Tired

I'm feeling a little drained today. Ethan's not been feeling well, I've been sleeping horribly (like a couple hours a night, if that, and not being able to nap), and today Terral is sick as well. So we tried to take it a little easier today, but I still feel rather blah.

I'm a bit nervous because tomorrow I start babysitting every Friday morning. It's in the morning, and I start at a time when I'm not usually awake. So hopefully everything goes better tonight.

Wish us luck!

Service Received

This morning, our neighbor came over to mow our lawn. Parts of it were pretty overgrown. I did weed some of the more jungle-like areas in the past few days, but I hadn't gotten to all of it. It was so nice of him to do that for us!

And after he was done with the lawn, he went and got his weed eaters to tackle some of the more obnoxious weed bushes growing outside the lawn. I kept telling him we really didn't expect him to stay all day, but he just said that since he's retired he'd just be at home watching tv, or else working on his own weeds, and he was tired of that.

Everything looks much better now. It was quite the act of service! He was here a couple hours. Now I just need to get some more eggs so I can make a thank you treat. :)

Ponies at the Park

My big accomplishment for the day was getting started dehydrating the apples that came from our tree. It feels really good to have that going finally.

I also weeded some of the jungle out of our lawn, and while I was doing that our neighbor came over to the fence and offered to mow our lawn for us. Since we don't yet have a mower, I accepted his kind offer.

This evening, Terral offered to make dinner, so I took Ethan on a little walk to keep him occupied. There is a little park within walking distance, but we hadn't visited it yet, so I decided to take him there. There is a field that surrounds it, and when we got there we saw seven little ponies near the fence. When we walked up to look at them, some of them came to see what we were all about. It was really fun. We let them sniff our hands and fed them bits of grass. They were only about as tall as Ethan!

 Then we went over to the little play set. It is much more suited to Ethan's size and age than the elementary playgrounds, which is where we have been going, so I think we will come back to this one often. He had a blast since he could pretty much do everything himself.

He found a little bar to hang from.

 And he loved climbing up this thing. Wouldn't even touch the stairs.
(He got a wood chip in his sandal and was asking me to fix it.)

 He tried the red slide first, and then the blue. But once he went down the yellow slide, nothing else would do.

 On the way home, he got to walk the last part. Sometimes we don't even bother taking the stroller out on walks anymore because he just loves to walk and run so much. I sure love my happy little boy!

Wheeler Farm

This is my last catch up post from July. Hallelujah!

After the wedding luncheon, there were several hours before the reception, so all of us non-newly-wed siblings gathered to spend the afternoon at Wheeler Farm.

Ethan fell asleep on the ride over, so Terral and I found a shady spot to park and we sort of napped in our seats while Ethan slept. Sarah had to go home for a couple reasons, so she was kind enough to bring some clothes for Ethan so he didn't have to wear just a diaper for the rest of the time. :)

Because of the nap, we wandered just the three of us for a while until we caught up with the others.

I loved the look of this barn!

Moo! Ethan liked the cow, but he wasn't into them quite as much as he is now.

The horses caught his interest a little more.

Aren't they pretty? I like their feed box too. :)

This is right after the horse snorted on us. Ha!

Ah! It's much nicer up here.

There was a whole barn full of tractors, which was pretty excited for Mr. E. But they were all antiques and we couldn't touch them.

He did get a turn on this green one though! Such fun!

And finally we found everyone else.

The kids thought it was pretty funny that the pig got in its water to drink. Ethan kept saying, "wet!"

Nothing's more exciting than a tractor in action.

There was a fun two story tree house that the kids loved playing in.

The door to the next level was pretty tiny. I wanted to go up there, but I decided there were too many kids. (Please note the headband in Kaylee's hand.)

Kyle made it up to the second level in spite of the teeny doorway and the multitude of kids.

Lovely sisters waiting while the kids play.

Daddy and Ethan up in the treehouse. Hmm. . .how did Kaylee's headband end up there?

He certainly didn't seem to mind it! Especially with the cool wagon there.

When we were done looking at animals and such, we gathered on one of the big lawns to visit and have a little picnic.

