Spreading the Love

One of our very favorite holidays at our house is Valentine's Day. I love having little heart-decorations all over the house, making love notes for each other, making heart-shaped food for the kiddos... it's just fun. :) This year the entire week leading up to the holiday was jam packed full of stuff and kept us on our toes, so I didn't have the energy or time to put into lots of little "extras" with this holiday like I normally would. First off, Ryan's medical group is trying to recruit another Pediatrician so as part of the recruiting weekend there were a few events we had to go to. One was a family pot-luck lunch at one of the doctors' houses. We were asked to bring a dessert to feed a crowd so I made a chocolate brownie and strawberry trifle. It was quite decadent and sooo yummy. I ate way too many helpings of it myself. That lunch took up most of our saturday, but we had a good time. 

 After that was a "family valentine's dance" put on by our ward. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and with it starting almost at my kids' bedtime I didn't think we would stay long. But it was actually a really great time!! The kids had multiple crafts to work on and there was a live band. I was super skeptical about the band too but I was put in my place! Really, it was a blast! All 5 of us were out on the dance floor, grooving together. The kids especially got into it when the band performed "Happy". Oh my goodness, I wish I had video taped how over the moon my kids were, out there dancing with us to that song. I will never forget it! Such a special evening with my favorites.

Valentine's Day fell on a week-day so both kids got to have V-day parties with their school classes. Grace even got to make her own box this year, which I honestly didn't know people did anymore. I'm so happy her school does though! Grace wanted to make a tiger (that's the school mascot) and I had an applesauce box that I thought was perfect for an animal head & opening/closing mouth. So Ryan and Grace worked on it together. It turned out awesome!

Grace picked out these printable bookmarks and helped me laminate/cut them for her classmates. She is a great reader these days (literally reads for an entire hour every night by herself) so it was fitting.

For Logan we found these printable Star Wars valentines and attached a tootsie roll. He was super excited.

 A couple of days before the holiday, our local dam (Oroville Dam) was so full that they had to start letting water drain out of it. Well after starting that process the spillway collapsed and created a giant hole in the chute where the water is supposed to go, so they tried to hold off. But in doing so, the water continued to rise and spilled over the emergency spillway... which ALSO started to erode and cause panic. They issued an evacuation order for the whole town of Oroville so it created a lot of chaos. A few days prior to this, our stake presidency had asked if anyone could be called upon to host families from the neighboring Gridley stake, and tons of our stake members said they could. We never got a call to help though, since a lot of the Oroville members wanted to stay down in Chico instead of coming up the hill to Paradise. Since there was SO MUCH NEED all over Chico and Paradise, we felt we needed to help somehow. I started searching for ways to jump in... in one case I was able to help a family by paying for their cartload of items at Kmart (the had to buy some clothes, food, and toys for their kids as they stayed in a hotel with only their clothes on their backs). Another idea we had was to collect diapers of all sizes and wipes to drop off wherever they may be needed. In fact, I started to collect them from friends and my own stashes of diapers Boston grew out of too quickly... and I didn't know yet where I would donate them. There were evacuation centers all over with evacuees, and motels completely full of families in need of everything aside from a roof over their heads. I stayed prayerful and waited to be directed. Finally I was put in touch with a lady who had been searching for size 3 diapers in Chico but the few stores she tried were completely out. But I had some Boston grew out of! This lady had even tried stopping at the Stake Center to see if they had any donated there, but she said the Stake Center had hardly any diapers available. That was my answer! I didn't realize the Stake Center was in need - - I figured they had everything under control there. So I was able to drop size 3s to this family, PLUS drop off all the other diapers and wipes to the stake center. I was so thankful to be able to see a need and jump in with collecting things without knowing beforehand where they were needed. It was a great testament to me that the Lord knows what His children need. If we put ourselves in a position to understand the promptings we receive, then the Lord will guide us to where we are needed.

The kids put together a little goodie-bag for the evacuated family who needed the diapers. They were excited to help too!

Grandma and Grandpa Turner sent a little V-day package and the kids loved getting their notes and treats.

 I made the kids fruit and pink yogurt, toast and juice. Usually I make heart-shaped waffles but I had a lot of stuff going on this week... But they loved it. :)

 So excited to go to school with her tiger box!

Two of my three boyfriends. I sure love them!

 I mentioned that we were helping recruit a new Pediatrician... well his wife and 2 kiddos came to play out our house that afternoon. The little boys loved swinging together. The just BARELY squeezed in there together.

