Out of the mouths of Babes

Since the start of preschool Avri has officially given up naps. (I know, she's a little old, but obviously still needs the sleep.) This morning she sauntered out of bed around 8:15 and came in the kitchen and said "I'm still tired, Mom. I woke up and now I'm grumpy." I very nicely told her to go back to bed until she wasn't tired or grumpy anymore, and she actually complied. Wouldn't it be nice to just go back to bed if you still felt tired? Mom's sure don't get that luxury!Talmage has learned the art of talking non-stop. He narrates his entire life and those around him. Because of this I've learned how to relatively tune him out and only hear the really important things. Yesterday in the car we heard from the back seat "I threw up in my mouth, and then I ate it." I guess he's discovered acid reflux.

In other news, Kendall and I have been married for 2,309 days. Avri asked Kendall the other day how long he had been married to me. He answered 6 years. She then replied, "No, Dad, how many DAYS?" So we figured it out and here is the answer.

Preschool

Avri started preschool last week! She is getting so grown up, I can hardly believe it!With the schedule of preschool being from 12-2:30 she is officially out of napping, but I guess that doesn't mean that she isn't tired! This was Sunday while the other kids were napping.
She comes home every day and says "I learned a lot and I got to play." So I have to ask very specific questions so that she will tell me exactly WHAT she did. She is already learning about the exoskeletons of bugs, painting and cutting out shapes, and she's only been to preschool like 3 times! I think we are going to be really happy with this preschool program!

Surgery

Last Friday I had my surgery. They made 3 incisions in my abdomen that are only about an inch long and filled my abdomen with carbon dioxide so that they could see everything easily. They went in laparoscopicly and removed the IUD which had embedded itself in some tissue between my uterus and ovary. It left a little hole which they said should heal very quickly. The worst part of recovery was the pain that the carbon dioxide causes. It manifests itself in your shoulders and chest and sometimes spasms making it impossible to breathe. But that is mostly over now and I'm just waiting for the incisions to heal. So it was a successful surgery and now I can recover and get my body back! Hurray!! Thanks for all of your prayers and thoughts!

St. Louis

A couple of weeks ago we drove to St. Louis to pick up my sister from the airport. Since we were driving the 3 hours to another state we decided to make a full day out of it and it turned into a very fun mini vacation. We left at about 7:30 in the morning and drove to the Arch in St. Louis. When we got there we had a nice little picnic in the park.Then we took our picture at the base of the arch. It was so tall and skinny! Talmage kept calling it the "march" and he said it so cute that I didn't want to correct him.
This is the arch, looking up from the base.Our family in the little pod that takes you up to the top of the arch and brings you back down. It looked like something from the future, but this picture makes it look like we are sitting under a rainbow.
Once we got to the top there were these little tiny windows that we could look out and see all the tiny little people and cars and even some helicopters and school buses. Talmage was the only chicken. He didn't like looking down at the ground.
Partial view of the city from the top.
Waiting for our pod to take us back down.
We went to the Westward Expansion Museum after the tour of the arch. We found out that Talmage weighs more than Sadie (big surprise there!), the kids really liked the stuffed animals,
and the tee-pee. After that we went to the zoo. The zoo in St. Louis is free, so we went and had a few hours of great fun. By far the coolest things that day were the hippos (who we watched swim past and chase each other around), the tigers (they had like 7 of them and they were playing and climbing the trees and wrestling each other) and the penguins. The penguin house was SO COOL! You were so close that you could literally reach out and pet them if they didn't have signs saying "Don't touch the penguins." The Rock Hoppers really looked like funny little old men, and the Emperor Penguins looked just as high and mighty as their name suggests. This is Kendall pointing to one. The camera is not playing tricks, he is really that close! In fact we were told not to point because they think your finger looks just like a fish and they will bite!Avri was waiting the whole day to see the giraffes. No idea why, but she was. She had to carry the map around the entire time and show us where the giraffes were and ask why we weren't there yet. So here she is with the giraffes in the background, holding the map that she intently studied for hours.
We took our wagon so that everyone had a place to sit and a place for their drink. You would have thought that we were an exhibit of the zoo. I guess we haven't been anywhere quite that public with it yet because we felt like we were being gawked at the whole time! But it was worth it because it worked so perfectly! We just need to get little shade umbrellas to suspend above each seat and then it will be perfect!
From the zoo we went to the airport and picked up my sister. She had no idea that we were going to be there, she figured it would just be my parents, so she was really surprised and excited to see the kids. We had a fun drive home, stopped for a great dinner and didn't get back until about 11:30. It was a long day, but so much fun!

