Introducing Natalie Victoria Wardle

Natalie Victoria Wardle was born yesterday, December 10, 2009 at 11:58. She was 6 lbs 12 oz and 18 1/2 inches long. We decided to give her the middle name Victoria after my Grandma.

As I mentioned in my last post I had my membranes stripped on Monday, and I was really expecting that that would make me go into labor, it worked with Adam. But I went ahead and scheduled an induction for Thursday anyway, just in case. I had contractions off and on for three days, but they never turned into actual labor. I was pretty disappointed Wednesday night when it became apparent that I would in fact be induced the next day. We went to the new Riverton Hospital on Thursday morning. It is such a nice hospital and all of the staff was so nice, they made us feel very comfortable. Things went slowly for a few hours, then at about 11:30 they got a little crazy. I went from a 4 to holding my baby in less than 30 minutes. And, my epidural didn't have time to kick all the way in, so I could feel a lot more than I wanted to. It was not fun, but it was fast. I only had to push through one contratction and then my beautiful baby was here. No stitches eaither, yeah!

We stayed in the hospital for less than 24 hrs after her birth. I am a postpartum nurse and so I feel like I can take care of myself. I also don't really like being in the hospital, the bed is not comfortable and the food isn't very good. But the main reason to go home early was because kids aren't allowed in the hospital right now because of the strict visitor policy during flu season. I missed them and I wanted them to meet their baby sister.All ready to go home

Adam, Nathan, and Jaocb checking out their sister

Nathan and Natalie

Jacob wasn't very excited about a sister from the begining, but he feel in love with her as soon as he saw her. I knew that would happen. Nathan was very excited for a baby sister the whole time, he is also the one who really wanted the name Natalie, so he was really excited. I was worried about how Adam would do, but he did very well with her, he is facinated by her, I think he thinks she is doll that moves.

It is strange to have a little girl dressed in pink in our house. I am sure we will get used to it soon enough. Now I need to go and get some sleep.

I am ready! I think.

Today I am 39 weeks pregnant, and I am so ready to have this baby. I was really happy to wake up this morning with somewhat regular, but very mild contractions. They lasted all morning, but stopped about the time I went to my doctor appointment. I am dilated to a 3 and 70% effaced. I had the doctor strip my membranes. It hurt like heck. I had it done with Adam and I don't remember it hurting so bad. With Adam I went into labor about 48 hours later, so maybe Wednesday. If it doesn't happen on it's own, I went ahead and scheduled an induction on Thursday, so whatever happens, I am having a baby this week. I went ahead and used today to finish up some last preparations.

I have drawers full of pink clothes, which is really strange for me after having three boys.

I took our old, ugly, boy bassinet and recovered with a cute brown and pink polka dot fabric. Now it is fit for sweet little girl.

My mom and I found this supper cute car seat cover that changes my boys car seat into a nice girly one with a nice think blanket cover to keep her warm this winter. And, I got this diaper bag from my sister in law, just enough pink, but not too much that Randy won't carry it.

All this pink is really strange, but so cute. I am so excited to be having a little girl. I can't wait to see her, and give her a name. The sooner the better, I am ready.

My Favorite Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

Today I baked a batch of my favorite cookies ever. Since I haven't posted for a while I decided to share the recipe with you. I found this recipe in a ward cookbook my mother in law gave me not long after I got married, over 9 years ago. It has been a favorite of ours ever since. I have trouble with cookies at our altitude, they always fall flat, or are too cakey, these however turn out perfect every time.

1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/2 c. peanut butter
1 egg
2 Tbs. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. milk chocolate chips

Cream the butters and the sugars. Then add the egg, milk, and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together, then add to wet ingredients. Stir in MILK chocolate chips. (I am usually a dark chocolate girl, but the milk chocolate goes perfect in these cookies.) Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes. Makes 2 1/2 Dozen. It is as easy as that. Hope you enjoy.

Fall Festivities

So this was going to be post just about Halloween, but as I was looking through my pictures I found some really good ones of other stuff we have done this month. These first three pictures are of my kids and their cousins, Isaac, Alayna, and Eli, at the pumpkin patch. There is a great little pumpkin patch close to our house that has this little kid size corn maze that the kids love. This year they added kid size wheelbarrows too. We had fun looking for the perfect pumpkins.

