Dear little baby

Dear baby unborn, we are getting very excited about your arrival.

This is Claire, the one who lovingly jabs at you. I'm so glad you finally kicked her back yesterday. She believes me that you're really in there now, I wish you could have seen her face! "Oh! Baby in there!"

This is your oldest sister, Emmy. She loves to talk about you and what you'll be like and all the things that she'll be able to do with you.

And your brother, Jonah. He hopes you're a boy, but he did say this evening that really he just wants a baby, even if it's a girl.

We have so many things to show you! Most of them outside. You've spent a lot of time outside from inside me already. You know those rushes of fresh oxygen you get in the mornings? That's when we're on the front porch, savoring the coolness.

Oh, be prepared to see this face leaning in a lot. Her babies get lots of kisses, and I imagine you will be adopted into her family shortly after your birth.

I promise to try to keep you out of her little plastic baby strollers and high chairs and cradles, but forgive me if, at some point, you end up in one of them. 

Jonah will prepare you for the times that I may have to... uhmm... clean your facial features. It happens to him all the time. It's part of life, kid! You're headed for it soon!

She thinks it's funny, but little does she know that she's next.

We have lots of great tricks to teach you!

And please don't be too frightened when Mr. and Mr. Hair come to call. 

Why is it that my kids call this trick Mr. Hair? Wouldn't Mrs. Hair be more appropriate? Hmmm. Maybe Katie started that one. 

Dear little one. Katie loves you too, and can't wait to meet you. I promise she's not always scary like in the above photo. 

Expect her to give you looks like this one often. You are very lucky to be born into this family, which includes her.

Dear baby, you wiggle and squirm and hiccup inside me. I wiggle and squirm and hiccup with excitement to see you, rather than only feel you. I already know you, I already love you.

Did I do it?

Here I am, attempting to post from my iPad. I haven't figured out movies yet, but I'm getting closer. I can feel it! It's right there! Lingering just beyond the grasp of my frail, oldish, pregnancy ridden brain!
Jonah would like to show you his recent bicep growth.

See? That post was so worth reading.

Let's put this backyard to use

Once upon a time, because it was Katie's birthday, and because it was Caleb's birthday, and because he might have turned 30 but who's counting, and because the weather was perfect, and because we had green grass and a grill and neighbor's with tables and chairs who like to share, and because my father-in-law is a grill master, and because I was determined to show Caleb that he does, in fact, have friends...

we had a barbecue. 

It's true! We really did! See? Pictures! Pictures by Tess, of course, because I was busy being busy. 

These are exactly the kind of pictures I wish I could take, you know? Exactly. They're perfection. I don't actually want to put forth the effort to learn how to do it myself, though, so I whine and beg her to grace every event that I'd like recorded. 

Luckily she likes to take pictures, and also likes to share them, and also likes me. 

It's very similar to the way that I convince her to finish every sewing project I ever start, cut my hair, give me fashion advice, and shampoo my carpets. 

This little's boys face? Also perfection.

The convincing Caleb that he had friends totally worked, thank you very much.

I've always had these unspoken fears that if I had a bunch of people over for a gathering they'd all sit around awkwardly and stare at the ground and the food would burn and I'd forget to make sure there was gas in the grill tank.

Turns out, when you have happy chatty friends like us, there's no need to be concerned about awkward silences. These people are so adorably cute I can hardly stand it.
And the grill ran! The whole time! Even though I did actually forget to check and make sure there was gas in the tank.

The birthday peoples were happy, the adult guests were happy,

and thanks to our landlord's bouncy house - the Kiddos were happy! 

Bouncy houses do have a tendency to cause trouble, but they have a greater tendency to cause smiles. 

And static.

And Katie has a tendency to attract children and cause many giggles.

And for those kids who were waiting for a turn in the bouncy house, there's always the rock wall full of lizards to provide endless hours of entertainment. 

I didn't realize this until recently, but my neighbors do not have the lizard colonies that we do. Isn't that strange? There are many rocky walls in my neighborhood, but they all say they're relatively lizard free. 

We love the little guys! There is not one spider to be seen in the whole rock wall that borders our long yard. It's the best, man. 

Oh, and there was a brief sighting of J. J. Coolness.
Until the little guy stole his sunglasses back from her, giving her that "you're odd" look.

Oh, and because Caleb doesn't eat cake,

I have to get creative. Last year it was oreos, this year it was watermelon.

And honestly, this was one of the best tasting birthday cakes I've eaten. I've never been so refreshed after eating cake!

So, like I said, thanks to the fact that people are happy and generous and friendly, back yard barbecues are not so scary after all. 

