Mikey's First Dentist Appt.

Mikey had his first dentist appointment along with Tanner and Jake this morning.  He was very excited and kept talking about how he was going to be brave and a good boy.  And he was right!  He got right up there on the chair and let the hygenist do whatever she needed to!  No cavities for him either!  We left with Jake and Mikey part of the cavity free club!  Tanner on the other hand had a little one that we need to get taken care of.  He is growing up so fast and will do anything to keep up with his brothers!

 We headed to Chick Fil A for lunch that afternoon or maybe it was later that week...I don't really remember.  Chick Fil A is definitely our most frequent stops for a quick lunch!  Jake and Mikey are so sweet and always want to get a balloon for Luke before we leave.  They send them right up to the sky so that Lukey has one too.  Love them for that.

And here is my mother who finally downsized from a 12 passenger van that she has been hauling kids around in for years.... to a little mini cooper!  She has wanted one of these for a long time!  And I am glad she finally got one!  She calls it her baby and I know she was going to name it...although I haven't heard what she came up with!  Can't wait to see her whipping around town in that little blue bullet!:)

Wilder Twins

One of my best friends, Jenny,  had twins about 4 or 5 weeks ago and I really wanted to be able to go see them and help her out a little bit.  The month of November was filling up really fast, but somehow we managed to make it work and I got to fly into Idaho Falls and hang out with her for a couple of days.  They live in Rigby and I haven't been back up to Idaho since Doug and I graduated!  Doug travels up there all the time and is always telling me how much Rexburg and even Idaho Falls have grown, but its been 7 years!!  Luckily Allegiant started to fly there and it is sooo convenient and pretty cheap too!   

I was also lucky because I got to see Rebekah!!  She was still in Rexburg for Fall semester.  So one day Jenny and I went and met up with at her apartment and we went to lunch.  Then we went to see parts of BYU-I!  It is sooo different, but awesome!  It was fun to take a trip down memory lane even if a lot of the town has changed.  The twins....Emmy and Lucy are darling of course and soooo tiny!  I don't know how much of a help I was, but it was definitely nice to hold those sweet  babies and make some trips to Target and run other errands around Idaho Falls with Jenny.  I wished we lived closer to them and maybe someday we will, but for now random trips to see each other will have to do:)l!!

Rebekah was heading to Provo to spend Thanksgiving with Jonathan and Melinda, and my flight home was out of Salt Lake so it worked out perfectly and I just drove down to Provo with Rebekah! We made a stop at Tai Pan(I wish we had that store in AZ so bad) and then headed to JB's house.  It was fun to see Libby and little/big Holden!!  They are so cute and of course Melinda had whipped up some homemade pizza for dinner...I think I ate like 5 pieces.:)  Then it was off to the airport so that I was home in time for Thanksgiving the next day!!  It was a short trip, but totally worth it.  Thanks to Melis for filling in for me and doing my daily run arounds!!  I'm pretty sure she was exhausted by the end of the four days! At least Doug was there for bedtime and after work for a little relief.   Don't know what I would do without her!

Giving a Garden a Go...

 When we bought our house I was excited because we already had a garden box that was built back by our basketball court.  What I didn't know is that Doug was thinking about ripping that garden box out and expanding his basketball court.  Of course he wanted to move the garden to another area in the yard, but who knows when that was going to happen.  So for a while I thought that planting anything in the garden was pointless if he was just going to tear it down.  But when he decided that we needed a garden and that he was going to postpone his court expansion plans:)....I went to work.  The previous owners had never planted in the box though so I was kinda starting from ground zero.  I definitely didn't know how hard the dirt was that was in the box and holy cow was it hard!!!  I was trying to till it really good so that I could put a good layer of fresh soil on top and I thought it would be a quick fix, but boy was I wrong!  This dirt was tough!  There were these massive boulders of mixed concrete and hard hard soil that I thought were just rocks...thats how hard they were.  I really had to put my back into it to get it ready for the plants.  It was a definite work out!!  I was so sore from tilling that dirt!  But I knew I had to get those plants in before it cooled down too much!  So once I got it to a good place, and poured and mixed the soil with the dirt, we were ready to plant!  I have some amazing gardeners in my life that I kept calling and asking for advice.  Doug's mom has an amazing garden and the boys love to pick from it and help water it whenever we go to Denver in the summer...she has a green thumb for sure.  As well as my sister Erin who has done her fair share of gardening here in AZ!  So she was also a go to person.   But I am NO green thumb!

Melissa, Jaycee, and the boys helped a bunch and when all was said and done we had planted carrots, green onions, lots of broccoli, strawberries, asparagus, and romaine lettuce.  I'm crossing my fingers and praying for something to grow!  If I get one or two carrots I will feel like I have accomplished something!

It's a....

 ...GIRL!!!  

I know what you are thinking!  A girl???  Because I was almost positive that this little baby was another boy.  I haven't felt different with this pregnancy and maybe deep down I was hoping that it was going to be a boy.  Not because I don't want a girl....I will/would LOVE a girl!  Besides getting over the fact that I may never have one after having four boys, I think deep down I was hoping and trying to relive my pregnancy with Luke, and that if this baby was a boy that it was going to be Luke again.  I know this sounds weird and crazy, but somethings just make you want to go back in time.  No baby will be able to replace my Luke, but we are very very very excited for this little girl to come to our family.  She is going to be my sweet tender mercy because in all reality I don't know if I could emotionally have another boy right now and pull out all my boy stuff again and I honestly believe that the Lord knew that.  

