behind the scenes: going to Grandma and Grandpa's house

We went to my parents' house this weekend.
Getting ready to go takes me the whole day:

7:30 am--this crazy haired girly wakes us up. She's hungry. And she wants to watch a show on my phone. I usually say no because watching tv makes her grumpy.
But this morning, I give in.
I stay in bed and keep nursing Christian. 

8:15--we head downstairs. I spend some time snuggling this little squishy monkey.

8:26 am--Nicholas finds a flag shape in the sunshine on the floor. He sits at the end and pretends to "hold" the flag.
8:29 am--Ellie sees what he's doing and stands on the flag.
8:29 am--Nicholas is mad. Because Ellie's standing on his flag. They proceed to argue about the flag made of sunshine on the floor.
8:33 am--I tell them: "Stop fighting over the sunshine, guys!"
I never expected to hear myself say that.

8:44 am--I get my Bubs dressed again. His diaper soaked through onto his monkey outfit.

8:57 am--the kids already ate once, when Kent brought them down before he left for work. But Nicholas runs outside, finds a dandelion and blows on it, then comes back to tell me:

"Mom! I wished with a clover wisher for more cereal!"

9:15 am--My mom and Sarah stop by. They're on their way to see Alicia's graduation from UVU, but they spend some time here first.

9:30 am--I lay Christian down for a little nap, but he won't go to sleep, so I nurse him first. Sarah is downstairs playing Go Fish with the kids, and Ellie tells her about the time she swam with dolphins at Bear Lake.
Ellie's oblivious to the meaning of "tell the truth."
My sweet mom does my dishes while I'm upstairs.

9:57 am--my mom and Sarah have to go, Christian wakes up and I feed him again while the kids play outside and in the garage

10:30 am--I'm done feeding Christian. I try to start organizing a few things to pack.
10:32 am--Ellie's hungry. Snack time.
11:08 am--I get Christian to sleep. I never know if he's going to sleep for 20 minutes or 2 hours, so I get to work fast.

11:11 am--first task, clean out the van. No matter how hard I try to keep it clean, it's always full of jackets, toys, and trash

11:12 am--Ellie runs past and throws her empty cheetos bag in the car. I think I've discovered the problem.

11:39 am--I stick the kids in the tub for two reasons. They need to be cleaned and it will keep them occupied and not making a mess while I pack the suitcases.

12:29 pm--Kids are out of the tub and shower. I stop packing and folding laundry to make lunch.
Nick wants a peanut butter sandwich, Ellie wants a grilled cheese.

I heat up leftover green chicken enchiladas for my own lunch.
Ellie says they look "slobbery like a snail. See, Mom, the sauce?"
12:34 pm--I sit down to eat my lunch. To drink I have a sparkling water--I've been loving these lately. They're not sweetened at all, just carbonated water and natural flavors. I like them, and I like that they aren't sweet because that means I don't have to share them with the kids.

12:54 pm--time to clean the fish tank and transfer the fish to the bucket to take with us.
Yes, we take our fish to Grandma's house. So I don't have to find someone to come feed them.
I'm feeling ready for these fish to move on. The black one is often swimming belly-up, but unfortunately, he always recovers.

1:10 pm--packing and cleaning. The kids are everywhere, packing their own backpacks with their own treasures and favorite toys. Their packing methods aren't very tidy.

1:27 pm--turn on our sprinklers

1:30 pm--Christian's awake again, and ready to eat. We sit down to nurse while I watch the big kids finish "packing."

2:02 pm--Kent's home from work. It's time to gather up the last few things

2:14 pm--Nicholas is supposed to be going potty and getting in the car, but he can't leave Christian alone. He's got a serious case of baby-love.

2:15 pm--remember to turn the sprinkler timer to "off." We learned the hard way last summer that if we leave the sprinklers set to go on by themselves, they'll turn on....and then turn on again, and again, and again, until they flood the golf course.  We probably should just get a new timer.

2:20 pm--in the car, on our way!

2:40 pm--Christian falls asleep after surprisingly little fuss.
2:55 pm--Christian's awake again. I feed him a bottle while we drive.
3:16 pm--the kids:
           Nicholas

       Ellie

        Ellie's pants.

        She wore a skirt in the car last week and the way it bunched up in her seatbelt drove her crazy, so she took it off while we rode, and so naturally she now insists that she take off any sort of dress, skirt, pants, or shorts on the off chance it might bunch up when we buckle her. 
Three-year-olds are awesome that way.


Christian was surprisingly chill the rest of the drive.

As were the fish.

3:57 pm--Nicholas woke up and insisted he hadn't been sleeping at all. Then he looked out the window at the trees in the canyon and said,
"Wow. Those trees are just really too green, aren't they?"
I told him I thought they were pretty and asked him if they even could be too green.
His response? "Actually, it's pretty nice to be green."

Agreed.

We had an awesome weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house,
and when we set off for home on Monday morning, my mom sent us off with this tray of cookies fresh out of the oven.

 I asked Nicholas to smile for me, but this is his "I'm super mad because I don't want to go home" face.

 Little brother was happy, at least!