This is when I told my family that we were expecting. (I told Matt & Karalee and my parents earlier.) I kept waiting for a good opportunity to just slip it into the conversation so everyone could hear, but there were too many different things going on, so I ended up just saying it in a conversation with Braelyn. She was asking me about motherhood, so I figured that was as good as it would get! Sarah and Diane heard me, and then I had to interrupt other conversations to let everyone else know. So not as smooth as I'd hoped. But, hey, everyone was happy for us!

After a bit, Diane had the brilliant idea to play 9 Lives. We used to play it when we were kids, but I had completely forgotten about it. I was pretty young then. I wasn't nauseous at that point, so it felt really good to get out a run and play. Terral and I didn't stay to finish it though, because we wanted to visit the habitat for humanity restore. That was a bit of a fiasco, so I kind of wish we had just stayed to play. In any case, we still made some good memories, and overall Matt's wedding day was full of good things.  It really was a beautiful day.

Settling In

We are becoming more and more a part of this ward. I've already led the music on two different occasions, subbed in nursery, and am on the line-up for a sacrament meeting musical number. And today the bishop asked Terral and I to come in after church and we both received callings.

Last week the relief society president asked us if we would have dinner with them this Sunday. I looked forward to it all week. We had a really nice evening with them and hope to do a game night sometime.

There's another lady in my ward that I met during a weeknight meeting, and we just hit it off right away. I think she's about forty years old, but that doesn't seem to matter. We stopped by their house last Sunday while we were out on a walk, and she showed us all their animals: cats, rats, goats, and chickens. Ethan loved it all, but he seemed particularly enthralled by the chickens. I'm really grateful to have made a friend so quickly that I feel comfortable enough with to just stop by unannounced.

Now I just need to start going to the Thursday morning play group so I can get to know some other young moms. It just takes me so long to get going in the mornings that I haven't made it yet, so I've been kind of a hermit. In the mean time, we are still getting to know people and feeling more at home in this area. It's a nice feeling. :)

Fun Busy

Today was a very full day for Terral. It started a little after five in the morning for him, since he had to get ready for his race. He and some friends ran the Cedar Express Relay as Team Unshoes. I was originally going to run with them, but with the way I've been feeling lately, we thought it best to find a replacement. Luckily we found one easily enough! Besides Terral, the team members were Laura, her husband Shad, his sister Wendy (my replacement), and Zach. Zach and Laura both work for Terral. Zach was one of Jaymon's best friends, and Terral's been trying hard to get him "addicted" to running. And it looks like it's working! Everyone had a really good time at the race. They didn't finish at the top, but they did have quite a few people ask about the sandals. ;) I'm just glad they enjoyed themselves. Ethan and I enjoyed ourselves too. We slept in. :D (I really needed it because for some reason I just couldn't sleep at all the previous night. I just laid there all night until I finally fell asleep at about seven. Weird.)

When Terral got home from the relay, we packed up and headed to Sand Hollow to celebrate McKade's birthday. We spent a really fun afternoon there at the lake. McKade got to ride on the tube quite a bit, which is good since that was his favorite part. We had a great time playing in the sand (which was perfect!), throwing rocks, splashing in the water, and goofing around. We also did a little tubing. I had a short, very mild ride with Ethan that was very relaxing.

I didn't get very many pictures since I didn't want to get my phone wet, but I did at least get everyone who was there.

Adding Joy

It's time to announce that this family is expecting another kidlet come March! We are very excited to have our family grow.

It's too early to know the gender yet, but even before I was pregnant we felt that we had a little girl coming. There's a chance it won't be this time, but at present we think it is.

My first signs of pregnancy this time were immense hunger, more emptying of the bladder, and an inability to regulate my core temperature. Pretty sure that last one is not normal, but it sure let me know something was going on in my abdomen.

It will be nice now not to have to pretend I'm not nauseous. :)

I feel kind of bad that until a few days ago I haven't spent nearly as much time contemplating this pregnancy as I did the last time. Having a new house with all the projects that come along with it and taking care of our little boy take up a lot of my focus.

All the same, I know this little baby will be very unique and we will love her (or him!) so very much!

