Another busy week

I think that we are finally over with the big events planned so far for this summer. This past month has been super crazy! Here is what happened last week:

Tuesday -

• drop the kids off at my parents house,
• got my hair colored,
• ate lunch at my parents,
• stopped at REI on the way home,
• M&M had tumbling class,
• Luke had baseball practice,
• DH's parents arrive in town

Wednesday -

• tried to go to some stores & run some errands but realize that I left my wallet in the car that DH takes to work - so no money, credit cards, check book or driver's license,
• do laundry & clean house,
• kids & Grandma play with water balloons in backyard,
• DH, his parents, M&M, Luke & Blondie play miniature golf - Kitty, Baby K and I stay at home

Thursday -

• DH's birthday!
• go to the grocery store,
• bake a birthday cake,
• DH opens his presents,
• go to Carl's Jr for a quick dinner,
• M&M & Luke have their first baseball game,
• eat cake & ice cream at home

Friday -

• bake brownies for family reunion,
• pack camping gear and clothes for family reunion,
• Shane & Vonae & family arrive,
• DH, Shane & their dad go play some golf,
• DH & most of the family leave for the family reunion in Heber Valley,
• M&M, Baby K and I go to M&M's end of the year tumbling recital,
• DH arrives at campsite and sets up the tent & sleeping bags,
• my carload arrives at the campsite just as it's getting dark (around 9 p.m.)

Saturday - FAMILY REUNION all day!! (more details in separate post)

Sunday -

• Church at 9 a.m.!
• DH has EQ Presidency meeting & Bishop's interview after church,
• DH's parents arrive from Heber,
• eat dinner,
• make peach crisp for dessert,
• drive to my parents' to visit, take pictures of the sunset & eat dessert

Monday -

• DH's parents leave in evening to fly back to their home

Look-a-likes??

There has been a lot of discussion at our house lately that Baby K looks a lot like Blondie. Here are a couple of pictures of the two together for anyone who would like to weigh in on the matter. As soon as my husband gets our scanner set up I will scan in some baby pictures of the older kids so everyone can do some more comparing.

New 'do

I lost a "bet" with my husband and had to have my hair dyed blonde. What, you might ask, was the bet that I lost? Well, it goes back to a couple of months ago when we were on our flight back from our trip to Florida. I was pregnant at the time and there were several women seated in the row in front of us that had blonde hair (mostly dyed). My husband made the comment that he wondered what I would look like as a blonde. At the time I was 95% sure that the baby I was pregnant with was a boy so I said, "I'll tell you what. If this baby is a girl, I will dye my hair blonde."

And, as you can tell from my blog, Baby K is in fact a girl!! So, here is my new "blonde" hair. I think my husband was surprised that I decided to go ahead with getting it dyed because I have never colored my hair before. My feeling was that I lost the bet fair and square so I had every intention of following through with it. I told the hairdresser that I wanted some of my original color left as an undertone so I actually don't look much different than I would if I spent the whole summer in the sun. Blondie likes not being the only one with blonde hair right now and I know she is hoping that Baby K will end up with blonde hair.

I took the kids over to my parents' house so they could watch them for me while I went to get my hair done. Amazingly, Baby K stayed asleep almost the whole time I was gone (almost 2 1/2 hours)!

I actually got it cut the week before my sister's wedding but wanted to wait until after the wedding to have it colored. I'm still getting used to the haircut. It is a little more maintenance than I'm used to to get it to look right...

Turning over a new leaf...

I think that Baby K hit her two-month birthday and decided to turn over a new leaf. She has been a much more happy & content baby over this past week and a half, it's been amazing. I can now put her down during the daytime and she will stay asleep for an hour or two, which has been awesome! She also seems to be able to go for longer stretches during the day without eating. She is very alert and responsive off and on throughout the day and smiles a lot (especially in the mornings). I have actually been able to get some things done around the house and have even been able to go to a couple of stores - which is quite a feat with 5 young children, but also necessary since Sunday was Father's Day, DH's parents arrive tomorrow to stay with us for a week, and Thursday is DH's birthday! She still startles very easily and wakes up pretty easily so we are still working on that. :)

Just look at those squishy cheeks - Baby K's, not mine! (Okay, so I'm holding her while she's sleeping, but who can resist a cute, sleeping baby when there are no pressing things to get done??)

Happy Father's Day 2008!

Here is a picture of DH with Luke, Kitty & Blondie. He is wearing his new (pink) tie that the girls picked out for him... He also got a new belt that hopefully doesn't squeak and a left-handed baseball mitt so he can play catch with the kids (M&M and Luke start T-ball tomorrow).

