Growing Pains

So, wow! July has come and gone. And to be honest, it kind of hit me like a Mack truck. But more on that later. We kicked off the beginning of the month with the 4th of July in Indiana with the cousins. Ethan and Grace went up a few days early with Scott's parents and we followed later on with Sophie and Jane. Highlights of the trip included Jane projectile vomiting not once but TWICE on the way there. The first time took about 30 minutes to get cleaned up on the side of the highway. So that was fun. The second time it happened we were literally pulling into the cousin's neighborhood, so at least I was able to just plunk her in the tub when we got to the house. Poor little lamb. Luckily, the pyrotechnics ended there and the rest of the weekend was enjoyable. The kids especially loved the fireworks display put on by their Uncle Blake and aside from a minor incident involving Sophie and a sparkler burn, everyone had a blast. Incidentally, this was the weekend that kick-started a routine of SUPER late bedtimes for the kids and a newly created love-hate relationship between Sophie and Grace.





Once back home, Ethan's birthday festivities continued with an outing to a baseball game with dad and grandpa. This was Scott's dad's present to Ethan and it was a hit!




The day after Scott's parents left, my sister Emily came to town with her little girl Pearce. We had so much fun together and even managed to squeeze in a mini roommate reunion with our good friend Natalie who now lives only 10 minutes from me! Emily did a much better recap of our time together on her blog, so you can check it out here to see what else we did. :) A couple days after Emily arrived, Hurricane Hansen swung into town when my mom got here with all the rest of my siblings except for Laura -- Freddie, Amy, Jacob, Sarah, and her two little girls Eleanor and Penelope. We had a blast with everyone and Ethan was especially excited to have everyone here for his postponed birthday party -- which went off without too much of a hitch. Aside from all the family here, he also invited a couple of other families we are good friends with from church. On the agenda was a water balloon fight, (many thanks to Freddie and Jacob and Amy for helping to fill up ALL of those balloons), tie-dye shirts, and of course, cake and ice cream.

Up first -- the water balloons. Although I personally think they are SO much more trouble than they're worth, my kids always seem to love them. But seriously, you spend HOURS filling them up and they're all used up in minutes. Oh well! After the balloons were all gone, we whipped out a water sprinkler/hopscotch that all the kids seemed to love.

(I stole this pic from Emily's blog)

Do you like how Jane won't relinquish the hold on her bottle? Hahahaha.

Tie-dying shirts was the next item up and aside from the casualty of my shirt, everything went swimmingly. Cake, ice cream, and presents were the last items on the list and I would have to say that all in all the party was a success. Of course, it helped having an army of help there so thank you family!

The first round of tie-dying. I took 2 or 3 kids at a time to help them. That purple shirt I'm wearing there was the casualty -- I should have been wearing a plastic apron or something. Hahaha.

The Birthday Crew

Ethan made my life easier this year by requesting a cookie cake. Fine by me!

Thanks to our friend Haela -- who has all the same allergies as Sophie -- we have discovered that Oreos are a non-dairy cookie option! They are Sophie's new favorite. Or at least the creme filling is. Hahahaha.

I stole this from Emily's blog, too. Sadly I never got a shot of everyone with the finished product of their shirts! Here are Ethan, Grace, and Sophie with little Pearcie-pie.

For the rest of the week, the kids had lots of fun with cousins and aunts and uncles. Even though Ethan was outnumbered amongst all the girl cousins, he nonetheless enjoyed the male bonding he experienced with Freddie and Jacob. Lots of Wii was played by the boys, and LOTS of dress-up was done by the girls although Ethan DID join in their festivities at one point to put on a play -- an interesting (and thankfully shortened) version of Cinderella.

Sarah was so nice to help them with their props in the basement. What a trooper!

Sophie and Eleanor were practically inseparable -- and almost impossible to tell apart from behind!

Grace was the "baby-sitter" extraordinaire

And Jane and Pearce developed a precious little relationship as well. Here you can see Jane stealing the bike from Pearce...

and then so graciously sharing it with her! Hahahahaha.

Of course, it wouldn't be my life if there weren't SOME kind of hiccup. And this time it came in the form of a tooth. My tooth that is. My dentist was trying to hold off doing a root canal until after the baby came, but unfortunately my tooth started to really bother me a few days after the birthday party. I ended up going in for an emergency root canal and everything would have been hunky dory except for the reaction I had to the Tylenol with Codeine that I was taking for the pain. Apparently some of the side-effects include dizziness and nausea, both of which hit me really hard a couple of days after I was on it. On that Friday, I ended up having to go to the hospital after throwing up all day and becoming completely dehydrated. Luckily Emily and Amy were still here to help with watching the kids so Scott could join me while I was re-hydrated with 3 IV bags of fluids. Fun times! Thankfully, everything was okay with the baby and after a few hours I was able to go back home.

