Jane didn't want to take a nap today. I didn't want to fight her so I closed the door and told her to read books and have "quiet time" in her room. Well, moms know best, right? She was exhausted and after talking to my sister on the phone (okay for about 45 minutes), I went up there thinking it was awefully quiet, and found her...



Oh, and I finally cut the boys hair. With the pile on my bathroom floor, I could have donated to locks of love!

dreams

do you believe in dreams?
when jane was less than one week old I dreamed i had a new baby boy. we named him tommy. it was really real to me. i think it was a little vision telling me i wasn't done having kids, there was another special someone out there going to join our family some day. for those few minutes in my dream, i loved this little boy.

we don't know what we are having. but 2 nights ago i had another dream that I had a baby boy. this one was more brief, just a dream of a naked baby after birth...definately a boy!

then last night another dream! and another boy. last night was the first wierd one...the labor and delivery was a piece of cake, and then I saw him, and he had a tooth. random, i know! but I was in love with him. (Tom has had to pull a few teeth on newborns...really rare, but it does happen.)

So needless to say, if this baby comes out and is a girl, I will be VERY surprised!
7 weeks to go. 5-6 weeks to go I'm as early as Braden and Jane. Yes, I'm already counting because yes, I am starting to get uncomfortable!

February...so far

A post NOT about my kids. Thus the pictures aren't as cute as normal! :)
I went to upstate, New York for three days to visit my Grandma. I haven't been back to NY for over 3 years, so it was nice to go back to my hometown and even better to visit with my grandma. My cousin, Amy, flew out from LA the same weekend so it was a double treat for me. WE got to remember old times and catch up on life. It was really nice. It was really great to just hang out, make some dinners, desserts, and just spend time together!Amy caught this shot of Grandpa Gerry telling one of his stories. He is a talker! :)

Okay so I look REALLY pregnant in that picture above.

This one is me and my niece Hannah. Isn't she just a doll? She's a few days older than Jane.

We visited the house I grew up in. I knocked on the door b/c I really wanted to see the inside again, but no one was home. Sad for me. Oh, the memories!

I got home from New York Monday evening (after spending 12 hours in airports/on airplanes) and Tom left Tuesday afternoon for his Cat ski trip he's been looking forward to for the last year! He got home and said it was the best vacation he's ever taken!

Above: The CAT you ride up the mountain in. Below: Just one pic of a little jump. It was apparently breathtaking, amazing, the best skiing he's ever done.
Part of the group: There was 11 in the group all together. A few friends from Spokane, a few from dental school. Overall, an amazing group , amazing skiers, and TONS of fun.
I managed to make it through the weekend without him without going completely crazy. I got to deal with sick kids, and a FOUR day weekend. Not fair. Oh well. We're back to normal now, and hopefully I'll be better about taking some pictures, although nothing eventful is going on right now in the dead of winter!

Merry Christmas to all! I didn't take many pictures...more videos. Here are a few I did snap. The boys loved their matching vests from grandma.

Jane LOVED her dollhouse. Played with it all week long!

The little elfs...we had a sleepover right before Christmas!

I have a few pics from New Years in Seattle as well...will have to come later though.

Check out Jane singing...

So the other night at bedtime I was singing this to Jane and all of the sudden she started singing with me. I had no idea she knew the entire song! It cracked me up. Then I started to sing others and when I'd stop she'd fininsh the sentence. The little smarty pants.

She is just my little sweetie that melts my heart daily. The things she says and does...she's so funny! Everything I do she is so grateful. She says "thank you mommy" to me 20 times/day. And if someone is sad, she will just go up and put her little arms around them and say, "it's okay". Like I said, she melts your heart.

Twas the first day of break and all through the house...

Kids were going crazy and NOT quiet like a mouse!
We stayed in our PJ's, took naps, ate neighbors treats.
The kids were bored, not obeying, not too sweet.

So, funny story, kindof:
Friday night, a girl in our ward did a fundraiser with some other girls (to raise money for needy families this Christmas). They sold babysitting tickets and we, of course, bought three, one for each kid. There were about 40 kids there, total. It was organized chaos. But they had a blast!

Well, 24 hours later, the "fun" began. Saturday night, about 6 families children who were at the babysitting night (that's just so far that I've talked to), were up with their kids puking all night long. Sunday, I thought we had escaped it. My kids all felt great and were happy as could be. Then while we were at church, Jane threw up ALL over me. She continued to throw up every hour till about 10:00pm last night. Then, all night long she woke up crying. Her tummy hurt and she was thirsty. I gave her little sips of water throughout the night and finally this morning at 6am after 8 hours of no throwing up, I let her have some crackers and more water. Basically, she slept with me and about 2am Tom went into her bed.

Now I have secluded our family from any others for the next 24 hours to make sure it is OVER. It was so quick spreading I don't dare go anywhere, for fear of spreading it to some other poor soul.

We are all going crazy, ready for dad to get home from work to entertain us, and it's only 3:30 in the afternoon. Hopefully tonight will be uneventful, restful, and then tomorrow we can go play!

One week till Christmas...

Here are my cute school boys on the last day of school before winter break! Janie decided to dress up in her fairy outfit. She is so funny!

Santa visited our ward Christmas party. The boys were thrilled to see him (as you can tell), and Jane wanted NOTHING do do with him, except the candy cane he was giving out. When I tried to put her on his lap, she freaked.

So with one week left, we are finally ready for christmas to come!

