Thanksgiving

You know what I wanted to do during nap time today? Sit and rest, and oh, write a blog post since it's been a few weeks.  And when I went to upload the few pictures that I have right now, I couldn't.  Why? Because my Picasa Web Albums (that I didn't know I was using every time I put a picture on a blog) are full.  They are full, make it near impossible to figure out how to delete anything to create space, and have long-running scripts that force the window to close and reopen.  Why would anybody choose to use that?  So it'll be a while before I can share any pictures because I have other things to do with my time than spend forever trying to figure that out.

In the meantime, I'll try to keep my brain together and remember things that I've been forgetting to write about.  I had a list earlier and now, of course, I can't remember them.

We had a fun Thanksgiving.  Natoma decided to be human and give their employees their due holiday, instead of making them work it.  Shad's been working mandatory overtime 50-60 hours a week since September.  Others in QA have been at it since July.  People are getting burned out and this is expected to continue at least until Christmas.  Probably longer.  They're really backed up and overloaded on orders.  Anyway, my parents arrived Wednesday night.  Tom had been so good waiting for them.  I told him the Friday before that they were coming and showed him on the calendar so that he could understand that it would be a few days, but that we could be excited now.  Finally on Wednesday, I told him that they were coming today.  He repeated, "Gramma and Grampa come two days." I had to re-explain that they were coming after dinner when it was bedtime and that they were going to sleep at Tommy's house.  That meant a whole different thing to him and he understood.  It's nice to have language comprehension develop further so that we have good communication.  Thursday was a nice relaxed day.  Shad went out with the missionaries in the morning to play Frisbee golf.  Mom and I walked down to the park with the kids to meet up with Shad after we all got ready.  Aside from the ham I put in the crockpot after breakfast, we didn't do any cooking until after lunch.  Then Mom did all the cleanup and she and Dad watched Shaun the Sheep with kids so that Shad and I could have some game time.  That was nice.  Almost like an at home date:)

We tried to go to the Fort Bissell Museum in Philipsburg, but found out when we got there that it's closed until May.  Warm weather only thing.  We shopped around a bit to make it at least worth the trip.  Then went down to Logan for awesome pizza and wings at the Main Street Pizza place.  After lunch, we walked two blocks over to the Hansen Museum, where they had a fun exhibit of health based interactive activities.  The kids loved it.  We got our house all decorated for Christmas in the evening while Mom cooked.  She wanted to make a lemon chicken dish that my sister Jen made for them when they visited her in Canada a couple weeks ago.  Shad and Dad cut a spruce tree from our backyard.  We didn't want it there and it's the perfect size for a Christmas tree.  We watched Cinderella Man in the evening...okay, we talked about it at 8 and it was 9:30 before we had Dad all set and ready to go.  So it ended at midnight.  When we moved upstairs for bed, I lost my dinner.  Take it from a pregnant lady with loads of experience, acids like lemon juice and vinegar (Italian dressing) are the last things you wanna throw up.  Gosh, it burns! 

Shad and I thought I was just being pregnant, but when I was up again at 3:30, 6:00 and 7:15, we knew we had something contagious to deal with.  Tom started at breakfast Saturday morning.  Shad caught his Sunday afternoon.  Katie's still managed to escape the horrors.  Shad and I only had the bug for 24 hours, but Tom is still getting over his.  He only threw up for a day, but then had a fever and hacking cough.  We've had to try so hard to get him to eat or drink anything.  Really, probably just enough to keep him alive.  His energy has returned today.  He's been all over the living room cooking for me and bringing me more.  His strength is not back though, since he still doesn't eat much.  Watching him walk is like watching Katie, though sometimes she looks more stable.  And he and I have both come to the conclusion that stairs are entirely out of the question.  He just can't handle them.

Aside from sickness, the kids have been having a hard time adjusting to their dad being gone so much.  They miss him, cry any time they see him leave, act out, etc.  On top of that, I've still been getting over the turmoil of first trimester nausea and fatigue, so without Shad here to help me so much, our house has been in a general state of chaotic, filthy disarray.  I just can't keep up with all the demands of taking care of 5 people single-handedly.  We're slowly finding balance...or at least trying to.  Having a weekend with my parents definitely helped.  The kids got more attention, play time and outdoor time.  Mom got us all caught up on dishes...though after 4 days of playing nurse now, I'm behind again.

We qualified to refinance our home!  The quote for the monthly payment is that we could be saving almost $100 a month AND cut off 3.5 years.  Yay!  We took our application over to our neighbors to help clarify somethings I didn't understand.  When we got to the liabilities section, I only had the house down on that.  They asked about car payments, student loans and credit card debt.  They were shocked when I told them that we didn't have any of that.  Their two sons are rather swimming in it, so they were rather dumbfounded at the thought.  I'm really thankful for the way Shad and I choose to manage our finances.  We may not have loads to spare and still can't afford $500 a month for health insurance, but we are happy as we are, not having the shackles of debt tying us down.  We will be going from 7% on a 15 year loan to 3% on a 10 year loan.  I'm super excited!

