Farmer Mark's

Back in October, a friend of mine took H with her and her daughter to tour a local farm while I was at a prenatal appt. Here's a picture of the two little friends together.

And here's what H had to say about it:

"They talked about cows, and what they give us. It was really, really fun! And I saw one pig. and its pink ear. It was so exciting. We got to pick pumpkins! And the farm was really silly to remember what we were going to pick, and we said, "Pumpkins from the pumpkin patch!" We were right. It was really, really fun."

Merry Christmas!

We spent Christmas at home, so we decided to make a video of the pictures we took that morning for our far-away families to see.

Year in Review

In January we were thankful for good medical care as we learned to control H & R's asthma, a doctor that H finally liked, R's birthday, and S's involvement with Scouts.

In February we were thankful for H's 3rd birthday, weekly activities to keep Mom & H busy (Mon - Music Makers, Wed - Playgroup, Thu - Preschool), and a Valentine's Day temple trip for Mom & Dad!

In March we were thankful for dental care (esp. R's new occlusal guard), good friends who help us out when we need a hand, and the chance S had to guest lecture two classes at UNC and NCSU.

In April we were thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ when two different friends lost babies, we watched our prophets and apostles speak during General Conference, and we attended the baptism of our friends' son.

In May we were thankful S could attend Open Repositories 2009, an annual conference about institutional repositories, in Atlanta, GA. We were also thankful for the $8,000 price drop on a house that allowed us to make an offer!

In June we were thankful for good timing and airplanes! Some close friends invited R to attend the birth of their twin boys, who decided to come two days after their grandmother arrived and two days before R's parents came for a fun-filled, four-day visit! :) We were so thankful for the chance to help good friends who'd helped us so much, as well as for a great friend who worked for us as our real estate agent.

In July we were thankful for many, many things: first, to close on our house before leaving town for three weeks, even if it did end up being the day before we left; second, to learn that we were expecting another child!; third, to visit our greatly missed family in three states and attend three of four family reunions; fourth, that our little family of three was only hit four times, rather than six or nine times, by the stomach flu bug that apparently was running rampant in every state we entered. (We're rather curious if it's the same bug that some friends here in NC accidentally took to UT a month or two prior. Their kids started puking on the plane ride there, and the entire wedding party--including the bride and groom--quickly became sick as well!)

In August S was thankful he could attend the annual Society of American Archivists conference. He was able to present a software application he'd written for Duke at The Researcher's Forum, a pre-conference event. Although R was learning what it was like to really be sick during pregnancy, she was thankful she wasn't sicker than she could have been, and she was especially grateful for a daughter who didn't mind watching tv morning after morning as Mommy slept or eating cereal for every meal while Daddy was out of town.

In September we were thankful for good quality children's shows every morning on PBS and for a Daddy who'd come home and make dinner every night. :)

In October we were thankful R was finally getting a little more energy! Back to playgroups, visiting teaching, babysitting, and--yes--even making dinner at night. ;) This came right before S and then H became sick near the end of the month, so it really was a blessing. We were also thankful for the generous amount of time S has been able to take off from work, which has allowed him to attend R's prenatal visits and ultrasounds.

In November we were again thankful for timing. R and H came down with the flu in time to recover just enough to still spend Thanksgiving with two of R's brothers and their families in Alabama. Again, we were very thankful for PBS and a husband/daddy who could come home and cook dinner and wash dishes!

In December we were thankful R had started Christmas preparations early and that S was fine with a quiet birthday celebration at home since his baby girl was sick. We are especially thankful that on this, her third week of illness, H decided she really didn't mind taking her antibiotic that much after all. That was just the blessing we'd been praying for, as we know too well how not fun serious infections are. She started feeling better just in time to enjoy the holiday. Phew! Again, we're thankful for good friends who help us out when we're in a bind and for family who keep us in their prayers when we're struggling.

Here's to the upcoming year!

Snow 2

Oh, how this made my Christmas!!

Sure, it may have been raining Christmas Day, but the fact that this bit of snow hung around for a few days beforehand kept me filled with Christmas cheer! (This is our last tree to change colors, and it's probably been the prettiest as well.)

