Welcome Caitlyn!

           Well, we have officially welcomed Caitlyn into the world. We got to the hospital around 3 for the induction yesterday and got started. It went pretty slow until they broke my water, and then I went from a 4 to delivery in an hour. It's probably a good thing the water didn't break on it's own earlier. I always get so nervous when I come in. I hate needles, I hate getting the epidural even though it makes the labor so much better. So I always dread it. Probably because the last two deliveries I've had to have the epidural redone, which is never fun when you're in pain. But this time it went smooth, the best epidural I've ever gotten and I had the easiest delivery. I'm feeling amazing compared to the other births too. I haven't needed any pain medication since we delivered her and besides just being tired everything has gone sooo well. I definitely have so much to be grateful for.
           She was 7 lbs. 12 oz and 19 inches long. She's bigger than my other two girls were but she is smaller than Isaac was. She is a cutie with lots of dark hair. We are in love with her.
           The girls are as well, wanting to hold her, and fighting over who gets to hold her and for how long. I'm afraid I'm going to have two little over-helpful mommies at home.
           Isaac was pretty excited about seeing her as well, practically laid on her so he could get right up close. When we asked him where the baby was immediately patted her face, rather than mom's stomach. When Isaac was born when we asked Mirian where the baby was she would still pat mom's stomach.
           So life is good with us. We'll be going home tomorrow and resting while my mom is here to help out for a while. We are truly blessed to have this little one.

Tonight or Tomorrow....

           Caitlyn will be arriving! We're finally having contractions, nothing major, but if they don't send me in the hospital on my own tonight then tomorrow we have an induction scheduled! So hopefully you'll see some pictures or hear the word on here soon!

Waiting

           We are still waiting around for this baby to come, which is frustrating in a way since I feel like my life is on hold with so many things. I know I could still be working on them until she arrives, but I'm just so uncomfortable, tired and miserable it's hard to concentrate. After a long shower last night though, and getting the house all picked up and cleaned so that it felt ready for whom ever might be called on at last minute to come and watch our kids, I started feeling better. Plus our life has been off schedule forever and it's been wearing on me. So we decided to fix that this morning.
           Beau and I got up at 6:30 this morning, the first in a long time, since we've been getting to bed so late. I had time to cook some muffins and read some scriptures before we woke the kids up at 7:00 and announced to them we're going for a bike ride. So we loaded up the bikes, breakfast, and water and headed for the river trail.
           So we spent the morning walking (hoping to send me into labor - yeah right!) while the kids rode their bikes on the beautiful river trail this morning. We saw our little friend the snail and had a nice relaxing morning just getting out in some fresh air and sunshine to enjoy the morning.
           It was just what I needed, as I think everyone else in the family too. Some family time out of the house and some nature. We want to go for a walk every morning this summer and just enjoy getting out and being a little more active as a family. Plus it just gets things started in the right direction.

Counting down...

           Only two more days till the official due date of the baby. I'm at the antsy stage of wondering when it's going to happen and busily trying to get everything I possibly can get done before then out of the way. At the same time I only want to rest, do nothing, and feel calm and rested before the day arrives.
           Between trying to get everything done my kids decided to get sick on me. Isaac was sick with a fever of 104 for two days. All he wanted was mom to sit in the rocking chair and hold him. He was miserable. So it was a nice and stressful two days, because he rarely wants me to sit and hold him anymore, and I know with the new baby coming along, times like this would be far in between, so I took advantage of cuddling him again since he's no longer a baby. It was also stressful because I felt all these things heaping up that HAD to be done, and he was not letting me do them. We survived, only to have Savannah catch something next. She has spent the last two days laying around and throwing up. Needless to say I AM SO THANKFUL for carpet cleaners. We invested in one a year ago and it has been the BEST investment we have ever made. I've had to use it 4 times in the last 24 hours on the couch.

           So needless to say I'm tired, and praying that I don't catch this flu bug. Labor is bad enough without the flu on top of it! :) Today I just needed to relax so we scrapped a bunch of 4x6 layouts. It was such a nice break, and the kids had fun helping me pick the colors and things to put on it. Here's one from last weekend at the reunion. Savannah was so upset about this layout. She has been learning how to sound out words and start reading. She kept telling me she didn't like his name. She wanted me to take it off and spell it with an F. Fillip.:) I explained to her about how putting the P and H sound together make the same sound as the F. She accepted the answer but it still bothers her, and she mentions it every time she sees this layout.

