Thinking back

Yesterday we celebrated Bennie-boo's birthday. He was one happy kid all day long, and that just made me happy. And since I am such a slacker with zilch energy lately I didnt get any pictures. I'm terrible!!! But i wanted to write my thoughts on this little one of mine.

When I was pregnant with Ben,and found out he was a boy- I was slightly surprised cuz i thought i was gonna have a girl, and we would have 4 kids, and we would be complete. (But 3 boys was much easier to wrap my brain around than 4!) However, once we had our little Ben, I couldnt have loved him more. From day one this boy has been a snuggler. I seriously love that he still is. If he sees an open lap, he is there in a flash. He is my happy go lucky kid, He has brought such a sweetness into our home and I honestly cant picture our family without him.
Obviously I am pregnant with our 4th boy- and many times throughout this pregnancy Ive had moments of "another boy?" freak-out-ed-ness. But knowing how much we love and need our Bennie-boo, how much love he brings to our family- well, lets just say those moments still come,(especially when all 3 of my boys are fighting/wrestling/screaming/causing all sorts of mayhem/and destroying) but i just have to look at my Bennie-boo and the freak-out-ed-ness is replaced with laughter and a looking-forward-ness to more of this mostly-fun-loving-craziness in our lives with yet another boy.
And just for record sake, I asked Ben what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday a couple weeks back, and he said "a cookie cake, like daddys."  I thought, thats easy enough, until the next week he changed his mind to "a mario cake like toastys." Then it was back to the cookie cake, then back to the mario cake, then an elmo cake, then a "blue toad from mario world" cake, then back to the cookie cake, then back to the mario, then it was a froggy cake, then phineas and ferb cake, then back to the froggy cake...so after he changed his mind 100 times- i made up the froggy cake, and surprisingly it turned out pretty decent considering how lacking I am in the cake decorating skills department. Anyway I document this little tidbit of information cuz Ben takes after his daddy in a lot of things, but apparently he is a little nuts like his mom when trying to make a decision. And that just cracks me up.

same old stuff

My dad has a little saying..."same old stuff, different day"- and that is pretty much how life has been the past few weeks. And that's just fine by me. We are getting all ready for the baby, although I still have several weeks to go. But it does feel good getting prepared. Daniel and I are trying to put our brains into baby mode again. Diapers, bottles, binkys, burp clothes, formula, spit up, no sleep, ...we feel like we've been out of it for so long, although its only been 3 years, but boy, do babies grow and change quickly. All in all we are getting so excited to meet this baby, excited to count his tiny fingers and toes, excited not be be pregnant anymore, but instead hold him close, and just so excited for all the joy and love and new baby brings.
So being ever so pregnant, I have been trying my best to keep up with my walking, and since I have absolutely no energy to do it in the mornings anymore, I am walking in the early evenings. When I was able to get up in the mornings, I would go before my kids got up and while Daniel was getting ready for work..but now, since Daniel is at work in the early evenings and I have my kids to take care of, we go to a nearby park and they play while I walk around the little sidewalk track. Last week we had stopped in at the dollar store and the kids picked up some little buckets and shovels, and decided they wanted to take them to the park. So I'm walking and am just kind of in my own world with my thoughts but as I came around by the playground and passed them,  I had one of those precious moments where I looked at all of them, busy in their digging adventures and had to brush away a tear or two as my heart felt so immensely full. There are so many moments where I am driven a little insane by the craziness of them all, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love being their mother and I love watching them grow and learn and I especially love the tender little moments when i look at all of them and everything else falls away and I recognize just how blessed I've been.

(someone please remind me of this after my new one is born and we are all going through our own adjustments and I'm grouchy as can be and am considering giving them all away- :) )