This one's for you, Ammon

These are random pictures. They are just "life" around the house. The girls' hair is messy, faces are dirty, but we are having fun. Grandpa is always good to get the kids out of bed so that he can read them a story.Talmage likes blueberries, and smiling for the camera.
Avri has a new fascination with toads. We get lots of them in our yard. Here she has two of them and they are kissing and dancing. She's such a girl. Talmage would have them dueling with swords or something slightly more violent than dancing and kissing. :) Do you think when she is older that she will still be so excited to play with toads?
In our garden we grow ducks. Avri was very attached to this zucchini, so we were never allowed to eat it.
Another addition to our collection of disgusting bugs found in Illinois. This spider is at my parents' house. My dad has been "growing" her. YUCK!! I'm such an arachnophobe!!
Let's get a closer look at what will be the subject of my nightmares tonight!
We looked it up. It isn't dangerous to humans. It is a common black and yellow garden spider who just happens to be HUGE and DISGUSTING and SCARY! But I can't help but be somewhat intrigued.

Growing up too fast!

Here is a face only a mother could love! What can I say? Sadie LOVES blueberries. She is her mama's girl!
Sadie sitting right between our strawberry and raspberry patches. She is at that height where the curb is just the right height to just sit down and rest and it always makes me smile! Today she was sitting on a 12 pack of pop at Grandma's house. You would have thought it was made for her. :)
We made the leap into the big-girl bed! We just took the front off of the crib. This is the first time we've ever done this, because we always have another baby by now. She seems so little to be in a big bed, but she has actually transitioned pretty well. The first 4 nights she went to bed no problem. Then I guess she figured out that she could get out of bed, so for the next week she wouldn't stay in bed and we had much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But the past few nights have been heavenly. She stays in bed and in the morning she just gets herself out of bed and comes to let me know she is up. She's such a cutie. Here she is the first night of her new bed. She was excited, but a little nervous so she would stay in the back corner.
Chillin' with Daddy. She's been quite the daddy's girl lately. In fact, she acts like she doesn't even LIKE me right now. She has taken to hitting me and telling me "NO" if she doesn't want to do something or doesn't like something, or even if she just isn't happy but doesn't know why. Not my favorite. We are working on breaking that habit before it gets any worse.
Even with the terrible two's on their way I still think she is just adorable. Except during the 3rd hour at church when she will not sit still. Only 2 more weeks until nursery! And for the first time in over 4 years I won't have a baby to hold at church! As cliche as it sounds, kids really do grow up too fast!

How We Met...

I was cleaning out some of my drafts that I never finished. Here is a tag about how Kendall and I met.

1.Where did you meet? As wall flowers at a high school dance. Both of our dates kept wandering off (not together) and leaving us to hang out on the sidelines.

2.What was the first thought that went through your head when you met? I thought he was really tall and I liked his zebra pants. :)

3.Do you remember what he was wearing? Yup. Zebra pajama pants and a white t-shirt. It was the "Pajama Jam."

4.Where was the first time you kissed this person? On my front porch, December 8, 1999. It was after the most romantic date to Temple Square with all of our friends in the car trying to see us.

5.Where did you go for your first date? First I woke him up and took him to Denny's for breakfast, then later went to the mall for a picture scavenger hunt. That night we had a funny little spaghetti dinner at a friend's house and then we went to a dance at school. It was quite the day, but the best day of my life up to that point in it.

6.How long did you know this person before you became a couple? We had known OF each other for 8 months, but had been dating for almost 3 weeks.

7.How did he ask you out? Actually, I asked him out first. But then we asked each other out back and forth a lot. This question could take hours to answer. We were always creative in the ways.

8.Has this person ever proposed to you? Yes he did. On the 3 year anniversary of our first date (November 13th, 2002). He dressed up as my knight in shining armor. His white horse canceled because of the weather. He met me in "our" park. As he had been waiting for me he got a lot of funny looks for sitting by himself in a park dressed like a knight. He got down on one knee and proposed.