Home Sweet Home

Nothing Fancy
           Well here's a quick view of the outside of our new place, (before we mowed the lawn and started cleaning it up a bit.) If you were imagining something big and grand you'll be disappointed. It's just a old tiny house, but it meets our needs, and is exactly what we were looking for when we thought of a starter home. It's taken some time to get a few things unpacked (it'll probably take us all year) But it's feeling more like home every day.
Not For Cars
           Beau got a garage, where he could now put all his wood working and shop tools. Garages weren't meant to actually store cars right?! Plus it's a place for more storage. Off to the side of the garage is a room that's built on that is going to become the office. It needs some minor repairs and some carpet laid, and then we'll get to enjoy a separate office, were kids have limited access, and where work can actually happen without interruptions! It also leaves Isaac his own room for once. Lucky guy!
Green Thumb
           I've been dying to have my own garden spot and have been itching to get it started now that we've officially moved over. It's been overcast, rainy and cold for the last couple of weeks it seems. It might be too late to get one in at this point, but it's still cold so we're hoping that we'll get be able to harvest at least something out of it. Beau got it all ready today, now we just need to get some extra soil and put in the plants on Monday! I can't wait to get my hands dirty!
           Savannah got a hold of the camera and snapped this photo of the flag on our front porch. We've had it almost 6 years now and never a place to hang it. We got it for a wedding present, so when Beau found it while unpacking he took advantage of the poles on the porch.
Another Artist
           I came in from outside were we where all working to find this little boy. Savannah had left her paints out from earlier. He waddled inside, found them all ready to go and though he'd take a stab at it. He actually knew what he was doing. Dipped his brush in the water, then the paints and then painted on the paper. But once he started putting the brush in his mouth mom had to call the fun over.

Another Day

Growing Up
           Isaac is growing up and wanting to do what we do. He especially wants to be like his dad. He follows him around copying everything that he does. Now that we have moved into the category of home owners, we are now also included in the part of home repairman. Since we've moved in Beau has been fixing little things, setting things up and has his little partner following him around, carrying tools and trying to help.
           He is definitely like his dad in interests. If he can put it together, fix it, or plug it in he is all over it. If a ball is involved he wants in on the action, he is such a boy and so much different than my girls who are all over dressing up and changing outfits 5 times a day. He is a breath of fresh air.You've Come a Long Way
           Savannah finished her season of dance class, and we have pictures, stories and videos to show off later. She has come a long way this year on overcoming her shyness. She still has a long way to go, but I'm proud of her for her improvement, she did a great job there at the end.
           I still can't find my cable to download all our recent picture from my camera! It's driving me nuts, since I want to become a little more active on this blog than I have the last little while. Plus soon Caitlyn (our newest one) will be joining us in a few weeks, and that camera needs to be emptied for all those great shots.
Today
           Today we got our washer / dryer hooked up and working. After a year of a dryer that took 3 rounds to dry, my handyman husband ripped the whole thing apart today, cleaned out all the vents, and now has me a dryer that dries in one load! Happiest Day of my life. I got 3 - 55 gallon bins emptied and put away, slowly the unpacking will end. Mirian had a fever in the 100's all day, poor girl. All she could do was lay around, sleep and ask mom to just sit by her. Hopefully she'll having a better day tomorrow.
           Savannah was with me in the kitchen emptying boxes, and cleaning. Isaac and Mirian were taking naps while dad was working. She proudly told me that we were having a "mother-daughter date" because everyone else was gone and it was just me and her. I agreed and also hope to take her out to do something a little more fun than unpacking boxes. Hopefully tomorrow will bring more empty boxes and a camera cable.

Back Online

           Well we are officially set back up with the internet and online, although you still might not be hearing from me really regularly as we still have tons of things to unpack and get ready so that we are all settled in before the baby is born. I've got some photos to post, but as luck would have it somewhere in some box is my cord to download them off my camera! Ahhh, who knows when it will come out of hiding! We are doing well well though and will catch you up on details later!

Catch Up

           How do you play catch up when you haven't written for weeks! The last couple have been crazy. Thursday I got to enjoy my mother's day present. A day to myself to relax with friends, go out to lunch, and a hour foot massage. Beau really knows how to pamper me. He picked just the right thing. He hung out with the kids all day and was a real trooper.
           We also closed on the house the same day and have been in the process of packing things up and getting ready to move.
           Saturday was spent all day in dress rehersals for Savannah's Dance recital. She is so shy and terrified of being in front of people. We were pretty sure she wouldn't do the recital, but she really wanted to. I was able to actually catch some fun video of her dances and some photo shots of her during the rehersal. It's a good thing too, because as soon as she walked out on stage and saw all of the people, she walked right back off. She's come so far since the first day of class, so we were proud of how much she has grown in having confidence. Hopefully next time she'll go through with it.
           The last couple of days are making arrangements to move, rearranging utilitities, packing, and getting ready to leave town for the next 4 days for a high school graduation and a family reunion.

