New Beginnings (again)

This year the first day of school was perhaps even harder than last year. New schools (again) for everyone.  More nervousness, trepidation, and excitement. All from me.

Ha! Not all from me, but most of it.

Matthew started Jr. high at a school where he hardly knows a soul. I can't believe I have a 7th grader! He seems even more grown up now than during the summer.

Gracie's a 5th grader. It was a rough first few weeks, being the only new girl in her grade. Tears were shed, discussions were held about going back to the old school but she stuck it out. She's settling in nicely now. Just got elected class representative for student council. Settling in quite nicely it would seem.

Owen's a big ol' second grader now. Owen's a cool cat, makes lots of friends wherever he goes and charms the pants off his teachers. No worries here.

My little Rexy started kindergarten this year, my first full day-er to date. It was hard on me but he was so excited and he loves school. It helps that he has two siblings at the school with him.  It's so fun to see the excitement of learning through his eyes.

Poor little Colby, once he saw all the big kids go off to school he suddenly decided he wanted to go too. He didn't want to leave after we took them all to their classes. Poor kid, nobody tell him he's got three years to go...

As I said, he was pretty sad he doesn't get to go...

This was the only picture I took of Leelee on the first day of school. At this point in her life she was still sleeping most of the time. :)

Double Digits!!!

My little girl isn't so little anymore, well she hasn't been for quite some time but at least her age is starting to catch up to her. She'll probably still get mistaken for a teenager but at least now that she's in the double digits it will hopefully not seem so shocking, at least for me. 

Dad got her a special pink coconut covered donut. She loves coconut.

This year for her birthday Gracie said she wanted a shopping spree. So all she got for her birthday was money and she and I (and the baby, of course) spent the day shopping. We stopped by Dad's work and then went to Ikea, the mall and Target. She cracked me up with how frugal she was. Ikea was pretty much a waste of time because she didn't want to buy anything there without seeing what all her options at the mall were. She spent a ridiculously large amount of time at the rock store as she carefully chose a few select rocks. She bought a geode which was cool because she came home and got to break it open to see what was inside. 

 After about four hours of shopping she had spent a whopping $11, she eventually spent more over the next week or so.

A few facts about Gracie:

She wears a size 11 shoe in womens. Yes, you read that right- size 11. Bigger than me, we barely got to enjoy the sharing shoe phase and she's 10 for crying out loud. Oh please do not let this girl be taller than six feet, but her big feet have me concerned.  I should note that it does not seem to bother her one bit at all and unfortunately she has been blessed with no coordination.

I have never had to deal with friend drama with her at all. She is a good friend and she gets along well with others and doesn't seem to ever get caught up in any nonsense.

She hates (HATES, I tell you!) to do chores. You see, she is a child who likes to have fun. She likes to craft and write and play and daydream and do fun things! And chores are so not fun! Oh, and she also always leaves her dirty clothes in the bathroom. But, I might add, she has been keeping her room in super neat condition (mostly) since we moved into our house, nothing like this.

She's an awesome big sister. Since she likes to have fun she is always coming up with new games to play with her little brothers. She was my savior this summer while I was suffering through my pregnancy. She kept those boys entertained for hours each day playing school and doing other fun activities.

She's super smart. She scored 100 on the state standardized test in the language/reading section and only missed 3 points overall. (But I'm not bragging or anything :)

She practices her instruments faithfully, without ever being asked to do it. Last year it was the violin, this year it's the clarinet (sorry Em!) since she wanted to join the band.

She gets hot very easily, hence the flushed cheek look she sports in so many pictures. The only one of my kids to suffer from this. Weird.

Happy 10th Gracie, my dear, you are a supremely wonderful, fantastically amazing daughter! We're so lucky you're ours!