Big sister M&M

I am loving having M&M out of school! She is becoming very responsible (for the most part) and I love having her around to help out with the younger kids. Quite often I will have her look after Baby K or hold her while I try and finish something up and a couple of times she has even gotten her to sleep (as in this picture). :) I can't wait until she is old enough to babysit for us!

Blog backgrounds

If you're looking for a new look for your blog, try out one of the free backgrounds from this website: The Cutest Blog on the Block.
This was one of easiest changes I have done. The hardest part was picking out the background that I liked the most and one that matched the colors in my picture that I use for my blog title.
Thanks for the link RaNell.

Totally spaced it...

I've been running around all morning & afternoon trying to get the house back in order after our busy weekend when I came downstairs and saw M&M looking at the calendar on the fridge. She was about to ask me something when I looked at the clock and realized that we were a half hour late for my son's orthodontist appointment! I've had that appointment on the calendar for several weeks and I can't believe that I totally spaced it - usually I'm really good at remembering things like that! Baby K has been so good today and I've been able to get a lot done around the house and I just completely forgot about the appointment. I yelled downstairs for the kids to get their shoes on and get in the car while I called the orthodontist's office to see if we should still come. After the receptionist talked to the orthodontist she said that they're just too booked today to be able to squeeze him in, but they do have an opening tomorrow morning. So I rescheduled for tomorrow morning. That should work better for me anyways. I like to take care of any errands, including appointments, in the morning if at all possible. Unfortunately this is the second time that we've had to reschedule this consultation. I made an appointment 2 months ahead of time for a couple of weeks ago and when they called to confirm, the time was different than what I had written down on my calendar - right in the middle of the school day during the last week of school. So I called and rescheduled for today. Oh, well. The reason Luke has this appointment is because he has some huge teeth coming in and no room in his mouth for a couple of teeth that he just lost. My prediction is that he will have to go through the whole expander/braces routine that M&M did already.

Cousins

The kids had a lot of fun playing with their cousins this past weekend. Blondie & Kitty played just great with my brother's daughter, Annie, who is Blondie's age. They were really sad when we had to say goodbye to her Monday evening. M&M had fun with Carol, and Luke enjoyed roughing around with my oldest brother's boys, Con-man & T-Rex. My oldest brother's family is here in Utah for another 2 weeks so I will try and get some pictures of them playing together when we meet up again this weekend.

My brother's younger daughter, Meg, loved to "play" with Baby K. Whenever she saw the baby she would come over and say, "What's that?" I would then ask her what it was and she would say, "Baby".

...And Baby K loved having lots of people around to hold her.

Mill Creek Canyon

Monday afternoon, June 9th, we drove to Mill Creek Canyon and went on a little bit of a hike with my parents & my brother's family. It was close to 80 degrees, even in the canyon. I carried Baby K in the baby sling and about halfway up she woke up and wanted to eat so I tried feeding her while I was walking - not my favorite thing or most comfortable thing to do. She went back to sleep though and then woke up when I put her back in the car. She just sat quietly in her car seat for the drive back to my parents' for dinner.

My baby sister ties the knot!

My younger sister and her fiance were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on Saturday, June 7th. She is the last of us seven siblings to get married. My oldest sister was the only one not able to come to the wedding.

We started out the day with a brunch at the Shilo Inn in downtown Salt Lake and then the sealing took place in the afternoon. My sister's friend, Emily, and her boyfriend were able to watch Baby K for us and then M&M and cousin Carol were able to watch the other kids. My brother's brother-in-law and his girlfriend were also there to help out with the other nieces and nephews during the sealing. Luckily Baby K did pretty well for Emily and she was an angel baby for the whole day. I couldn't believe how good she was the whole day as she got passed around from person to person as I was running around and trying to help out. I had people several times ask if they could hold her for me which was greatly appreciated (and I usually took them up on the offer).

There was a little bit of a miscalculation in how long the sealing and pictures would take and we had a hard deadline to be at the house for the cake & flowers delivery. Thankfully my sister's friend Emily was able to help out again and before my sister came out of the temple Emily took off for my parents' house to receive the cake & flowers for us. Then when we finally had the pictures taken and went to the house to set up for the reception, Emily and her boyfriend were there setting up tables and chairs in the backyard. Unfortunately, the night before the wedding we were going to set up the tables & chairs in the backyard but there was rain in the forecast so we decided to wait. It did rain during the night, but that meant that we had to set up the tables & chairs & centerpieces & food in about an hour before the reception started - and we actually had people show up right when the reception was supposed to start.


