The rest of my pictures

This is not the most flattering picture of me, but I never have pictures of me, so it's probably good to document what I look like the day I turned 31. I was watching a home video from 4 years ago and I definately look older. I don't feel older though, is that what old people tell themselves? I feel good. I have been so busy. I am teaching yoga 3 times a week and that alone has added about 5 hours to my week. It doesn't seem like a lot, but I am adjusting anyway. It takes time away from when I feel like I can be doing yoga or other things for me, but I am enjoying it. I am trying to get a job at Villa because it is closer. I am being persistent. It will save me time in driving, which is valuable. I think my ultimate would be to work at CorePower where I practice yoga just once or twice a week and then get free yoga, so I am being patient for that. I am enjoying the craziness of it all, but I have to remind myself to enjoy it a lot of times. I love my kids. I feel so grateful to have the kids I have. They love me. And I love being with them. I love that the girls are getting older. We play settlers together and for the first time went shopping at Target for new swimming suits for them (we go to Florida next week). It was so fun having them pick out 3-4 choices and then just sit in the changing room watching them be excited about which ones they wanted and liked. The picture above is of the swimsuits they picked. So fun. And Melanie even came and took Ashley to see a movie last week. They are growing up.

The pictures of Katelyn are with HoneyBear. He is a bear that gets to go home with different kids from her kindergarten class. She was SO excited that it was her turn this weekend. She brought him to the swimming pool, made waffles cut-outs with his cookie cutter shape, made sugar cookies with him, took him sledding, and played all sorts of games with him. HoneyBear goes back to school tomorrow. I love kindergarten, and especially kindergarteners, but mostly I love Mrs. Myers. She is awesome.

So now I think I am mostly caught up on blogging. Wow.

Swimming Pictures

It's fun to take the kids swimming. It's a great activity and it wears them out. I love that my kids are so close in age and that they all love doing the same thing. I know that won't last forever.

Mia

Mia gets tired at the swimming pool.
But mostly she loves it. She likes the pool more then the others right now. We go once a week. It is great exercise for all of us. We alternate between our YMCA without the slides and Melanie's Y with the slides. We take Hans with us every once in awhile:)

She gets cold or coldy as she says.

She loves to open my sliding door, stick her head out, and yell "Friday! Friday come home!" over and over again. Wonder where she got that one from?

Got it on video. It's painfully cute.

Mia is my baby. She hasn't worn diapers since Wednesday. I have been telling her for 2 months when she asks to go on the potty that she has a diaper on so she just should use that. I guess I wasn't really ready for the annoyance of it and the ending of a diaper changing era. I've been changing diapers for over 7 years. I used to joke that I wouldn't potty train Mia until she could say with perfect diction "Mother, I would like to use the toilet now." So I find it funny that my not even 2 1/2 year old is potty trained. Piece of cake, actually. She has had 2 accidents. That's it. And one was with a babysitter and the other at the Y daycare. Other then that she has been perfect. It was good timing because I realized I only had 3 diapers left too. I don't do pull-ups or diapers for naps (if she still took one) or bedtime and she has been perfect with that as well. She did wake up at 5 am 2 mornings to use the potty, but she went back to bed. We made a special trip to Target to buy underwear for her and she picked out Dora, of course. She loves them. She will show them to anyone who walks by. She just bends over into a down dog and pulls the underwear up so you can see them. They are quite big on her. She is a small gal. We should get a couple years out of them. She felt so special and it was fun for me to watch. When Hans and I got home to the babysitter and an accident, Mia said, "Dora is so sad. I went poop on her." But she said this in a singsong voice while she was dancing. At least she gets that she shouldn't do it. She is so cute. I love this little girl. Now I think I'll make her stay in her crib until she figures out a way to persuade me otherwise.

Katelyn is 6!

Katelyn is a star gymnast. 20 pull-ups and a back walkover on the beam! She is always in a leotard and she is upside down more then she is not.

We had a baking party and decorated our own cakes. Here is Justin's masterpiece.
Ashley's cake. And Melanie helping decorate in the background.

Can you tell that this was exciting for Katelyn?!

Opening presents. Katelyn thought of a number between 1 and 10 and had her friends guess. The closest one got to give their present first. Katelyn got a zhu zhu pet, a picture making kit, a purse craft, matching nightgowns to wear with Kit, a new jacket, 20$, and a big coloring book and crayons. WOW!

We played pin the chef hat on the giant picture of Katelyn.

It was funny to watch people play that game.

Justin was the most disoriented.

The girls in their Aprons that I made. Check out Mia's Dora apron and Justin's lightning mcqueen apron. 9 in total. I'm pretty darn proud. They are all doing their impressions of a chef. Cute girls.

The birthday girl. I love when we can have the birthday party on the actual birthday day.

Decorating hot pads with fabric markers.

Blowing out candles! We also made our own pizzas, rolled out our own dough, put fruit on skewers, and played pass the present with our aprons. It was a very fun and exciting party. Katelyn and Kit in matching nightgowns.

