Sounds About Right

Pink eye.

yes.

Not joking.

Luckily we already have medicine for this illness.

What a blessing.

Oy.

We Can't Catch A Break

No joke. I had something that sure felt like food poisoning ALL. DAY. YESTERDAY.

Bronwyn came down with our stomach bug on Monday night and then randomly yesterday morning

started screaming that her ear hurt SO. BAD.  Luckily I had begged Reed to stay home so he took her

to the doctor and turns out she had an ear infection so she gets medicine.

Mirren's bout of the stomach bug turned out to just be a combination of molars and not wanting to eat

so her stomach was hurting because she was hungry. I think.

I am so praying we get a break from being sick long enough to clean and sanitize this whole house, so as to

keep any other illnesses from getting in!

The Stomach Plague

The stomach plague struck our house 6 days ago. 

I finished my bout only yesterday, 

Reed's finished today, 

Aftyn's started only 2 days ago 

 if she's lucky

she'll be done tomorrow 

and well

Mirren's just started tonight. 

There is no rhyme or reason to this plague. 

It levels everyone it comes in contact with.

You've been warned.

Beware.

Merry Christmas

Ya filthy animals

Basketball

       Bronwyn's Team: The Blazers.  She had very nice, very dedicated coaches. They were
        a husband wife team and had both played basketball in college. Bronwyn learned a lot from them!
       We learned she dribbles better with her left hand then her right, even though
          she is right handed. Isn't that quirky! Ha ha!!

                                  Look at those red cheeks. That girl was running hard in her game!

         This is Aftyn completely caught up in her game. Her coach taught the kids to clap to let the player                   with the ball know they were open.

                                   Her team was The Magic. I couldn't get the whole team
                                                           into one picture. Ha ha!!

Mirren's Real 3 Year Old Birthday

 The best parts of Mirren's birthday: Waffles, sausages and scrambled eggs for dinner. (Her choice)
  It was still warm enough outside that I encouraged the girls to go outside and play on the new patio
while I made dinner (and decorated for her party that she didn't know anything about. Also I
decorated and made her cake without her knowing. She loved all the surprises!!) We actually
celebrated a day early since the next day we would be at Grandma and Grandpa Bishop's house
for our once a month dinner with his family.

                                              The balloons were a hit! They are kind of Mirren's thing. :)

                                           This was Lochlan's reaction to the balloons. Ha ha!!

        Mirren got such fun presents. Her favorites are probably the things I picked

        up at the DI, so I think I've learned my lesson. Always check the DI

        for newer toys before purchasing full price ones. I think I spent $3 and would

       have easily spent 7 times that amount for those 2 toys. A singing tea pot

        and a Minnie Mouse cell phone that both had TONS of battery life in them!

      Where did 3 years go? Mirren, in true Mirren fashion, is taking her sweet time
       growing up and is such a sweet girl.

      She cares about everyone, but also likes to have fun and will

      carelessly hurt you in the name of fun at any moment. Ha ha!!

       She gives the best hugs, but could break your ribs if she loves you enough.

      She has so many talents, but she loves to sing. She has an amazing

      memory and as her personality continues to truly emerge, I am

      thrilled and touched by her sweetness and goodness. She is just as

       sensitive and tender as a rose, so her middle name suits her well.

      We love love love our Mirren girl. What a fun and happy change she has

                                      made in our family!!

8 Years in the Making

                                               Waiting for the cement truck. . . .

                                              Here's the before:

                                           This was yesterday, only 12+ hours old
                                            with lots of little cement blobs
                                                needing to be taken off

                                             Today, 2 days after the initial pour.
                                               Notice how much lighter it is!

                                                     The transition point between slabs

                                          The box I built to put around the faucet for easy access.

The box has a lip on it so that when he pulls it out next week, there will be an inset for a grate to rest on.
I'm so pleased! This whole job came out SO awesome! I was worried that maybe it couldn't look like a professional job, even though Reed has had lots of experience working with concrete. He did GREAT! And Brian and I were pretty awesome helpers. :)

Birthdays and Glasses

Mirren's 3rd birthday is coming up in just a couple of weeks.
I can't believe how old she is! 
She is still our sweet hearted girl who loves to play with her big sisters and little brother and the cats.
I love her smile.
It lights up her face.

Yesterday, something happened that aged her. Let me show you with pictures what I mean.

