Random Happenings-Part 1

I was looking at our pictures and realized, there is a lot I haven't blogged about lately. So I figured I should post some pictures and a little update. This is part one because I have also been forgetting my camera a lot and have been borrowing Allan's parents so I have to borrow their card and get some more pictures on here!
Way back (I think sometime in February) we had a Barnes and Noble fundraiser and my kids sang. Above is a picture I took of Ally after they were done singing and if you look below you will see why.
One of the disadvantages of having short kids is that you can't see them in a crowd. For some reason they never plan out performances very well and my kids are always behind really tall kids! This is the best picture I got of Ally over that kid's shoulder!
So when Hailey's class was filing in I took a picture of her before the tall kid came and stood in front of her. lol. Luckily she was on the end and we were on that side so she kind of directed her performance towards us.
Here's a little bit about Lilly....
Lilly is a little mischievous. On this particular day she used the step stool to climb up on the counter and get herself a piece of bread.
Then she grabbed a plate and sat down on the counter to have a little snack.
Lilly loves her brother, I can't really keep her away from him. I have found her in his crib, if he is on the floor she is always on top of him, and when he is in the swing she opens it up to give him loves.
Another day I put her hair in her first full ponytail. It's really hard to get a picture of the ponytail from the front so here are two views. this was towards the end of the day so it's falling out a little bit.
Lilly has been on this no diaper kick. I put her in a onsie to sleep, but it doesn't seem to make a difference!
Really she is on a no clothes at all kick, she loves to strip down and walk around in just her boots for some reason.
Hailey, Ally, and Natalie's ballet did a performance in March. This is one of the times I forgot my camera so I only have a picture of Hailey because she was in the evening performance as well as the matinee so I took my camera then. I will post pictures of Ally and Natalie soon.
Now a little bit about the boys...
I just thought that picture was so cute, I workout every morning at 6 with a couple of girls. One day I heard Brayden crying while we were working out. When I finished I found Allan and him like this.
Brayden has the saddest little sad face. This is my attempt at capturing it, in real life it's even sadder than this.
Allan turned 31! We had a couple of our very best friends, the Laytons and The Pettingills over to help us celebrate. Allan isn't a huge fan of cake so instead I made Tuxedo Brownie Bites. I made Allan a super big one for his "birthday cake"
As you can see he is very upset about turning 31. Okay, not really, but this was a funny look, you can see by the next picture he has some serious mood swings!
This was the morning after the Easter Bunny came to our house, as you can tell Lilly wasn't quite ready to see what she got.
Lilly quickly warmed up when she saw her sisters going through their baskets. By the way incase you are wondering, it's really hard to get a picture of all 5 kids looking let alone smiling at the camera. After about 20 pictures this one actually has them all looking. Maybe soon I will learn to photo shop and can fix it so the best face of each of them is the one you see.
And lastly another lovely surprise this morning! I don't know how well you can actually see, but this is the walkway up to our house, the show drift was over a foot high!
I opened up the door in the back to get a picture of the back yard and had a lovely present!
And Meesa, yes this is our back yard, two of our neighbors don't have fences which works out greatly to our advantage. The second swing set is in the back neighbors yard, and the neighbors to the side have a sand box. This added to the fact that their families have 5 and 3 kids makes for an instant park in the back yard complete with friends to play with!
So, if you are still reading I guess you stuck out my rediculously long blog. Make sure to come back for part 2 which promises more pictures from the Ballet, an Easter Egg Hunt, Allan and his sister Jeni celebrating their birthdays together, and a picture of my kids with my Grandparents from our trip to Utah for Easter and maybe more!

April Fools!

Mother Nature played a little April Fools joke on us. Literally less than an hour ago I said to my mom, "We don't have any snow on the ground here." Oh well, what did I expect? We do live in Idaho after all!

Quick Weight Loss Update

Well, I said I would update the blog world on my progress once a month, so here I am. I am not going to take a picture because I still look the same.....Maybe I will take a picture every 3 months just to see if I look any different.

This last month has gone okay. I have lost 4 lbs, which is what I said I need to lose, so that was good. I have worked out 5 days a week for the last 3 weeks. (since Brayden was 6 weeks old) I have been trying to keep track of my calories and eat right, and did pretty good for a couple of weeks, then the last two I have kind of been slacking off and also not watching my portion sizes as well as I should. I have such a hard time reducing what I eat when I am breastfeeding. I am hungry all the time and snack on junk all day long, a big disadvantage to being a stay at home mom!

This next month I am going to try and make sure I have healthy low calorie snacks around for when I want a snack. I am also going to try and drink even more water so I maybe don't feel as hungry. I drink quite a bit anyway because breastfeeding makes me thirsty, but I would like to be better about constantly drinking water rather than waiting till I am thirsty. I also need to be better about not taking seconds at meals, I know this one thing could reduce the calories I am eating by 200-300 calories a day, but sometimes dinner (or dessert) just tastes so yummy I want more!

Okay, time for your participation: leave a comment and let me know what your favorite low calorie snacks are!

