Ben, Emily, Autumn & Prairie

Halloween 2011

2011-11-02T20:16:00.002-07:00

So we did the whole Halloween thing. Prairie was Elphaba (we saw Wicked this summer), Autumn was a vampire, and Zephyr was either a frog price, an elephant, or a jaguar depending on the day and what was clean and what he wanted to be.

Ben took the three kids trick-or-treating and I stayed home to pass out treats. This is the first time that we have lived at a place where we actually get trick-or-treaters so it felt really weird not to have the whole family go out together. Ben took the kids to a small HOA across the street from us and then Zephyr got dropped off. He LOVED handing out candy and got so excited everytime the doorbell rang. Even if the kids had already say trick-or-treat he would say
"you want candy? say trick treat!" then he would strenly tell them "only one!". It was great. I loved it. And Ben still collected candy for him, and the girls got to go fast, so it worked out for everyone.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T14:35:00.003-07:00

Our carved pumpkins that we grew in our garden. I will have to admit I LOVED not buying our pumpkins and just walking out to the garden. Also we didn't even plant these, we had like 30 volunteer pumpkin plants and I got rid of about 25 of them. So here is to pumpkins that just grew! (we used our compost from last year and I had put the pumpkin seeds from last year in our compost)

Camping In Moab

2011-10-30T19:32:00.007-07:00

The kids had 2 days off from school and got early out on the Wednesday so I decided that I should take the three kids camping to Arches national Park. There were no camping spots available at the National park, but I talk to the BLM office and they said I should be able to find a campsite close to Arches. So I loaded the kids, drove the 3 hours down there, and we left late, and by time we got there it was dark. We drove around for 2 hours in the dark looking for a campsite, never found one so finally went and "camped" at the Motel 6 and ate hot dogs from the microwave at 10:30pm.

The next morning we found a campsite, I set up our tent and we headed to Arches. We had a great day and did a 3 mile hike round trip to delicate Arch, and I LOVED it. Zephyr was a trooper and didn't want me to carry him, but we didn't plan well for his nap, so 1.5 miles back to our van he rode in the Ergo carrier and fell asleep. We had plenty of water, but it was a really hot hike. There was hardly any shade and we were going in the middle of the day. When we finished we went and picked up some firewood and went back to our campsite.

I worked on the dinner and the kids played by the river and in the tent. I was having a hard time with the fire because I didn't have any kindling, so the kids gathered some. I FINALLY got a good fire going, and dinner cooking on the campstove. Right about when dinner was done I puked in the bushes by our van. It was dark now, and so I served up dinner, but could hardly eat anything. I had had a headache for a couple of hours. All 4 of us sat by the fire and ate our dinner, (I could hardly eat any) but the kids LOVED what I cooked, and said I should make it all the time. Thankfully the time I can't possibly get them anything else to eat they actually like what I made. So they finish eating and I feel soooo miserable. So I tell them I just really want to talk to Ben, but we are about 3 miles away from cell phone service. So we all load in the van in our pj's and drive so I can talk to Ben.

When we get to cell phone service I call him and just start bawling. Telling him how sick I feel. He immediately says he will come, but I say no it will be okay, but then I proceed to puke while I am on the phone with them. Then he was adamant that I tell him what campground and what number we are at. Now keep in mind we have one vehicle and I am 190 miles away from home. Anyway Ben borrows a car from our neighbors and drives to Moab to be with me and help out, though ironically by time he got there at 2am, I had slept for a few hours and felt much much better. So much better we spent the next day at Arches.

Anyway overall we had a great time. I was really glad I took the kids camping. I learned that I will probably just go within an hour of our house if I am going to go without Ben, and I love camping with my husband. I was really glad that he came when I was so sick.

Zephyr trying to figure out what pull-ups are for

The kids at delicate arch. They were pretty tired. I kept promising them a fruit leather when we got to the arch.

That is Autumn and Prairie on the left base of the arch, and on the right-hand side of the that base. Autumn is wearing a white t-shirt. It is pretty large. I was impressed.

Close-up of Autumn and Prairie

I got someone to take a picture of me with my kids at the arch (I need to crop the man in the yllow shirt out but I was too lazy today)

Prairie sitting in her "seat" that she found, and then Zephyr had to try it too.

Our campsite by the colorado river

Autumn (on the left) and Prairie (on the right) climbing up a rock

Ben and the kids sitting on a ledge on one of the fins (large rock formation).

close up of Ben and the kids on the ledge

Autumn, Zephyr and Prairie at landscape arch (Landscape arch is around 290 ft long)

Kiddos

Emily and Ben at the landscape arch

First Day of Kindergarten

2011-10-28T09:08:00.004-07:00

Prairie had a really rough day of kindergarten so I didn't feel like posting pictures of her while she was at school, so now two months later I am getting to it.

We had to literally pull her into the school and then she had a 45 minute freak out session in the hall. Yelling, crying, hitting. It was pretty intense. I started crying at one point because I was so sad that she was so scared and couldn't verbalize it with us. Anyway we finally got her to calm down and she went and had a great time. We decided to take some pictures on the second day of school when she was happy to go.

First day of school outfit (at this point we didn't know she was scared)

Zephyr wanted his picture taken too

Things starting to get bad. She won't get out of the van, trying to close the door. We had to pull her out and quickly lock the doors so she wouldn't get back in.

Finishing her first day, and she enjoyed herself. (We restrained ourselves and didn't take pictures o freak out session)

Second day of school. No drama this morning, phew! Showing off her jaguar backpack.

We ran into Autumn in the hallway, and the sisters were overjoyed to see eachother.

Prairie showing us her hand and name on the wall.

First day of Second Grade

2011-08-22T10:51:00.002-07:00

Autumn started her first day of second grade today. She was really REALLY nervous. The last two years she went to an elementary school for spanish immersion, then we decided to switch her to the elementary school in our neighborhood. We are excited to be going to school with all our our neighborhood friends, but Autumn is now doing chinese immersion and she didn't do first grade, so she has no chinese background right now.

When we dropped her off she was nervous. The teachers are extremely strict about not speaking any English in front of the students. So even with the parents the teacher will only speak chinese (lucky for us Ben took 3 semesters in college and can get by). At first the teacher told her she was in the wrong classroom (because there is another Autumn) but we all got it worked out even with the teacher only speaking Chinese.

Ben taught her how to ask a couple of questions in Chinese because the students aren't allowed to speak any English in class either. Anyway I hope it goes well today.

Autumn insisted that she needed to stand on something for first day of school pictures because of the first day of kindergarten.

It was fun to take first day of school pictures at our new house. Ironically this is not the door that we use to leave for school. Oh well.

We LOVED walking to school, and seeing so many people we knew going to and from school.

Pictures of the House

2011-07-24T13:12:00.008-07:00

I decided it was high time to post some pictures of my house. I kept delaying because we bought a foreclosed home that was empty for 10 months, so there has been a lot that needed to be done to the house, and I kept thinking that I wanted it to look better or whatever, but I decided I was tired of that and would post pictures of it in its imperfect state. (For example Ben has been working on the sprinklers so there is piles of dirt and sod on our sidewalks.)

We have been living here for 6 months! I really can't believe that we have been here half of a year already. We absolutely adore our house, and have really found a new hobby for ourselves....home improvements! I will have to post before and after pictures of the inside. I don't have any before pictures of the outside. The grass was completely yellow when we moved in because it wasn't watered at all last summer.

***disclaimer: The yard hasn't been mowed for a while, the grass hasn't been watered for over a week because Ben has been trying desperately to fix our sprinklers, and we have been putting in our own fence, so this is a realistic look at our house, not a pretty staged one.

This is our house viewed from the street

This is the view of our property from the corner (we have a corner house). Also that is NOT our Porsche, we are just renting out part of our driveway.

This is the view of our house from the other street. The garage is on the basement floor. Our house was built in two stages. the basement was the only thing built for a long time, but then a family bought the house and decided to build the upstairs and that was in 1949.

The side yard by the basement door.

A view of the garage, and the porch on top of the garage with our 12 ft picture window

A view of the porch and the front door on the main floor.

The huge porch. the kids LOVE playing here, doing scooters and small bikes and whatever else. Even though that huge window is southern facing, it really doesn't get a lot of heat coming through it during the summer because of the large tree that shades the porch.

The sidewalk leads around the house to the backyard. This fence is very new, like Ben finished it last night. We now have an area of our yard that is fenced in and we can let our dog out, we are so excited!

This is the side of the house, and where the yard is fenced. That door goes into our kitchen.

This is the fenced in backyard

This is the two story playhouse in the backyard, that is a little rough but has a lot of potential.

This is the view from my kitchen door.

more views

This is the view of the side yard by the basement door, viewed from the porch

From the kitchen door looking to the front yard

Views from the porch swing on the front porch by the front door

View of our double driveway (why we have space to rent out)

Easter

2011-04-24T20:17:00.003-07:00

True story: I took pictures of the kids BEFORE church and we got to church EARLY (and we have the 9am church). Yeah I couldn't believe it, as in I don't know what cosmic event will have to happen for this to happen again for our family.

Thanks for the suit for Zephyr mom.

Coconut

2011-03-11T09:53:00.002-07:00

The kids love coconut. He is so playful and fun. Prairie loves putting him on the leash and running around in the yard with him.

My birthday

2011-03-09T09:11:00.002-07:00

I woke up to this little guy two days after we moved into our new house for my birthday. I was surprised, I thought we were going to wait until we were settled into our house before we got a dog. Ben had other ideas. We sure love him (except his extremely sharp puppy teeth, and the "surprises" he leaves for us on the carpet).

P.S. It is a boy, and his name is Coconut. He is a poodle. He is 5 weeks old in this picture (he is now 11 weeks old). He was about 2 lbs here and is now about 5 lbs. He should get to be about 10 lbs full grown.

I have the coolest friend

2011-03-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

So with all the repairs we have been doing on our house we have spent a lot of money and really need to not spend money now. So I paid the last person for work they had done and then that day my dryer breaks. I honestly kept hoping that if I pushed the button it would magically start working again.

I really didn't want to go buy a new dryer, but we got this one used, so it didn't seem worth it to pay someone to repair it more than it cost us to get. Ben was ready to go out and buy a dryer on Saturday, but I asked him to give me a little more time. I told him I wanted to take it apart and try to figure out what was wrong with it. He was really skeptical, and didn't want me to try, but finally relented and said he would wait a couple of more days to go buy another one.

So I called my really cool friend on Saturday, who is really brave (atleast I think she is). I told her my dryer was broken and wanted to know if she wanted to come over and try to help me fix it. She excitedly said yes. She came over and "we" (as in I stood there and watched) while she took apart the dryer, she did a lot of searching on the internet, untils she basically narrowed it down to one of two things, and we both thought that the one was more likely.

So today I went and bought the replacement thermo fuse, and put it in all by myself and guess what..... My dryer worked again! I was sooooooo thrilled. The fuse cost $20, which is well worth it to have my dryer working again. Having my friend come over and help me, helps me to feel mkore adventurous fixing other stuff.

