Us Lately

Since the beginning of the year Matthew has been slammed with work.  He has had a couple of rough months in residency.  He has been working about 70 hour weeks since the beginning of January.  He has been on-call a few different weekends and has spent a few nights sleeping at the hospital.  We knew it was going to be a rough couple of months but man, it sure hit hard. March is a little lighter month for him but April, May and June will also be quite rough.  Oh, perfect timing to have a baby! 

I have also never seen Matthew so sick before.  Usually he never gets sick but with the intense schedule and stress at work his body hasn't been about to keep up.  One morning when he was home sick, Kensley decided that if she read him some books, he might feel better!

The kids and I have been trying to keep ourselves busy this winter doing inside things.  One morning they decided to put swimsuits on and do some "cleaning" at the kitchen sink.

"Look Mom, my cheese is a race car!"  Everything he eats somehow turns into a plane, car or boat. 

When Matthew does get home, he is immediately tackled.

We've done lots of painting this winter.  I can't believe how grown-up Austin looks here!

If I can't see or hear Kensley playing, then she is usually sitting with a pile of books reading. This day she was reading to the bear. 

I got a new straighter for Christmas this year and Kensley really wanted me to try it on her hair one Sunday.  It's so long when it's straight!

Austin took this picture for me to document that I am indeed getting bigger.  I am 26 weeks along. When I looked at the picture after he took it I had the immediate thought that I definitely feel a lot bigger than I am! I guess everyone feels that way when pregnant.  But everything is going pretty good besides heartburn and getting more and more uncomfortable but just normal things. 

On the few days that it's been warm enough to be outside we have gotten together with cousins to jump on the trampoline or play at the park.  Check out Kensley's awesome trampoline hair.

I love coming to Austin's school to volunteer or help. (When I was teaching I always appreciated parents that came in to help so I want to be one of those parents as well!)  I also LOVE spying on Austin and seeing him in the classroom environment. It's a win-win. :)  This time I was helping with the 100th Day of School party.  Kensley is in the background participating in one of the activities. 

In January I joined a mommy preschool group for Kensley.  We rotate whose house it's at and it's been so great for Kensley. It's nice to have something for her to participate in and to make new friends.

That's a little bit of what we have been doing this winter.

Valentine's Day 2015

Matthew gets mega bonus points for this Valentine's Day!!  Even though the holiday fell on a Saturday, Matthew told me were were going on our date Wednesday night.  He arranged a babysitter and planned everything but wouldn't tell me where we were going.  As we drove closer to where we were eating dinner I figured it out!  We happened to get engaged on February, 11th at the Roof restaurant in downtown Salt Lake.  Wednesday night was the 11th and we were going to the exact spot were we got engaged 9 years ago!  So sweet of him to remember that! It definitely made the night so much for fun to remember our last time we ate there.

Here is the night we got engaged!

On Valentine's Day Saturday, we decided to make roll out sugar cookies.  I make them about once a year and they are the best sugar cookies ever.  The kids helped me this year and absolutely loved the process.  They were really good at cutting out shapes and putting them on the cookie sheets.  Then we decorated them and decided to deliver them to grandparents.

Everyone helped frost and decorate cookies.

First we delivered to Grandma Black.  It was such a nice visit! She fed us a wonderful Valentine-themed lunch and the kids played with vintage blocks and trucks that she has kept. 

Then we stopped by Matthew grandparents.  We helped them with a huge puzzle they were working on.  Austin loves puzzles and was so excited to be helping them and Granny read books to the kids.

It was so nice to spend our day with grandparents that we don't see too often.  Especially on Valentine's Day!

Kensley's Birthday

Kensley's birthday was at the end of January and she is now 3! She was very excited to have a princess party this year.  So we invited a few little girls over and instructed them to wear their princess dresses. They were all so cute.  We  had a very simple party that included decorating wands and crowns, coloring princess pages. princess stamps, cupcakes and time to play.  Austin didn't want to be left out so he joined in on everything and loved being a part of it!

Kensley is a girly- girl to the max! She always wants to have her nails painted and I can't pull out my lip gloss without her begging for some too.  She always wants to dance to music and has to be wearing a skirt when she dances.  She loves to draw princesses, especially Rapunzel with really long hair.  She is very sweet but can also be very stubborn.  We love her so much!

Announcement!

On Christmas Day we announced that we are pregnant again!  Round 3!