These next pictures are from one of our families favorite fall activities, going up in the canyon to see the fall colors. This year we made the trip with Jason and Erika and their kids. So again my kids are pictured with Isaac, Alayna, and Eli. It was a beautiful day.

Don't we have some dang cute kids?

Okay, now to Halloween. Our Halloween festivities lasted for a week this year. We started off with a ward Halloween party last Saturday. Then Nathan had a Joy School party on Thursday. Jacob had a class party on Friday. And finally the real deal yesterday. So Jacob got to wear his costume 4 times and the other kids did 3 times. I usually make my kids costumes, but I wasn't feeling very creative this year and so we recycled old Halloween costumes, with the exception of Jacob's, which Randy made. Jacob really wanted to be a robot. So, Randy got a box, spray painted it silver, covered a play hard hat with tin foil, and put some dryer hose on his arms, a perfect robot, except he couldn't sit, or put his hands together when he was wearing it. Nathan wore a corn on the cob costume that Jacob wore a couple of years ago, and Adam wore a lion costume I made when Jacob was about the same age.

Adam was not very cooperative, this was the only picture I could get with his mane on

On Friday there was a little Halloween parade at Jacob's school before their class party. They started playing the Ghost Busters song and Jacob started dancing. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so cute. I tried to include a video, but it wouldn't upload. Sorry Mom, I will have to try again later. I got to help with the Halloween party in Jacob's class. This is a picture of his class, they sang some songs at the beginning of the party. Notice how little Jacob looks, he is one of the smallest kids in his class.

The little golden princess in this picture is Katelyn, she is Jacob's new best friend. This is a big deal because Jacob's cousin Isaac has been his best friend his whole life. Now he says Isaac is his best cousin, and Katelyn is his best friend. He also thinks it is amazing that a girl can be his best friend. Let me tell you about Katelyn. Her family actually moved in across the street from us over the summer, but they didn't meet until the second day of school. Jacob pointed out that she is the first friend he made by himself, without mom or dad. They sit at the same table at school. He talks about her constantly. One day I picked Jacob up from school and as we walked by her she said "bye" to him. Then one of our ward boys who is in their class, Jaxon, yelled, "Jacob has a crush on Katelyn." Jacob laughed and said, "That is funny what Jaxon said, isn't it mom?" I agreed, then Jacob said, "What does that even mean?" with this perplexed look on his face. I told him it means that he likes her and that he thinks she is cute. Then I asked him if he does have a crush on Katelyn. He said, "Well, I really like Katelyn" and left it at that. Apparently he is not the only boy in his class, or in our ward, who really likes Katelyn. Another mom in our ward asked me at the party who she is because her son, Tyler, is constantly talking about her. Today Jacob asked me if he could marry someone he met when he was five. Hmm.

Disneyland!

We just got back from a fabulous vacation to southern California. We flew out last Tuesday afternoon. We flew down with Randy's brother Jason and his family, his sister Kristin and her family, and her friends family. Randy's brother Scott and his family met us down there (they drove), so we had quite a large group. The flight down was great. We flew into Long Beach, rented a car, and drove about 30 minutes to Anaheim where we stayed.

Nathan in front of the airplane, we flew Jet Blue, which he thought was he plane's name.

We spent all day on Wednesday at Disneyland and California Adventure. It was so fun. I hadn't been to Disneyland in 15 years and Randy and my boys had never been. We had an awesome day, the lines were not long and the weather was great. The kids, even Adam, did great even thought we had a really long day. The highlight of the day was the Pixar Parade in California Adventure, all of my kids favorite movies came to life, including Finding Nemo, Cars, and Toy Story. The boys also got to have their picture taken with Lightning McQueen and Mater.Ready to go, riding the shuttle into the park.

We spent Thursday winding down by going to Newport Beach, visiting Trader Joes (it wouldn't be a vacation without bring home some edible souvenirs), and going to an Angels game. It was an awesome day for the beach. It was hot and the water felt so good. There were some good waves, Jacob and his cousin Isaac loved playing in the waves. The littler kids loved playing in the sand, all Adam wanted to do was roll around in it. We put the kids to bed early in preparation for an even longer day at Disneyland on Friday.