Tom-isms: He does catch on to things!  His pop gun that he got for his birthday has been a problem a little bit.  Being misused as a sword and all.  So he gets corrected that it's a gun, not a sword.  Lately, Katie's taken an interest in it.  Today, he told Katie, "No, no, no, Katie! (yes, he's started pronouncing the T) Not a sword! I's a gun!"  He even took it away from her until I had him convinced that she was using it as a gun.  He's also been mirroring my language, asking, "Katie, yike some druice?" (Katie, would you like some juice?) "Okay, be right back."  And the newest one: "Good idea!"  Several months ago, Tommy was commenting on something in the sky on a walk...the moon or clouds or something.  I told him, "Tommy, Jesus made the moon."  His reply was immediate: "Oh, FANK you, Gees!" His pronunciation has improved to "Gesus," but he still thanks Jesus for the stars, moon, sun, clouds, sky, trees, etc.

Katie has been acquiring more language skills, too.  She desperately tries to talk all the time.  Just this weekend she picked up banana, apple and cracker, and is thrilled to have that new communication!  Her face just lights up, knowing that I understand her.

I've reached the second trimester now, which means a bump and the eye of the storm.  I've been trying my hand at a new area of baking: breads and crackers.  I've tried out wheat thins, rolls, hamburger buns and bread bowls.  There's tweaks that need to be made here and there, but overall, we like these new homemade food items.  I'm also looking at cloth diapers, but not only that.  Instructions online for sewing your own diaper covers.  And then I still have a list of more soups I want to can.

Well, I better run and get to other things...like tonight's dinner.

Filling in the Gaps

I don't know where he picked it up, but Tom learned that pirates have hooks on their hands.  So now when he plays pirates, he gets a hanger...and ends up holding it backwards!

 

 

Katie is a climber and quite proud of herself, too.

 

And good at helping finish leftovers.  She found her leftover birthday brownies after I evicted her from the dishwasher and helped herself .

 

City wide cleanup means that everybody puts their junk on the curb and it gets picked up on the designated Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  That also means that the preceding weekend is generally known as "trash swap."  We participated in the scavenging and came out with a 7 piece Coleman cookware set (I told Shad that I was pretty sure Dad would beat me with a stick if I passed that up); a small bookshelf; a triple stroller that needs a simple wheel repair; a baby toy...one of those arched things that has dangling toys on it for the kid to play with while lying on their back; a trash bag full of girl clothes (I have yet to go through it); and swing set grip handles, plastic wheel, some hardware, and a glider swing.  Not bad for trash swap!  We put out stuff of our own, but it really was trash.  On Monday, when the pick up actually began, there was a...well I don't know what all those machines are called.  Look at the picture.  That thing was parked outside our house for about 3 hours and was the cause of much excitement.

 

When the kids discovered that it was just sitting there, they had some youtube time.

 

This dump truck came by that had Shrek strapped to the front for some reason.

 

Just a couple of kids sharing milk time together.

 

The Sunday before Halloween was stake conference for us.  We didn't go because Shad had worked 58 hours that week, but the cherry on top was that on Saturday night, Tom hit his head on the coffee table and we took him to the ER just to make sure he didn't need stitches.  We were told to keep a close eye on him and spending 2 hours in the car, then 2 hours of conference and another 2 hours in the car just didn't sound like a good idea.  Turned out to be a good thing because I woke up with a terrible headache.  Worse than I've had before and Ibuprofen didn't take care of it.  I spent a couple hours just lying down in bed while Shad entertained the kids.  When I was finally able to come downstairs, this is what I saw:

 

Minus Shad and Tom.  All I saw were the chairs, benches and pillows arranged like that and couldn't help laughing at what fun that must have been...whatever it was.  I found the builders down in the basement and asked what I had missed.  "Oh, that's Her Lady's Vigor."  Well what the heck does that mean?  "Oh, it's our pirate ship."  I had a fit of hysterical laughter at that point, imagining my kids playing on a pirate ship called Her Lady's Vigor.  Shad and Tom gave me demonstrations as to what that looked like.  They shot at things out the window.

 

And had sword fights.  Tom used me to share/swap out the weapon he wasn't currently using.

 

One day when I wasn't feeling well, Tom went upstairs to play with his hammers and ended up taking a nap on "Nana's bed."

 

Katie has this little Alfalfa clump of hair that usually stands on end at the back of her head.

 

We went trick-or-treating with our friends, the Vanderveers.  Eden was The Little Mermaid, Hattie was Cinderella, Tom was Harry Potter, and Katie was Dobby.  All kid costumes were sewn by the moms.

 

And in case you missed it, we're expecting a #3 May 18th.

