oh NO! update

not that you've been holding your breath since my last post but FYI my computer crashed. Thanks to a wonderful friend and neighbor, who is letting me use her laptop till ours gets in and out of the repair shop, I can bring you this updated message. unfortunatly that means that I won't be sharing pictures. bummer! but here's some updates about what's going on here.

Nate-
Survived Scout Camp (a week with yong men from our church) and the boys survived too!
Had an interview with his boss's boss for a promotion possibility
Survived giving a talk in church about Scout camp
Still works in Optical, but becoming a little bored. 8 years of the same thing will do that to ya.
Turned down promotion possibility, it involved lots of time away from family and most likely another move
Had successful rhinoplasty surgery-he'd been having 20-40 min. nosebleeds-not for a nose job

Christina-
Watching children grow
Doing a better job at keeping the house picked up
Got a Kirby vaccuum (oh! shiny)
Gets quite a lot of headaches :(
Finally done taking the boys to swim :)
Traveled twice to St. George for a week both times :) :)
Got tan
Got the garden planted, and weeded!----plants are bigger than last year! and are doing very well still no produce harvested
Got the boundry exception letter sent to Roosevelt-finally!

Joey-
Introduces himself to people as Joseph
Finished 1st grade
Loves math
Over 55 lbs
Over 4 ft
Loves to read-mostly superhero but branching into science and scriptural
Paid for his own swimming lessons
Can swim confidently in the deep end of the swimming pool, the width of the pool
Was approved to return to Roosevelt! YEAH!
Saving up for a big kid bike with gears and handle brakes
Climbed to the top of the rock wall at a local carnival

Ben-
Can recognize his first and second letters in others words
Confidently jumps into the pool
Floats on his face as well as his back
Loves his big brother
Loves being a big brother
Over 35 lbs
Loves his cousin Micah
Loves bouncy houses and bouncy slides

Isabella-
LOVES Mommy
Doing well on solid foods
Loves graham crackers and puffy treats
Over 16 lbs
Hates having her hair done
Can roll over in one direction
Loves to be read to by her big brothers
Still has 1 big curl on the top of her head and 1 on the left
Smiles super big
Says momma among other gobble-de-gook
Now has lite blue eyes
Loves bouncing in her saucer
Loves car rides
Sleeps best on her side

Such a boy

Ben was able to put this puzzle together and 5 seconds after he was done he politely asks "Can I break it now, Mom?"

Christmas

these aren't all the Christmas photos but you can never get all of them, right?a good shot
of each of the boys

Just what a tired Mommy wants to see

My little Ben has been such a helper since Izzie was born, and here he is again sweeping up his own mess cuz I was too mad/tired/frustrated......lazy to do it myself.

Man I love this kid!

i've been a little busy lately...

and a little bit lazy. Probably more lazy than I want you to know. plus most of my grumblings would have been just that, me grumbling and complaining about my stomach being stretched to the breaking point, the constant heartburn, and unending tired-ness. Now aren't you glad you missed that? Somewhere around mid-November, I finally got too paranoid to wait for my water to break and went in to see if I was in labor. I'd been 80% effaced and dialated to a 5 for 2 weeks and having super irregular contractions , I think I was due for a breakdown in common sense.

long story, short or short story, even shorter....I had my baby girl. I remember looking at her right after they pulled her out, still not able to comprehend that I was having a baby, let alone a GiRl! But since that day I've completely fallen in love

though sometimes I get jealous of the attention that daddy pays to her or that for a while she'd only smile at him. but now that's getting better because I get some smiles from her and I'm getting the loving words and attention from my husband that I want.

i hope that you're ready to be inundated with pictures and you can figure out where they go.Nate hates this photo but I love the completely adoring look he gives her

I've been humanized by the power of a shower!
our welcoming committee
the very first niece to hold Izzie

Pumpkin Carving

At the end of Sept. we went to a pumpkin patch for a neice's birthday party, and even though we have 20-something pumpkins growing in our garden, apparently you can't get away from a pumpkin patch without taking one home, or in our case 1 for every person. So while searching for pumpkins Joe found the LARGEST one of the night, for sure, but possibly on the farm! at least that they weren't trying to make huge. We'd carved Ben's a few days before going to St. George and never took any photos so I made sure we had pictures of this monstrosity.

As Joe and Ben are pulling out the innards make sure you look at where this pumpkin is hitting the boys on their legs, just to tell you HOW big this thing really was!
it wouldn't even fit in the garbage can!
Do you see any resemblance?




Here's Ben showing us the big, strong muscles he used to help Joe lift the pumpkin
and here's Joe actually carving the pumpkin ALL BY HIMSELF! not "here Joe help me carve this little part over here, oh no your doing it wrong, just give it to me! I'll do it" from some random parent.

Since I didn't get a picture of the completed work of art here's a picture of a picture we copied to trace onto the pumpkin.

Nate didn't end up getting a pumpkin at the patch, and I'm guessing he felt a little gypped because just a few nights later while searching for a copy of Iron Man 2, he cruised on over to our local grocery store where they had as he described it "a wall of pumpkins. He stepped out of his car, and THERE it was! the perfect pumpkin, the GREAT pumpkin. It had no dents, no scratches, perfectly round, perfect evenly spaced lines going down, perfectly orange and perfect for him." What a master story-teller :)


So now you ask, well now you've carved you pumpkins, what are you going to do with the 20-something pumpkins in your garden! Let me tell you, the best and first we kept for carving(which still hasn't gotten done and most likely won't, cuz it's after Halloween) But we ended up giving 4 or 5 to each of our neighbors around us, since their kids had asked ever so nicely, but we gave the rest to Kris' and Kourtney's familys for them to decorate their yards with.

Maybe next year we'll only plant 1 pumpkin. Maybe

Babymoon! with the kids

Since I'm ready to pop at any moment and Nate has MANY days off in a row(yeah!) He wanted to get away from our normal boring day-to-day stuff, and head to sunny St. George! It also helps that his mom lives there, so we didn't need to give much advanced notice that we were coming. we only went down for the weekend, and decided to leave our house at 2 so Joe could get some learning in, apparently there was a huge rain/snowstorm forcasted for our area, which was pretty nice to leave behind. While there it would rain during the night but the days were SO sunny and the weather was so comfortable! Nate and I'd sit out on the porch at midnight or one and it'd be so nice, probably around the low 70's. can you believe that! I'm so used to it being Halloween time and having snow on the ground, but of course Nate was just acting like it was normal because he was raised in that area.

We did a few fun touristy things while we were there, like visiting Brigham Young's Winter House and Staheli's farm. I didn't think to bring the camera with us to the "House", but it was charged and ready to go for the farm.

At the farm we watched pig races, played on lots of toys, got hit in the head w/tennis balls(accidentally from the corn cannon) and picked out pumpkins for our Gaggie(grandma) to decorate her porch with. We really and truly went there to wander around the cornmaze, but as I said before it'd rain during the night, so the maze was closed due to mud but we made the best out of the situation. Also while we were at the farm, the boys went on a "cow train" ride, where barrels on wheels are pulled behind a tractor, anyway the tractor took them around the cow enclosure/manure pile. the first thing Joe says as the tractor pulls up is "That was DISGUSTING!" :) well at least he's honest.

Here we are waiting for our tractor to take us back.