One year older

So here I am another year older, now I'm 31! I think my looks have finally caught up to my age because now when I tell people how old I am I don't get the surprised reaction and the comments "but you look so young!" I guess that's what happens when you get older...you actually start to look older too! Who would've guessed!

I had a wonderful birthday, but I always do because Tom always makes a big deal out of it. What a great guy! When I woke up he had bought me some chocolate croissants from Flour Girls and Dough Boys. I got hooked on these when we went to Paris a few years back and we found these at the local bakery, they taste almost as good as the ones we had in Paris. He also brought me a raspberry tart to enjoy later on in the day! He also took care of my mothering duties for the morning and made sure that Carson was ready for school and did the carpooling for me. I received calls from my family and friends and that always makes my day. It feels good just to be remembered! I had many sweet notes and gifts given to me from friends in the ward, that meant so much to me, thank you!

My sweet friend Melissa was so nice to put together a lunch at Cafe Rio with some of my friends. Thank you to everyone who came and to those who wanted to come we missed you! It was so fun to get to visit with all of you!

The evening of my birthday we went with Tom's family to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. It's a tradition that we go to every year and this year it happened to fall on my birthday. We went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse beforehand and then headed up to the concert, they always do such a good job and it's amazing how beautiful the program is.

The next day Tom had planned a fun weekend in Salt Lake for dinner and a Jazz game and had arranged with his Mom to watch the kids overnight. We headed up to Salt Lake around three and checked into the hotel then got ready for dinner. We had reservations for 5:00 at Tucano's at the Gateway...always a good place to eat! We enjoyed our dinner and realized we still had an hour before the game started so we did a little Christmas shopping at the Gateway.

Then we walked over to Energy Solutions Arena to watch the game. Tom got tickets in the lower bowl and I was amazed at how well we could see the game. I loved every minute of it...even though they lost they almost made a comeback at the end and it got really loud in there. It was so much fun. We stayed downtown at the Marriott City Center and it was nice to be able to sleep in, since that rarely happens! We watched a movie in bed and finally got up to eat breakfast at the hotel around 11:00. We had a good breakfast with fresh squeezed orange juice, I was craving that all morning. So once again I had a wonderful birthday thanks to my sweet, thoughtful husband Tom. Without fail he makes a big deal of my birthday every year and I appreciate it so much. I love you!

Since I can't really hide it anymore......

I guess it's time to announce that I'm pregnant! I'm 14 weeks and due on May 30th. I know some of you may be thinking weren't you just pregnant?!? With all the boys being 3 years apart this will be the smallest space. I'm a little scared with the spacing because the 3 year space has been relatively easy.....we'll see how we handle 2 years.

So I feel like I have been completely out of touch, in my own little world and very low functioning these last few months. Unless it absolutely needs to be done it doesn't get done. So basically my house hasn't been as clean as I would like it, I've done very little blogging....I hardly even get on the computer. I dread when 4:00 comes around and I realize I have to make dinner. I have a sensitive nose as it is and pregnancy just makes it so much worse. Right now the most awful smells to me are onions and the fabric on the chairs of our new kitchen table....I wish my nose didn't work right now! I feel like I'm finally almost done with the morning sickness I only get it a few times a day, but the headaches just won't quit.

All the boys are really excited including Tom, I think he was more excited than me! When I told him that I was pregnant he was so excited he said "I'll rub your feet every night!" He does rub my feet..... just not every single night. He has been such a help with the boys, the cleaning and cooking and has been so understanding of my crazy emotions right now. I feel so lucky to have him as my husband!

We decided not to tell the boys until we started telling our families because we were worried that they might accidentally tell, so about a week after I found out that I was pregnant Austin came up to me and said "we are going to have 4 kids in our family" I asked him again what he said and he repeated the same thing so I asked him how he knew that and he said "I just know Mom." I found this so interesting because we hadn't even talked about having another baby he just said it out of the blue one day. It makes me realize that these precious little kids of mine are still close to their Heavenly Father.

So though this pregnancy is a little closer than we wanted we are thrilled to be adding a fourth child to our family!

Halloween

Usually we carve our pumpkins a little too early, so to be safe we waited till the night before Halloween this year. The boys had so much fun, we just got a new table and Tom did not want pumpkin guts all over it so we layed down a bunch of paper in our entry way and carved them there. Carson wanted to carve his himself but we still don't feel comfortable letting him use a knife so he drew the picture and I carved it. We also tried that with Austin but it didn't work out so well, you can tell in the picture that there is marker all over his pumpkins face. Max did not like sticking his hands inside his pumpkin to clean it out he just kept saying ewww!

