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.

It's A Girl!!

I had my ultrasound today and found out that we are having a girl. After having three boys it came as a little bit of a shock to us, we were just planning on it being another boy. I have to say that I did have a feeling that this one was different. For one thing this baby is not as active as the boys were, I hardly ever feel her moving. Even during the ultrasound her movements were minimum, in fact she curled herself up into a ball at the end. I also got pregnant really fast this time. I heard the author of the "What to Expect" books say that it takes longer to get pregnant with boys than girls, something about the mothers body chemistry. It took me at the least 5 months to get pregnant before, so I was very surprised to find myself pregnant after only 6 weeks this time. I was really hoping that this one would be a girl. I really think that we are done after this, I have no desire to ever be pregnant again, and I was worried that if this one was a boy I would feel like I was missing out by not having any girls. I am excited about cute girl cloths and hair bows, and I think it will be good for my boys to have a girl around. Mixed in with the excitement, I am also feeling a little nervous. Girls are a whole new ball game for us.