The kids were pretty excited when we told them and the first thing they mentioned was "Mom, you are going to get really big and fat."  Yes, thank you kids, yes I am.  I was 17 weeks along in that picture and am due June 2, 2015

Now I am currently 21 weeks along and we found out what we are having.  It's a BOY!  Austin was so thrilled.  Kensley was in denial for a little bit but has now embraced it and tells everyone we are having a baby boy.  

Minus the month of November in which I was so sick the entire month I have been feeling fine.  Just a little overly tired but nothing too bad or extreme, very similar to my other pregnancies.  Let's hope it stays that way.  So excited to add another little guy to our family!

Christmas 2014

We had a great Christmas season this year. We stayed home this year and did lots of festive things.  Christmas gets more and more fun as my kids get older and older.  Austin was very diligent about moving the snowflake on our advent calendar every day as soon as he woke up. 

Christmas Eve we went to Matthew's parents' house to act out the nativity.  Kensley was very excited to be Mary.  She loved the nativity story this year and would always put a blanket on her head and pretend to be Mary.   Austin enjoyed being a wiseman and giving baby Jesus a present. 

Christmas morning came and Matthew and I woke up early expecting to hear kids up and ready to open presents.  However, Austin didn't wake up until 8:15 and Kensley slept until 9:00!  They had had a couple late nights that week so we totally let them sleep and started Christmas when they both were up.

It was also a fun surprise to wake up to a white Christmas! We have hardly had any snow this season and then Christmas morning comes and we got dumped on.  Austin loved going sledding and playing in it until his fingers were numb.  Kensley had a runny nose and a lingering cough so she stayed inside with me.

Then we went back to Matthew's parents house to open more gifts.  Austin got this race car that he can drive and it was for sure his favorite gift.  He has gotten so good at driving it around and going in reverse.  It doesn't have a good turning radius so he has also gotten really good at making 3 point turn arounds. 

Kensley loved her new dress- ups, Elsa doll and Olaf and wanted me to take a picture of all them sitting together. 

Before Christmas we decorated gingerbread cookies with cousins.  Austin concentrated so hard to make it perfect and symmetrical. 

Kensley was more interested in eating as much candy as she could instead of decorating anything.

 Austin and I went on a Mommy/Son date to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. The Seseme Street muppets were there as a special guest and my sister Kayla was dancing in it.  It was such a fun night with him.  We took the train up to Salt Lake to avoid the terrible parking and Austin loved that too.  He was a little young to sit through a whole concert without talking or wiggling too much but some M&M's helped with that.  It was an amazing performance!

The Saturday night before Christmas we took the whole family on the train back up to Salt Lake to look at the Temple Square lights.  Such a fun family Christmas activity!

Thanksgiving 2014

I know.. I am so behind in blogging  But, I am determined to catch up!

This year for Thanksgiving we drove up to Rexburg, Idaho. Jenna and Cole just bought their first house and were excited to host.  So the whole Black clan came up.  It was so awesome to be with everyone.  The kids especially had fun playing with cousins.  I think my favorite thing we did was sit around and play games with everyone.  We even did a couple that the kids could be involved in and had such a blast.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was so yummy.  Between Jenna, my mom and I, we made homemade everything including turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cooked carrots, green bean casserole, rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie and pecan pie.  It was a lot of work but so very worth it!

Jenna's beautiful table setting:

Since we were all together family pictures were a must:

 The girls:

Grandkids picture:

Halloween 2014

We had a great Halloween season this year.  The kids wanted to be superheros this year.  Austin wanted to be Flash and Kensley just wanted to be a "girl super hero".  So I introduced her to Wonder Woman and she loved it. Costumes were easy to make this year too and that is always a plus!

They were so looking forward to trick or treating this year.  Luckily the weather was so nice and not that chilly.  Kensley was pretty shy at the doors but Austin knew what to say.  We got quite the load of candy!  During trick or treating, Kensley got some candy that was in a wrapper with the Frozen characters on it.  She would not put it in her bag bacause she wanted to hold it in her hand to make sure she could keep it.  Cute girlie. 

My sister Kayla and I ran the Haunted Half Marathon the week before Halloween.  We dressed up at Bat Girls and it was so fun to run it together.  It was a beautiful run down Provo Canyon. And to top it off we both beat our previous times.  Woo hoo!  Matthew and the kids came to watch us cross the finish line which was so nice to see at the end.  The kids loved watching all the different people in costumes running. :)

Other festivities included pumpkin painting.  Our kids don't really like to get involved in the carving process but they sure love to paint.  So they each painted a few different pumpkins.