Lately

2011-03-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

So we bought a house in January and moved in at the end of January. We are still getting settled because we have done a lot of work on the house in the first month. We have had tons of different people here doing different things to improve the house. It was a foreclosure, and needed a little work. Now we are to the part that we can start doing cosmetic stuff, but already spent our money on all the essential stuff, oh well isn't that the case.

I have been having some technically difficulties with the internet, but hopefully that will be up this week, and connected to the computer that has all of our pictures. We did a small remodel job on the kitchen, and I want to show pictures of my house, which by the way I absolutely love! We have soooo many large windows, which is a dream come true, and we have beautiful views of the mountains. We have a 12ft long 5ft tall window in the front room, it is MASSIVE and it is south facing and we get all this delicious sunlight all day long. Yeah I am loving it. Now if I can actually get unpacked, so we aren't living in chaos....in time, right?

So I haven't really been blogging since the summer. This buying a house has been an absolute roller coaster. We weren't even thinking about buying a house for atleast 2 years, but this was in our neighborhood, the interest rates were sooooo low, and everything fell into place. We feel so lucky to have this house.

So I have found a new hobby -- home improvement! I can't believe how much time we spend doing stuff on the house. I know once I actually unpack everything, and now that we don't have different workers at our house everyday, I will start to feel settled, and actually have time for some sewing, but there is a pretty feeling of fulfillment to do work on your own place.

Anyway so here is to some pictures coming.... sometime?

Autumn Surfing

2011-01-18T23:44:00.003-07:00

Seriously, how cute is my daughter? I was so proud of Autumn watching her surf. She had a fantastic instructor, and she couldn't stop smiling the whole time, and neither could I watching her.

Autumn Running

2010-09-23T09:51:00.005-07:00

Autumn ran in a one mile race for elementary school children yesterday. I was so proud of her. She has gotten very athletic this past year. She taught herself to ride a bike, and we have been riding to and from school fairly frequently, and we did a lot of hiking this summer. She has gotten strong.

I was really surprised how I teared up seeing her run to the finish line. I was so proud of her.

As I was thinking about Autumn and how strong and healthy she is, I am so grateful for the doctor that caught her hip dysplasia as a one day old infant. If it hadn't been caught and treated, she would limp now and wouldn't be able to run and do everything she does. I am so grateful to be her mom, and I am so grateful that she has such a healthy body that she takes such good care of, and I am grateful for modern medicine and that we were able to treat her hip dysplasia.

Autumn 6 days old wearing her brace to correct her hip dysplasia

Autumn and her best friend from school preparing for the race.

Last Day of School

2010-07-15T13:31:00.001-07:00

Autumn's last day of kindergarten was on May 28th. She wore the same thing on the last day as the first day. She was excited to see how much her hair had grown.

last day of kindergarten

first day of kindergarten

Prairie's Dance Recital

2010-07-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

Prairie had a dance recital in the beginning of May. I stayed up late and made her doll a matching dance performance outfit.

Ben was a cute dad and got Prairie and her doll flowers for the dance recital.

Our Prairie

Prairie and her doll in the performance outfits

Prairie and her dance teacher

Bath Time

2010-05-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Autumn and Prairie really want us to let Zephyr take a bath with them, but Ben and I aren't ready yet. Zephyr really likes standing by when the girls take their bath, and throwing toys in the tub.

Zephyr also likes when he gets some bath time to himself

The only problem with Zephyr watching the girls take their bath, is that they splash a lot, and he gets wet, though he dosen't seem to mind.

A super in 10 minutes

2010-05-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

Prairie had a superhero birthday party to go to, and she was already late. We put this together in 10 minutes. We were both pleased.

Playing in the front yard

2010-05-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

All three of the kids were playing out in the front yard on the large driveway, riding bikes, building forts with the porch chairs, and dancing around.

Autumn was very good with Zephyr and was letting him ride on the tricycle, he loved getting to play with his sisters.

Prairie dancing, and pulling on the vinyl flowers from the flower bed as usual, and probably got in trouble, as usual.

Crazy hair day

2010-05-20T06:01:00.000-07:00

Autumn's school had crazy hair day on St. Patrick's Day. I don't really do hair, so I was proud of how I did Autumn's hair. Autumn was really happy with it, but then got a little worried about going to school with her hair sticking up, and what if no one else remembered it was crazy hair day. But she got some confidence and went anyways, and was really excited to see some of her friends did different hair dos too.

Prairie's 4th Birthday

2010-05-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of back logged photos that I am trying to catch on the cutest of, but I also don't want to miss important things that are happening now.

Prairie had her birthday on the 7th and turned 4. She really loves Autumn's American Girl Dolls, and will often want to play with mine ( I have 2 from when I was a kid), and she is so careful with them, Ben and I decided she was old enough. She LOVES her doll. She takes it everywhere, and wants her to dress just like her.

So Prairie got to open presents are breakfast and got a doll and they got matching pajamas.

Prairie instructed me that she wanted a strawberry, princess castle cake. So I made a strawberry cake and made that into a princess castle cake.

Prairie was really pleased with her cake, but when it was time to eat it, she didn't end up eating any of it, and just ate the ice cream.

Ben was taking the afternoon off from work for Prairie's birthday. She is really into climbing so we told her we would take her rock climbing for her birthday. One of the local rec centers has a rock climbing wall, so we thought we would take the kids swimming and then go rock climbing afterwards, and it wouldn't cost anymore because they are both at the rec center. Well I was really good to find out that the rock climbing wall doesn't open until 5pm, but somehow neglected to find out that it isn't open on Fridays.

Prairie had been really excited about the rocking climbing. She had been telling everyone that she was going rock climbing for her birthday. So I want to display something really cool about Prairie's personality. So we got there found out the rocking climbing was closed, she got a sad faced and then said, "well i only wanted to go swimming anyways". When plans have to change Prairie doesn't really get upset, she just moves on. She had a great time swimming, and her older sister is the one that complained about us not getting to go rock climbing.

So a post to look forward, when we finally take Prairie rock climbing.

2010-05-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER: This is an old post, I wrote i on the 10th of September 2008.

So I was looking through my dashboard and I noticed a few posts I never posted. I thought I might as well post them since I went to the trouble of writing them. I didn't post this one right away because I was pregnant with Zephyr and we hadn't announced it yet, but Autumn said something about my pregnancy. I guess I just forgot to post it after I had announced we were pregnant.

So my friend did these questions with her 4 year old a few weeks ago and I thought I would do them with Autumn. The stuff in purple are autumn's words.

1. What is something mom always says to you?"I love you" (atleast she said that and not 1-2-3-4-5 with each number getting louder because she needs to get to me immediately)

2. What makes mom happy? "If I help her" (I do like help)

3. What makes mom sad? "When I not be good" (Probably kind of true)

4. How does your mom make you laugh? "By tickling me!" (Well of course, tickling is sooo much fun)

5. What was your mom like as a child? "A little kid" (So true Audie)

6. How old is your mom? "25" (she knows are ages really well and actually reminds me how old I am because I forget and then she will exclaim, mommy did you forget how old you were?)

7. How tall is your mom? "Hmmm, I don't really know that question" (I guess we haven't talked about height very much)

8. What is her favorite thing to do? "Go out to dinner with us, with the whole family" (I like going out to dinner, I don't always like how much it costs, but we just went out to dinner as a family the other night, and I told her that was my favorite thing we had done that day, so I think that got stuck in her head)

9. What does your mom do when you are not around? "Just sew, and lay and sleep and listen to her ipod" (Yes I do like to sew, and then I listen to audiobooks on my ipod)

10. If you mom becomes famous, what will it be for? "What does famous mean?" (I am fine if she doesn't get famous yet)

11. What is your mom really good at? "telling me that Papi is really good at kitty stuff, that's what you are really good at" (wow what a special gift! The girls and Ben have become attached to a stray cat, Ben has been feeding it and yesterday autumn spent an hour trying to play with the cat outside, and she kept asking me games to play with it, but I have never had a cat and I am allergic so I didn't know and I kept telling her that Papi knows fun games)

12. What is your mom not so good at? "not so good at taking of us when she is tired" (um, that is probably too close to the truth)

13. What does your mom do for her job? "takes care of us! that's what she does for her job!" (yep that is my job, plus taking care of the house)

14. What is your mom’s favorite food? "grapefruit!" (I am guess she answered this because we were doing this right after breakfast and I do really like grapefruit for breakfast)

15. What makes you proud of your mom? "taking care of 3 kids, when their is one adult at home." Then I ask "Who's the third kid?" "The baby in your tummy, you have to take care of the baby too." (Okay announcement I am 2 months pregnant, I guess I will see who actually reads through this whole thing!)

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? "I would say Aurora" (Oh great I am sleeping beauty I assume because my comments on question #15)

17. What do you and your mom do together? "Hmmm, we clean up messes together. We hike together, and bike together!" (those are definitely things we do together)

18. How are you and your mom the same? "Oh, hmm, we have matching clothes, only uno matching shirts, the cabin shirts and pants" (those were the matching clothes I made for the Weinheimer reunion last summer)

19. How are you and your mom different? "We have different swimsuits" (so true autumn)

20. How do you know your mom loves you? "Because I was in her tummy and she loved having a baby"

My Dishes Nemesis

2010-05-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

Zephyr still doesn't crawl on his hands and knees, but he can do one very quick army crawl. If he hears the dishwasher open, no matter where he is or what he is doing, he drops it and scoots over and fast as he can before I close the dishwasher. Sometimes I am nice and let him have at it.

This was a little surprise when i walked into the kitchen one morning. I guess he was telling me he was ready for breakfast, and not just milk!

Zephyr's Suit

2010-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

This boy keeps growing and growing. I have months of photos and I know the some of the grandparents would like to see a sampling of them. This was a suit I finished for him in March and have had to make another since, because the snaps would pop along the pants seam when he wore it. This was probably my favorite suite yet. I really like gray, and I liked Ben and Zephyr having the matching ties.

Ben's tie came with a handkerchief and I cut it up and pieced it and made a necktie for Zephyr.

Zephyr's First Birthday

2010-05-14T10:21:00.009-07:00

It has taken me a long time to post about Zephyr's birthday. He turned 1 on April 3, 2010. I didn't just want to post some pictures, I wanted to write down some reflections. Having Zephyr has been the hardest baby by far. His birthday marked to me that we made it through that first year. He not only was the most demanding baby we had had, but we had some huge emotionally traumatic stuff happen this year.

When Zephyr was 4 months old I felt like I was going to go crazy. At that point I was holding him the entire day. The only time I literally wasn't holding him is when I changed clothes, when I changed his diaper and when he was in his carseat, which honestly wasn't that often. I knew that is what he needed, but I was feeling the strain physically and emotionally constantly having a baby on me. I know it might sound weird, but I feel like holding him constantly those first 4 months was one of the most difficult things I have done, but I don't regret it.

