Surviving

Being 7 1/2 months pregnant and suddenly having all 3 boys back all day together was a little exhausting. One of the ways I survived was having my daily "nap/rest time" break. Miles still naps and thankfully we have a crib tent that keeps him there for the full 2 hours I require.

Ethan has recently fallen in love with the Captain Underpants series. I know, great literature, but it's at least a start to a love of reading. We'll get him hooked on better novels when he's a little faster and more fluent.
And Isaac is pretty good at playing quietly in his room by himself. Excuse the mess, we've literally torn almost every room in our house apart to repaint/carpet/repurpose it. Here's the pile of all the picture frames waiting to be rehung and Miles' crib waiting to be assembled in the boys room.

Spring Break- REAL

After 2 days with museums the kids were happy to stay at home and played very nicely together. I spent the day starting a new clean-out project that you'll get to see later. And since Taylor's parents were out of town we got to have their REAL soccer tickets for the Wednesday night game.

It was perfect! Free stadium food to entertain the littler ones and soccer to entertain Ethan, Taylor, and I. And since we've been having amazing weather it was in the 70's until the very end of the game when all it took was some rain jackets and hoods to keep us warm.

Spring Break- Dinosaur Museum Day

Tuesday was another good museum visit day of Spring Break. After a morning relaxing and cleaning and a midday doctor's appointment and then naps, we headed off to The Natural History Museum at Thanksgiving Point and then free dinner at IKEA (are you noticing a theme here- I'm game for free meals for my kids any time and happily plan our excursions around them :).

Most of the museum is dinosaurs but they have a rotating exhibit room and this time it was physics related experiments. My kids would have stayed there the whole time.

Making clouds.
But alas, I made them move on. I LOVE this museum and only wish it wasn't 40 minutes away. It's absolutely perfect in my opinion with one room of stuff to see and learn followed by one room of hands on activities. Just the right mix for little boys who want to see and do and see and do.

So after seeing lots of dinosaur bones they were ready to put together a 3-D dinosaur. Actually I should say Isaac and Ethan were ready to. Miles flipped out. Seriously came running into my legs sobbing about the scary dinosaur that would get him.
Then it was time for more bones and then these magnetic puzzles. Ethan would have stayed there for years...
Miles and Isaac were just as happy climbing on the digging rocks right next to the puzzles.
Then more bones followed by puzzles and dress-up costumes and books to read (and a bench for me to rest on :).

Miles was much happier with this size of a dinosaur!

And then on to the best part of the museum- the erosion table. This table seriously takes up an entire room and can fit probably 40 kids around the inside and outside. There are aprons to keep their clothes dry and then you just let them go.
There are little spouts of running water and mounds of sand you can build into islands or dams. Plus lots of little plastic trees and dinosaurs.
We stayed more than an hour. And they would have stayed all day- sand+water+dinosaur toys=happy boys.
Then more dinosaur bones (and I finally remembered to take a picture :).
And then more dinosaurs to climb on.
More bones. And finally a digging sight complete with brushes and sand.
Well worth the drive and getting free dinner afterwards was icing on the cake. Definitely ready for bed though when we got home. A perfect outing!

Spring Break- Aquarium Day

Even though we stayed home for spring break I wasn't crazy enough to think that I could plan to stay around the house and have happy, entertained boys all week. And since we weren't spending any money traveling I figured we could splurge a little and hit up some of the museums we never go to (mostly because they're a bit of a drive away and I'm lazy).

So Monday after we'd cleaned up we headed off for free breakfast at IKEA followed by a visit to the Aquarium. All in matching brown since I've learned they're easier to keep track of all looking alike. And since I wasn't bringing a stroller, that helped me keep track of 3 little boys.

Amazingly Miles was so enthralled by all the fish that he was the easiest to keep track of. He rarely moved until I told him to and prefered to just stay and watch.

Isaac was the one most often running off to the next exhibit very excited to yell back to us to come and see something cool.

And of course they love the play tunnels with small aquariums in them.
The new exhibit at our rather small Utah aquarium is river otters. The first time we passed by they were all still sleeping. But when we came back an hour later they were in full play mode.Overall a good morning and just the right amount of activity for the day. After that just lunch, naps, some playing outside, dinner, and ready for bed. Fabulous!

General Conference

For the first time ever we were able to watch General Conference at home, on our TV. Surprising right? But while we lived in DC and had cable, only those in Virginia got conference on TV (there weren't enough DC signers of the petition) and then once we got to Utah, we skipped cable for the first 2 1/2 years we were here so we ended up just watching over the internet again. It works, but not as comfortable to watch on a small screen in an office chair. This year it was fabulous with a couch and a big screen.

And since my boys are getting older, I put in more of an effort to make it meaningful (and make them actually want to listen) for them. I found all my ideas at sugardoodle.com if you'd like your own for October. That's my favorite sight for all things primary related.

We missed Saturday morning session with soccer games but were around for the rest. Here all 3 boys are playing bingo with jelly beans. Next time I'll use some kind of markers instead of candy since Miles couldn't resist eating them all and then had nothing to play with. Also Ethan couldn't stop holding them in his hands which made them sticky, and him sticky, and then my new carpet sticky. Lovely!

