We had an excellent conference weekend.  You might wonder how this is possible when we have four very young children.  Well, we locked Adalie and Jackson in the playroom. At least it wasn't the closet under the stairs.  I must add that all we heard from downstairs were constant giggles.  Logan, Evelyn, and I played conference bingo for all of the sessions. I was very impressed with her ability to listen for so long and to pay attention to the words enough to pose as a competitive threat to Logan and me.  The skittles and m&m's didn't last through the four sessions, so we decided to use the plethora of altoid mints that we bought this weekend. This brings me to the next activity this week...

This week Logan has been getting his fishing gear set up. He created the perfect mini tackle box for any occasion.  It even passed for being great for a backpacking trip.  He bought mini altoid tins and a large altoid tin specifically for storing different kinds of bait. The altoids went to great use as bingo markers.

Logan has been working in his shop like a demon this week.  He created space to hang all of our yard equipment, he brought his workbench and miter saw out, he organized his tools, and he hung his hangboard about fifteen feet high so that he had to begin his workout by mantling up to it.  He also has been working to create our garden masterpiece.  We have a space behind the shop that is about 12' by 25' that we are using to create a little garden sanctuary.  He set up a fence (first things first so that this little garden is not ruined by fun loving hands), dug out the space, and created a path out of river rocks.

I am excited to get out there and work with him.  The weather wasn't cooperative, but I am sure we will have many future weekends with kids running around in the yard while we get dirty!  We have many plans for our backyard this summer.  Let the fun begin! 

That pretty much sums up our week.  I have a few minutes, so if you are interested you may read on to hear some cute stories about what each of our kids are up to.

Evelyn
Logan and I take turns reading The Magic Tree House book series to Evelyn.  These are perfect books to read aloud!  The books are also enticing Logan and me to take trips to places like Africa and the South American rain forest.  Every week I have a day that is just set aside as a mommy day.  I spend time with each of the kids individually, and we spend time all together.  We have no other plans on this day.  Anyway. This week we built a time machine out of the box for our lawn mower.  We had a great time and have since visited many of the Magic Tree House destinations.

Evelyn and I are both planners.  Every morning when we are eating breakfast she will look up at me and ask, "What's the plan Mom."  Then, I will proceed to outline the plan from that point on until Papa comes home (I am a planner and I generally have one. :)  If I shortchange her and don't tell her the whole day she will say, "No Mom, I mean the whole plan!"  I also like this because it makes me think about the day and figure out what outing we will do, when I will take time with the kids, and when they will play on their own.  These things together make for a well balanced day.  This is also helpful because often I will include cleaning together before we do a fun activity.  I think the kids clean better when they know ahead of time that they will be cleaning.  I also think it is helpful to have something fun planned afterwards.

Adalie
Adalie can melt my heart in a second, or she can threaten me with early gray hairs!  I have been having a difficult time getting Adalie and Jackson to actually nap now that they are in toddler beds.  On Monday I put them into bed and explained that it was time to go to sleep and not time to play.  We talked about it for a while and Adalie had the perfect face of innocence as she politely agreed that she would not get up to play.  I shut the door and didn't even take a step before I heard her cheery little voice exclaim, "Let's Play!" 

Adalie is my cuddler.  She will cuddle for hours if you let her!  Sometimes she brings me her blanket and asks to lay on my shoulder.  She also loves to be rocked while you sing Rock a Bye Baby (who came up with that horrible song???).  Adalie has decided that she can read.  She will open a book and start turning the pages while she sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. 

Jackson
On Tuesday I was sitting on the couch feeding Maren while the kids were all running around playing together.  Jackson kept running over to me and saying, "kiss," then giving me a quick kiss before running off like a wild man to his next new adventure.  What a sweet kid!  He will also randomly walk up to Maren and rub her head, or bend down and give her a kiss.

Jackson is by far the most interested in his little sister.  He constantly wants to hold her, kiss her, rub her head, and take care of her.  I love watching the relationships form between all of my kids.  What a joy.

Jack can also be the grumpiest one.  I can definitely tell if he hasn't had enough milk.  I swear this boy runs off of milk!  He can out drink (and out eat) Evelyn and Adalie.  I don't know where he puts all of the food and all of the milk!  He is generally the last one at the table and he eats more than the other two combined (and all three are good eaters!). 

Maren
Maren fits right in with our family.  She is such a sweet tempered little girl!  She is very content and she is giving us more and more of her sweet smiles, and she is quite the little talker lately.