As difficult as it was to for me to hold him constantly, at the same time I have never been so connected to one of my babies. I KNEW when he was going to be hungry. I had never felt my milk let down with my girls, but I would know when he was hungry because my milk would let down and then he would wake up a few minutes later.

The way he would look into my eyes as a little infant I knew I was everything to him, and it made it easier to not feel so overwhelmed. I feel like holding him that much has been wonderful for him. To see the way he loves his family, is amazing, and I know we did right by him. It is also such a relief to me that he likes playing with his sisters finally, and playing with the play kitchen. He still likes to be held a lot for a 13 month old, but it is good, and it is probably good for me, because I am not by instinct a touchy feelie person, and so I have had to adapt myself to his needs.

I am really grateful to have him in our family. I really enjoy having him in our family. I have grown so much as a mother and a person, I am so much stronger than I think.

Autumn the bike star

2010-02-28T20:37:00.003-07:00

Autumn got a bike for her birthday in November. A bicycle with no training wheels. We tried riding it that day, and a couple of days after, but then we got some snow, and haven't touched the bike since November. She was a little discouraged how much harder it is to ride a bike without training wheels.

On Friday, we were having really nice weather so the girls decided to play in the backyard. We have tons of cement in our backyard so Autumn pulled out her bike onto it. There is like 20 ft of space was trying to ride her bike, and was able to stay up for a couple of seconds. She rad in to tell me and was really excited. She had been thinking to herself that she would never ride that bike, and then thought, unless I try. So she got on on tried. So then we took the bike to the front yard, and she practiced going on the sidewalk, and by the end of the afternoon was zooming up and down our sidewalk of our block and swerving around obstacles (neighbors, other bikes and bushes).

I was so impressed that she just got on and did it, and basically taught herself. She is in LOVE with riding her bike. That is all she wanted to do yesterday. She wanted to know if she could ride her bike to the errands we had to run. So today we told her we could ride bikes to church. Our church is 0.6 mile away, and we have to cross one busy road, and the road we go on is fairly busy. Anyway she was a little nervous but did a great job, and is excited about biking everywhere.

Autumn and Prairie biking with their neighborhood friend (Prairie got Autumn's old bike when Autumn got a new bike for her birthday)

Prairie set up seats to watch Autumn bike. Autumn indulged Prairie and sat down for like a whole 30 seconds. You can't keep Autumn away from her bike.

Autumn working on her jumping off the bike skills, so she won't crash

Autumn riding her bike

My 9 month old

2010-01-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

Zephyr has been 9 months old for a couple of weeks, but here are some current pictures of him.

My Supers

2010-01-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

Zephyr was taking a nap one afternoon and I had to do some stuff on the computer and this is what my girls did. They made their own super costumes without any help from me. They found the fabric for their capes in the scrap box (that they are allowed to use) and cut them the shape they wanted. They were really happy with their costumes.

They were trying to be like superman. That is why they are both wearing blue, with a yellow 'S' and then a red cape.

The Em's

2010-01-23T11:54:00.003-07:00

I had the chance to visit my college roommate, Emmaly, and stay at her house for 3 days. When Ben and I were dating, she was dating her husband who was roommates with Ben. We have a lot of fun together. Ben wasn't able to go this time.

Emmaly and I both have 3 kids, both in girl, girl, boy order, ages 6 years, 5 years, 3.5 years, 2.5 years, 9 months, and 6 months. The kids had a blast together and really got along pretty well, except for musical beds at night.

I got the cheapest rental vehicle and by happen stance got a SUV with a convertible 3rd row. Emmaly used her magic and puzzle-pieced 6 carseats in the back 6 seatbelts. So all 8 of us were able to go all over. We got quite a few looks and comments when we went places and I thought it was kind of odd until I saw the picture of all 8 of us, and then I realized that we look pretty wild, but so much fun.

The last time I visited Emmaly, Prairie was a baby and she was pregnant with her second, so there were 3 kids. I noticed that we doubled the number of kids since my last visit, and I hope we don't double between now and my next visit.

Christmas 2009 recap

2010-01-06T08:24:00.005-07:00

I was wondering if it was too late to post about Christmas, but then my cousin did yesterday, so I decided I could still slip in a Christmas post (especially since my mom wanted to see pictures of my girls on Christmas).

Here is our beautiful Christmas tree. It is almost better in this lighting because you can't see that we had been having a leaky roof (hazards of having a flat roof, good thing to learn BEFORE we purchase our own home). So we had buckets set up right in front of our tree the week of Christmas.

Here is the tree all ready for Christmas morning.

Autumn opening the box of clothes for her American Girl doll (Autumn worked hard all year, she started saving money in January and had enough in October to buy her very own American girl doll. But she was sad that she didn't really have any clothes for her, well she can't say that now.)

Autumn with bunny slippers from Grandma and Grandpa (her doll of course got matching ones)

Prairie had been saying for a couple of months that she wanted an Ariel (Disney Little Mermaid) blanket for Christmas. Ben and I found this Ariel doll at DI (local thrift store) and thought she would love it go along with her blanket. As soon as she opened the doll she immediately went and got her Ariel dress up and put it on.

Prairie also got this Unicorn where she can pretend she is riding it

Priarie in her new Cinderella dress up with cinderella shoes and a cinderealla headband, a 3-year-old's version of heaven.

Ben got me a new lens for my camera and I had fun taking pictures of Zephyr

Autumn and Chrissa wearing their pajamas, robes and bunny slippers

Chrissa in her new hammock to hang by Autumn's top bunk

Close up of the Ariel on the Ariel blanket (this is my best appliqué work ever)

Prairie all Arieled out for bed on Christmas night

Autumn and Chrissa in one of their new matching outfits

My Boys

2010-01-03T20:34:00.002-07:00

Dressed up and all ready for church

Scenery Shots

2009-11-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

I sure love living in Utah. I think it is gorgeous!

Iowa Recap

2009-11-02T21:33:00.004-07:00

Even though it was sad circumstances to go out to Iowa, Ben's parents, siblings, and extended family are so fabulous that we were still able to have a lot of enjoyable times and good laughs. We got to go spend an afternoon in probably mine and Ben's favorite city, Ames (also where Autumn was born). If Ben didn't love his job so much in Provo, and Utah hadn't grown on us so much we would try to find a job in Ames.

We also got to enjoy the fall foliage and they had a couple of overcast and dreary days, which seemed kind of appropriate for Ben's sister's viewing and memorial service, but then we had a beautiful sunny day that was just perfect for playing the backyard.

Zephyr

Prairie, Papi and Zephyr enjoying the porch swing in the backyard of Poopa and Grandmother's house

Silas (Zephyr's cousin that is one week older)

Silas enjoying the leaves

Prairie having fun throwing leaves in the air

Autumn having so much fun in the backyard

Ben's little sister, Lindsey, finally consented to Ben doing his trick with Silas, Silas was a champ

This is how invigorating the trip to Ames was for Prairie (just kidding she had a great time at the Ames Public Library when Papi put on a puppet show to enertain all the kids in the children's section of the library)

This is how Zephyr loves to such his fingers, especially when he is eating solids, one bite of food, one such on the fingers, another bite of food, another suck on the fingers

Autumn and Prairie had a blast using the plethora of canes around the house as crutches

Zephyr and Silas holding hands (and then shortly after that they kept grabbing the other one's pacifier)

Autumn, Zephyr and Prairie with great-Grandma Parker (this is Ben's mom's mom)

Halloween Recap

2009-11-02T13:39:00.005-07:00

We did a lot of fun things for Halloween. The week before halloween we had a halloween party for the girls and their friends. It was nonstop work, so I don't have any pictures from the party with 11 little kids running around.

I was working on Zephyr's Halloween costume (and his winter coat, it was a combo deal) and I thought I want this to fit all winter, so I made it a 6-9 month size. Well when it was almost done, I tried it on Zephyr, and it was huge. Luckily I had exactly enough fabric let to make a 3-6 month size. Well Zephyr's cousin that is 1 week older than him is much larger, and the larger one fit him perfect, so they had matching costumes. Their grandpa calls Silas the Bullfrong and Zephyr the tadpole.

The kids at the Monte L. Bean museum for the halloween festivities

Autumn as Belle and her brand new American girl doll that she has been saving up for for months in her matching Belle dress

Prairie as Diego from the Nickoloden show Go Diego Go, who is Dora the Explorer's cousin

and of course Prairie had to have a rescue pack

Hannah, Ben's cousin, Zephyr, Silas, Prairie, Autumn and Chrissa (Autumn's doll)

Ben and his sister Lindsey each of them holding their son, in their matching frog costumes

Smiley Silas and cutie Zephyr in the frog costumes

Autumn with her haul, she was pleased!

(Prairie was too excited to start eating to set our her candy in piles)

So Sad

2009-10-20T09:06:00.008-07:00

Beautiful Laura

A week ago today we found out that Ben's little sister, Laura, ended her own life. She had been struggling with a deep and devastating depression for many years. She tried so hard to survive. I feel so sad that this seemed like the best solution to her. I'm sad that I didn't understand the extent to how bad it was while she was alive. I'm sad that she won't be there to do the makeup and the hair of my girls for prom, because heaven knows I do not have talents there. I will miss her laugh and her quick whit. I am grateful that when she really had nothing to give, she still gave to my girls, because they love their aunt Laura and miss her terribly. That even when things were so bad, she would come babysit, build forts, do fingernails, make smores for them. My daughters have the best memories of their aunt Laura and I am so grateful for that. I will miss our deep conversations about life. I will miss the emotion that she was able to pour into a piano. I will miss her.

Ben and Laura (Laura figured out how to play the accordion that Ben got for free on craigslist)

Laura with Yvette on Ben's birthday

Laura snuggling with the girls

Autumn and Laura

Laura and Autumn reading books together

Laura with Prairie

Prairie and Laura on Prairie's first birthday

Prairie and Laura

Laura and Zephyr (the only day I have pictures of Laura and Zephyr together)

Laura and Prairie

Emily and Laura

Our Weekend Getaway

2009-10-01T19:23:00.004-07:00

We got a 4 night stay at the ..... Hospital! Thursday night Zephyr had a fever, gave him some tylenol, that seemed to help. But all day friday he was burning up. When Ben got home from work he decided that we should take him to the doctor's. We took his temperature and it was 103.7 degrees. When Ben called the doctor's office and told them, they told him to come in immediately.

When they got to the doctor's the doctor said he needed to go to the hospital. He was still running a really high fever and he was very lethargic, non-responsive, they figured he was severely dehydrated and needed an IV. So Zephyr's fever broke and by Saturday morning, he was feeling sooo good, he was laughing and playing and Ben and I had such a good time with them.

By the afternoon he was really really fussy. Everything they tested (swine flue, avian flu, RSV, regular flu, all kinds of viruses) for he came up negative. Because of his extreme fussiness and because his oxygen saturations and his heart rate would drop lower than they were comfortable with we ended up staying an additional 3 nights, even though his high fever was basically gone after the first night.

