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!

Alexis' no good, very bad day

Alexis is having a bad day, and I feel really sorry for her.

Yesterday she was perfectly fine, but this morning she woke up and her eyes were crusted shut from gunk pouring out of them all night. And she has puffy eyes and a runny nose. The doctors office called in some antibiotic eye drops for her, and even though her eyes aren't quite so gunky anymore, I'm afraid she is still contagious.

I told her this morning that she wouldn't get to go to school, and though she was sad she was okay with it. But I just barely called the school to excuse her and I guess that's when she remembered what today was. Today is the last day for the student teacher that's been in her class. They were going to have a party and Alexis really wanted to tell her goodbye. She cried and cried and cried, and I even cried for her! Please remember I'm hormonal, but she just sat there sobbing in my lap and there was nothing I could do to really make it better. I know she'll probably forget all about it in a few days, but that doesn't make the moment of sadness she feels any less painful for her or me.

And tonight she was supposed to go eat at Carl's Jr. (with a play place!) with her dad and brother and some friends, but she probably won't be doing that either. Poor girl.

And to top it all off she has to have eye drops in her eyes!

The bright side is that I let her have a doughnut for lunch. She needed it.

And I had a cinnamon roll for lunch. It's snowing--I needed it.

facts

Oh am I tired.

That is life these days. Tired, tired, and more tired.

With some sewing thrown in. And a few other projects.

And the ever present, ever loud, ever messy children.

Here's a question: Have my kids always been this messy, or does it just seem worse because it's so painful to bend over and help them clean up?

Here's some interesting facts about Alexis:
-She has bitten her lip three times today. Three! And every time she screams like the world is ending.
-She called Tyler "Chubby Buns" the other day and I'm pretty sure it's the best nickname I've heard yet.
-Today she told me that her class needs 5 mom volunteers for a field trip but that I am forbidden to go because she wants it to be special.
-Also today she was "hula" dancing and it was one of the cutest things I've seen her do. She tied two capes around her waist to act as her hula skirt, and a thin necktie around her chest area to support her you-know-what's. And if it weren't so revealing I'd show you all a picture.

Here's some interesting facts about Tyler:
-He does indeed have "Chubby Buns", but they are getting decidedly less chubby as he gets taller and less baby like.
-He is also very tired today, which means he likes to snuggle with me more and listen to me less.
-He is one of the most loyal brothers I have ever seen and also one of the scariest T-Rex's I have ever seen.
-He likes to help me with whatever I'm doing--whether it's sewing, cooking or cleaning.
-While I'm watching Jeopardy he asks every 5 minutes if it's over and who won. When it is over he has to know who won and is often times upset because it wasn't the person he wanted to win. (He never wants the girls to win--only the boys.)

Here's some interesting facts about me:
-I have zero interest in going on a field trip with a bunch of kindergartners. Too stressful for me, I'd spend every other second counting kids to make sure I have them all.
-I've done pretty well at keeping up with my dishes and keeping my kitchen clean for about a week!
-I get to see some of my good friends from college this next week and I can't wait!
-Next week I'm going on a 4 wheeling trip with Jeremy and his parents and brother. There will be no bathrooms (maybe a port-o-potty if I'm lucky) and I'll be sleeping in a tent. I will also be 30 weeks pregnant. I'm a little nervous (or a lot depending on the time of day and my hormones!)
-I have begun reading "Anna Karenina" and hope to actually make it all the way through.

Here's some interesting facts about Jeremy:
-He had the Rhino painted black because someone offered to do it for free. It looks cool.
-He's getting stuck with the kids a lot over the next five days but he hasn't complained. (Maybe I should give it a few days...)
-He graciously offered to build some sort of portable bathroom enclosure for our trip.
-Those are all the facts I have about him because he doesn't talk much and I don't see him much more than that.

And now I have filled my blogging quota for the week--too bad it wasn't more interesting. And just because everything is less lame when a picture is involved, here's one of Tyler helping me make pizza dough.

a follow-up

Yesterday morning Alexis was very distraught to discover that, yet again, Lucky and Larry (the leprechauns) had not come to get the letters she left for them. Evidently she had been leaving them out for three nights in a row and I was entirely unaware (see the post below about the pregnancy stupids). Fortunately, as I sat there searching my brain for any excuse as to why they hadn't come (again, the pregnancy stupids), she chimed in with, "Oh! They probably couldn't see the notes, they were too high for them". Then she promptly placed them on the floor, where they remained through the rest of the day.