Maren looks just like Evelyn did at this age!  I also think that they will have the same color hair.  Maren has many of Evelyn's features, but her chin looks just like Adalie's.  Also, when she sleeps she looks just like Jackson did at her age.  Crazy.  She seems to be a good mix of all three of them.  This is a good thing since the three of them don't even look like siblings!

Maren is addicted to the sound of rain. We have a white noise maker with 8 different sounds, but rain is the only one that she will accept.  The other day I was trying to put her to sleep without it.  I held her, I swadled her, I gave her a paci, and I did everything else I could think of.  I finally gave up and turned on the rain maker.  She stopped crying immediately, yawned, and closed her eyes (this took about 20 seconds).  She was asleep in less than a minute.

All of the kids
Adalie and Jackson have been tornado terrors this week!  In two days they have emptied my sewing stuff, strewn my ribbons around the house, tried on my mascara, gotten into Logan's fishing box, played in the sink in the bathroom numerous times, written in crayon on the windows, written in crayon on the table (a seperate time), spread frozen corn and peas across the upstairs, spread handsoap in her hair twice (Adalie), poured cereal on the table, spread water all over the kitchen, and emptied their dresser drawers numerous times.  Those are the incidents that I can remember.  Remember- all this in TWO DAYS. Sometimes I want to admit myself into a mental institution.

I have been wondering about who would go on the potty first.  About three weeks ago Adalie went in and went potty!  We had a little potty celebration for her and Jackson decided he wanted to try. Not to be oudone by his sister, he sat down and went potty! I can definitely take advantage of this sibling competition.

Evelyn, Adalie, and Jackson are known by people in nursery and people in playgroup as the 'book kids.'  All three of them are magnetically drawn to books and will sit in a little huddle together around a pile of books for a long time.  The weather has finally been nice enough to play outside.  I noticed it was particularly quiet out there so I peeked out the window to check it out.  All three kids were sitting on the firepit hearth reading books!  I am pretty proud of them.

Evelyn, Jack and Addy are very good at taking care of Maren.  Sometimes I will come to get her when she is crying only to find that the three kids are huddled around her with her rain machine and her pacifier.  I have all three kids cover her with his/her special blanket (the ones that they can't sleep without).  I love my kids!

Wow. I kind of rambled on for a long time. I am impressed if you made it this far and didn't just skip to the pictures. All that reading and you only get two pictures. Here they are:

 The first of many...

Evelyn really wanted me to take a picture of her and her sister.

It was the first week of Spring and I am loving it! I didn't get this post up yesterday because we were busy walking to the park and having a BBQ picnic- I'd say it was worth it! Let the season of fun begin!

This week was our Evelyn week. We FINALLY decided to celebrate her birthday (2-19) with a party for her and her friends. We had one planned for the actual week of her birthday, but then Maren was born, and then my parents were here, and then Rachel's mom was here.... Well, the big day finally came, and what a day it was!

Rachel went all out for this. The theme was farytales, and she had it all figured out, from the decorations to the games to the cake. Evelyn had five of her good friends over and they started out by making crowns which were labled with their fairytale name (Sir Jack, Lady Evelyn, etc.) This was a huge improvement over silly party hats and helped to set the stage for everything else. It was a good party and everybody had fun.

One of the funny/tragic moments of the party happened with the pinata. After the kids poked around for a while it became obvious that we were going to be there all day if things continued as they were. That's when I stepped up to bat. Well, I must have overestimated the strength of our little pinata (as well as the kids hitting it), because one good solid wack totally obliterated it. Like, seriously, there was nothing left of that poor pinata. Also, the blow was hard enough that it split open most of the boxes of Nerds candies that were inside of it, so when it broke there was a litteral explosion of Nerds. It was cool. The kids went running and started picking up candy like their lives depended on it (there were other things besides Nerds).

Except for Jack. Jack wanted the Nerds. So he found a Nerds box and slowly started picking the little candies off the floor, one by one. It took him a while, but finally he had filled up most of his box. He was obvioiusly very proud of his accomplishment and very happy to have a whole box of Nerds to himself. He ran over to Rachel to show her, saying "Look, look." Just when Rachel looked, however, tragedy struck. The bottom fell out of the box and all the candies went rolling accross the floor. He was crestfallen...but only for a minute. Thankfully, Jackson is only 2 and has a short attention span. Rachel acted quickly by pointing out some Hershey's Kisses for him to go after. I think the Nerds were totally forgotten by the time he was about half way to the Kisses. We swept up the Nerds, and everyone was happy.

...Including a very chocolate-covered Jackson.