9.Do you and this person have kids together? Yes, Avrianna 4 years old, Talmage 2 1/2 and Mercedes almost 18 months!

10.Have you ever broken the law with this person? Does speeding count? I can't really think of anything else.

11.When was the first time you realized you liked this person? It would have been the night after our first date. I had a super crush!

12.Do you trust this person? Completely.

13.Do you see him as your partner in the future? For all eternity!

14.What is the best gift he gave you? He gave me the gift of being sealed to him for eternity and then he gave me the 3 most special little spirits for children that I have ever known. My family is everything to me.

15.What is the one thing he does that gets on your nerves? He tries really hard to not get on my nerves. I don't know, sometimes he leaves his wet towel on the floor?

16.Where do you see each other 15 years from now? Let's see Avri will be 19, Talmage 17 and Mercedes 16, so probably paying huge amounts of auto insurance and getting ready for college and missions and having fun with all of the active lives of teenagers. We will really love being able to go on dates without having to hire babysitters.

17.What causes the most arguments? We really only argue when I'm just being moody or ridiculous about something, so it is something dumb. We usually just discuss things, not really argue. Kendall's a very humble person. I need to be more like him.

18.How long have you been together? We have been together for 10 years in November, married for over 6 of those years!

19.Are you married? Yes, obviously.

20.Who do you tag? Everyone who reads this.I enjoy reading love stories.

Fondulac Farm Park

I have these pictures totally in reverse. And they are very late, but here they are. We went to Fondulac Farm Park a while back for their birthday celebration. At the end we got birthday cake and ice cream.
This is the kids in front of the old school bathroom. It took me like 12 shots to get a picture THIS good. Silly kids.
In the school house. Avri the student and Talmage, Mr. Distracted...
Sadie liked feeding the goats but was definitely nervous. She would give this worried little laugh that made me laugh.

The kids got lucky enough to pet one of the ducks that they had taken out of the pen to let play in the water.
It was a great day out. The kids had a blast and when we got home we were all tired from the sun, so nap time was WONDERFUL!

Goin' fishin'

The kids have had the chance to go fishing a couple of times in the past couple of weeks. I'm finally getting around to blogging it. These pictures are all from the first trip. The fish were biting really well so they each got to catch a couple.
Look how big that fish is! Haha!
They fished from this small dock that was a little wobbly, so they all wore life jackets. The first trip there weren't any problems. But this last weekend my Dad and Kendall took all three kids and it was slightly more eventful. The lady who owns the pond came down to visit and when she stepped onto the dock it tipped a little too far. Talmage fell over and rolled right into the water! She felt really bad, but Talmage was funny to listen to as he told about how he fell in the water.
This was Talmage's first fish that he caught. You should have heard him tell about how BIG it was! So funny!!
After the fishing they each got to take a turn out in the boat with Grandpa.
Maybe one of these days I'll be invited too. :)

Mystery solved

We solved a mystery last week. I went in for a semi-routine ultrasound to check up on some cysts that I have been having the past few months. While I was in the ultrasound, they found... my lost IUD! They had told me months ago that it probably just fell out. I didn't believe them, but how do you argue with someone who went to school for decades? Well, they found it and it is no longer inside my uterus, but floating around outside now surrounded by fluid. This makes so much sense!! I've been getting double dosage of birth control for quite a few months now. I'm beginning to understand the weight gain, the lack of patience where my kids are concerned, the general hormonal feelings, and the fact that I'm still not having regular cycles months after weaning Mercedes. I have to go in for surgery to get it removed, probably the end of next week. I'll be so glad to be hormone free! I've decided that birth control is not on my side. It either doesn't work, or it over-works!

Well, it's not bad news...

We haven't been trying to keep everyone in the dark. We FINALLY got a phone call from the job interview that Kendall had a week and a half ago. The bad news is that he didn't get the job. But the good news is that they REALLY liked him and so they are looking for another position to put him into. They have clearance to hire another person in November and they want to have Kendall then, if he hasn't found something between now and then. And if they can find another job within the company to hire him for in the mean time, they might do that. So I still get to have my wonderful husband at home with me for the time being. I don't know how he feels about that... :)