The only thing I'm not so ready for is the time at home with my kids. I desperately need some ideas of fun things to do this next week so we don't all get on each others nerves! Any ideas would be appreciated!

Newest Addition

So we got our Christmas present a little early this year...a piano. I've been wanting one for a long time now, and we finally decided to just buckle down and buy one. It is accompanied by our Christmas tree at the moment (had to post a picture of our tree. We cut it down over Thanksgiving in the mountains with Tom's family. Cute, huh?)

The boys have loved playing on the piano, and i'm going to get them started on lessons at the new year. I've really enjoyed getting back into playing again as well! Christmas is a fun time to have fun songs to play!

Oh, and one more exciting thing...Maria set a date for the wedding...March 20th. We are super excited for her. Now let's just pray this baby stays inside of me till we get home from the wedding!

YEAH!!!

My cute sister-in-law Maria got engaged over Thanksgiving break! She is marrying Kirk sometime early next year...probably February, but date's aren't final yet! We are SO happy for them. They are seriously the cutest couple and are just so great for each other! We are super excited to have Kirk in the family. He is currently in his pediatric dental residency in hawaii. Long term plan for Tom and I is to convince them to move out this way and us help him find a job close! If not, no worries...we'll be going to pedo conferences with them forever.

This picture was taken over Labor day at my house. Aren't they so cute!?!

IT'S A...

Healthy little baby! I had my ultrasound today and I got to see the little one moving all around. Healthy, all the parts in their correct places, and pretty cute too! But I'm biased as the mother!

What is the gender? Well, that we will all have to wait until D-Day. That's right. We didn't find out. We have two boys, one little girl, and we'll be thrilled with whatever comes next. We've never been surprised and just thought it would be really fun this time!

Funny though, how much of an opinion everyone has on the subject! I think I have only had one or two people actually say, "oh, that's fun!" Everyone else gives me the, "you are one of those" or "why would you do that" or "just put it in an envelope and give it to me so I can know" (the most popular phrase yet believe it or not)! But the truth is, I don't care what others think. I'm 100% satisfied knowing everything is healthy at this point and really look forward to finding out upon delivery!

Cameron's big day

We have had a CRAZY couple of weeks in our house. Maybe not so much for everyone else but at least for me! It started with Jane's birthday last week, then I hosted book group at my house and fed everyone Cafe Rio salads. Then I prepared for Cameron's birthday (one week later), did some last minute shopping, had a family party with him on the 5th, and then a friends party on the 6th. Let me tell you, 7 eight-year-olds = chaos! At least Cam had a blast!

The next morning we woke up and got ready for a very special day...baptism day. We didn't get to celebrate one baptism, but two!! Cameron's lifelong friend, Kate, was getting baptized the same day. They are 6 weeks apart and have been friends since they were born! Lizzy and I met in dental school when we were both pregnant with these guys! So anyways, we went to Kate's baptism that morning, at 10:00, then went over to their house for lunch. Tom's parents came in about 2pm and we hung out with them until Cameron and Tom had to go to the church to get ready for Cam to get baptized at 5:00pm.

Cameron and Kate right after Kate's baptism.

Just before going to the church with dad and grandpa.

All dressed in white.

Right after the baptism. Can you tell how much my kids LOVE having their picture taken?

Kate came to Cam's baptism too!

After the day was over, we decided to celebrate by taking Jane to a sitter and going out to Red Lobster! Cameron and Kate LOVE shrimp and got the bottomless shrimp. Man, did they put it down! Here they are toasting with their root beers!

What a great weekend! We really had a blast with Grandma, grandpa, and Jonny coming to celebrate with us! But today I'm in my PJ's and am going to stay that way! :)

Halloween Fun!

We had a GREAT Halloween this year! It was just so fun because our kids were so excited about it! We went swimming in the afternoon with the kids at the Kroc center, went to a halloween party at a friends house where we had potluck dinner and the kids did crafts, then we came home and went trick-or-treating. I stayed at home to hand out toothbrushes & a piece of candy to everyone who came by our house, and Tom took the kids out. Jane was hillarious! After every house she would say, "one more house, daddy". She did not want to come back in and would not let anyone hold her candy bag, even when it got heavy. The boys had a blast and could have kept going but it was getting chilly and we bribed them with a movie.

My three amigos!Jane was a unicorn (thanks to my friend). Braden was Indiana Jones and Cameron was Zorro.
During the movie Braden said, "This is the best day ever!"

Oh, and they didn't really care about how much candy they got b/c in our house, the halloween goblin comes and eats their candy anyways. What's that? Well, the boys write a note to the goblin, put their candy out on the front door step before they go to bed, and in the morning, the candy is gone and a prize is there waiting for them. They were so excited about it this year they had NO problems picking 5-10 pieces of their favorite candy to save(after stuffing their faces all night) and putting the rest out. Sure enough, this morning, the boys each had the prize they wanted (thanks to Tom and his late-night Fred Meyer run), and I don't have to deal with candy, wrappers, and more candy messes than I care to deal with post-halloween.

Last year I even had enough candy still left at Christmas to use to stuff their stockings!

Jane's birthday!

We had a birthday party for Jane. She had 7 friends come and we did a "mommy & me" music class. Jane loved it. Bubbles at the party!

Jane was all about the present opening! She was so excited to get some cute "girly" things!

We had a family birthday party tonight with the kids. Jane totally enjoys singing happy birthday to herself!Happy Birthday to my sweet baby girl!

Happy Birthday Grandma!!!