Little Leelee

I'm finally getting around to posting our baby story. Around the first week of July I was starting to get excited for Leelee to join us and as the dates started to roll by I kept hoping I'd go into labor. July 7th would have been cool since her sister's birthday is 8/8, or 7/8 would have been fun too, or lucky 7/11, or 7/13 (my birthday), 7/15 (Michelle's birthday), 7/17 (I just like the numbers), 7/20 (my grandma's birthday), or 7/21 (Kris' grandma's birthday).  Pretty much any day in July would have worked. My due date was the 19th so I was praying that whatever day she did decide to come it would be before that date.  I was going out of my mind crazy being super pregnant in the middle of this hot summer with all the kids home. Out. Of. My. Mind. Crazy. Just ask Kris or the kids. On second thought, don't ask them as I'm sure they would be brutally honest and I'd rather pretend like it didn't happen.

I had lots of contractions starting around the second week of July thus feeding into my furious desire to go into labor. I dragged Kris on many hot summer night walks around the neighborhood trying to get them to progress into something serious.  We had an unfortunate trip to the hospital after having several hours of regular contractions that were getting seemingly stronger and were less than five minutes apart. We dragged the kids out of their beds in the middle of the night and hauled them to my mom's only to be sent home from the hospital after 5 hours of being monitored and walking the halls. I don't dilate early and I was too far from my due date for them to "help" me along so they sent me home and of course eventually the contractions stopped. That had never happened to me before, I felt so dumb. Here I am having my sixth child, I KNOW what it's like to go into labor for crying out loud! I thought for sure I would not leave that hospital without a baby.  And to top it off Kris wasted one of his precious vacation days that would've come in handy when the baby actually got here!

Further into the month I began to get increasingly discouraged but eventually came to the realization there was nothing I could do to speed things up. So we waited and waited. We watched her due date roll by (the kids were certain she would be born that day since it was her DUE DATE after all!) At my appointment that day the doctor left it up to me, whether I wanted to be induced or not. At this point my frazzled brain and hot, heavy laden body could handle no more. Induce me! Please! I was SO ready!

I really wanted to go into labor on my own but I don't think she had any intentions of coming out anytime soon so on the 22nd we headed to the hospital to help her along. We had an awesome nurse, same one that had been there the night we had the false episode and she remembered us. We laughed and joked the whole time. She has a son named Rush, how cool is that? Everything went so smoothly. The anesthesiologist jokingly asked us if we were going for the big family discount, buy 6 get one free.

Me, moments before changing into that lovely hospital gown.

Kris moved his chair across the room so he could sit next to me in the rocker. This is the scene our nurse walked into and she asked us for our camera. We were like two little old people sitting in our rockers watching TV. Reminds me of my great-grandma and grandpa, they had two recliners together in front of the TV.

The labor and delivery were great. Once my water was broken she was born quickly. In fact, we had been watching Wheel of Fortune, my mom was there and if you know my mom she doesn't miss Wheel, not even for a grandbaby :) and Leelee happened to be born right during the middle of it. Not that we were watching or anything (well, Mom might have been) and we joked about naming her Vanna. Such a happy, wonderful time. We are so blessed.

Our Little Leelee

July 22nd

8 lbs. 15 oz.

21in.

(2nd biggest, I can't believe I thought she would be my smallest!)

It's good to start life off with a few good leg rolls.

Finally a sister!

Big Bro Colbs

Daddy and daughter

Meeting Grannie, part of her namesake. (Actually, she'd already met her the day before...)

A family portrait for me at the hospital by Owen

Big Bro Matt

Big Bro O

Big Bro Rex

(this little girl is going to have some serious protection)

Our happy family

We feel so blessed and happy to have Leelee in our family. She has a sweet and calming presence. She is loved by all. Colby has his moments of picking on her but mostly he loves to hold his little Weelee (as he calls her). I am just trying to savor the days of her newborn babyness, I know they will be gone far too soon...

It's My Party...

Today is my 34th birthday.  Yikes, am I really that old? Really? Yes, it's true.  I'm just trying to go with the flow.  And if I live to be 100 (as I plan to) then my life is just over 1/3 of the way done.  So, c'est la vie. Anyway, I didn't really want to blog to lament the fact that I'm getting older I wanted to blog about how cute my kids are because as Matthew told me this morning after he apologized for not getting me a gift he said that the best gift he could give me would be to be a good person since I am the one who gave him life. Too true. And so sweet. And Colby sang me "Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday" all by himself.

Then Owen and Rex unveiled this beauty:

 It's a lego creation that they built, h b m, it stands for Happy Birthday Mom!

