Outside

My pictures aren't organized right now.  These should have been in the last post.  My kids live outside now.  In hanging out in the fort, my kids have realized we have "Over the fence" neighbors.  They have 3 girls and 4 baby chickens. The fence has also become a new fun place to hang out. I love this stream of pictures I took.  This was a happy night, Mike mowed so everyone's feet are green.  Some of our best friends, Aaron and Star with their kids Brooke and Tyler came over.  These pictures just make me smile. 

\

This was actually the picture for my view out my kitchen window.  Half painted.  I love the color! Can't wait til we finish it up, but it's been super rainy.  

The Baby

(I just realized this title could be misleading.  This is not an announcement. haha!) Ok, I'm obsessed with this kid.  He is just cute and funny and makes me smile and giggle all day long. We call him "The Baby."  He gets my phone and asks for "the baby." He likes to look at pictures of himself (and there are TONS on my phone. haha).  He helps clean up and unload the dishwasher and loves to help me sweep (he especially likes to pick through the pile for treasures and then spread it all out again.  Super helpful like that).  He  turned 18 months at the end of March and started nursery.  He loves it (after the initial 3 second "you're leaving me!!!" cry). He is talking up a storm and always says "Thank you."

He's obesessed with trains.  Here he is wearing his train shirt playing trains.  He calls them "Choo Choos." He will sit and play trains in the playroom by himself forever. 

He loves to swing. "Wee! Wee! Wee!"  He cries all day to swing.  With my knee, I have been out of commission for unstable surfaces and a sloped yard with holes and knee high grass definitely qualifies for "unstable." So he has to wait until Mike gets home to swing (unless I can talk a kid into doing it for me.)  He's discovered pockets in his pants and it's pretty much the cutest thing when he walks around with his hands in his pockets or puts rocks or cars in them. 

He seems to have outgrown his dairy difficulties. I still limit how much a day I give him, and make sure he doesn't have dairy at all 3 meals, but his skin and comfort level are looking good.  He LOVES cheese! He bangs on the fridge, "Eese! Eese!" Over and over again until I give him some. He still won't drink anything other than water, but at his last check up he went from the 3-4% to the 14-15%.  He seems to be growing just fine without it.  

Oh he just makes me happy! I'm sure he will get another post of his own sooner than later simply because I'm pretty obsessed. Loving this baby of mine!

Favorite Friends

Our best friends from Spokane stopped through and squeezed us into their busy schedule.  We met up at a fun park for a while, then came to our house for dinner, playing games, and ice cream.  It was SO fun to get together.  We miss them!  This was Isabelle's little friend Josie when we lived up there.  She still talks about Josie. 

We used to hang out with them alot.  Julie and I have stayed in pretty good contact with random phone chats and plenty of texting, but it's just not the same as hanging out for an evening here and there.  I miss them!!!!!!  Thanks for taking the time to see us!!!

Happy Easter!

 We had a fun little Easter. A little egg hunt in the morning with a basket. Sticky buns for breakfast (which is actually a conference tradition.  It always throws me off when we have Easter on conference.  Difficult to shove two sets of traditions together with still keeping the sacred nature of them both.) This year the kids each got their own picture of Christ to put in their rooms.  I was originally going to let them pick them out themselves.  But it came down to a rush before knee surgery (weeks before Easter) knowing I wasn't going to get around to much shopping.  Luke was with me, so he helped me pick them all out.  It was so funny the one he picked.  He picked the same picture of Jesus we already have in our house.  I kept saying, "But we already have that one. How about you pick one we don't have?"  He refused!  They all loved them. (And months later, are still enjoying them.)  When we hung them up, They all wanted to be able to see Jesus from their bed.  Michael explained, "I like to look at him when I try to sleep." 

Isabelle loved the candy, of course.

I love when I catch an excited face just right. :) Really they all just love an excuse to eat candy for breakfast. 

This face makes me laugh.  I now don't remember what he was so excited about, candy, or the couple of little cars he got, but he was SUPER excited Easter morning.  

He definitely caught on quickly that there was something yummy in the eggs.  He had to open the eggs before he could find another one.  

After our short little Easter stuff, we watched conference and then went to Mike's parent's house for the last session and a delicious Easter dinner and egg hunt from Grandma and Grandpa. Such a wonderful holiday to remember such a wonderful event. 

Conference

My kids always surprise me at conference time.  We've done a bunch of different traditions over the years and this is the one that has stuck.  Snacks for words.  We have bowls of random snacks with words on them. The kids get a snack from the bowl when they hear the word.  We usually switch it up each session. The kids listen really well for 3 sessions, by Sunday afternoon they are all over the place, but I consider that a win! We always have a family question and the kids get so excited when they hear our question answered.  I love seeing them as they are learning how prayers are answered when we are spiritually prepared for conference.

We bust out this little table and the coloring books and everyone pays attention, somewhat.  

Except for the baby....he liked the candy bowls. Haha.  

For Saturday afternoon we had a couple of visitors, my cousins Nadine and Lisa. It was so fun to have them join in some of our fun!  

After, we made home made pizza and colored eggs for Easter. 

Such a fun, spiritually inspiring weekend!

So Blessed!!

