On my mind

1.movies:
we signed up for a two week free trial through netflix a couple of weeks ago. While it was fun to watch so many movies, I also realized it would be a really, really bad idea for me to stick with netflix because I'm pretty sure I'd just browse through all their 'instant watch' movies way too often and find lots of fun old and new movies to watch and I wouldn't ever do anything else with the very, very limited free time I already have. And actually, I didn't really get to see anything super exciting anyway because all of their really good or new movies had really long waits on them. But I did watch a few old ones that I thought I remembered liking: Kindergarten Cop(wow, didn't know that one had so much foul language in it. I mostly wanted to watch it again since I have a child in kindergarten now), Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken(I was in love with the actor in that movie when I was little, but now that I have my amazing Scott, he doesn't seem that wonderful), Daniel Deronda which was one I hadn't seen before but it's based off of a novel by George Eliot, who I like, so I watched it...and it was okay. I hate when they're 6 hours long and they're only 'okay'. You see what I mean about me wasting my time. And I watched a couple of others during those two weeks. WAY too many hours of movies to have been watched in a 14 day period.

We have also seen a couple of really good movies over the past month, but not through netflix. I mentioned we saw Last Song in the theater which I really liked, and when my brother and his wife were here we watched Sherlock Holmes and The Young Victoria. I liked both movies. I wouldn't have rented Sherlock Holmes if I hadn't had the free rental from Hollywood Video that I got on my birthday. And in fact, I went to Hollywood so excited to get the new Emma movie(masterpiece theater), and was super disappointed to find out they didn't have it! I had family waiting in the car and had to decide fast. I didn't know much about any of the movies, but Scott read all the Sherlock Holmes books and I knew he'd probably like to see this, so I got it. I was sure I wouldn't like Sherlock Holmes(too much action in the previews) but I did. I think mostly I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes' quirky behavior and his abiding friendship with Watson. The Young Victoria was based on a true story, and while there was nothing in it that was super exciting or thrilling, most of the movies I love don't have that element...they have more dialogue and sweet relationships, which this one had as well.

2. Books:
We read Jesus the Christ for book club last month and this month we're reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Both books were good. Jesus the Christ is very uplifting and informative. I actually started that book about 7 years ago. It was a gift from Scott when we were dating. I only got through the first 130 pages at the time. So I picked it up at page 131 a couple of months ago and began reading again. I'm now on page 519 and still have about 100 or so pages to go. I will finish it. It really is an amazing book, it's just one that I have to sit and ponder the applications of it in my life for just about every paragraph, so it takes time. Potato Peel Pie was different and better than what I expected. I enjoyed the relationships in that book and reading about some of the things that went on during WW2.

3.Life and adjusting to a newborn:
I used to think newborns were easy. That was until I had three other little children(all under the age of 6) I also needed to take care of. Baby Jane is darling and precious and sweet and beautiful, but she can't feed herself, dress herself, walk, sit up, hold her head up, crawl or do anything much at all. And so I'm adjusting to having a new baby in the home that needs to be held when she's not sleeping and who doesn't sleep well during the day when she's not being held, along with several other children. But, I also know that this time is extremely fleeting and oh how I love to cuddle with her and nurse her and give her soft cheeks lots of kisses. And she smells so good. Sometimes I say to myself, 'please stay this small and sweet forever.' But then I think, no, that's not how Heavenly Father planned things and in reality, if she were to stay so helpless and dependent forever, I'm pretty sure I'd have some sanity issues. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to best manage my time: when to shower, read, exercise, make meals, clean the house, blog etc. I think most of those will get done once Scott is home for the day though nursing is a great time to for me to read. And so far I haven't had to worry about many of these things too much because I've always had someone with me helping out, but next week, that will change. I'm so grateful for all the help we've been getting from our mothers. If Angela wasn't here with me this past week when I made a cake for a friend's daughter(the one who made me my beautiful car seat cover), I don't think it would've gotten finished on time. And I'm so grateful to Scott for all his help and support. He in fact cleaned up after most of my cake mess, colored frosting for me,and entertained me with music from Pandora and our conversations. Here's a picture of the cake. Her daughter turned 6.

