Here and Gone

One magical night as I was getting the kids ready for bed they peeked out the window and found that it was snowing outside.  They were so excited I knew there wouldn’t be any sleeping until they got a chance to enjoy it a little.  We went outside and filled up a big bowl with the beautiful new snow and brought it inside. We made our first snow man of the season while staying cozy and warm in our PJ’s.  He might have been teeny tiny, but we were so happy to finally get to make him.

 For two fun filled days we enjoyed playing in the snow with rosey cheeks and huge smiles. When the warm rains came and washed it all away I might have been ready, but the Hudson and Ellie were pretty heart broken. I'm sure the snow will be back soon, and I know two little kids that will be excited to see it.

Hudson really got into sledding.  He loved to run and jump onto the sled as it slid down the hill.
Ellie was pretty adventures herself.  She would get so excited when the sled spun around to make her slide down the hill backwards.

Hudson is a very sweet big brother.  He really loves Autumn....sometimes a little too much.
 I have to remind him often that Autumn needs some space. I'm a little worried she may not ever learn to roll over herself, because all she has to do is let out a little squawk and Hudson run to her rescue and rolls and does the rolling for her. 



Sweet baby Autumn is now 4 months.  She had to go to the Dr and have her shots this morning, so she has been a little sad today.  She is sleeping sweetly on my lap right now. I love to watch her and hear all the beautiful little noises she makes. Even her cry is pretty sweet.  She loves to take baths and kicks her leggs and giggles as she splashes the water.

4 month measurements:
Autumn 14.6 lbs; 24 3/4th inches long
Ellie 16.1 lbs; 26 1/8 inches long
Hudson 17.8 lbs; 26 1/2 inches long



Desperately seeking SNOW!!!



♫♫Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.....Please. How sad is this? The kids are so desperate to go sledding they sit in their sleds in the house. Meanwhile, outside the window our hill awaits, covered in lovely green grass. All they can talk about is how they are going to make snow men and go sledding and drink hot cocoa. Every morning they run from their beds yelling “did it snow, did it snow?” Each time, they let out huge sighs of disappointment to see the green grass taunting them once again.  I know one of these days it will actually snow, and you can bet it will be quite a festive day at our house when it does.



  The kids got a big shock this week when we had a knock at the door and found Gram Wendy standing on the other side.  Jake and I knew she was coming but we let the kids be surprised.  They were overjoyed and had a lot of fun playing with her.  They even got to have a “slumber party” where they all camped out in the living room one of the nights. Judging by how grumpy they were the next day, I’m guessing they had a lot of fun and not much sleep.  I think Gram Wendy might need to sleep for the next week straight just to get caught up from a few days at our house.  It was so nice to have her visit and we were all sad to see her go.

Another fun surprise came when I took Hudson to his first swim lesson on Saturday.  It had been about nine months since he had been in swim lessons and when his teacher saw how well he was swimming they moved him into the advanced class. He is a few years younger then the other kids in his class and when he stands next to them he only comes up to about their shoulders. He looks so stinkin cute! I was so proud of him, and it was fun to see him be so proud of himself.  It was such a fun feeling to share his accomplishment with him.  No wonder parents can't help but brag about their children. What an awesome little man he is!

Autumn started to giggle for the first time this week.  If heaven were a sound, it would sound like her laugh. She is still a little stingy with it though.  I haven't been able to recreate yet for Jake, and I know he is sad to have missed it.  He is once again very busy. Although he has less classes this semester, he has twice as much teaching responsibilities, plus his thesis to finish, and job hunting to dive into. The next few weeks he is also participating in some landscape architecture competition involving urban land reclamation.  I don't know a lot about it, except it seems to require a lot of his "spare" time, ha ha. If anyone knows how to get the most out of their time it is Jake.  We are sure lucky to have him. 

Adventures in cooking

I sure enjoy my sweet little kids, but for some reason, everyday just before dinner time they all seem to get grumpy at the same time. On any given day you could show up to my door at 5 o’clock and find me in the kitchen working on dinner with an angry fussing baby in my arms and two kids running through the house screaming while trying to destroy it and each other. It really is a given, that no matter how sweet everyone has been all day, at 5 o’clock, the peace and happiness in our home is replaced with chaos.
As part of my calling in compassionate service I make and deliver a lot of dinners. Most people like their dinner to be delivered between 5 and 6 and you can only imagine how well preparing and packing up the dinner and the children goes at that wonderful time of day. I typically end up with some kind of burn and a car full of crying children. There have been a few dinners I have been a bit embarrassed to present to people. It’s one thing when you present your husband with over cooked food and an apology and he chokes it down and tells you its fine and even asks for seconds to make you feel better. Its another when you know you have tuned a roast into jerky and there is no time to make something new and you have to present it to people who have no idea that you had to prepare the whole meal with one hand while the other one is devoted to coddling a sad baby and rescuing a hysterical two year old who’s brother keeps locking her in various rooms and leaving her in the dark. I know the service is supposed to make me feel love and other warm fuzzies, but it mostly make makes me feel crazy. Ha Ha

The only thing that is more fun then preparing dinners to take to other people is when we have people over for dinner at our home. Preparing an edible dinner and a clean house at the same time is a whole other situation. Ellie can turn a clean house into a disaster in less then ten unattended minutes. So imagine the house is clean and I take the time to make a salad. I look up to see the couch cushions have all been removed and the couch is covered with hello kitty stickers. On one special occasion; Hudson decided to be a big help in my dinner preparations.

