Try, try again

I know, can you believe it! I am so excited to post tonight. I am constantly urged (inspired) to record our little family's history, and after some thought and heart prayers I have decided that for now, this is the best way to do that. I still have my own personal journal, as well as my children's personal journals that I record major or special moments in, but I really have a strong desire to be more consistent with getting our lives recorded. And I have started and stopped before, but I am not letting that get me down! Because although I am not perfect, I want to be perfect in trying because that's really what it's all about. So I will try! To weekly post about our family happenings. Sometimes just saying it and telling someone you're going to do it is motivation enough, right?!!

Well I decided to start this one on January 22, 2015 with little Lucy Michelle being born into our family. This sweet babe came straight from heaven and has graced our home for a month now. My dear mother came to help out for a week, true to tradition. She also made her famous chicken salad for me (she made it when I had Cole and it's one of those tastes-so-good-now-cause-it-sure-did-then dishes), cleaned, played, loved, and just made life more comfortable and easy while she was here. I hope to be as amazing as she is when I'm her age. I love her.

Isn't she so beautiful?!! And a great dresser.

 

Here I am resting (momma's orders) the day before Lucy was born. 

 I knew our traditional 23rd pie wouldn't happen if I actually tried to make it on the 23rd so I made it a little early this month. Chocolate cream with an Oreo crust! It was very tasty.

 Night before - last belly shot. 

 Morning of - getting all situated.

 First picture of little Lucy. 7 lb 1 oz, 19.5 in

First family of six photo :)

Leaving the hospital

 Taking this sweetie home with us! In the truck, traditionally.

 This girl loves her sister. And all things baby. But she is so happy that we have a real live baby she just can't stand it.

 Morning hangout in our bed, it's prime real estate by the babe. Everyone fighting for a spot next to her.

 Admiring 

 Beautiful! 

 We cuddled and she fell asleep on me, just a couple days old.

Kate's face here is priceless, it's that "Awwwwwww" as if she's just so cute I can't stand it face.

She does whatever I do, she's been my little shadow and I have her eyes on me about 90% of the day. You can tell she's watching and learning so closely! She set up her own changing station and bathtub for her baby in the living room corner.

Lucy's first stroller outing to the park! 

Oak Meadows Park - we love this place! We usually have it to ourselves, it's super close to our house, and there are cool bushes and a big open grass space right by it. Lots of room to play.

We (Mom) took everyone to Get Air for a night of fun. I was so glad Tyler got to go. He had as much fun as the kids.

How many grandmas does it take to change a one week old baby? Two apparently :) What a lucky girl to have such great grandmas in her life.

So when Lucy was one week old we took off to drive to Utah to show her off to family there. With Tyler having 5 weeks off for paternity leave, we knew we wanted to take advantage of the time and get over there. She traveled so well and slept in the car literally the whole time except waking up to eat every 3 hours. We thought we were going to go play in the snow but instead we got beautiful weather! It was fun to play outside and especially be with cousins and family.

We had a great time bowling!

It's amazing all the things you can get done while you're on the potty. All three are pros at multitasking while going to the bathroom!

Pretty babe

Lucy at 2 weeks old

We went out for Valentine's weekend with our friends Matt and Candace, had a great time playing games at Power Up.

Getting bigger! We love her little fuzzy baby chick hair.

For President's Day we went to the coast in the afternoon. Kids played in the water, built sand towers, played on the dunes, and flew kites. It was amazing weather and such a memorable day.

Lucy's first trip to the ocean!

My strong pack horse

One perk of being there late in the day was seeing the beautiful sunset over the water.

We had sick kids around our place the last few days, first Cole then Luke then Kate. So sad!

Nothing so cute as baby toes

Tyler made breakfast for dinner one night and was experimenting with the bacon grease. He tried fried french toast and Oreos. The kids loved both!

Cole made the part of a monkey in the Missoula Children's Theater production of "The Jungle Book". It was a great experience for him to get to practice and perform, I was really proud of how he overcame his nervousness (it's amazing what a little positive reinforcement - Dollar Store- can do) and played his part so well. Still can't get "Monkey See Monkey Do" song out of my head...

One month old! 

This week now is the last week Tyler has off before heading back to work. I feel like we've been living in this ideal bubble of a life, having two parents at home and I've been super spoiled. Tyler works lots of hours so this has been such a blessing to our family! I'm anticipating a sad week for all of us but more than that I'm just so grateful for such an amazing month with our daddy :)

No news is good news!

It's a true saying for us, but no news doesn't mean NO news. We have been busy busy, as usual.

We have lived in Oregon for 6 months now! Half of a year. And we're still not settled in :) We took our home off the market in December after trying to sell it for 3 months and are renting it to a really sweet lady that takes great care of it. But we really feel strongly that we shouldn't buy until we sell, so in December we also moved into a small 2 bd 1 bth apt. so we could have our own place and save up some money for a few months while we figure out our next move :)  There are definitely many plusses to having such a small space, mostly the fact that when I clean for 10 minutes the place is so small that it is super rewarding. The kids are all sharing a room and it's working out great. I'm so grateful for such adaptable, happy children. I've really learned about what makes and keeps a family happy, and it definitely isn't having a "house". We are happy because we read and play together, study the scriptures and learn about Christ together, have traditions and routines that are unique to us, and because we love each other and we show it. Things are so not important!

