Bear Lake with the Pace's

 

For one last final fling before school started for Skyler, we spent a Saturday playing on the beach at Bear Lake with Laron's family.  We'd never taken our kids there before, but they absolutely LOVED it!  There's just something about playing in mud & sand & water that makes a kid feel in HEAVEN!  And I have to admit that I'm not a super-big fan of going swimming necessarily, so just walking around in the water with my bare feet & getting splashed occasionally seemed PERFECT to me as well!

SO fun for the kids to be able to play around with their cousins (who we just don't get to see quite often enough!).  And Aunt "Nana" was an awesome babysitter to have around while some of us Mom's sat around & talked without our children for a little while.  Laron had fun getting down in the mud with the kids & building castles & moats & bridges & such... I'm glad our kids have got a good Daddy like him!

The weather was a little crazy on that particular Saturday... Perfect, then rainy, then windy, then perfect again, then rainy.  It kept things interesting for us I suppose!  While the kids played & the wives talked, the boys played Volleyball on the sand & seemed to have a BLAST!  I'm glad that Laron thought about bringing our Volleyball Net last minute... :)  And of course we had lots of yummy food to eat throughout the day, which always makes a fun family event, even BETTER!

 So even though this was our first time ever making a trip to Bear Lake with Laron's family, I'm definitely hoping to make it into a yearly tradition!  We didn't have any fun water toys or anything, but there's something about spending the day with family just hanging out on a beach that makes things fun anyways... It ALMOST makes up for the long drive we all had to make to get there & the fact that Kimberly threw up a few too many Red Vines she'd eaten throughout the day on the curvy canyon roads on the way home :)

New Rooms for the Kids!

So we just recently finished changing all the kid's bedrooms, all in preparation for this baby of ours to come... After much debating, we finally decided it would be nice to have JUST the baby in the kid-room upstairs & to move the girls downstairs into their own room.  I was a little nervous about moving Bailey downstairs already (she's only 2!), but I think it made transitioning her into her new "big girl bed" that much more exciting for her.

It's always been my DREAM to be able to go all out on decorating my kids bedrooms, but all the cute accessories usually cost WAY more than we could afford, so we've usually just "made do" with whatever we've had on hand.  But a few weeks ago I was able to find a package deal for most of these girly accessories used on KSL for $65, so I jumped on it!  (Especially when the comforters alone that I'd been eyeing for them beforehand were $50 EACH, $100 total if I got 2 matching ones, so that made the set look even cuter to me!)  So all the things included in that were 2 matching comforters (bright pink with a flowery pattern sewn into it), 2 butterfly wall hangings, cute striped floor rug, 7 handmade pillows to put on top of the beds, 10 gerber daisy flowers & 1 big pink plastic decorative flower.  The 3 paper flowers hanging on the wall were ones I already had before, so the only EXTRA thing that I bought was the pot to put the flowers into!  I was thrilled to finally be able to have a cutesy, girly room to decorate & I'm thankful that it all turned out just like I'd imagined it would!  So yay for good deals & having cute kid-bedrooms!!!

Skyler's new room on the other hand isn't quite as exciting to ME, but fortunately I think it's exciting to HIM!  His new room is smaller than his last one, so I was worried that he'd somehow think it was a down-grade (especially after the girls had all their new decorations & comforters!), but after finding that we had a Spiderman blanket in the closet that someone had given him for his birthday, his new room suddenly seemed MUCH more cool!  We also re-painted his bed & a bookshelf that's in his closet, which really helped freshen up the space too.  But his favorite part actually of getting a new room was that he got to help me organize all his stuff... I know, it seems like something that MOST kids would dread, but I think I've rubbed off on him a little in this regard, because he's always liked helping me find better organized & new ways of arranging STUFF.  Who knew getting new rooms could be this much fun (or this much work!).  

Now onto working on the Baby's new room!!! :)

Laron's Birthday

Laron's Birthday was this past Wednesday & we sure hope he felt LOVED!  Laron requested pies for his Birthday dessert, so it was busy day for me at home making pies & wrapping presents before he got from work!  That afternoon Laron's brother & sister, Jesse & Diana, took him out to eat at the "Olive Garden," so we ended up saving his birthday dinner for the next day, which ended up working out fine...  My parents had given Laron this lawn-game, so of course we had to try that out that night as well & the kids did pretty good for their first time trying it!

