The rest of July

I can't believe how fast time is flying. It's speeding along at a ridiculous pace! July is done, and we're starting school again in 2 weeks. Crazy.

Some days we just stay home and work on our Kiwi crates. (A monthly subscription for science activities. Worth every penny.) We even found one at Savers the other day! The one pictured here was all about symmetry. They built a kaleidoscope among other things.


We went with our homeschool group to the Food Bank to help sort food. It was a traffic filled drive up, and back, but I think the hour we spent there was worthwhile.


Another Thanksgiving Point day with friends. Can't believe I didn't snap more picture of them at Farm country!


We took advantage of the discounted bowling the lanes here in Riverton do during the summer. I invited a ton of people, but only 1 other family showed up. I was grateful they were there though because I spend the majority of my time chasing Benson, and I knew that another adult was near my other children. I tried so hard to have a laid-back happy attitude about this experience, but it just wasn't going to happen. Benson, and the age he is, makes most things difficult. He doesn't want to participate properly, and has no fear and not much stranger danger. So bolting out the front door is always an option for him. By the end I was sweating, and in such a huff, I fear my poor attitude put a damper on the activity.


Gwen's little edit of this "Friend" story had me cracking up.


Pioneer Day! This holiday always seems to sneak up on me. The night before I realize what tomorrow is, and I think of lots of fun pioneer things we could do, but that require forethought and planning...and then we end up not doing much. I made the kids watch "Legacy" and counted that as our official Pioneer recognition. :) Then later that day we went kayaking with Ben and Becca! It's always a fun activity. We brought picnic dinners with us, and then floated the scenic Jordan river, ending at suicide bridge of course. Love being able to spend time with our family! As we drove home, Miles asked, "Aren't we going to celebrate Pioneer Day?" I said, "We just did!" And he said, "No, like, do something Pioneer-ish?" I told him next year I'd try and be more on top of things and we'd make honey candy, or make our own butter, or something cool. We'll see!


Lindy is about done with her little tumbling class for the summer. She has loved it and she's so good at it! This day the theme was Super-heros. We didn't have any Super-hero attire, so we painted her face and I think she felt pretty cool.


After class, we went to a new splash pad in Riverton. I think it's my favorite one yet! The park and splash pad are right next to each other, so you can always see your kids from anywhere you're at. It's small enough that the kids are contained, but big enough that it's still exciting. It kept them busy for 2 hours with no whining! That's a win!


I got to take some baptism pictures for my nephew Ethan. I had to share a few pictures because he's just so handsome! It was a fun outlet for me. One day, I would love to be a fantastic photographer. Until then, I'll keep pretending. :)


Grandma and Grandpa Garner have a couple of Korean ladies staying with them on an exchange program for a month or so. They have done it before, and they are always sweet and bring presents for the kids. Miles and Gwen got matching jammies, and Lindy got a pretty bracelet.


One day, Richie took the two oldest to help him build sets for the play, "Swing!" he's been working on. I'll write more about that later. But that left me with the 2 littles to help me make some apricot jam! I'm always so pleased and grateful that Heavenly Father helps us find food to put up. We've never had an apricot tree, but Dad Garner knew someone with one, and went and picked me a couple boxes! It was enough to freeze 3 bags, make about 15 1/2 pints of jam, and make 2 pies. YUM! Plus more for eating and snacking on. Lindy was actually extremely helpful. On her own, she would go stir the jam, come back to pit more apricots, sort them accordingly, and then go stir the jam again. She was in her own little element. Until I whipped out the play-doh for Benson, then she was more into that. And she spent an hour making play-doh cakes. She was so proud of each one and made sure I had bites of every cake. Usually when I try and involve the kids in kitchen chores, I just get frustrated. And then I'm guilty that I got frustrated, because I wanted to create a warm, cozy memory with my kids, and didn't. This time however, it was a wonderful, mostly stress free morning, putting up apricots with the kids. I'm going to tuck that memory away and pull it out every so often. It makes me happy.