Update

I didn't take a single picture of my trip to Utah with Melanie. We had such a great time. We left Thursday morning and came home late Monday evening. It was a long time to be away, but Hans handled it gracefully. I had some help from my neighbors and friends. We shopped, skiied, went out to lunch, got pedicures, went to a movie, went to the temple, had a superbowl party, and just generally had a great time. My two older sisters live in UT as well and they were able to ditch their kids and we just spent time together. It was so nice to be together and be friends. I loved it. I came back Monday evening to a crazy week. I frosted cupcakes, sorted through school folders, separated valentines, and tried to prepare for the week. Tuesday was my birthday. I am 31. I felt like I had already celebrated my birthday over the weekend, but I was still grateful to Hans for making an effort and for friends who stopped by. So thanks! The kids were really excited to see me and to give me their presents and eat the cake they had made. Hans had made all 40 heart-shaped playdoh for the kids to give out for valentines. So we took those valentines and Katelyn's birthday cupcakes to school on Tuesday along with Justin's valentines and valentines day box to his school. Laurie watched the kids so Melanie and I could go to yoga together. So nice. I hadn't done yoga since Wednesday and I was craving it. Overall, I enjoyed the day. And turning another year older. After my celebrations were over we went straight to getting ready for Katelyn's birthday party, which I will do a separate post on. It was a great trip and I'd do it again tomorrow if I could!

More Random Pictures

She's easy to love.
They are easy to love too, most of the time...

When I go anywhere, these 3 people follow me. I love my entourage. I will miss them in a few years. They are perfectly happy to run my errands with me and spend time with me.

I finally captured a picture of Mia doing her booty shake. She is usually naked when she does this. With some prompting she obliged.

Christmas Pictures

I didn't format these pictures very well, but they are here. Christmas morning is so fun when you are a parent to young children. They still believe (Ashley is on the fence) and they are so so so excited. We did Christmas morning in shifts. We opened and played with presents from Santa for awhile. After breakfast we opened some more. And after lunch we opened even more. I love that they just want to see and play with what they have opened. Mia loved unwrapping presents and the whole experience was just too good be to true for her. She was so cute to watch. All Justin wanted was a digital camera. He got a disposable camera, but he loved it just the same. He was so cute with that camera. I still need to get his pictures developed. I have Katelyn the blue leotard you see, which I think was more of a present for me then for her, but it is cute on her. It was a great morning.

Random Pictures

Decorating sugar cookies. We love this activity.

There is a huge dirt pile across the street from our house. They are building a house right in front of us. It has provided endless recreation and dirt in my house. Justin was not scared to slide down it.

The girls loved torturing Friday and making him slide down with them and then run him back up.

I love this picture. Ashley is watching Hans. Justin is watching Ashley. Katelyn is filled with complete joy, as usual. And Friday is hoping to run away.

I love this girl. She painted that great snowman picture you see behind her. And you can see Mia holding scissors in the background. This drawer holds school stuff. It also provides Justin, Mia, and Katelyn a place to do artwork, cut stuff up, and make a mess.

Update

The past two weeks have been so long! My poor Mia has been so sick. For 3 days I dealt with croupy cough and a fever and then the day the fever went down she started throwing up and having lots of diaper blow outs. I assumed it was Rotavirus (opted out of this vaccine since I felt uncomfortable making my 8 lb baby drink it) and just dealt with the symptoms. But 6 days later I thought maybe she would die and I would go crazy so I took her to the Doctor knowing they would do nothing. The Dr told me to take her straight to the ER to be re-hydrated, which I didn't do since it costs upwards of your life savings to take a trip to the hospital and I had already vowed that 2010 would be a doctor free year. I started syringing pedialyte into her mouth 1 oz every hour and she started to be a little more responsive. At this point she couldn't even lift her own head, had lost 2 lbs, and was very listless and lethargic. By the evening she looked awful again and when Hans got home he decided we needed to rehydrate her, which would be cheaper at Urgent care. The Dr there said that while she would benefit from rehydration it wasn't bad enough that if we had to pay for it out of pocket that it would be totally worth it. If we kept up with pedialyte the virus should be done - since 6 days is usually the max time for these things. So home we went and slept with Mia between us waking occasionally to syringe pedialyte into her mouth. In the morning she seemed a lot better, although she was still having diarrhea and she only slept most of the day not all of it. By the evening though she started throwing up again and being miserable. She did this for 3 more nights. Every day I thought she might die so I'd call the Dr and talk to them - she'd lost 3 lbs at this point - my 23 lb baby down to 20 lbs. She looks emaciated. Her skin is gray and her eyes are lifeless. I'm pretty much just sitting on the couch holding her watching endless TV. I hate TV. And the Dr would say - well take her to the hospital - but all we can do is send you there and tell you to feed her whatever she'll eat and hope the virus runs its course soon. Ugh!! But then every afternoon she would start to seem a little better after not eating anything and we'd feed her stuff and she'd be cranky and screaming at me and then she'd go to sleep and wake up vomitting again. We finally gave her a blessing and both Hans and I independently thought that this must be Gluten intolerance like me and put her on a gluten free diet yesterday and she hasn't thrown up since. She woke up twice last night to eat. I am so so so relieved. I think she might be able to grow and tolerate food again. She's eating and keeping it down. Over the last two weeks when I would try to have her eat something she would scream at me "I don't like food!!"

So that is why it's been a really long couple of weeks for me. I am so glad she is better because now I get to go to SLC for my birthday with Melanie and ski. I can't wait. We leave Thursday. The other 3 kids have been so great. The girls started art classes and we have still managed to find time to spend with them through the complete exhaustion.

I am excited for this week to start and for all this to be over.