Leaves are falling all around

It is fall.


It snowed.

It almost always snows at least once before Halloween, but I was not ready for it. I was quite enjoying the lovely cool, but not cold weather.

Roman noticed the leaves along our driveway Saturday and begged to make a pile so he could jump in it. Marisa joined the fun. I used to LOVE playing in the fall leaves. In fact, I used to make a big nest of leaves, line it with blankets and play for hours.


We carved our pumpkins tonight. Well, I carved our pumpkins anyway. Roman probably could have done it, but I didn't really consider that until it was over. He did design his own jack-o-lantern face though. It's just coincidence that Roman happens to be wearing the same shirt both days (although not really, he loves this shirt).


I'm amazed by how well the horse turned out. Gotta love what you can find on the Internet.


Thanks to the neighbors for bringing the leftover pumpkins from their patch. Two of our store bought pumpkins had such tough skins I would have died trying to carve them.

The way you look tonight

This is a bad picture, I know. This is how our entertainment center used to look. We bought it (and much of other furniture) from a lady at Shane's work who was retiring and moving. It served us well, but we've outgrown it.


This is where it sits right now. I will be listing it for free tomorrow afternoon. It needs to go. It's still very nice, but we don't have any use for it. So if anyone wants it, let me know before then. :)


One broken humidifier, a water damaged T.V. , a new BIGGER (used) T.V. that doesn't fit in the old entertainment center, a new (used) entertainment center and voila!



My favorite part (besides the slightly old fashion design elements that remind me of my grandparents house), is that I can finally hide all the ugly. I'm somewhat a movie collector and our movies are all over the house because there simply wasn't any room for them in the old one. Now, this thing will fit all of them and more. Even better, you can't even see them! Love it!

Everything combined was $600 total. It's a lot more than free but that wouldn't have come close to buying a new fancy T.V. Yes, I know you can get a new T.V. for that much, but it wouldn't have been what we wanted. We still would have had to spend more $ on something to put it on, and where would all my lovely movies go?

Gotta love KSL classifieds.

By the way, this is not the the first entertainment center we bought. A week earlier we went through all the trouble of borrowing a bigger car and driving 40 minutes away from home to get one that we found on KSL. We got there and the thing weighed so much it took over 45 minutes just to get it out of their garage. It was at that point we decided it was going to be way too hard to get home and we asked for our money back. I was disappointed at the time and reluctant to give up, but I like this one much better so I'm glad we did.

Do you remember the time? VII (Roman's birth story)

On Marisa's birthday I shared her birth story and Ezra's birth story is already on my blog... The only one missing is Roman's so I thought I would share it here since I'm not sure I've written it down anywhere yet. Like it or not, here ya go.

Something about the first pregnancy is so much fun! I really enjoyed being pregnant with him.... well, except for the whole hips that could have fallen off my body part. Oh, they hurt! Other than that, I felt quite normal the whole pregnancy. And, you gotta love those abs that resist being stretched rather than willingly falling back into pregnancy mode like they did for those next two rug rats.

I was determined to have this child without meds. It was a long standing desire of mine and I really wanted to play it out. I forced Shane to go to Bradley classes which I will admit were.... interesting. I'm glad we went, but there were some aspects that were just not for me. Hindsight is 20/20.

Anyway, we were excited for him to come but in true first child fashion he breezed right past his due date. I didn't care. Something about the looming change made me want to enjoy my last few days of childless freedom.

It was the three day weekend of Memorial Day and we had nothing planned. I woke up Monday morning at 1 am to regular contractions. I timed them and they were slightly over 5 minutes apart but not very painful. The adrenalin kept me awake though so I went to the basement to sew (stupid) and returned to my sleepy state on the couch around 5 am. The contractions must have stopped or I was just too tired because I slept for a few hours.

We woke up around 9:00 with no real progress so we decided to get on with our day. We went to Walmart for something that I can't remember and we milled around all morning. I went for a LONG walk around the block (probably about two miles). We decided to go to a Thia place for lunch (stupid #2). We had our usual Massaman Curry and went over the Shane's sisters house to visit afterward. It was at the end of lunch and during our visit that the contractions started to be really uncomfortable.

