a follow-up

**EDITED**

I had to come on here and tell you that my house is much improved from those last pictures I showed you. There's still a lot of work to be done, but we're moving along!

Also, remember how one time I mentioned that Alexis had a field trip and she didn't want me to go? I ended up getting asked to go, and the field trip was yesterday. She was disappointed at first and told me that I wasn't going to sit by her on the bus, but I think in the end she had fun with me there and only had to sit by me on the bus on the way home. When I asked her if she had fun even with me there she said "yes, but I kind of wish you hadn't come because then I would have been in a different group". Just one more reason why my motto as a mother is becoming: You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself. Or at least that's my motto at mealtimes, and the reason Jeremy sees peas (despite his complaints) included in the dinner at least once a month.

On a more serious note, I read a short news article online from our local news station this morning and it has me baffled. Recently a death warrant has been signed for a man in Utah who killed an attorney while trying to escape from a courthouse in 1981. This particular article announced that they are making commemorative coins for those involved in the execution in June. Commemorative coins for an execution? This is a mentality I don't understand. I can't bring myself to expound on this anymore than that, but I hope I'm not the only one that finds this is a little unnecessary. **Here's a correction to that last article. It makes a lot more sense now!**

On a lighter note and in conclusion because this is all my brain can handle today, this morning Tyler asked me how many years until the baby comes out. Some days it really feels like it takes years, but then I look at my gigantic list of things to do before he comes and I can only hope that it will take years.

it's getting messy over here

I only show you these pictures to help you feel better about yourselves today. I took them for my own sake, lest in a few months my sleep deprivation caused by a newborn makes me wish for a return to the days of pregnancy, I can look at these photos and remember.

Remember that in my pregnant state I do the very minimum to get by.

Remember that in my pregnant state I haven't cleaned up, or made the kids clean up, the toy room for weeks. I wish that were an exaggeration, but it's not.

Some of you have nice basements or hidden away spaces for your kids to play so you don't see the mess daily. I do not have that. I have a room directly across the hall from my room, and right next door to my kids room, that is viewed often. I see it when I wake up in the morning. I see it after breakfast when I go back upstairs to get ready. I see at night when I put my kids to bed. And I see it as though it's burned into my eyelids when I go to sleep.

Ready for it? Here is what our toy room/everything else room currently looks like:


And don't forget the closet:

It's pathetic really, and at this point I think I've given up on organizing those toys.

In order for our house to be baby ready we have to do some major purging. And I'm just waiting for a time when I can go through all those toys and get rid of half of them without the kids around.

Have I mentioned Alexis is a pack rat? So for her, parting with things (this includes garbage) is akin to a normal person parting with a necessary limb. It is traumatic to say the least.

I, however, have never considered myself a pack rat and try to not keep unnecessary things around. So I realized that I needed to go through all the old girl clothes I've been saving and get rid of most of them. I did that last week and now I understand Alexis a little more! It was kind of hard and a little emotional. And really ridiculous how many clothes I'd been hanging onto. Seriously, can one little girl really wear that many clothes??

But as I went through them those clothes brought back a lot of memories. It's funny how you can associate such a material thing with moments that matter. So I kept all the stuff that really held sentimental value or that I really loved, but the rest of it I'm passing on. I kept thinking that most of the memories I have from those clothes are associated with photos I've seen over and over, but I just looked through old pictures and most of the clothes aren't in them. So I guess they are actual memories. But here's a few photos I do have:

Purple velour pants, ridiculous purple shoes, flower onesie. This was a favorite outfit.

First time swimming
First time she attempted to take off her clothes (while she was supposed to be napping!)

Though I don't really care for Winnie the Pooh, she had a set of three different onesies that she wore a lot, and they were some of the hardest to part with. (p.s. what's up with her hair?)
I just really like this picture! And she wore that sweatshirt a lot!

And this dress was a favorite! I can still picture her crawling around church in it.

Loved this coat! I'm keeping it.

Her first Easter dress. This has been passed on to my niece that will be born in August.

That's enough of that. To sum up:

1. My house is a gigantic mess!
2. Jeremy and I are in the process of organizing and de-junking our entire house so the baby doesn't have to sleep outside.
3. This all needs to be done by June 2nd at the very latest (my induction date!!!!)
4. Alexis has had way too many clothes in her short life span of 5 1/2 years.
5. I am apparently having a hard time accepting the fact that my oldest is growing up.

And along the lines of #5, would it be weird to keep a pair of her first set of underwear in the memory box that I have for her?

6. Sometimes I ask really weird questions.

thinking of a title will cause Alexis to be late for school...

Should I start every post these days by mentioning how tired I am? How long would that take before it got old? Oh, it already is old? Never mind then, I'm not tired. I'm not exhausted. I'm not pooped. (That's a fancy word for tired). (A little Fancy Nancy humor for you).

I am quite pleased that it's the middle of April. Technically I have 2 months left of this pregnancy business, but I'm counting on less because I like to do stupid things like get my hopes up. But this morning I stepped on the scale and boy howdy was that a mistake! I hadn't prepped myself or anything. I just did it quickly before jumping in the shower, and then I spent the whole time in the shower worrying that my weight will cause it to collapse and crash through the floor to the kitchen below. That would be embarrassing! We'll just say I'm not one of those people who gains the safe and suggested amount of weight during pregnancy. I gain way more than that. So no wonder I'm (not) tired.

And now I challenge you to use the phrase "boy howdy" in a sentence today. It's kind of fun.