name game

My Daniel had his birthday last week. Since it was a weekday he had to work, but when he got home, the kids were sure excited to celebrate with him. We made  his favorite dinner, made a giant cookie cake, and had his homemade cards and presents from each of the kiddies to open.
Personally, I never know what to get for Daniel- he always comes up with the best  gifts for me, but I totally stink in the gift giving department for him, but this year I arranged to have a friend babysitt the kids overnight and we went to san diego for a little getaway! It rained and even snowed in the mountains between here and there on saturday, so we didnt get to go to the beach, but we did get to go to the temple, we got to go out to eat at some of our favorite places, and even did a little shopping. mostly we just enjoyed a little break from the everyday and enjoyed our time together.
So while on this little trip, Daniel threw a curve ball into my carefully planned ocd plans. When we traveled up to my moms for thanksgiving, we were all thinking we were gonna find out for sure we were having our baby girl, and we have had her name picked out FOREVER. But to be silly I told the kids and Daniel we needed to come up with a boy name "just in case."
Daniel is the worst with names- I have a huge list of names i really like and every single one of them he vetoes. He's done this with James and Ben and i find it quite frustrating cuz I like to have a name picked out from the moment I find out whether we are having a girl or boy so that I can call my baby by his/her name. Anyway I went through my list and Daniel, of course, vetoed everything, so in exasperation I was throwing out random weird names. And of course when I do that he actually ends up agreeing on them. I threw out Phineas in reference to Phineas and Ferb and Daniel was totally in to it. I thought he was being sarcastic, but he said he actually really like it. And he got all the kids calling the baby Phineas after that. I wasnt sold on the idea and thought it was weird, but after so many of my kids prayers asking for baby Phineas to grow healthy and strong, I ended up going along with it. in a weird way it was cute and come on, who doesnt love Phineas and ferb? Phineas is a child genius. SO he(the baby currently in utero) has been Phineas for a few months.
But on this little getaway Daniel drops the bomb on me that he now finds the name weird and doesnt want to name him that. im like "WHAT????!!!!????  I have got 9 weeks left--(7 if Im lucky and go 2 weeks early!!!! crossing my fingers!!) and you are telling this to me NOW- ummm do I need to remind you I am a little bit psycho and need to have things planned out or else I get a tense-(cough cough- ok maybe a lot tense) especially when I am pregnant and my hormones/emotions are all over the place-- you cant do that to me!" and im thinking isnt he the one that got us all hooked on that name anyway? But NOW he thinks its weird? What the flip? He's playing with fire.
So we have been going through names again. And again- everything I like- he doesnt.And yet he wont give me anything serious to work with. SO frustrating!!! I need my baby to have a name. Its driving me crazy.
So when I was pregnant with James, I loved the name Jaxon. I am all about the x in a name- its tough and cool and to tell the truth Jaxon Jackson is just AWESOME...in my opinion. But Daniel hated it. As did anyone else that I told that name to. I tried it again when expecting Ben, but again Daniel thought I was wack outta my mind. so when I threw it out this time around- Daniel actually mulls it over and tells me he likes it. Um--yeah...I cant tell if Daniel is pulling my leg, but since I suggested it he still seems to be on board.. Unless he wants to have the wrath of pregnant Kimmy to deal with, he better not be changing his mind again!
Last night when we were having family prayer, Toast was offering it, and got all upset and stopped right in the middle of his prayer to tell me he didnt "want to pray for baby Jack Jack"-(my favorite nickname....Incredibles anyone?) because "he is still baby Phineas!" Maybe he just needs a little time to adjust to the change...James actually likes it simply because he thinks he is Dash, Kylie is Violet, Daniel is Mr Incredible and I'm "the mom" (he is still trying to place Toast and Ben, but since he doesnt want to share his identity he's having a hard time cuz he doesnt want Syndrome/Buddy to be part of our family for Ty, and Ben cant be Frozone cuz "Frozone is just their friend but not an Incredible." But he is liking the idea of baby jack jack, and the fact he can turn himself "into fire or stone or the devil, and shoot lasers out of his eyes!" (I'm hoping my baby doesnt turn into the devil, or stone, or fire-- but the laser thing might be cool)
Honestly, I'm feeling anxious cuz i really dont think Daniel is seriously gonna let me name our baby Jaxon Jackson. We shall see. But really-- isnt it just a seriously awesome cool name?

Just a few of my favorite things

There are a few things that have been making me just so happy as of late, and I wanted to write them down before my deteriorating mind forgets...

1- Our friend gave us her playset when we moved, which we love, only problem is the wood is a little rough and the kids have had several slivers from it...James, who had never had a sliver before was calling them owies until he heard me talking to Kylie about one of her slivers and he now talks about his "snivers" everyday. Oh how I love how he calls them "snivers" Its one of my favorite things.