Another great part of having our own address is being involved in a ward again. Tyler was called to help in Young Men with the Varsity scouts which is thrilled about (not many people love scouting like he does). I was just recently called to be in primary and am equally thrilled about too. The kids are making friends their age and Cole loves kindergarten and has the best teacher that is really challenging him which he thrives on. Kate and I are still doing Princess Preschool three times a week and it's been such a bonding thing for us. No one can melt my heart or push my buttons like that little girl can. Okay, so my boys melt my heart like her, she's just special cause she's got the button pushing down :)

Another big event in our home lately is me having knee surgery to reconstruct my ACL that I tore on New Year's Day playing volleyball. Which meant 3 weeks of crutches and tons of rest/down time. I am now strong enough to move around without them but very slowly and carefully. And I walk pretty gimpy. It's been reeeeaaaaalllly hard for me to come to terms with this for so many reasons. If I wasn't a mom and had a home to run and little minds to nourish, this would be actually a nice vacation to let others take over and let myself heal. But so much of my identity comes from serving my family and to not have that and not sure when I will be fully back again has been hard. I've learned so much from my mom (who came for a week) and also Lisa, my second mom, who have shown me how to give selflessly and haven't complained one bit as they've taken on all my extra work. They are angels!

Tyler turned 32 recently and has been given a new opportunity at work to be the manager over marketing. I'm so glad they are seeing how great he is and how hard he works and rewarding him for it. He takes care of us in so many ways so well!

Kids are growing, here's some pics to enjoy!

This day we were dancing to some music in the kitchen and Luke kept going over and hugging Kate for no reason. It was sweet.

Gotta love a good horsey ride. Good thing daddy has good knees still!

I just thought they each had a funny face here. It can be hard to sit still for my lame phone camera that takes 5 seconds to shoot.

It's been 3 months since our Disney Cruise and Kate is still spontaneously finding hidden Mickeys! Can you see the one she pointed out to me?

Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what Kate is made of.

This girl is so comfortable on a horse. She'll hop on a pony, saddle or bareback, and ride around the arena or Rod and Lisa's just taking the horse wherever she wants to go, singing songs and talking to him. I hope she gets to continue riding and loving them for a long time, just like her grandmas!

Luke also enjoys a good sit on a pony.

It's fun having an artist for an aunt! I love Kate looking at Cole.

Here are my little bookworms. We go to the library each week and switch out our books, it's a cozy little branch here in Junction City and usually we are the only kids there. We love going.

Had tons of snow days back in winter time, headed out to play as much as we could!

They aren't playing together in this picture, but I love having these two so close in age and being such good friends. They pretend together, wrestle together, read together, play computer games together, I just love it. My biggest wish is that Cole will do the same thing for Kate that Parker did for me; excel at everything so my competitive nature had to try and compete with him and I end up doing ok too :)

Here's our preschool wall that we have. Its amazing having just ONE student to worry about and keep track of! She is such a smartie.

Cole took this, just dancing in the kitchen before my surgery :) Our downstairs neighbors just LOVE us.

 Luke's cute smile.

Here's the crazy frozen rain that kept us stuck at home for three days.

Made a snowman with a mohawk.

One of those snow days was a Sunday, and they cancelled church and Tyler ended up having to go into work (his little Rabbit does awesome in the snow, it had no problem on the roads) so at breakfast the kids and I came up with a list of things to do for the day. We got each one done and had a really great day.

 Kate and Cole love riding their bikes around grandma's house.

Here's my little reader again. Just a couple nights ago I heard her walking around in her room about half an hour after we'd said goodnight, I peeked my head in and she had pulled a stack of books over by the night light so she could read. You don't know how happy this makes my teacher heart feel :)

Hidden Mickey!

Luke loves board books!

Here's been my view for the past 3 weeks. Ice ready to go, doing my electrode shocking for my quad, TED hose on, cozy hospital socks on. I'm not icing near as much now or having to keep it up for as long, and the swelling has gone down a lot. Just working on flexion, need to get it bent more!

This was at my 2 week check up at the dr office when they took out my staples. There were 16 of them! I felt like Frankenstein.

Just Kate playing in the water, she just dumped a gallon of water out of her boots.

I walked in the living room at Lisa's and found Kate reading Luke his favorite book. So sweet.

Playing Sorry with my underwear superhero buddy.

Another random reading moment.

I came out of the apartment and these three were waiting for me so patiently.

 I loved this day, it was one of the first sunny beautiful days we'd had and we went outside to eat lunch. Luke started trying to ride all the dogs.

Then he really wanted to say hi to the donkeys and Buster but it was too muddy.

Such a man's way to do dishes! Watching a movie on his phone. You don't hear me complaining!

We have Spring Break coming up this week, Tyler starts his new position soon and Cole and Kate are signed up for baseball/Tball this spring. Can't wait for it all! :)