Catch Up

The last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy. We're so close to having the carpet in...more on that later, but in the meantime we've been a little cramped upstairs all day and the kids get a little stir crazy. It's a good thing Tragon is pretty happy in the bouncer as long as the other boys are nearby.The most recent activities have included pots and pans drumming.
The rubber spatulas were definitely a good choice over the metal spoons I almost gave them. They had a great time...and I only had a little headache at the end of the day.
They were pretty good about sharing for the most part, but the bigger bowl made a louder sound, so it was definitely the coveted drum.
There are several reasons why I love getting my diapers from diapers.com, some of which include the giant boxes they come in. We've had some fun this past week making ramps and bridges and huts and all sorts of fun things.
They usually last a few days before they get too trashed to play with anymore, but then we just toss it in the recycle. I also like them because they are cheaper and I usually get my diapers the next day and so I avoid having to ever buy diapers at the grocery store.
This was Logan's attempt at a regular smile. haha
This was our hut that we made. Damon can actually stand all the way up in it and Logan only has to crouch a little bit.
They loved watching their cartoon in the box hut.

So, about the carpet. We had everything ready to go, carpet was here, installer was ready and then we roll out a piece and it was pink! :( And it really looked not so great. We felt bad telling our neighbor who we hired to do carpet that we wanted to switch carpet. Luckily, and very much so, we were able to get a full refund on our carpet, but that meant that we had to re-order, which would take another week to get here. We were hopeful that the carpet would be here Friday, and then installed Saturday and Monday, but we found out that the truck got delayed so the carpet won't even be here until Monday. I was pretty bummed. And the pink carpet is still downstairs, which is gated off because of the exposed tack strip all over :( And our furniture for the basement has already been delivered and is squished in our bedroom at the moment.

But, there are good things from this: We are going to get carpet that we really like (this is a pretty big investment), We had some furniture on back order that we can now switch out and have delivered after the carpet is really installed, and it will still be done by President's Day when my parents were going to be coming up for the weekend, so we should still be good to go. Overall, the hassle has been worth it. So, until next time....when hopefully I'll have pictures of a finished basement.....

Master Chef

If you ask Logan his favorite word, he'll say it's "bakery" I'm not sure how he got this obsession, I guess he sees me cook, but still. He does like to help me in the kitchen on occasion, but not always, mostly he just likes to eat the brown sugar (got that from his mama) Do we have a little kitchen play set? No. Do all his friends? Yes. Did he throw the world's biggest tantrum after leaving a friend's house with said playset? Oh yeah. Should I get him one for his birthday? Maybe, but then the novelty might wear off I'm still deciding. Last week he really wanted a chef hat, like chef Piscetti on Curious George, so I offered to make him one.
Not too shabby for a bunch of paper and tape. Maybe someday he really will love to cook, that would be awesome. I always said I would marry a chef growing up, that was my excuse for not really learning to cook from my mom (huge mistake by the way, there is so much that I wished I would have paid attention to) and although Morgan is great at making bubblebread, spaghetti, and a few other dishes, his specialty is more on the eating side rather than cooking. :)
But of course, once Logan saw me with scissors, he wanted them too. (If you give a mouse a cookie...) After I slaved for oh I don't know, ten minutes...precious naptime minutes mind you...he decided he didn't want the hat anymore, just the scissors. No way, we were getting proof that we do fun things. So I told him he couldn't have the scissors unless he wore the hat, I know, mean, but I got my evidence and after that I didn't really care. Which is good because after he had cut all the scrap paper I gave him, he proceeded to cut up the chef hat....:(
Tragon still won't roll to one side, but can still get around by rolling in one direction until he gets stuck somewhere. He does a lot of Superman too. I don't think he's quite gotten mad enough to scoot though. We had his 6 month checkup and he's doing great, following in his brother's footsteps of tall and skinny. He's 13.56lbs (2%) and 26.38in (49%) He's still eating pretty good, but I see a little foreshadowing of him being more like Logan, than Damon in that department.
I love this look, I get it a lot and I'm sure I'll get the toddler/little boy/tween/teen/adult version of it quite frequently too. He's still a really great baby, but the last couple weeks have been tough, it's either teething, or tummy issues, but he wakes up about every hour. Logan went through the same thing about this time and it was torture letting him cry it out, but we're almost to that point. Luckily even when he is wailing at night the other boys will stay asleep or at least go back to sleep when the screaming is over. Damon has also been sick this week, so between the two of them, I'm pooped and sleep deprived!
Tragon is starting to like his bouncer more...just don't put him there right after he eats (duh!). He loves being in here when Logan and Damon are running around him and he can watch them play.
This week has been book week, for some reason they both have really loved reading the books and pulling every single one off the bookshelf, it does provide hours of entertainment. :) Couldn't resist the plumber and crazy face shot.
Damon is two and acts like it. Since he's been sick his patience before throwing a tantrums is about nothing, so he's been spending a lot of time in his room lately. Being sick just isn't a good enough reason to throw a fit over Logan looking at him. He's such a fun boy and talks A LOT, just like his brother, they have some awesome conversations. Sometimes I wish I could be in their little brains and see how they process things.
This would be a great picture if let's say I told him we were going to Disneyland, or Grandma's house, but no, this is "Logan, do a funny face"