Because the doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with Zephyr, they wanted to make sure their wasn't some underlying heart problem. So Zephyr got to have a EKG and an echo cardiogram. For the echo he had to be sedated, and that was honestly kind of scary for me. His echo turned out completely normal and his heart looks great. They never figured out what made Zephyr sick, but he is better now and at home, yay!

Zephyr in his hospital crib, hooked up to monitors, an IV and antibiotics (oxygen didn't come until later)

Zephyr with his monitors

Getting and IV is no fun, here is his hand with the IV, they had to keep his wrist destabilized so it wouldn't come out, and all of his fingers taped

We had a nice view from our room, I do love Provo

Papi and Zephyr playing, when Zephyr felt soooo much better after being hydrated

Zephyr showing off his baby hospital gown, with his hospital tag and his sensor for oxygen saturation, Zephyr really didn't like that sensor, they had to redo and redo that one, because he would push it off with his feet

back view of Zephyr with his baby hospital gown

some things don't change even at the hospital, Zephyr loves to sleep in his sling, it was a little trickier though to get him in with all of his cords attached to him, plus whenever I put him in the sling, the oxygen saturation didn't read as well

Zephyr with his oxygen tubes

Autumn holding Zephyr in the hospital

Zephyr with tons of extra cords (yes that is a pink pacifier, and Ben is the one that brought it because we use all his other pacifiers, Ben couldn't find them when he went to the house to get stuff for the hospital)

Zephyr sedated getting his echo cardiogram

Silas

2009-09-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law requested that I post some pictures of my nephew Silas since she doesn't live close anymore and doesn't get to see the babies. Silas is our nephew that is exactly one week older than Zephyr. Ben's little sister and her husband and son moved to Utah from Idaho, and now only live 40 minutes away, and we have been spending a lot of time with them. It is really fun to have them close, especially since we have babies so close in age. I figure that if Zephyr never has a brother, Silas and him cane be like brothers since they are so close in age.

This is Ben's youngest sister, Lindsey and her son Silas, isn't Lindsey gorgeous?!

Prairie holding Silas

It might just be me, but when I see Silas I totally think of the bald cabbage patch doll. Silas is so cute, and so chunky, the complete opposite of Zephyr, who is soooo thin

Silas is very advanced for his age. He is very strong, he has been sitting up well on his own for a while, and is strong enough to hold on to the couch and stand without assistance from his mom for a little bit

Prairie, Autumn, Silas and Lindsey hanging out on the green couch

First day of school

2009-09-12T06:19:00.003-07:00

Autumn started kindergarten 2 weeks ago. She was really nervous, but she LOVES it! She is in a Spanish language dual immersion class. Here are some pictures of her in her princess first day of school outfit.

She even had disney princess hairties and disney princess socks.

Autumn being cute!

Autumn with her backpack

We had a back-to-school dinner the night before kindergarten started. We had pesto, green beans, and broccoli. Autumn made limeade to drink and I made a key lime pie (recipe taken from Cafe Johnsonia) and we add green food coloring to the key lime pie so it really looked green to stay with the green theme. Then Ben helped Autumn make green whip cream for the waffles. Autumn said we had to use green plates, so we gathered as many green dishes as we could. It was a lot of fun, and Autumn really liked it.

Autumn with her key lime pie with green whip cream and green spinkles

5 months old

2009-09-03T20:39:00.003-07:00

Zephyr is 5 months old today! He has been soooo different from our girls. He doesn't like to play on the floor, he wants to be held all the time, he isn't that interested in toys, he just wants his mommy. He is a tiny peanut just like Autumn was. He weighed intoday at 11 lbs 12 oz, which is tiny for his age, he is below the chart, so he doesn't have a percentile. But because he is so small he can still wear all of his 0-3 month clothes. Here is a picture of him in his spiderman jammies and the same ones he wore the night he was born, wearing them when he was 2 hours old.

Zephyr 5 months old wearing the same spiderman pj's

Zephyr 2 hours old wearing the spiderman pj's

Summer catch-up

2009-07-28T06:16:00.001-07:00

My kids all pysched about the summer reading program (don't mention to Autumn though that we got too busy and we won't be going to the pool pary)

We have been so busy this summer, too busy to blog. Since Zephyr's baby blessing we have:

Went to Idaho for our nephew’s baby blessing
Went to New York for 11 days, helped put on a quilt show for my mom’s 50^th birthday, saw Wicked and took all 3 kids down to NYC for a day
Had a 5 day Weinheimer reunion in Eden, Utah (had my dad visiting for a week for it)
Had cousin Nick visit at our house for a day
Ben’s little sister and her baby have been to Utah to visit 3 times and have spent time with them
My parents visited for a weekend for a friend’s wedding ad we had a great day at seven peaks
Took the family to Llama fest

Now it feels like summer is almost done, and I love summer, and we need to get Autumn all ready to start kindergarten!

Here is some assorted pictures from a variety of activities this summer.

Prairie had been wanting for a quite a while to have Zephyr sleep in her baby doll crib, she was thrilled

Zephyr

Ben wearing Zephyr in a wrap and then a sling. We have pictures of Ben doing and not me, because I do it all day everyday so it isn't picture worthy I guess.

The girls doing rockets with their Poopa (Ben's dad). Their favorite part is when the large rocket 's engine blew up and scared Grandmother and made her fall.

Four generational picture

Great-Gram with Zephyr

Zephyr in bed with his Papi

the cousins (Zephyr and his cousin Silas that is exactly one week older)

Prairie sleeping on Papi's legs

Zephyr sleeping in bed with Mommy

the girls taking a bath

Autumn, Prairie, Cousin Nick, Emily and Zephyr

the girls spending quality time with Nick

Prairie's cutie face

Zephyr and some quality naked time. Let me just say that getting Zephyr naked is almost guarenteed he won't be fussy and will be VERY happy. I never really gave either of the girls naked time, but Zephyr gets it because he is actually happy and I am not holding him.

Prairie's Pi Birthday

2009-07-27T13:34:00.002-07:00

Prairie with her pies

Prairie pi years old!

Priarie was 3.14159 years old on Sunday June 28th. We celebrated with some family and friends. For our main dish we had pizza pie (one with pepperoni, and one with cheese but with pineapples for the pi, also I used fresh mozzarella chesse which was sooo good).

Then I made 6 dessert pies (I somehow missed a closeup picture of the strawberry rhubarb pie), which were so yummy, but we had so much leftovers! Two of our friends brought over pies too, so we had tons of pies.

Key Lime pie, recipe taken from Cafe Johnsonia

Oreo pie (oreo crust, with vanilla pudding and whip cream with crushed oreos)

Lucy pie ( a favorite from growning up, it is a cream cheese and whip cream pie) with blackberries as topping

Coconut cream pie, with toasted coconut for the pi symbol

and a pumpkin pie per Janardan's request, and the pi birthday celebration was Janardan's idea.

When Autumn turned 3, Janardan (my sister's husband) asked if we were going to celebrate Autumn's pi birthday. We had never thought about it, but thought it sounded like a lot of fun. Now it is a tradtion we are planning on, to celebrate each of our children's pi birthdays. This time Janardan asked when Autumn would be 2pi years old, and I told him I was done with one pi birthday per kid.

Another picture of the spread. To see Autumn's pi birthday click here.

Prairie was really into her pi birthday. She loved all the pies. Though she did ask where her cake was for her birthday, she didn't completely understand that this was a birthday with no cake. At church that day she kept telling everybody that she was pi years old, it was pretty funny.

Our Future Little Missionary

2009-07-26T16:15:00.004-07:00

Blessing

2009-06-03T20:07:00.006-07:00

We blessed Zephyr a week and a half ago, but it has been super busy around here, so I am just now getting to post it. It was such a great day. I felt such joy seeing so much family coming to support us, and watching Ben bless our son with a name and a blessing. It was a great way to celebrate our 7 year wedding anniversary. I was also really happy with how his blessing outfit turned out.

Zephyr waiting to go to church, his bow tie not tied yet

Family picture after the blessing, Zephyr is VERY hungry

Zephyr in his ourfit (the vest and pants are made of out scraps from my wedding dress)

Zephyr all smiles

Zephyr's blessing shoes. I found these ar DI for $1, but they didn't have laces, and they had embroidered flowers in pastel colors. Ben put bleach pen on the flowers, hoping they would bleach to white, but they didn't and it just ate through the thread, so Ben ripped out all the thread for the embroidered flowers. Also they didn't come with laces, so we took a pair of cream baby shoes we had, and bleached the laces, and that turned out perfect. I was really happy with the shoes when everything was said and done, and it was relatively cheap.

Zephyr all daper with his vest undone (those are the cool snaps my mom gets for me in Amish country that look like dress buttons)

Tummy Time

2009-05-18T20:40:00.002-07:00

So we have been doing tummy time with Zephyr, and he hates it. That is pretty much the only time we hear him screaming is when he has to do tummy time. Autumn think I am torturing him or something. I try to explain that it is his exercise, but she just thinks it is plain mean to make him do his tummy time. Zephyr is so strong though, a lot of the time he will rotate his body 180 degrees, or even roll over because he is pushing so much.

Ben's grandma, Gram, made baby quilts for all the grandkids, and now for all the great-grandkids. We were able to see Gram and she gave him his baby blanket. We have been using it for tummy time. Autumn and Prairie decided that they needed to do tummy time with their baby brother, and that they of course had to do it on their blankets from Gram.

The Faces of Prairie

2009-05-15T20:37:00.002-07:00

One night we found Prairie awake far after we had put her to bed. Autumn had left her makeup bag out that had nail polish. Prairie painted blue nail polish all over her forehead and hand. It took Ben atleast a half an hour to clean it all off, and Prairie decided getting it cleaned off wasn't very fun even though she got to stay up later.

This is from one morning when Ben made smoothies, and it was a pretty thick one and Prairie tried to drink it. It was so thick on her face, that Ben carried all the way from the kitchen to the bedroom so I could see it.

Prairie fell off of her scooter and hit her head on the pavement and got this wonderful gooseegg. Then like two days later she ran into the door frame in our bedroom and got a bump and a bruise in the middle of her forehead.

Meeting Grandpas

2009-05-13T07:45:00.005-07:00

Zephyr had the occasion of meeting 3 different grandpas during April. After my mom came out for a week I had a week with no help, and then my dad came out for a week. While my dad was here we had my grandpa over (Zephyr's only living great-grandpa). Then Ben's dad made an unexpected visit to Utah, so he got to meet Zephyr also.

Zephyr with his Grandpa Oviatt, more affectionately known as Poopa

Zephyr with his Great-Grandpa Weinheimer, known as the Brown Grandpa. My kids are the only great-grandchildren on my dad's side of the family. My grandpa just celebrated his 80th birthday this past November.

Zephyr with his Grandpa Weinheimer, known as Baba Russ.

