Washington Trip

Whew, I am behind in blogging! So I'm going to try and get caught up here over the next day or two. Here it goes.

For our last official week of summer (well last week for Lance and actually the first week of fall for Mikey as he started school that week--but we missed it. I'm a little concerned about all that he missed during that first week of preschool, but we're working to catch him up ;) we went to Washington to visit Lance's family. Here are some highlights.

We drove there. It's a long drive for three little kids (and a long drive for a mom with three little kids in the car). So we stayed over in a hotel half way through. I just couldn't resist the pictures here because I was taken back to so many nights on vacations having to share a bed with a sibling. Here is Mikey and Luke's first night of many, I'm sure, sharing a bed. And yes, you'll notice the barricade of pillows there that was required to stop the interactions preventing sleep.

And I just love a sleeping Luke

Lance was wise enough to bring a little something to get them to run around during those bathroom breaks

Here is Lance doing what he loves most--barefootin' it up with his brother

Kids in the sand

Kids in the water

Luke was very brave and went tubing on dad's lap--and loved it!

And Mikey, who is sometimes a little more timid with things, particularly things with water, surprisingly went tubing all by himself!

The last day was picture day

All the grandkids (Luke was grumpy through this whole process--you may notice the lack of smiles)

My cute boys!

Luke and Lizzie

The whole gang

The kids with Grandma and Grandpa

Backyard Camping!

If you remember last summer, Lance took Mikey camping in our backyard. Well I think it's now become a kind of tradition. This time Luke got to join in. After they were all settled in to sleep, I sneaked outside and scared them with the camera. :) Hee hee.

As you can see, it was difficult to get everyone to cooperate for the camera...

If only they weren't all so afraid of the camera...
I mean seriously, it's just a camera....
Seriously.

The Fish Formerly Known as Planter...

...Is now known as Superman.

Mikey lovingly (randomly?) named his fish "Planter" six months ago (yeah, I don't know where "Planter" came from, but that's another story....) But finally the superhero obsession has taken over. Every time I mention Planter I hear, "You mean Superman?" "Yes. I mean Superman."

Jail Time

For this story, I must start with some background.

Lance tells Mikey stories every night before he goes to bed. Lately he has gotten more and more obsessed with superheros so Lance has been telling him Batman stories. The stories all include a bad guy--the usual ones, The Joker, Cat Woman, Two Face.... And at the end of the story they all end up in jail.

Now for our story. So Lance works at the Attorney General's office. Once a year they are given the opportunity to tour the Utah State Prison and they are allowed a "plus one." :) How nice, huh? (Actually we were pretty excited and it was really interesting.) Anyway, the day we were going Lance was driving in the car with Mikey and had told him where we were going and why mimi was coming to babysit. Suddenly Mikey said, "is The Joker there?" Lance was confused for a minute and didn't know what he was talking about. But when Mikey said it again, he finally realized what he meant. Of course! Batman had been sending all these bad guys to jail and we were going to see the jail! Mimi helped Mikey call us after we had gone and he asked me if I had seen Two Face. It was awesome.

The Continued Importance of Being 4

A few days ago we were back at the gym and going into the child center. Mikey had to use the bathroom so I went in with him and waited to make sure everyone was all set. After doing what he needed to do he was out washing his hands at the sink. Another little boy came in the bathroom and stood there for a minute watching Mikey. Mikey was looking back at him and suddenly the following conversation took place:

Other little boy: "Hey. Are you 4?"
Mikey: "Yeah. Are you 4?"
Other little boy: "Yeah."
Mikey: "Hey cool! We can play together."
Other little boy: "Yeah! Let's go!"

Catching up with Mikey

Mikey is doing great. He's a great big brother. He plays with Luke all the time, teaches and helps him with all sorts of things. And no matter what kind of warnings he gets from us about waking up Joey he just can't NOT kiss Joey every 5 minutes. Aside from occasionally waking Joey up, he is very helpful and always doing things like keeping Joey happy by making faces at him for a few minutes, keeping his binky in his mouth and those kind of things. But here are a few of my favorite things about Mikey lately:


The importance of being 4:
I have recently discovered that being 4 is VERY important. When Mikey turned 3, he enjoyed his party and presents and things, but he didn't talk too much about being 3. That is not the case with being 4. The magnitude of this new milestone became more apparent to me this week.

Early in the week we went to the gym so the kids could play at the child center. When we first walked in I noticed Mikey noticing and smiling at another little girl who was waiting around the entrance. I think he knew her a little from the child center. Well I checked in and we finally approached this little girl. As we walked past Mikey was finally close enough to her to greet her. As we walked by he stepped a little closer to her, stopped, smiled and put his hand out in front of her with 4 fingers up and just held it there. No words, he just held out his hand with a big grin on his face. He waited and after a second she did the same thing back--just holding up 4 fingers, kind of like this 4-year-old salute or something. They both just smiled at each other and kind of mumbled, "yeah?" "4?" "yeah." And he walked away smiling. I was dying. It was like their own special "handshake" for the "4-year-old club." It was awesome.

