Our First Born

He just turned 7.  I'm a little late on the post, but the birthday came and went regardless of the blog or my desire that time could freeze for just a little while.  He's 7, my little baby - who is neither little, nor a baby.  2nd grade here we come.  School starts on Thursday.  Some days it can't come soon enough.  Then moments, like right now, I want to keep him home with me forever, safe, where I can always see him.

Kenzie turns 5!!!

Birthday month is in full swing here at our house.  Kenzie turned 5 today.  Oh boy!  She's so delightful to be around, I'm going to miss her so much once school starts.  I'm not sure how I'll survive without her, she's my little shopper, my right hand girl.  It was just her and I for such a long time -  now I guess it's me and Andy.  Preschool starts the week after Dillon starts and it's only half day, so I'll still have a little time with her :)

WOW! My Baby is ONE!

I've been so reminiscent lately.  I feel like the last year has been an absolute blurr - a beautiful blurr :)  Andy is ONE today (okay, so I started this post on his birthday and then he turned off the computer and now I'm back - a few weeks later :)  ).  Crazy to think he's already been on this Earth for a whole year.  He fits so well into our family.  We are all completely nuts over him.  He is doted over CONSTANTLY.  He has got to be the most adored baby I've ever met.  What did we used to do before he came along?  Well - here's one year of Anderson...

I've Been Missing Y'all

The highlights.  Bug Man hired employee #2 - YIPEEEEEE!  This enables him to work from home.  Home - a l l t h e t i m e, in case you've noticed the change from computer addiction to complete disappearance - this is the reason.  He sits at the computer -previously MY computer working...  It is really great having him home - but the novelty is wearing off.  I spaz out if the kids are being too loud by our bedroom door, in case he's on the phone with a customer.  We keep thinking about an office but we just aren't there yet.  All in good time, I suppose.

On the other hand... it's been extra helpful lately as we have moved.  With him home we were able to move in a few days and be totally done with it!  Then during Andy's naps I would go to the old place (around the corner) and clean, it hasn't been that clean in 3 1/2 years :)  How peaceful to clean all by yourself. 

Our new place - we've moved into our friends house.  They've been temporarily reassigned to work in Australia and heck yes! we'll leave our nasty mold infested, neighborhood children infested apartment to live in your happy, clean, little house!!!  It's short term, fingers crossed, we'll be buying a house in March!!!!  :)  Maybe I shouldn't be so excited about that - it means we won't be moving home anytime soon... oh ya, that and our company wouldn't survive back home... dang it.

Lets see, for the record we need some children updates.  Andy is still little Mr. Charming.  Absolutely the most adorable, happy, perfect baby any of us have ever seen.  We all just sit around watching him be cute :)  He stands pretty well.  He's taken 2 steps.  I keep pretending he's still my little tiny baby, but he's almost 1.  Man, he's almost ONE!  Weird.  He's got a mouthful of teeth but still loves nursing and hasn't bitten me since he's had them so I guess we'll keep going!  Oh, Andy LOVES food.  It doesn't really matter what food, he's not very picky, just food.  He won't turn anything down - the only way to tell if he's full is he spits it out after he eats it :)  Usually when he's hungry he say mum mum mum mum mum until the food cometh.  He also says uh-oh, bye bye, Dad and I'm pretty sure he said truck the other day.  He really likes trucks.  There was a firetruck at church today and he was mesmerized. 

I couldn't help myself, this picture was just too cute.  I love baby bums!

Little Miss Mack.  My little dancing song bird.  A few weeks back she was hanging out with a 9 year old girl who was rather mouthy, her favorite thing to say was Really?!?!?  (insert majorly sarcastic tone) she said it about every other word.  Kenzie has added it - among other things (clarify - not naughty things, just slightly ruder than I would prefer her to speak) - to her vocabulary.  At first it was kind of funny and cute.  Not any more...  She is girly to the core of her soul, the girliest girl I know.  However, not opposed in the least to dirt, mud, and playing transformers with her brother:)  She's headed to preschool in the fall and I don't know what I'm going to do without her.  Sometimes I wonder if us deciding to hold her back was 100% for her.  I'm going to go with 98% for her :)  I'm just not ready for her to grow up so fast.  Dillon hit school and all of a sudden he was a big kid, learning things that I hadn't taught him and being all smart.  Can we just go back to them being babies?  Can't there be a temporary button we push to snuggle a sweet little 1 year old for just a few minutes, maybe let them fall asleep in my arms?  Nope.  No button, we just convince ourselves it's time for another baby :)

Dillon was taking a nap on Andy during a car ride to G-ma's, Andy woke up and proceeded to stick his fingers in D's eyes, nose & mouth, all the while D slept on :)

