December 2015

I had my follow up ultrasound and this time baby cooperated! Ben wasn't able to come to this one with me.  We were able to see all 4 chambers of the heart and the blood flowing in and out!  Since baby cooperated so well we had time to spare so the ultrasound lady took some time trying to get some good shots of baby and trying out some features on her machine.  She got some really fun ones!

These were my favorite ones!  I love that you can totally see babies features and all the fingers like baby was trying to hide from getting the pictures taken!

Ben's work Christmas party was the evening of my ultrasound.  My mom watched the kiddos so that we could go.  They always have great food!  This year they had prime rib, which I don't like but I of course still grabbed some so that Ben could have more.  Then when everyone was done eating he went back for another slice!  He loves it!  All the sides were really good so I was still satisfied.  Always nice to have a night kid free!!

Aspen all ready for her dress rehearsal!  She had a different teacher this time, the teacher she used to have moved. It's still at the same place, they have tons of teachers that do different times and\or types of dance. She really liked this teacher and she became even cooler when we saw her a couple times at church, she is in one of the other wards so we would see her in the halls occasionally.

Hunter of course needed to get in on the picture taking action!

It's quite a task to try and get this many 3 and 4 year olds in position and to stay in position for a group picture!!  There was one girl that was dropped off by her dad and her hair looked like she had just gotten up from a nap, the teachers hurried and tried to fix her hair as best they could before the pictures!

Aspen and the teachers daughter (the one sitting on Aspen's right) were two of the first ones in their poses.  They did pretty well sitting there waiting but you could definitely tell they were getting bored!

Here she is in the classroom the next night waiting for her time to go on stage!  She did great!

They do their performances Friday night and again Saturday afternoon.  It also coincides with a Christmas festival that is held in the other part of the community center.  So we got ready Saturday morning and headed over to check out the festival before Aspen needed to be there again. They had some fun trees there, the kids loved looking at how all the different businesses decorated them. 

Timber's first time ever getting her face painted!  We weren't going to have her get hers done but, when she saw Hunter and Aspen do it of course she wanted to too!

It's always fun to try to get a good pic of all of them together!  Timber got a butterfly, Aspen a snowflake, and Hunter the Batman symbol.

We even lucked out and got to see Santa there!  I was worried the kids weren't going to get to see him this year.  We missed our ward party the night before because of the dance recital and that's usually where we see him.

After seeing Santa they gave them each a doughnut and either chocolate milk or juice!  They loved it!

This is during Aspen's recital!  Of course you need sunglasses in a dark room mom!

Aspen's dance teacher gave them all a lip gloss and matching ring when they were done with the recital, Aspen was way excited about it!!

After the recital we went to look for a Christmas tree!  We went up a road that you have to have a key to get into so we were quite surprised to find some people up there!  It happened to be a family in our ward having a family picnic because their daughter had just gotten baptized (which I missed for the recital) and their son had just returned home from his mission that week and he was having his homecoming the next day.  They were also surprised to find other people up there for the same reason!  The dad of the family works for the city water so he is the only other person, besides Ben's fellow field crew coworkers, that has a key to get up there.  We love this family!  So we visited with them for a bit before we started our search.  They tried to feed us but we had recently eaten so we declined but that didn't stop them from sharing chips with Aspen, licorice with Timber and a pop with Hunter!  The kids thought it was great!

Hiking with my prego belly proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would be!  I was huffing and puffing by the time I made it even halfway up the hillside!  What made it worse was that some of the kids from the other family started up the mountain with us!  The boy that just got home from his mission was very sweet and stayed near me until we reached more level ground and made sure I was OK.  I was a little embarrassed that some of my primary kids saw me huffing and puffing, although I'm sure they could care less!  Once I made it to the top I had the thought of how it was probably not the best of ideas for me to go traipsing up a mountainside since my blood pressure had started to go up this last doc appointment. I really didn't want to miss out on this tradition though, or leave Ben with all 3 kids and a tree to deal with.  So when we didn't find a tree worth cutting on that mountain side, I still hiked up the next one too!  Of course I didn't help cut or haul the tree at all.  Ben always takes care of that part.  And once he got the tree taken to the truck then he came back to help with Timber.  I've got a good guy!

