Birthday fun

We had a birthday party for my brother Derek here at our house. We had yummy Mexican food and fun games and my dad talked to us about the butterfly effect, which is pretty cool. I am sure you can Google it and find out more. But it is about how our actions can effect a whole lot more than we realize. It was a fun family night.

This dress is itchy

Jon got Lily ready for church and she came down the stairs and said, "Mom, this dress is itchy." I just had to get a picture of that sad face.

Getting close

Here I am at 34 weeks pregnant.

At my 31 week appointment they checked to see if I was dilating because I have been having a lot of contractions. I was not, thank goodness. But I was 40% effaced. I measured 28 centimeters. With all three kids I usually measure 2-3 centimeters smaller than the week I am at.

The last couple of months have been really hard. I have been getting contractions or braxton hicks just about everyday since 27 weeks. Sometimes they hurt, sometimes they don't. But I am sick of them. I don't sleep because I have to go to the bathroom every hour. The baby is very active. I mean, very, very active. I do love feeling the baby move, except for the kicks in the bladder and in the ribs.

I have been a lot more uncomfortable with this pregnancy and it has seemed to take forever. I think it may be because I never really got to heal from the surgery before I started growing. But all is well and I am thankful for that.

We are having a hard time deciding on a name. The ones we are considering are Anabelle, Ayva, Addison, Ansley. But we are still looking at all options. I was in love with the name Anabelle at the beginning and now I don't know. The kids still love it.

In preparation for baby to come we bought a new stroller. A sit and stand, it is made for two kids but can actually fit 3 if needed. I have wanted one for a long time. We got a new car seat that fits in the stroller. The baby clothes are washed and in the dresser and I think we are about ready. Except for labor and delivery, can you ever be ready for that? I am because I am uncomfortable, I am not ready because it is scary. I am going to try to do it natural again. The epidural with Calvin was so scary, I couldn't breathe and it made me swell up everywhere. Natural birth with Lily was amazing but extremely painful. I have a birthing coach or Doula to be in the room with Jon and myself. Hopefully she will be a really big help like my nurse was with Lily.

I am thinking I have about a month left. My due date is in just over 6 weeks but I had both Calvin and Lily 3 weeks early, so that is 3-4 weeks away. It would be ironic if I had the baby on April 17th (which is 3 wks before my due date) because I have super Saturday at the church, and I really want to go. And it is Megan's baby shower. I missed all of Megan and Andy's wedding, endowment, and reception because I was in the hospital having Calvin. Hopefully I don't miss her baby shower too.

I am scared, excited, anxious, tired, all the emotions you can think of. Pregnancy is wonderful and it is a miracle. I am so excited to meet this little baby girl.

Pirate day at the City center

I took the kids to the city center's pirate day. They had fun activities, like making pirate necklaces, decorating cookies, gymnastics, coloring pages, pirate hats out of newspaper (the kids fell apart and so we came home and made our own), and a treasure hunt, the treasure was a ring pop. The kids loved it.

A great getaway

For Valentine's day I surprised Jon by setting up everything for a night away. We left Friday morning Feb 26. and dropped the kids off in Santaquin. We headed for St. George. We had fun listening to music and talking on the drive. We got to our hotel room in the early afternoon and we had a while to shop around and go to dinner before we went to the Colbie Caillat concert.

The concert was so great. It was in the college auditorium, which was not very big, so it was like a personal show. She was interacting with the audience and having a lot of fun. Her opening act was her guitarist, Justin Young. He also sings. We ended up buying his CD because we both enjoyed how chill his music was. Colbie sounded really good live and she sang a lot of my favorite songs off of her new CD. I was so excited because I took a lot of videos and we were pretty close to her. But when we got back to the hotel and we played the videos back, we noticed that I had the camera video in time lapse mode. Oh, I was so sad. My 2 minute videos were like 5 seconds and there was no sound. Oh, well.

We spent most of Saturday just hanging around in St George and shopping. I got some little exercise bike pedals that can go by any chair, like the office chair for when I am blogging, or the couch for when I am watching TV. I love them, they make it so I don't feel lazy about sitting
down. Jon got some new jeans. We picked up the kids Saturday night and came home. It was really fun and we needed it. Here are a few pictures.

Organize

Organize and toys are two words that just do not go together. I have learned this over the years as I have tried to come up with a solution to the overwhelming amount of toys around my feet at all times. Jon and I decided to switch the linen closet in the bathroom by the family room to a toy closet and teach the kids to put toys back after they use them. We took the blankets and other items down to the basement room closet and transferred some toys upstairs. It has actually worked our pretty well. There are still toys everywhere, but when I ask the kids to clean up they don't whine about having to take stuff downstairs, instead they just take them to the bathroom closet.

The other two reasons we did this are #1 the toy room is also Jon's graveyard sleeping room. And so when the kids wanted toys and dad was sleeping, they just had to wait for him to wake up. Now we have a great selection right by the family room. #2 The toy room is mainly a Lego room and has been for the last while. Sometimes when friends would come over they would destroy things Jon and Calvin were building out of Legos in the toy room it would make Jon and Calvin really upset. Now that we have a lot of toys upstairs, we can just shut the Lego room door if we don't want little hands destroying hours of Lego city work. We also bought a few coffee tables from IKEA to build Lego stuff on, and that takes up a big space in the room. Toys, toys, toys, they are everywhere. But it makes me happy because it means there are cute little kids around too.

Two spiritual nights in one week

We are so blessed to be able to live in Utah and have our church and religion be such a big part of the culture. Last week I was able to attend two amazing meetings. The first was a primary music training taught by Pat Graham who served on the general primary board for over ten years. She had some amazing advice and gave such wonderful tips on teaching children. She was very entertaining and fun to listen to. She sales a book called "The Children's Songbook Companion." I ordered one for our primary and I am so excited to get it in the mail.

The second event was a multi-stake enrichment night with Barbara Thompson, 2nd counselor in the general relief society presidency. She is one that I always look forward to hearing from at conference. She is so upbeat and funny. I loved listening to her talk, she spoke to the women about strengthening our relationships with our Savior and Father in Heaven. It was the same things you always hear: pray, read your scriptures, serve, etc. But it is the way she presented the message that I really loved. She put a lot of humor and personal experiences into her talk and it made it really enjoyable and easy to relate to my own life. It was a great night. I left feeling very uplifted and happy.

Our Pirate ship

Calvin is obsessed with pirates lately. He used to say, "When I grow up I want to be a knight, no maybe a pirate, no an astronaut" and so on and so on. Until one day he came up with a solution to his major dilemma. He came into my room one morning and said, " Mom, I have a great plan, I can be everything I want to be when I grow up, I will just call myself a changing pirate, knight, astronaut, etc. And I will change whenever I want. " He was so very excited about this for a couple of weeks. And then he decided he no longer wants to be a changing guy, he only wants to be a pirate. Because pirates are the coolest. He is so much fun to listen to.

He begged us to build a real pirate ship in the backyard. We finally convinced him to just let us build his swing set into a pirate ship. He agreed. So on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of January's cold weather, we made our swing set a pirate ship. We put a steering wheel on it, we added a flag that can be raised and lowered, some skull-like sails made out of truck floor mats I found on clearance at Ross, and we called it good. The kids loved helping out and they love the backyard even more now. They call the swings the anchors and you have to swim or pretend like you are on a small boat to get in and out of the ship.