I'm back!

Thank you to everyone who called and made sure we were doing alright. We've had quite the February and I can say that I'm extremely glad it's over. The sun is starting to shine again in our lives (figuratively and literally) and things are looking up.

First I'll explain why I needed a hiatus in the first place. With permission from my sister I'll give a short summary of the beginning of February. As many of you know, she was due with her second son just 2 weeks ahead of me. We were very excited about this since our last babies were born 2 weeks apart (along with one other niece). It's always fun to have cousins close in age.

At 22 weeks, E's water broke. She had a very emotional hospital stay over the next 5 days and delivered her beautiful baby boy February 2nd. They were able to give him a name and a blessing before he returned to his Heavenly Father and we were all privileged to attend a small service for him later that week before he was buried near his grandpa. It was an extremely hard time for all of us, but I dare say all of us received a growth in our testimonies during this hard trial. There was no doubt that God was very aware of all of us in our mourning, and we felt His spirit with us in abundance, most especially with my dear sister and her husband. We are all *extra* grateful for our knowledge of eternal families.

This is the original reason I stopped blogging for a while. There was so much to say and yet nothing to say. It came down to the fact that I was still dealing with my emotions and they were way too close to the surface to try to put them into words (especially for public viewing). So thank you for understanding. :)

In January Brent and I decided to refinance our house. The market was excellent for this and the interest rates were insanely low. So we put in all our paperwork and waited for the lowest-possible interest rate. We were using a sweet lady in our ward who is a loan officer. She called Brent a few times telling him the rates and every time he felt like he shouldn't "lock in" even though the rates were 4.75% a couple of times. He started to feel like maybe this wasn't the next step for us......he didn't know that I had been feeling the same way. We'd both started casually house-hunting on the internet without the other one knowing. Once we found out, we had a good laugh and decided to pray about it and go to the temple to see if this was really something we should pursue (since the obviously "wise" thing to do with our money would be to refinance). We both received overwhelming confirmation that it was time to move. We needed to sell our house. And within 3-4 days of this decision it was sold, without even putting it on the market. In that time we'd also submitted an offer on another house and had gone under contract with that house. This is the house we will most likely buy, but we've been trying to do our "due diligence" all month. We've run our realtor ragged. Part of the reason is that the "new" house is another fixer-upper. We've been searching diligently for a house that doesn't need a ton of work. We've found some great houses, but none have panned out for one reason or another. So it looks like Heavenly Father wants to put Brent's and my skills to work again. (Brent's the one with most of the skills, but I'm a GREAT go-fer!)

I know, I know.....we just did this all 3 years ago, right? Exactly.

And I'm pregnant again, right? Hey, apparently it's the thing to do when I'm pregnant. This will be the 3rd time. BUT it will be the first time we're not moving across the country, so that's nice. And I'm earlier in my pregnancy than with the others.

This was another reason for the blogging hiatus. Moving is quite stressful!

One more reason....Brent just got back from a 10-day trip to India last week. I was lucky to make it through those 10 days alive (and with my children alive)....there was no doing anything "extra" during that time. (Except running around with my realtor looking at more houses, of course, and putting an offer on a house by myself without Brent's signature next to mine on all those papers....you know, nothing big or stressful!) (That was one of the houses that didn't pan out, by the way.)

And during all this time, there was still the "regular" stuff to get to. How annoying is that? Have you ever noticed how the regular stuff doesn't seem to go away even when your life is turned upside-down? I find that terribly rude.

So I guess I'm officially back, but still under a bit of stress. We're closing on our current house the end of this month, and will hopefully have another house to move into at that time. ;)

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some pics Brent took of the kids yesterday before church. He brought all the girls skirts/shirts that the little girls in India wear. He brought Roo a "treasure" box. He knows his kids well. :)

Blogging hiatus

Just wanted to let you all know I'm going on a short blogging hiatus. There's just too much going on right now in my life and with some extended family situations. I'll be back as soon as I can handle "extra" things again. Either that or my posts will be fewer and farther between (like this last time).