Milestones

Both my kids have reached a big milestone recently.

First, Austin started kindergarten!  

He is a very young 5 year old and we debated holding him back another year but in the end decided to have him start this year.  I still have mixed feelings about it but I'm sure that is partly due to it being my oldest going off to school. We were both a ball of nerves that first day but he walked right in.  He did look back though and waved goodbye!

Silly faces. Kensley didn't want to miss out on first day of school pictures

 Everything went great that first day.  Then the second day...
On the first day I took him to school and picked him up from school but starting the second day he rides the bus.  Putting my 5 year old on a big bus and watching it drive away was a little gut wrenching for me that first day but i knew it would be fine.  Well I started walking to the bus stop from our house to pick him up and saw all the kids already walking home.  I had missed the bus.  It came 10 minutes early!  So i asked the other kids if they had seen Austin and no one had.  AHH! I didn't know if he was still on the bus, or maybe got on the wrong bus, or maybe got off at the wrong stop.  No idea.
I called the school and they said there were no students left at the school.  I called the bus transportation and they got in contact with all the bus drivers and they said all the buses were now empty. WHAT?!  Then where is my son?!  I called the police and explained the situation. They told me to stay home and sent an officer to my house.  They had to search the house first since 98% of the time a missing child is reported they are hiding in the house somewhere.  I assured them he was not home.  Then they got in contact with the school and the bus transportation and could confirm that he got on the right bus to come home. So they put a police officer at every stop the bus made and started searching.
Finally an officer radioed in that they had him  He apparently stayed on the bus the whole time and the driver didn't see him.  The driver looked up his stop, drove back and dropped him off at the correct stop.  An officer saw him get dropped off and drove him home.
It was the scariest 40 minutes of my life not knowing where my son was.  Austin just thought it was pretty cool that he got to drive home in a police car.
Now I am at that bus stop every day super early!

Kensley's milestone is that she is now potty-trained!

I was not looking forward to this part of parenting. We were not sure how it was going to go but she has far exceeded my expectations.  She has been doing great!  The first two days she had no idea what was going on and was pretty upset that her whole world was just turned upside down. But with princess panties, a sticker chart and gummy bears we are doing pretty good. She looks so grown up in underwear!  

Yay for kids doing awesome things!

Camping

We have been itching to go camping all summer and finally made it happen this Labor Day. Actually we went two different times!
The first time we went with Matthew's parents. They had last minute plans to go up into the Uintas right on the border of Utah and Wyoming.  It  was a small campground with little cabins and real bathrooms (woohoo!)  The cabins had heat too which was great since it was chilly the whole time we were there.

We went 4-wheeling up in the mountain trails. It was so pretty and super steep sometimes too.  We also had to ride through several huge mud puddles so we were pretty covered when we got back.

The kids had so much fun playing with sticks and rocks and just exploring.  It was so nice to be outside in nature.

 Found this huge pile of branches.  Austin and his cousin Aaron spend a good hour or so throwing sticks into the pile or pretending the pile was a bad guy/monster and fighting it with sticks :)

Kensley and Declan spend a good deal of time "fixing" the broken trees.

We also went canoeing.  I was worried that we would tip over but it was great!  The kids were excited and nervous to be riding in a boat.  They are the two little blobs in the middle of the canoe.  

Our second camping experience was a little more rugged.  Our ward was putting on the camp out.  We showed up and it's just an empty space for tents.  No facilities or anything.  Which is fine, but I was grateful it was only for one night!  We were also 1 of 4 families that came up to spend the night!

We love our ginormous tent!  

 After roasting smores and exploring the campsite with flashlights Austin asked "When are we going to bed?"  He thinks going to sleep in the tent is the best part about camping. So here we are reading books and putting kids to bed.  Not sure why Kensley is giving that face!

We only had three sleeping bags so we gave the kids 2 of them and Matthew and I slept on an air mattress and laid the third sleeping bag over both of us.  Bad idea.  We froze all night.  I checked the kids and they were both toasty warm curled up with blankets and sleeping bags.  Not us.  I fell asleep with numb toes, woke up about 20 times in the night with numb toes and got up in the morning with numb toes.  No amount of cuddling warmed us up either. Matthew got up about 6:30 to make a fire because he was so cold.  Needless to say Matthew and I slept horribly.  But both the kids slept all night. Next time, we will be sure to get enough sleeping bags for everyone!

We got in our camping itch and I'm so glad we did.  They kids love it and do really well and we love getting away too.