Craziness

           Well for lack of taking any pictures lately... here's some I've been scanning in of old photos growing up, so another self portrait. Hmm... some of these self portraits are better than the ones now! :)
           Life will be crazy for us the next couple of weeks, hence probably a lack of absence here on the blog. Today was a mother's day present. A day all to myself to relax with two of my friends. Beau kept the kids all day while I got to enjoy going out, shopping (ok more like browsing) and lunch with them. Then later an hour foot massage. My husband is way too good to me. :)
           The middle of my day out was broken up so we could go and close on our new house! Yeah! I was perfectly fine giving up part of my day so that we could get this ball moving. Which means I'll be MIA as we are packing, traveling to reunions and graduations next week, and then moving and cleaning the following week. Trying to get out of here by the 30th. Good luck to us. It will be a crazy couple of weeks, but at least when it's all over we will be in our own place! Yeah!!!!! It's been a blessing, and we've had so many blessings poured out on us all the way around. Life has been good.

Newest Stuff

           Well lately I have just been exhausted and so uncomfortable. I will be so ready for this baby to get out here in a month. So my lack of blogging is basically because of a lack of energy. I've been working on some new baby products for the last couple of weeks and finally got them up at ScrapGirls! Yeah. I was excited because it's something that I can use quite a bit for my own purposes. I always like that!
           We are in the process of buying a tiny house. It's not necessarily any bigger than where we are at right now, but we'll have an extra bedroom for the kids, a garage, and a small yard! Yeah! we hopefully close here the end of next week, and then I will probably be MIA as we are packing, moving and cleaning these last couple of weeks!
           Here some pictures of my latest creations!
           My Newborn Collection.

           Here's a layout of Isaac using it.
           Here's my first attempt at actually doing some illustrations to match a kit. It was pretty fun, and now I've got ideas for other ones as well, which we're in the process of drawing out.

           This is probably my favorite part. The Newborn baby album templates. Savannah is now almost 5, I have three kids and no baby books for them. It just took too long. So now that I'm in love with the 4x6 size, I made some templates for an album that size. It is perfect, I was able to whip all of their albums out no problem, and they now officially have one! Yeah!!!
           Here's some samples showing Isaac's finished album. Just too much fun!

With still a month and a half to go.

           I've seen this photo in various places and my husband rolls his eyes at it every time because he says it's just not possible to actually see the foot like this. He's right, but boy lately (especially today) I sure feel like this photo. My stomach feels like it's in my throat and my growing belly is feeling huge and tight with all this rolling, moving, and pushing. I keep wondering what this kid is doing. I'm sure she's just trying to get comfortable just like me. Especially after all the abuse from her siblings. Isaac climbing and standing on my stomach, everyone sitting on it, pushing on it and climbing on it. I'm sure she's wondering what we are doing!

Being in the pictures too.

           It seems that most of the time I am the one taking pictures and so it's always fun to run across a picture where I'm actually in one. I ran across this one that I didn't realize I had until right after Savannah was born. I've been having fun and actually getting a lot of layouts done of our family with these 4x6 layouts.
           Sometimes they aren't the most flattering pictures of me, but I'm slowly getting over it as I realize I need to document myself in this life of ours, just as much as I need to document my children's life. I have very few pictures of my mom when we were growing up, and usually she had her hand up saying don't take this picture, or a scowl that she wasn't too happy with her picture taken. I want my kids to see me in pictures as being a part of their lives as well... so even though I don't necessarily love how I look right now I still need to be taking more!
           Which leads me to sharing my latest love.... more of Kal's Tiny art but specifically her pink ladies.


           She started this series when she did a painting for herself sharing her insecurities with her body after having a new baby. And it has evolved into a bunch of tiny art about women and their image of themselves with all their flaws, and not recognizing their real beauty. Too often we are comparing ourselves with earlier, skinnier days, each other or the media's description of what beauty is, when we are really missing it. We have beauty. Each of us. Inner beauty and outer beauty despite the extra curves and pounds that we carry. I love her simple words she describes, her descriptions of how we view ourselves and her honest drawings of what most of us look like. (I know I'm not one that promotes art, images or pictures of half dressed women, but I really love the message she is sharing and the way she is portraying it. Trust me I am the pickiest person when it comes to things like this, but I love them and the message so much I couldn't not share it.)