2- Bennieboo has an obsession with granola bars. He seriously eats like 5 a day. What I love though is that he asks me each time if he can have a "nalona nola bah." I seriously laugh each time he says that. Even if I'm in a terribly grouchy mood- hearing him say that makes me chuckle each time.

3- In my 3rd trimester of each pregnancy I get rather anemic. I cant get enough of the smell of dirt and the chonking of ice. I have chipped several teeth throughout my previous pregnancies with all the ice I chonk on. And right on cue- I got to my 3rd trimester in this pregnancy and I cant get enough ice-- but since my sweet Daniel bought me a shaved ice machine several months ago- we have been enjoying our shaved ice each night. I LOVE IT! And since its shaved ice- its saving my teeth this time around.

4- I have always had a thing for sunrises and sunsets. Its not only therapeutic, its also a spiritual thing for me. Anyway for the past 2 months I lost my walking partner, and have been walking by myself- and since I'm by myself,  I go walking a little later than the 2 of us did, so on the last part of my walk I get to see the sky ablazing with the morning sunrises. But for the past 2 weeks I have not been able to get my self out of bed so early to do my walking. (I blame the anemia) So instead I have been going in the early evenings. And now instead of the glorious sunrises, I walk as the sun in setting. this week-- the sunsets have been out of this world! Also- since its a full moon- the past week has been really cool to see these gorgeous sunsets on one side of the sky and then turn and see this ginormous full moon rising from the other. Majestic!

5-lastly--again with my Bennieboo. I ask him all the time why he is so cute, and he always responds "I awesome!"  He's just matter of fact about it too- it just cracks me up. and this past week he has started adding "ya know" on the end of every sentence. SO he says "I awesome, ya know!" Man alive I love that kid.

Happy Friday ya'll!

Lets talk about LOVE

I know I maybe slightly go a little tiny bit overboard with bragging about my Daniel, but since its my blog, and my journal...I think its good for my kids to know how great their daddy is in his role as a husband, so I tell it like it is.
I am not a big Valentines Day fan...I try to make it fun for the kids and try to come up with some small gesture to let Daniel know how much I love and appreciate him, (like vandalizing his car) (dont ask) but I like the ordinary day gestures best..I dont care so much about flowers on Valentines day- although Daniel does get them for me..and I wont refuse chocolate any day either..which Daniel does as well..but what I really love about my Daniel is that he really puts his heart and soul into our relationship, and to being "there" for me, even/especially when there are a few bumps in the road.

I have been more emotional with this pregnancy than I have been with any of my others. I seriously cry all the time, which is making me think I'm crazy cuz I'm not too big on crying. "It gives me a headache"-(famous quote by Sister Hinckley ringing a bell?!!!) but seriously- my hormones have been so wack for the past 29 weeks and I cry all the flippin time. When we were in the mess of renovating, I went over to the old house to pack some things up, leaving Daniel, my dad, and our kids at the new house. (I kinda needed a break from my wild ones, and Daniel thought I wouldnt "over-do it"  while packing stuff up, like I had been trying to renovate at the new house. Anyway.. after a couple of hours I was burned out- it was late, we had been working for over a week and had been doing late nights and were all off the routine and I just became overwhelmed thinking how much more we had to do, and was feeling like a bad mom since my kids werent getting all the attention they usually get from me, and I just sunk to the floor and sobbed for a good 15 minutes. I was feeling so alone, and just overwhelmed and in that moment decided to pray. And I told my father how I was feeling and let it all out... and pleaded for some help. Not 5 minutes later my sweet Daniel came in. How I love the quote "Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers, but it's usually through another person that he takes care of our needs." I believe with all my heart he sent my sweet Daniel over to comfort me in that moment. And Daniel just hugged me for a good 10 minutes while I cried on his shoulder. Never once making me feel bad for "loosing it." Never once making me feel like the crazy psycho pregnant woman I am. Just loving me and then helped me load up some boxes to take over to the new house. SO again.. i love that Daniel is "there" for me. And its on the days and in the ways I need it most.