 Then Gracie gave me her gift, a memory box.

 Dang these photos that won't rotate! Why will some do it and others won't!?

 Leave it to Gracie...

 I can store all my special keepsakes in here.

I feel so loved today, the kids all want me to have a special day, they let me sleep in with minimal interruptions- they even waited so patiently to eat their breakfast since we had donuts and they couldn't eat them without me.  I love these kids, they are my best gifts!

(I'm sad that Kris had to miss all the festivities, I'm glad he went and got the donuts this morning before work.  He has to leave for work at 6:20 and I sure didn't want to wake up at 6 on my birthday, or wake up all the kids for that matter. Love you, Babe!)

4th Fun

Let me just start off by saying I was so depressed that we weren't in Rexburg this 4th of July.  Like majorly depressed.  It's so hot here and I'm so pregnant and I LOVE spending the 4th in Rexburg, I love a small town 4th of July celebration.  So, as dismal as I was we managed to gear ourselves up and have a little fun.  On Saturday evening we went to downtown Mesa to take part in their celebration for the 4th.  They had tons of slides and jumpy castles set up for the kids and I was afraid there would be masses of people but there weren't, and I was afraid we would be melting hot but it really wasn't too terrible, especially once the sun went down.  In the end we managed to have quite a good time.

Here's a prego photo, I haven't posted any so here you go, 38 weeks and counting...

(I can't believe how blond Gracie's hair looks.)

I get so annoyed when I can't get the pictures to turn the way I want them to...

Owen and Colby on the slide.

Rex

(sorry for the crappy photo quality)

Gracie and Colby

The kids had lots of fun on the water slides.

Matthew

We found a nearly empty corner that had a perfect view of the fireworks, it was awesome!  I was really impressed by what the city of Mesa put together.  We were so glad we went.

We love this land!

And I may or may not have promised the kids that we would go to Rexburg next year for the Fourth of July (or maybe the whole month of July, if only I could figure out a way to make that happen, any ideas people?)

Swimming Summer

We've been doing LOTS of swimming this summer, almost every day.  We are very happy to have a community pool in our neighborhood and the kids enjoyed a couple of weeks of swimming lessons where they each improved greatly on their swimming skills.  We'll have them turned into Arizona water babies before long.  Every Friday after the summer movies we've been going over to the Bergen's for a little swim/pizza party.  This particular Friday happened to be the week of Rex' and Ren's birthdays.

 The newly three and five year olds and almost all the cousins (who live here).

 Everyone enjoyed the cupcakes Kindra made (I probably could've eaten 5)!

Then we called cousin Mia in Idaho to wish her a happy birthday since it happened to be her birthday on that very day.  Wish she could've been here to help us celebrate!

Number 5 is Alive!

Rex turned 5 in June and he was pretty excited.  I love my little Rexy and I'm really sad he's old enough to be in kindergarten now, I hate how fast time flies.  He's lovable, fun, friendly, laid back, sweet, and smart.  He especially loves anything to do with numbers.

Enjoying his birthday donut. (They get their love of maple donuts from their dad, yuck!)

We celebrated with a little family party at Chuck E Cheese's, as you can see he was pretty excited.

We were glad Granny and Pops could make it.

He seemed more excited to get this water gun from Gracie than to get any of his other presents.

The boys.

The kids raked in the tickets, apparently they found a game with a glitch and scored a billion tickets. More than they've ever had before, they had lots of fun picking out their prizes and the guy at the counter was super nice and patient :).

The big present. Maybe once summer is over he'll get a chance to actually ride it.  (Kris and I have this thing about bikes, in Arizona you get bikes for Christmas because it's perfect weather for riding. In Rexburg it doesn't make any sense to get a bike for Christmas because you won't be able to ride it for another 4 months. And it looks like Rex shouldn't get a bike for his birthday in AZ because it's just getting hot enough that you don't want to be outside anymore unless you're at the pool, lesson learned.)

The birthday cake. It was a store bought ice cream cake and I thought it was pretty gross, another lesson learned.  At least the kids enjoyed it.

Happy 5th birthday Rex!