Madtober

This October can officially go down in the books as one of the craziest since Eddie and I were married.  The month started out as any other:

Riding the horse at the grocery store.

Riding the tractor train at the pumpkin patch.

And chalk drawings on the patio.

But then things started to happen.  Things like my two year old breaking his foot in some mysterious accident that only his 4 year old brother happened to witness.

At least he only had to wear a removable boot instead of a cast.  I am definitely grateful for that.

Also, for the past few months, we have been shopping for a new house.  Ours is just getting really tight and it's simply too far from Eddie's work.  We were looking thinking we wouldn't really find anything until spring but then a house that had everything we were looking for, in a price range we could afford, came up so we thought, "what the heck", and went and took a peek.  Well, to make a long story short, the past few weeks have been spent getting our current house ready to sell because we ended up loving and buying that other house.  We will officially be moving in December since we don't want to take Thomas out of school before the semester is over.

This has definitely been an October that we will not soon forget filled with a lot of ups and downs and just sheer exhaustion.  Many thanks to those who have helped us in so many ways because I know that we could not have done it all on our own.  November is looking up.  We now have our home on the market (you know you want to buy it!) and Henry gets his boot off tomorrow so things are kind've beginning to get back to normal - although this whole keeping my house spotless at all times is getting really old, but nothing I can't handle.

If you would like to see pictures of our new house I'd be happy to email the link to you, I just don't want to publish to the world our new address.  ;)

Then you top all of it off with Halloween and you've got a good mix worthy of making anyone crazy!  Due to my lack of time to dedicate to making costumes (getting the house ready to sell - mostly painting), and my strong belief that costumes should be simple and homemade (although I tend to stray from that occasionally when I find a good deal) the boys were good sports with what we put together for them.

Puppy, Mummy & Superman.

One thing I have learned through all of this is that the Lord puts people in our lives for a purpose.  I can be a pretty private person and I'm not one to burden others with my problems or ask for help much but this month I learned that my humbling myself to ask for help not only helps me but it helps those who help me.  Everyone receives the blessings and it's a wonderful thing.  We all need opportunities to serve and if none of us is humble enough to ask for help, then those opportunities become very limited.  I'm going to be more mindful of that in the next few months when we're packing up our house, etc.

Father Time

A few weeks ago Eddie took the two older boys to the fathers/sons campout for our church congregation.  They had a blast!  The boys came back so full on junk food and so covered in dirt I hardly recognized them, but they were also supremely happy and completely exhausted.  A great combination of things.  Here are some pics of the occasion.

While the boys were away, Henry and I had fun hangin' out together.  We played outside and went to the library together, but most importantly, we went on a date to Five Guys (probably my most favorite burger place).

It was a great weekend!

Surprise, surprise...

This is the big week where we tell everybody that we are expecting baby #4 in April!  We wanted to wait until I had my first ultrasound to make sure all looked a-ok with the babe and since the ultrasound was on Friday, here we are.  One thing I can deduce from the ultrasound is that we've got another feisty one on the way!  I wanted to wait a few more weeks to tell people, but as some of you know, the more kids you have, the harder it is to conceal it physically.  I'm already kinda showing and I'd rather have people know that there's a reason that I'm wearing ill-fitting clothes and gaining weight in my mid-region.  One of my friends told me this week that I'm "not hiding anything anymore" so I figured now was as good a time as any.

Eddie and I are thrilled to welcome another sweet babe into our family and contrary to popular belief, we don't really care if it's a boy or a girl.  We would just be happy to have a healthy baby, regardless of the gender (although I have to admit that having a girl would be nice because it would be different - no more fighting over the same toys, etc.).  When we told the boys on Friday night, Henry didn't really know what we were talking about, Jonny immediately started rubbing my belly and saying how excited he was to "have a new baby brudda to hug and to hold", and Thomas, with a huge grin on his face said, "I hope we have a girl!  We would be so lucky to have a sister because we've never had one!"  It was pretty funny and sweet.  I'm glad they all seem to be excited about it.

This pregnancy has been more like a rollercoaster than the others so far.  I'll have good days and I'll have not so good days but overall I can't complain.  I'm not spending any time hugging the toilet or anything, I just end up super exhausted and feeling sick to my stomach all day.  I'm just counting my blessings that at least I can function and still make dinner without throwing up (although some days it's unpleasant to even think about dinner).

So there you have it.  That's the news for this week...  Don't worry, next week will have more pictures! ;)

Fight the Good Fight

The past few weeks have been hard.  Really hard.  Starting about three weeks ago, Jonathan and Henry developed pink eye after having horrible coughs and lethargy for several days.  We were excited when the prescription eye drops did their thing and within a day or two, both boys' eyes had at least stopped oozing green gunk.  That's always a good sign, right?

When we thought we were in the clear and life was as it should be again, Henry developed large sores on his tongue and hand which we then deduced was Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease (a nasty virus that is extremely contagious and miserable and nothing can be done for it except to just wait it out).  I crossed my fingers that no one else would get it but a few days after I noticed Henry's sores, Jonny started complaining that his tongue hurt too.

Now, when Henry had the sores, he didn't even complain, I didn't even know he had them until I noticed them in his mouth when he was eating lunch one day.  Well, Jonny's reaction couldn't have been more different.  Jonathan is a very passionate person and is one whose feelings are close to the surface.  Knowing him is like going on a roller coaster ride some days.  So, you can only imagine how close to dying these sores made him.  Every hour was crying, screaming, complaining and let's not forget the drooling.  All. Night. Long.  I've dealt with canker sores all my life so I am very familiar with how much it can hurt, and don't get me wrong, it can hurt like the dickens, but I haven't ever felt that I was teetering between life and death.  All of us got to endure about 3 days of "apocalyptic Jonny" and I'd be lying if I said I didn't end up in tears on more than one occassion.