Another funny moment during the party was during the game "pin the fire on the dragon." (Obviously a spin-off of the donkey game, but more fairy-tailish). Well, when it was Evelyn's turn, she removed her blindfold only to see that she had put the fire right on top of the dragon's head. She suddenly became very distressed and started saying "Get it off! Get it off! It is going to burn the nice dragon!" Rachel and I were too busy laughing to do much about the unfortunate dragon, so Evelyn decided to take action and remove the offending flame herself. Whew! Disaster averted...barely.

After all of Evelyn's friends went home we hurried and cleaned everything up and got ready for the next party that we were to have... that night! We had invited some friends and a couple of Japanese exchange students over for a BBQ and camp-fire in our back yard. This was also a lot of fun and I think everyone had a good time. We did steaks on the grill and roasted hot dogs and s'mores over the fire. One of the big highlights was the makeshift shooting range I had set up in the shop for use with my air pistols. I know- it sound a little adolescent. Well- we had teenagers there, as well as Japanese students who had never been allowed to even touch anything resembling a real weapon (by law), and it became the feature of the night. After it got dark we sat around the fire for a long time until they had to go. It was a success, and I think it was only the first of many, many backyard gatherings we will have this summer.

Here's Evelyn, ready for the big event!

Evelyn and Rachel spent a long time getting ready for this party. Here, Evelyn proudly displays the ill-fated pinata that she decorated.

Our house was filled with royalty.

The cake. Evelyn and Rachel had fun decorating this. I think it was very impressive.

Rachel made little booklets of "The Paper Bag Princess" to include with each of the kid's party-favor bags.

Lady Evelyn

Lady Adalie.

Me and Maren, before we whacked the snot out of Evelyn's pinata.

The back-yard campfire party.

It's been another good week for us, which is saying something since this was the first week since Maren was born that we didn't have family staying with us the whole time. I know, it's crazy. Maren is over 5 weeks old, and we are just barely weaning ourselves off the constant help from others. We have been spoiled.

So, how did we do? Well, thanks to Rachel's Super-Jedi-Knight-Power-Rangers-Xena-Warrior-Princess-Mothering Skills, we did Great! Really, there isn't a whole lot more to say. Life is fun. We are just living it and loving it. We love the spring time. My job is going better than anybody ever could have hoped it would. Rachel is able to get out of the house frequently to be social and stuff. We have really good kids who *mostly* listen to what we say. Our cars still run (knock on wood). Oh- and our microwave finally got fixed.

We're happy.

...And we now know once and for all how reliant we are on the microwave.

Our activity of the week was going to the annual Sportsman's Expo in Spokane! This was cool. It was this giant gathering of red necks who were all decked out in camoflauge talking about guns and antlers and stuff. There was constant bugling and quacking from the vendors selling their game calls. There were live bears. There were lots of booths with hunting and fishing videos showing. There were demonstrations. There were men (and women) who still smelled like the animals they hunted (you know what that means, right?). This was an awesome place, and there were litterally hundreds upon hundreds of people who showed up for the event. Matt, you should have been there.

And then there was us, with our Cadillac of a stroller which comfortably seats all four of our children, slowly making our way through it all. Man, it was great! The best part was listening to people comment about us in hushed voices that weren't quite hushed enough. Some people, however, don't even try to be discrete. One woman pointed her finger right at us, and bellowed in a loud voice "Look! They have four of those things!  We have six, but we have four adults." By "those things" I'm not sure if she was referring to us, our children, or our stroller, but either way I love this!

I've said it before, and I'll say it over and over again...I love my life!

Here's Rachel. The kids thought this wall was the coolest thing.

Here's me and Addy looking at the live bears.

The other day Rachel was looking in on the kids while they were playing on the top bunk of Evelyn's bed. Suddenly, out of nowhere and without warning, Jackson grabbed hold of Addy's head with both hands in a vice-like grip. It looked like he was going to hurtle her over the edge of the bed, sending her face-first into ground a good 5 feet below. Addy looked terrified. Rachel was about to save the day by diving into the room for a hero-style rescue when she saw Jackson make his move. He bent down with his face, gently kissed the top of Addy's head, and sweetly said "there you go" before letting her go. They then resumed playing as normal.

I love our kids.

As far as our activities for the week go, I couldn't really tell you. This week has been a marathon for me with work, so I really wasn't home all that much. Actually, I worked the same amount as I normally do. The reason it seemed long was because we had Study Club over the weekend. Let me just say, I love study club! These weekends get me so pumped up about my job. The stuff we do during these weekends is the reason I got into dentistry in the first place, and it is just downright COOL.

