Completely Proud of Myself

I've been meaning to clean out the garage since we moved into our house last August. The people that lived here before us had a dog that shed like crazy. Even now, a year later, I sometimes sweep up dog hair when I'm cleaning the house. I didn't get a chance to sweep the garage before we moved in, and there was dirt, dog food, and dog hair all over the place. Then the guys just dumped everything labled "garage" in the middle of the floor (what else were they supposed to do?) and I never got around to organizing it all.

Over the last year, things have been piled on top of the original pile, and it got to the point that we had a tiny meandering walkway to the stairs and about a two-foot walkway to the mail box, with a huge pile of miscellaneous junk covering the rest of the floor.

I went in on Tuesday while Ethan was napping to straighten up the loft area, but when I finished that, I just kept going. I threw away a living room full of boxes (the living room is where I tossed them before Brian came home to put them in the recycling tub), reorganized the furniture, and even made the dressers available so we can store things in them instead of just storing the dressers. It looks fabulous! I love having a clean garage!

I wish I took before pictures, but I honestly didn't think I would do that great of a job. The plan was to have Brian help me this weekend, but he was surprised to come home from school to find that it was all done! Here are the after pics:


Notice the HUGE area in the middle. No more problems walking to the stairs! And I don't have to hug the washing machine to walk in front of it to do laundry.
The black bag and Styrofoam didn't fit in the garbage this week, but they will be gone next week! Yea!

Our Summer Adventures

Ethan got into the oil based paint when Christina and I painted her kitchen table and chairs. The lady at Lowes recommended the oil base paint to me, but I vow that I will never use it again. We were scrubbing black paint off our skin for weeks! Luckily, I got to Ethan fast enough that it only left a grey area on his tummy for a few days.

Here's Ethan playing in the water with his cousins, Asher and Derek. Derek is the oldest by just a couple of months, and Asher and Ethan are only two days apart. These boys are going to have fun growing up together!

Alyssa loved swimming at Grandma Roses' house with her cousins.

Grandma Roses built a fort for all the kids to play in, and they loved it.

This is the bed that Alyssa sleeps in at Grandma Jacks' house. She got up early one morning and helped Grandma and Grandpa collect snails from the backyard. Grandma likes to put them in the garbage to keep them from eating her plants, but Alyssa wanted to keep them as pets. She had them in a ziploc bag, and put it under her pillow, but it wasn't shut all the way. The above picture is what greeted me when I went in the room to get some clothes for the day. We had to take the whole bed apart to make sure we found all of the snails.

Here's Brian reading a Princess book to the kids that Alyssa got for her birthday. He had just finished boards and driven up the night before, and we were all so excited to see him.

Alyssa got a Cranium game called "Hullabuloo" for her birthday. It seems like it's a great game for all ages.

Brian is famous in our house for building towers. He likes to stack things (ice cream, then canned soup, then cheese, etc.) on the conveyor belt when we're grocery shopping, and sometimes he stacks various dishes and food items during dinner. It looks like Ethan inherited the stacking gene from Brian. He was so proud of himself! (Notice the two cheeze-its on top.)

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

So after being in the Tri-Cities for a month and a half, we are finally home! The kids and I took off when Brian got out of school in the middle of July. He stayed behind to study for boards, and after all the stress and worry (and I'm sure he was stressed and worried too) about how boards would go, he joined us in Washington. We had a great time hanging out with our families. We passed the flu around for about a week, which was no fun at all. I think because I'm pregnant it hit me the hardest. There was a point that I was throwing up every fifteen to twenty minutes for a few hours. Stink! The great part is that Ethan was throwing up the same time I was so I didn't have to clean up after him. Brian did a great job of taking care of him.

Brian went to Alaska to go fishing with his dad and brother for a week. It's something they've wanted to do since before Brian and I even met, and finally they did it! They had a great time and brought home 500 pounds of fish! They even left some old clothes and shoes behind so they would have room to fill a suitcase with frozen halibut and salmon.

We had a great time, but if feels so good to be home. We now know what our house looks like with at least four weeks accumulation of cat hair. We also have about ten flies buzzing around the middle of the living room. They're not going anywhere else in the house, just flying in circles in the living room. I don't know, maybe something very flat died under our rug, and we can't smell it. So this week will be spent thoroughly cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, etc.

I'm excited to have life get back to normal again. Brian started school yesterday and Alyssa starts kindergarten next week. We went to bed at a normal time last night, and Ethan seems happy to be back in his own room. I should be posting on here a lot more, too.

Happy Birthday, Alyssa!

Five years ago today I became a mother. We went in for a doctor's appointment on the 8th of August, two thousand and two and were greeted by a very happy certified nurse midwife, John Rose. I loved going to him. He always had a bit of trivia to tell us (What's the largest herb? A banana!) and he always had time to answer any questions I had, which were many, considering that I was a first-time mommy. It was the day before my due date, and I think I was only a centimeter dilated, so he stripped my membranes to see if that would hurry things along. We were told that if something were to happen then it would happen within the next forty-eight hours.