On Jonny's 2nd day of sores, Thomas developed sores in his mouth, a sore throat, and a fever.  He was one sick camper.  So, the next few days were filled with two miserable boys, both slobbering everywhere and unable to eat anything except frozen go-gurts and popsicles (or so they said).  Eddie ended up staying home with them from church for the second week in a row while I got a bit of a break and went to church alone.  A much needed reprieve.  When all was said and done, Thomas & Jonny ended up missing several days of school and were overjoyed when I gave the green light to go back.  Who am I kidding, we were all overjoyed.

I said earlier that those weeks were hard and while that is true, there are a few things that I got from that time that I wouldn't trade.  One of the most helpless feelings in the world is to see your child suffering and not be able to do anything to relieve that suffering.  That said, through it all, I gained a stronger appreciation of the power of mothers to nurture and soothe.  Since there wasn't anything I could do for their pain (other than give them Tylenol every several hours), the one thing I could do was lift their spirits and take their minds off of the pain.  I think I read more books, sang more songs, and cuddled more hours, than any other time in my experience being a mother.  So, even though it was really hard and brought me to the end of my rope on more than one occassion, I cherish it because it brought me closer to my kids and that is something I wouldn't trade.  Ever.

On a lighter note, we finally got around to recording Henry singing "I Am A Child of God".  Enjoy!  We sure do.

Nutshells Are Never Big Enough

I was going to post about the happenings around here in a nutshell, you know, so it won't be novel length.  But as I was uploaded the pictures off my phone, I thought, nope, a nutshell would just be too small to do it justice.  So, this post might be a bit lengthy, but it'll be worth it, I hope. 

Sorry for being out of commission for a few weeks.  We've had a lot of sickness going around these parts and I'll be honest, at the end of the day, some days, I just couldn't find it in me to sit down at the computer to document the events of the day.  But here I am, I haven't given up completely, and that, for me, is a victory!

A few weeks ago, Eddie had the opportunity to go away for a weekend for a bit of a roommate reunion.  He met up with 3 of his old college roomies (old, as in, 11 years ago!).  They all lived in an apartment together right after their missions and I don't think they've really seen each other in about 8 years (since we got married).  They all met up in Charlottesville, VA for a BYU vs. UVA football game and then spent the night in Richmond where one of the guys lives.  Eddie came back so glad he had gone.  Even though it was a lot of driving, he said it was worth it to reconnect with those guys.

While Eddie was away on his trip, I decided to have a bit of special fun with the boys.  Kinda like a date with Mama.  I gave them some options of what we could do on Saturday and they got to choose two.  The first thing we did was go over to the Franklin Park Conservatory in downtown Columbus to see the butterfly exhibit.  In the conservatory, they have a room that is like a rain forest where they have butterflies flying freely.  The kids love it because the butterflies can land on them or they can watch them drink nectar from the flowers.  It is really neat and they have an amazing array of butterflies in there.

Pictures from lower left going clockwise:  1. the boys sitting on a bench waiting for the doors to open  2. looking through the window where all the butterfly chrysalis' are hanging so we can see the butterflies coming out and stretching their wings.  3. the boys love the Koi pond!  4. gorgeous, big, blue butterfly  5.  a butterfly drinking some of the sugar water in the feeder.

After the conservatory, the boys chose to go and see the movie, Planes, in the theater.  I didn't get any pictures of that but we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  It was a really fun day!

Since all of that was a few weeks ago, here are a few of the things we've done in the meantime:

We went apple pickin' and picked about 50 lbs of fresh honeycrisp apples.  They are soooo good!  We also have been harvesting tomatoes from our garden and this year we decided to try cantaloupe and it worked!  We harvested two decent-sized cantaloupes last week.  Score!

Jonny & Henry finger-painted

Henry was pointing out the kitty that lives in the house behind us.  We ended up drawing our own kitty on our picture.  He was really excited!

Thomas was deep in thought, drawing out plans for a real transformer that he is going to invent when he's a grown-up.  He made it look like a real set of instructions by labeling each part of the picture and he even included a list of each item needed and how many of that item he would need written next to it.  It was pretty incredible.  We're definitely going to keep that for when he really is a grown-up!

And the crowning glory of the past few weeks was Jonny starting preschool!!!



He was super excited and seems to be loving it.  As luck would have it, however, he developed pink eye after his second day and had to miss the next day so after only having been for two days, he's loving it so far.   He was the most excited about his new t-shirt.  We are really excited for him, it'll be a great year!

This past week both Jonny and Henry have had pink eye and the upper respiratory infection type symptoms that sometimes accompany it.  It has not been a fun week but they seem to be on the mend so hopefully we can get back to normal this week.  Something else that happened in the past few weeks was that I decided to join a community choir.  It is all women and we practice Christmas songs all through the fall so that we can go around to nursing homes and assisted living facilities to sing to the residents in December.  It has been great singing Christmas songs in September and it helps that the conductor of the choir is one of my good friends from church so I think it'll be a good few months!

Just as a spiritual side note, today I had the opportunity to speak to our Sunday school class about the handcart pioneers who walked, pulling everything they owned in handcarts, from Iowa to Salt Lake City, UT in 1856.  Even though they met with much tragedy along the way, they kept trudging onward.  Their story is very inspiring to me because it shows how much faith and courage they really had.  Even if you aren't a member of the same church that I am, their story is one of hope, faith, courage and endurance and one that has touched me deeply.  I will never forget it.