We headed home around 3:00 and I decided I really needed to get some rest so I lied down. But sleep could not be found because the contractions were getting horrible. I tried to do what I had learned at our classes but nothing worked. It seemed like they stressed relaxation and I just couldn't do it. It hurt and I had to do something to fix it! I called the midwife and she said I could come in or wait a bit, maybe take a bath. I decided to take a bath. It was lovely when there were no contractions but the bath did nothing to make the contractions feel better. Then the curry came back to haunt me... multiple times, in fact. To this day I can't enjoy Massaman Curry like I used to.

Things were starting to get ugly so we packed up the car and started for the hospital. For those of you who know Utah/Utah county you know that there is only ONE road to anywhere. And if I-15 is backed up... you aren't getting anywhere. Well, by this time it was 5:30 at the end of a three day weekend and just 5 minuets on the freeway and we had to get off because it was stopped dead. It was bad enough that it took 30 minutes to get to the hospital on the freeway at 65 MPH. It took over 1 hour on the back roads. More barfing, lots of stops and turns. That was not my favorite car ride.

I was so happy to finally be there. We walked up to the labor and delivery and walked right into a room with a bed without having to fill out papers or show ID (Payson Hospital could learn a thing or two from American Fork Hospital) . They checked the heartbeat etc, told me that after all that time and pain I was barely at 4 cm and asked me if I wanted and epidural. At this point I was exhausted and totally discouraged by that little four. I not had good sleep since 1 am and I wasn't doing well at managing my pain. I decided for the epidural. My heart sank a little. I really wanted to do this with out an epidural, but I didn't know how, and Shane didn't know what to do to help me so I was stuck. I was kind of expecting my own personal cheer team from the nurses and the midwife but I was disappointed by their passiveness. I've come to find since then that most of them think you are nuts if you don't want meds. Or, at least they come across that way.

After the epidural some things improved, mostly my mood. The pain was gone and I could think straight again. I turned on the T.V. and sucked on ice chips. Shane went to go get himself some dinner. Things went slow. REALLY slow. Hours ticked by with only 2 centimeters to show for it. His heartbeat kept slowing down with the contractions so I had to lay on one side. And many of you women know what happens next. All the pain medication was going to one side of my body and the other side was starting to really hurt again. But if I moved to the other side, his heart rate would slow so back to the other side I would go.

Finally around 11:30pm or so the contractions started picking up again but along with that came even more slowing of the heart. The midwife tried to speed things up by breaking my water, but that caused even more heart rate problems and they ended up giving me a dose of some kind of medicine to stop the contractions for a while and give his poor little heart a break.

Once they started up again it was back to worrisome heart rate monitoring. I was wearing an oxygen mask, had a thousand tubes stuck in me and looked pretty miserable. We managed to somehow make it to 10 cm without a call to the doctor for a c-section though and when it came time to push I was more than ready.

I couldn't feel a thing really and pushing was like trying to use some kind of Star Wars force to use muscles I couldn't feel. They ended up using some scissors to help get him out before things got bad. He was born at 1:30 am on Tuesday morning. But oh, once he was out.... ahhhh. All was right with the world.
The first things we noticed were his LONG locks of hair, his HUGE hands and feet and his little chin.

He didn't cry much and his cries were absolutely adorable, quiet and kitten like.

That... was the end of life as I knew it. It's crazy to think of life before that day 5.5 years ago. I will admit it was a hard adjustment. I had gone from a married woman with a job, and income, freedom to leave the house when I pleased, freedom to stay up late, sleep in, go to a movie etc. to being a mom and everything that comes along with it, all in 24 hours. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Later I was able to use what I learned during his birth to have Marisa and Ezra without medication. I couldn't relax the pain away and I learned ways to get myself through it since Shane to this day is pretty clueless about what to do (it's OK though). I realized that I remembered the walk from the car up to the labor and delivery was the least painful part of the whole deal with Roman. So with the others, I stayed on my feet and what a difference that made!

There you have it. I couldn't have asked for a better baby either.

You've had a birthday shout HOORAY!

Our baby boy is one! I can't believe it. It sure doesn't seem like it has been a year. But... that just seems to be the way it goes.

Awww. Precious!



We had family over for dinner and cake and ice cream. Can I just say that Papa John's makes some GOOOO...OOOOD pizza.