Snow!!!

Yay!!!!
It's not every day that it snows in NC!

S's B-day, Cont.

Happy B-day Again!!!

Oops! Lost a candle!

It's not the most impressive cake since I'd forgotten I'd ruined our second cake pan and I'd totally forgotten about candles, but that's okay. All S cared was that there was chocolate frosting. ;) Can you tell H helped decorate it?

Here's the proud girl

O Christmas Tree

We told H she could put one ornament on the tree before bed, but we weren't very quick to correct her when she decided she was going to put the rest of them on as well. (Ornaments that weren't shiny globes, that is.)

This was probably the happiest we've seen her all day!

See?
H most of today.

We would have completely decorated the tree today, but we found that only one string of lights that I'd gotten from a moving neighbor actually worked. Sad!

Click on this one to see her shirt. :)
I think it's the best!

What's up with the red-eye?
Even Picasa isn't removing it.
???

Silly, sleepy girl

Put'n on the bow

Whoa! Lost we lost it!
(Oh, look! Our camera has an "indoor" setting!)

Little help from Daddy

Ta-da!

Just one more. . . .

Done for now

Happy Birthday, My Love!!!

Due to H being sick, we celebrated S's birthday in a casual way. He enjoyed birthday cards and phone calls from family, set up the Christmas tree, and even had the chance to play some video games. H and I gave him supplies for building "gingerbread" houses (read: graham cracker houses). He didn't want us spending money we really don't have right now, but I still wanted him to get to do something fun on his birthday with H being sick and all. He likes designing and building, not to mention eating, so I hoped it would be a good gift, considering the circumstances. Unfortunately, store-bought frosting isn't the sturdiest or fastest drying of frostings, and the generic crackers I bought weren't as big (or tasty in my opinion) as the Honey Maid ones like I had thought, but S and H still enjoyed eating crackers and frosting together. I told S I'd have to get him some Honey Maids this coming week. Maybe we can try again for Family Home Evening. . . ?

Thanks, Parents & Grandparents, for giving S the things he really wanted for his birthday!!! So far he's bought a new pair of earphones for his ipod, and he's planning on getting a new scooter helmet since his current one doesn't have a visor. I'm grateful someone can give it to him when I can't.

"So, where's the cake?" you just might be asking. Well, its absence is proof that I have ADD. I walked into the kitchen tonight to make birthday cake and dinner (while S & H worked on the gingerbread houses) and then debated over which to start first. Of course, I decided to get the cake baking and then start our quickie meal of chicken and pasta. However, once that decision was made, I promptly began making dinner! Ack!!! It wasn't until after we had finished eating that I realized my mistake!

So, birthday cake is coming tomorrow. I wish I could say I've invited our good friends to join us in our celebrations to help make S's birthday wonderful, but, back comes the knowledge that H's still sick (day five of fever), and bye-bye goes that great idea. I'm thankful S's a trooper. Notice that I'm the one complaining on here, rather than him? ;)

S & H making their houses.

Oops! Well, he tried!

Plan B: 2-D house

H's idea of making houses

Pulla!

Seth made loaves of Finnish Pulla (known as "biscuit" in his family) for the annual "International Food Festival" at work. Most of the loaves were consumed before he had a camera to take pictures. :) This is a bread his mom traditionally bakes at Christmas time. It's great fresh, but it's just as good toasted with butter. I think it just might become a tradition in our house as well! ;)

We are still trying to adjust to our oven, so they turned out a little dark. However, they were still very tasty, and I'm so impressed at what a beautiful braiding job he did! I must admit I felt very much like the other farm animals in the story of Chicken Little when he asked me to help him braid them. I was afraid I'd mess mine up after watching him braid so well! However, I was still there at the end, saying, "Can I have some, Seth?" I'm lucky I have a nice husband! :D YUMMY!!!

Here's the house!

Quickie panorama shot, just to give you an idea of what the place is like. I think this is the better view. Double click any panoramas to see a larger version of them.