Austin wanted to be Obi Wan this year so I made him a costume, and my friend let me borrow Darth Vader for Carson, she also had a cute little Yoda costume for Max, unfortunately he would not keep the little hat on, which really is the cutest part, so we decided to have him be Superman. So much for a theme, that would have been so cute!

Carson wouldn't wear his mask and Max had just woken up so he wouldn't even stay in the picture with the boys. Oh well, we'll try again next year.

I made this Superman costume for Carson and all of the boys have been able to wear it! I would put a picture of Carson but my scanner isn't working right now. We had a great Halloween, we went to my sisters house for a halloween themed dinner and then the kids got to go trick-or-treating with their cousins. We even took Max and he loved it, although it was really slow because he didn't want me to carry him, it was really cute he said trit tree when they opened the doors and would say bye after they gave him a piece of candy. We didn't go trick-or-treating at Tom's work like we usually do and our ward didn't do a trunk or treat so the boys didn't get a lot of candy....good thing because then I won't eat it!

Some fun fall traditions

Cornbellys! We have gone here for the last two years and the boys have a great time! We went with some friends so the kids had so much fun being there with their buddies.

Finally I get a good picture of Max! Of course I forgot about the drool on his chin, I'll have to photoshop that out later. He loved sitting on this little toy which is very unusual, he usually screams if I have him sit on anything.

Carson tried for a while to lasso but didn't have any luck. He had lots of fun trying though!

Austin had fun going for a train ride in the little cow and riding the cars. I tried taking Max for a ride on both of these and he cried the whole time! They had a lot of playing in the corn pit.

Another fun tradition we do every fall is go to Southridge Farms and go to the pumpkin patch in Santaquin. This is something my sisters and I do every fall. We go get lunch first then take it to a fun park we found and let the kids play in the leaves.

After lunch we head over to Southridge Farms to go on a hayride to go to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins.

It's so much fun for the boys to be with their cousins, and they all get along so well!

We had so many pumpkins growing in our backyard that I told the boys they could only pick out a tiny little pumpkin, they were a little harder to find. When Max found one he kept saying "pass" and throwing it. Right now he thinks that if something is round that it is a ball and should be played with.

The kids on the hayride back with their pumpkins and then afterwards we get ice cream at the barn!

Just a few of the many fun things to do in the fall, and I feel so lucky that we have family around to do some fun things with!

Girls Getaway!!!!

On Sepember 4th I left for a girls weekend in New York. We planned this last December and it seemed so far away when we planned it at the time. But it came and went and now I'm left with lots of pictures and a ton of fun memories. Tom's sisters and Mom were finishing off a family vacation in New York and my sis-in-law Sandy and I came to join them for the weekend. We both flew on Southwest so we met up in Chicago, after a 2 hour delay we finally took off for New York City. We originally were suppost to arrive into Long Island at 8:30 pm but arrived at 10:40. We knew that the last train to leave Long Island to go to Manhattan was at 11:15pm. We knew we had to hurry otherwise we would be taking a $150 cab ride. So after some running we finally made it to the train station with about 10 minutes to spare. We took the 90 minute train ride to Penn Station and then we hopped on a subway to our hotel. We got off the subway and it was about 1:45 am. Our hotel was in the financial district so there weren't a lot of people on the streets. We were a little scared since we were wheeling our luggage through town....a dead giveaway that we were tourists. So we finally arrived at our hotel talked for a while then after a little sleep we woke up and left the next morning at about 10am. Our first stop was to Wall Street where we took a look at the New York Stock ExchangeWe roamed the streets for a while then we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry to get a peek at the Statue of Liberty. We tried getting a picture with all of us in front of the Statue of Liberty but the lighting was off and it didn't work.

And on our way back we were able to get a shot of the New York skyline.