Wanna know what Baby #5 is going to be?

I must be the most impatient person in the world. I can't stand waiting. I'm 17 weeks along....only 3 more to go before we get the regular 20-week ultrasound. But can I wait 3 more weeks? Absolutely not! Not after my sister, who's only 2 weeks ahead of me, has already known she's having another boy for 3 or 4 weeks. And also, not after I went through all the baby clothes in the basement. Brent thought that now would be a good time to clean out some of the boxes in the storage room, so Saturday I went through a bunch of boxes and threw stuff away, combined stuff, and condensed the number of boxes in the storage room. I first went through the baby girl clothes.....they're cute and I love them, but I've seen/used them all 3 times now. Then I went through the baby boy clothes. I cried. I've only seen/used them once. And that was 6 years ago!

So I went upstairs and informed Brent that we would be finding out whether this baby was a boy or a girl on our date that evening.

I NEEDED TO KNOW!!!

I made an appt at one of those Fetal Photo places in the mall and we went there directly after a spicy dinner at Pei Wei. (I was hoping the spices would get this baby moving!)

The ultrasound tech asked us whether we wanted a boy or a girl and I quickly informed him a boy was on my wishlist. He said he'd see what he could do.

We first saw the little tummy, full of fluid. Next the heart, beating away....155bpm. 2 arms, 2 legs, a perfect little spine. The head measures right on, the head-to-rump measures right on.

Ok, let's take a look between the legs.......



And here's a profile view, which the tech said actually gives a better picture of the proof (or lack thereof). See how she's rounded from her tummy around to her rump? There would be a couple of bumpity-bumps if she were really a he.Brent was just fine right away. He's excited to add another girl to the family.

I must admit, it took me a minute to recover. I was SOOO sure this was going to be a boy. All we've talked about are boy names, and how we're going to organize the bedrooms if this is a boy. But then......

The tech moved the wand over my belly and held it still for a minute. We saw her squirming and stretching and kicking. She gave us a little wave.....

And then she put her hand to her nose as if to say, "Neiner, neiner, neiner, Mom. I'm not a boy!"
How could I NOT fall in love immediately?

We've made 3 girls that look and act nothing alike so far, so I guess we'll have to see if we can do it a fourth time! :) And from the looks of it, we're going to have our hands full with a spunky little girl! I can hardly wait! :)

As the saying goes:

"Thank Heaven for Little Girls"

Pics from Sea World

Ok, I lied. Sea World was such an amazing experience, I'm going to have to give it its own post. When we asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was, they couldn't really decide between Disneyland and Sea World. They were fascinated with the animals at Sea World!

Whole family at front of Sea World.

Kids at Shamu Tank. They loved this. We stayed there for a long time watching 2 killer whales play together and one scratched its back on some rocks at the bottom of the pool. Awesome!

Roo checking out a killer whale.

I think this might have been the most amazing experience at SW. Petting and feeding the dolphins! SOOOO FUN! They feel so cool.

The dolphin show. So fun!

Lady looks so cute clapping along with everybody else!

And here I am looking silly trying to get her to clap again. She knew better....nobody else was clapping. I couldn't fool her.

This was one of Roo's favorite parts.....the SHARK TANK!!!

They have a tube in the tank that you can walk through and see all the sharks swimming around you. Kind of creepy, but quite incredible.

JAWS!!!!!

And the grand finale for the day was watching the Shamu Show. It's spectacular that they have these animals so well-trained.

These next 2 pictures were amazing to me. Isn't this the way the killer whales play with their food in the wild? I'm not sure if I could ever do that.

We also got to pet sting rays and AJ and Brent went on a couple of big rides and we all got to do some fun smaller rides. What a fun park!

I'm still alive! And pics from our trip....

