Before...

... and after.

It was a good day.

Christmas Eve Nativity

We each had to play multiple roles, but it turned out pretty well in the end.

Grandma Marynel

This weekend Grandma Marynel came to play!

HOORAY!
(Follow the Leader)

We had lots of fun going to the park
and making sugar cookies
and reading stories
and decorating the house for Christmas (finally!)
Thanks for coming to visit us Grandma!
WE LOVE YOU!


What will we do now that you're gone???

Overachievers

We had a little bit of gingerbread dough left over after L1's party, so Saturday morning we managed to stretch it enough to make one more gingerbread house... which Lisa and Brent turned into this...

Yes, that would be a Russian Orthodox Church, complete with minarets made out of Rice Krispie Treats and covered with fruit roll ups, decorating gel, and melted candy corns.And this was only the practice version - they have even bigger plans for one that they'll make on Christmas Day. I can't wait to see it!

Gingerbread Houses

Since L1's birthday is right in the middle of the holiday season, we started the tradition of celebrating with her friends by making gingerbread houses. This year, we're in the middle of replacing the floors in our house and all of our furniture is crammed into one room, so we held two separate decorating sessions.

First, L1 had some of her friends from school over for what I think was the speediest decorating ever.

Then the next weekend, a couple of friends from church came over for more decorating fun with lots of giggling and screaming mixed in :)

The final product looked good enough to eat!

And P generously put himself in charge of "putting away" the leftovers...

SIX!!!!!!

My baby girl is six years old!
(seen here in her birthday outfit from Grandma Marynel)

She seems so grown up already. L1 is definitely the queen of the house and rules her brothers alternately with charm and brute force. She absolutely loves being in kindergarten and is learning so much everyday. Her favorite subject is art and she is actually very talented - something she gets from her Dad.
Here is her project from school this semester.Impressive, no? Especially to someone like me who struggles to draw stick people.

Leah asked for a flower cake and potatoes for dinner. We had a great time celebrating with Grandma and Papa and Uncle Brent. Thanks for coming up and sharing L1's big day!

Blessing Day

Today was Elijah's blessing day. We've given all of our boys names that they share with our ancestors - Lincoln and Peter are named after an uncle and a grandfather on Andrew's side of the family, so we decided to find a name on my side of the family this time. Eli is named after two grandfathers in the Bardo line - Elijah after his 5th great grandfather and Charles after his great grandfather who passed away in February. According the the genealogy fiends in my family, there are also several Charles' on Andrew's side of the family as well. We are so grateful for the good examples that our ancestors have given us and for their testimonies of God and his blessings in our lives. As our children grow, we hope their names will remind them to look to these examples and be inspired by the lives of their forefathers.

Economizing

Rather than give our kids each their own room,
we decided to give them each their own cubby... maybe this will help them learn to keep the clutter to a minimum.

On Thanksgiving

We were lucky enough to have family visiting us last weekend, so we took advantage and had our turkey dinner on Sunday. This means that we've been eating our Thanksgiving leftovers all week long, so we weren't really in the mood for another traditional meal. Instead, we started our day with a big Austin tradition - the Turkey Trot!
I took Leah and Lincoln downtown early this morning to run in the Kids K (of course, I forgot my camera) and after we spent a couple of hours jumping in the bouncy house and making turkey hats and sand bracelets. We had a great time and it got our day off to a nice start.

When we got home, we piled the rest of the boys in the car and went driving around town looking for a place to eat - we settled for Steak 'n Shake where we enjoyed some yummy burgers and fries and even yummier milkshakes.

Sometimes it's really nice to just slow down and enjoy your family and realize how blessed you really are to have such wonderful kids and an amazing husband and good health and get to live in this great country. I am indeed thankful!

Hooray Peter!!

Yesterday we celebrated Peter!

Hooray!!

It doesn't seem like that long ago that he was a wee little one...

And now look at him...
Can't you just see the mischief in those two-year old eyes???


Peter loves all cars, but his favorite of late has been the fire truck.
So we made a fire truck cake...
which Peter thoroughly enjoyed!
Then we moved on to presents - although it took a little to convince Peter that it really was his turn to open them. And what was the first thing he opened?
A fireman outfit!