I love my boys and they are so fun and I'm so glad they're mine. Until next time...

I'm losing it, but getting better

Prepare for rambling, the pictures are at the end if you want to skip to those. :)

It's a proven fact for me that when I wake up early, exercise, eat right, study my scriptures and say my prayers that my days go so much better and I'm happier and more patient with the kids.....but that still doesn't make it easy to do. Part of my goals for the new year, or life in general is to be healthy and that's probably the hardest part. When I'm home with the kids and hanging out with food all day, I tend to snack all day long. I have found that if I set small goals for myself, like, drink my whole water bottle before getting a snack or eating anything in between meals then I really work hard to drink that water and usually I'm too full to actually eat the snack right after, but at least I feel like I accomplished a small goal. I decided to set weekly goals, this week: no chocolate. It is a another proven fact that chocolate is not good for me, I don't particularly even like it, but I eat it against my better judgement, I usually have a sugar high for about 30 seconds and a two hour crash, and I get cranky and the baby gets cranky. So this week I have been purging myself of chocolate...and then Morgan brings home a bag of mini chocolate bars from a scout training. I'm 4 for 4 though in not eating it. Yay me! So in that sense of "losing it" I'm trying to lose the last 10 lbs of my Tragon pregnancy, the worst by far and I gained about 55 lbs, so I guess on the flip side losing 45 lbs in 6 months is pretty good.

Today I was determined to eat a bit better though, not just cut out chocolate, because really when I have a bowl of ice cream, some apple crisp dessert, and a handful of Nutter Butters, I would have been better off eating one little mini chocolate bar. Since doing Bountiful Baskets on a weekly basis I have been getting lettuce every week. I think I bought about 10 heads of lettuce in the past 6 1/2 years of marriage, but in the last 6 months I've had more lettuce than I know what to do with. Taco Salads are good and we have been doing that more, but I'm going on a limb and trying new salads and making some of my own dressings. The one I had today was particularly good and pretty easy to throw together with what I had on hand, so for posterity I'm going to share. I'm not sure what to call it other than a Fruit/Veggie Salad with Citrus Dressing, I know, not very creative. Here goes:

Salad:

-roughly 1 cup of chopped lettuce (I have about 4 Tupperwares of lettuce ready for this week)

~1/4 cup of Craisins

~1/4 chopped Granny Smith Apple (added a really good tartness to the salad)

3 grape tomatoes cut into quarters

~5-6 slices cucumber, also quartered

~1/2 orange peeled, sliced (leftover from making the dressing)

I thought about adding some kiwi too, but my plate was getting pretty full by this time.

