Pregnancy, Birthday, and Life in General

Here's some little bits of what's been happening at our house

A beautiful sunrise

Kelsey showing interest in potty training. She likes to wear her sisters' underwear over top of her clothes and every single time one Bryn or Madi goes to the bathroom, she runs in there with them and sits on her potty. It's pretty cute. I'm just trying to follow her lead.

Funny story about this...one of our favorite family games is hide and seek, and this large cupboard under their bathroom sink is one of the little girls' favorite places to hide. One day I had a basket of clean laundry (all our whites) sitting outside the laundry room waiting for me to fold it. I came upstairs and found a bunch of clothes strewn across the hallway, and leading into the bathroom. I picked up what was there and thought, hmm...I could've sworn this was a much bigger load! Then the kids started saying they were out of clean underwear, which I didn't understand as I had just washed them all! A couple days later I went to clean the bathroom and found the rest of my laundry shoved inside, making a nice bed for Curious George. I just had to laugh, picturing Kelsey taking trip after another back and forth from the basket to shoving it under here. At least we solved the mystery of the missing underwear!!

Another Kelsey shot :) We had a huge heat wave come through and we were consistently in the high 30's and even 40's for a week or two. Well it melted a lot of snow, and turned Anchorage into a giant sheet of ice. We really wanted to go outside because it was so warm, but it was like ice skating around, and pretty dangerous, especially on our driveway! The kids slipped and fell almost every day getting in and out of the car. One day we decided to go for a walk anyway to get out of the house. Here's Kelsey on the ice, wearing MY hat, and MY gloves--just because she wanted to. She couldn't see anything it was so funny.

A recent project I did. Some of our favorite pictures or favorite memories from the year 2013 up on our kitchen wall.

The kids play this hilarious game where they string all their animals upside down in the soccer goal and pretend they're roasting them!! Hahaha I think it's so morbid and funny. They call this game "Sweet Meat!" Which I'm sure was Tyler's idea.

Tyler draws some pretty cool stuff every day, and has even gotten creative with the Etch A Sketch. 

This was the picture I used to announce my pregnancy on social media (facebook and instagram). I am 14 1/2 weeks along right now, due around August 7th. I'm feeling better now and feel like we survived the worst of it. Although I must admit, this pregnancy was not nearly as bad as my others have been. I don't know why. I like to think it's because it's a boy, but I threw up a lot with Tyler too, so I'm not sure what was going on, but I was spared of the daily puking this time around. (As long as I didn't take my prenatal vitamin...) I certainly wasn't feeling great for many many weeks, but knowing how much worse it normally is we were extremely grateful. Kenny's a huge help to me during those rough times. He is good at encouraging me to do things simpler. He would come home from Costco with frozen meals, and never balked once when I would call him from work and ask him to please pick up something on the way home because I just couldn't do dinner (again) that night. We were thrilled to go to the ultrasound at 9 weeks and see that little tiny baby with a strong heart beat, alive and healthy. I was so super nervous and couldn't sleep the night before for worry at what we would see. I never used to get worried, but the miscarriage really shocked me and made me so unsure. But we are very excited to be having another baby join our loud and crazy family:).

Yet another funny Kelsey. She has perfected the art of pouting/sulking. It really is hard not to laugh at her because it's so darn cute. I must say, I prefer this to the screaming and hitting. Pout all you want, it's much quieter and cuter :)

Kenny and I went on a date the weekend before my birthday. We had a lovely time listening to the Anchorage Symphony perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It was a great evening, and always nice to hear music performed that I'm familiar with.

My birthday was on Tuesday, the 4th. I turned 27!! (Yes, that is the only picture we have, but that's okay.) It was a fairly uneventful day. We did pick up dinner at Olive Garden (I don't feel as bad about having 4 kids share 1 entree if we eat at home). But it wasn't until after soccer, so we didn't eat dinner till almost 8:00 p.m., which is normally when the kids are in bed! It was probably the first time we've ever eaten that late haha.

 I woke up that morning feeling so overwhelmed with gratitude. Nobody ever really knows how life is going to play out and what will happen to them. But I am so so happy! I just have such a beautiful, blessed life (even though it's obviously not perfect and easy) and feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I know the Lord blesses me with so much more than I deserve, and while I realize how very undeserving I am, it also is humbling and makes me want to be better to be worthy of it all. 

Here's Kelsey enjoying my Costco cake :)