Doug is so excited for a girl too....I mean honestly, he should be right?  He has four boys!:)  She is going to have him wrapped around her finger the second she arrives, I just know it.  And she is bound to be slightly spoiled....just slightly:).  It's pretty inevitable...she is the first girl and the only one!  I will try to keep my shopping hobby to a minimum. (yeah right:))

We made the technician check multiple times to make sure nothing was hiding and she was wide open and willing to show us that she wasn't a boy.  Although, the pic kinda looks like it, I came home and compared her picture to Lukes ultrasound picture showing that he was a boy and they are COMPLETELY different.  I mean....she's got nothing there and he had a lot there, so I felt better.:)  I'm glad she wasn't being shy though because that would have given me second thoughts too.

Tanner knew we were having the ultrasound today and he wanted to go really bad.  He went to Luke's ultrasound in Denver when we found out and he completely remembers that, so he didn't want to miss out.  But since he had school I promised him that I wouldn't tell the other boys until he got home.  By the time he got home from school though he had forgotten about the whole thing.  I had gone to Wal-mart and tried to find anything and everything pink I could find.  There wasn't a ton, but I found enough pink candy and junk to make it fun for the boys and J.  Melis and I made Doug and Kyle take the boys and J on a bike ride while we set it all up and then when they walked in we told them that we were having a "Pink Party' and if they knew why!?  They immediately knew it was a girl and they were all so excited and giddy!:)  It's funny how they always have told me that they wanted a boy but with this pregnancy for some reason they have all wanted a girl!  So I am grateful for them that we got one!:)  No disappointment there!

Bring on the PINK!!!

Fall Flag Football

Tanner gave flag football a go this fall.  His team was half little boys from his church class so that was really fun for him.  I was nervous at first for him to play because he really isn't the aggressive type at all and I know its not tackle, but he still has to get in there and get those flags and he isn't too contact if you know what I mean.  But Carson Brown did a great job coaching and Tanner loved it and had a great time!  I really like the I9 league here in Chandler because it makes sure that every child gets a good amount of playing time and a different child is picked each game and given a medal for that game.

 Isaac Brown and Tanner

 Half-time oranges.

 Tanner got his medal at the end of a game where he had also scored a touch down!  Go Tanner!!  He was sooo happy and it is so fun to see him so excited!  Cute boy.

 Here they are in action.  Mammy was down for Luke's birthday weekend and Tanner just happened to have a game so she got to come and watch!!  

 And this kid....I don't know what I am going to do with him!

No Diapers???

That's right, he is officially potty trained!  No more diapers for Mikey!  I have never potty trained as early as two and a half. I mean, if my boys want to sit on the toilet then fine, but I never push it before age three.  But when Melissa was going to potty train Jaycee I thought I better give it a go and Mikey wanted to, so I said okay!  The first go was hit and miss...he was doing great but then he got really sick.  I'm talking throw up and diarrhea and there was no way we were going to potty train through that.  It was pretty sad and he wanted to keep wearing underwear, but I had to explain to him that we could try again when he wasn't sick so that we didn't have any accidents.  We were heading to Newport for the first week of Fall break and I wasn't going to worry about it there, so I figured maybe when we got back.  I'm not going to lie though, he wasn't doing as good with it when we got back from our trip and I was sooooo close to throwing in the towel!  But we still had another week of Fall break and we didn't have anywhere to be so I knew that this was the perfect chance to give it another go.  And I am so glad that I did because it just clicked!!!  And he has been my best potty trained boy yet!!  He never (okay rarely)) has an accident and he even sleeps through the night dry!  No pull-ups for him!  His older brothers can't even say that! It's seriously a miracle!  By the time he had it down he didn't even care about his big reward and as you can tell from the sticker chart, he got over that idea rather quickly too and he would just go potty without needing any reward!  AMAZING!   He really does want to keep up with his brothers in any way possible and he definitely is when it comes to the toilet!  So thank you Mikey for making this rather easy on your MOM!!

Newport Beach- Fall Break

For Fall Break this year we headed to Newport Beach!  This seems to become a family tradition we have started just the last two years.  Newport   October is the perfect time for a family vacation after Doug's busy summer of traveling.  It seems to be a little more of a down time for him and so we like to take advantage.    Kyle, Melis, Boyd and Niki had already been there for a week and were staying in the lower level of a beach house that was right on the board walk the previous week.  We headed over the following week with the Nygrens and were soooo excited to hit the beach!!  Luckily the upper level in the same beach house was available and we bunked up there with the Nygrens!  It was a blast!  The boys were in heaven spending 24 hours with their friends and cousins, never having to do their hair:), and pretty much living in their swimming suits! The house was right on the boardwalk....literally 3 feet from the beach.  We could be sitting in the house and the kids playing in the sand right outside the door.   It was perfect!! They would spend hours and hours searching for beach creatures, building sandcastles, jumping waves, and exploring the rocks!  We ate a TON of donuts (and other food of course).....played hard on the beach....had bonfires...rode the ferry to Balboa....went on bike rides...and just relaxed!  It is what I call a TRUE vacation and total family time!  We decided not to venture to Disneyland this year(it is only 20 minutes away), but that is the nice thing about going each year, sometimes we may want to and other times we won't!  It's just nice to be able to not really plan anything and just wing it.  No itinerary...just some true R&R!!  We cannot wait to go back next Fall break!!  

To be continued...