But...It also means I didn't get to spend a lot of time at home. As far as I know, Rachel is starting to get out more regularly now. Grandma Almond is still here and it has been nice having her to help and provide good company for Rach and the kids- especially on a week when I was pretty much absent. It is also looking like Spring is here to stay in Northern Idaho, and we have enjoyed some beautiful days lately. The kids are having fun discovering the joys of a backyard, and Rachel is having fun discovering the joys of a fence.

We live a good life.

 Here's some of the outside play we have had. It has been beautiful! Addy hasn't seemed to have this figured out yet though-- I think she will still put her snow clothes on to go outside even when it is summer time.

 Grandma Almond gave this chalk board to Evelyn for her birthday. As a part of the gift, they decorated the edges with flowers and jewels and stuff.


Also, this week I put the climbing wall up. Our kids love it! Evelyn has become quite the pro.

Okay, okay, I know I have been a slacker lately. Thankfully, Rachel did our last post and put up a ton of pictures. Suffice it to say that we are doing very well. Maren is working her way into our family and has, so far, managed to survive the affections of our three other children (if only barely). When it comes to taking care of her, Jackson is by far the most interested of the three and he does a very good job of cuddling and soothing her. This is a good thing since he ensures ample opportunity by "pointing out" (aka: gouging) her eyes, nose, tongue, and belly. We have had to step in and rescue our "Little M" on multiple occasions. Once, while I was reading a book, I looked up to see Addy teaching her how to wrestle. Unfortunately, our Addy could probably stand her ground against a grizley bear in a fight, so when it comes to a newborn I'm afraid that Maren stood no chance. Addy was just setting up for a WWF style body slam when I steped in with some timely intervention.

But despite the loving attention from her siblings, Maren remains a pretty mellow baby. In that respect, she reminds me of Evelyn when she was little (Addy and Jack, on the other hand, were more like two little monsters who had taken too much caffeine). Marin is doing crazy well sleeping at night, allowing Rachel to get more sleep than any of our other kids did at this point.

We have also enjoyed having the pleasant company and help from Wendy (Grandma Almond) this past week. It has been fun having her around, and the kids hardly even noticed when Rachel and I escaped a couple of times to go on some short "mini-dates" (for now, Marin's eating schedule prevents us from getting out for very long). Having Grandma around has also helped Rachel to get out of the house a lot more, allowing her to resume a little bit of her active lifestyle after the brief hiatus imposed by Maren's birth.

As for me, I have to say that things don't really seem to have changed much. This is probably because I go to work during the day, and we have had constant visitors at night time and on the weekends ever since Maren was born. With so much other activity going on, it is hard to guage the amount of change, if any, that Maren is having on my day-to-day. I do want to put a little plug in here about my work- I am loving it and I am doing an awesome job (if I do say so myself). Enough said.

One more thing- I like tax returns!

Here are some pictures:

First, the many faces of Maren.

The Dr. Suess Crew! 

Grandma painted Addy's face

Happy Birthday sweet Evelyn!  My sweet little girl is now four years old!  We had a little family birthday party for her yesterday (her birthday).  We had the customary cake, ice cream, and presents.  The big hits of the night were her sturdy magnetic paper dolls frorm Grandma and Grandpa, and her french message board and curtains that I made for her.  She has wanted to make her room fancy like Fancy Nancy, and this is the beginning of the transformation.  Pictures to come soon...

Evelyn is one of the sweetest and most thoughtful 4 year olds that I know!  She always makes sure to share everything with Adalie and Jackson.  If they are not awake she will save some of her treats to give to them as soon as they wake up.  She is always ready with a helping hand and she loves to 'be like Jesus.'  She has learned on her own the joy it brings when she is thoughtful and she helps others.  The other day she came into the kitchen bouncing up and down excited to tell me that she felt very good and warm inside.  I asked her why, and she responded that it was because she was thoughtful and helped Jack first.  She is a joy to have around and she is absolutely in love with Adalie and Jane stories.  Adalie and Jane are best friends who fight monsters such as the candy monster, sock monster, spit up monster, and the bat monster (the list is endless!).  Evelyn loves hearing these stories and she generally gets at least one a day from either Logan or me.  I love seeing Evelyn's imagination growing.  She loves books and anything to do with princesses.  I am proud of our little girl and I can't believe she is growing up so fast!

One sad part of Maren's early arrival is that we had to postpone Evelyn's friend birthday party.  It was planned for Monday afternoon, but we will have to reschedule it for a few weeks down the road. With this pregnancy I learned that the last minute 'to-do' list should be completed the week before delivery!