Dressing:I found it on allrecipes.com, but cut down the portion and changed a few things

1 TB lemon juice

1/2 TB lime juice

1/4 cup orange juice (didn't have any, but have tons of oranges so it took about 1 1/2 oranges)

3 TB white sugar

2 TB mayo

1 1/2 tsp honey

1/2 cup oil (I used 1/2 olive and 1/2 canola)

Put it all in the blender (or magic bullet:) and voila

It had a very subtle orangeness to it that was just enough to make the salad good. I've decided that I really like to add some fruits in my salads instead of just veggies. The dressing made about 1 cup, so I have enough leftovers for a couple more salads. Yay! I guess this counts as part of the "getting better"

On the other side of "losing it" I think my brain is officially toast, I think I gave the last half to Tragon. Case in point: I bought some veggie dip at Smith's the other day and it was on the Manager's Special for .59 cents. Typically this means that it's going to expire soon, but not always. The expiration date was Feb. 11 I looked at my calendar and saw that it was the 17th and I berated myself for buying week old expired dip, even at a cheap price, I then saw that my cottage cheese "expired" on Jan 24th (at this point I was thoroughly convinced that it was February 17th, not January). and my milk expired on the Jan 28th, that was at least two weeks ago! I was ticked. How could they sell stuff two and three weeks past the due date? I grabbed the phone to call Smith's and see if I could get a voucher for free dairy food when I saw the calendar, it was on JANUARY. It took me a few more minutes to process that I still had a good week or two before all my dairy would go bad. Boy did I feel sheepish, I'm just glad I never got a chance to make that call!

As far as "getting better", I am 3 for 3 on my weekly blog posting. :) Okay, now for pictures.

Last Saturday was a great day to go outside and play, it was quite warm for what it has been lately, so we bundled up the kids and took them sledding out in the hills by our house.
The snow has been melting a lot lately, and with the recent rain we can actually see our grass and rocks again. We still have the 5 foot high drifts though where it all got piled, we might have to turn those into sledding hills next time we get some good snow. I love how big and puffy the boys look in their winter gear.
Look, proof that I do get out. It was even warm enough that Tragon got to come out for a little while, it was a very unique day with no wind!
The boys liked getting rides on the sled across the field and up the hills and I think Morgan just enjoyed being out during the day and the sunshine. Winter is hard when he leaves for work when it's dark and gets home when it's dark.
I sure love my boys! Morgan is such a great dad to his boys. As much as we want them to be older and able to play sports and stuff, we're getting better at enjoying this age too.
Lately, they have been waking up around 6:30am which I guess is okay when it means Logan can go through the night without an accident, but we spend more time in jammies some mornings when I haven't quite been able to prepare myself for the day. This was probably after lunch one day this week. They made a train, or car, or rocket, I can't remember.
But they were actually playing nice and interacting with each other. I love those moments, this is my proof.
I finally got a picture with all the boys in their Christmas jammies. Whenever one of them wears them, they all have to or I get an earful.
I was even able to get them to all look at me at the same time. :)
Then I told them to do a silly face and this is what I got. We'll have to work on that bit. This month has gone by pretty slow, probably because we're now basically done with the basement except carpet which will be a while, so we're not spending every waking moment on it now. I'm not sure we'll know what to do with ourselves once the project isn't looming over us....well, yes I do, then we'll grab the shovels and dig ourselves out of debt, oh how we love student loans. :) Until next time....

Rolie Polie Tragon

This week has gone by pretty slow. Last Saturday, we were able to go to the temple and a neighbor watched our boys. It was so good to get back. Our goal this year is to go at least once a month, and so far we're 1 for 1. :) Usually Logan is pretty good when we go get him, but he did NOT want to come home. He threw the biggest tantrum I've seen in a long time. He would not stop screaming. Finally we convinced him that we could play "bakery" at home too and it would be fun. I guess I know what to get him for his birthday. They also discovered the drawer under the stove where I keep my muffin tins and some pans.They had a fun time making Play Doh muffins and counting the muffin cups.
Who knew Logan loved baking so much.
The other day we made a little hut in the living room. We read stories and drove cars. Tragon is mid-rollover.
He can finally make it from back to stomach. He's been able to go from stomach to back for a couple weeks, but now that he goes from back to stomach, he doesn't go from stomach to back, but he's really good with tummy time and likes to be on his belly so it's not a big deal.
He's still eating pretty good, but I don't think solids are his very favorite, especially after his little tiff with constipation, so we're taking it a little slower.
Logan and Damon both got their bears and blankets so they could snuggle in the hut.
I remember building quite the extravagant huts and tents in our basement growing up and it's really fun that my boys are enjoying that as well now instead of just destroying it before I can even get it up. I want to make fun memories for my boys and I hope that by taking pictures and doing some fun activities that they will have some good memories too. I love my boys so much!