Jake had invited a good friend from school over for dinner. I was determined to have everything ready and not be in a frazzled state when they walked in the door ready to eat after class. I had brined a chicken in preparation for roasting and had pulled it out of the fridge and set it in the sick while I got the pan all ready. Autumn was napping and the kids were happily painting at the table so I turned my attention to some potatoes that were simmering on the stove. When I turned back to my chicken I found it was now GREEN. Hudson had poured his glass full of paint water all over the chicken. I showed Hudson his mistake and felt very good about myself for not losing my temper as I started on the task of scrubbing as much green off the chicken as I possibly could. I really hoped that the roasting would hide any discoloration that was left. As I put it in the oven I noticed the potatoes were done. I dumped them into the strainer in the sink just as I heard a loud “UHH OHH”. I looked over to see Ellie and our carpeted dinning room floor covered in paint and water. I let out a sigh and picked up my little girl and took her to the bathroom to clean her up. As I scrubbed the carpet I looked up at the clock and was so pleased with myself for not only having plenty of time to let the carpet dry but also, once again, I hadn’t let myself get too angry with the kids. Returning to the potatoes that were waiting for me in the sink I froze and stared at them in disgust. What should have been white was now a greenish grey color similar to the shade of Ellie’s eyes. Hudson had decided to “help” clean up all the remaining paining stuff by pouring it into the sink where my potatoes were straining. I angrily threw them into the trash and promptly yelled at Hudson and Ellie and sent them to time out for eternity. Fortunately they stayed out of sight long enough for me to prepare more potatoes and calm don a little. A little later when I rolled out some dough to make rolls; I found that although I had wiped off the table thoroughly, they still managed to pick up a little bit of green paint themselves. At this point all I could do was laugh and throw them on a pan and into the oven. Hopefully no one would notice. As we sat eating the meal that night I couldn’t help but smile as I thought about all the disasters that had happened to the food everyone was enjoying. I guess painting is not a good distraction to use on the kids when I need to get some cooking done. Lesson learned!



Remember that sweet little baby who loved to be held all the time?  Someone switched her with this this thing. This one is still pretty cute, but she thinks she doesn't want to be cuddled anymore. She loves to lay on  this pad and kick and grab all the toys. I can just hear  her tell me she needs her own space sometimes.




This is what happens when a group of kids beg me to make them a pinata and I only had what was lying around the house.  It might not have been very pretty, but the kids sure thought it was fun and it was a good way to use left over Christmas candy. 



Christmas is over.

Ahhh Christmas is over! As fun as it is for the kids to have our apartment full of Christmas stuff, it is equally fun for me to put it away. With each box that gets packed up I feel a little more at peace to see a small bit of order restored to our living space.  The kids were sure sad to see our tree go.  This year however, we were able to put it to good use.  We took it a farm where Jake is working on a stream restoration project.  The kids felt better about it leaving us since it was going to help the fish in the stream.  Jakes professor even brought some fish food and we were able to feed some huge rainbow trout. The kids enjoyed getting to see the fish their tree was going to help. It was pretty cold but fun to get out for a bit.



Hudson was reasuring Ellie, that the tree was going to be happy living on the farm.
They were so cute!






We just keep falling in love with our little Autumn more and more.  She is growing way too fast and is such a good baby.  We have a lot of fun watching her discover new things each week. Lately she has been spending a lot of time staring at her hands and discovering that she can grab things when she wants to.  She suddenly loves toys and coo’s happily at them and the people she loves when she sees them. We took her swimming for the first time and she loved it.  I think she is going to be a little fish just like the rest of us.  She sure looked cute in her tiny little swim trunks.   

                    I Love you THIIIS much!

Jake and I turned 30!!!

Jake, Hudson, and Ellie made me an amazing rice cripie cake!

I had a WONDERFUL birthday! I awoke to Hudson in my room.  He was very excited and told me that it was my birthday and I needed to sleep in.  While I dozed in bed he went to work decorating the house with streamers, and helping Jake make me a special birthday breakfast of yummy crepes with strawberries and whip cream. I have such wonderful boys! Later a friend watched our kids for us and Jake and I spent the afternoon together.  He took me shopping for a new coat and to a yummy lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant.

A funny thing I realized, was that I purchased my previos coat with money from my twentieth birthday. A few years later when Jake and I were dating, I was invited on my first outing with the Powells.  We went to Pine Valley to stay at the cabin and play in the snow.  Jake pulled me on a sled with a 4wheeler. Durring my ride we hit a patch of rocks and I ripped my then 2 year old coat up the back, destroyed the sled, and nearly broke my tail bone.  Jake felt aweful for both.  His mom lovingly patched up the back of my coat and time healed my tail bone.  Jake always offered to get me a new coat and it only took us eight years to get around to it. I can not believe how quickly ten years went by. The past ten years brought more blessings to my life then I could have ever imagined. I wonder what the next ten will bring?

 Jakes birthday seemed to revolve all around food. He also got to sleep in, but his breakfast was skillet eggs, and of coarse chocolate milk and donuts!  He was over joyed to get an enormouse brown sugar spiral sliced ham for diner. Everyone was excited to get to share his "black cookie" ice cream cake. He spent the bulk of the day up at school working, but at least he got to eat all his favorite things. 


A funny thing about Jakes birthday is that I spend most of the day thinking about his parents.  It must be because I am in mom mode these days, but I feel so much gratitude for them giving me him. Even today I can't think of them without tears in my eyes. Everything I love most in my life I have because of them. Jake is more then I could have ever even dreamed of. He is my definition of Joy.



Happy New Year!

 This year we went to a friends house for a new years eve party. It was a lot of fun and since everyone had little kids we had a mock countdown at seven thirty. It was just the right amount of partying for us. Ellie and Autumn weren’t very fond of the cheering and noise makers, but Hudson joined in with enthusiasm. 2011 was pretty great, but I think 2012 might just be even better.