We're back

           I've been sort of absent for a while... life just catches up with you sometimes. Last week was a busy week of finishing up finals! Helping people, babysitting, dentist appointments, and the flu (me only!) We are enjoying the fact that we can relax and just be a family again. We had a great Saturday! I went to a baby shower, then off to Chuckie Cheese for a fun afternoon birthday party as a family. Afterwards we tackled the house before we went out on a date with friends to an Argentine restaurant. Beau's old mission companion and his wife went with us. They both miss the Argentine food, and so we enjoyed an evening of Milanesa's (I probably have those spelled so wrong! :)
           The best part of my whole weekend? My laundry is all caught up!!! It has been behind for literally months. Our dryer takes 2-3 cycles before it actually dries a load, and it has been impossible and would be impossible for me to ever get it caught up. So we just spent the money, and hauled all of it to the Laundry mat, and got it ALL down in a couple of hours. Loads and loads of it. I won't even tell you how many loads it was! Too embarrassing. But what an amazing feeling of relief it is to walk past the laundry room and have it clean, all it folded and put away, sorted through, and have one small pile to get done today. It was so worth every penny we paid! No more guilt and frustration of being constantly behind. What a productful, relaxing weekend.
           Today... Beau isn't working! I get time to design this morning, then we are off to relax and enjoy the day together as a family. The best part is that it is finally feeling and looking like spring too!

More Playing

           So I've been having too much fun playing and getting way too many ideas of possible projects in my head... but that's a good thing. I need that right now... here' s one of Savannah.

Oh I forgot!

           For those of you sitting and waiting from my last post as to whether on not Beau passed his defense for his masters... he did! Yeah!!!! The last week has been filled up with Final Projects, Finals, and readjusting the printed version of his thesis, but hopefully Tues is THE DAY. The final day, we can resume normal life. When life will slow down just a bit for us and we can take a break, breathe and relax!
           For those wondering - he's getting his masters in Computer Engineering: Robotics. His thesis was Real Time Implementation of Vision Algorithms for Control, Stabilization, and Target Tracking, for a Hovering Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. (You think the title was a mouthful, you should have gone through the editing! I kid him, but he's actually taught me enough and helped me try to understand it that I could actually follow the paper and his defense. I couldn't tell you what an algorithm is for the life of me let alone write one, but I know enough that I get excited about his projects.)

Experimenting

           Ok Mandy... here is your long overdue portrait. But I sort of cheated. I've been playing around with the Painter X demo for the last couple of weeks, and can I tell you how bad I'm dying for this program. To have access to all the art media, without it being strewn about my house by children and no messes to clean up! Combine all my loves of the computer digital world.... and my need to paint and draw again! Perfect combination. I will admit on this one though, that I was playing with the cloning tool, because I just wanted to be able to experiment with brushes, paper overlays and various other effects, but still ended up liking the end result, so I thought I would count it for now, or it might be months before you ever see one. :)
           I really need to get Kal's bulletproof attitude, when it comes to using the computer for art, and realize that hey I don't have to do everything the traditional way, starting from scratch and drawing it all myself from the very beginning. (First off I just don't have time for that lately. It would take me months to complete one piece, and my creativity needs to be fed lately a little more often than that.) Who cares if I did use the clone tool on part of this. Who cares how it was made, it still has bits of me, I still pick and choose how I put things together, what I wanted to pull out etc. What is considered cheating in the art world today anyways? I would say that cheating is one way blatantly stealing someone else's art and claiming it as your own. As long as I'm not doing that (although I did use your photo for this Mandy.) then I'm not cheating right!:) So I still have this huge battle in my head... and just need some bulletproof attitude here. (When are you going to do an online class Kal?)

It's Finally the Day!

           After what seems like months. Today is the day, in two hours I'll be heading up to hear my husband defend his thesis for his Masters. Yeah! We are almost finished! Until we start up the doctorate... but we'll think about that later.

Fun things mother's get to do.

           So who says being a mom has to be boring. I had a great day today and had the chance to get creative and learn something new!

           Today was Mirian's birthday and she was determined she wanted a princess birthday cake. Savannah had a Cinderella one last year, and she wanted an Ariel one. So we found a picture, and I went and actually bought the real cake decorating supplies since I figure with at least 6 birthdays a year and other celebrations over the next 20 years while my kids are home, I'll get my use out of it. Plus it's fun to be creative in a whole new way.
           We had a great day. Decorated cakes, hung up streamers, went shopping, had a party, and wore myself right out.

How old are you Mirian?

           I'm three!
           Happy Birthday Mirian! You were so much fun today and were so excited about everything, the cake, your presents, the balloons... you name it!

Reflections of Christ

           Someone sent me an email letting me know about this exhibition "Reflections of Christ" by photographer Mark Mabry at the Mesa Arizona Temple. It's hit me on so many levels today, that I thought I would share the quick slideshow that they have of the the images from the exhibition. I'm hoping later they'll have it made so that it's possible to actually post it straight into blogs. I love to see artists like this using the gift that they've been given to glorify him. The website is www.reflectionsofchrist.org