Baba Russ, Zephyr and Autumn all stacked up

the girls using the slings that they got as gifts when Zephyr was born

All three of us using our slings with our babies

Happy Birthday Prairie

2009-05-12T14:07:00.003-07:00

Prairie turned 3 years old on Thursday May 7th. Ben was able to take off work early. We took her to this really nice indoor pool that is designed for children. She loves to swim, so this really was a treat for her. She told me that she wanted a Blue's Clues cake, and that she wanted Blue's whole body, so I made that, and she was so thrilled. She was so cute and genuine about telling me that she liked her cake, that I felt like I would make her a cake every single day if she was that cute.

The day before her birthday aunt Laura dropped off a gift from her and Poopa. Prairie was thrilled with her bubble shooter. She used all the bubble stuff by the afternoon, and the batteries were dead on the bubble shooter by 2 days later.

She also got this cute little dog from her great-grandma.

And Prairie got a tu-tu from me and Ben, and Prairie informed us that ballerinas don't wear shirts, so she immediately striped off all of her clothes and put on her tu-tu and danced around for everyone. She has worn that tu-tu almost everyday, she LOVES it.

2 week update

2009-04-23T10:07:00.006-07:00

Yeah I know Zephyr will be 3 weeks tomorrow, but here is the 2 week update. We had Zephyr's 2 week pediatrician appointment on Monday and he has not regained his birth weight, and isn't even close. I honestly wasn't that surprised, considering that none of my kids by their 2 week appointment have regained their birth weights. I know I have enough milk, because I have been pumping after he feeds, and I usually pump a couple of ounces. So the doctor thinks that Zephyr is a lazy eater, so for this week he wants me to breastfeed him, and then when he seems done supplement him with a 2 ounce bottle. Ben was insightful enough to suggest I start pumping when Zephyr was a week old so that we have enough breast milk stored up so that we can supplement with breastmilk and not formula. When Prairie hadn't regained her birth weight, we weren't prepared and had to use formula, and it was killing me since I was spending so much time breastfeeding, and then I still had to use formula.

Anyway feedings take FOREVER this week because I breastfeed him, then I pump, so that I am actually making enough milk for him, since he doesn't seem to be nursing once he is filled up, and then bottle feeding him 2 ounces. I really hope he has gained some weight, because this seriously takes too long. On the plus side, Ben and Autumn have really loved helping to do some of the bottle feedings. Even Prairie wants to help, but she really doesn't have the attention span to do it very long.

We sure enjoyed having Grandma here for a week, to see some of the fun stuff she did with the girls check out here blog here

Aunt Jennie, Autumn and Zephyr snuggling (Zephyr likes sucking on fingers better than pacifiers)

Autumn and Zephyr

Zephyr fell asleep while I was holding him in my sling, and then I put him down to sleep in his bean bag

cutie Zephyr

Zephyr in his second sunday outfit, he had a coordinating bowtie with his Papi

Prairie helping out Zephyr during his tummy time. He was whining a little bit, and Prairie thought he needed a pillow, and her monkey blanket, and then she set up the bean bag so she could be laying by him, and then she decided that he really just wanted to suck one of her fingers.

When I asked her if she washed her hands she told me no, but she washed the finger he was sucking, and I was like okay. But then later she showed me how she washed it, she sucked it off in her mouth.

Zephyr with Priarie's "clean" finger in his mouth

Loads more pictures

2009-04-13T19:51:00.005-07:00

So we had the most wonderful first week. It was so great to have Ben home for 9 days, we all loved it. I read about this couple doing a "babymoon" when their baby was born, and I thought that sounded fun. Ours was more of a family moon, since this was our 3rd child, but that is really what it felt like. We called it our staycation (stay at home vacation). Ben took the girls to do fun activities, we had homemade fruit smoothies almost every day, and splurged and got the most delicious chocolate cake from Costco.

Saturday and Sunday I got a little sad because Ben was going back to work on Monday, but I also knew that real life didn't have to set in yet. My mom flew in late sunday night and we have her here all week, and that is soooo helpful.

Anyway here are a bunch of pictures from our familymoon or staycation.

Zephyr all stretched out (thanks Shawn I LOVE this outfit)

Prairie being the big sister and loving it

Naked Zephyr

Autumn pushing Zephyr in her doll stroller

Autumn holding Zephyr

Zephyr's first Sunday at Church

the kids in their coordinating outfits

Ben with the kids (Ben has bowtie out of the plaid fabric, and Zephyr has a real tying bowtie too, thanks to Lindsey and Fred for letting me take a pattern off of Fritz's bowtie)

The whole family (no I don't have anything with the plaid on)

Prairie and Zephyr snuggling together, I went to get Prairie's pajamas for her, and she laid down next to Zephyr and shared her Monkey blanket with him, and if you know Prairie that is very special that she was willing to share the blanket

Lots of Zephyr pictures

2009-04-06T19:32:00.005-07:00

Things are going pretty well. I am tired, but that is to be expected. Ben has the whole week off from work, and is being amazing and taking care of everything, so pretty much my job is to feed Zephyr right now, and rest as much as I can. The girls love Zephyr and love having Papi at home.

Prairie holding Zephyr when is about 10 hours old

Aunt Laura meeting and holding Zephyr for the first time

Autumn holding Zephyr when is about 34 hours old

Zephyr's First Bath

Ben gave Zephyr is first bath on Saturday

Zephyr not happy about being in his bean bag

cute little baby shoes

Aunt Jennie with Zephyr

He is FINALLY here!

2009-04-03T01:52:00.006-07:00

16 days after his due date, but right on time on the 3rd of April 2009 at 12:23 am mountain time. We are naming our son Zephyr and he is 21.75" long, 9 lbs. 5 oz. The labor and delivery went really well. Mom and baby are doing great. We loved having the baby at home, the midwives were awesome!

13 days overdue

2009-03-31T09:18:00.002-07:00

No baby yet, and no I don't want to be induced yet. We have a midwife appointment today, we will discuss options. My sister was 13 days late. I really think this baby wants to come on April fools day, atleast that is what I am hoping at this point.

Baby Boy Beck

2009-03-27T08:46:00.003-07:00

We got a phone call at 3:15am this morning to tell us that we had a new nephew! We are soooo excited! Ben's little sister Lindsey was pregnant, and they hadn't found out what they were having, so we were very excited to find out it was a boy.

Lindsey wasn't due until April 2nd, so her baby came 6 days early, and here we are 9 days late and no indication of our baby boy coming yet. We were really surprised. This whole time, I think Ben and I thought we would have our baby first. We are so excited for them, and wish sooooo much that we could drive up to Idaho this weekend and see that new baby.

Autumn on the other hand was very upset when she found out that Lindsey was in labor and going to the hospital. She said she wanted our baby to be older. But once we told her that Lindsey actually had the baby and it was a boy, she seemed to get really excited, but she was disappointed that she is going to have wait for so long to see the baby.

some picture from December when we saw Lindsey and Dustin:

Ben and Lindsey with their tummies

Emily and Lindsey around 6 months pregnant

A Yoga Afternoon

2009-03-26T20:50:00.004-07:00

The girls enjoying their yoga mats that they got for Christmas (they are doing eagle pose here)

(also a sneak peak of my new rug that we got in the mail over the weekend)

the girls following along with their yoga ABC's DVD doing flower pose

Non preschool days are harder than our preschool days. Autumn loves preschool, and has a harder time on days when she doesn't have preschool. I suggested a couple of times playmates to invite over, but she was frustrated that the kids she wanted over were all at school.

Anyway this afternoon was going pretty well, but then Autumn had a melt down because Prairie wasn't doing exactly what she wanted. So after she had a time out to cool down, the next thing I know Autumn informed me that her and Prairie were going to exercise. I was cooking dinner, so I couldn't do it with them. Autumn found a pilates book on our bookshelf and told Prairie that she would show her how to do the different exercises.

Well after a few minutes of that Prairie decided she would rather do a yoga video so she asked me if they could do a yoga video, so I pulled out the tv for them and they did yoga will I made dinner. It was a lot of fun to see them do yoga together, and also really helped me out this afternoon/evening while I was making dinner. Then when they finished yoga, their Aunt Laura called and said she could babysit, so Ben and I could go out to a movie. So yoga and Laura totally saved me from losing it with Autumn this evening.

41 weeks

2009-03-25T22:20:00.002-07:00

Just thought I should post some pictures so everyone can see that I really am still pregnant. I am not anxious. I am fine letting this baby come on its on time schedule, and I would really not think about being induced with pitocin until 43 weeks. My midwife has some more natural ways to help induce labor that we might start trying next week, but I would really rather just let my body and the baby go at their own speed.

So I am just trying to take it easy, not start too many new sewing projects, and enjoy these last few days when I only have girls.

Grandmother Oviatt's Birthday

2009-03-19T19:36:00.003-07:00

Today Ben's mom turns 50 years old. When I told Autumn earlier this week that her grandmother was having a special birthday, Autumn responded that she wanted to sew something for her. So she went in the sewing room, went through the scrap box and picked out fabrics, and started cutting stuff all by herself. I was making dinner, so she asked me to change the thread in the machine, and then set it up for her to sew. It was a lot of fun to see her just start a project and do a lot of it without me even in the room.

She was able to finish the quilt in time that we sent it on tuesday with 2 day mail and it got to her Grandmother's house in time for her birthday. Autumn was so pleased.

Autumn ironing

Autumn sewing

Autumn with the finished quilt (front view)

Autumn with the finishe quilt (back view)

Some Pregnancy Talk

2009-03-16T14:04:00.003-07:00

So I am 39 weeks and 5 days along. I really wanted to post something today, because when I was 39 weeks and 5 days along with Prairie we moved that day. The move was just a little under a mile, but nonetheless a move.

I am soooooo glad that I am not moving today. It was not my favorite thing moving so close to my due date, but everything worked out fine. I am glad that my bed, the baby's bassinet and crib, and all my other stuff is already set up in my house, and my house is relatively clean. It is nice to not feel so stressed, and I can relax and enjoy these last days before we have another baby.

Don't get me wrong I am getting a little anxious about having this baby, but I have basically come to terms that this baby will probably be close to a week late ore more, just like my girls. The difference is with my girls I WANTED them to come late because with Prairie I was moving, and with Autumn I was going to school full time and I had 4 exams from her due date until 9 days after her due date. Autumn came 10 days late, exactly the day I wanted her to come. I don't really have any compelling reason to want this baby to come late, so I thought that maybe it wouldn't, but I am starting to think that is just how my body operates, and I am totally okay with that. I would much prefer my body to go into labor than being induced or anything, but I am getting a little excited about meeting our little baby boy.

Ben and the girls are excited about our baby boy being born too. Autumn says she wants her baby brother to come because she really wants to hold him, and because then Papi doesn't have to go to work. Ben is taking a week off as soon as our baby is born, and I know he is exicted to have a week off. With both of our girls Ben was in school, and pretty much didn't miss any school or work, so it is nice this time to have a full time job and Ben has vacation saved up so he can be home. Ben and the girls have tons of fun activities planned for them to do the week that he is home.