I printed off topics charts and taped them up on our only "wall" in the room with space.
Here's the close-up. Basically we listened to a talk and then halfway or all the way through we'd decide what the main topic for the talk was and then we'd get to eat the corresponding candy. This worked mostly well except next year I'll make my own papers with topics I think are more likely to be covered and that the kids will recognize.
After we decided on the topic (and ate the candy) then we'd tape up the picture of the apostle who had talked about it. The good side effect of this that I hadn't thought of was that it gave my kids a natural break during conference. It's a LOT to ask a 4 and 6 year old to sit for 2 hours straight and just listen. And then to ask them to do it 3 times over 2 days is just TOO MUCH. So since I only had pictures printed out of the apostles, I decided they only had to listen when an apostle was speaking. Any other general authority they got to ignore (ie play quietly on the floor with some toys, since this is the toy room). Someday I'll ask them to listen to all of it but for now, small bits of listening mixed in with small breaks to play was about perfect.
The other activity I had was to tape up pictures of the apostles when they spoke. In primary they've been learning the names and faces of the apostles so this was another small activity for them to see if they could match the face on the TV screen with the face on my print out.
I learned from this experience that it is easier to send my kids downstairs to play so I can listen and enjoy conference myself. That's what we've done in the past and I definitely get more out of it personally. But then they don't get much of anything out of it so I guess it's about time for me to be a little more self-less and help them learn to listen. So we'll try this again in the fall with a few small modifications.
And in the end everyone was happy and full of sugar and we'd had some good family time.

Easter Bags

One of my main complaints with our family traveling so much is that we always do it around holidays. We're ALWAYS gone at Christmas and then Spring Break is always around Easter so we seem to miss that holiday too. Don't get me wrong, I manage to squeeze in the basics like stocking and easter baskets, but I do feel like the meaning behind the holidays is often lost in the chaos of being somewhere new.

So this year since I'm just 6 weeks from having a baby and WAY sick of traveling after Tahiti and NYC we decided to stay at home for a stay-cation. And since we were staying I had time to make Easter more meaningful. So for the 2 weeks prior to Easter we had nightly FHE where we opened up an "Easter Bag" to find a surprise that went along with a New Testament story of Christ.

Okay so I'll admit that we didn't do a bag each and every night, sometimes we missed a night because we were off doing something together but it was nice to each night gather, read some scriptures, and then get a small surprise to go along with it. In case you're wondering I absolutely did NOT come up with this on my own. I found it on Pinterest (which I LOVE) so you're welcome to look me up and "pin" it for next year for your family.

I severely neglected taking pictures but I did remember the first night where we read about Jesus' many names and then found small playdoughs inside our bag. Then we used the playdough to spell out each of our middle names which are all family names and have more meaning because of the people and stories they represent.
A fun tradition that I'm hoping to continue in years to come. Check out pinterest to see all the different day's scripture stories and the coordinating small gift. (another favorite of the kids was reading the miracle of the loaves and fishes and finding 5 crackers and 3 swedish fish in their bags :)

Another PINK Baby Shower

One funny fact you may not know about me: I have 3 little boys but I've only ever had a pink baby shower. And now- I've had 2 pink baby showers! Thankfully this baby WILL be a girl and WILL get to wear all the adorable clothes and shoes I got.

When my neighbor said she wanted to throw me a girl shower, she asked if I'd bring along the pink outfit I'd told her about . So here's the story for posterity. When I was pregnant with Ethan, Taylor and I worked every Thursday night in the Washington DC temple as ordinance workers. There were a few other young people but mostly just older couples that worked there. And one night when I was very visibly pregnant, one of the other ladies on my shift brought me a gift and a story to go with it. Her very elderly mother had died recently and in cleaning out her home, she found this beautiful crocheted sweater and bonnet in a hope chest. She assumed that she was the only baby to ever wear them since she'd been the only girl in her family. She also assumed that her mother had been saving it to give to a descendant but unfortunately she'd only had sons and her sons had all only had sons. There were literally no girls for 2 generations. So this cute old temple worker gave me this beautiful, antique sweater and bonnet that she'd worn 60+ years ago and told me with a wink and a smile that she hoped now the curse of no girls would be broken from her family.

I was a little overwhelmed because it was a family heirloom and because it was such a beautiful outfit but I was excited to put it on my own little "Olivia". Unfortunately ETHAN was born and the pink outfit was forgotten until much later and the temple worker had moved on by then.
So it's been carefully folded in a box in a closet for the past 7 years just waiting for an actual girl to put it on. And hopefully in another 2 months it will ACTUALLY happen!!!
So I attended by second pink baby shower put on by my amazing next door neighbor who has 5 boys of her own and was so excited to do something pink. How cute is she? See the table cloth? She wanted to make a little flag garland and couldn't find paper to match so she color photocopied the tablecloth and printed off exact copies. Have you ever heard of that? I thought it was genius! and adorable!

They literally stole my camera out of my hands and pushed me into taking a picture- which is fine since really this is probably one of the only prego shots I've ever had. So fine, there's one, now we're done forever.
So fun to be pampered and to get cute pink clothes. I CANNOT wait to use them!!!