THEN a few days later we were back. This time Mikey was standing next to me as I handed my card to the man at the check in desk. The man looked at Mikey and said, "hey buddy! what's up?!" Mikey can get a little shy at times with strangers and this was one of those moments. He gave a shy smile and put his head down a little and leaned into me. Then after a second he finally looked up at the guy, smiled a little bigger, and then just stuck his hand out...again with 4 fingers up. No words. Just a smile and 4 fingers. If there's one thing you need to know about Mikey it's that he's 4.


Celebrities in the Neighborhood:
Mikey was the first to learn that there are celebrities who live in our neighborhood. We can see their house from our back porch, in fact. Can you see? In the picture below?


So a few days after we moved in, I was lying down and Mikey came inside all excited and whispered to me, "Mom! There is something I have to show you! You have to come see! We can see the Three Little Pigs' house from our porch!" I was a little out of it and didn't know what he was talking about. Anyway, so he pulls me outside and tries to point out the house. I had no idea what he was talking about and was wondering why he thought the Three Little Pigs lived in this big house. But finally I realized he was talking about THIS house.
He continued to talk about the Three Little Pigs for days and wanting to go knock on their door and see them. Luckily he finally let it go, but I still think about the Three Little Pigs when I go out on our porch. The things kids think of.


Big Brother:
Like I said, Mikey is a great big brother. Last Sunday Luke was taking a nap, Joey was asleep in the swing and Mikey was just playing by himself while Lance and I both took naps. (I know, amazing that we were both taking a Sunday nap.) At some point I started to hear Joey fuss. Mikey came in and was talking to me about it, but I was so out of it I don't remember much. When I got up a little later I faintly remembered Mikey saying something about the binky and then found him like this:
He had sat there and helped Joey calm down and get his binky and apparently laid down at some point of taking care of him and fell asleep. I woke to three kids sleeping peacefully. What would I do without Mikey. :)

Catching up with Luke

Oh my little Luke. He's growing up so much and it makes me sad! I want him to stay this little forever! Though maybe he could still grow out of his hitting and tantrum phase. He is the happiest and cutest thing going, but all of the recent changes in our lives have not gone unnoticed in his behavior. He has gotten noticeably more clingy and needing of my attention. Though this makes things much more difficult when trying to adequately take care of a newborn, I secretly love it ;) He wants me to hold him and cuddle with him all the time and I really love it.

But yes, he is going through quite a little hitting and throwing stage. I don't know if this is just his age or the move and new brother thing or a combo of everything, but it is a little difficult to deal with at times. Usually it is Mikey or the walls that suffer from this, but he has successfully landed a blow to Joey two or three times :( We're working it. Hopefully we can get over this soon. But aside from this he is doing great! He loves to color and draw, but we're working on the difference between paper and all other surfaces in the house. And he can also now count to 7. We love Luke!!!

I mean come on, look at that smile!

I just loved this picture all zonked out in his short shorts :)

And finally, only tonight Luke slept in a big boy bed for the first time!! He did great! He got right in and went to sleep! But we'll see if it holds up and how he does in the morning. I also don't know about naps. We might keep using the crib for naps for a bit just to keep him in there :)
Also, in case you're wondering that is Luke's Sonny Bear. We don't know where he got it, but one day he just started calling his bear "Sonny Bear." (Or maybe it's "Sunny Bear?" He didn't tell me what spelling to use.) We seriously have no idea where it came from.

(Okay, I also have a bunch of Mikey stuff to post, but it's super late so I'll get to it tomorrow.)

Catching up with Joey

Time to post all the pictures I haven't gotten around to posting for the past month! Our little Joey is just as cute as ever and is getting so big so fast (as they always seem to do.) He is now almost two months old and has grown out of his newborn clothes :(

He is doing great, but poor thing is definitely the third child (Lance and I both sympathize as fellow thirds :) He usually has to cry a little longer than either of the other kids ever had to, sometimes gets his feedings cut short or at least must take a little unexpected break in the middle of eating, has to share my lap with a brother while trying to nurse and has been hit on the head or face more than once as a result of a little two-year-old's "I just had to move and I just got a new little brother who takes all my mom's attention" tantrum. (More on Luke later.) Regardless of the attention stealing he does, his brothers are almost always crazy about him and love him a little TOO much, if you know what I mean. He has started to smile quite often and his brothers get even more excited when they can get a smile out of him. Nights still aren't great as he usually won't give me more than 3 or 4 hours at a time, but we're still getting by.