We're planning a trip to California in a couple of weeks...
I think I'm going to have to start packing for it today if I want to get everything ready in time. Whew!

wildlife

 Living here has it's perks.
We get to see this from our breakfast table each morning.

 And from the floor in our living room I can look up to see these beautiful mountains.
I spend a lot of time on the floor, changing Christian's diapers, cleaning up the kids' toys, reading books, picking up about 6000 beads that Nick likes to throw around, cleaning up the toys again....etc.

It sure helps my mood to be able to look outside and see something so beautiful while I'm in the trenches of young motherhood.

And we get to watch lots of interesting wildlife.

There's a bald eagle who lives nearby, and several times each month I see him swooping down over the golf course and soaring into the canyon.

We have a family of quail that like to wander down our river bed in the backyard.

Canadian geese have built a nest in the golf course pond just around the corner from us.

We have all sorts of birds, deer, coyotes, rabbits, 

And then, there's these guys:

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep.

We've watched them up on the mountainside and down in our golf course for the past three years.

Herds of them, grazing peacefully, so fun to see.

Until this guy went crazy:

The picture is from my friend Allison, because I was too chicken to take one of him at my house.

For weeks this spring this one ram has terrorized the neighborhood. I have no idea what got into him, but he'd climb up onto people's back porch and ram into the glass doors. He also rammed into cars and garbage cans.  I watched him run down the streets, approaching people's porches and wandering their backyards.

One morning, I was still in bedwith Christian, nursing him, and Ellie was downstairs alone eating the breakfast Kent had gotten her before he left for work. 

I heard a loud thump, and then she shrieked. 

I assumed she'd just dropped something.

But then she came running upstairs to talk to Nicholas, who was in the playroom.

"Nick! That was SO AWESOME! A really friendly goat wanted to come say 'Hi'! He knocked on our door and then he jumped over the sandbox! It was so cool! Come see!"

And I'm thinking, No. No, let's not go see. 

I'm also thinking, Thank goodness Ellie didn't open the door so he could say "Hi." 

Honestly, I was terrified. But I tried not to let the kids know that. Ellie was being incredibly brave, but Nicholas has a tendency to overreact. (wonder where he got that...)

I made the kids come in my room and close the door and I called the sheriff's office to get animal control out here. And we just listened and waited while the mad ram thumped against our door over and over and over.  

Eventually the thumping stopped and I got brave enough to leave the room. By the time animal control showed up, the ram was long gone, but I showed them which direction I'd seen him go off into the neighborhood.

I don't know if they got him, but he hasn't been around since then.

Living in the mountains can be pretty exciting!

easter

We went up to my parents' house for Easter and conference weekend.

We wanted to spend the weekend with everyone, 

plus we had to introduce our little guy to my Grandma:

 She adores him.

It was General Conference that weekend, but I spent most of my time on the couch, nursing a very sad baby. It was the peak of his reflux problems, and I was so so grateful to be there with so many extra hands to help love and hold my little man. I even got to take a coupe of naps, which was glorious.

And I'm glad conference is online so I can listen to all the talks I missed.

Saturday morning the Easter Bunny came, and left jellybean trails as clues to where the baskets were hidden.

We'd had a long, rough night with Christian, but these excited faces just couldn't wait any longer.

"How did the Easter Bunny know what size my head is?!"

In between conference sessions we had our traditional family bonfire and hot dog roast. We've done this since before I was born.
After the picnic the kids get to do an Easter egg hunt:

On Sunday morning we colored eggs.

Our sad little Christian was there too:

My parents have a neighbor who has built his own "train," and he'll drive around the neighborhood giving the kids rides--it's so cute!

Because we didn't have church on Easter Sunday (conference weekend), I got the kids dressed up in their new Easter clothes the following Sunday:

the first weeks

During that first week home, when it was just me and Kent and Christian,
we had to do some jaundice treatments, and daily trips to the hospital lab for blood draws.
On our way home from the hospital we'd go out for donuts or smoothies, just the three of us.

Christian had to sleep on the biliblanket for just one night--he began to recover like a champ.

Our little guy is incredibly strong. He holds his head up almost too well--we almost forget he's only a few weeks old and then he'll flop down and smash his nose on our chests.

The day we came home from the hospital, Christian got to meet my parents and siblings, 
and they came back the next weekend too!  

After bringing our other babies home in Texas where we didn't have any family around, it was really really fun to be surrounded by family, everyone loving on my sweet little baby.

Kent's mom came the next week,
her help was so wonderful! She kept the house clean and fed us and played endless games with the bigger kids.

Kent and I have been amazed at how incredible Nicholas has been since Christian was born. He's the sweetest kid! 
So helpful! So happy! SO obedient! 
He really is a fantastic five-year-old.

And he vacuums happily. Thinks it's a special privilege, actually.
Super awesome.

Ellie loves her little brother, and she's been very sweet to him,
but I think she's feeling much more affected by the lack of attention on her. 
While Teresa was here I got to take Ellie out for cookies, just me and her.
She brought her purse.
I love this girl.

These first few weeks are always kind of a blur,

but we're happy to be together, happy to have Christian here, 

and happy to be figuring it all out, day by day.