We got up early Friday morning and were at the park right around 8 am. It was an awesome time to be there, there were no lines for anything and we were able to do most of what we wanted to do within a few hours. After a fun morning at Disneyland we went over to California Adventure for the afternoon. One of the highlights for me was Soring Over California. It was unbelievable, that is the closest thing to flying you can get. We went back over to Disneyland for the parade in the evening. We didn't really get to see much of it because of where we were sitting and the unbelievable crowds. There were no crowds all day so I figured the huge crowd was just everyone gathered for the parade, but when we went to try to ride some more rides the lines were crazy long. For some reason the park really filled up in the evening, some much that it wasn't even fun anymore. We were going to try to stay for the light show, but crowd was so huge and the kids were tired. They actually started begging to go home, so we left. We didn't feel bad about leaving early, we had an awesome day. It was hard for me to be there and not go on any fun rides, I LOVE roller coasters! And couldn't go on a single one, what being 29 weeks pregnant. But it was okay. I held up remarkable well with all the walking too.

Jacob trying to pull the sward from the stone


With cousins and the Bears from Brother Bear

On Saturday we drove about 40 minutes to Riverside to visit my Grandma. It was fun to see her and my uncles and cousins I haven't seen in a long time. It was also nice to have a relaxing day.

Grandma Vicky with her Great Grandsons, Jacob, Ryan, Adam, and Nathan

Me and my cousins, Corri, Matt, and Jessica

Matt and his family, Ryan and Jessica

We left very early Sunday morning. Our plane left Long Beach at 7 am. We discovered on the flight home that Nathan gets air sick just like his mom. There was a storm in Salt Lake, and a ton of turbulence. By some miracle Adam, who had been very wiggly the whole flight, fell asleep right before it got too rough. He slept in my lap while I struggled to keep my breakfast down and Randy helped Nathan use the barf bag. It was not fun, that was by far the worst part of the whole trip. We had a great vacation, but were glad to be home.

What do you do with tons of free fruit?

Can it! I have some very generous neighbors, who had some very plentiful fruit trees this year. I got free peaches, pears, and more apples than I have ever seen in one place. I am on a big food storage kick, so instead of letting all this fruit go to waste I tried my hand at some serious canning. It took me about a week, but I made 7 pints of peach jam, 7 quarts of pears, 7 quarts of apple pie filling, and about 20 quarts of apple sauce. I took some of my apple sauce and tried apple butter. I have never really had apple butter, so I wasn't at all sure what I was doing, but I followed the recipe and it turned out fabulous, I love it.

Jacob was an awesome helper making apple sauce.

First Day of Kindergarten

Jacob had his first day of Kindergarten on Thursday (I know, it was an odd day to start, especially since Friday was a short day and Monday is Labor Day, but whatever). We were very excited that the big day finally came, we have been waiting for a month for school start. The rest of our school district, including all of Jacob's cousins, started school at the beginning of August. Our start date was pushed back a month because our brand new school, Silver Crest Elementary, wasn't ready yet. It was worth the wait. The school is beautiful, and it is so nice to have it right in our back yard. On Thursday morning Jacob got up at 6:30 and asked if it was time to get up yet, "No! Go back to bed." Later in the morning, when we saw his friend Lexi, who lives next door, heading off to her morning Kindergarten class he was ready to go too. When I told him that he doesn't go until after lunch he started to cry, "Why didn't you put me in the morning class?" It was a long morning of waiting. Finally, it was time to get ready. He picked out which shirt to wear and got dressed in his new school cloths, I made him wear old cloths in the morning. He insisted on wearing his Lightning McQueen underwear to match his backpack, and because "It is my lucky day." :0) Here he is all ready to go.
Randy was able to come home for lunch so the whole family walked over to the school to drop Jacob off. He was excited, not at all nervous. I was excited too, not at all sad. He has been so board lately, I am glad that he finally has something to do.