This has been by far, the easiest recovery from pregnancy/labor. Which is interesting because it wasn't the easiest pregnancy, and in fact, was perhaps the hardest: more aches and pains, really bad nausea in the early stage which was similar, but worse, than the pregnancy with Elisabeth. But this time around, even though I tore like I did with all the others--well actually tore with 2 and had an episiotomy with 2-- I wasn't having to sit on pillows for a week or two afterward, and in fact, really didn't feel any discomfort at all. And I started going on walks the day after I got back(and I even went for walks in the hospital while I was there in recovery). Once we hit our three week mark I started jogging a little during my walks and now I can jog a few miles at a time again, which feels nice. I've lost some of the pregnancy weight, but only about half so I've still got a ways to go.

4. Healthy eating choices:
I'm far from perfect in eating healthy, but I'd like to think I'm learning and using more wisdom in the foods we eat. I know this has a lot to do with the influence of the grandmothers. My mom is mainly eating raw foods and while she was here, she shared some information with me and I saw what and how she ate and thought it'd be a good idea to incorporate some of those things into our diet and family life(Lots and lots of fruits and vegetables). Scott's mom also has shared some healthy eating ideas with us about trans fat and other things which has also helped us to eat a little more healthy. I've discovered that I love raw almonds! They are so good and I only need to eat a few to get that energy boost and then I'm good. I feel better about myself and life when I'm putting good things in my body. When I put junk in there, I always complain later about how I shouldn't have eaten that because I feel gross inside or my stomach hurts etc., and I'm sure Scott would attest to that statement. So anyway, like I said before, I'm FAR from perfect, but we're trying to make a few healthful improvements in our lives and in the lives of our children and hopefully we'll stick with it and continue to do better. I also received lots of good food and exercise information from a stake relief society(church) conference I attended a couple of weeks ago. There was a RNA who talked to us about many things. I was especially interested in the information she gave on the negative effects sugar and processed foods has on our bodies.

5. Annabelle's diaper issues/potty training:
I mentioned before that our goal was to have Annabelle potty trained before baby number four arrived. Well, that didn't happen. My stomach was so big and I was so uncomfortable at the end there, that the last thing I wanted to be doing was bending down scrubbing pee out of the floors, doing extra laundry and giving children extra baths. But now, she's really wanting to potty train and in fact, will take off her dirty or wet diaper herself and get a new one out and try and put it on. She took off her diaper in the night a couple of days ago and so we had some extra laundry to do the next morning. Since she seems to be very interested in it now, we're kind of just letting her do her own potty training thing when she wants and she's done pretty good so far and has successfully gone pee in the potty a couple of times. But, hopefully she'll stop taking off her diaper at night.

Jane is one month

Wow, how the time flies! For the majority of the day Jane eats, poops and sleeps. Occasionally she'll wake up for a short period of time and be alert and smile. She eats around the clock and will usually wake up around 130, 330 and 530am to drink milk during the night. No wonder she's gained so much weight(well, at least I think she's gained so much weight, though we haven't weighed her in a couple of weeks.). Jane must have a sensitive stomach because she spits up A LOT and will projectile vomit several times a week, just like Elisabeth did. She also is a really noisy eater and makes lots of grunting noises while she's eating and sleeping which are also things Elisabeth did.

Here's a picture of Jane trying to eat Elisabeth.



And check out Charlie's bandages. He was playing outside at a neighbors house, on their rock, and fell off and into a thorny rose bush. Ouch. He had cuts all along both arms and on this foot and ankle. I think he had seven bandaids.

Family and Kennecott copper mines

We've been so lucky to have visitors with us since Jane's birth. My mom was here for about 10 days and then Scott's mom arrived when my mom left and will be here until next Sunday, when we bless the baby, as will Scott's dad, and last week my brother Fred and his wife Robin and their family(from the tri-cities, WA) came out for Robin's brother's wedding and stayed with us for a bit over week. I don't know what we're going to do when everyone is gone next Monday. Probably be really bored and have an even more difficult time juggling everything. I'm pretty sure the house will be in a constant mess and we'll never have any laundry done. Well, I'm sure there will be an adjustment period where Scott and I have to figure out when the best time is to clean and get things done...most likely once the kids have gone to bed for the night. We'll see.

Here is a picture of Reese and Annabelle who are about a week apart. Charlie and Shaun are about a month apart. The weather was really nice most days so all the cousins enjoyed playing outside with one another on the swingset and in the dirt. We went on walks and played sports over at the church field a couple of times. One day we were able to go visit the Kennecott copper mines which was pretty cool. The trucks are ginormous! This is the actual size of one of the wheels on the trucks(in picture below). They have something like 70 of these trucks and each one costs about 3.5 million dollars! The boys enjoyed looking at the toy trucks and tractors they had on display, but I think the adults were more interested in most of the things at the mine than the children.

