures I got the following day on a short drive I took. I didn't drive very far from home, the roads were too covered with debris and water.

See the broken and fallen trees on the power lines. These are on major roads. No wonder the power is out!

This house had four trees on it. Check out the detached garage on the left.

See the tree leaning up against the house? This kind of thing is all over the place!

This house had a tree go through its roof

This is the retention pond near my house. It is VERY full.

This is a typical picture of the trees blown down all over everywhere.

This is a new construction build in my subdivision. It was just framed, and totally blown down.

Hurricane Ike

Yes, we are "hunkering down" and waiting out Ike. We have been asked not to evacuate and let those that need to evacuate get out. We should have some pretty strong winds, but we are prepared. Troy (Evan's' brother) and his family came over last night and helped put everything away outside in preparation for the winds. I have a full tank of gas, lots of water and plenty of food. I'm kind of curious what hurricane winds could be like. They will be hitting in the middle of the night, so it will be harder to tell just how strong they will be. I don't look forward to be out of power with no AC and high humidity.

The plan has been to go to Troy's house and wait the storm out there, but last night Taneal started throwing up. Hopefully it is an isolated incident. Wouldn't it be horrible to be out of power and running water for days with all of us throwing up? Not a fun thought.

Oh, the Diapers

What do you get when you have a two-year old and a one -month old in diapers?




















This is just from last night. See, a BIG diaper from Spencer and five little ones from Nathan. There is a lot of dipaer changing going on here. And, the diapers don't make it to the trash in the middle of the night, they wait until morning.



My little Nathan. It was 3am. I heard him dirtying his diaper while in his crib. I waited a few minutes to make sure he was finished. He started to cry because he doesn't like a messy diapers. I changed him. I fed him. 45 minutes later he was finishing up eating and he had already filled his diaper again. I unlatched the diaper, lifted his bum to clean him (yes, the diaper was still there just in case) and an explosion happened. I think I screamed. Yes, poop everywhere! On my hand, up my arm, all over my pajama leg, all over my bed sheets (I had a changing pad under him, he just had enough force to make it past the changing pad), all over the dresser next to my bed, and on the carpet. Wow! And at 3am in the morning!

Smiles

Nathan has started smiling. I love the newborn smile. I'm not talking about the ones they make while they are sleeping or in la la land. I'm talking about the ones that they make when they look at you, the full face smiles. Nathan started making those smiles about two weeks ago and they have started becoming more frequent. I have tried and tried to capture the smiles on camera, I even had Taneal snapping photos, but no luck. So, for the meantime, here is the closest photo I have gotten, I will post the real smiles as soon as I can capture them.

My Biggest Helper

Look at how Nathan is growing. He is now one month old.

I always figured my oldest child would, by default, be my biggest helper. But, I'm learning regardless of birth order, their personalities still dominate. Taneal is still a great helper, but Camie just can't seem to get enough of her newest brother. Today she came home from school and as always, asked to hold Nathan. She had already washed her hands. Danielle came in and asked to hold Nathan when she heard Camie asking. Camie explained to Danielle, "I have been gone all day and haven't even held Nathan once! You've been around him all day. It is my turn." How can you refute that? Camie spent a lot of her afternoon and evening holding her little brother. And this evening after scriptures and prayer as I was reading stories to Danielle and Spencer, Camie sat in the hall and held Nathan. She is such a great helper. With the help of the older children, the transition to five children hasn't been too hard. The hardest part for me in the past was bedtime and reading stories to the kids while the baby cried and I tried to juggle books and nursing and anything to keep the baby happy while doing the bedtime routine. This time around I have helpers that offer to help. And they are wonderful!

This one is for you, Evan

There was a lot of dancing and laughing this morning by Spencer and Danielle. And Spencer has the best laugh. He does the all out belly laugh. Oh, how I love to hear Spencer's laugh. As soon as I pulled out the camera, Danielle and Spencer realized they were being video taped, so they weren't acting quite the same, but it was still fun to watch them play. Hope you enjoy.

Sleeping?

It appears there is a lot of sleep going on in this house . . .

Nathan sleeps fairly well, most of the time. He goes to bed usually around 10pm, wakes once (which takes about 45 minutes) and the wakes again around 5:30am and is awake for a while. I haven't had a baby sleep this well before. I am very happy.

As for the rest of my kiddos, they attempt to fall asleep around 8pm and I roust them out of bed at 6:45am. They all usually sleep through the night with an occasional wake-up.