Yup. My little 2 year old almost 3 year old got glasses. And now she looks like she should be in kindergarten. But at least she can see. And my little Mommy heart is just a little broken that my little Mirren looks so much older, and that she will be different now than other 3 year olds. And I think this is a totally normal thing to mourn. But really, she can see! As you can tell, I'm trying to focus on that. I'm happy for her that she can see better. Her glasses are a lot stronger than Aftyn's, and she keeps exclaiming over the things she can see. A lot of them are surprising, things I just took for granted that of course she could see, but I think I was wrong. She has been spending a lot more time just looking around at things since she got them. It's kind of comical.

Sunrise, Sunset

                  

I love sunrises in October.

Here's a picture of a harvest moon I caught a few weeks ago. 

This picture doesn't show any of the orangeness the moon had. 

It was beautiful.

Linder Farms

We went to Linder Farms last Monday for Family Home Evening.

It was SOO much fun!!!!

Reed met us there after work so we could go when it was still light.

We started out in the corn maze.

 We did the medium rated maze. It was still hard. We found two Linder Farms workers to walk us out after about 25 minutes in there. The kids were beginning to complain because they wanted to go and do some of the other fun things there and it seemed like we were never going to find our way out.

First we hurried over to the ponies so Aftyn and Bronwyn could have a ride. Mirren kept insisting she wanted to ride, but she is emotionally all over the place. We weren't sure it was safe to put her on a pony in her current emotional state. Ha ha!!

They loved it!

Next up: the swings!

All the girls got to ride this time.

It was SOO very cold by this time. Everyone's hands were cold, Lochlan was insisting that I take him out of the stroller which we had forced him to stay in through most of our activities. In fact, here is our patient little boy:

So after the swings, we went to get some hot cocoa and some corn puffs. It helped a little, but mostly, we huddled around the huge bonfire that was going until our kids could feel their fingers again.

Then we ended our night in the corn bin, where corn is like sand and the kids can go swim and jump and hide in it and then come home with corn kernels in their undies and shoes. Ha ha ha!!!

We had some tired but happy kids. We love the tradition this has become for us!!

Lochlan's Phone Problem

This morning, after talking to my sister on the phone, I turned off the phone, laid the phone on the couch and went down the hall to the laundry room. After switching the wash over to the dryer and then as I was refilling the washing machine, I heard Lochlan start to cry. Going back into my front room, poor Lochlan was sprawled on the floor with the phone clutched in one hand.
A little backstory. This boy is obsessed with the phone! He likes to push buttons and he also likes it when I'm talking to Reed and I hold the phone up to his ear and let him talk to his Daddy.

So back to today. I scoop him up, notice the phone is on so I turn it off and then proceed to clean him up. Poor guy hit his gums on the phone when he fell, he had been walking, so I wiped him and his bloody mouth up.
 The phone rings, just a few seconds after I begin to clean Lochlan up and it's my sister again. She informs me that she had been on the phone and the phone was turned on, when Lochlan started pushing buttons. She told me that when he started pushing buttons on the phone, at first, she told him "No no! Don't push buttons!" and then prompted him to "Go bring the phone to your Mommy." 
 I can collaborate that that is exactly what he WAS doing when he fell! He had been walking from the couch all the way to the hallway (where I was) with that phone. Ha ha ha!!!!

After my sister explained the situation to me, and I told her he did bring the phone to me (in his way), she said "Let me talk to him!" so I put the phone back to his ear. I could hear as she told him "Good job! You brought the phone to Mommy, Lochlan!".  I could see the way he listened and the expression in his eyes, he understood and felt really happy about being praised. Oh my little guy, what a good helper he was trying to be. I had to record this because it just makes me giggle and makes my heart really tender toward his sweet little spirit.

Oh my Mirren

Mirren's words lately:

     In the last 3 minutes, she's used the word actually twice. Except it sounds like this:  act-u-wee
        She loves phones, and she's always "talkin' to somebody, Mom".
    I love it when she tells me "I wove you Mom!". 

 This girl makes me smile with all of her talking lately!

         I love you too Mirri!

Butternut Baby

One day, many weeks ago, my mother in law gave me a butternut squash to take home from her garden. Having my hands full at the time with lots of other things, I creatively handed it to Mirren and said, "Here! This is your baby!".
 She loved that. She cradled, cuddled and cared for that baby for a few days, until the fateful day I had appointed to make butternut squash soup. And that was the end of that baby. And Mirren was totally okay with it.

Well a week and a half ago, Reed came home with another butternut squash from his mom. And it sat on our counter for about a week, until a few days ago, Mirren told me that it was her baby and could she please have it. I decided to really embrace it this time, so I drew eyes, a nose, a happy smile and some hair on this squash with a ballpoint pen. Mirren didn't like that I drew it all on, but she really went full out with this baby, taking it to bed with her, feeding it bottles, putting a bonnet on it, wrapping it up and carrying it around with her in her little play bag so she could take care of it. When asked, she told me her baby's name was "Crying".  Here's a little snapshot I got of her baby lounging in her bed after a nap.
         