My oldest brother and a sister-in-law ended up running to the store partway through the reception because we had more people show up than we had anticipated. My sister and her husband got to the reception about 20 minutes late because they taking pictures at the temple. By the time they got to the house we had quite a crowd of people at the house.

M&M and her cousin Carol were junior bridesmaids to my sister and the other little nieces were flower girls. Two of the girls are not in the picture because they are at the age where they don't care for strangers and don't like to sit still for pictures. With all the crazy weather we had last week we actually had a nice day for my sister's wedding. It was sunny most of the day with a breeze on and off throughout the day. The reception started to get a little cool towards the end but for the most part it was a beautiful day!

I'll have to get some more pictures from my sister because I don't have any of Luke & his boy cousins with the ties that my mom made. I also don't have many pictures with my parents in them.

2 months old!

Baby K was 2 months old on Friday, June 6th. Today was her Dr's appt and I'm pleased to say that she is "growing like a weed" - to quote the Dr. At her 2 week check-up she was not up to her birth weight yet because of some problems nursing that I have blogged about already. Today I finally had confirmation that she is definitely nursing & growing well now. She weighed in at 10 lbs 15 oz and measured 23 inches long. Her weight & head circumference are at about 50% for her age and her height is at 75%!

Baby K has had some pretty bad baby acne for the last couple of weeks, but I think it is finally going away. This weekend it was pretty bad for the wedding and the skin was very rough to the touch. Today it is almost smooth once again. The doctor said that Baby K has a small hernia under her belly button but in most cases it will clear up by itself without the need for surgery.

It's fun watching Baby K start to interact with us and she is finally sleeping a little better during the day. I have actually been able to go to a few stores without having to leave quickly to feed her in the car in the parking lot.

Luke meets Mr. Baseball

Sunday evening we went back over to my parents' house for dinner & to visit with my family that was still in town. Luke was in the backyard throwing around a baseball with M&M and their older cousin Carol when this happened:
He was hit on the outer corner of the eye. It's hard to show in a picture just how bad it looks, so let me just say that within a minute or two after the hit it had already swollen up pretty bad. It now looks like he has some pretty eye makeup on. At the Dr's office today for Baby K's checkup, everyone was asking him what happened.

Busy, busy week!

Monday morning, June 2nd, I was getting the kids and myself ready to go to the store to buy some things for my sister's wedding and some groceries. I wanted to take Baby K's dress for the wedding with me so that I could try and find a headband for her that was the same color yellow. My mom made a dress for Baby K to match the dresses for Blondie & Kitty that were made for them for Easter this year. My mom brought the dress over to our house after church on Baby K's blessing day on May 25th. I remember her showing us the dress and then putting it back into the plastic bag that she had brought it over in and then left it on the floor of the living room next to the stairs. I remember walking past the bag with the dress in it several times and thinking that I should put it somewhere out of the way. Normally I would have just put it downstairs in the room I use for my sewing/project room, but DH's parents were staying with us at the time in that room.

Well, after searching the house from top to bottom I could not find the dress anywhere. I had the kids search when they came home from school and then I asked my husband about it when he came home from work. None of us know what happened to that bag, but it was gone. The only conclusion that we could come to is that the bag was mistaken for trash and thrown out. I quite often have the kids help take out the trash from the house and what they usually do is collect the plastic bags from the trash cans throughout the house and then put the bags into the living room so that they can take them all out at the same time once they are all collected.

Needless to say I felt somewhat sick to my stomach knowing that that is probably what happened to this dress that my mom worked so hard on - and the wedding was less than a week away at this point. I called my mom just to make sure that it hadn't ended up back at her house somehow and then tried to figure out how to make a replacement dress. I had another dress pattern that I could use for it and so I went to the fabric store that evening and bought new fabric, overlay, thread and some buttons. I also ended up buying some fabric & a pattern to make myself a skirt for the wedding if I had extra time. Unfortunately, in addition to the dress, I also had my good fabric scissors, pins, thread & dress pattern in the bag. I do have extra pins & scissors, but that evening as I was trying to cut out the dress I realized that my second pair of scissors do not work well at all which made cutting out the dress take even longer.

While I was cutting out the dress Monday night I realized that I also needed some lining for the dress which I went to buy Tuesday morning along with some new fabric scissors.