Just the thing he needs...
to ride in his fire truck!

We still need to work on the pedal action, but who needs motion when you can make your own motion sound effects?

Thank you Grandma and Papa and Uncle Brent for coming up to celebrate with us!
And thanks to all those who sent such wonderful presents to play with...
Vroom! Zoom!

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

We love Sesame Street around here! Where else can both kids and adults be so entertained by good clean fun!? So, for your viewing pleasure on this day that should be a national holiday... Here are links to some of our favorite clips :)

Meal or No Meal

My Triangle

Time to Say Good Night

I Don't Want to Live on the Moon

ABCDEF... Cookie Monster!

Law & Order: Special Letters Unit

RSI: Rhyme Scene Investigation

Captain Vegetable

The King and I

Enjoy!

Bathtime

Eli's cord fell off during his two-week well check
so the big event this week was his first bath.

He seemed to like it the first time...
but maybe he was just bewildered by the sensations,

because he sure gave those lungs a workout when we repeated the fun on Saturday.

My Boys

Leah has a tendency to monopolize the baby when she's around... not that the boys really care all that much. It just means that we don't have as many pictures of them with Eli. So this week wheile I took Leah to the dentist, Andrew took advantage and got some great shots of the three boys. It's hard to believe they were all that small once!

Trick or Treat!

Here is our crew before the ward Trunk-or-Treat...
Dora, Diego, and Thing 1

They ended up getting an impressive amount of candy considering the number of cars that were there - luckily, the Candy Witch made a stop at our house last night and left these treasures in place of the candy the kids left out for her.

Halloween?

I know I have a really good excuse and all, but I feel kind of lame that this is the extent of our Halloween decorations this year... and we wouldn't have had this if it hadn't been for an activity at Andrew's work!


I did, however, make this lovely cake for the cakewalk at Leah's school carnival. I guess that has to count for something, right?

Details

Now that Eli is just over a week old and we are starting to form some semblance of a routine, I thought I'd take a minute to pass along the details of his arrival for posterity and since so many have asked. For those of you who would rather not know, you probably just want to skip this post - although I don't tend to get too graphic.



Most of you know that I was scheduled to be induced on Tuesday morning... so of course, my contractions decided to get serious on Monday morning at about 2 am. Keep in mind that I was already dilated to about 4cm on Thursday and had been having contractions for awhile, just not with any consistency. The ones that woke me up, however, were definitely more intense.. so I spent the next few hours waiting for them to get a little closer together.

At about 5:30 I woke Andrew up, called my babysitter, and let the hospital know I was on my way. We got to the hospital a little after 6... after a very slow walk up to L&D since my contractions got a LOT closer together when I was walking. Turns out I was already dilated to 8cm by the time they got me set up so Eli really didn't take very long to make his appearance. He has pretty broad shoulders though, so he got stuck a little on the way out in between contractions - not a fun place to be for either of us. Unfortunately, being stuck also meant that his umbilical cord was pinched off for a moment so he was pretty floppy and blue when he finally made it out, but pinked up quickly.The kids had just woken up when we called to tell them their new baby brother was here. When Leah heard the news there was a slight pause of disbelief (she really wanted a sister, I think) but she was excited nonetheless. And now she is completely enamored of her newest brother and has been a huge help around the house. She'll even sit and hold him for almost an hour if there's not too much else exciting going on.

I think it's safe to say that Eli has found his way nicely into our family and we're quickly approaching the point where we don't remember what it was like when he wasn't here.

First Photo

Elijah Charles

Born 7:35 am
8 lbs 15 oz
20 inches

Eviction Notice

This post is mostly to put my mom's mind at ease.... I know she's been waiting for a phone call to hear about the newest grandbaby - who still hasn't made an appearance. However, as a friend of ours put it, the child has been served an eviction notice. He or she has until Tuesday to make an appearance by choice. Then it's off to have a baby for sure. So if you don't hear from me before then, be sure to swing by for an update on Tuesday!

My Bags are Packed...