She had a good life there for a few days, and then well, today came. I cut her up, put her in the crockpot and made some really yummy food with half of her. As I prepared dinner, Aftyn came in and said to me "Oh, are we eating Mirren's baby?".  Anyone listening would think we were cannibals!

Perhaps this is the end of the Butternut Babies this fall, but I guess we shall see. Maybe they'll come back to live at our house next year again?

   

Pickle Problems

I've recently been consuming A LOT of pickles thanks to my recent weight loss efforts (22 pounds down!), and Bronwyn, Mirren and Lochlan are always eager for me to share. After finishing off this BIG bottle of pickles just this week in large part to the 2 older hoodlums, I caught Mirren with a fork in the pickle jar. Doing just as you see, sticking her fork in and just licking all that pickle goodness off. Ha ha ha!!!! I definitely think we better start buying bigger jars of pickles!

Loch-er Walks

 This past Monday, Lochlan decided that he was just going to start walking. By 8:30 am, he had already taken 6 straight steps and by the time Reed came home from work at 6:30, he was up to 18 steps in a row. He is unstoppable and still walks as much as he possibly can, but when speed is needed, he drops to his knees and goes full steam ahead. He started clapping a few weeks back and it's so fun in the car! When I start clapping along to music, I see him start clapping in my rearview mirror. Ha ha!! He's such a fun boy. He always has a smile for whoever gets him out of his crib in the morning and after naps. I took down our front room fan this week to replace it with a light and as I brought him into the front room for his first time seeing it, he automatically looked up at the ceiling! Ha!! He totally noticed it right away! He sure surprises me with some of the things about him. He LOVES to laugh. He loves to be played with when he is in a playful mood. We just love him and love the part he plays in our family dynamic.

Mirren-isms

Mirren has recently been surprising me by coming and saying to me "I love you Mommy!" in her sweet little happy voice. I am eating it up!!  A few days ago, she was looking through our books and said, "I see Jesus!" to which I said "You do?!?  That's nice! Jesus loves you!" and she said to me "And Jesus loves you too Mommy!".  It was so so sweet and felt like a little message from Heavenly Father straight to me via my sweet little Mirren. She has such a sweet and tender spirit.

Also, when she is feeling stubborn, Mirren says, "I don't want _____  aaanymore, Mommy."  *Sigh* This girl is an independent stubborn little cuss, which is probably good in some instances and just hard in others.

All My Bags Are Packed

 Bronwyn and Mirren have been playing the most interesting things this week. It has usually involved a bag filled with a cell phone, some books, and any other thing they deem worthy to be in their little purses. Also a hit: babies and bottles. They are still learning to play together well because Bronwyn REALLY wants to boss Mirren around and little Miss Mirren is still struggling to use her words instead of screaming, crying, hitting, kicking, etc to make her point. Miraculously the past 2-3 days have been so much better! Mostly because Bronwyn has been busy doing other things away from Mirren and Mirren is independently playing her own games. She has been coming up to me and telling me what she needs, and she seriously has such nice manners with lots of pleases and thank you's. I keep hugging her and thanking her for being so nice and using her words and telling her how proud I am of her. She seems to like that. :)  Ha ha!! She can be such a sweetheart when she's not having to dig her heels in and do what her big sisters tell her to do.

Shine on, Harvest Moon.

                      We had a harvest moon the other night, so I went outside to see if I could capture a shot of it.
This picture doesn't do any justice for how beautiful the moon was that night, but it's a nice memory and I love the shot of the barn behind our house with it.

Linzy's Wedding

 An unfortunately blurry picture. Laura, Lochlan and Reed were looking so cute all together. Laura and Lochlan have the same shade of red. I should get a picture with Laura, Alyson and Lochlan. They could be hair triplets.

                         Linzy and Tanner. Aw!! Young love. :) It was beautifully decorated!!

                                                       Lochlan making a break for it.

                                             Lochlan's 2nd cousin. It was their first time meeting.
                           It will be fun to see these handsome young men interact as they grow older!

      Mirren in our motel room, where lots and lots of Disney channel was watched (when we were there).

                                                        View of the falls from our balcony.

Proof that Aftyn and Bronwyn did come, were dressed cute, and that they too enjoyed the Disney channel.                                                                    Ha ha!!

                                                                   Cousin Carter.