Full frontal view, so that you can see all 4 of our kids no problem!

The kids wanted to ride in the back of the truck and since Timber wanted to too, I sat back there with them.  I have definitely had much more comfortable rides than that one!  Between the tree, the saw and the kids there really wasn't much room for me.  I was very glad when we got closer to the main road and had to get back inside the truck!

  

When we got home Saturday we got the living room rearranged for the tree and got it in the house, then Sunday after church we decorated the tree.

Most of these right here close together were from Timber, I think it's hilarious when the little ones pick a spot on the tree and that's where all their ornaments go!  All of our kids at Timber's age have done that!

This is Hunter's new face he pulls every time I take a picture!

Thank goodness we were able to convince him to smile!

Setting up the magnet Nativity on the dishwasher.

The next day we had my work party.  My mom again watched our kiddos for us.  My boss took us to a live comedy show, Ramona's big fat Christmas (I think that's what it's called.)  He took us to it last year too.  It's really funny and they serve dinner right before the show too.  The food was great!  I got chicken, Ben got prime rib (you get to pick between the two.)  We have a new doc at work that works 1 day a week when my boss takes a day off.  When I saw who his wife was I was so surprised!  She worked at the doc office that I had Hunter with.  I totally remembered her as being so nice!  Small world!  I don't think she was quite as amused with Ben's eating habits as the rest of my co-workers are.  They just know he's a big eater and always pass any extra food down to him, haha!  Ben's friend happened to be there at the same time for his own work party and he ended up giving Ben part of his prime rib, then Ben also finished most of my chicken, she just kept staring at him like he was crazy!  Then when we told her that this baby was our number 4 she again looked shocked!  I'm pretty sure she's LDS, and I know she comes from a family of at least 3 cuz she had a brother and sister that also worked at the doc office, so not sure why she was surprised but it was pretty funny anyways.

Frosting lips!!

I had to meet with the school counselor the day after my work party so that we could sign paperwork to start the testing process to try to get some help for Hunter.  It went pretty smooth, his teachers, the principal, the counselor and I were who met together.  After the principal left and us women were talking more I totally ended up crying, dang pregnancy emotions!  They make this already hard situation even worse!  After we got the paperwork signed then she said that they would review all the info and then eventually the teachers and Ben and I would need to fill out questionnaires about Hunter and the district psychologist would come anonymously observe him in class (anonymous so that none of the kids including Hunter would know who he was watching) and the teachers also had to document any incidents that happened from then on.  I left feeling pretty excited knowing that something was finally going to happen to help him!

Aspen's hair was getting so long!  With the length came lots of snarls though and she does not like getting her hair brushed!

So we cut several inches off and it's made a pretty big difference!