Now for some pictures you've missed:

Joey was blessed on July 11th...the day after we moved. I know, it was crazy. But you do what you gotta do, right! It was a great blessing with great people there and that is what is important (even if they had to sit amongst boxes after)

How sweet is this picture of Mikey and Joey! We were sad that we never got a picture with Luke after, but he fell asleep on the way home from church so he missed the whole party!

Just a whole bunch of cute Joey faces:




And like I said, more and more smiley!


This is for the grandparents. It's just the little wiggles and grunts of a 6-week-old, but moms and grandparents can't get enough of this stuff :)

Happy Pioneer Day!

The 24th was a (mostly) fun day for all! (I had a little work crisis that I found out about at 5:30 am and that I worked on until about 11:30 and it never really worked out all that great, so that made me a little extra tired and stressed that day, but enough of that!)

The boys all started the day with a little neighborhood parade led by a fire truck and a breakfast. I was sad to miss out on it, but they all had fun! Anyone who wanted to participate in the parade was welcome in whatever form desired. Mikey rode his bike and Luke rode dad. :) They came right by our house so I at least got to see them.

Then in the evening we went up Millcreek Canyon with various family members for dinner. Here is Luke with his cousin Abigail. The kids were covered in marshmallows and dirt by the end and were happier than ever!

We tried to take some family pictures, but getting the kids to hold still long enough to take the pictures were more difficult than usual.

Luke was using this lacrosse stick for everything he could think of including a butterfly net, a baseball bat, and as seen below, a horse.

Happy Father's Day (a little late!)

I meant to post this a month ago when we first got this, but then we were moving and I forgot! This was the picture the nursery sent home on Father's day for Lance. Could that be any cuter!?

Two wheeler

So Mikey has been begging us to take the training wheels off of his bike. Lance has taken them off and worked with him a little. I think he's still a little ways off from being able to ride the bike without training wheels, but still he needed to be properly protected. So Lance took him to the store to buy a helmet. As luck would have it, they had Spiderman gear--I think he's now more excited about his gear than actually riding the bike. :)

New House

As I mentioned earlier, we just moved! We have been looking for just the right house for about a year and half and it was well worth the wait! We couldn't be happier with our house (unless, of course, if it were in our last ward boundaries because we miss them!) But we have met some super nice people in this neighborhood and we know we will love this neighborhood, too.

We have been trying to get things unpacked and organized enough to take some decent pictures to post, but I fear that if I wait for that I'll never post pictures. So instead I thought I'd just put up the pictures that were used for the listing when the house was for sale (so none of the furniture is ours as it is all staging furniture--but I wouldn't have minded them leaving some of it! :) We have done a little bit of painting which we are super happy with, but for now this is what you get. I have not really bothered with putting these in any sort of order that makes sense. These are just a few random pictures and one day I WILL take some pictures when it looks more like our own :)

The Front (needs some pruning, flowers and things)

One of our favorite things! The view. We seriously comment on it ever time we go out on our deck. (And this picture doesn't even show the half of it!)

The laundry room (Who posts pictures of the laundry room? Well maybe you would if it was this AWESOME! I hate doing laundry so this was big deal for me. I love it :)

The family room

Master bath

Master bedroom

Kitchen

Finished basement (there is also a sub-basement that is unfinished)

More kitchen and dining

Living room

More living room

Entry

That's all for now!

Quote of the Day:

Mikey came in this morning all excited to tell me about what we are doing at the 24th of July neighborhood Breakfast:

Mikey: Mom! Do you know what we're doing tomorrow!? We're going to be in a parade and eat breakfast and do a Popsicle course!

I do not know what a Popsicle course is, but I'm excited to find out!

Good Idea, Bad Idea

Good Idea:
-Giving birth to a beautiful baby
-Having adorable and very active two- and four-year-old boys
-Buying a beautiful new house
-Moving into a bigger and much better house
-Having a business that keeps you busy

Bad Idea:
-Having each and every one of those at once...

Yes, we went under contract the day I went into labor. Then unlike when having my second child, this time I couldn't arrange my work to take a break so business continued as usual despite having a baby. And obviously we had to prepare to move which is never a small feat. So without going into too much detail about all the hurdles we had to go through to get the sale completed, in addition to minor troubles with our rental property in Florida and troubles with our landlords here, the last month and a half has been my craziest to date of my WHOLE life. (Okay, I'm being dramatic, but you can imagine.) If it weren't for my parents and my sister here to help with my boys I think I would still be in our old house curled up in the fetal position in the basement quietly going insane. So now you know why I haven't been showing off my perfect little newborn every day. Now that we are (slowly) getting settled, more pictures should starting popping up of both newborn and house. Just have a little patience.

But just a little taste:

View from our deck and the reason we get nothing done from about 8:30 to 9:00 at night:

My little sweetheart:

PS--anyone who gets this post's title's reference wins a prize (the prize being my undying and profound respect)