Naturally guilt set in. As my mom put it, Alexis forced my hand. A leprechaun would be coming that night.

But first this leprechaun had to spend an hour on the phone calling every store in the area trying to track down those gold chocolate coins. Eventually they were found and all that was left was the note. Jeremy took pity on me and whipped up something way better than I would have. Of course he stole a lot of it from the Internet, since we have no idea what a leprechaun would write in a note, but we made the last two lines our own!

Then we hid the gold around the living room, rolled up the note like a scroll and played a few tricks. Green water in the toilet bowl (which I stole from Rachel, thanks! and which totally freaked Tyler out), a couch tipped on it's side, the family picture on the wall hung upside down, Alexis' backpack hanging from the light fixture, and some shoes found in the toy box.

I have to admit--it was fun! The kids reaction was totally worth it this morning and it's nice to do something out of the ordinary every once in awhile. It's just the planning ahead that really kills me.


The best part has been that all morning whenever they notice something slightly off around the house (and trust me, there's a lot of things) they blame it on Lucky. Lucky moved the cereal boxes into a different order, Lucky put a helmet in the laundry room, Lucky moved a blanket, etc. And for some reason if I were the one to do any of these things it would just be annoying, but because they think a leprechaun is doing it it's really funny and cool. I wish Lucky would have given that some forethought and gone through the humongous pile of papers and artwork in the corner of Alexis' room and thrown some out--because I'm not allowed within 10 feet of it.

anyone seen my brain?

I just have to take a minute and let everyone know that I have a major case of the pregnancy stupids. Some people sugarcoat it and call it "absentmindedness" or "forgetfulness", but the fact is that I'm really just plain stupid these days.

Today I walked Alexis to school only to return home to realize I had locked myself out of the house. This might not seem so stupid except that I did it just last Friday too. You would think that would have reminded me to take keys with me. I'm too large to jump the fence where we have a hidden key, but fortunately last time I was able to send Alexis over. This time she was already at school and I had to call my mom to come let me in.

Last week I made rolls with dinner and put in 2 tablespoons of salt when the recipe called for 2 teaspoons. As I was pouring it in I thought to myself "boy, this seems like a lot of salt", but I just kept on pouring.

Now I'm not normally a gourmet cook, but I manage to make most of my meals without any large mistakes or burning anything. Yesterday, however, was a whole different story. I decided to make a meal I've made hundreds of times and is quite literally the easiest recipe in the world. You throw about 5 ingredients in a crock-pot and stir. All afternoon we smelled that cooking and looked forward to eating it--especially poor Jeremy who was fasting. When it came time to eat, I took the lid off the crock-pot and the stuff was burned black and bubbling! It seriously looked like I was cooking tar in there. Poor Jeremy was so hungry that he ate about half of his piece of chicken before I demanded that he stop.

I'm telling you, it takes a major case of stupids to burn dinner in a crock-pot! The thing is a slow cooker, meaning it should basically be impossible to burn anything in there.

I can think of a million and one more daily examples of my pregnancy stupids, but I'm already feeling bad enough about my current state of mind. If things continue to progress on this downward slope someone will need to send help. For the safety of my children, the health of my husband, and the life of our fish.

Lucky is trouble

For whatever reason, I'm not a big holiday person. Christmas is of course a big deal, and the past few years I've tried to make Valentine's Day fun for the kids because Alexis loves Love, but other than that I do the bare minimum that is required of me to get through the holidays.

I'm a super fun mom.

So, you can imagine my joy when Alexis has been coming home all week talking about "Lucky" who leaves notes for her in her class. You can probably guess, but Lucky is a Leprechaun.

A LEPRECHAUN!

I've been trying to remember everything I ever knew about leprechauns, and this is what I've come up with: I vaguely remember watching a movie when I was younger with leprechauns and banshee's and I'm fairly certain they were all evil and scary. And also, is a leprechaun's job to protect the gold at the end of the rainbow? That's all I know about leprechauns and both of those things I'm obviously a little fuzzy on.

Now thanks to our local public school system I have to try and explain leprechauns and shamrocks to my kids--and set a trap to catch them on St. Patrick's Day.

A TRAP!

How do you set a leprechaun trap anyway? I suppose next I'm going to be required to make sure everyone is wearing green next Wednesday.