One thing I got Laron for his Birthday was some tickets for our family to go see a "Bee's Baseball Game" the next Monday night.  I had gotten the tickets for a pretty good deal & had hoped that it would be a fun night of family memories for us all.  But it didn't take long before the kids were bored with the game & were ready to move around.  So Laron noticed that there was a grassy area on the back 2 sides of the field where people had blankets spread out & were sitting and watching the game from there.  So after finally talking me into switching areas (we REALLY had AMAZING almost-front-row seats beforehand!), we went & got our complimentary hot dogs that came free with our tickets & headed over to the grass to find a place to sit.  And from then on, the kids had a BLAST!  They ran up & down the hill & wiggled and moved & even eventually found a little playground behind us to go play on.  So we didn't actually see much of the BASEBALL GAME after we switched spots, but I have to admit that the kids did have a lot more fun.  Okay, I guess we ALL did!

Laron also got some money for his Birthday, so I was curious to see what he would pick out (those husbands are hard to shop for sometimes!)...  He finally came home with a new Charcoal/Wood-Burning Grill that apparently he's been wanting for awhile.  It wasn't his DREAM model, but it was clearanced-out because it was the end of the summer & it had almost all the main features he was hoping for.  Apparently on his mission they cooked really amazing meats by cooking them in something similar to this that would smoke the meat at a lower-temperature, all day long.  And apparently it always tasted AMAZING, so he is now very eager to try his hand at cooking or smoking meat with his new grill very soon!  I'm glad he was able to find something he's excited about though!  I just hope he can figure out how to COOK with it now!  We sure love you & hope you had a very "Happy Birthday" Laron!  You mean the WORLD to us!

Finally Announcing...

So, to MOST of you out there, this is definitely old news, but to those few of you that hadn't officially heard yet...  

We're expecting our 4th baby!!!  

And now that I'm over the sick, nauseous, miserable part, I'm getting pretty excited to meet the little guy!

So lets see... Where to begin?  Well, I'm now 25 weeks pregnant & counting down to our November 29th due-date (the day after Thanksgiving!).  This pregnancy has already been SO different than my other pregnancies, in SO many aspects...

Last September, we felt prompted that it was time to start thinking about our next baby.  So a few months later, I had my IUD taken out (which I'd never tried before) & figured that I'd be taking pregnancy tests within a few weeks.  Well, weeks turned into months & I could tell that hormonally & physically, my body was totally messed up from the IUD.  I wasn't sure whether it would even be GOOD for my body to get pregnant in the current shape it was in!  Every week was full of ups & downs, but I still held out hope that things would work out, sooner-than-later.  Long story short, after saying many a prayer to Heavenly Father, I finally explained to Him what I was hoping for & when & why, and then I turned it over to Him & said that I knew that He knew what was best for our family & for my body & that we would try to accept that.  Apparently that was the humility that God felt I needed to show, because it was only a few weeks later that the pregnancy test finally showed up POSITIVE!

But, getting pregnant hasn't been the only hard thing about this pregnancy... By 5 weeks, I was SO sick that I pretty much couldn't do anything but lay on the couch.  But what a blessing it was that Skyler was so much older this time around & SUCH a good little helper!  He didn't go to school until the afternoon, so in the mornings I would just throw up, then go back to the couch, while he attempted to get the girls dressed, turn on movies for them, play with toys & even make them lunch occasionally!  I don't know how I would have survived it without him!  And maybe it was all in my head, but I swear I was more sick with this pregnancy than with any other one before, but maybe it was just because I've never had 3 other kids to take care of while I've been sick & a kid to drive to school everyday & my hormones were out-of-whack to start with & it was my 4th pregnancy & because it was what I was experiencing NOW!  My father-in-law even talked me into trying Acupuncture this time around, which I was desperate enough to try twice, but I'm still uncertain whether or not it helped at all.  Either way, surviving those 2 1/2 months of misery was about all I accomplished in life until I got to about 15 weeks pregnant.  And then things slowly got back to normal around here...

And then we had our most exciting doctor's appointment... The one where you find out the gender :)  As our little family all waited in the office for the doctor to come in, Laron asked them what they were hoping the baby would be, a boy or a girl?  They all suddenly started chanting together, "BOY!  BOY!  BOY!"  Skyler was really hoping for a little brother that he could finally play with, and somehow he'd talked the girls into thinking that would be cool over the last few months.  Laron & I had also had felt like this one was a boy from the very start, so we didn't try to discourage their thinking... And we were right!  It's a BOY!!!  And we couldn't be MORE excited about it!  He'll help balance out some of these little girls around here!