Secondly- I love how thoughtful my Daniel is. I seriously dont know how I got so lucky to be with this guy. HE is the most thoughtful, caring, selfless guy and many times over I realize I really dont deserve him. I just really really lucked out. Again..in the chaos of renovating, Daniel was getting up early to go to work, and tried cramming his usual 10 hour daily work load into 5, so he could get off and come spend all afternoon and evening working on the new house. once i got my oldest 2 off to school, I would load up snacks and what not and bring the other 2 over and let them play in the backyard while I worked on chiseling away old shower tiles, shoveling rocks(dont ask), prepping/masking for paint, and clean up. By the time each day was done we were all exhausted. And my dang back would be killing me, and the one thing that wanted above all else was to soak in a hot bath to ease some of the intense pain I was feeling...but the dang water heater went out, so we had several nights of freezing cold quick showers before we could get it replaced. But my sweet Daniel- who was exhausted himself, knew I was in pain and knew that some slight relief would come with a hot bath, so he got out all the pots and pans and boiled the freezing cold water a hundred times over to fill up that bathtub-(he carried each one up the stairs each time to pour it in the tub- seriously he went up and down those stairs at least 50 times)-- all so I could get a few moments of relief. Who does that? He was so tired himself and dealt with the cold shower and Im sure he just really wanted to sleep, but instead he did that for me..without my asking.  if thats not love- I dont know what is.
So yes I brag about my Daniel..but really- how could I not? I write it down so that my kids know how incredible their daddy is and in hopes my boys will one day grow up to be like their dad. After all the world could use a few more like him...perhaps thats why we are getting "blessed" with so many boys...(im still trying to wrap my brain around having another boy join the ranks in a few more weeks.!! One more trimester to go....)

Feels like Home

Good news!!! We are in our new house, and I must say I LOVE IT! What a crazy few weeks we had, but now that we are settled, unpacked, organized, all fresh and clean and new, and everything is almost just how I want it, I can say the adventure of getting to this point was well worth it!!!
We had many late nights, many early mornings, and trying to do it while maintaining some sense of normalcy for the kids was quite the challenge. I had a few emotional breakdowns during the process, but seeing as how we were renovating one house, trying to pack up clean and move out of another, move into the new one, deal with broken collarbones, having the water heater in the old house go out a week before moving out, continue to try to get homework done, piano practiced, people fed and taken care of all while sporting my ginormous pregnant belly...well it could have been worse. :) Thankfully we have some great friends/ward members and thankfully my Daniel was very supportive and patient through it all.

                                                                    Kylies room-

                                               The office-- my dad had it up in no time at all. He is
                                                     pretty amazing if I do say so myself!

                                          The front room--now the perfect size in my opinion!

                                     The kitchen- eventually we will replace that dishwasher and fridge and go
                                       with an all stainless steel look...but we have to work up our savings                                                                            accounts before we can splurge. :)

                                                             The kids "ducky" bathroom
                                                  (its hard to see the detail with my camera phone,
                                         but believe me, the tile looks amazing, especially considering
                                                       how gross those tiny tiles and black grout was!)

                                                    the trampoline that is now in the ground!
                                                     My boys loved watching grandpa use
                                                           the backhoe to dig the hole.

                                                        Small part of the family room
                                                     (all new carpet, paint & trim! Lovin it!)