After the appointment I went to the mall with my mother-in-law and I walked as fast as my hugely pregnant body would let me, for as long as I could. No real contractions. I went home, had dinner, still no contractions, then went to bed. Since nothing seemed to be happening, Brian decided to invite some friends over to play Risk. He came to bed at twelve o'clock, and I got out of bed at twelve-thirty, because I was finally starting to get some real contractions.


We were living in Brian's grandma's basement for the summer, so I headed to the family room to lie down on the couch and count contractions (why I didn't walk around, I don't know). Brian had given me a beautiful new watch, which he said would be great for timing my contractions with. The only problem was that it didn't have a second hand. So I pulled out his watch and stared at it, counting when the contractions came, counting how long they lasted, and counting how much time there were between them. When things felt like they were getting serious, I woke up Brian and told him it was time to go to the hospital. It was four-thirty in the morning.


We arrived at the hospital five minutes later. Even though it was a short drive, it was a hard one. I was leaking fluid, which I thought was my water breaking, but apparently it wasn't, and I was holding my bottom off of the seat, because Brian kept shouting, "Don't get it on my car!"


When we checked into the hospital, they monitored me for a bit to see if I was truly in labor. I was, which thrilled me. I would have cried so hard if they had sent me home. At this point I hadn't decided if I would get an epidural or not, so they gave me a shot of pain killer so I could sleep for a while. They should have given something to Brian, too, because he was stretched out on a couch that was way too short for him, and he had a very hard time sleeping.


The day progressed, but I did not. They broke my water around lunch time. I ended up getting an epidural. By evening time, they checked where the baby was, and she had moved higher into my body than she had been when I arrived early that morning. I had been pushing for about two hours, and nothing was happening. The baby had turned sideways, so her head was facing my hip. It was at this point that john Rose asked if I wanted a c-section. After twenty-two hours of labor, I readily agreed.


The epidural had long since run out, and the anesthesiologist was busy, so it took a while for him to come prep me for surgery. The nurses told me to stop pushing, since it would do no good. That was horrible! When you're pushing, it hurts, but you can concentrate on pushing. When you stop pushing, you just have to lay there, letting each contraction come and go. And even though I wasn't getting any closer to delivering the baby, the contractions were coming closer and closer together. At first I would squeeze Brian's hand, to take my mind off the pain. Pretty soon I had him squeeze my hand, as hard as he could, so I could at least concentrate on a different kind of pain. When I was a little girl I was in a car accident and needed to have fifty-six stitches in my head. It hurt a lot. The doctor told me to say "Ow" every time it hurt. I spent I-don't-know-how-long saying "Ow, ow, ow, ow," over and over again. I reverted to this strategy when the contractions would come, but my moans were a little louder and a little more intense. "Ow, ow, ow, Owwwww!" And that is what my parents heard when they arrived at the hospital.


Eventually, I was prepped and wheeled into surgery, and Alyssa was delivered at ten o'clock in the evening. She was a beautiful baby, and very very sweet. She showed us that she had a temper the next morning when she had trouble latching on while nursing. It didn't take her long to get the hang of it, though, and she grew quickly.


She was strong and active since day one. She was rolling over and crawling by four months, walking by nine, and running soon after. She was talking early, too. She didn't babble in sentence form, like most toddlers. She worked on one word at a time until she mastered it, then she moved on to the next word. There was never a time that we didn't understand what she was saying, because she always spoke so clearly.


She's always been difficult to keep up with. I'm excited for her to go to kindergarten, so I can have a few hours of rest each day. Even though she's a good girl, she's exhausting! She doesn't sit still for long, and she's constantly running around on adventures. Most of these adventures end up getting her in trouble, but when you ask for her motives behind the action, they always make sense. She's so clever, and so smart.


Alyssa is also one of the most polite and friendly little girls you will ever meet. When we went with Brian's mom to meet Christina and her kids at the park, she instinctively introduced Diane to all of the cousins. She is so good about saying please and thank you, and she's always concerned about others' feelings.

Alyssa loves to sing! She can belt out songs from "Phantom of the Opera" like no body's business. She also loves to make up her own songs, and she gives us concerts sometimes.

Alyssa loves Heavenly Father and and Jesus. She's learning about them and when she makes a mistake we talk about ways to make them happy. She knows that immodesty makes Heavenly Father sad, and she points that out when she sees girls around town making bad choices concerning their dress. She loves to pray! Sometimes I forget to have prayer for breakfast or lunch, but Alyssa always reminds me.

I'm so thankful to have Alyssa in our family! I couldn't ask for a better daughter. We love her so much!