Anyway, so no baby, and no indication that he will come any sooner than his sisters did, but very happy that we aren't moving today.

Here are some pictures from our Friday night. We have a friend from church that is in a punk band, and they were playing at a club in Salt Lake City, so Ben and I punked out to see him and his band perform. It was a lot of fun.

Yes Ben has eye liner on, and he used magnets for his gages.

Tag

2009-03-16T07:22:00.002-07:00

I am not very good about doing tags. But the photo ones alway interest me, because I can't imagine that I actaully have a good picture following the rules, but then I am surprised. This tag was picke the 6th picture in your 6th file.

This is July 2005 when we still lived in Ames, Iowa. Autumn had been giving Ben backrubs with the little massagers that you hold, but now she was getting the backrub. Autumn is 20 months old here.

39 Weeks

2009-03-11T21:33:00.002-07:00

Autumn was 10 days late and Prairie was 7 days late, so we most likely still have more than 7 days left, but we are getting near the end.

Prairie feeling pretty cool because she is taller than Mommy when she stands on the counter.

****These pictures were actually taken like when I was 37.5 weeks, but I am 39 weeks today****

Project Weekends

2009-03-02T09:24:00.006-07:00

Autumn has been in New York and Maryland for the past 11 days, and Ben and I have taken advatage of only have one kid to get some projects done around our place. Also I really wanted to get some stuff done before we entered the whole 3 kid phase.

Our bedroom has wood paneling, and the brown was really dark when we first moved in, so we talked to our landlords and they said they would pay for the paint for us to paint it white. Last weekend we painted the bedroom, and I LOVE it! Our closet was all brown, the walls, and everything, and now it is all white. It is so bright!

I didn't get any before pictures of our bedroom, but I have some after ones. There is also a built in chest of drawers, but I told Ben and I didn't want to do it last week because it needed quite a bit of prep work, such as sanding and stuff, and I wanted to make sure we finished our room over the weekend, because I figured just painting the chest of drawers wouldn't be so bad some other day.

So Saturday we pulled all the drawers out, took the handles off, Ben sanded them down and the chest of drawers, and started an assembly line to paint them all. Ben was good enough to let Prairie help. I was able to put the drawers back in today and they look so nice.

Prairie and Ben with their masks on so when they sand they don't inhale dust

Prairie and Papi sanding the chest of drawers down

Ben painting his assembly line of drawers after having sanding them

the drawers (Ben said that they had been the ivory yelllow color, blue, and pink at one point, it was good he sanding down all those layers first)

Before picture of the chest of drawers

After pictures of the chest of drawers, I think they looks sooo nice!

Ben also built a shelf for me in a cupboard, and once I get all the stuff organized in there I will post some before and after pictures.

Valentine's Day Recap

2009-02-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Autumn was very excited about Valentine's Day this year, and so I had to get more into the holiday than I usually do. We cut out red and pink hearts and hung them from ceiling in our front room (all Autumn's idea). Autumn said that we needed to make cookies for Valentine's Day also. I don't have any pictures but we made heart shaped sugar cookies and decorated them. We even had their cousin Vaughn over and helped decorate/eat the cookies, and then Ben took Autumn to deliver the cookies to her friends.

Then on the actual day of Valentine's Day we had Ben's little sister and her husband visiting with us. I was at the track in the morning and when I got home Ben was making pancakes, but much to Autumn's dismay he refused to cook any heart-shaped pancakes.

We all went to the dollar theater and saw Madagascar 2 and afterwards we made empanadas, and I made special ones for Autumn and Prairie that were heart shaped (they were a lot more work, so there were only 2 heart-shaped empanadas made). Anyways it was a pretty relaxed day, but Autumn had been very very excited about it.

Prairie and Autumn with their Valentine's presents (fruit snacks from Mommy and Papi, and a packagae of M&M's that said "we luv u Prairie" and "we luv u Autumn" from Grandma and Grandpa Ciccotelli)

Ben our official empanada maker

Prairie with her heart-shaped emapanda

Autumn with her heart-shaped empanada

Emily at 35.5 weeks pregnant, and Ben's little sister Lindsey at 33.5 weeks pregnant

Man Craft Time

2009-02-26T08:45:00.003-07:00

Three and a half weeks ago we were going to make cupids in preparation for Valentine's day. I am not a big decorator for holidays, but Autumn was being very insistent about what we needed to do for Valentine's day. So I told her we could make these cupids on a monday evening, but we ran out of time roasting hot dogs over the fire in the fireplace. So I told her we would do it another day. Well the next evening she really wanted to make them and I told her I couldn't because I was making dinner .... then Ben showed up home early from work and we had man craft time. Ben sat down and made the cupids with the girls, but kept telling them that it was man craft time, and that they needed to use "man" scissors and the man everything. Anyway it was a lot of fun, the girls loved their crafts, and Ben made it so much fun for them.

This was my view while I cooked dinner

Ben making the bow and arrow out of pipe cleaners for cupid

Ben helping Prairie glue on the cotton balls for cupid's hair (Ben got creative and didn't follow the instructions for this, and Autumn refused to do except for the way the instructions said)

Prairie with her cupid

Autumn with her cupid

the girls with their cupids and Papi for man craft time

As a side note, I hope we have many more evenings of man craft time, it was so enjoyable!

My 26th Birthday

2009-01-29T10:36:00.005-07:00

So yesterday was my birthday and it was a good day. Ben took the morning off, and he did some deep cleaning, and told me not to do anything, so I relaxed. Then he took the girls to run some errands, so I got to just relax.

Then they had me open gifts:

Autumn got me a lot of new socks, and I really really needed them (in fact I really needed them at my last birthday) but they made me promise I would throw away all my socks that had holes that I had been wearing.

So I had to throw this pair of beauties out :(, but I can't complain because i have soooo many more new nice socks with no holes!

My mom surprised me and made this quilt and pillow for me, which I was really really excited about! Check out her blog to see more detailed pictues.

Then when Ben got home from work we had some cake with the girls (my favorire german chocolate cake)

And my sweet girls helped me blow out the candles

Then my sister was so good to babysit the girls so that Ben and could go out to a nice dinner with some delicious food! If you are in the Provo/Orem area I highly reccomend the food at Pizzeria 712.

Then we came home and found our girls in Bed and I got to enjoy my surprise gift from Ben:

which I was VERY excited about. I didn't expect anything, because he had some money saved up and donated it to my rug fund (I want to get this very large rug for our front room, and it is kind of expensive, so I didn't expect any other gift, but he fanagled a way to get me another gift)

Then I just relaxed in bed and got to play New Mario, and then I got to watch Ben play the game and love it. He told me if he had realized it was that fun he would have boughten a long time ago, so now we are going to have battles over who gets to use Ben's DS :)

So I thought my birthday was over, but then we got the biggest surprise at 5am (technically not my birthday anymore)

a very cute, but sick little girl, she had more sickness at 6 and 6:30. Then we finally went back to sleep and slept in until 9.

And her very sweet older sister got her breakfast in bed. What cute girls.

So now we are just going to take the day easy. We are all hanging out in my bedroom. We are all still in our pajamas, the girls are watching movies and I am going to catch up on some paper work that has been accumulating on my desk.

So that was my birthday, the end.

Yesterday

2009-01-28T09:55:00.003-07:00

Eating gigantic icicles from the backyard

Making Mommy's birthday cake

Prairie dropping the recipe card into the batter

the damage to the recipe card

the cute girls getting readay for bed

The Vacation is Over

2009-01-23T10:07:00.004-07:00

I know everyone is dying to see pictures from our tropical vacation to Puerto Rico in the middle of winter. And I really got some nice photos, but I am a little depressed about the whole pictures thing. On the third to last day in Puerto Rico, my camera mysteriously stopped working while we were hiking through a very humid forest. So it turned out my camera was fine, but my memory card would no longer work. I got a new memory card for the last two days, but one of the days I spent almost the whole day on a kyak, and the other day we were in the car a lot for traveling from the small island Vieques back to the main island of Puerto Rico. Anyways, so my brother-in-law said he would look at the memory card to see if any of the data is retrievable, but until then, I feel sad of all the pictures i might have possibly lost.

But when I got home from working out yesterday morning this is what I found my family doing:

Ben asleep in bed

the girls eating pretzels and playing dominos all by themselves

It turns out that Ben did get up, helped Prairie go potty and then told them to play quietly and let him sleep.

Snowy Day not getting us down

2009-01-08T17:42:00.002-07:00

So Monday around noon it started to snow and it snowed for 30+ hours straight. We had quite the snow accumulation. When Ben got home from work he thought it was a perfect night to build a fire. So Ben and the girls built a fire.

Then as a family we got to all sit by the fire and enjoy it. Then even better, Ben put the girls to bed, I took a nice long hot bath, then snuggled up in jammies by the fire, while Ben shoveled the driveway, and I got to enjoy the dying fire and watch the magical snow come down into our back yard.

The best part of the evening....

enjoying the snow because I knew on Friday I would be in Puerto Rico with my swimsuits on a nice beach.

The snow accumulation

November and December Review

2008-12-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

So I haven't really been blogging very much so I wanted to highlight some of the stuff we did the past two months.

Jennie Returns to Utah!

The night Jennie got back, all the girls up on Autumn's top bunk snuggling together (Prairie is not picking her nose in this picture, when she is getting ready to sleep she rubs the ties from her blanket on her nose)

Going to the park with Jennie and doing choo-choo trains on the slides, they even got their 5 month pregnant mom to get on the slide too (it was very squishy and very fun)

My Dad and I with the Tur-Duc-Ken we cooked for Thanksgiving dinner

A close up of the Tur-duc-ken (which is a boneless chicken stuffed inside of a boneless duck which is then stuff inside of a semi-boneless turkey) it was so tasty and the best Turkey I have ever had for Thanksgiving

Prairie and Autumn reading the newspaper with Baba Russ

the blue tea party (all Autumn's idea)

Autumn reading stories to Prairie in the child's rocking chair

Racking up the leaves in the yard, and barely finishing before the first real snow, and once we got our first snow we haven't seen the grass yet, so phew, we did it in time!

Prairie loving twirling in her Christmas dress

The First Snow!

Autumn throwing snowballs at her Mommy and Papi

Prairie throwing snowballs

our little baby boy enjoying his first snow in the comfort of his mother's womb

sleepovers by the Christmas tree (their cousin Vaughn is closest to the camera, then Autumn, then Prairie) Vaughn was just there for the evening, but me and the girls did sleep out in the front room by the Christmas tree 3 different times during December

Prairie enjoying my boots (and always taking the insoles out!)

Autumn enjoying the camera she got for her birthday in November

our family had an evening at temple square to see the lights

Prairie pulling out ALL the puzzles when Poopa came over

the girls reading books with Poopa

christmas report

2008-12-30T13:59:00.005-07:00

We had a ton of family in town, and I loved every minute of it, but now I am recovering, from going going, going for almost 2 weeks. My mom was here and I had so much fun sewing with her, and then her husband flew in for Christmas, and it was so nice to spend Christmas morning with them. I haven't done that for 4 years, so I really enjoyed it.

