4 Pictures from me because Jayne does not post anymore.

 Did anyone else notice that Jayne's posts are growing more rare? You would think she's growing a baby or something. hmmmph.

Well here is the last week. Bike riding: Thanks Jayne.

 Fishing. Thanks Zack. (Zack probably caught this fish and let me hold it so I could look cool with a fish longer than 3 inches.)

Canyoneering. Thanks Levi. That was a long 15 mile day. Lots of sand. In places where it doesn't belong.

 Last a drive into the hills: Thanks Jonah. Only, we eventually were stopped by unmelted snow. We did get to help some nice folks in a Jeep get unstuck though. Sissy's.

We are all beat, but happy its somewhat warm. 

Did I ever mention that I love that Jonah kid? If you've never met him you should, he's great. 

Guest Post: Emmy!

Emmy had a great day with her Grandma last week, and she'd like to tell you about it. Let's see what she says! I lurve doing this. 

This is Emmy. One morning, my Mom came to wake me up because Lala was coming to get me. 

 When Lala got here, I was so excited! And when we got there, to the Secret Garden, the first thing we saw was the bridge.

The Secret Garden is at Thanksgiving Point, and it took us like four hours to get there.

Then I wanted to dip my toes into the water like the girl, but I didn't really. See? That's me!

Guess what? These flowers looked like snowballs. I said that, but I don't know why! They were really poofy and soft. I don't know what they smelled like, they just smelled like a poof of snow.

A while later, after we had been walking, I found a ladybug on my sock! So Lala took a picture of it. And there it is! It's red and black polka dots. Then I flicked it off into the grass.

This is me going into the secret garden! I found the door! We couldn't guess which door it was, but it was this door.

I'm looking in!

I was pretending that I was walking in a dream. Well, when I walked in there was a huge fountain in front of me, so I just ran to it. There was pennies in it, I noticed.

This is me smiling at Lala.

I took some flower pictures. See? There's the flowers. I couldn't get any pink in it. I was trying to get the pink roses behind them, but I only got the purple and orange. See if you can find any pink in the next picture!

Look! There's me behind all the flowers. I'm sorry you can't see me very good.

I took a picture of Lala. Oh, those are Lilacs. I just remembered that. Lala likes Lilacs.

This is a sign. The Secret Garden, this way!

 This is me trying to take a picture of myself, and I forgot to smile! Can you see Lala in the background? She's so funny. She's my Grandma. Do you have a funny Grandma? Well if you do, send me back a message about her!

This is me standing by Jesus. He is caring for little chicks. Can you find the little chickens by the Mother?

This is a little stream, and Lala took this picture. And when we looked out the other side, there was a huge waterfall!

Now this is the end of my story. Thank you, Lala. I really liked this day a lot. Good bye.

Hippo Birdie Two Ewe

Claire's birthday was pretty chill this year, which was lovely for this super-chilled-preggy. We do chill around here every chance we get. 

 JoJo came over and brought most of Claire's gifts. I sent her to town with my list and she found everything that I couldn't find in my little mountain town. Which was basically everything, because my little mountain town doesn't have a Target (tragedy) and heaven forbid I go to town, right?

 Lainey came along as well, which is always awesome! She provided the gift-unwrapping-cheering-section. I wish I had words for how much I love my little niece. She makes me laugh like few people can.

 It was very convenient that we decided to wait for the Dad to be home for lunch before we opened gifts, because the baby stroller came unassembled. I know that's not usually a big deal, but what took him 10 minutes to build would have taken my Mom and I at least an hour.

 It was a serious stroller, man. Claire takes her new responsibility as "Little Mommy" very seriously. That's what she calls herself as she's pushing the stroller around. "Leeloll Mahmee!"

A few days later the Kepsel Grand's were in town, and the party continued.

 Among other things, Lala gave Claire a bag of chocolates. She knows this girl.

 Claire did smile that day, I guarantee it. I can't prove it, but it's true.

 Katie found this brilliantly adorable train set, which fits our tracks downstairs. Pink trains! Claire was in heaven. She's a big fan of the train table these days, and having her very own whole train has been the icing on the cake for her.

 Speaking of which... This cake was good, if I do say so myself. I've learned that as long as the only new recipes I try are from Pioneer Woman, they're great! It's the only safe thing to do.