Here is Maren's Story:

Okay, okay, okay.  I learned my lesson.  Maybe it is a good idea to pack a hospital bag a few weeks before your due date. Maybe not a bag, but at least a list of things that it would be good to throw in the car before leaving.  I did not pack a bag, and I didn't feel like I really needed to.  The hospital provides everything for you- from your clothes (lovely hospital gowns), to diapers for the new baby, to other little hygene necessities for after the baby is delivered.  I also knew that Logan would be going home every day to be with the other kids and he could get anything that I needed.  I knew that we would leave the hospital with a change of clothes for me, clothes for Maren, and her car seat.  Nothing else to worry about right?  When my water broke it would have been nice to have planned ahead to bring the camera and the Kindle Fire computer.  I guess that I still will never understand the people that pack a thousand things that never even get used. 

The birth story-

I have always wondered what it would be like to have my water break... I didn't think I would ever have that chance because I will always have a scheduled C-section a few days before my due date.  I was scheduled to have my C-section on Thursday, February 16th, but Maren decided that she was ready to meet us before that day. 

On February 10th I babysat for the neighbors so that they could go on a date.  Logan was at an Elders Quorum activity.  I took advantage of how well the kids play together and I cleaned like a maniac for 2 1/2 hours.  I have been having pretty debilitating back pain for a while now and on this night I felt great!  When Debbie came to pick up Micah she joked that there was no way that Maren was going to make it to the 16th.  Imagine her surprise when I called her an hour later to come over and watch the kids because my water had broken!

At around 10:30 my water broke, but it wasn't what I had expected, and It took me a while to convince myself that it was the real thing.  I have always wondered about having my water break, and I have always been secretly glad that I wouldn't have to labor through the night and have a newborn without having any sleep.  Both of these became a reality for me.

Debbie arrived and we left for the hospital.  It was confirmed that my water had indeed broke and the doctor said we would have a c-section at precisely 7:00 a.m. the next morning.  He also gave the nurses permission to give me an epidural if I was in pain from contractions.  I ended up getting barely 2 hours of sleep that was interrupted every 15 minutes by contractions.  So much for avoiding a sleepless night the night before!

The c-section was the best one so far. They get easier and easier. This is where the camera would have been nice.  The nurses were very sweet and they took a few pictures of Maren after she was born.  These pictures are on our previous post and they look nothing like our little girl!  I don't even think I would recognize her if I was shown these pictures now!

Recovery from the c-section has also been much easier aside from the fact that I have three young children and I am not supposed to lift anything heavier than Maren! This has worked pretty well so far with three extra people around to help me. 

Nancy flew up early to help us with the kids.  She arrived on Monday and Greg and Allison arrived on Wednesday (as originally planned).  They have been SO much help!  The kids have barely noticed that I have been MIA because they have Grandma, Grandpa and Allison to play with. 

Maren is a wonderful and sweet little girl!  I have been praying for a while now to be blessed with a baby who does not spit up.  I wondered if such a baby even exists judging from my experience with my previous three.  I have found my answer.  Maren is 9 days old and has only spit more than a teaspoon once in her short life.  Thank you Maren!  I have never experienced life with a newborn without smelling like spit from sunup to sundown.

Maren has settled very well into our family life.  She is a very sweet, quiet baby.  She eats a LOT, sleeps a LOT, and is calm and bright eyed when she is awake.  She has a predictable hour of fussiness in the evening, but other than that is happy. 

Evelyn, Adalie and Jackson are all very loving and sweet with Maren.  I am a very lucky mom.  It is crazy to think that I have FOUR kids!  Four sounds like a much bigger number than three.  It will take some time to get used to, but things are going great so far! 

Bring on the pictures!

 Evelyn, the birthday plate, and that crazy hair!

 Present time!

 Jack loves giving Maren kisses! 

 Oh that hair!

 New bunk beds!  Thanks Jill and Conrad!

 Skyping

 Allison did a great job with Evelyn and Adalie's hair!  I have actually done it a few times since.  Up until this point they have not kept hairstyles in and it was a waste of time to try.  Thanks for teaching them Al!

 I love my nursing cover, but it has been difficult to get Maren set up while still being modest.  Logan invented a new way to hold the cover up!  It worked great.  What you can't see is the large heart balloon attatched to the top and the wrench hanging off the back as a counterbalance.

 The (mostly) hooded people before their walk around the block

 Our FOUR cute kids!

 At the children's museum with Grandma, Grandpa, Allison, and Papa

 More cute hair!  They loved the matching bows.

Bye for now