Last week I got it in my head that I need to learn how to cut boy's hair. I currently have 1 3/4 boys so I should really be responsible and frugal and learn to do it myself. I will never attempt this on Alexis, Jeremy or myself, I know my limits, but who cares if Tyler's hair looks stupid right? Obviously not us. Instead of asking the plethora of people who actually know how to do this, I turned to the Internet, turned on a movie for Tyler, then turned on the electric clippers. The result isn't terrible, especially if you don't look closely, but it's definitely done by a beginner. Fortunately his hair grows fast and we can try again in a few months. I should show you a picture, but I don't have one and I'm not about to chase him down to get one. I'm (not) too tired for that.

Here's a few pictures I do have. First, this is what Alexis is wearing today. Just wanted to document that the weird outfits continue.
Pants under a skirt is her new favorite look. And that is the tie to her bathrobe worn around her waist. When we went out this morning she said to me "Thanks for letting me wear my bathrobe tie today to school". She sounded genuinely surprised that I let her. When honestly, to me it got lost with the rest of the outfit so I didn't even think to tell her no. I'm starting to think that from here on out when I buy her new clothes I should only buy them in one or two colors and definitely nothing with prints. That way she's guaranteed to match.

However, I really do love her creativity. Which is what the next picture shows.
I took this picture because I thought that whatever she had made here was so darn creative. I mean, the helmet for the barbie is made out of half an Easter egg strapped to her head by a rubber band. And the pens were handles or paddles or something. Unfortunately I can't remember now what exactly it was supposed to be, but it sure was smart!

And now, I need help. My couches have a bunch of dumb little stains and watermarks on them. They are microfiber. Anyone know how to clean them up to look nice??

Now back to your Monday's everyone. Boy Howdy is mine busy!

The Trip Recap

Please pardon my long absence, I've been busy trying to keep everyone in this house from dying due to some illness or another. Perhaps that's a bit dramatic, but it sure felt like I was dying last night when I couldn't stop coughing and I had an extremely bad case of heartburn. I've had a cough for about a week, but it was really bad over the weekend. And as I told Jeremy, a bad cough is a mean trick to play on a pregnant woman who already has very limited bladder control.

And that's all I'll say about that.

This weekend was also The Trip. The one that I was so nervous about because we'd be camping, and there were no bathrooms, and we were in the middle of nowhere. That's everything I knew before. Then come the week of we discovered the weather forecast. And then I got sick. And then my mother in law got pink eye, and my father in law was still not over some bad case of the flu that he's had for several weeks. We were going to make an awesome group--yet we were determined to go!

But we woke up to go in the morning to several inches of snow on the ground with it still falling. And you know how I feel about snow. It is my opinion that a person should not plan on riding the Rhino when it looks like this:
That's the kind of weather we were driving through.

By the time we got to our destination it was cold but sunny with no snow, so we hosed off the frozen Rhino and went on our way.

And I have to say that the trip was actually a lot of fun! It had it's downs, like the fact that it was freezing most of the time and the wind that blew in the night making it hard to sleep. In fact the second night it was so windy that my brother in law's tent got flipped over, with him still inside it!

But the ups far outweighed them. Jeremy (and his parents) took such good care of me that I didn't have to do much. Also he borrowed a three inch foam mat that he put on top of the air mattress for me to sleep on and I'm pretty sure I slept better on that than I do at home. It was heaven! It really helped to insulate our sleeping bags from the cold so we stayed toasty warm all night.

There was the matter of the hike we went on that was supposed to be less than two miles round trip and ended up being at least twice that. Which normally wouldn't scare me but I'm carting around an extra 35 lbs and my core muscles are a little stretched out at the moment, so it probably goes without saying that that hike left me VERY tired. But it built character (I think)!

Within minutes of getting in the Rhino Jeremy had us sunk in a wash. But I've learned that it's not really fun unless someone has to be towed out of somewhere.

Jeremy and his dad on what we dubbed "the slant rock". It really is amazing the shapes you find some of these rocks in.

Lake Powell. Simply beautiful. It gave us all an itch to go back there and soon! (And with a boat.)

Jeremy, me, Cindy and Trent with Hole in the Rock and Lake Powell behind us. It was really cool to learn about the history behind this. Basically a group of Mormon Pioneers in 1880 lowered 26 wagons and 250 people, plus animals, down this really steep crack in the rocks to ferry across what was then a river. It is unimaginable how they did it, but somehow they did and everyone and everything survived.

This is what they called "Dance Hall Rock". It's shaped like and has the acoustics of an amphitheater and the pioneers would square dance here while they were camped waiting for the road to be ready.

And then we came home to more snow on Easter morning. But we also came home to two little cuties who were very excited to see us and get a visit from the Easter Bunny. Alexis has been talking about this Barbie bathtub for months, ever since she gave one to a friend for her birthday. And miraculously that's what the bunny brought. Jeremy finds it a little ridiculous that our daughter owns a toilet for her Barbies, but that's okay. I learned this weekend that toilets are essential, even for Barbies.

And Ty-guy of course got dinosaurs. He loves dinosaurs and spends half his day pretending that he is one. And I'm pretty certain that sometimes he's so into being a dinosaur that he thinks he really is one. Like the other day when Jeremy was washing Tyler's face and he said to him "Why are you wiping a T-Rex's face??"

And have I mentioned that he's a daddy's boy? Cause he is. Big time. And I love it!

Now back to Spring Break for us!