Climb Every Mountain

Life sure has its ups and downs and right now I'm just enjoying some really great "up" time. The weather is getting warmer, we can play outside more. Logan is so full of information and soaking everything in and comes up with the wildest stories. Damon is always playful, eats great and talks a lot. Tragon doesn't spit up anymore and is doing great with solids, he can sit up on his own and really scoot around, does some great push ups, but not quite crawling (secretly I don't want him to crawl yet, he's going to be a busy baby). We've got a roof over our heads, food in our belly, and we're surrounded by awesome people!So, with the weather being warmer...sometimes, we found a giant dirt mountain that the boys love to climb and what luck it happens to be in our "front yard" one of the many perks living in a new construction neighborhood.
Anytime we go outside, they usually want to go to the "lake" (a little pond of water filling a future home lot that hasn't drained, which now has ducks) or the "mountain" Our neighbor friend came with us one day so I was able to run back inside and grab my camera.
The first time Morgan took the boys out I was terrified they would fall and get hurt, but the dirt is pretty soft and they really can't fall too far from any one point and they love it.
They were "bowling" down the mountain. Usually when Tragon is taking his naps we go outside and play if it's warm enough.
Damon can get up by himself, but usually would wait at the bottom for me to run up with him. It's actually a pretty good workout going up and down about 20 times. :)
Of course, have the mountain ended up in my house from their pockets and shoes and socks, but we'll just have to get used to that this Spring and Summer because we love being outside.
A couple weekends ago my mom and sister in law came down to visit, so we blew up the air mattress and it stayed in the extra room for about a week. This was the new parking lot for all the cars.
Logan loves talking on the phone (those are the old ones that don't really work). It's so fun to hear him carrying on a conversation with some imaginary person, although most of the time it's grandma he's talking to.
Playing in the dirt again. Of course we had to take my niece and nephew to the mountain when they came to visit. We even broke out the shovels.
Damon gets along really well with his cousins when he's one on one with them. He was having a great time with Sequoia.
Logan and Lincoln had a blast climbing up the mountain and sliding down and bowling and just getting dirty.
From behind these two could be twins, they both have the cute Charlie Brown head, but turn them around and you can tell, one with bright blue eyes, and one with the darkest of browns.
If you have ever met my mom, you know she is probably the coolest person in the world. I love when she comes and visits, she's always getting down and dirty with the grandkids and teaching me how to be better mom.
They had some pretty awesome roads and holes dug out for the cars.
We had a great time playing and really wore the kids out. I think all of them fell asleep within about 5 minutes of bedtime. That's pretty good for four hyper kids 3 and under. That left us to have a girls movie night while Morgan was at a YM activity.
Logan has always been my "clean" child, but when it comes to digging and playing in the dirt and climbing and hiking he's all boy and doesn't really mind it at all. We had a really great time and I hope that we can do it again sometime soon! And hopefully the weather will be just a tad bit warmer. Maybe I'll stay caught up on my blog this go around too. I really want to try and post shorter entries that deal with the day to day humor that I find and then maybe blogging won't be so daunting. So, until next time.....

The Basement Revealed

I didn't take many pictures, but I did get this video of our basement. It's kinda shaky since I was walking around, but at least now we have a record.

We learned a lot in the process of finishing our basement and it was a fun project, but we're sure glad it's done. We're still pretty busy and I'm starting to wonder how we ever found the time to do the basement, because we thought once it was done we would have tons of time to play and have fun, but somehow we are just as busy. Oh well, at least we have a fun place to play.

This other video is of Tragon laughing, you can kind of make it out over Damon's laugh, he was laughing even harder before I finally ran upstairs and grabbed the camera. I sure love my boys. Right now we can just hardly wait until warmer weather, it has been so nice to be playing outside more. We wore Logan out so much yesterday he almost fell asleep at the dinner table. Until next time...

February in a Nutshell

February is one the worst months of the year for me. I start the year with great ambitions and motivation and do really well during January to meet all my goals. Then February hits along with reality and I'm not doing so great anymore. The biggest goal though in attending the temple once a month happened, but just barely on the last possible day of February that we could go and even then we staggered it so we wouldn't have to get a babysitter for sick kids. Anyway, March will be better it always is after a little February humility and another boost to re-commit to goals.

The most recent family photo. Some days it takes a second to register that I have 3 kids which means we are a family of 5! It's pretty crazy most of the time, but I sure love all my boys.
Logan was not cooperating this for the camera, but Damon was happy to oblige.
Usually over President's Day we find ourselves down in St. George, but with the work on the basement almost complete we decided to stay up here and my parents came up here for the weekend. The basement is officially finished!!! It's been so nice to have a place for the boys to play and to have a tantrum room back and not have the loud echoing coming from down there. :)
We really enjoyed having Grandma and Papa over and wished they could have stayed longer. Hopefully we'll get to see them again soon. Honestly, the past couple weeks are just a blur of business. I'm sure there was more that happened. We didn't really do much for Valentine's Day, at least not on Valentine's. The boys got a little treat which they didn't end up to fond of, but I have yet to catch the holiday itch and go all out for the holidays, maybe when Logan is older and hears about other cool stuff all his friends do, I may have to step up my game, but until then, I really enjoy low key holidays. I did a "14 Days of Valentines" for Morgan and each day I put a little note in his lunch along with a treat or love note and he even got a couple "presents" like a watch and a gift card for itunes. He surprised me a few days before with some beautiful flowers that actually managed to survive the weekend and then some.

I also became a Volunteer Site Coordinator for bountiful baskets. My cousin had been doing it, but she's pregnant and was able to pass it on to me. It's been really fun. I'm only "in charge" every other week and we have a really good group of volunteers. Bountiful Baskets has sort of been my "thing" that I do every Saturday and I love it. I love having the variety of produce and good food around, someday maybe my kids will even help me eat some of the veggies instead of just the fruit. And it's saved us a ton of money that we would have been spending on groceries.

Other than another round of colds we're all doing well and wishing it were Spring. I think I've got Spring fever and now I have a new grand scheme of how we can do some square foot gardening, I just hope it works out, I would love to have a garden and have the boys "help" me with it, I think it would help us get outside more this spring and summer. So, until next time....which will hopefully be in a week and not another month. :)

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...