Well I made it through the morning yesterday. And I was the SECOND speaker....I thought for sure I'd be the first! Luckily the woman speaking before me took enough time so that my talk wasn't too short. When I timed it the night before, it took 15 minutes....when I actually did it in Sacrament Mtg, I think it was more like 12. I have a hard time speaking slowly enough. SOOOOO glad that's over! I think I've perfected the art now and should never have to give another talk in Sac Mtg again....that's fair, right?

Ok, on to pics from our trip. Here are our first 3 days.....

Here we are in line during the morning. The rain tapered off enough in the afternoon that we didn't have to wear ponchos the whole day. We were pretty soaked for the morning, though. Luckily Brent went to Target that morning before going to DL and bought us all rain gear.

Kids standing at the river...notice the wet pants. Luckily the ponchos kept the rest of their bodies fairly dry.

Ann and Lady w/Woody and Jessie.....none of the older kids would go near the characters. Lady had no choice. ;)

Here are the spoil sports. :) They'd been hiding behind Brent.

Here's Lady in the tent we rigged up over the double stroller with a poncho. This is where she slept that afternoon. And had quite a good nap, I might add.

Here we are waiting for the parade to begin. It seemed to take forever!

Here's the whole fam at the front of Main St. after the parade....just heading back to the hotel.

Day 2 at Disneyland. Notice the difference in weather? It was wonderful! And still no lines!

While Brent and the kids went on a rollercoaster in Toon Town, I walked through Mickey's house. I had no idea I'd end up waiting in line for pics w/Mickey himself. I felt a little silly once I realized what we were all waiting for, but there was no way to get out. So I went ahead and got my pic taken with him. Did you know he has security there with him?

Here was a part that wasn't there when I was little. They had a whole section dedicated to princesses and knights. It was pretty cool. Aurora came and shared a story. And they had arts and crafts. The girls loved it!

And here is our one and only picture of Day 3...at California Adventure. It was raining really hard again, but with the temperature drop and the crazy wind, it wasn't worth being outside. So we didn't last very long there that day. We did some inside stuff, but for some reason didn't get any pics of it. AJ LOVED this ride! She and Brent also went on Soaring and loved it.

I'll post pics of the rest of the trip in another post. We had a great time and the kids have made us promise to go back again!

Temple Square at Christmastime

My wonderful sister-in-law, S, called Sunday night to invite us to Temple Square with their family for FHE. Being the smart, smart woman that she is, she'd checked out the weather and realized that this would be one of the last "warm" nights to go. And after our nearly frost-bitten experience last year, we thought it was a good idea to go earlier rather than later. So off we went.

I LOVE Temple Square at Christmastime! The lights are always amazing and the manger scene is beautiful. And it was even more enjoyable last night since the air wasn't trying to bite my nose off. The evening would've been perfect had it not been for 2 little girls who didn't get good naps that day. After about 30 mins of walking, they'd had it. But we stretched their patience as far as we could and kept plugging a mouth with a binky before we finally headed for home, much to the reluctance of our older 2 kids.

Thanks for sharing your night with us, M & S!!!!

Here are some fun pics.

This was at the beginning of the night when smiles were aplenty!

Notice the gappy smile? This kid has had 3 teeth fall out in the last 3 weeks or so. And there's another one on its way. He'll soon be unable to whistle. :)
Here's the group of kids. Lady was still on Brent's back and Brent was taking the pic....so she missed the photo op. But I stuck my fanny in there so that Tink could get in on the action. Isn't the temple beautiful?

My cute nephew, A, who just got new glasses and couldn't be more proud! Don't you just want to chew on his cheeks a little? I know I have a hard time resisting.Here's a great night-shot of this majestic building. I love this temple!

And here's handsome Brent carrying cute Lady. She enjoyed riding on his back for a change.And the reason she got to is because her sister was being ultra-picky and only wanted to go on my back. So I obliged. And don't ask me what that face is that I'm making....I must've been in the middle of saying something to Brent. But he doesn't do the "1, 2, 3...smile" thing. He just clicks. Lovely. Oh, and you can see the great mood that Tink was in by the end of the night. Doesn't she just look huggable?