Bring on the New Year!

I love the New Year with new aspirations, inspirations, and motivation! We really had a great/busy/fun/crazy 2010 and I think I've finally come to the realization that life is just always going to be like that. There will be no "settling down" or "normal" so I'm learning to just appreciate what is. I still have quite a few new resolutions this year, once of which is taking more pictures and videos of my boys as they are growing up and updated our blog at least once a week. I know I need to make time for that, because this is my outlet and form of journal, and already as I look back on things I have posted, I have forgotten a lot of details that are fun to reminisce about.Tragon loves his bouncer now...as long as the other boys are in the room playing as well. He still doesn't like being by himself. He is doing great on solids...other than the constipation he's had the last couple days, we are getting it taken care of, but the cries of pain when he poops are heart breaking. He's such a great baby and takes 2-3 naps a day, sleeps through the night, and is generally happy and loves to coo and talk to his brothers, and other spectators. Honestly, up to this point, 3 hasn't been too much worse or different than 2...except during grocery shopping, or road trips. It makes a huge difference loading and unloading 3 kids into the minivan. :)
Damon loves puzzles, I think I've mentioned that several times now, but his favorite puzzle that he always asks for first is the Caterpillar puzzle. After he's done he'll tell you the story and my favorite part is when he gets to the watermelon and says it like he has a tummy ache, it's hilarious, I will have to get that on video soon before he stops doing it.
Logan has been such a perfect, loving big brother...except when he fighting with Damon :) He's had so much love and tenderness with Tragon that it melts my heart. When Damon is napping, it's usually Logan playing with Tragon, reading him stories, playing peek-a-boo, or even getting my diapers. He's such a big helper and I can't believe how big he's getting. Hopefully this year we'll be able to get him into some itty bitty team sports and give him some other fun activities to do now that he is potty trained.
We've had some crazy weather. This is still about 6 inches of snow on our driveway after I had shoveled at least twice that much two times!! Sad to say, I couldn't even get out of our driveway to go to our family Christmas Party. The plows weren't not very good with our street and we had huge drifts still blocking the road.
Seriously, we had drifts up to Morgan's shoulder. It was a constant snowfall/wind all day!
We got to have Papa and Grandma Hadlock over for dinner on Sunday. It was good to see them and both the boys were just having a Papa day and wanted to read tons of stories with him. Grandma of course had Tragon. :)
He's getting so big so fast, and while I want him to stay small, I also want him to get big enough and mobile enough that I'm not worried that his brothers will "love" him too much and squish him.
Today Logan and Damon were taking turns playing the harmonica.
Maybe someday they'll even learn how to play a song. :) I do love my boys so much even though they run me ragged. Another resolution is to have more patience with my boys and do more activities and play with them more during the day instead of trying to get a whole bunch of "my" projects done. So far I'm doing okay, but I could do better.