Our next stop was at the wharf and we stopped for some pictures. We then went to Canal St. and chinatown to do a little shopping. All the girls wanted a new purse so we went down to see what we could find. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures but had a great time searching for the right purse. I can't tell you how many secret doors we went through. After we went shopping we went to SoHo, which was so much fun! We even stopped at a little cuban cafe that Jen had recommended for some good food. She said that the corn was really good.I like corn on the cob but I LOVED this corn on the cob, it was seriously sooo good. Maybe one of the tastiest things I've had. It was grilled and rolled in some sort of sauce then rolled in some cheese that I don't know the name of. If you go to New York you gotta try it, I wish I had gotten two!

We then went back to the hotel to rest a little bit and get ready to go to the Mets game. We wanted to go to a Yankees game since they were going to be tearing their field down but they weren't in town, so we settled for the Mets. It was interesting, we found out after we were there that they were going to be tearing down Shea stadium as well. So we were glad that we got the chance to go!

Barbara wasn't feeling well and Amy wasn't in the mood to go to the game. So Sandy and Jen and I had a great time together, even though they lost. We had decided before the game that we would meet up with Barbara and Amy in Times Square for dinner. So what do you know we decide on Sbarro for dinner. Nice choice for pizza in New York huh? I was starving and that cheese pizza never tasted so good!The next day we saw a little bit more of the city and we waited in line for 1/2 price tickets for the Broadway show. We also saw the Empire State Building, but decided not to pay the $20 and wait in the long line to go to the top. We also stopped at Mood Fabrics, if any of you are Project Runway fans, you'll know that that is where all the designers go for the fabric on the show. For lunch we stopped at the Shake Shack, Barbara, Amy and Jenny had eaten there before we came into town.and said it was really good. They have really good hamburgers and fries.

After lunch we decided to head back to the hotel to get ready to go to the matinee showing of Mama Mia! An hour later we were all dressed up ready to go!

I loved every minute of that show! It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip! When we came out of the show it was pouring rain! We knew those umbrellas we were carrying around all day would come in handy. We knew we would be going to dinner afterwards and walking all over town so we all brought some flip flops in our purse to change in afterwards. So here we are walking all over the city with the rain pouring constantly, not letting up at all. We stepped off so many curbs landing in puddles of water, laughing like crazy! Having some fun with the camera, we took this picture in black and white with only the yellow highlight. I can't tell you how many we had to take to make sure there was a taxi in the picture.For dinner we went to a place called Rickshaw Dumplings. They only serve dumplings, so we ordered a plate of each kind they offered. It was really good and lots of fun!And to top the night off we saw a special for a pedicure and a manicure for only $19! We couldn't pass that up. And when we were finished it was still raining! We went back to the hotel, put on our warm pajamas and popped popcorn, had candy and watched a movie in our room. What a great day!

The next day the weather was perfect, it was about 80 degrees and there was no humidity at all. It was so nice. We stopped to see the temple, right in the middle of the city! For lunch we stopped at New York's most famous hot dog stand Grays Papaya. We each got two hot dogs then we headed back downtown, on our way we took a walk through Central Park. That place is amazing! I can't believe how huge it is. We had some extra time so we went to check out FAO Schwartz toy store. Of course we couldn't resist taking some time to play the BIG piano. We had so much fun!Here we are attempting to play Heart and Soul, I kind of figured it out but Jenny and Amy really had it down.This was so much fun, I want to go back and give it another try!

Serendipity - The art of finding something by looking for something else. You can't go to New York without stopping at the cute little restaurant Serendipity and getting a frozen hot chocolate. We actually got two... and a hot fudge sundae and a strawberry cheesecake sundae. Doesn't that look good?!!?We actually finished most of it but we were soooo full afterwards, I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to eat again that day!After Serendipity we thought we would walk it off and do a little more shopping for souvenirs and check out Rockefeller Plaza. It's funny how in real life things look totally different than you imagine.

And here we are shopping for t-shirts for our kids. We all ended up buying the same ones for our boys and they all ended up like this......


Now that is what I call a cheap t-shirt!

Monday was our last day in New York so we all had breakfast at a little bakery and then we left to catch the train to the airport. They have trains leaving for Long Island only once an hour and we barely caught the one we needed without a minute to spare!

What a fun trip we had! So much laughing, walking, sweet treats, and fun memories! I'm so grateful that I had the chance to spend some time with my mother and sister- in -laws, I feel like we all get a long so well and are great friends! And thanks to my sweet husband for wanting me to go and get a break. I had so much more fun knowing that our kids were taken care of and getting to spend time with their Dad. The boys had so much fun with him, of course he took them to do some really fun things!