This family also stayed for dinner that evening. I had planned an all-red dinner and it turned out alright. haha. We had ravioli (red sauce), red jello (which didn't set up enough), red juice, strawberries and watermelon, and heart-shaped rolls. It was fun! I meant for it to be sort of "fancy" with the candles, and I remembered to light them, but then I forgot to dim the lights a little bit. Oh well! It was fun having some guests for a silly, fun Valentine's dinner with the kiddos.  

 The "invisible man" dropped off some packages for the kids and they were super excited! They got some candy, straw cups, a teddy bear, a swimsuit, and Boston got some cars, baby food and lotion. It was a fun and VERY busy day.

Boston Lee {9 months old}

Weight: 24 lbs 4 oz (97%)

Height: 31 inches (100%)

Head Circ: 46 cm (74%)

-wearing mostly 18 month clothes now.

-climbing the stairs, climbing up onto stools 

-screams if it takes too long to put food on his tray

-LOVES eating! Nurses 5 times a day, gets "hangry" and needs snacks, and loves feeding himself table-foods. He will eat pretty much anything we are eating and he is awesome, even without teeth!

-naps twice a day still, usually 9:30-10:30am and then 2:30pm-4:00pm. He goes to bed for the night around 7:45/8pm.

-has the sharpest nails, no matter how often I trim them! I have scratches all over from him. It probably looks like I have a cat. 

-reaches out to grab things as fast as he can if he knows I am going to take it away. 

-holds on to things SUPER tight when I'm trying to take it away.

-isn't great with his sippy cup still. He sucks the water in and then lets it fall out of his mouth. He ends up soaked all down his front and his back and seems to rarely swallow it.

-favorite foods include: cheese, PB&J sandwiches, veggie straws, gold fish, roasted veggies, yogurt melts, black beans.

Things that I want to always remember about this age:

-Boston is learning how to give kisses. It's pretty much just putting his open mouth on my cheek, but sometimes he does a "mah" or "pah" too. 

-Learning to clap his hands! I love it. It's my favorite new trick.

-Enjoys having free reign to crawl around the house and poke around wherever he wants. He doesn't like being held back from where he wants to be, or picked up and moved. He's learned to become slippery, dead weight in my arms if he's upset with me. 

-One of Boston's very favorite activities is to open and close drawers and open and close cabinets. It also causes lots of smashed fingers but he's a pretty tough kid and only cries for a few seconds.

-He is the best baby! I particularly love how easily he goes down for naps. In the morning, all I do is wrap his aden & anais blanket around his shoulders while sitting in our rocking chair and he cuddles right into me. We rock for a minute and I sing a song, but sometimes he doesn't even want that and would rather just lay right down in his bed. In the afternoon, because of the timing of school pick-ups, I usually end up nursing him right as he is about to take his nap. He falls asleep and I just lay him in bed. I usually am a FIRM believer in the "feed-play-sleep" cycle (and I still believe in it for young babies in order to get them on a good schedule), but this one small change has helped him transition from 3 naps to 2. It works great for us at this stage!

-I love the smell of Boston when he wakes up from naps. :) It's my favorite.

-His TREE-TRUNK THIGHS!! They are seriously massive. His whole body is just HUGE. We all think he's going to end up over 6 feet. Crazy boy.

-He likes to suck his bottom lip in and then blow it out, and does that over and over. It's hilarious.

 Cousins wearing the same t-shirt, 2,500 miles apart. They're pretty much the same size too. haha

 Trying to grab daddy's fruit roll up. This boy will eat anything.

 Watching his siblings swim.

 Happy boy at Costco! Especially with veggie straws on board.

 These boys!!! They are just the cutest.

 Why is this boy so BIG?!

 "What? Do I have avocado on my face?"

 He likes to poke around in the pantry and make messes, but I just let him. Hey, he's content and he's safe and I can see him the whole time. ;) 

We are so lucky to have this BIG boy in our family. He is absolutely adored! Love ya, buddy.

A Great Big Catch-Up

I'm behind on my blog again... Life just gets so busy and a certain baby I know won't allow me to be on my computer when he's awake. But posting these photos and memories is SO super important to me because I start to forget details if I leave it for too long. So in order to catch up I'm doing a bit of a photo-dump.