The basement is coming along, this past week we were able to put in two closets, get one painted, get two closet doors on...all projects that we were dreading and avoiding, but were running out of other stuff to do. There are still a few touch up with the fireplace mantel, touch ups in the bathroom, we're still waiting on a piece for our vanity cabinet, and then we'll have the final trim around the closets and the two or three sections of baseboards that we had to wait to do. All of which I think we'll probably have done by the end of January, then once our house in OK sells, we should be able to get the carpet in. YAY! So, until next time...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I'm baffled that it has already been a year since we moved into our new house and that Tragon is already 5 1/2 months old and loving solid food already, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start with Christmas. We had a great Christmas in St. George. We left on the 23rd and headed down after spending the 22nd working on the basement. We were able to make some good progress, but it was nice to be away from the house and not be tempted to work on it. It was a nice break for us and for the kids. The ride down was pretty uneventful, the kids did really well in the car and all took naps at various times and they did really well when we stopped in Scipio for lunch and went to Subway.
Damon loves trains! My mom has a singing train tree and Damon would just stare at it for a long time. If I ever heard the music playing and couldn't find him, he was usually on the chair by it watching it. He was very concerned though that the top train didn't move and always made sure to tell me so.
Someday I will get a picture of Damon with a real smile and not a crazy cheese. :)
Our days were filled with lots of fun and family. The whole crew was there, that makes 7 grandkids ranging from age 3 (Logan the oldest) and Tragon being the youngest. There was a good share of tantrums, but for the most part I think all the cousins got a long really well and had a great time!
Logan loves Moon Dough, it's kind of like Play Doh, but less messy, I might have to get some for his birthday that's coming up in a few months. :)
I can't remember a Christmas when we didn't have some sort of video game that was being played, this year is was a puzzle game on the Wii.
Every night we probably stayed up until 1:30-2:00 am and Christmas Eve was no exception. We got all the kids in bed (our favorite time of night) and read our Christmas Stories by candlelight. After that we played games until we could barely keep our eyes open. Traditionally it's me waking the family up around 4-5am to start Christmas, but this year I wanted to sleep in as long as possible...Tragon woke up at 4:30...then Logan woke up about 5:00....but Lincoln my nephew takes the cake, he was up at 2:00 (about the same time his mom and dad were climbing into bed) and wouldn't go back to sleep because he was so excited to open presents. Finally about 5:30-6:00 since most of us were up we decided to get things started. We had to wake Damon up, and boy was he unhappy. The poor guy just threw tantrum after tantrum, mostly because he wanted Logan's truck/car toy (above), but I think he wasn't feeling well either. He even threw a tantrum when we tried to give him a new present of his own. Lesson learned: never wake Damon up early, he gets very grumpy. That's good news for future Christmases though, hopefully my kids will want to sleep in until at least 7:00 when they typically wake up.
This was a toy that Logan picked out himself and then I wrapped it. His cousin got the exact same one. Logan was a champ opening presents this year, he actually did most of it himself. I think next year will be even more fun for him.
Damon is my puzzler. He loves puzzles almost as much as trains and he will spend hours doing puzzles...yes, really hours. I love it! He's actually really patient with puzzles and will spend time figuring them out for a while before asking for help, I think right now the most he's done by himself is a 35 piecer. We usually have at least a 1500 piece puzzle set up during the holidays and I even snuck Damon into the no kids zone to have him help me with the puzzle. I think together we put in about 10 pieces, I'd find the piece and tell him where it goes and he would figure out how to get it in. After about 10 pieces though I could see him getting a little anxious and wanting to push the puzzle off the table, I didn't want to press our luck, so we played something else.
I couldn't resist. Logan was getting dressed for the day, he can strip down by himself, but he didn't want Damon to get his toy while he got dressed, so he grabbed and ran upstairs to hide it until he got his clothes on. This one is going to be a classic butt shot for years to come. I can't wait until he starts dating...(well, yes I can).

We had such a fun time at Christmas, Morgan and I had a chance to have a little date and went and played pickleball. It's sort of like tennis and ping pong combined. You're on a court like tennis, but the paddles and ball are more like ping pong, it uses a heavier wiffle ball. It is more of a retirement game...I think we were the youngest by about 30 years. We had two nice old ladies teach us the rules and played a couple games with us...they were really good. We were starting to get the hang of it though and played a few single games. My legs were even a little sore the next day. That will have to be a new tradition when we visit is to go play pickleball, Morgan loved it.