Spring is here

Spring is here which means beautiful flowers(and allergies, unfortunately), pretty pastel colored dresses,


rain boots (well actually snow boots in Annabelle's case, and ones that are much, much too big),
baby chicks(our neighbors hens' laid some eggs that just hatched and the kids got to hold them!),

(Annabelle wasn't really sure what to do with the chick)
and lots of story time and holding baby Jane(okay, those are not really because of Spring, they are just all-the-time things, but I thought the pictures were cute)

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My good friend Maren emailed me this picture today:
I love it! A play-dough birthday card, sent by email, with her boys! It was perfect and it made me laugh. Thanks Maren!

Scott had Scouts tonight, so Saturday night Angela watched the three oldest for us so Scott, Jane and I went and saw the movie, Last Song as one of my birthday wishes. Before seeing the movie, I read a couple of not-so-good reviews, mostly about Miley Cyrus' acting skills, and shared them with Scott. He wanted to know if I still wanted to go even though it got bad reviews. And of course I did. It's a Nicholas Sparks story, which if you know Nicholas Sparks, he almost always kills someone, but they're sweet love stories and I like them. And this one had Miley Cyrus in it, so I had to see it(yes, I'll confess, I'm 27 and I like Hannah Montana).

Scott made breakfast for me this morning and an icecream cake for this evening(I went out this past weekend and bought my most favorite ice cream from Coldstone: cake batter). If you noticed the missing piece of cake, the reason behind that is my friend Elisa came by this afternoon for a birthday visit, and I knew both her and her husband really like coldstone too, and so I forced her take some. I like having a wonderful treat on my birthday, but I don't like having it around for days afterward because it means I'll eat it and that's generally not a good thing when you're trying to get rid of baby weight. So I was grateful to Elisa for taking some of it off of my hands. And, as a side note, I love Scott's mad decorating skills!

Sisterly love

and a big yawn from baby Jane...

Hanging out

Since Jane's birth, we've mostly been doing a lot of hanging out at the house. There's an adjustment period that goes on when you welcome a newborn in the home and so mostly, I prefer to stay at home and relax with the family. We'll occasionally get out for short periods of time like when we went to Carl's jr. for lunch, or we all went to Walmart one day and today we went to Costco, but I have to time it just right with feedings and even then, sometimes it doesn't work out. And since she's so new, when she's not sleeping, she's generally either eating or having her diaper changed (which we probably go through 10+ diapers a day) and that's just much simpler to do in the comfort of your own home.

We're so glad to have Grandma here because she's fun to talk to and a good entertainer. The kids have been playing lots of different card games with Grandma(Go Fish, Old Maid, Crazy 8's etc), and Grandma recently bought them each a scrapbook that they've just begun putting their special letters and notes in from family and friends.
Oh and check this out:

Jane is smiling! I kind of caught this as her smile was fading, but she did smile and it was big. And she's wide awake! She'll be two weeks tomorrow. Yesterday she smiled at me after I smiled at her, and then she did it again and again in response to my smiles! I know probably none of you believe me, even Scott was a bit skeptical when I told him, but I promise it's the truth! It was NOT gas, and she was wide awake and following me with her eyes. Perhaps this is an indication that we're going to have a very happy and optimistic child on our hands. Sounds good to me! :)

General Conference/Easter weekend

This year, general conference fell on Easter weekend. My mom and I took the kids to our local grocery store, Saturday morning, for an Easter egg hunt. Afterward, we watched a session of conference on the computer,
went to Carl's jr. for lunch(notice the girls cute twinner princess hats, compliments of Granny Garnica),



watched the second session and then hung out at home while Scott attended the priesthood session. We had several activities for the kids to do while watching conference: coloring, journal writing, bingo, and then the second session, I pulled out a couple of bowls of candy, wrote a few words on paper and then each time they heard one of those words, they could pick out one piece of candy to eat. It worked pretty well for Elisabeth, she actually sat and listened for the words. Charles just did his own thing(colored etc) and when he saw Elisabeth get up and get a candy, he'd get up too. But my main point in this activity was to keep them somewhat quiet and occupied and in the same room as us and that seemed to work for them both. Annabelle slept during the first hour when I was doing this candy thing, but a little while after she woke up, I decided it would probably be a good idea to get the candy out of sight.