I made a Cookie Monster cake for Ezra. I started out with the idea to have a Halloween party, which transformed into a monster party, but because any ideas I could find were a little creepy, it transformed again into a Cookie Monster/Sesame Street party.

Here is the cake for everyone to eat. I found these little figurines for $6 and since the store didn't really do a Sesame Street cake, well.... this was just as good. I guess.


I made Ezra his own cookie monster cake which was.... just OK. But adequate for destroying purposes.
We practiced blowing out the candle and he was good at blowing, but didn't have good aim, so I ended up blowing it out for him.

I don't think he liked how the frosting felt or tasted.



But he still managed to make a mess

After a bath and some jammies, it was present time. A pop up toy from his cousins.


A new sippy cup from his sister (so that he no longer has to use her pink ones)

And the busy ball popper. We need to somehow disable the music on this toy. It's loud and obnoxious, but the kids (8 year old cousin included) enjoyed playing with it.


Happy Birthday little man!

Bippity Boppity Boo

So, the wedding was on Friday. All went fantastically well as far as I know and all of Lauri's hard work payed off. She's the mother of the bride and my neighbor/running partner/borrowing buddy/babysitter in a pinch/friend. In reality I am closer to her daughter's age than I am to her age, but it sure doesn't seem like it. I guess kids do that to you. ;)

I ran over to the reception early to try to snag some pictures and get my picture taken with her. We did get the token picture standing next to each other. BLAH.... I say blah because she's probably 5' 4" give or take a little (or a lot, I'm not good at judging height). Anyway, she's not tall, even with her heals. So when I get my picture taken next to tiny little skinny girls I look HUGE. Not just tall, but HUGE! Uggg. You can't make me share that picture with you. And any pictures I took of her were.... just okay. I don't want my dress's debut to be some sub par picture I snapped.

So.... you might have to just wait for some of the professional pictures to come through. I know.... it's mean, but I don't know what else to do.

Well, ok, here is one that I stole from her friend's blog who took some pictures for her for display purposes (she hasn't had her bridals taken by the professional photographer yet because she just got her braces off).


So, there you have it.... but there will be more. Trust me... there will be more. :)

The wedding reception was a shy person's a.k.a MY bad dream. By this time, a lot of people had heard that I was making the dress and wanted to talk to me about it. AAAAKKK! I never know what to say and I don't take or give compliments well. I'm just a loser that way. I kept trying to brush them off and direct the attention back to how good she looked IN the dress. etc. etc. My face was probably a constant shade of magenta. Oh, attention. I would hate it if I got no attention for it, but at the same time, I don't handle it well.

But I LOVE comments on my blog... so bring it on ;) LOL

Baby let your hair hang down

Ezra had his first haircut yesterday. Boy was that fun. :) Can you just feel my sarcasm?


He threw a fit because he doesn't like being pushed around and I had to get all that hair around his cute little neck somehow.

So... we tried the pacifier. It worked for minute, but not nearly long enough.


The key? A sucker.


Mmmm... sucker! All is right with the world. He loved it, sticky hair and all.


First haircut... first sucker. He has the cutest little neck. :) Really though, he doesn't look all that different. His hair was not all that unruly but I wasn't going to let it get that way.

What a cutie!

Do you remember the time VI

I've spent the last several nights sewing like a child in a sweat shop.

I had a hand full of orders, some last minute tailoring for the wedding next door, and three Halloweeners who need to have their costumes by the 21st this year.

Oh, Halloween. I have a love/hate relationship with the day. I'm not into the decorations, the spookiness, or the creepy parties much but candy, **SIGH** , I LOVE candy. And, there is something about Halloween candy that is even better. I'm convinced it's because the candy is fresh. Whatever that means. And dressing up...Well, I don't know if I will ever hate dressing up. I just don't do it much anymore.

Anywho, for this week's blast from the past I was going to post a picture of one of my homemade Halloween costumes from when I was 10 or so. It was... Well, I really wish I had found that picture. I think my mom must have it because I searched and searched and it was nowhere to be found. I did find these beauties though.

This year I must have been Pippy Longstocking... what? This wasn't Halloween? Hmmm.

A pioneer one year... oh wait, this wasn't Halloween either.
A skeleton.... Still not Halloween. This was a synchronized swimming performance. Oh my!