Tyler and Kerri had an open house at the church here the week before they got married.  This is the first sibling on either side that married someone not from Utah, so it was a bit different.  Her family didn't come to this open house and none of us went to the open house they had a few weeks after the wedding in California.  So none of us met each other until the actual wedding.  For the open house down here Dixie did hot chocolate with several mix in options and then she had several people bring sugar cookies.  She gave us all the same recipe printed from an email and the bottom of the paper said what size to make the cookies, so it was pretty funny to see all the different variations that came!  I don't have a circle cookie cutter so I measured a cup to make sure I got the right size, while others eye balled to get the right size and those ones all came with smaller cookies.  She didn't say what kind of frosting to make but there was a basic idea (no amounts, just the items used) of one on the bottom of the email, so I figured everyone would probably end up with that.  Me and Joslyn were in charge of keeping everything stocked so of course had to test every bodies cookies!  Besides the difference in size of circle, some were thicker than others (again I'm a spaz and since it was for a wedding I totally measured and made sure I rolled my dough out to 1/4 inch like the recipe said to do), some were cooked way longer than others, etc.  Then the frostings were all pretty different too, even between me, Joslyn and Dixie.  All 3 of us used the same ingredients, Joslyn's was thinner and more glossy, Dixie's was thicker and more powder sugary, and mine was right in between theirs.  It was really entertaining to compare the differences of all the cookies.  I have made many different sugar cookie recipes trying to find the "one" and was so glad Dixie's friend gave her this one to try for the open house!  It's definitely my new favorite!  My version of it is nice and thick and super soft, the perfect sugar cookie in my opinion!  Although Ben's grandma did come to grab one and asked me which was best, and of course since I had sampled several and examined all I knew right which I would tell her, but then she said she wanted one the way a sugar cookie is supposed to be, nice and crispy.  My heart stopped for a moment, but I kept a smile on my face and directed her to the, in my opinion, way overcooked one, best bet she would have to get crispy from this recipe!  If you can't tell from this super long story all about sugar cookies that was actually supposed to be about an open house, I have a deep love for sugar cookies.  Moving on.
The open house was nice, some of their colors matched with mine and Ben's so we were able to borrow table cloths from my mom from our reception for this.  Dixie made some cute center pieces for the tables out of ornaments in their colors.  And most of the other decorations she was able to borrow, which is always so nice, and it all came together nicely.  It was a pretty low key gathering, Tyler and Kerri weren't in their wedding clothes, Kerri wore a short white dress with navy blue leggins and Tyler had church clothes on.  All of our kids ran around the cultural hall like crazy the whole time (just a bit hopped up on hot chocolate and cookies.)  I'm not sure how I managed to not get any pictures of the open house, fail.  I do have some pictures from the wedding the next weekend though!

Tooth number 7!  I told him to get down so I could see the gap... I meant look down but he got down!

Aspen saw that Timber had gotten in on the picture so she decided she needed to too.  Not sure why she wanted to be in the picture cuz it sure doesn't look like she's happy to be there!  For quite a while she went through a phase of this look for most pictures... So glad she eventually remembered how to smile for pictures!

We went to the library's Christmas party. The girls got to make elf hats and decorate a cookie!  Timber was too busy with her cookie to look up for a picture and she insisted on eating every bite of it!  Poor Aspen was dying to see Santa but had to wait for Timber to finish her cookie!  I eventually convinced Timber she wanted to see Santa and snuck the cookie away so that we could get out of there!  We were some of the last ones in there!  I didn't fool Timber though, as soon as we got done with Santa she was trying to find her cookie again!  I figured she would forget about it so I had thrown the last little bit away. Luckily going and picking out library books helped her forget that last little piece of cookie!

Aspen finally getting to sit with Santa!  Timber did not want to sit with him, she probably was just wanting to get back to her cookie!

 

I go check on the kids before I go to bed each night and it's pretty often that I find Timber like this!

Tyler and Kerri got married in the Salt Lake Temple.  So we drove up the night before and stayed in a hotel.  We got there late-ish so we went through a drive thru and brought the food to our hotel room, we quickly ate and had just enough time to get to go swimming for a little bit before bed!  That was of course our kids favorite thing of probably the whole weekend!  You can't tell by Aspen's face but she was pretty excited too!  There were a couple other kids swimming in the pool when we went, Hunter was liking playing with them.  There was one that we couldn't decide if it was a girl or a boy, does anyone else have that struggle when kids have long hair but dressed more like a boy???  They just had regular shorts on, not swim shorts with no shirt, so almost like they forgot their swimming suit so they just went in some shorts, we're pretty sure it was a boy, but that young sometimes it's hard to tell.  Anyways, one of the kids started asking Hunter which room we were staying in so that he could come hang out later!?!?  What!?!?!  Luckily Hunter couldn't remember our number for sure, he knew which floor but not past that, which is why I found out the kid was asking for it, Hunter came and asked me what our room number was.  When I found out why he wanted to know I had a little talk with him about not telling strangers where we sleep at night, not our room number, or home address or anything!  Hopefully we won't have to worry about that again!  Funny the things that you think would be common sense, I'm pretty sure we have talked to them about not telling people where we live before, but I guess it was time for a reminder!