A few months ago, we had our kids' photos sketched. It's sort of a long story, but in a nutshell the person who does these sketches wanted to advertise his services and the clinic people wanted to use the sketches as decor in the office. Sort of random... but they asked if our kids could be the models, and it was free to us, so why not. They turned out pretty great! Now they're hanging in Ryan's clinic.

 Logan's isn't done yet but here's Boston's. It's pretty amazing work!

 Grace and Logan are obsessed with Star Wars and superheroes (Avengers) right now. Ryan feeds into it as well because he loves those things too. The kids often build ships and such out of legos or other building toys. Grace drew this picture recently and the details on the bodies made me laugh... I mean Hulk and Iron Man have chest muscles, right?... haha So cute!

 The kids are loving playing Quarkle, and Boston likes to try and get the pieces in his mouth. Look how tall he is though!

 Grace's school had a minimum day recently (they get out at 11:20) and Logan was still in school until 1:15. So I decided to surprise her with lunch at Black Bear Diner in town, and I invited Jess, Lilly and Ryann Croshaw as well. It was fun to have a little "girls' lunch" in the middle of the week. :) We sure love the Croshaws!! They better not move away ever.

 This was from a few sundays ago. Look how cute these 3 are!! I can't believe how big Boston is is this 12-18 month outfit. 9 months old, people! Holy cow!

I hardly ever sit down to practice the piano. But when I do, this is what happens ... The kids won't leave me to play on my own. They must think I need help or something. ;)

 Last weekend we had some errands we needed to run in Sacramento/Roseville area, so we took a day-trip down there. It's less than 2 hours away so it's really not bad! We were able to get some lunch at Chick Fil A, go to Hobby Lobby for a few things, go mini-golfing, go to a few stores in the mall, let the kids ride a merry-go-round, and grab dinner at Costa Vida.

Of course the highlight was the mini-golfing! It was a beautiful sunny day at 60 degrees.

Logan and Grace have been earning allowance for the last few weeks and it's going really well so far. We were so tired of having to remind them to do the most basic of things 10 times just to hear whining and/or refusals. So the kids earn a nickel for each chore they do per day: make bed, brush teeth (in the AM, since PM is already a given), clear dishes after each meal/snack before I ask, and nighttime toy clean-up. Then they can earn a dime for a few extra things that are optional: unload silverware from the dishwasher, put away their clean laundry, vacuum under the table and around the eating areas. So now that they're earning a little over $1 per week, they're learning great lessons about tithing and about savings/spending. When we went to Roseville, we knew they would beg and beg to go on the merry-go-round because they do every time and we always say no. It's expensive! But they brought their own money this time and spent it on one ride. It was $4 for one ride... wow... but they were super excited and took responsibility for their own "wants"! I'm proud of them for the lessons they're learning and the growth they're making.

We have had SOOOOOO MUUUUUCH RAAAAIN. It's been endless!! At least it feels that way when it rains for 7 days in a row and we have super dense fog every morning. To be honest though I'm not overly sick of it, because here's the way I see it: A) at least it's not snow! B) at least it's not a gross, hot desert! and C) it makes this area so beautiful. But when it's sunny and 50 degrees outside for a day or two of a break from rain I kick the kids outside for awhile. They refused to wear a sweatshirt this day and even sat and read their books peacefully for awhile.

Couldn't even see 1/8 of a mile ahead.

But seriously, look how beautiful it is here!!! It's january, and the view out of the window is THAT! How could you not be in love?! I still pinch myself sometimes.

 This year we made it a goal to have FHE every.single.week. So far it's been going great, although Ryan's schedule hasn't been working very well with our goal. We want to be able to take turns teaching but his work stuff often gets in the way. But this photo is from an FHE where we talked about service and then donated a bunch of our things to the DI trailer in our church parking lot. The kids helped, and then showed off their muscles.

 Freshly bathed and in brand new pajamas that actually fit them. They're growing like weeds, I tell you!! Grace is in size 8, Boston size 18 months, and Logan size 6.

 I've been so proud lately of how healthy and adventurous my kids are with foods. I made a new recipe called "Yum Yum Bowls" and the sauce for the rice was very different than what they've tried before. It had an interesting texture and curry taste they're not used to. But I let them put whatever toppings they wanted on top (black beans, shelled edamame, etc) and they LOVED it. They even asked for seconds. I also bought edamame spaghetti noodles from Costco to give them a try and again, my kids loved it. All three! Boston will shovel them in his mouth even plain. We also love anything that has to do with quinoa. Everyone's favorite meal are these little quinoa patties (quinoa, egg, ritz cracker crumbs, cheese, seasonings, peppers/onions, anything we want to put in them!) and we fight over them. haha I'm so impressed with how well they eat most of the time. Of course then we will have days where we have something as simple as barbecued chicken and the kids turn their nose up at it. You just never know with kids.