Fun Little Hike

Near the end of June, we went on a little hike as a family. Terral took us to a place he had seen on some of his trail runs.

We found a feather for Ethan, and he thought it was pretty cool.

 Ethan got tired of the backpack a lot faster than he usually does, so he did some hiking on his own. It was pretty gnarly with rocks and things, but he did really well!

And I just couldn't resist including this video because I think it is so funny. He'd a a really wet diaper, so we decided to let him air off for a while. I love the random spin in the middle. :)

 And here we are at our destination! 

Ethan jumped off those boulders into his daddy's arms over and over. It was a very good day.

Пельмени

I've been trying to have more variety at meal times lately, and tonight I finally cooked something I've been wanting for a long time: пельмени (pelmeni). I ate these meat-filled pastries quite a bit on my mission, but I actually never had any that were homemade. 

Terral had some on his mission too, but he didn't have the fond memories of them I did. Luckily, they were a hit with everyone tonight! Ethan ate better than he has in quite a while. And honestly, you'd never know I made them with venison hamburger.

I was a little worried about them turning out because the dough did not work the way the recipe said it should. I think it's partially because I used whole wheat flour. But it all worked out in the end! I admit I was rather proud of the end result.

Craving: Satisfied!

Weekend with Family

Okay, no more procrastinating. I finally took a picture of the cabinets in their current state so I could write this post.

As I mentioned before, Dad and Matt arrived during the big storm. They had hoped to get here at about 1 in the afternoon, but experienced some setbacks at work. So between the evening hour and the rain, it wasn't possible to do anything on Friday. It would have been nice to be able to do something, but we will take whatever help we can get! We were just grateful to have them there. We had dinner, and then when the Downwards arrived we did some playing.

I haven't really played any songs on the piano yet because I had the music all packed away, but I broke out some books so Diane could play some music for us. It was cute to see the kids dance to it. :)

(Sorry about the poor quality of these pictures. They are all taken with my phone because even though I have my camera back, the charger got misplaced in the move.)

 The next day I woke up at about seven, and Dad, Terral, and Matt were already going.  Matt worked on the cabinets (one of them needed to be fixed) and Dad and Terral worked on the roofs. Mike soon joined them up top.

 Demo time!

 You can see how the cabinet door wouldn't stay shut and it was missing a drawer. Also, the cabinet under the sink was badly water damaged and deteriorated, which caused the countertop to break. So nice to get all of that out!

 Here's my daddy up on the roof.

 And me trying to clean some of the yuck that was on the wall behind the sink.

 Diane helping me clean out the new cabinets. Way easier than the uppers I cleaned last week!

 Terral on the shed.

 Lunch break! I thought it was cute to see Matt sitting at the table with all the little kids.

 Matt helping dad fix some electrical issues before the "new" cabinets went in.

 Terral and Mike on the new shed roof.

 Mike again.

 And the cabinets going in! My dad is doing a remodel for one of my old primary teachers, and she and her husband let us have their old cabinets for free!

 In the midst of all this, a swing set arrived. The neighbors across the street just showed up with it. Apparently, it used to be here and was given to them. There kids are old enough now that they don't ever use it, so they decided to give it to us! We've really been wanting to get a swing for Ethan, so we were quite excited about it. He loves it and asked to swing about every fifteen minutes. ;)

 And here is the not-so-awesome picture I snapped today of the kitchen in its current state, dishes and all. Even though the cabinets are old and need to be painted, the dishwasher still needs to be hooked up, and there is still lots of other work to be done, it just feels so much more homey in there. It's really nice to know the cabinets aren't grody and falling apart. I somehow hate the floor less too. :)

We were also going to use the countertop that came with the cabinets, but even though the sinks measured the same, the placement was off and we ended up having to put the old counter back on. We do have one little section of "new" counter to the left of the stove though. The counters and sink are just sitting on top since they are temporary. We'll be getting our butcher block after all!

We feel really blessed to have had so much help. We are so grateful for the service we've been given! And we really enjoyed spending time with family too. It's awesome to know that we can bed 7 extra people, and we'll probably be able to do even more down the road. :)

Thank you, family! You are awesome!