This year was my year for the sickies. All my boys had some sort of cold on the way down or by the time we were headed home. They're all doing pretty good now though and Tragon is almost over his stuffy nose. By the time Sunday rolled around, they were all ready to go. I think I had reached my lack of sleep limit staying up too late and being up through the night with a baby that couldn't breathe, and the incessant whining of sick kids. It was crazy trying to get ready for church and deciding to go or not to go, in the end my mom helped me make up my mind and gave us all hugs and kisses and told us to be on our way to get our boys home and feeling better.

It really was an awesome Christmas, but it is always nice to get back home and get back into a routine. Thanks everyone for a great Christmas! Until next time....

Happy Thanksgiving

I can't believe I've gone from a once a week blogger to a once a month blogger....wait, yes I can, I have three kids, it's the holidays, and we're booking it to finish our basement. :) Come to think of it, once a month is pretty impressive right now. I'll start it off with Thanksgiving, sadly, no pictures, but we did have one of the best Thanksgivings ever.

My parents and my brother and his family came up to stay with us for Thanksgiving, it wasn't really a planned thing, it just sort of happened and I'm glad it did. We had great food and had quite the spread for hosting my first Thanksgiving, although I think my mom still gets most of the credit for it, I couldn't have done it without her. Whether it was her cooking or playing with the kids so that I could get stuff done. We had a delicious turkey, candied yams, green beans with bacon, homemade crescent rolls, thanks Kim, Morgan is still talking about them, juicy ham, of course some Stove Top stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, dixie fruit salad, coconut creme pie, pumpkin pie (made with a real pumpkin!), cherry pie...wow, just thinking about all of it reminds me that I could probably still go another few days without eating. :)

Secretly, we were really making a push to get the drywall and mudding all done in our basement before the company arrived and I'm happy to report that we made it, of course that was also one thing that we decided to hire out. They got done the day before everyone arrived. My brother and dad were planning on helping with the drywall, so I hope they weren't too disappointed that they weren't hanging it and mudding all weekend. ;) Seriously though, we got so much done in those few days with help from them and Kim with some painting too. We were able to get the bathroom all tiled, the doors hung, the electrical stuff all working (yay no more flipping the breakers to have light down there), we got the fireplace mantel put together and a whole lot of other stuff.

We did have some fun too, although they all did spend a really good portion of time in the basement working. We played games almost every night and brought out good ol Monopoly and Clue, of course there was the customary Canasta games as well as a few others. The kids played so well together and we only had a few minor tantrums with all of them having a few turns each. :) Once we have the basement done we're definitely looking forward to more get togethers; we had a great time.

The next week...well, we all got sick. :( Damon and Logan each took a turn with the flu, it only lasted a couple days and included only one messy barfing each...although, when they spread it out over a week, it does feel like I was cleaning puke and diarrhea all week. I didn't get the yucky flu and neither did Tragon, but we both got colds, his nose is almost clear and it's not quite such torture to clean out his nose so he can eat. Morgan was sick a couple days, but not enough to take a sick day, it's really crazy at work around the holidays. We are all pretty much feeling tip top now with only a few drippy noses here and there. I hope that we have gotten all our Christmas sick bugs out and done with (knock on wood).

We've been so focused on the basement...which is almost done, but all the little details sure add up to a lot of little projects and time in the end, so it will probably be another couple months, our goal is to at least have the bathroom done by Christmas and since we just got all our stuff delivered today, I think we can handle that.

I did finally get the tree out....today....December 10th....shhh, don't tell my family. Traditionally it's me begging to break out the Christmas music by Halloween and man, if we don't have those decorations out the day after Thanksgiving, it's too late. It's a little different with little kids though. I did let them help me decorate the tree, but then Damon spent the bulk of the morning in time out for hitting the balls off the tree....I may just take all those breakable ones down, or keep the tree in our bedroom and just read bedtime stories by it at night, and we are definitely NOT putting the presents under there, oiy! It really does feel like Christmas time now. And, the shopping is almost done too, I think I only have a couple more things to get, wahoo!

The boys did like all the snowmen ornaments. They like to find their favorites and show me.
I was surprised at how well Logan could hang the decorations, even if the tree is a little lopsided and droopy on the bottom. :)
It's going to be a great Christmas!