Ok, I'm getting back to this, for reals.  Blogging has been difficult.  At the end of the day, I have needed to lay down with my knee up.  Have you ever tried to type laying down with a laptop on your stomach?  Yeah, it's not pleasant.  I had more typos than legible words, so I gave up.  I'm now back to as normal as life will be for a while. I rarely have swelling and can catch back up.....So here we go! I'm starting right where I left off, just 2 MONTHS later.....  

I have to brag about my mom.  Serioulsy, we would not have made the knee surgery situation without her. At the end of the two weeks when she left, I could move around enough to feed people on paper plates and get around on one crutch really well.  She left my house clean, with no laundry, a few meals in the freezer, pantry and fridge full, I could just focus on survival mode when she left.  

Her very last night here we celebrated.  I GOT OUT OF THE HOUSE! We went and saw Cinderella in the theater.  This is the first time I have ever taken a kid to the movies.  It was a really fun girls night. And I really enjoyed the movie.  Isabelle said at the end, "Mom, that movie was beautiful!"  What a fun night together. 

While I was laid up, my mom was fantastic with the kids!  She took them to the park a couple times and just played with them (while also completely running my house).  

She did other fun things around the house with them.  Educated them on selfies. Ha!  My kids learned about selfies from their grandma! :) Love it!  

We were so sad to see her go.  I love when my mom comes! There have been plenty of times when I drop my mom off at the airport (with moves and having babies) and cry the whole way home saying, "How am I going to do this alone?!"  But this time, I felt confident that we were going to make it.  (And sure enough we did.)  Thanks again, Mom!!!!  You're THE BEST!!!!!!

Visitors

On St. Patty's day, we had some special visitors!  My mom's parents live in Cache Valley.  We invited them down to lunch for a visit, since I couldn't go anywhere.  They came down in the morning and spent most of the afternoon here.  It was awesome!   I love that my kids are getting to know them better.  I've gotten to see them much more often now that I live close. They are so patient and fun loving with my crazy boys!  Grandpa brought lots of old photos of his life.  We went through them all and I learned lots of new things about him.  He was an adorable little boy that loved his dogs and a good strong LDS youth. I found all his stories and pictures fascinating! 

When I was in college, before I got married, I would visit their house for a weekend here or there.  I called it my cabin in the mountains. It was so nice to get away and feel the love of family.  (I also always took my laundry. haha.)  I love them so much and have so many happy happy memories with them.  I'm so happy I get to keep creating good memories with them and my kids are getting to know my wonderful grandparents too. 

Knee Surgery

So back in January, I tore my ACL.  After finding out all my options, we opted for surgically fixing it, which in my case was actually taking a less used tendon in my hamstring and making a new ACL. Isn't modern medicine amazing?!  Not to mention our bodies and how they heal and adapt.  After asking around, I found out it would be ideal if I could have some live in help.  So my mom came to my rescue!  You are never too old to need your mom.  She came out for almost 2 weeks! We could NOT have done this without her. Mike and all my kids have been super helpful, but Mike is gone most of the time, and kids can only do so much for themselves. 

The surgery went well and I had also torn my meniscus and there was something else, but I was pretty drugged up when they told me. Ha. I was expecting much more pain.  I was only on the prescription stuff for a day or two.  And I'm able to walk on it pretty well. I have been recovering with as much down time as I can make myself do.  My mom and a really fun project (future post) made this much easier.  

I sat in my bed for a week on this machine that keeps my knee elevated and moving and an ice water knee brace thing that is AMAZING. I could get up and move around a little, but as soon as I did swelling went crazy. That's really the only issue I've had is keeping swelling down.  It's important.  But other than that my range of motion is good, walking is good (with crutches), I'm sleeping great (thanks to everyone else getting up with kids at night), seeing great improvements every day, and feeling good.

We had a permanent bed party for a while. I'm really glad we upgraded to a king recently! 

I'm hoping the kids remember this part of our experience.  We've had lots of reading time and snuggling in mom's bed.  Unfortunately that's about all I've done with them, so I'm hoping they remember this and not me being unfun.  Spencer loves to toddler around my bed and play peek a boo at my bedroom door.  It's adorable.

I tried staying in my bed, but after a few days, I ventured downstairs and stayed on the couch during the day.  It was SO nice to be part of things, but I wasn't as good at staying still and swelling was worse. 

My view. :) 

I'm grateful my mom is so willing and awesome!  So grateful for modern medicine to give me a fully functioning knee again (eventually)! 

Kid Imaginations

The kids love to use our patio chairs for an imaginary train, airplane, car, and all sorts of other things.  When Isabelle is around, she is so good at creating and imagining that keeps the boys entertained forever.  When she's gone, they just don't last as long.  We love our Saturdays with "the entertainer" all day. :) 

Dr. Seuss

Isabelle's first grade did a cute little Dr. Seuss program for Dr. Seuss Bday.  It was cute.  They opened with a song in Chinese by Isabelle's class. It was packed.  I thought I'd be able to see....but this was my view...

I couldn't see a thing....except these cute boys

And then someone moved their head just so and I saw my cute little girl and took a horrible picture. :)

From what I heard it was good. Haha.  

Her Chinese teacher, Ms. Wu.