Oh, and my kitchen looked like this by the end of the day. 1 batch of crackers, 5 loaves of bread, 3 bags of frozen apricots, many 1/2 pints of jam, and 2 pies. Yeah. It was a disaster zone.


Grandma and Grandpa Crosby randomly sent the kids $10 to go get a treat. They chose sodalicious, and were so excited! It came on the perfect, boring summer day when we were all wondering what we should do. G&G to the rescue!

Baby #5

At some point after we had Lindy, I told Richie that I needed to be done at 4 kids. That I wasn't ready to be done with 3, but I think 4 would push me to my mental limit. He reluctantly agreed. After I said those words out-loud, I started getting mega promptings that our family needed to include 5 children. 5 KIDS??? Was Heavenly Father crazy?? What kind of insane idea was this? Even when I got pregnant with Benson, I tried again and again to push those promptings away. I'd try and think to myself, "Alright, this is the last time I'll have morning sickness." or "This is the last, first time I'll feel the baby kick." etc. And every time I had those thoughts, I'd get a quiet, but firm, "No."

Heavenly Father knows I process things slowly. So he knew he had to start working on me, with this whole 5 kids idea, a while ago. Once Benson hit that age where we would typically start thinking about getting pregnant again, things got real. We really had to think and pray on having another baby. I guess I should re-phrase that. I knew we were supposed to have another baby, period. I guess the praying and soul-searching was really me asking Heavenly Father to help me change my perspective and be ready for this next phase. Not that I'm not excited to have another sweet baby, I am! I'm just so tired, and I know exactly how much work this is all going to be. So jumping on board this time has taken more faith than ever.

We discussed waiting until the other kids were older to have a new baby, so that they would be more help. We talked about adopting because I had finally lost all of the pregnancy weight and I was not looking forward to being pregnant, the subsequent weight loss, and nursing that follows. We tried to look at it from all angles, but it became obvious that this last child needed to come now, and from us.

So here we are! I'm almost 10 weeks along. I realize that about 1 million things could still go wrong at this point, so I hesitate to "put it all out there" and risk eating my words later. Hopefully this doesn't jinx anything, but I feel very at peace about this pregnancy. After our 2 miscarriages, I was nervous all throughout Lindy and Benson's pregnancies. But this time around, I feel like it's all going to work out just fine. Fingers crossed. I still haven't gotten that giddy feeling that typically comes with the knowledge that in 9 months I'll be snuggling a sweet, new baby. Hopefully baby #5 never takes that as meaning we didn't want it. That's not true at all. I'm sure that giddy feeling will kick in at some point. It's just hard being pregnant, and caring for 4 other young children.

Since this is not my first rodeo, I'm a pro at understanding my symptoms and knowing what's coming next. At this point I'm ridiculously tired, and have a constant feelings of "gross-ness". I don't throw up, I just feel kind of sick all the time. I have an extreme lack of motivation. I don't want to do anything. Ever. I just want to sit and watch movies all day. This is problematic with 4 children to entertain and prepare for a new school year. I am forgetful. My dreams become crazy and very detailed-even more than normal! Sleep is already an issue. Not because I'm huge and uncomfortable yet, but something makes sleep less fulfilling. I don't like sweet things like normal, in fact sometimes chocolate etc makes me feel worse. Instead I crave food I don't normally want that's really bad for you, like a huge, greasy burger, or a stuffed crust pizza covered in sausage, or a bucket of fried chicken from KFC (yuck!). The only craving I feel ok about eating is the grilled cheese sandwiches Richie will make me on demand. Complete with a salty, dill pickle in the middle. That and orange juice, freshly squeezed please.

It's amazing how my body is ready for this. As soon as I realized I was pregnant, I could see changes in my body immediately. I feel like I'm already obviously showing, although most people probably interpret it as me gaining all that weight back. That's a tough challenge for me, I'm not gonna lie. But I've lost the weight before and I can lose it again. This time I'll lose it one last time, and never again!! My body knows what it's doing, and I find it miraculous how Heavenly Father has worked it all out. And I'm so grateful that my body is capable and healthy enough to do this.