I took some before pictures, but now cant find the SD card they are on, and I was gonna take some after pictures with my awesome camera, but unfortunately my camera  bag wasn't zipped up and got knocked over and my camera fell out and busted. (I am seriously so depressed over that right now!!!) So I took some after shots with my phone instead.
The previous owners had a dog, so I wasn't too thrilled with the old gross dog infused hair and germ ridden carpet. The bathrooms had those small white cheap tiles with the grout that was once white, but after a few years turned black, so it was disgusting and yucky, the kitchen, laundry room, and bathrooms all had cheap gross old linoleum flooring, the paint was ugly and old, the window coverings were yucky , dirty and old. And the front room was just a big wide open waste of space to me...so we (and by we I mean my awesome dad) first built an office, and cut the front room down to a more appropriate size, we repainted, re tiled the bathtubs, shower, and the bathroom and laundry room floors, we put some laminate down in the office and kitchen, re carpeted, got some new blinds-(we looked into shutters as I love the look of shutters, but holy smokes shutters are so dang expensive!!!) put in some ceiling fans, and even got the backyard set up a bit more to my liking.  My awesome dad even put in some shoe shelves for us in the garage, and some shelves in the kids closets, and after all that and a very thorough scrub down, we unpacked, organized and are seriously in love with our home. But now that the house is looking so great, Daniel and I are thinking we are gonna need to replace our old furniture sometime soon. If only our tax refund was gonna be bigger. I am missing George Bush's economic stimulation checks... :)
Now we get to prepare for our little Phineas. My kids are worried he is gonna be bigger than our house since my protruding abdomen is getting bigger than our house apparently. Sometimes I am not a fan of the honesty of a child. My dad thought I was due next month as he thought i was looking ready to pop. And even my Dr made a gesture at my last appointment suggesting that I am looking very pregnant. (I'm kinda surprised since he is a ob- one would think he would play cautiously to the fragile emotions of a pregnant woman)- but there is no escaping it. I'm humongous. At least Daniel tells me I'm not. Bless him. He is just so good to me.

Just our luck.

I wasn't planning on blogging until we are settled into our new house, but as i need some family history written, I'm breaking my own rule. Not that it was really a rule, more like I knew going into all of our planned projects I wasn't gonna have much time on my hands. But unplanned for things need to be noted in out little blog journal.
So my mom and dad traveled down last weekend to help us with our house. My mom had to fly back Sunday as she had to be back to work Monday, but my dad is staying until we get all our projects done. Can I just say I am sooooo extremely beyond grateful for my dad. The fact that he is down here helping us, applying all his knowledge and expertise to help us renovate our home just moves me to tears. He is just so great.
Anyway we have made excellent progress and hope to be able to move in sometime next week. So I am obviously sporting a very pregnant belly, and as such am kind of limited in what I actually can do to help with the renovating. But I took the kiddies over to the new house and let them "play" while I did what I could. After working for only 2 hours or so James came in crying. Now James is my toughest kid. With as wild/adventurous as he is, the kid gets banged up, but never cries about it. So I knew from the cry that he was obviously hurt, and sure enough I could see his collarbone poking underneath his skin at an odd angle. I asked him what happened and he said he "fell from his imaginary ladder when it turned into crumbs." Huh. Imaginary ladder? turning into crumbs? this kid has such an interesting imagination. But I'm still trying to figure out what happened. where is this imaginary ladder? it has to be somewhere, cuz collar bones don't just end up poking out at odd angles cuz of imaginary ladders, do they?
So I called the nurse, and by the time she called me back, James was happy as could be on to his next adventure acting like his normal self, so she said to just watch him and if it got worse to bring him to the ER. James continued to act just fine, until he tripped and then was afraid to move his arm, so I knew I needed to get him checked out, but I refuse to go to the ER if I can help it. After the ridiculous fees we were charge and the run around and hoops we had to jump through the last time I ended up in the ER I didn't want to deal with that again, so I took him to the urgent care instead.

So when we finally saw the Dr, he started poking around james's collarbone area, and James, being the tough boy he is didn't cry, winced slightly and calmly replied, "ow." It cracked me up. What kind of kid calmly says "ow" when a Dr is poking around your broken bone. Well we didn't know it was broken, but it was obviously out of place. Anyway they did an xray and sure enough he broke his clavicle. SO since they cant set and cast that bone, they gave him a little sling and sent us on our way with the instructions he isn't suppose to use that arm or move his should around until it heals on its own. Yeah, that's proving to be impossible. James has been climbing, jumping, punching, hammering... you name it. I tell him over and over not to use that arm, but he is just so busy and active and wild that I don't think it will ever heal. 

Daniel and I are kind of laughing thinking about the timing of it all. our boys are wild. And its really been miraculous that none of them have had any broken bones before now, but of course it has to happen when we are trying to get all these projects done. I'm kinda feeling like a lousy mom cuz I was just letting them do their own thing, so I could get stuff done, but look where that got me. Blasted all. But that's life. Gives you some curve balls at inconvenient times. But at least it wasn't worse. I just gotta try to figure how to keep this kid from using his arm for several weeks. Any suggestions?