Another quickie panoramic from another vantage point. All the back trees on the left are on our property, and there's a small creek that runs in front of them when it rains. :) Fun, eh? The yard was really a buying point for us. Much as it needs some work, there's a lot there already that we just love.

Side porch that we use as the main entrance for now. When you walk in, there's a vinyl entryway and carpeted family room that runs the depth of the house, which we're trying to get all arranged first. Eventually we'll get the sitting room looking nice and make a pathway outside from the driveway to the front door, but again, that's e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y. As for now, I'm growing a baby and am proud of how much I have gotten done in the house!

View opposite the side porch. Sure, we need to fix the shed doors, but they give Mitzie a safe hiding place from stray dogs for now. (Which I'm glad to say I've only seen one or two of.)

Quickie panorama shot again. I would have taken many more picts around the backyard to really give you an idea of what it's like, but it was really cold out (yeah, yeah, for NC!) and my camera batteries and I were freezing! The black bin on the far right is our compost bin. :) Hope it works! And the fenced in area is just the right size for little ones.

After living in apartments and playing on sidewalks all her life, Hannah seriously didn't think the yard was for playing in. I remember trying to convince her to join me in kicking a ball around the fenced area instead of only on the deck, and she was like, No, we kick the ball up here! Why do you want to go down there? It took the visit of a friend for her to get used to playing at the side of the house, and then after a little coaxing, I got the two of them playing in the front yard as well. I think I had to use the excuse that it was sunnier there, and thus warmer, on that chilly fall day.

WE HAVE A CAMERA!!!!

Thanks to our grandparents generosity, we now have a camera! (Yes, confession, we do tend to open Christmas cards early......)

THANK YOU, GRANDPA & GRANDMA!!!!

Here are a couple of the first picts I got to take with it. Hannah was sleeping and the sun wasn't at the right angle in the sky for picts of the house, otherwise I would have taken picts of them, too. I'll have to get some tomorrow morning. :)

Here's my Love. . . .

(Tell him what a great haircut I did,

even if it turned out to be a little on the short side!)

And here's "our" Mitzie!

(Far as S is concerned, she's still temporary. ;)

Anyone want a well-behaved kitty?)

WOW, is my blog outdated.....

Here's the house!

Looks pretty bad in this photo, honestly! This is the MLS listing photo. Can you believe we still checked out the place based on this photo? Believe me, it looks much better right now: new roof--Thanks, Obama!--the weeds ;P have grown in (patchy ground was from replacing septic system) and are now mowed regularly, and the bushes are a little more under control!

And the Baby!

I think you've all heard about Baby, so the majority of this post will fill in the details on the house. First, though, as of today I'm 18 wks and 2 days. Yay for almost half-way there! And, yay for cleaning out the nursery yesterday! (There really is a floor in there!)

And the Cat!

Well, really, this is just a look-alike as we're still camera-less and I forgot to take a pict of her when I had access to A's camera. . . . She's a sweet-heart, but I can't keep her. (Asthma/allergies stink.) Anyone want a cat??? Please??? She's really gotta go before I go into labor, much as I'll hate passing her on to someone else, or else I'm going to seriously have to be on oxygen the entire time the way my asthma is right now. . . . (I'm looking forward to upping my med dose next week, but I know from prev experience it'll only do so much.) I'm too much of a softy to take her to a shelter, and all the no-kill shelters are full with how many people had to give away their cats in this economic down-turn. . . .

And, back to the house!

Really, the main things that sold us on the house were. . . .

1) Location, location, location: Sure, it's definitely NOT prime real estate. However, we were NOT buying it (ha, we'd have to remind ourselves) as an investment. (We watch too much TLC/HGTV--DON'T DO THAT at least a YEAR before looking into house buying! It's DANGEROUS. You'll end up buying a fixer-upper like we did! BAD, BAD, BAD!!! ;) ) For us, it's a great location. If we were going to move at this point in our lives, we wanted to do it as sanely as possible, and considering what this summer has involved, I think we did pretty good! We didn't want to leave the ward--never thought I'd say that, but considering the perk of not having to say goodbye to great friends after only 2 yrs, I learned to be quick to say it!---or have to get used to a new area of town, which affects not only having to learn driving routes, etc, but also having to get acquainted with an area's stores and "good buy" prices and re-creating shopping routines. We also needed to be able to get S to work via a safe scooter route or a short bus route (as in 30min. trip max). We're not fans of long commutes:

15-min scooter ride for S to work (12-14 min for me, depending on traffic lights since he takes a lower mph route), prob 7 min. from Kroger (was 5min from our apt), still only 5min. to the great toddler park we enjoyed when in our apt.....We thought that was pretty decent!