Brayden's 2 Months Old

Time has flown by since Brayden has been born. I am sure it is because we stay so busy. As sad as it sounds, I think the hardest thing about having 5 kids these days is that I am always forgetting one of them. I picked up my kids from Zoe's house the other day, and left Brayden. I was dropping the 3 big girls off at their dress rehearsal another day and started down the stairs before I realized I had left Lilly watching the movie where I had put her while I was getting the girls settled. Ally was playing at a friends house and I forgot to pick her up for about 45 minutes (she thought it was great b/c she had dinner with her friend). I could go on and on, I am hoping it will kick in soon and I will stop forgetting my kids! Anyway, back to Brayden.We had Brayden's check up Friday, he is growing great! He weighed 10 lbs 15 oz and is 22 1/2 inches long. He is starting to be very alert when he is awake. He prefers it to be noisy (go figure, with four older sisters!) He can lift his head while lying on his tummy. He is starting to sleep 5-6 hours at night. I have recently found that the blanket I swaddle him in matters a lot, he is so strong that he can get out of most of his blankets and he would wake up every 2-4 hours, but I have found a choice few that he stays wrapped up all night and it has made a huge difference.Brayden is really a pretty good baby, he can get a little fussy at times and would like to be held all the time if possible, but he is learning that is not going to happen. For the last month he has had a little cold that started out as a little stuffy nose, then got worse, then he had a cough with it and sounded kind of yucky, and now he is finally shaking it off. I was hesitent to take him to the doctor because they can't do much, but when it got worse I took him in to make sure. His lungs were totally clear and his oxygen saturation was at 100%! Brayden is a total boy, he burps and farts way louder and more often than my girls did, which I think is funny. We love having a little boy in our home!

How Hailey Finally Got Her Own Room (for a short time anyway)

Sometimes (okay, a lot of the time) I complain about Hailey. She is so different than me, and challenges me in so many ways, but the truth is, it must be hard being the oldest of 5. She has been sharing a room with at least one person since before she was 2 years old. She has the most and the hardest chores, and does them the best and most consistently. I expect a ton from her academically and have pushed her to do her very best. I have asked so much from her from the very beginning and she is a wonderful child. Lately she has been AMAZING, like a whole different child. I am not going to say she never has her moments, but I feel like there is light at the end of a two year emotional tunnel! Before Brayden was born I decided that I would move the toys downstairs and put some kids in the "toy room." At that point I "decided" but didn't do anything about it. Our basement has been a total mess for 2 years. When we moved in we put a bunch of stuff down there and as we needed things we would go and open boxes and look for this or that and we would take things down there we weren't using and let the kids go down and play with things like playdough and we have food storage down there and basically everything exploded onto the 1700 square feet of cement. Anyway, long story short, it wasn't something I was ready to tackle pregnant. A few weeks ago I decided the time had come and I spent a whole week down there going through and organizing everything. It's amazing the difference, but really not what this post is supposed to be about. Then I moved all of the toys downstairs and made a play area in the basement. It's really nice for the kids and I don't get nearly the flow of toys into my family room that I used to get.

When I started doing all of this, I knew I wanted to move Brayden in there eventually, but didn't know which of the girls or how many of them I would move in with him. At first I thought maybe Lilly and Natalie because they were the youngest and just split them up older and younger. Then I thought Ally because she is probably my deepest sleeper and that way if Brayden was crying in the night it might not bother her. Finally I decided Hailey would be the one. She is after all the oldest so if anyone was going to be getting new furniture and a new room it should be her.(there are positives to being the oldest as well as the afore mentioned negatives) Plus I have been thinking she needs her own space, and I was right. We told her that she would be sharing with Brayden in a little bit and if his crying bothers her we may have to change things around but for now Hailey gets the room.The first night after I moved the toys downstairs and got the room all scrubbed down, we still didn't have any furniture for her, so we told her she could sleep on a crib mattress in the new room or she could sleep in the room with her sisters one last time. As you can see Hailey and all of her "friends" made the change as soon as possible. The next day she and Allan went to the store to get the bed we had found in an ad. We went through the ads and found a couple of options. Turned out the one we originally liked only came with a headboard and no frame so we went with our second choice (which I am now happy we did.) Unfortunately our second choice was out of stock at the store here in Idaho Falls and the sale was ending that day with no rain checks. We called up Allan's sister in Pocatello and she went to the store and bought the bed for us! (Thank goodness for our wonderful family) This meant a few more nights of sleeping on the crib mattress, but it was well worth it.Hailey has loved having her own room. She has decorated it a bit with her things placed just how she wants them. Most mornings she gets up and makes her bed right away and straightens her things. She does her homework on her bed, and gets to stay up later than everyone and read without worrying about having her light on and bothering her little sisters. Back to my first comments, I am not sure if it is having her own room and space that is making her have a better attitude and be more helpful all around, but she has been a dream kid since moving into her room a couple of weeks ago.

I want to write a few things about Hailey. She is so smart. She has been reading chapter books since first grade and is now reading fourth grade level books in second grade. She probably reads anywhere from 3-5 chapter books a week as well as several short books. She has been working on an accelerated math program that her school has and passed off over 110 objectives and is now doing multiplication and division, fractions, weights and measurements, and much more! She is super helpful around the house and with her siblings. She loves to unload the dishwasher and help fold and put away laundry. She cleans her own room, of course, but is also incharge of keeping the kids bathroom clean. She almost always helps clean up the toy room even when she has been at school all day while her sisters made the mess. She will walk Brayden around when he is fussy and she is big enough that I don't have to worry about her dropping him or something like that. She is really obedient. An example of this is 25c Fridays. The kids can take $ and buy treats. Anyway, Hailey is allowed to take $1 a week if she has been good, but sometimes she loses quarters. She takes the $ out of her little bank each week and puts it in her wallet, and every week she only takes what she is supposed to, so if she lost 2 quarters, she will only take 50c. She does what she is told, although sometimes not quickly she just needs to understand why and then do it in her own time.

Well this is getting a little long (or a lot) but the point is I love Hailey and I am so grateful to have her in our family. Like I said she is different than me, but it helps me to learn and grow, all of my kids are different and present different challenges and blessings. Hailey is such a special girl!