 Grace's class celebrated the 100th day of school last week. Her teacher asked each student to make something using 100 items and then show it to the class. Grace came home from school the day before and this was our conversation:
Grace: "I want to use legos and make a dog and a bone."
Me: "Oh. Are you sure you want to do legos? Maybe you could make a picture using 100 dot stickers. Or cut out 100 small paper squares and make a mural or something." (because that seemed MUCH easier in my mind)
Grace: "Well... I kinda just want to try the legos first..."
Me: I hope she doesn't ask me to help with this one. I can't build a dog with legos! I don't even have time to think about it before dinner. I know we will get to bedtime, she will be frustrated that she couldn't make it the way she wanted to, and then I'LL be frustrated... (those were all my thoughts)
Grace --30 minutes later--: "Mom, look at this dog I built! And the bone too. And there are 100 legos exactly."

Yeah...I should NEVER doubt this girl. She's amazing!! 

 Selfie shot before swim lessons. I sure love them!!

 I had some crafting projects to work on for Logan's room, so the boys and I went to Home Depot. They were just so stinkin' cute sitting together in the car cart. I had this interesting moment where I took this picture and thought "Look at this. I can totally do this. I can raise boys. I can find what I need at Home Depot by myself." ;) Sometimes we need that positive self-talk, right?

This is Logan's new room decor! I bought the images on a group email sale for really cheap, the frames are the cheapy plastic ones from IKEA, the wall sticker was free from Ryan's work, and the bedspread was on sale from Kohls! My favorite part is his name magnets. We found those letters at Hobby Lobby (so they were the most expensive thing in his room, but still not bad). They're metal so I just cut down a piece of sheet metal to fit inside a thrift store frame I painted red, then used simple magnets to attach the letters. It turned out so fun! He absolutely LOVES his room.

 (I still want to change out his curtains for blue ones, but they're fine for now)

 

The view out his window is pretty fun with the play set out there. :) 

 Last sunday was SuperBowl Sunday! Another goal for this year is not watching TV on sundays... but we broke our rule just this once. We also had the Croshaws over and had such a blast! I made a whole Cafe Rio salad buffet... only to find out after they filled their plates that they have never had Cafe Rio salads. What the?! So we got to introduce them to the idea. It was sure yummy!

 Jess makes the most incredible chocolate chip cookies. They're almost the size your face, and soooo good.

 The 4 littlest played games while we all hung out watching the game.

 Katelyn, our favorite babysitter. 

As a quick update on Ryan, because I feel like I forget to write about him sometimes... He has been SO busy in January and February so far. His practices (both at the health clinic and the private clinic) are absolutely full. He actually sees more patients a day than the other 3 pediatricians do and yet he still makes room for as many sick visits as he can in a day. He won't turn people away if they walk in without appointments, when the others would say no. This means he is often behind in his notes and has to find time to catch those up whenever he can (which he does, of course). During his lunch hours he seems to either be in a meeting, helping advice a staff member on some sort of family or social drama, or seeing someone in the hospital for a circumcision or to discharge a new mom&baby who wants to go home. He sees newborns in the hospital every single morning (even during one or two weekends a month), gets calls from ward members with pediatric questions, and is on several committees and boards. He still takes call days once or twice a week, and two weekends a month. Now that he is a partner, there is more to do and he now has twice as many meetings to go to as he did before. He also has to keep up with his "Continuing Medical Education" credits by reading articles and listening to presentations online in his spare time. He also has his calling in the Elders Quorum which means a presidency meeting almost every sunday afternoon. He does yard work when it's not raining, and house projects when I have some "honey-do" items for him. He is SO busy... but he is very happy and fulfilled. I should write more on this in a coming post though because I have more to say on this topic. I just wanted to record how proud of him I am, and how wonderful he is. He has given our family such a great life. He handles all this stress and all those balls in the air like a pro and only rarely complains or seems overwhelmed. I would literally crumble if I had even HALF of this stuff on my shoulders. He is incredible and we are so blessed that he is ours.