Ben's parents and Tyler and Cason also stayed at the same hotel as us, they didn't make it in time to get to go swimming with us, but we got to see them in the morning for breakfast!  Our kids thought that was pretty cool to see them in the morning!  Tyler had had an impromptu bachelor party the night we got there, we tried to figure out a way to get Ben to be able to go to it, but it was an hour and a half away from our hotel and I really struggle staying awake driving.  I was also having a hard time imagining trying to haul my pregnant body, our 3 kids, and all our luggage to our hotel room by myself, so thankfully Ben ended up deciding to stay with us instead.  I felt bad that he had to miss the party (they went to dinner and bowling) but I can only imagine how much of a struggle it would have been for me had he have gone.

The wedding wasn't until noon, so we were taking our time getting ready so we had somewhere to hang out before it was time to be at the temple... Tyler had asked Ben if he would be a witness that morning, they didn't know that meant he needed to be there early!  So when they called to tell us that, we hurried and loaded up as quick as we could and got there as fast as we could!  We had originally planned to get some lunch for our kiddos to eat while we were in the temple but since we had to change plans last minute that didn't happen.  We had some snacks in the car from our drive so we brought those with us and I let them eat some fruit snacks while we hung out outside for a bit.  Kira and Jordan were coming to watch our kids while we went in for the sealing, so I got to hang out with them outside while we waited for them to come.  They ended up getting there just before noon and we barely even got to say "Hi" as Ben whisked me into the temple (he had come out looking for me.)  Everyone was already up in the room waiting for us, they couldn't start without Ben!

This is after the sealing, waiting outside for them to come out.  Right after they came out somehow a glass vase that had been right by the doors got shattered on the ground!  Hunter had gone up there to see them come out and I thought he had done it!  I managed to work my way up there and found Jaron helping clean it up, so I started helping too (not so easy to bend over with a short skirt and a prego belly, haha) and luckily found out that it wasn't Hunter, phew!  Still kind of crazy with all the people that were around that it was mostly Jaron that cleaned it up!

Tyler's side of the family.

The whole wedding party!  During the pictures snow kept melting off the temple and we would occasionally get it dripping on us!

After the pictures we headed to Dixie's sister's church, where we had a luncheon.  Dixie and I both made a double batch of a loaded broccoli and cheese soup I found on melskitchencafe.com (love her food!) the night before we drove up north.  We froze it so it would travel well, then it just had to be warmed up for the luncheon.  Grandma Turner had planned to warm up our soup and her's (she made clam chowder) while we went and helped set up the church.  Well Grandpa thought he was helping and turned the crock pots off before they left to the temple, so when they came home they still had frozen soup, so she had to try to warm it really quick on the stove, which ended up taking quite a bit longer than they had hoped to be, and also slightly burnt our soup.  I don't think anyone else even noticed, but since I knew what the soup was supposed to taste like, I could taste the slight burnt flavor to it.  Other than the luncheon being delayed a bit waiting for the food to arrive it was great!  We got to visit with all the family and eat good food!  After the luncheon got done and we helped clean up we changed our kids into their jammies and headed home!  We ended up stopping in Payson to get Ben a Dr. Pepper and me a water, the girls were already asleep by that time and luckily stayed asleep!  The drive went pretty smooth after that!

This cute girl loves to look at books!!

I had another appointment with my baby doctor on the 23rd.  I had to skip an appointment somewhere so he had me go just 3 weeks this time so that I would get back on schedule with the weeks he wants patients seen.  That was my last appointment before my 2 week checks start, which means we were getting close!  I had just really hoped to stay off bed rest so that I could make it to Tyler and Kerri's wedding, after that we didn't have much going on that we needed to go to, so I figured we could handle bed rest after that if we had to, but thankfully still managed to stay off it!

Christmas Eve with the Ewell's.  Opening PJ's!  Looks like Ben's already ready for bed... too bad there was still stuff to put together!

Our 3 cuties in their new jammies!

Joslyn and Tyson even came over this year for the Christmas Eve dinner and jammies.  Her 3 boys were with their dad so they just had Aspen and Tayten.  They left right after this, while the rest of us did the usual Christmas Eve program then went on a drive to look at Christmas lights.