We always toyed with the idea of living in the country. In fact, the past two apartments we've lived in (MI & NC) were always on the edge of town, so seeing fields and farms (in MI) or trees galore (NC) was only 1-5 min. away. We're technically outside of Durham, and just a hop-skip-and a jump from the Durham County line, although I'd honestly rather be paying taxes in the county whose services I'm going to be using the most. However, it's like 2-5 minutes until we reach "civilization", depending on your definition of the word. ;)

It is off a 45-mi country road, which was a major con, but it is at the far end of a large cul-de-sac, which has turned that major con into more of a minor one. Hopefully the rest of our kids are as cautious as Hannah, or if they're not, hopefully they're more interested in the woods behind the house rather than the asphalt in front.....There's good....Oh, what's the word....You can see cars coming for a good distance both ways down the old highway, and there are 2-3 houses on each side between us and that road. So, yes, I do need to keep track of the toddlers, but I was already doing that living in apartments. Let's just say I'm grateful our oldest has a good head on her shoulders. . . . if she's well-rested I should say! ;) Today was unfortunately not one of those days. . . but I digress. . . .

2) Yard: wanted it to have plenty of roaming space for the kids (and us!), and it definitely has that! It's a mini version of my dream property: grassy play area (although, it's honestly dense weeds! :P ), small wooded area, even has a creek that runs through it when we get a lot of rain. How cool is that??? Plus, it had a fenced-in area in the back (original owners apparently had a small dog). As it's now been years since a dog's been living back there, I don't mind using it to contain the little ones!

3) House Size: 3 bedrm, sm front living room, large family room. (They turned the carport into a bonus room.) I love that it has two living areas. We wanted a small home (lol, not that we could afford anything else, at least in the safer parts of town!), and two living areas makes a small home SO much more do-able! And the 3-bdrms....the whole point of moving was to find something at least 3-bdrm. If your daughter's life battle was sleep (as in, she's been fighting it since the moment she was aware of it), you probably wouldn't have the guts to put another child in her room with her either . . . at least if you valued your own sanity! Once she's older and doesn't nap anymore (which probably won't be until she's six the way things are going!), she ought to be able to share a room with a younger sibling. (She'll be 4 in Feb, and she has to have her two-hour nap at the exact right time and be in bed before 7 p.m. each night or she starts waking up at night. When sleep-deprived, she also bounces between being goofy and grouchy, and she also becomes accident prone--as in both the "ouch!" kind and the "Uh, oh! I'm wet!" kind. My own ability to handle all the above with patience depends on how much sleep I've been getting and/or how long I've been having to deal it all. Either way, it's just better for the whole family around if everyone sleeps well!!!!)

4) Price: Honestly, it was one of two houses that was in our very low house-buying budget in the area of town we wanted to live in. . . . Yes, Mom, we're crazy. . . . ;)

So, anyway, we're loving living in a house! (And we also are learning now what it's really like to have a really tight budget. But, hey, at least we're learning to enjoy that too, right?)

Quick note

here's what I wrote to my lil' bro tonight, quick summary of last week's excitement

I got to be at the hospital during my friend's delivery of her twin boys.

Her hubby was the only one allowed in the OR, where the actual delivery part happened in case they couldn't turn the 2nd baby and had to do an emergency c-section.

But, thankfully, God helped the docs pull it off, so no slicing and dicing was involved.

I've been curious if I could handle being a birth doula, and A was more than happy to have me come along.  She was very blessed to have a comparatively easy delivery with few complications, so I must say it didn't help much in my decision there, but it was still an awesome experience.