Then Ben's parents decided to come out to Utah for Christmas too, and their trip completely overlapped with my parent's trip, so we were trying to find time to spend with them too. And since they decided to come, Ben's sister from Idaho and her husband decided to come down and visit after Christmas. So we got to see a lot of people and are so grateful for so many family members.

Autumn anxiously awaiting Christmas Eve dinner

Prairie and Autumn in their new pajamas (Prairie actually slept in them, and not naked, that is a miracle!)

Prairie opening up her new baby crib with the new bedding and everything

Autumn wearing her new Belle Princess Dress over her pajamas

Autumn thrilled that Grandma found some leftover fabric from the cow blanket that was made 5 years ago, and now Atticus has a matching blanket

Prairie sporting her new hat and jacket made for her by Grandma for Christmas

Prairie VERY excited about her new baby doll with matching pajamas

Prairie and Autumn using large boxes as a car and driving their babies around town

Autumn in her Belle dress without the pajamas

Autumn and Prairie in their new outfits from Nana

My adorable nephews in their spiderman pajamas that I made for them for Christmas presents

Tagged

2008-11-19T22:27:00.003-07:00

So I thought I had been tagged, but as I went back looking through the different blogs I read, I couldn't actually find being tagged, but it looked like fun, and so I am doing it. Also just a disclaimer, I am not very good about being tagged, I know my cousin tagged me months ago, and I have still thought about doing it. So don't be offended if you tag me and I don't really get it, I really don't blog about a lot things that I am thinking about so I have a hard time with the tags sometimes.

Anyway this tag was open the fourth folder in your pictures folder and then the fourth picture in that folder and post it. Anyway here is the beauty that I found. I really had no intention of doing this tag, but when I saw the picture, I really thought I better, especially for my friend Emmaly (the one on the left).

Keep in mind these are 3 girls from a USDA-ARS corn starch analysis lab. That is right we had the really cool job up soaking, peeling corn, grinding it up, and then seperating the starch and then analysising the starch. It was actually a really good paying college job and I loved working there. This picture is from December 2002. And yes I am a little embarrassed about how seriously I seem to be taking this Charlie's Angels photo shoot.

Ultrasound

2008-11-10T22:47:00.006-07:00

We are only having one ultrasound during my entire pregnancy, and my midwife strongly recommended that we waited until I was 21 weeks to do the ultrasound. Ben has been going crazy since about 17 weeks, because he knew that you can tell the gender that early. We didn't find out with Prairie and Ben says we are never doing that again. I thought it was fun not knowing the whole pregnancy, but Ben didn't, so we found out this time and ....... we are having a BOY! We are soooo excited! Ben was really really hoping for a boy, and I was really excited for either, I totally thought it would be fun to have 3 little girls, but if I really had my druthers, I was probably slightly leaning towards the boy side (completely unlike with Autumn and Priarie, where I most decidedly wanted girls, and would have had to have a total adjustment, and a little disappointment to find out I was having a boy, but my feelings have been really different with this pregnancy).

You can see the head and the hands

Anyway I am excited about having a boy. Autumn was kind of hoping for another sister, but she seems fine with it. I was talking to her about having a baby brother and she said she was a little sad because she wanted a girl. Then she told me that she was worried because boys die before girls, and I exclaimed, where did you hear that, and then she tells me that her baba Russ (my dad) told her that. Then I tried to explain the context, that when people get really old, often men a little younger, but the real thing is she was worried about her baby brother dying. So then I promptly called my dad and "thanked" him for giving Autumn that little piece of information, when she isn't really old enough to understand the context, my dad just chuckled.

The baby's spine

Also one other note of interest, Autumn has seemed really excited about the ultrasound, so we decided that she would go late to preschool today so she could go with us. Well we went and they were running a little behind schedule so we started a movie in the waiting room. Well once it was our turn, the room is just off from the waiting room, and we were the only people in the office, so the ultrasound tech said the girls could stay in the waiting room and keep watching the movie if we wanted and we could leave the door open. So Autumn has been so excited about this ultrasound, but when it came down to it, the rugrats movie was way more exciting, so Ben had to yell out to the waiting room to tell the girls that they were having a baby brother, Autumn initial response "oh ok" (leave me alone i am watching this movie). Anyway I was amused by that.

So to celebrate today I made this outfit for our little boy. I am very excited, but also feel very busy since I need to gather up some boy clothes, as in I plan on sewing a lot, but very excited about it. I already have plans for cute little sunday outfits out of an old suit that Ben ripped the pants out on, so we are going to have a well dressed little boy.

By the way, how cool is my mom, she got me these snaps that look like buttons, in case I had a boy so that I could make all kinds of button up shirts, without the pain of actually doing buttons on a baby -- I LOVE these snaps, they are so cute!

Halloween

2008-11-10T06:37:00.005-07:00

So I am finally getting to posting about Halloween. It has been a crazy week and a half. I got pretty sick the day before Halloween and spent the whole day in bed, and then on Halloween I spent a lot of the day on the couch, but was feeling well enough that I went out with the girls. I didn't want to miss it yet. My dad has come out every year for Halloween since Autumn was born, so this was his 5th Halloween to spend with us. This year Autumn dressed her Grandpa up to go tick-or-treating. It was a lot of fun.

I have also been really busy with our church's ward party. I am the co-chair activity person and we don't have a committee right now, so it was pretty much a 2 woman show with our husband's help, but it all turned out great, and now we are just trying to finish up painting our front room.

Anyways here is a bunch of pictures of the girls in their costumes and with their candy. Autumn requested I make her doll Atticus a matching Aurora dress, so that was the only costume I had to make for Halloween. Autumn's Aurora dress I made for Christmas last year and, i made the frog costume for Autumn 2 years ago, so Prairie got to recycle it, so it was a pretty easy year on sewing for me.

Autumn and Atticus in their Aurora dresses

Autumn, Atticus, Prairie and the potty-training baby all in their costumes

my cute girls

my dad all dressed up compliments of Autumn for trick-or-treating

Prairie with the baby dolls

Autumn with her stash

Prairie with her stash

A little bit of a catch up

2008-10-20T08:50:00.005-07:00

So my house is still not completely unpacked. It feels like we are getting really really close. Ben and I keep trading off being sick, so that has made it hard to finish the house. Also I have really wanted to finish the house and also enjoy the nice fall weather so that is the lack of blogging.

Here are a few of the highlights of October so far.

The girls are loving have easy access to the backyard and playing out there whenever they feel like it, even if I am making dinner or something. It is sooo nice, that is one of the main reasons we wanted to move, so that our girls could play outside more. It is so nice that Autumn can play outside during Prairie's nap, or while I am making dinner, it is easier to take our lunch outside, we are loving it.

Autumn found our box of outside toys and was loving doing the bubbles. Prairie was enjoying the blanket that we had out for lunch.

The lacrosse stick family provided entertainment for like a week for Autumn, until we decided to play lacrosse in the backyard. The tallest lacrosse stick with the sweater is Ben, I am the one with the Aurora dress, he lacrosse stick the flowered dress wtih orange, green and brown flowers is Autumn, the next lacrosse stick with the jumper on is Prairie, and the red lacrosse stick is the baby and it is a naked baby. Autumn did all of this all by herself and loved taking the lacrosse stick family around the house.

On the second weekend in October my cousin and her husband, and my aunt and uncle all came down for the BYU football game. We got to watch my cousin's adorable daughter Hannah. So we had 3 girls, a 4 year old, a 3 year old and a 2 year old. The three girls had sooooo much fun. Hannah brought these Krispy Kreme donut hats for the girls.

If you notice there is a fire in the fireplace. Our weather decided to skip fall and go straight to winter. We had flurries in the morning and it was so cold. Ben built a fire and the girls had so much fun making beds out of blankets and pillows on the ground, and just laying the dark watching the fire.

Here is one of the days I have been sick (not pregnancy sick, like we keep getting the flu, head colds, sore throats, I just want to be done with the winter sickness and winter hasn't even started). Ben checked out the movie the 10 commandments from the library and we spent a Sunday afternoon watching it. Autumn was so cute and snuggled up with me to watch the movie and we had matching blankets, how cute, right?

Autumn loves our fireplace seating. She likes to use it as a desk and has been really into drawing pictures. So here she is drawing pictures and Prairie completely fascinated just watching Autumn draw. We really like our new place.

Preschool

2008-10-02T07:21:00.004-07:00

Autumn all ready to leave for preschool

Autumn had her first day of Preschool for this school year yesterday. She went to a preschool that a lady in our neighborhood runs for about a month and a half in the spring. This preschool she is attending is called Baby Bulldogs. It is at the high school, the high school students actually run it. That is why it doesn't start until October because they have a while to be trained in what to do in the preschool.

This preschool reminds me more of kindergarten. It is a large room with all of these different stations. I am really excited about Autumn going there I think she will really enjoy it.

She was really nervous, but she got excited once I went through the different things they would be doing every day. They had an open house before preschool started and I think that really helped her feeling more comfortable.

Autumn wearing her Aurora t-shirt and her Aurora fuzzy pants (she left the jacket that matches the pants in Maryland)

Autumn on tuesday (the day before preschool starts) tells me that we need to go to Joann's to get some new fabric for a new outfit for the first day of school. I was kind of concerned because that is not what i was planning on doing on tuesday, so she decided that she could wear her new aurora (sleeping beauty) outfit that her grandma got her, phew!

Prairie all excited to take Autumn to preschool

Autumn at the high school ready for preschool, wearing her bike helmet

We were a little late getting ready, and with all the pictures Autumn wanted me to take and the video she wanted me to do, we were going to be a little late. Our plan is to bike to preschool everyday that she has it. Well I suggested that maybe we should just drive so we aren't late, well Autumn says, "No mom, let's bike, I want to be healthy, it's okay to be a little late." I have the coolest kids ever.

Prairie making herself comfortable at the preschool

Autumn and her friend Clark singing the Itsy bitsy spider

Well not quite yet

2008-09-27T11:05:00.001-07:00

She will be the big sister in about 6 months (like the end of March) though she keeps insisting that she won't be a big sister until she is 4 because Autumn is a big sister and she is 4 years old.

Prairie missing Autumn and enjoying the freedom

2008-09-26T10:08:00.001-07:00

Prairie has so enjoyed just looking at books this week, when it is really quiet, I will often find her with a stack of books and just looking through all of them

Prairie and I flew back from NY on Saturday, and Autumn is coming back to Utah until this coming saturday, so it will be a whole week without Autumn. It has been so much fun to spend a lot more one-on-one time with Prairie. She has been amazing while I have had to do so much packing, moving, unpacking, cleaning, she just finds random little toys and amuses herself for a long time.

I think she has enjoyed the freedom of playing with whatever toys she wants and so has been able to keep her self so entertained. She has been able to exactly what she wants to do with the dishes of the kitchen, try on all of the dressup clothes and the jewerly without Autumn yelling at her.