Aspen and Timber's Santa presents, the big one is theirs together.

Hunter's on the left, mine and Ben's on the right and a family one on top of the piano.

We let them go for the Santa presents and check them out for a little bit, then we separate all the ones under the tree and take turns opening those ones.  I love the Timber loved the Barbie house even before taking her new Barbie out of it's package!  She just liked playing with all the little furniture.  For some reason for a long time she thought the Barbie bed was to sit on!  Any time she could reach it off the top shelf she would pull it down and sit on it!  Most of the furniture has been overly loved and had to be fixed over and over again by Ben.  They just can't seem to figure out how to be gently with it!  Thank goodness they've got a daddy good at fixing them!  I just realized I didn't get a picture of Hunter opening his "big" present, he got a big Ninjago Lego set, he loved it!

Timber opening her new outfit, I always get them a new outfit to wear on Christmas day.

Aspen's present from Hunter and Timber, a kid laptop (we give a $10 limit per kid for their siblings to get them a present, I thought this was a pretty awesome present for that limit!)

I helped the kids pick out this present for Ben, it's a game that you hang over the back of a door, then it has a bow and suction cup arrows that you shoot at the different animals on the game.  The kids were pretty excited to get to play it with Ben!

Ben had forgotten to let the kids get me a present until I reminded him (cuz I knew they would be sad if they didn't get me one) a couple days before Christmas.  They picked out a Santa in his sleigh with his reindeer glass decoration for me to get to use next year!

All done with Christmas at our house!  I really failed on pictures!  I didn't get any of Hunter opening presents, except for the very first one and he's kind of in the background.  They all got a new book.  Hunter and Aspen got art sets, Avengers and Frozen, and Timber got a coloring book with stickers inside.  For sibling gifts Timber got a cleaning set with play broom and mop etc. anytime I sweep she thinks she needs to help me too, so they thought she would like a broom her size!  Hunter's sibling gift was a transformer type car, Ben's opening for him in the picture above.  Hunter and Aspen both got new tennis shoes, and Timber got a new hooded towel.  They also got a few little stocking stuffers and of course an orange in the toe, toothbrush and candy throughout!

We had the traditional Christmas breakfast casserole that Ben grew up having for Christmas... I think Ben was the only one that loved it.  I don't mind it and have had it with his family Christmas morning, but the kids really didn't like it, so I'm thinking we probably will have to come up with our own Christmas morning breakfast tradition for future years.  After breakfast we got dressed and then my parents came by with their presents for us.  We opened presents with them and visited for a little bit.  After they left we headed to Ben's parents to open presents there.  Then we all headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Ewell's to visit.  After that headed to the Watson's for tamales and taquitos (they do this every year, they make hundreds of them and just keep having people show up throughout the day until they are all gone!  I wanted to go help them make them this year, but my hands kept going numb with this pregnancy, more on that later, so I didn't feel like I could.)  After lunch there we headed home and put Timber down for a nap, while Hunter and Aspen finally had time to play with all their new stuff!  Once Timber woke up it was time to head to Brandi's house for my families Christmas Dinner.

 Christmas dinner with my family they always have prime rib, if you've been counting that's the 3rd prime rib dinner Ben has had this month!  He loved every one!  We had good food and a good time hanging out with family!  A very busy day, but definitely a good one!

For New Year's we had dinner with the Ewell's and then headed home to put the kids to bed.  They are still so young that they don't even understand that it's a holiday and are way to grumpy without a full nights sleep and haven't ever asked to stay up!  Until they get old enough to ask to try to stay up I'm definitely all for just putting them to bed so I don't have to deal with grumpiness the next day!  Ben was really tired and ended up going to bed shortly after the kids.  I debated going and working since Ben went to bed so it was just like a normal night for me, but I decided to give myself the night off since it was a holiday.  I ended up talking to my Mom and Dad on the phone for like 2 hours and rang in the New Year with them over the phone.  They were just hanging out the 2 of them playing games, so we just chatted until the New Year then said goodnight!  We had a good 2015!  With the start of the New Year the arrival of our baby seemed to all of a sudden be coming so soon!!