Here's to another 30 weeks of pregnancy. Hopefully at some point my feelings will change from endurance and duty, to cherishing this last miraculous journey. I really want to take it all in and treasure every last little symptom and experience because I know this is the last, and it's the end of and era. And the beginning of a totally new dynamic for our family. But I feel a little guilty that those feelings haven't kicked in yet. Mostly I just want to get the baby here, and everything else in between is kind of a nuisance. I want to believe that when I deliver the baby, I'll have a twinge of sadness that this season of life is over, but really if I'm being honest, I think the happy tears I'll be crying will be from knowing that it's over!! I don't know. I guess we'll see.

Even with all of my whining in there, it needs to be made abundantly clear that we are so excited for this baby to get here and be a part of our family!! Miles obviously wants it to be a boy. The girls obviously want it to be a girl. Benson is clueless. I'm looking forward to the snuggles, and all of the sweet firsts, and trying to block out the non-stop crying and lack of sleep. :) Richie is only excited. C'mon February 28th!!!

(2 thoughts when I look at these pictures: 1. We need to repaint our door frame. 2. I can't believe I'm already this big at 10 weeks!! It makes me terrified to see what I will have transformed into by 40 weeks. YIKES)

First Half of July

Richie celebrated his 33rd birthday! We had a lovely dinner at his parent's house on Sunday, eating delicious fish tacos outside. Later on that week we went on a date to buy him some sweet boots he's been pining for at Nordstrom Rack, went and got dinner, and then took the kids to do our once a year, massive food storage re-stock. This was our biggest one yet, and although the end price tag shocked us a bit, we had fun later that night stocking our shelves with our store bought goods. When we get to canning in earnest in a month or so, our food storage room will be lookin' good.


We went bowling with the Crosby's for Alec's birthday! So fun to have them close enough to get together casually like this!!! Ben was Benson's favorite, even preferring him to me. :)


Our neighbors invited us to do a lemonade stand on the 3rd of July, when the city's 4th of July parade passed right on the street behind us. We figured the kids would make good money setting up a little stand on the corner. They did pretty well! And it was our first experience with an actual parade. Richie and I are not big parade people. Crowds, it's hot, noise...We're just party poopers I guess. But Miles loved grabbing all the candy he could and was totally enthralled the whole time. Benson, Richie and Gwen were gone for most of it because Gwen had a soccer game. Overall, not a bad parade experience.


We took some more friends kayaking to celebrate Richie's birthday. It was all fun and games until Richie was loading the kayaks in the back of the truck, and shattered the back windshield. Happy birthday to him! We had some rhubarb crisp with ice cream later though, so it's all good. :)


Took some friends to the massive park/splash pad in Bluffdale. It's a fantastic park, but it's so huge and busy I'm anxious almost the entire time. :)


Had another great FHE with friends. It's such a fun, easy activity, I wish we thought to do it more often than we do. We invited 3 families in the ward over, including a new family who just moved in. I was trying to get together a bunch of ladies that I minister to so we could all get to know each other a bit better. We had leftover water bottles from the 4th, I made some peanut butter brownies, pulled out the whiffle ball equipment and Bam! Instant activity. It was a relatively cool evening and we had a really nice time.


Benson learning the art of posing for pictures. :)


Gwen playing at one of her soccer games! So.much.running.


Miles went to scout camp and had a blast! He saved up money and bought himself a sweet pocket knife, a stuffed snake, some junk food, and shared the rest with his friends. He came home dirty and worn out both days. Signs of a good time.


Gwen counted up her money the other day and realized she had enough in her spending section to trade out for a $100 bill! She was thrilled! I urged her to put it in the bank, with her penchant for losing money. But she wanted to show it to her friends. Luckily I convinced her a day or two later to open a savings account.


We decided to go with our homeschool friends on a bike ride on the Jordan river parkway. I'd never been! We didn't go very far because it was pretty hot, but the rode for a bit and then played at the park for a while. Pretty good way to spend a morning.