All in all, she turned two as a very happy, healthy, sweet little mop-headed girl. I love her more than I can type. Especially since I have a bandaid on my right center fingertip which is tripping me at the moment.

In other news:

The Peach Trees Blossomed!!

It's going to be a good year.

Swing your way home

 This one thinks that she's much bigger than she actually is.
Or maybe I think she's much younger than she actually is.

 This one still cracks me up with her gappy smile. I hope I never get used to it, because I love extra reasons to laugh.

 This one is currently refusing to get a hair cut. My feelings on that are mixed.

She just turned two. Her birthday this year dawned as beautiful and sunny as the day she was born. Remind me to blog about it, ok?

 If this one ever decides to get any taller I'll start to believe that she's really six. Although, a few minutes in conversation with her convinces me every time that she's at least ten.

 When this one lets me do her shaggy hair, it looks really cute! Which means about once a week it looks really cute. Her face makes up for it:)

 Speaking of shaggy hair. If he ends up with only sisters, he'll manage just fine. A brother would be awesome, but his personality deals with the girls quite well. He's managing to fight all the bad guys who enter our yard pretty good on his own. We girls are well protected:)

I don't know what number four is going to be like, but if he/she follows after her/his siblings in any way, he/she will be super great.

It begins

It's here! It came. 

It's not going to last through the week, but it's here for a few days at least. 

People, I'm talking about 80 degrees. It happened. 

We've been outside soaking it up and loving every second of it, which makes for some very dirty kids. Playing outside at our house basically directly translates to playing in the dirt. 

On the evening of the first sunny day, I plopped them all in the tub and we did a good scrub down. I should have taken a photo of the bath water after they got out, then you would really know what I was talking about. You might also want to turn me in to Child Services. Dirt can't hurt, right? 

Then, as soon as we got out to the living room to put on jammies, out the front window what to our wondering eyes did appear, but a cute worker Dad and his... dirt digging... machine. 

That rhymed. 

 Despite just getting the grime off, they were immediately back outside to watch.

 I did constrain them to the rocks, rather than to rolling in the freshly tilled earth like they wanted to.
Harsh, I know.

Our noses were just a quivering with the smell of spring, you should have seen us. We looked like a little flock of bunnies sitting there on the rocks watching him go back and forth with the tiller and turn up the soil.

Emmy: "Mom, I just love the smell of fresh dirt."

 Me: "Me too, Emmy. What do you think it smells like?"
Emmy: "Worms."

Ok.

 Claire was content to sit on my lap. She was getting quite sleepy by this time, as it was nearly 9pm. My camera did a pretty good job of capturing the little bit of light that was left. It was way darker than these photos show!
This is me leaning back as far as the non-muscles in my stomach would let me in order to get a photo of her.

 She would like you to meet Pumba.

 Caleb had been in the garage working on my van for the last 17 hours, so getting outside and breathing some fresh dirt air was needed, despite the late hour. He was so much happier after this! I'm telling you, Gardening is the best therapy - PLUS you get tomatoes!

I eventually sent the minions inside while I helped Caleb finish up. "Helped" meaning lending moral support from my spot on my rock.

 They couldn't stop watching though, despite the directions to go brush their teeth.

But honestly, it wasn't like I could get after them. Who could?!

It's not a tumor

Pregnancy is so weird. It's so weird! 

Being the epitome of pregnant for the fourth time has not lessened the weirdness one bit, either. All four have been so different. It's amazing how many times the same thing can be different. Endless, I suspect.

Yesterday morning, for example, I had an amazing breakfast of Organic yogurt with granola and fresh berries, followed up with some toast and homemade strawberry jam, fresh squeezed orange juice, and a grapefruit. Then a bit later I had a bean and cheese burrito, because I was hungry again.

Then, I promptly threw it up. All of it.

Then I walked back into the kitchen and ate two bowls of ice cream.

And after that I felt great!

Last night my right hip wouldn't stay put, so I had to hobble through getting the kids into bed. That was a new one for me. Loosey Goosey Tendons!

The wigglings coming from within are getting stronger, and the kids have finally felt their little sibling saying hello. I need a good nickname for this baby, any suggestions? A cute, non gender type? Not knowing the gender makes it tricky to refer to my baby without calling it "It" and that's just not kosher.

We're all about being kosher around here.

So happy we could have this talk today.

(Don't worry. The mustache lastest a whole 3 minutes. First and last one of his life, I guarantee it.)