And so now, I'm finally onto the 2nd Trimester & MOSTLY enjoying it.  I've now been diagnosed with Hypoglycemia (basically low blood sugar) this time around (again, something I've never been told I've had before), so it's been a journey just to try to figure out how to EAT differently so I can FEEL BETTER (mostly just focusing on eating complex carbohydrates & eating protein anytime I eat something sugary seems to help).  But wow!  I've been literally AMAZED at how much FASTER my body has gained weight & started looking pregnant & started having heartburn & all the other aches & pains associated with pregnancy this time around.  I suppose this IS my 4th pregnancy, but wow!  I just hope I can endure another 15 weeks of this!

But for now, I've suddenly felt an urgency to start getting things ready for the little guy to arrive, which THIS time around means changing ALL the kids bedrooms... After much discussion on the matter, we finally decided to move ALL the kids downstairs, so that the baby can have a room all to himself (which after having 3 kids upstairs sharing a bedroom when we had Bailey, ONE baby in a bedroom all to himself seems HEAVENLY!).  So first we switched Skyler into our old Guest Bedroom, then the 2 girls & a bunk bed into Skyler's old room (which also meant suddenly transitioning Bailey into a "Big-Girl Bed!"), and now the final step will be to prep & paint the baby's new room (which is currently purple & definitely not BOY-worthy!).  It actually has really helped me to have some big projects to work on, with a looming deadline in November helping to keep me focused & on task.  I've enjoyed having something fun & exciting to work towards, which I think has also helped make me that much more excited to meet the little guy... Because by the time he gets here, all the kid's things will have been freshly organized, their rooms newly decorated & the baby's room will feel incomplete until we bring HIM home into it!  And then maybe I'll be more okay with accomplishing nothing else for a few months while we just snuggle with our new little baby & enjoy his sweet little spirit in our home.  

And so, the COUNTDOWN begins... Thanksgiving still seems SO far away & yet SO close when I think of all the little projects I still want to get done before his big debut!  But mostly, we're just grateful that Heavenly Father has allowed us the privilege of inviting another one of His precious little children into our home.  We couldn't be more thrilled!!!  :)

Jeremy Ranch

This past Sunday night to Tuesday morning, we stayed at my parent's condo in Park City, which was fun!  The kids loved the fact that we got to SLEEP there for 2 whole nights & they especially loved all the special treatment they got from Grandma, Papa, Chris & Jeff (& they were THRILLED with all the little presents that Papa gave them!).

Laron had to work on Monday, but as soon as he got off work he met us at the Condo & played a pretty good game of tennis with all the BOYS... The kids ran around for awhile & tried to be helpful by chasing after all the stray balls, but eventually Grandma & I ended up taking all the kids on a walk around some of the surrounding, very hilly neighborhoods!  The kids were such troopers!

After our little walk, we all watched a movie while we waited for everyone else to get back from playing Tennis... It didn't take long before Bailey fell fast asleep while snuggling next to Grandma!  I guess our little walk wore her right out!  :)

After that we all went swimming, which turned out to be a little less fun than we'd anticipated... The water was extra cold & suddenly it got a little windy on top of that.  And I didn't even TRY getting into my swimming suit, because I don't really have one that works very well with this growing pregnant belly of mine right now, so I just watched everyone from the sidelines.  And then Kimberly suddenly started shaking & complaining about how COLD she was & we realized that she had a really high fever all-of-the sudden, so she ended up joining me on the sidelines, all wrapped up in a towel & falling asleep.

And then Laron had cut a huge GASH in his arm just the night before at Nana's house as he was trying to fix something on her roof for her & the ladder fell out from underneath him.  So his arm was all bandaged up & he figured maybe swimming might not be the best thing for HIM to do right now either (which I think really disappointed him!).  So although the concept of going swimming sounded fun at first, the fun was short-lived & then we were all back to the condo, tired & hungry from a busy day of fun!

Going CAMPING!

So even though I was big & pregnant this Summer, I REALLY wanted to go camping with the kids at least once...  It just seemed like they were all old enough to sleep through the night well & we didn't have a newborn baby or an infant that would be crawling around in the dirt, so I'd hoped that my pregnant body would cooperate enough to allow me to survive sleeping through the night in a tent.  And although it was LOTS of fun, it was a LONG & TERRIBLE night with not much sleep for me.  But I don't know that sleeping in a tent has ever really been my talent in life!  :)

We made sure to get to the campground around 2:00, so the kids would have plenty of time to play & go exploring while we got the tent all set up.  Laron was able to find the PERFECT little spot that was right next to the river, complete with rocks, sticks, shells & every other exciting camping feature to a child!  I actually was AMAZED at how many little tiny shells the kids kept finding everywhere... Pretty cool!