Even though Emily had to leave the next morning, and I really miss having ALL my brothers and sisters here, I have been super spoiled to have Amy staying with me since then to help out with the kids until the baby gets here. She is pretty much my lifesaver. Not to mention the kids think she's the coolest. Mostly because she is. Hahahaha. We're really going to miss her when she has to leave to go back to BYU at the end of the month.

As for the rest of July (and the beginning of August) we've continued to stay busy and I've managed to complete a few different projects. You know, things like quilting, cleaning, organizing, back to school shopping, and painting the kitchen. I guess I really just rather being busy than bored. Hahaha.

The first project finished was a quilt I made for one of my good friends here who was due a few weeks before me. I finished this quilt just in time for her sweet little girl to get here and I love how it turned out! I tried out a "Disappearing Nine Patch" pattern and I've decided I'm a big fan.




Another quilting project I'm frantically trying to finish up is the quilt I'm making for my own little baby -- Alex! This quilt is a "Ticker Tape" quilt and I'm really excited with the way it's turning out. Hopefully, I will get it done before he's here, but if not -- oh well!






And while the kids haven't been the biggest fans of cleaning and organizing the house, they WERE all super excited to do their back to school shopping earlier this week. After trips to both Walmart AND Target in one morning we managed to get everything on their lists and I managed to survive the outing to boot. After this year's shopping trip, though, I do have to say that kids are kind of expensive. Hahahaha.

The next project I wanted to tackle before the baby was painting the kitchen. I didn't take any before pictures, so I found an old one from Sophie's birthday that showcases the yellow color it used to be. This color has slowly but surely been driving me nuts since we moved here a year ago! And since I'm kind of an extremist, once I decided I wanted to paint it this week, it was just a matter of time before it happened.

Before color in the background.

Using my ever-favorite "Antique Bone" paint color, Amy and I knocked out painting the kitchen in a single afternoon. It looks pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Hahaha. And just as a side-note I'd like to point out that this is the cleanest and most de-cluttered this kitchen has looked since we moved in!

And that pretty much brings us to the present. Today I'm officially 38 weeks pregnant and I've never felt huger! This baby can come any day now as far as I'm concerned. School starts up again in a little over a week and to say I'm looking forward to it would be an understatement! Let's just say there's been a little too much family togetherness going on. I think we'll all benefit from some time apart. After all, absence does make the heart grow fonder, right? Hahaha. In all seriousness, though, this summer has actually gone a LOT better than I thought it would. We've managed to survive the heat -- hello? It's been almost 100 degrees with like 95 % humidity for the last month and a half -- and we've even had fun in the mean time.

And so to finish off the post, I present you with a bunch of random miscellany and whatnot:

* The soundtrack of our summer has been comprised of a compilation of American Idol performances with "Benny and the Jets" leading the pack. Also prominent on the play list has been "American Honey" and the Hannah Montana movie soundtrack. You'd have to be in the car to appreciate how hilarious it is to hear every single one of my kids (minus Jane of course) belting out all the words to all the songs as they sing along so enthusiastically.

* Jane is nuts. And hilarious. And NOT a very good sleeper these days which is making me a bit nervous for when a newborn is added to the mix. She's also addicted to Pippi Longstocking and her bottle (still).

* Ethan is indeed the only child to reach Level 12 of our family summer reading program. And even though he didn't manage to read EVERY single Geronimo Stilton book out there, he read quite a few and has become a pretty good reader this summer in the process (which makes me super happy).

* Grace and Sophie have a lot of issues. They are like cats and dogs half the time and BFFs the other half. They seriously fight over the most ridiculous things. Like whose lunch box is cuter, or who looks more "dazzling," or whose pillow chum is fluffier. One morning was particularly fun when Sophie woke me up screaming at 5 in the morning because Grace had stolen the pillow chum she was sleeping on on the floor and had also taken over her bed on the bottom bunk and wouldn't give it back. Because as Grace said, "Sophie is the meanest!" Clearly.

* Scott has been driving all summer with no air in his car.

* Jane loves Justin Bieber.

* And finally, we're still trying to figure out how we're going to work the sleeping arrangements and bedrooms when child #5 arrives. Wish us luck!

The End. Hopefully, the next post will have pics of a baby!