In fact, they're pretty fun.

Although, Caleb's last comment before collapsing into bed that night was
"That was really fun, thank you Jayne. Let's not do it again for a few years."

Bless his 30 year old heart:)

Stop it already.

There have been moments in my Motherhood when it's been obvious to me that my kids were getting older. 

Now, my kids are still very little. I'm not packing their bags and booking our second honeymoon yet, I'm just saying that even little kids get bigger. 

Milestones! That's what I'm talking about! Milestones!

Like when Claire learned to pull on her pants all by herself.

Like when Jonah yelled from the bathroom "I can reach the TAP!"

Like when Emmy lost her first tooth. 

And when she learned to ride a two wheeler!
Caleb had to teach her. My girth and I couldn't keep up!

 Jonah's quite determined to keep up, as always, and we may be seeing some two wheeling from him later this summer.

 She's been riding around on our grass for a week or two, because we don't have anything smooth to ride on at our house. A few practice runs around my Mom's driveway, then a trip down to the church parking lot to seal the deal. It's official now!

 Speaking of determined to keep up. Although Claire prefers to push her "honey train" rather than ride on it. Whatever floats your boat, my dear!
Oh, and who knows about the name she gave her bike. That's just what she calls it!

 We also tried a little frisbee, with bike helmets for safety of course.
:)

 Then Claire put our safety measures to naught by riding the honey train down the hill.

Many times. Very fast.

So, like I was saying, my kids are getting bigger.

But not too big.

Fancy Nancy to the Max!

As previously mentioned, Emmy and I had a little partay to attend last week, and let me tell you; we know how to party. 

See? Proof, right there.

What? It was a Fancy Nancy party! Which meant that we had to don every single piece of plastic jewelry that the dress up box held, as well as every hair clip/bow/band/flower we could find.

We have this crazy local library, and it comes complete with a crazy children's librarian whom we adore, and they put on crazy events like this just for the fun of it. That's our lady being fancy in the back there, with all the rest of the little fancies.

We even found a friend there! Hi, L!

Each girl got to have the stage to herself to be "introduced", and Emmy performed her curtsies and twirls perfectly:) She didn't get it from me.

Although I did paint her nails! And when I finished, most of the polish was even on her nails! How about that.

We had mini etiquette lessons, and practiced them with our delicate lunch items.

See? Check out that pointed pinky finger! Oh yeah, we were posh.

Thank you, Emmy, for bearing with your chubby Mom and for teaching her a thing or two about being BLING!

A visit, in pictures.

Hi blog, it's me. Jayne. Here I am! I am here. Your creator and abandoner. Is that a word? 

But I'm back. Physically, if not completely mentally. 

Caleb bought me an iPad in hopes that I would blog more, wasn't that nice of him? If that's not encouragement I don't know what is. Although I am currently blogging from my best friend iMac because I can't figure out how to blog on the iPad without it being in HTML mode and I don't speak that language. Any thoughts?

A few weeks ago we had visitors.

A lovely lady and her two lovely daughters settled their wings on our home for a few days, and while I had never met them before, and it had been 10 years since Caleb had seen them last, it was friends at first sight. They were absolutely delightful, and we're looking forward to seeing them again.

Caleb served a mission for our church way back in 2001, and down there in Alabama he met this woman and her then toddlers, and taught her the Gospel. They have kept in contact ever since, and this spring they road tripped out here to see the sights and meet the fam!

Naturally, a day at Temple Square in Salt Lake City was in order, and the day couldn't have been nicer.

Do you know I had never been in this building before? How many hundreds of times have I been to Temple Square, and I had never peeked in and seen the inside of the Assembly Hall before. It's beautiful in there!

 

Our friends had never been west before, had never even seen mountains before! So showing them the sights was such a treat. My kids kept asking them what they thought of our mountains. My littles have never seen plains before, so the thought of no mountains cracks them up.

We ate lunch at the Lion House Pantry, which means my day was perfect.

The next day Emmy and I had a party to attend (more on that later) and the girls asked Caleb to "take them on an adventure in the mountains."

Little did they know what was in store.

Caleb has this thing for back roads, you see, and his 4Runner likes them too.

They survived the back roads over the mountains to our lovely Cascade Springs, and Caleb packed a lunch but forgot the bread for the sandwiches...

But I heard their "picnic" was nice anyway.

I also heard, the next day, her say to my MIL: "We asked him to take us on an adventure, but that was a little more than we were expecting!"

The girl's first snowball fight! This thought of never seeing snow before really did a number on my kids too. 

Jonah was along for the ride as well, but he was only conscious for the first half.

Adventuring can be very exhausting.