Dillon is going to be in SECOND GRADE!!!!  I remember second grade.  What kind of mom will he remember?  Oh boy.  He's so big.  He's huge.  That's what we want for our kids, right?  That they grow up?  Please make time freeze!  Back to Dillon.  He's an excellent reader, and a ... creative speller :).  He's a fabulous babysitter, now that he's home, I don't have to wait to shower until Andy's asleep and Kenzie's stuck in front to the tv.  This move has been pretty hard on the kids, him especially.  He had tons of friends - granted, they were NOT good friends, but they were boys to goof off with and have fun.  The kids have started swimming lessons and have been doing really well.  Dillon's goal is to stop plugging his nose :)  He loves 4-square, I think he wants to go back to school just because of it!  His favorite summer time activity so far has got to be driving his sister nuts.  They used to get a long so well.  I thought I got lucky with the awesome kids that rarely ever fight - then school got out :)  I can't complain though, I still have the awesome kids, just added the uh-uh, nuh-uh - repeat a zillion times.

Overall, pretty sure life couldn't get any better - oh wait, it's going to, this week :) 

MY DAD & MOM ARE COMING TO SEE US!!!!!

This Momma's girl stoked, beyond stoked.  They are nuts though, almost certifiable but I love 'em so gosh darn much and they don't mind so I don't mind :)  They live in southern Texas.  They are driving to Provo UT, then to Saskatoon Saskatchewan (Canada), then Spokane WA, then to me & mine, then Boise ID, then Provo UT, then back home.  All in all 6,051 miles, because they love us (us being their posterity and progenitors.)  Oh, allow me to mention another fun tidbit.  They are bringing their dog, Bowser.  And in Provo they picked up my twin 10 year old nephews.  They love me :) (and a few others but we don't need to focus on them:)

Cinnamon Roll Centers and Nachos - A Post for My Dad.

 

My Dad makes the best nachos.  As a kid I was pretty sure that he made those big plates of nachos so delicious so I would come share with him.  He had some magic trick.  I don't know what it was but I can't make nachos as good tasting as he did - maybe things taste better when you are stealing/sneaking/sharing???  We'd eat our crackers and cookies and cake and toast and brownies and muffins and cinnamon rolls and doughnuts in front of him and he couldn't have any, of course because he has celiac (it was only him when we were kids, now 3/5 have been struck).  We'd watch him eat his sponge bread and rice cakes with peanut butter 'n jelly and cringe but the second he started making nachos - we converged.  And he let us.  He had to watch us eat things a million times yummier all day long but whatever he had, if we wanted it, he'd share.

I had these thoughts the other day as I was eating a cinnamon roll from my favorite gf bakery - that I don't get to visit very often and they only make cinnamon rolls once a week and they are a little spendy, so I was REALLY excited about my cinnamon roll - I really like cinnamon rolls, can you tell?   So I get to the best part of my roll - the center, where it's ooey gooey deliciousness is simply heavenly - and they converged. I thought of my Dad and his nachos and cut off a big slab for each kiddo - I know they have no idea how much I love them and what sacrifice it is to be a parent (not just cinnamon roll centers :)  ) but I'm hoping someday they will look back and see that Mom shared her cinnamon roll and they will share with their little convergers too.

What my Mother Taught Me.

We were talking in Relief Society today about what our mothers had taught us.  I've lost my voice so I didn't raise my hand so can I blog about it instead?  

I'm guessing I was crying here... but my Mother looks so lovely.  Please excuse the nudity... 

My Mom's attempt to teach me to sew.  She took me to the fabric store and let me choose a pattern.  Then she stayed up all hours of the night to finish it.  I LOVED that dress.  I was kind of an Anne Of Green Gables kid and it had PUFFED sleeves :)

You know the usual - she TRIED to teach me how to sew...  hemhem... She TRIED to teach me how to cook & clean...  cough, cough.  Everything else she taught by her own actions. 
How to be gentle. 
How to be graceful.
How to be a lady.
How to be kind. 
How to be a mother.
How to be a wife.
How to have it all when there isn't a single extra penny in the bank. 
My mother is beautiful, she is an angel, she is the classiest of classy.  She is the voice in my head, coaching me through rocky terrain. 
She taught me that every meal is better when you make it from scratch and sit together at the table.
She taught me to have good posture. 
And to not go in public looking like a lazy scrub. 
She taught me to treat my husband like a King. 
She taught me R.E.S.P.E.C.T. 
She taught me that chocolate chip cookies are good, but they are way better as bars with icing on top.
She taught me to feed my kids the healthiest things I can find and to keep a bag of chocolate chips hidden where they won't find them. 
She taught me to work hard, but not if there is a baby that needs to be rocked or tear stained faces to kiss. 
It always tastes better if it came from your garden and your sweat. 
She taught me the sanctity and bliss of marriage. 
And how to work together when marriage and bliss aren't two words you currently feel like putting into the same sentence.
She taught me that beauty is only skin deep.
She taught me to be modest. 
She taught me to enjoy life and be happy with what I have.
She taught me to make up songs and sing them to my children. 
She taught me to pray and helped me plant the first baby seeds in my testimony.
She taught me about the temple and how to find the kind of man that also loves the temple and understands what Eternity really means to a marriage. 
I wonder what Kenzie will have to say about me in 20 years, I keep wondering if I'll match up! :)

She is amazing. 