Over the next couple of days - which also involved end-of-the-year school programs for M&M and Luke - I was able to get some good work done on Baby K's dress. Thursday evening I was almost finished with it and was serging some of the seams when I serged (& cut) right into the front bodice piece of the dress. DH happened to arrive home from work at about this time & I was in tears when he came in to see how things were going. I had to take out just about every single seam from the dress, cut out a new bodice piece and sew the whole thing back together again... This whole fiasco set me back another 2-3 hours. I did finish the dress that night except for sewing the buttons on which I did the next night. I went to bed at about 2 a.m. Thursday night because I wanted to cut out my skirt.

On Friday my dad came and picked up Blondie & Kitty to take to their house to play with some cousins who were in town for the wedding. I then spent most of the morning at the grocery store, bank, and at Bed, Bath & Beyond to get my sister a wedding present. Most of the afternoon I spent making a pasta salad for my sister's wedding reception (held at my parents' house and catered by my family). Later that afternoon I picked up another sister and her daughter from the airport and then we met DH at my parents' house for a big group dinner the night before the wedding (pizza). Roger's family ended up coming and eating with us as well so we had a pretty full house.

I then stayed up until about 2 a.m. again Friday finishing my skirt... On both Thursday & Friday nights, Baby K went to sleep around 11 p.m. and slept until around 5:30 a.m. - what a blessing!

Thankfully I was able to get everything done and other than being tired, I felt pretty good! I will post pictures of Baby K in her dress & more details of the wedding in a separate post.

Another school year comes to an end!

Friday, June 6th was the last day of school for our kids. The other 3 tracks still have 3 weeks of school left. Next year we'll be on D track which is the latest one to start so the kids will get about 2 1/2 months off until they start the next school year. (Unfortunately that means that they won't end until July 3rd next year...) The reason I requested this track is because I really like the kindergarten teacher on D track and Blondie will be in kindergarten next year!!
Luke has had a great year in first grade. We will miss his teacher, Mrs. B, who M&M also had for first grade. I was luckily able to help out about twice a month in her class and towards the end of my pregnancy I was helping out about once a week. This year there weren't too many parents that helped out (unlike M&M's year) so I tried to do all that I could for Mrs. B. I also think that she was more patient & worked better with Luke because she knows me and I helped out frequently in the classroom. I was sad once Baby K was born and I wasn't really in a position to help out any more. I know that she appreciated what I was able to do though.

M&M has also had a great fourth grade year. I can't believe she will be in 5th grade next year! M&M has struggled a little bit with math & keyboarding, so I was surprised & pleased when her teacher called her name for a math award for passing off all of her multiplication facts.

I keep feeling bad for switching the kids to D track for next year because M&M has been with a number of the same kids since 1st grade when we first got A track. She keeps informing me that she will be just fine, so I'm crossing my fingers. I told her that if we don't like D track I will try and switch us to A again for the following year.

Back to Primary

Sunday, June 1st was my first Sunday back at my calling as the primary pianist. The primary presidency was kind enough to find substitutes for me for the first two months after Baby K's birth. The problem with this calling is that as a nursing mother I am supposed to be in primary for almost 2 hours straight. Unlike some of my other callings such as primary teacher or YW advisor I only needed to be teaching for one hour and the other hour I would be free to take the baby and nurse her if needed.

So last Sunday was our first try at DH taking Baby K for the first 2 hours of church (we have Sacrament Meeting last in our ward). I packed a bottle and some formula for DH to give her if she needed it (since I had to supplement Baby K with some formula her first couple weeks of life she will still take a bottle thankfully). With church at 9 a.m. I had to get up around 6:45 to give myself enough time to get everyone ready for church. I fed Baby K right before we left for church. Once we arrived I realized that we had forgotten a blanket for her so DH went back home to get one while I took the kids to their classes (thankfully we just live 2 blocks from the church building). I then ran around to the different bathrooms in the building and could not get any hot water in any of the sinks... (As we were leaving for church we thought that it might be wise to have the bottle pre-filled with warm water so that DH doesn't have to do it while Baby K's screaming for food...) So I walked all the way around the building to the mother's room to see if I could get warm water from the sink in there - and I could. So I filled up the bottle with warm water and then hurried over to the primary room where they were already starting. Luckily I do have someone in the primary presidency who can play the piano and sit in for me...

The whole 2 hours I kept looking out the door to see if DH needed me and amazingly enough he didn't! DH fed Baby K the bottle during Sunday School and then she went to sleep and slept through the first part of Sacrament Meeting as well. Good job Dad & Baby K!!

Favorite Sunday Activity

Afternoon naps with Baby K: