Grandparents Visit

When you are counting down every day, multiple times a day, for at least two months, it feels like forever before they finally arrive.  And then they're gone in the blink of an eye.  My parents talked of coming in December way back before they knew about the March baby.  And then they said maybe they would only come in March but changed their plans so Jon and I could get a MUCH needed break for a couple days.  We picked them up on Saturday, December 6th and headed straight for the beefiest meal you will ever encounter for lunch.  It's a burger joint called Bairs that is pretty much awesome but can't be good for the heart.  After that we headed home and opened presents.  Sunday was a typical Sunday only made much better with lots of playing with the kids and card games for the adults.  It's amazing how much easier it is to play cards after the kids go to bed when we are at home.  Whenever we visit Utah, it feels like we don't get to play, usually because the kids get to bed late and then we're too tired.  Or maybe jet lag?  I don't know.  But we had lots of late night cards this visit.  On Monday we did the Bass Pro activities and tried out Jett's Pizza.  Best. Pizza. Ever.  And since we hadn't had nearly enough eating out yet, we got Andys later that night with our Christmas lights drive.  On Tuesday, Jon and I headed up to KC, while my parents took charge with the littles.  On Tuesday, they went to Chuck-E-Cheese.  Apparently, they got 600 tickets!  Which is amazing because we can get 200 at most, if Jon and I help a little.  And, apparently they didn't buy a single coin.  Go figure.  I guess the machines were spitting the tickets out and the employees just kept giving them free coins.  I don't know what exactly happened but the kids were pretty stoked about it all.  On Wednesday, they went to the Children's Museum.  The kids and I have only been once and I have been debating getting a pass.  Vanessa keeps talking about how much she loved it so I think we will.  She didn't seem to love it as much the first time we went, so that's why I haven't gotten a pass yet.  But if it makes her happy and keeps them entertained, while learning, it's a win-win.  On Thursday, they went to the library, read books, and played with the toys.  I'm not sure what day but they also made a trip to Chick-Fil-A a.k.a. Chicken-Fil-A or "the cow one."

Jon and I got home Thursday evening and while the break was much needed and definitely nice, it was so good to squeeze those cute kids.  I was surprised by how much I missed them after just two nights.

On Friday, it was warm enough weather to go to the park.  We went to Nathaniel Green per the kids request and even took Rocky with us.  It was pretty secluded seeing how it wasn't THAT warm and most kids are in school.  This made it 100 times easier to have Rocky there.  It is a beautiful park with tons of paved trails to walk.  My mom kept telling us she couldn't believe we hadn't brought her here in the summer and we HAVE to come back.  She would probably be the only other person to appreciate the Lily garden as much as I do so I think she's right. After that, we went to Lamberts.  We always eat out way more than I ever intend when my parents come into town.  And, I don't even like Lamberts.  But their rolls are killer, so I guess it's worth it.

We finished off the visit with more cards.  We basically always play girls against boys in hand and foot and it kind of sets the competition for girls against boys in everything.  This visit, the girls basically dominated.  I won Five Crowns, my Mom won Rummy, and the girls won Hand and Foot.  It needs to be documented because the boys have a funny way of always remembering winning :)

Saturday was basically consumed with packing and getting to the airport.  The kids were totally bummed to send Grandma and Grandpa home but as always, we couldn't have been more grateful for their visit.  We sure are lucky to have them!

 

Gymnastics Days

After paying for her new Leo, warm-ups, and two non-refundable meets, Vanessa finally confessed that she doesn't enjoy and doesn't want to do gymnastics. I saw it coming but I thought she would last through the meet season. After two practices full of sobbing and her not letting me leave, we had a little heart to heart and decided it was time to just be done. I'm trying to look at the fact that we will be saving all her monthly tuition fees. I guess we just need to find something else for her. Maybe we'll start doing one session of a bunch of different activities and see what she likes.

Fire Station Field Trip

Since we pulled Vanessa out of school, we go to a co-op once a week. Vanessa goes for two hours. It's a one room-schoolhouse set up with grades kindergarten to fourth. Once a month the co-op does a field trip of some sort. November's co-op was to a fire station. It was pretty cool.

60 Hours of Brigham

This is the reason for my current insanity. I have decided I spend at least three hours a day specifically cleaning up after Beigham. It's exhausting. This weekend I took a picture every time he dumped or broke something. This was Sat morn To Mon evening. I just keep praying he grows out of this because I am apparently inadequate at teaching him not to be so mischievous. Since these are from the weekend, the damage is slightly less. On a weekday he can usually do all this in a day; when there is only one set of eyes. So, here goes.

An entire bag of Frosted Flakes. We had maybe one bowl from it?

Two puzzles because separating the pieces is awesome.

Yes, dump it on the floor and eat it like Rocky.

"I wanted some cookies Mom. And you said NO. So I got them myself."

That 200 piece puzzle again and a bag of chips.

The bowl of popcorn. Don't you love how it barely phases Vanessa and Benson?

I was loading the kids in the car. We were leaving. As I'm herding Brig out the door, he ran in the playroom for two minutes. Not to grab a toy, not to play; but to dump a bucket or two. For good measure.

Just because it's fun?

This was a candle that he knocked over while climbing a shelf he has been told not to climb 100 times.

This was a moment when I thought Brig was with Jon and he thought he was with me. Wrong!

Bookcase

So we were planning on buying a Billy bookcase when the new Ikea opened in Kansas City. But we realized we could build something better for a lot less. So it began. We do this to ourselves a lot. We knew where we were putting it so we came up with our dimensions and then designed the shelves inside. I wanted some for storage baskets, Jon wanted some for spotlighted pictures, and we both needed lots of space for books. Little known secret: we both have a strong desire to hoard books so we are excited to have a spot for them!

Taking the Homeschool Plunge

I finally did it.  I pulled Vanessa from public school.  It was a liberating and terrifying moment. Terrifying because it was now all me. And so liberating to be done with the public schools and everything I was dreading about them. I have been contemplating homeschool since we moved to Missouri.  For whatever reason, homeschool is much more popular in the midwest than it is out west.  Maybe it has something to do with the schools here, I honestly don't know.  Having never experienced another school system as a parent, I can't give a good opinion on that.  It may have something to do with the "Bible belt" as well because a lot of families state religious reasons being the number one factor in deciding to homeschool.
I feel like there were exactly 1,298 reasons we should homeschool and one very debilitating reason why we shouldn't homeschool.  And that one reason was holding me back.  Vanessa started public school in mid August.  Taking her to school, I wanted to cry.  Not the typical, "oh my baby is growing up" tears.  But it was this knot in my gut saying, "is this the right thing for my daughter or for our family?"
I felt I couldn't get around this one reason to make homeschool be everything I wanted it to be.  Until I found stumbled across a couple of articles that actually made me feel better.  There is this one. Granted this is talking about preschool kids but I feel it still applies.  This was my favorite quote:
"Many people assume that kids need to spend lots of time with peers to develop strong preschool social skills. They don't."
There is also this one.  My favorite quote from this was: “People for some reason define socialization for kids as interacting only with kids, but if socialization means only interacting with kids that are exactly the same age as you, then that seems pretty narrow.”
Then there is always good ole sarcastic Matt Walsh.  My favorite point he made was this: "Homeschooling might be increasingly popular, but the vast majority of the people you meet have been public schooled. And you’re telling me that the vast majority of the people you meet are ‘socially well adjusted’?"
If we want to look more at studies, there were two studies done recently that were discussed in this article from the Washington Times.  I found this very interesting: "When measured against the average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more socially engaged (69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population). Average income for home-schoolers also was higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for home-schoolers. Home-schoolers also were happier; 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population. Almost all of the home-schoolers — 96 percent — thought home-schooling had prepared them well for life."
My favorite article however, I can't find again.  It talked about how socialization while children are too young may actually be harmful to their own development of identity.  That they aren't actually learning to be their own person but are learning to be like their peers.  The psychologist writing the article felt children should be mainly with parents until they are at least 6.
I had finally read something that was "the other side of the coin."  I finally read the other side.  It seems there is little of it when it comes to socializing outside public school because public school is the norm.  And for whatever reason, many still consider homeschoolers to be "weird."  
I also realized that my kids are already "weird."  We are Mormons surrounded by Baptists, Catholics, Protestants; but not many other Mormons.  We have {almost} four kids, which is not crazy here but not common. We don't "play" on Sundays.  Vanessa has been really good about turning down birthday party invitations that are on Sunday. We don't allow sleepovers. I expect my kids to be chaste until they are married.  I don't plan on allowing them to drink, or "experiment" with whatever else teenagers decide to experiment with. We are different simply by the nature of who we are.
But I might as well list the 1,298 reasons.  Or, at least maybe five reasons why I like homeschooling. Although if you would like a good laugh about it, you can read this article.  Some of my reasons for homeschooling include: 1) safety (from violence, sex abuse, molestation, bullying, etc) Sure they have to learn about these things and how to protect themselves eventually, but not at 5 thank you. 
2) vacation.  Jon's work schedule is amazing in that he gets 7 weeks vacation.  Seven weeks!  However, those are scattered throughout the year.  We will homeschool year round and the kids are on vacation when Jon is on vacation.  This allows for easier vacation planning which gives us more family time. 3) progress at their level.  I sincerely feel like Vanessa was ready for more than kindergarten was ready to give her.  It basically felt like a waste of time.  Maybe they were doing more than I could see from the outside.  But it is seriously stressful getting your kid to school at 8am so it had better be dang well worth the effort. 4) religion.  I don't have to worry about what they might be learning that is contrary to what we believe.  I can teach them that some people believe "this" or "this" but we believe "this."  And yes, my child is only 5 so I am teaching her to believe what I believe.  She'll get to make that decision for herself some day, but when she's older.  We can also talk about how God is involved in everything.  We can pray.  We can even say Bless You.  5) Germs.  Yes, this is totally paranoid and weird but germs are a big deal for us.  I kept Vanessa home from school for four days in the two months that she was in school.  Not because she was "really sick," but because I wanted her home so she would get better quick, had an easy day, and wasn't exposed to more germs.  Every time she was home, I got a call from the school.  And kids with a perfect attendance record freak me out.  What kind of bugs were they going to school with that they passed to my kid?
So that sums up the why.  My kids are out of patience so the HOW will have to come another day.

BIG News

We're having a BABY!  Before I get ahead of myself, I'll start at the beginning.  Jon and I found out we were pregnant on July 4.  A little ironic because in an effort to assure myself that we were truly "done" I had started giving away all our baby clothes and my maternity clothes.  I had kept many of the "things."  But the clothes were making me claustrophobic and I was sure if they were gone it would seal the deal in my mind that three was good.  As soon as I realized my period was late, (I was charting) I was pretty excited.  That tells you how well getting rid of the clothes worked.  Once I had a positive pregnancy test, reality struck that I was going to have FOUR kids and I can barely handle THREE!  Haha.  I was sure Jon would be more overwhelmed than me but true to Jon, he took it in stride and has been nothing but excited! 

As many know, having a baby for us means there is a 1 in 4 chance of the baby having SMA.  We learned soon after having Benson that you can do in-vitro fertilization with pre-implantation genetic diagnostics.  Basically, you do IVF and then test each viable embryo for SMA before implanting.  This ensures that your baby will not have SMA.  I looked into this quite a bit and we finally decided it was not something we would do.  IF we decided to have another baby, it would be au-natural.

 Right off the bat, I wanted to do an amnio so we wouldn't have to wait the whole pregnancy plus another month to know what to expect.  But then I got cold feet.  Like bad.  Statistically, there is a 1 in 300-500 chance that the amnio can cause a miscarriage.  This statistic was killing me.  I kept going back and forth on whether or not knowing was worth the risk.  If we knew ahead of time, we could try to get the baby into some of the current clinical trials.  They are enrolling for infants up to 9 months old.  It's hard to get into these trials but I felt like if we knew for certain and could build up a rapport, we had a shot.  I had Jon give me a blessing and felt good about doing the amnio.  But within a day or two I was back to worrying about the chance of losing the baby.  I prayed continuously about whether or not the baby would be safe, all the while leaving our testing date confirmed.  My own fear kept me from every hearing the Lord's answers to my prayers again. In the end, I relied on Jon's certainty and faith that everything would be okay because I continued to waffle in a land of worry.  I'm grateful my husband is such a rock in times like this.  I seriously can't imagine what I would do without him.

On October 1, at 17 weeks, we went in for our amnio. It was everything I expected and nothing like what I expected.  They did a full ultrasound and then the doctor came in and reviewed the pictures.  Everything looked good.  Apparently they are looking to see that something has fused, I honestly couldn't even tell you what, even though they said it like four times.  But that looked good. He found the spot where he wanted to go in and pushed with his finger on my stomach so he could be exactly sure where he was on me and where that was in relation to the baby.  It was a little freaky to have my tummy prepped and made sterile while I was just sitting there watching.  He stuck a long needle into my stomach while I closed my eyes.  It felt just like a shot.  We were told that he would pull some fluid and discard it before getting the sample to help ensure there isn't maternal contamination.  Jon was looking at the ultrasound and I was closing my eyes so neither of us saw if that was what we was doing here.  But then he told me that he was going to go through the uterus now.  This is the part that was nothing like what I expected.  Everyone says it's uncomfortable to painful.  Which was true but the gross part to me was that he had to really push that sucker in there.  It wasn't just a little poke through the skin.  I watched him pull the fluid from my stomach, all 20ccs.  He said the baby would refill that within an hour and the "hole" would seal instantaneously.  The fluid was sent off to a lab along with a sample of blood from me and Jon.  The lab would culture the skin cells from the fluid until they could test them for SMA.

We decided to wait to share the big news with family until we could do it in person so we booked some flights for Jon's next vacation week (we just happened to have enough points from our Southwest card. wahoo!).  I would be 18 1/2 weeks when we got out there.  It was probably the hardest secret I have ever kept in my entire life and I almost told about 100 times.  But I didn't!  Unfortunately, it was only 10 days after our amnio so we didn't have any testing news to share but we did know the gender.   

IT'S A GIRL! 

This is the picture I text to my sisters to announce the pregnancy after we told my mom.

 

We were beyond excited to have a sister for Vanessa.  Is it possible to not want to even up the numbers?  Vanessa, of course, is very excited.  She talks to the baby, gives her kisses, and has already named her Violet.  Benson is excited to and he is very sweet with babies so I am sure he will be a very cute big brother.  Brigham on the other hand, he has no idea what is coming; even though he talks about the baby in mommy's belly all the time.  This little lady is going to rock his boat big time.

I felt like three has been a hard number for me so I'm nervous to make the jump to four.  But I couldn't be more excited about it either.  I can't wait to meet this little lady, get to know her personality, and see if she looks more like Benson or Vanessa. 

A Trip to Utah

I failed to take hardly any pictures while we were in Utah.  I took a handful on my phone but even left my phone a lot so that didn't even happen often.  I knew I would be sad for not taking more, but we didn't bring our smaller camera and I don't really like hauling our big one around.  Not just because of size, because of Price! :)  So here are a few pix and I'll just have to write about the rest.  These are from the Museum of Curiosity.  It's a new-ish museum that has opened at Thanksgiving Point for kids.  It is 1000x better than the one that was in Salt Lake.  This one was highly impressive.  We were there for nearly four hours and my kids loved every second

 This was a hurricane simulator and Brigham's reaction was so funny we kept making him do it to try to get a picture.  I think some of the other moms thought it was really mean.  Haha.

 We also went to Wheeler Farm.  I thought it was fun and thought my kids loved it.  They got a tractor pulled ride, a little cow train ride, a hay maze, pick a pumpkin, and checking out some farm animals. The hay maze was perfect for the kids, in my opinion.  You could see adults over the top but couldn't see young kids.  But the kids also couldn't weave through the corn and completely get lost from you.  It was short enough that even Brigham could walk through it the whole time.  We tried a corn maze with the Brady clan and it was basically ten minutes of sky high anxiety before we pulled the plug and hauled all the kids out.

 Benson absolutely adores his cousin Sam.  He wants to be with Sam at all times.  And Sam is cute enough to be totally okay with it.  He plays with Benson and makes him feel like a rock star.  Don't they even look like cousins, too?! 

 It's always hard splitting time fairly in Utah and I don't know if anyone is ever completely pleased but we got to spend quite a bit of time with both families.  With my family we went to the museum and Wheeler Farm.  Becky also watched the kids for us one afternoon so we could go to the temple with my parents and then met them for dinner at Mandarin.  yum!  We also had a girls shopping day with me, Becky, and my mom.  I was able to find some sweat pants for Benson that have draw strings!  Thank you  H&M!  With the Bradys, we spent lots of time hanging out at the Brady home, after we welcomed Steph back from her mission.  We were also able to be there for her homecoming talk and the open house after.  We went to a pumpkin patch/corn maze with everyone that was also a lot of fun.  The week definitely flew by and I can hardly believe we are back to the nitty gritty in Missouri.  Visiting Utah always makes me want to go back.  Coming home to our lack of family kind of makes me a little trunky.  I know some people are able to build friendships that are as good as having family but we haven't found that yet.  Maybe it's just because our family is irreplaceable ;)

The New Van and Other Randoms

We got our new van!  It's been really awesome.  It makes getting the kids in the car a lot easier.  I already had the experience of loading everyone in a torrential downpour and I was very grateful I didn't have to deal with the suitcase ramps in that storm. Vanessa rides on the back jump seat.  Benson can ride in his chair but I need to make some covers for his straps because they rub his neck.  and I need to figure something out for his head.  It's only a problem if he falls asleep, but it just flops to the side and looks insanely uncomfortable.  We also have his and Brigham's car seats in the captain chairs, so he usually rides there.  The only down side to this van is that the captain chairs were moved forward with the conversation and you can't push them back at all.  It makes the access into the van from the side doors feel really cramped.  The kids can also kick our seats while they are sitting and that's kind of a bummer. We also can't figure out how to use the navigation system.  Haha.  I'm seriously considering taking it to a Toyota dealer, just so they can show me how to use it.  Now if only we could sell our other van.....if you know anyone looking, let us know!

 I love puzzles.  I have grand dreams of doing fun puzzles with the kids for hours.  I got a glimpse of that when Benson got this puzzle for his birthday.  We had a lot of fun putting it together.

 Vanessa found this monarch butterfly at a local park.  They have a butterfly house and had released a bunch of monarchs for their migration to Mexico just that morning.  This one was hanging out in the grass and Vanessa couldn't resist holding it.  She was really sad that we couldn't take it home with us.  She said the butterfly's name is Maxilla.

 Benson requested to make caramel apples one day.  The kids love helping me make with any kind of baking.