This year my family decided to go all 80's... Wait, this was the 80's. Boy, were we livin' it up. It may not have been Halloween but this picture is SCARY!

A clown. What?! You say this was not Halloween, it was PICTURE DAY!!!!! Where were my older siblings on this one? At least my hair was done. Oh, this picture cracks me up! Yes, that is green shag carpet on the wall of our dining room.

Now, this is closer. Yet, still not Halloween. I love that we had BOXES of dress up clothes in my house. When I got it trouble, it was usually because I had ransacked the dress up boxes. Oh, I love these girls.

Now THIS is Halloween. Awww um, LeAnn, you shorts are a little twisted.

Hey baby, let me light your fire!

AMEN!

On another note, we are having a "monster" themed birthday party for Ezra's birthday. Any cute ideas are welcome. It's just for family but so far all I really have is a cookie monster cake and some green punch.

Kicking and Screaming

is what Ezra does EVERY time I change his diapers. He absolutely hates it. And, now I absolutely hate it. Do you know how hard it is to pin that kid down? Then, in the process change the diaper with one hand?

We have had a handful of nice diaper changes. It usually involved risking the life of my cell phone so that he would just hold still. Even then, his interest waned and I ended up putting the clean diaper on a standing child and checking to make sure my cell phone still worked.

I've tried everything I can think of to keep him on his back. Singing, clapping hands, tickling, toys, food, the telephone, etc. etc.

Ugggg.... How much longer can this go on?

Blame it on the Rain

Or something like that.

Shane wants the whole world to know that I broke our T.V.. Not exactly sure why. And if we are going to play the blame game, I'm going to blame our Ezra's cold. Because it started all this.

How does a cold break a T.V.? I will tell ya. My stuffed up, plugged up, runny nosed goober monster that we used to call Ezra had me feeling pretty bad. So, I went to the basement and dug out our humidifier, hoping it would help a little.

I ran it all day long without any problems but it had to be put up where Ezra couldn't reach it. The only place high enough in our living room is on top of our Entertainment center.

Come nighttime, we turned it off and went to bed.

I woke up in the morning to Roman complaining that the T.V. wouldn't turn on. I thought that Ezra had just jumbled up the remote controls again so I drug myself out of bed and went to investigate.

I pressed the buttons with no luck, I tried the other remotes.... nothing. But I heard this ticking. Closer examination revealed that the once nearly full humidifier had emptied itself all down the back of the T.V. and on to the floor.

I thought maybe if I dried it out it would magically go back to it's working form, but no.

It makes S....omeone feel better to blame me, although really, there were annoying white lines across half the screen of the T.V. anyway and the subject of a new T.V. had already been floating around. As far as I'm concerned I did the poor T.V. a favor by putting it out of it's missery. However, we are faced with a dilemma:

They don't sell square T.V.'s anymore. And the hole in our entertainment center is quite square.
For the moment we have our bedroom T.V. in it's place but it's really small.
After we go off and buy a new T.V. we would have to buy a new stand/entertainment center which aint cheap. Even the cheap ones aren't cheap.

We watch our share of T.V. but we don't have cable so it's so much to invest to have this great T.V. and watch over the air T.V. and no, we are not getting cable any time soon. AND.... if we spend lots of money on a T.V. we would both become ultra paranoid about the kids ruining it with a ball, a block or their grubby little paws. :)

SO.... we may just go buy a used T.V. and ride it out like a bunch of old timers.

Time will tell.

Tea for two and two for tea

Since I've been a total blogger bummer this last week, I will do this. I'm not sure I have 3 readers, but don't be shy ladies and gentlemen. I will be nice to you.

... It has to do with GIVING and receiving. Since I'm a lucky recipient, I've promised to "Pay it Forward". The first three (3) people interested in this little game will leave a message on my post. I will then send a handmade gift to those 3 wonderful people within the next year (I hope it doesn't take me a year.) In order to play the game though, you must be willing to keep the spirit alive, and post a "Pay it Forward", and send out 3 handmade gifts to your readers!

Let the game begin!

It doesn't have to be big either. Cookies, a bookmark, Just something to get the giving juices flowing. After all, Christmas is just around the corner ;)