Sunday morning the kids woke up and did their traditional scavenger hunt for their Easter baskets. Everyone in the family who was with us that day got an Easter basket; even mom who is on a raw foods diet...we were able to find some raw food granola bars and other items to put inside. Usually the day the kids get their baskets, we let them eat more sugar than we normally would, but I think next year we may change that rule because they(okay, mostly Elisabeth) had a really hard time controlling their behavior and listening. I think that perhaps chocolate may effect that girl the same way it effects me, unfortunately. I'll need to remember that for next year when we're choosing treats to put in the baskets. Grandma Angela arrived around lunch time so we had lots of fun with family members on Easter. We ate our traditional resurrection potatoes (aka funeral potatoes), chicken and salad for dinner and Krissy brought over a yummy lamb cake and some awesome tasting cake balls dipped in white chocolate. I'm going to have to try and make those soon.

Scott's dream come true :)

Scott has been wanting a truck since we moved into our house. He wanted to be able to haul his own dirt/mulch and other things. Friday he got an old (1996) truck, and it's not a beauty, with paint coming off one of the doors, and a tear in the driver seat, amongst a couple other things, but it gets 25mpg, it's got a good engine and everything works fine(I told the owner before hand that I'd like to take it to a mechanic before we made our decision and he was fine with that. So he came w/us on our test drive and we took it to Big Tires or whatever the name of that place is, and they did it for free, which we weren't expecting) and it's ours! Now we can use our old car payments to go toward our van and hopefully pay it off sooner.
I love that we can easily fit three car seats in the back! Now Scott can take three of the kids with him when he goes out to run errands on Saturdays :)! Kind of funny: I was talking to the owner on the phone before we met with him and saw the truck, and I told him that I'd be bringing along my car seat because I told my hubby that it'd have to fit in whatever new vehicle he'd be acquiring. He chuckled but said that was just fine.

In a week

This is what's been going on this past week, since Baby Jane's birth:

dying Easter eggs:



A friend from church made this awesome car seat cover for me!
A couple of friends brought over some beautiful flowers! I had them in the kitchen for a couple of days, forgetting about my allergy to many flowers. I got a terrible, pounding headache. I didn't understand what it was from so I called my OB doctor thinking perhaps it was related to the birth or something, and he prescribed a medicine with caffeine for migraines. I read about it and learned that it was pretty addictive because of the caffeine (apparently there are two types: one you take with caffeine and the other just comes with caffeine in it) and decided not to pick it up. Thankfully, Scott put two and two together and figured out that the flowers were giving me a sinus headache. So we moved them out to the garage and within the hour, my headache was completely gone! Now I get to admire their beauty as we're coming and going which is still a really nice thing. Flowers are so beautiful; I wish I didn't have this allergy.
The kids have been taking turns holding Jane. Elisabeth and Char will sit still for a long time holding her. Annabelle, on the other hand, is satisfied after having a 10 second turn which is good because she's not very gentle.
Annabelle is a very independent and easy-going little girl. Here she is playing with her princesses, in her shoe :).
And I found her in the bathroom, all decked out in headbands and ponytails(on her wrist).

It snowed this week, a couple of times, and Charles and Elisabeth went out to build snowmen. They wanted me and my mom to go with and help, but it was really cold outside, so we just gave them a few verbal instructions and then encouraged them to try it on their own. Elisabeth made a little mound and then wrapped her scarf around it. I thought it was pretty hilarious.

And our little snuggle bug has been sleeping really well. She's been sleeping in about 4 hour increments at night which has been wonderful! And she's nursing really well. It's always pretty painful for me when I'm first getting used to it again, up until a few days after my milk comes in so probably the first 5 days or so, but then it gets much, much better. It's nice when I get to the point where I'm no longer holding my breath and cringing when she latches on(sometimes I blister a little a first which is so not fun), but rather, I barely even notice and give it no thought. I'm glad we're there now.


My mom has been such a HUGE help. She's totally taken over the laundry and every morning me and baby get to sleep in a little longer which has been SO nice. Unfortunately, she leaves tomorrow, but Scott's mom arrives today, which we're all very excited for. I'll post a few more pictures with my mom later.

Also, I mentioned Scott sold his car about a week and a half ago, and this past weekend, he was able to buy a truck. I will post pictures and give a few more details on that on another post.

And last but not least, Happy Easter! We are so grateful for our loving Savior for His sacrifice for us. And yay for general conference! How grateful I am to have a prophet and apostles, just like in the days of old. I know our Savior loves us and wants us to continue to learn of Him and draw near to Him. I love this time of year!