Not many people get to tend to and take pictures of a 5lb 12oz baby immediately after it's born!

I'm ever so glad things went so well for her, though. We

My own labor was, well, honestly, traumatic, and I've had so many friends lose babies lately, so it was quite refreshing to see what it's like when things go really well.

Smile for the Day

Mom: Should we buy a house?

H: Yeah, with Matt & Amanda & Mr. T!

:)

p.s.

If anyone has any great hair style ideas for little curly-haired miss H, please send them my way!  I don't want to let hers grow very long, probably not much longer than shoulder-length, for at least a couple more years....

H's Photo Shoots

Last month I finally got a three-year-old photoshoot with Hannah, thanks to a friend lending me her camera.  (Thanks, JW!)  I'm sure you got the better of them via email--well, except the first most recent one I'm including now.  It needed a little cropping....

I thought it'd be fun to pull up pictures from Hannah's photo shoots.  I can't believe how much she's changed (or is it just the fact her hair actually grew in?) in only the past year.  

One Year

The year of getting teeth, walking, running, 

and all the joys and sorrows that comes with them!

Two Years

Talking, drawing, and getting real hair--

not to forget her obsession with babies, 

which I swear HAS GOT to be worse than my own!!

Whatta full year!

Okay, so this wasn't really a photo shoot, 

but I just happened to come across it and thought it was cute.

She was excited about a book she had just received from Gr-ma C. :)

Three Years

There's her little imp-ish grin!

Cheese!

I wonder what this year's main excitements will be.  Okay, so I know preschool is one of them!  She LOVES preschool and LOVED even just the idea of going to school before we started up our little preschool.  It was hard to convince her that it was okay for her to have preschool at our house, rather than at a real school, and she also shed some tears about not getting to ride a real bus yet as well, poor kid. 

Well, a few weeks ago, H started talking about my next baby being "baby brother".  (No, that's not an announcement, see the comment under "Two Years".)  I guess she's gotten it from friends (or maybe the Berenstain Bears stories?) that she's supposed to have a baby brother.  I'm too embarrassed for her sake to share our conversation about what if she got a baby sister first. . . .  Well, here's hoping the next one is a boy--or that between now and next year H will change her mind on the gender thing!

As for the first Love of my Life, S has just started  his second serious illness of the year.  His first was a strep throat infection that kept him out of work for a week.  He didn't even have a sore throat, but his tonsils were HUGE.  As in I couldn't see the back of his throat they were so huge!  He had rare complications from that infection, though, which was quite exciting.  (Wait, was he the one who passed on that bug to M.M. or ....?  Well, M.M. as of Friday no longer has tonsils to become infected.  Hopefully we weren't the ones who triggered that most recent bout of abcesses!!!  I didn't think about that before.  Oh, my....)  

Now he's got a bug from H-girl.  I'm taking him in tomorrow to have him tested for the flu virus so that if it is the flu, we can get the both of us on anti-viral drugs:  him, for helping him get over his, and me, for helping me avoid getting it as well!  You'd think after all the times I've been coughed on by H since a week ago Saturday (although I must admit she's done quite well there with mouth-covering) I'd be totally exposed/immune to this junk.   However, with how much we've been sick, I'm not going to take my chances. . . .  I sure hope I can find a way to fit taking him in to the doc into my already filled day.   It's honestly a week's full of activities scrunched into one day: 

 - pick up H's antibiotics for her ear infection (honestly, only the first, so we've been doing well there!!!) and dropping them off at the apt before rushing off to 

 - a dentist appt (re-do 2 fillings--do I honestly need to do this, though?  Maybe I can plead husband illness and convince them to put it off for a while??? as well as patch up about four of the twelve teeth that I've ground and chipped to death, which I am quite eager to get taken care of), and then in the afternoon, hopefully 

 - an appt for S, 

 - my dr appt at 4:30, 

 - CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pick-up by 6 p.m., 

 - (?) pick up filled Rx's at some point, and 

 - we were going to do Mexican at Terrero's to celebrate Cinco de Mayo before I did a disappearing act to attend 

 - a church women's activity.  

I wonder how the day will actually go....