Thank you Mom.

Cabbage Hooters, for Current & Future Nursers...

 I know I've been on about cabbage on facebook etc for awhile now but I thought I ought to extoll it's healing properties on this here official blog o' mine.  This is a post for females, males have no interest here, so scoot scoot.

 

Cabbage has many different uses and recently (within the last 8 months of nursing) I have discovered only a few of them - for which, my little son and I have been very thankful.  I only wish I had discovered this gem of knowledge earlier in my life.  So to you I pass this nugget.  Cabbage has very anti-inflammatory properties and is useful when suffering from every sort of nursing pain.  Cabbage on the 'coconuts' is helpful with engorgement, clogged ducts, and mastitis - all three I have tested.  I have never purchased so much cabbage in my whole life, neither has Brandon - especially after dark...  I've never said the word 'cabbage' so many times, possible more times than a cabbage farmer :)  I've been in the midst of the most miserable case of mastitis of all time - fever, chills, body aches, pain, redness and misery - only to be completely cured after a few hours with my leafy friend. 

I've read that over use of cabbage can lessen your milk supply, not so with me but if you ever try it, proceed with caution.

I thought this picture was particularly appropriate as all the 'issues' with my cabbage loving knockers have been a result of the over abundance of baby juice.  :)

 (this is a fabulous job of copy & paste by yours truly from Wiki)  

In European folk medicine, cabbage leaves are used to treat acute inflammation. A paste of raw cabbage may be placed in a cabbage leaf and wrapped around the affected area to reduce discomfort. Some claim it is effective in relieving painfully engorged breasts in breastfeeding women. 

(for me I say 'the heck with the paste and slap one of those puppies right on the skin')

The Triplets!!!

I know, I know this post is a few weeks late but - better late than never?

Kenzie says they look like Mario & Luigi in this picture :)

My sister's babies were born on March 25th.  Basically healthy and almost full term - most women can barely go all 40 weeks with one baby and my sister went almost 35 weeks with 3!!!  They are Quinn Rebecca, Wilson August, and James Gordon.  I think I'll call them Queeny, WAM (can't take credit for this one, it was Sher's sister inlaw that came up with the name), and Jamie.

Jaime came home first on Friday the 8th, WAM came home Monday the 11th and Queeny will be in the hospital until she masters sucking and breathing.  Apparently Miss Quinn's face was being sat on by her brother in the womb so she never practiced breathing - or something like that?  Sounds about right - being sat on by a brother...  poor gal, it started before she even knew what was happening! 

I know it's going to be such hard work, I can't even imagine - but if anyone can do it, it's Sherry.  She's one tough girl and going to get a lot tougher.  5 kids, 3 & under.  Wow.  She's awesome.  Nate's awesome too.

I cannot wait to meet them.  My dad was commenting that it was the first time he's really been able to hold a baby since my little brother 23 years ago.  There's always been someone else (me) who had a baby stealing problems - but not at Sherry's house, there are more than enough babies, so now everyone gets a turn!  I love babies.  Oh man I love babies, I have a kissing problem and they have soft smooshy cheeks.  I'm saving my air miles - technically Bug Man's saving Eco Elite's air miles for me :) 

Just you wait little babies, Aunty Nanny's coming!!!

My Girl

She LOVES clothes.  She has definite favorites.  My kids never hit the stage where they want to pick out their own clothes, not sure why - they seem so opinionated in other ways!  Every now and then - usually Saturdays, I make them choose their own outfit.  This was hers  :)  All of her favorite items.  I like that she has a little bit of mommy style in her because every outfit she chooses has a white shirt underneath - just like me...  She's into skirts lately.  And this is her favorite cupcake shirt. 

A Very Angry Bird-Day

Bug Man's birthday and 2 other guys from the ward all had their 30th b-day within a month of each other so the wives got an idea.  We threw a party.  An Angry Birds party.  It was a blast.  I'm not taking credit for any of those cute cake items, Maggie decorated the cake and Cheryl did the cake pops - I made deviled eggs, we really like deviled eggs and now you know what happens when you get the eggs back - the crazy egg lady steals them and cooks them.  :)

 They had a sling shot to shoot the pinata - that was one tough pinata.  We also had a pinata stick (gotta love Winco - who knew you could buy happiness for $1.88???)  We let the kids all take a whack at it and then the grown ups take a whack at it, and then we pulled the strings and then whacked it some more - it was tough!