The problem lies with the amount of sleep I am getting. Can you ever really get enough? I go to sleep after Nathan around 10:30pm. I am awake for the 3am feeding lasting 45 minutes (why do newborns take so long to eat?). Nathan then wakes for the morning at 5:30am and I have to get up at 6:30 to get Taneal and Camie out the door by 7:30am. So, although there is a lot of sleep going on by the children, I think I am getting about 6 hours each night. I typically need more, but it is amazing how much less sleep you need when you aren't pregnant. The only napper in my house is the newborn baby. If Spencer takes a nap, bedtime is a nightmare, so I try to not let him fall asleep or I am up until midnight with him. Naps just aren't worth it.

Being Pregnant

I was out of a computer for the last month, so I wasn't able to post pictures of the end of my pregnancy. Of course I probably shouldn't want to publish just how big I got, but I really find pregnancy amazing.

This is my good friend, Jana. She was due a week after me. I ended up having my baby two weeks early and she has gone a week past her due date, so the babies will be almost a month apart.

And as a tribute to pregnancy, I thought I would share 10 great things about being pregnant:

1. you get to feel the miracle of life inside you

2. getting the flu is no longer a big deal, morning sickness is about the same, only it lasts 3 months

3. You no longer have to suck in your gut.

4. you are able to really appreciate sleeping on your belly once the baby is born

5. TUMS become your best friend

6. pregnancy is an automatic diet because you can no longer eat treats-the heart-burn isn't worth it!

7. You actually fill out your bra for a few months afterwards

8. You don't need a reason to cry

9. Your air conditioning bill goes way down once the baby is born

10. You get a baby. Everything is so worth it once you get to hold your baby in your arms.

This is me relaxing in a chair that was delivered to my house a few nights before Nathan was born. It is so comfortable. It worked miracles on getting sleep with horrible heart-burn. And, it is wonderful at rocking Nathan back to sleep in the middle of the night!

Jana had her baby!

For those of you who know Jana, her baby was born this morning at 9:52. Jana had a baby girl weighing 8 pounds and 3 ounces and was 20 inches long. They named her Brook and are still deciding on a middle name.

Congratulations Clint and Jana!

Spencer's new trick

Nathan is growing

He is still a sweet, sweet newborn, but he is really starting to fill out. His cheeks are chunkier and his thighs are getting bigger!

Punching Balloons?

Grandma brought some punching balloons from home, thinking the kids might enjoy them. . . to punch of course. Well, Danielle and Spencer had something else in mind. They put the rubber band around their neck, put the balloon through their legs, and bounced on them like a hoppity-hop! Only twice did a balloon pop. I was amazed at how well those punching balloons held up. Danielle and Spencer weigh at least 30 pounds!

The First Day of School

Taneal started 3rd grade and Camie started 1st grade. They were so excited to go until the morning that going was a reality. They were really quiet that morning, ate their yummy oatmeal (mom can't quite cook it like grandma), helped pack their lunches, and insisted on hot rollers in their hair! Where did that come from? I had to pull those rollers out and dust them off. But they still worked great and Taneal and Camie were pleased with the results.

They caught the bus on the first day. I felt like such a bad parent, not

walking them to their class on the first day. And then as the bus drove off and I was busy keeping Danielle and Spencer out of the road while holding Nathan in my arms, I didn't even cry! Wow, my first year not to have the tears a-rollin'. I knew they were safe, I miss them terribly, but they love school and were excited to go. My house is so quiet and empty with them gone. Yes, I still have THREE kids at home, but it is too quiet here. I am still so busy, but I miss them.

Danielle's Birthday

Happy very late birthday to Danielle. Her birthday was the end of last month. We did celebrate it on her day, I just haven't had acces to a computer since then. I had fun decorating her cake and watching her open her gifts. She turned 4. I was a bit embarrassed as she opened her gifts.

Taneal and Camie spent a lot of time sewing her gifts. Taneal made her a scripture tote and Camie made her a pencil holder. Danielle was more interested in the next gift then the one she had just opened. I guess the gratitude will come . . . I hope!

She had a great day. We ate pancakes for breakfast and had rice for supper (with chicken, salad, lemonade, etc. although rice was all she wanted) and had cake and ice cream for dessert. She got to share the candle blowing-out experience with Spencer and didn't think that was too cool. He couldn't accept the fact that it was someone other then himself that was having a birthday.

Happy 4th Birthday, Danielle.