 After we got camp all set up, Laron determined it was time to go on a little hike.  So we set off on some random trail near camp, with the kids leading the way!  They all had to keep finding & trading new walking sticks amongst themselves that they would find along the way, which kept things exciting I suppose. :)

And then we were off that night to meet my family at the "Martin Harris Pageant" in Clarkston (near Logan).  It was a really great pageant & gave us the perfect opportunity to be able to talk to our kids about some of these stories in our Church History.  It ended up being a pretty late night for us all, but we were glad we had a campground nearby, with a tent already set-up & ready to go!

The next morning we had a yummy breakfast, complete with fresh fruit & bacon & eggs.  There's something about going camping that always requires good food, isn't there?!  Well, this trip was NO exception!

We ended up roasting marshmallows that morning, since we had gotten back home too late to do it the night before.  But I'm pretty sure the kids would have been happy to roast marshmallows at ANY time of the day, so it really wasn't a big deal!  I DO have to say though that they were EXCELLENT stick gatherers for the fire, especially when they realized that this would help them be able to roast marshmallows sooner!

After a fun morning playing around by the river, we decided it was time for another walk.  Laron brought along a few snacks & we headed off this time in the opposite direction, so see what ELSE we could find on our exploration.

This time our trail didn't seem quite as shady & perfect as the one we'd found the day before, but Laron was determined to keep going, so we did.  FINALLY, just as we were ready to head back, the trail met up with another more frequently-used trail & became the shady & beautiful outing we were all hoping for.  But by this time, I was worried we had already gone too far away from camp to keep going forward, but Laron insisted that the kids would be fine.

After we happened to reach what's known as "Second Dam" in Logan Canyon, we knew we had hiked pretty far... But what worried me more was checking what TIME it was & realizing that we were supposed to be checked-out of our campsite in less than an hour!  (And it probably would have taken us an hour just walking back with all the kids!)  So Laron decided that HE would just hurry & walk back & pack up camp, while I hung out at "Second Dam" with the kiddos.  It proved to be a slightly LONG hour of waiting around with the kids for Daddy to arrive (especially since we didn't have cell-phone service to check on Dad & see how much longer it would be until he came to pick us up).  By the time Laron made it back, the kids were all STARVING for lunch, so we found a little picnic table & ate a yummy lunch before heading home.  All-in-all though, it was a fun little camping trip that I think the kids will remember for a LONG time!  :)

On our way home, we stopped by Jesse & Natalie's to see their new house.  SO happy for them!  But we stayed there WAY longer than we had time for, because I had a get-together that night with my friends from High School for our 10-year-Reunion!  I was kind-of hoping to have at least been able to take a shower before we went, so we didn't all smell like campfire, but at least we made it there & had a good time seeing friends from the past... It was interesting to see how much everyone had changed & yet not really changed at all either!  High School was fun, but I am sure glad that I'm in the stage I'm in NOW of creating & enjoying this little family of mine!

A Productive Day!

Had a VERY productive day today!  It was Laron's day off for the week, so with his help we accomplished a lot... Gave both the boys a hair-cut, took apart Skyler's bed, spray-painted the bed a fresh coat of brown, transferred over Skyler's clothes to his new room, spray-painted a bookcase white, moved a dresser downstairs, took apart the bunk-bed from upstairs & re-assembled it downstairs in the girl's new room, and SOMEHOW managed to have JUST enough energy left to actually make dinner  :)  So pretty much, we changed all 3 kids into new rooms to prep for our baby coming in a few months!  We've still got a ways to go before we're ALL the way put back together (including painting & decorating the baby's new room!), but I'm already feeling one-step-closer to being ready to meet our new little guy...  November is starting to feel closer & closer (and yet, farther & farther away as well!).

The Ogden Nature Center

Our final "free" thing that we were able to do over the Summer was to go to the Ogden Nature Center... Laron had seen the sign for it on 12th Street in Ogden several times & had mentioned before that he'd like to go there sometime (even though we weren't quite sure what it was exactly), so we were THRILLED to find out that we could try it out for free over the Summer.  And although it was fun, I sure am glad that we didn't PAY to go there, because we could have had just as much fun finding a trail up in the mountains to hike around on & explore... :)

They DID have an observation deck that you could look through some telescopes on & see far off into the distance.  But unfortunately, there wasn't really much to look at around except for the mountains.  But when we first started off on the trail, they had a couple of cool birds (a bald eagle, and owl, etc.) in cages that the kids could see, so that was cool.  And then of course they had a big bird's nest that the kids could play around in... (I suppose we might not have found something like THAT in the mountains!)

Always fun to do things as a family though... We DID see a deer & a wild turkey roaming around, so that was exciting for the kids.  But other than that, it felt like just a fun stroll through the mountains, which is something we haven't done for a little while, so that was nice too!