I can manage to scrape together Easter baskets, and I let Santa Clause take all the credit for a fun Christmas, I even buy fireworks (sometimes) for the 4th of July, but I cannot celebrate St. Patrick's Day! I just don't have it in me.

I'm thinking it might be time to start homeschooling. The effort required to do that has got to be less than celebrating all these crazy holidays, right? Also, I will get rid of our T.V., we don't get the newspaper, and I'll censor every conversation my kids have with any outside influences, making it impossible for them to find out about things like this.

On second though, maybe I'll just go to the dollar store and buy a green necklace so the poor girl doesn't get pinched to death.

travel log-ish

It would appear that blogging while pregnant is difficult for me. Actually, it's getting to the point where doing anything while pregnant is difficult--especially bending over. As in, bending over to pick up that toy on the floor. Oh, and that one over there too. And the sock in the corner. And the wrapper under the couch. And to help Tyler put his pants and underwear back on after using the bathroom, etc., etc., etc.

So, we went to Phoenix last week. Jeremy hasn't been back there in 6 years and has really been wanting to go. While there we saw a spring training game (Angels vs. White Sox), got together with a lot of his old high school friends that still live out there, swam, and basically just enjoyed the sunshine. I can definitely see myself becoming a snowbird when I'm old--with or without Jeremy. Though I hope he chooses with.

We were all healthy and the kids loved the plane, despite how late it was. If I could do the trip over the only thing I would change would be to not start out so late, the kids never really caught up on their sleep. They did pretty well but definitely had their grumpy moments--as did I.

Jeremy and I flew separately because we were using flyer miles, it's a long story. But on the way home our flights were on different airlines but left and arrived home at the same time. However, the kids and I managed to miss our flight. Tyler told me he had to go to the bathroom as our flight started to board (which he never says, so I took him seriously!) and I thought we had enough time. We hurried and as we were getting back to the gate I noticed a person boarding but figured we were probably the last ones. I got to the gate and handed the lady my boarding pass and she got really snippy with me. "What's this for? You're not on this flight anymore! We paged you several times." I thought maybe she was annoyed with me but was going to let me on anyway, but nope. She shut the door and left me standing there confused and ready to cry. At this point the kids and I were all REALLY tired and they were pretty bored from waiting in the airport for an hour already. They put us on standby for the next flight, but if we didn't make that one we would have to wait until noon the next day. We had already returned the rental car, we didn't have a hotel room and Jeremy had all our luggage. So I cried, then Alexis cried. Then we prayed. And fortunately we got on the next flight! Tyler slept the whole flight home, Jeremy picked us up and when we got home I ate my weight in Twizzlers--a good comfort food.

The kids on the flight to Phoenix (watching Tarzan)

Hole in the Rock

This picture makes my heart swell with pride.
She wanted to climb that rock--that's my girl!

Tyler's favorite thing in all of Phoenix--a dinosaur to ride on!

This picture shows what every one's favorite part of the trip was--
having Jeremy around!

Angels & White Sox game

I only put this in as evidence that I was there.
Kindly ignore all my extra lbs.

The kids in front of the Mesa Temple

Jeremy's h.s. friends and spouses (and red eyes cause I'm lazy)

Now we're back to our normal routine, with some rainy skies. And Tyler appears to have entered the terrible three's stage. At first I thought maybe he was still tired and trying to catch up on sleep, but unfortunately that's not it. He's just 3. Maybe by the time this next baby is 3 scientists will have discovered the cure for terrible three's. I would gladly donate $$ to that cause.

Fun facts

Life is just getting peachier and peachier around here. Here's some fun facts of the past little bit.

Fact 1: Jeremy hasn't had much of a voice for the past week and a half.
Fact 2: Jeremy has had flu like symptoms since Monday.
Fact 3: Jeremy has been unable to help with much of anything, including packing his stuff for our trip.
Fact 4: Alexis threw up last night.
Fact 5: Tyler has been crying ALL morning and throwing ridiculous fits.
Fact 6: Tyler does not feel well.
Fact 7: My kids typically go to bed around 8 pm.
Fact 8: We're booked on a flight tonight that leaves at 9:30 pm, and doesn't land until 11:15.
Fact 9: Jeremy is not on the same flight as the kids and I.
Fact 10: If anyone throws up on me while on the plane or in the airport I will be booking myself a separate hotel room for the trip.