Here he is with his Joy School friends Emily and Makailey in front of the school

This is Enoch, his "second best friend"

Most of the other Kindergartners in our ward are in his class, which we are all really happy about.

Lined up saying hi to his teacher Miss Schmidt

It turns out Randy went to high school with Jacob's teacher Miss Schmidt. They didn't hang out, but they had a lot of classes together and they had friends in common. Small world.

When I picked Jacob up three hours later he said he had fun on his first day of Kindergarten. It was hard to get much information out of him. But I did get that they read some stories and learned some of the rules. His favorite part was their 15 min recess because, "We got to play outside." I have a feeling that the only reason he said this is because Isaac says that recess is his favorite part of school. He also told me that he lost his chance to have an M&M, but he didn't know what he did to loose it. He said no one got one. Hmm. I hope they are being good kids.

What have I been up to?

Good question. Growing a baby, taking care of kids, is that a good answer. Really, we have been having a pretty lazy summer, mostly due to the fact that I just don't have a lot of energy to do more than I absolutely have to. That, and it has been so stinking hot, anyone who has ever been pregnant in the summer understands, I can only stand to be outside for a few minutes at a time. I feel bad that we haven't spent more time outside this summer, but even when I send my kids out in the backyard by themselves they only last 10 minutes max. That might also have something to do with the construction site in the backyard. It is so noisy you can't hear yourself talk, and the loose piles of dirt and wind are a great mix too. Mix in some tumble weeds, which we have in abundance this summer, and the backyard is a great place to play. I feel bad that we haven't done much of anything this summer. I had good intentions when the summer started. I found this summer activity book online that I downloaded and put together. I started saving items to use on the projects, I thought we would do every project in the book, but we only did two. A few weeks ago I was feeling really guilty so I made a list of activities we could do, all I had to do was pick an activity everyday to do with the kids. That lasted for 3 days. Even though I feel like we have spent entirely too much time this summer watching TV and playing video games, I also feel like we have been busy, at least too busy to do the things I want to do, like scrapbooking and sewing, I have all kinds of projects in my head I can just never get around to actually doing. We have just been busy doing normal, everyday things, like cleaning and running errands. We have ventured out a few times. Jacob and Nathan had swimming lessons for the first time this summer.
We had fun at the splash park with some old friends.

Jenny, Amy, Leslie, and Becky together again, with nine kids between us and two on the way

We went on a family hike, I almost died, Jacob and Nathan did awesome though.

We went to the children's garden at Thanksgiving Point with my old friend Becky and her kids. It was hot, but tons of fun.

Our Own YouTube Video

Jacob loves watching videos of hot wheels tracks on YouTube. He requests this activity so often that we have pretty much watched every hot wheels video that is posted. The last time we tried to watch and didn't find anything new Jacob came up with idea of making our own. Tonight Randy finally helped the kids make a video. Here it is. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. You can hardly understand a word Jacob is saying, it is Nathan you have got to watch.

Messy Face

This morning I made cookies for the ladies I visit teach (yes, it is the last day of the month, I am an awesome visiting teacher!) I made Chocolate Mint Brownie Cookies, very yummy. My kids begged me for cookies all morning, but I made them wait until after lunch. They ate their lunch really well today! As I was handing out cookies to the older boys Adam saw them and got really excited, smiling, and laughing, and pointing, he knew it was something good. I didn't really want to give him one because I knew it was going to be messy, but I couldn't say no to that sweet, pleading face. This is how he looked when he was done.
I think he liked it. I left him in the high chair for about 10 minutes trying to decide how I was going to clean him up. I tried wiping him with a wash cloth, but that just spread the mess around. It is really hard to clean someone up who doesn't want to be cleaned up, he didn't make the job easy. I finally just took him to the bath tub.

Speaking of Adam, here are some of the other amusing things he has been up to lately.

Getting into the bathroom soap, or the toilet, he has learned to lift the lid

Pulling dirty clothes out of the hamper and stuffing them in Jacob's drawer. He also likes to pull clean clothes out of Jacob's drawer and put them in the hamper. He is constantly making more work for me.

I have to watch this one closely, he is very curious and always into something.