Katie's Birthday Week

The week before Katie's birthday, a package arrived from Grandma with clothes for Katie. In that box was a pink tutu hand picked by Lori, who is determined that her niece needs a tutu.  However, Tom was being a bit unruly one night when Shad's family was here visiting, and Shad felt that the best solution would be to make Tom wear it. 

 

 

We celebrated Katie's birthday on Saturday afternoon/evening while Shad's family was around.  We went to the lake, but I forgot my camera, so there's no documentation of that.  We went simple with dessert because I felt like enjoying company rather than spending time baking and decorating.  Tom picked out Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies from Dollar General.  He was so happy that he got to pick a treat for Katie's birthday.  After the lake, we came home and opened presents.  Tom clapped and cheered for Katie as she got to put some birthday money in her piggy bank.  That's such an exciting thing for both of them!

 

Then Katie got to open her present from Mom and Dad.

 

It was a kitchen set that we picked up at a garage sale and were going to save it til Christmas, but decided why waste two months of play?  There was also a little plush pig from Ruth on the kitchen set when Katie opened it, but Tom quickly threw it to the ground because it didn't belong.  It's on the floor by Katie's hand in the picture.  They've realized that it can still be fun with the kitchen set...with luaus in mind.  They bake it in the oven!

 

And then we sang Happy Birthday. http://youtu.be/LUAA1zefTec

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Then Katie pulled the tutu over her head herself and spent the evening crawling around like this.

 

Fast forward to the night of Katie's birthday (Oct 24) and Dan and Ryan called us on Skype.  During the call, a train whistle sounded outside and Tom was so overcome with excitement between Dan on the computer and a train, that he started doing these gymnastic/acrobatic/break dance moves on the floor.  He wouldn't repeat it for the camera in video mode, of course, so this picture will have to suffice.  He'd get into position like this and then flip over his head.  We've never seen it before and we've never seen it since.

 

I made Katie's birthday cake two days after her birthday...finally.  We were going over to our friends' house for dinner and games and they asked me to bring dessert.  Perfect.  Well, this was a bit of a cake wreck/fail on my part.  I was inspired by this picture:

 

which looks awesome, right? But I turned the computer off before I looked at it again, so I decorated from memory.  The result still makes me laugh!  Sorry Katie, but we were late as it was and so I was in a hurry and didn't care too much:) Besides, I had spent the whole day in the kitchen--cooked a stockpot of soup and canned 7 quarts of it, roasted a pumpkin, baked the brownies, roasted and burned the pumpkin seeds, and decorated the brownies...however poorly.

 

We sang Happy Birthday to Katie again (only once this time), and she had help from the 2 and 3-year-olds in blowing out the candle.

 

She didn't need any help eating her brownies though.

 

Relatively clean, compared to Tom's first birthday.  At least she didn't need hosed off in the backyard!

 

Katie eating her brownie and telling me all about it:

 

http://youtu.be/oAGsXnYE-xQ

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All Quiet on the Kansas Front

Well, aside from my pregnancy announcement, it's been almost a month since I've written.  It's one of those things that you know you're behind on, but whenever you think about it, you just dread the work of getting caught up, so you put it off longer.  I've been the same way with my journal in the past month.  So we're just going for pictures to tell our lives and I won't try to think about anything that may have happened in between.

 

Tommy fell into a diaper box.  I thought it was hilarious.  He thought it was pathetic.

 

 

Happy Fall!

 

Katie's face is fantastic!

 

After many pictures, 15 minutes of trying and Shad and I both working on it on our phones, we caught one with both faces peaking through the holes.

 

This is very similar to a picture I got of Tom a year ago.

 

Rosalee is our new adopted Grandma.  She works at the library and lives just down the road from us.  Tom says her name, "Yisouwie."

 

Tom cooks me dinner frequently.  It usually looks similar to this and comes from his tool bench.  Reminds me of the Man's Kitchen episode from Home Improvement.  He tells me, "Mom! Tom cook it dinner. Still hot."  And then he tells me what dinner is.  His cooking repertoire has expanded to noodles, fried rice, quesadillas, green beans (he means black, though), muffins, cookies...and I feel like there are a couple I'm missing.

 

Cute little hoodlum.

 

Katie's a climber! She pushed that yellow chair there herself.

 

Tom looking at one of my grocery receipts.  I forget his exact comments, but I believe it was something like, "Oh WOW! Ninety seven, T, S, fwee."

 

Funny little conversation quote that actually happens nearly daily:

Mom: Tom, how old is Momma?

Tom: Mom tunty four.

Mom: How old is Dadda?

Tom: Dad tunty five.

Mom: How old is Katie?

Tom: Um, Kaie (the T is still silent) one birday.

Mom: How old are you, Tom?

Tom: Tom niney seven.

Big News!

I don't have time to blog now...or rather, I'd rather have a movie night cuddling with my husband while the kids are satisfied with their snacks and Sword in the Stone.  So here it is:

 

5/18/13

 

Just thought you ought to know:)