Prairie enjyoing getting into the dress-ups without Autumn around to get after her

Though I know she misses Autumn too because when we were flying back to Utah with Autumn, Prairie would open the window cover and then yell "Auutmn I love you, I miss you, can you hear me?!" Then she would random yell this on the car ride home from the airport too.

This morning when we were talking to Autumn, Prairie said, "I wish I was 4". I asked her why, but at first she wouldn't tell me. She had a pretty pathetic looking face too when she said it. Finally we figured out because if she were 4 she would get to stay at Grandma's house too. But then she was fine later playing.

Prairie wearing Autumn's Dora clothes, the capris fit her more like pants going all the way to her feet

Today she decided to try on Aututmn's clothes. Yesterday she had wanted to wear a pair of Autumn's shorts but I told her they were too big. Well while I was finishing a sewing project, she marched in to the sewing room and announced "Mommy they aren't too big!" So she was pretty excited about that. Then later she put on this really cute Dora outfit that Jennie bought for Autumn. When Prairie was wearing it she kept saying, "I look like Auutmn, I'm 4!"

How great is my husband

2008-09-25T23:47:00.003-07:00

Here is what my husband did while I sat out on the front lawn enjoying the wonderful early fall nights of Utah. I sat on the laptop and caught up on all the blogs I hadn't read in the last couple of days.

Our landlords decided to paint with oil based paints today, without letting us know. I was going to finish up getting the odds and ends out of the kitchen and clean it today, but that is kind of impossible while my landlord is here painting and I would have a 2year old with me the entire time, not to mention that I am really afraid of my landlady.

Anyway Ben didn't want me to have to breathe the fumes from the oil paint, so he spent 4 hours all by himself getting our kitchen sparkly, and I got to go to a relief society activity and putz around on the internet---he knew I needed that after how hard I have been working the past 3 days, so I really appreciated it, and he kept saying that he was so glad that he could something to help out with the move, what a great guy.

Here's What I did today

2008-09-09T23:38:00.002-07:00

So I tried to pack up as much as I could because we are MOVING! I am really excited about this move, even though it is really sudden. On Saturday on a whim we noticed the house next door to us is empty and the landlords were there, so we thought we would look around. We really like the apartment and we were able to negotiate on the price if we do some yard work. So we filled out an application and then found out Monday afternoon that we had been accepted. Then Monday night Ben posted our current apartment on craigslist. The first person that called came and looked at it and she wanted it, and really wanted to move in by this weekend. That lady is going through the application process with the landlord but it looks promising, so probably today while I am flying to New York we will find out that she was accepted and that we need to have everything moved and cleaned by Saturday - CRAZY!!

Anyway since I am going to be in New York for 10 days I wantaed to try to get as much done as I possibly could for Ben. There is still TONS to do, but I got a really good start for him. The sewing room is empty except for the futon, which is pretty good, because I had the closet chock full. Anyway I am excited that when I come home from New York I will coming home to a new apartment.

Oh yeah details about the apartment, it is on ground floor, YAY! It tons for more windows and natural light (which is the main reason that I wanted to move out of our current apartment, it has felt like a cave because it is pretty dark down here). Our kitchen area opens up into the backyard with 4 fruit trees and a grapevine. We get to park our car in a carport and walk about 10 ft to the door, no more tramping through snow and grass all year to get to our front door. There is places to park our bike and scooter in covered areas. There is a bathtub, an awesome fireplace, a huge front room, a huge laundry room/storage room, and there is 4 bedrooms. We weren't really looking for a larger place, but it was the same price we were going to pay to live in the upstairs of our current place, but it is larger.

There is a two bedroom apartment attached to the 4 bedroom apartment and we are really hoping that Jennie and Janardan decide to take it because we would love them living right there. Before Autumn went to ben she told me "Mommy when I want to go to Jennie's house I will just say Mommy I am going to Jennie's house and I will run out our door to her front door and knock and have a big smile on my face." So Autumn really likes the idea of Jennie and Janardan living so close. So did my dad, then he won't complain about having to walk around the block.

Anyway so that is what is going on in the crazy whirlwind life of Emily and Ben. Ben is amazing because he isn't worried about moving in less than a week and not having his wife here to help him and the fact that he works full time. Ben is amazing because he can do a marathon moving session and then he will just crash all weekend. Anyway we are super excited, and if you are in the provo area I know Ben could really use help moving on Thursday and cleaning on Friday.

Erol the Cat

2008-09-07T01:42:00.004-07:00

A few weeks ago it was a rainy saturday night, and Ben and Autumn heard a cat outside of our door. Autumn was worried that he was really hungry so Ben got out a bowl of milk for the cat. That night when Ben was putting the girls to bed, Autumn was almost crying because she was so worried that the cat was hungry and begged her dad to go buy some cat food that night. Ben really has a soft spot for animals, so that is all the encouraging he needed.

Well we have seen that cat at our house every single day since then, and we have already gone through one bag of food and had to purchase another one. Ben is starting to worry about what we are going to do once it is cold.

Autumn named the cat Erol, now we all call him Erol. I am allergic to cats and we aren't allowed to have pets, so he definitely stays outside. The thing is he is the sweetest cat I have ever seen. He let's Prairie manhandled him, he lets Autumn carry him around like a baby. He seems to really like our family, and I know our family loves him. We keep saying we are going to try to find him a good home where he can go inside, because he really wants to come in our house, but as of yet we haven't really made any attempts besides asking some neighbors and stuff.

Anyways here are some pictures of the girls and Ben with Erol the first night they fed him.

Ben, Autumn and Prairie watching Erol drink milk (yes Prairie is wearing a swimsuit, and Autumn is wearing winter clothes)

Erol drinking milk, he was so hungry that first night

Ben and Autumn watching the cat

the girls totally interested in the cat

Two Dollar Tuesdays

2008-09-06T13:39:00.002-07:00

In August Thanksgiving Point had Two Dollar Tuesdays, where it only costed $2 per person to get into each of their venues (the dinosaur museum, the gardens, and the farm). The only place we hadn't been to at Thanksgiving Point was the dinosaur museum, which is the most expensive to get into, and I decided that I should take the girls. Well I decided that when you pay $2 to get in that is about what it is worth, it was sooooo CROWDED, I was a little stressed by time the whole ordeal was over.

My favorite thing that we did was go to the IMAX show about dinosaurs. It wasn't cheaper so I splurged, Autumn loved it, I think that was her favorite thing too, and Prairie hated it. Autumn thought the 3-D glasses were pretty cool, and she thought it was neat when the dinosaurs would run at us. Different times through the movie I saw her reaching her hand out to see if she could actually touch stuff, it was really cute.

Prairie on the other hand, was terrified. She thought the dinosaurs were really going to get us. She jumped into my lap like 30 seconds after the movie started, and stayed in my lap in the entire time. We finally had to have her take off her glasses. She was cowering into my chest and hiding her face the whole time. She started whimpering half way through "get out of her mommy, get out of here right now!" I was able to calm her enough that Autumn and I were able to watch the entire movie, but Prairie was very relieved when the movie was over.

Autumn going through the tunnel

Prairie playing in the sand and water room (it was so crowded) and Autumn didn't want to get her hands messy

Prairie really liked this dinosaur puppet and kept having it eat things, she was pretty cute with it

the girls doing crazy faces for a posed picture for me

Hiking to Mt. Timp Cave

2008-09-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

Ben's childhood best friend was moving from LA to Tucson, Arizona. They asked if they could stay with us on their way there. So Jason and Megan stayed with us for two nights. Ben was able to arrange his schedule so that he had the day off.

We had such a good time hanging out with them, Ben and I were already tentatively planning on meeting them around the Grand Canyon sometime.

We took them to Mt. Timpanogus and hiked up to the cave and went through the cave. Ben and I had both done it when we were younger, but it had been many years, and we hadn't taken either of our girls to the cave since we moved here 3 years ago.

We had to wait a little while to start hiking because you buy tickets for scheduled tours, and wouldn't take us that long to hike to the cave. Megan got the girls into throwing rocks and sticks into the river. Prairie and Autumn both loved it.

Autumn hiked the whole way, not without a little complaining, but she did a great job. Prairie got to ride in the backpack most of the way. The last switchback you have to leave kidpacks behind, because you aren't allowed to take them in the cave, and you don't come out the same door you go in. So even Prairie got to hike a little. Here we are waiting for our tour to start and eating our lunches.

Autumn became best friends with Megan. Autumn is not the most touchy feely kid, like she didn't want to hold hands with me while we were hiking, but when we hiked down the mountain she wanted to hold hands with Megan almost the whole time. Then when we went out to dinner that night she insisted sitting by Megan. She was sad that they only got to stay for 2 nights.

Jason and Megan in front of American Fork canyon

Prairie, Autumn, Emily and Ben in front of American Fork Canyon

Prairie fell asleep about three-quarters the way down, she was worn out.

Relaxing in Rexburg

2008-09-04T21:42:00.004-07:00

I was looking through my pictures and we have done a ton of activities that I intended to blog about, but we have been too busy having fun to post everything, so maybe I will catch and you will get to see our trip to Mount Timpanogos Cave, the stray cat we have been feeding, our trip to the Dinosaur Museum. Until I feel like updating all of that stuff I will just give you a weekend update.

We had the best weekend in Rexburg. My aunt was gracious enough to let us stay at her home, and we really really love staying there. Ben and I both feel so relaxed when we stay there. Both times that we have stayed we secretly wish we could stay a couple of more days. Their house is just a couple of miles outside of Rexburg, and it has a more rural feeling and we love it.

Anyway we had such a relaxing weekend hanging out with Ben's sister Lindsey, and her husband Dustin that I didn't even pull my camera out. We played games, went out to lunch, played a marathon Risk game, played the Wii, ate food, lots of nacho cheese sauce, you know all the usuals.

Autumn and Prairie got to feed the horses and they really liked that. We were going to ride the horses, but it was too cold and muddy, maybe another time.

Prairie giving the horses some corn stalks, which they really like

Autumn and Prairie with the horses

Autumn getting brave and petting the nose of the horse

Ben really likes animals and loves doing stuff with animals with the girls

We are trying to figure out when we can make it back to Rexburg, this trip was a much needed mini vacation.

Things I find my kids doing

2008-08-27T21:06:00.006-07:00

So last week one night we had the kids put to bed at 8 o'clock. At 10:15 Ben went back to our bedroom and Ben found Prairie in there doing this.

This is her doing "her work". That is a toy typewriter. Then she insisted on putting things away before she went to bed.

Then one afternoon the girls had been really quiet so I found them in my sewing room and they had set up an obstacle course, jumping off the chest of drawers onto the futon with the cushions from the crib and Prairie's bed. Autumn dragged all the cushions to the room all by herself.

Prairie getting in on the bouncing action, luckily she isn't brave enough to jump from the chest of drawers

Prairie's cute grumpy face