Yesterday was the day I woke up feeling just kind of icky and unwieldy and really ready to have the baby out rather than in.

Some friends of ours from Japan once told us (when we were expecting our first baby) that we needed to invite the baby to come when we were ready. At the time I was overdue with Leah and we were willing to try anything - and it worked!

So... now that we are back in our house with some semblance of order, we've gotten the important paperwork out of the way to finalize our refinance (and closing looks to be about a week away), I've finally packed a small hospital bag, found the car seat, set up the bassinet, and my doctor is on call this weekend...

We would like to issue an official invitation to our little one to come join our family! We can't wait to meet you!

Criminal Masterminds

This is a map.

This is a map made by my children to show their latest master plan. I've labeled it to make it easier for the non-secret agent to understand.

The plan is to have Lincoln create a distraction so Leah will have time to hide my books (which books, I have no idea). The goal? When I discover the missing books, apparently I will yell so loudly that Andrew will be able to hear me at work.

I'm still not sure how disturbed to be by this secret plan... especially since Leah was very distressed when she heard that Andrew had shown me the map.

In other news...

We moved back into our house last Wednesday - Hurray!! They were able to get the foundation up to within 1/4" of where they wanted it and my dad and brother were nice enough to come up and spend Monday and Tuesday fixing cracks and laying our floor back in place. Now we just have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do as we put all our furniture back in place and prepare for the new little one. We have many other projects in the works now that our foundation is more stable, but I think we'll wait until the baby arrives before we tackle those.

Marathon Kids

Leah ran her first leg of a marathon on Saturday! Austin is a huge participator in Marathon Kids - a program that encourages kids to run or walk 26.2 miles over a 6 month period. Saturday was the big kick off at the UT track, where everyone ran once around the track to start their "marathon". We'll keep running for the next six months and meet up again in February to run the final lap.

Leah did a great job and ran the whole way keeping up with her dad! Here they are after crossing the finish line :)

Barking Spiders

This may just be a southern expression, or maybe even just a Texan one, but around our house when someone passes gas we say they have a "barking spider". It just seemed better than the alternatives - especially since not everyone seems to know what it means. Since Peter's speaking abilities have rapidly been improving, he's picked up on the phrase as well - in a way that makes us giggle :) Whenever he passes gas, he gets that wonderful surprised toddler look and says "Oh! Bark! Bark!"

No More Chocolate :(

I had to have a fetal EKG yesterday because the baby has been having an infrequent irregularity in it's heartrate. Turns out to be nothing to worry about as long as the baby is still moving around alot. Unfortunately, it also means that I have to cut out all chocolate and my occasional Dr. Pepper until the big day...The upside to the episode was getting to see this pudgy little face (a little blurred, but fun nonetheless). The technician says the baby is about 7 lbs right now so we're expecting a good sized little one in just a few weeks!

Labor Day Weekend

After a somewhat stressful week of moving into our temporary home and all the other little meetings that make life seem so crazy, we were ready for a mini vacation. Thanks to Andrew's work, we were able to get tickets to the Round Rock Express game (our minor league baseball team) on Saturday evening. It started raining right as we got there, so we didn't get to jump in the bouncy house, but we still had a great time!

We ate cotton candy...
And said hello to Spike - the Express mascot.
This was the first time Lincoln was brave enough to get close to him - he gave him a big hug and both he and Peter gave him high fives (Peter had no fear at all, just a huge grin on his face!)

Then on Monday, we decided to take the kids down to San Antonio to see the temple. We got lucky in that they were watering the plants when we arrived, so they let us walk around the grounds for awhile - otherwise the gates would have been locked and we would have had to make do with the a viewing from afar.

After our visit to the temple, we went by Chick-Fil-A for a free lunch (for wearing our sports logo shirts) and made a few scenic stops on the way back to Austin. In fact, by the time we got back to Austin, it was time for dinner so we stopped at Chick-Fil-A again for another free meal! You've gotta love that place!

All in all, a fun, refreshing weekend that left us ready for another busy week!

One Week In

Work started on our foundation last Monday and they seem to be making pretty good progress. At any rate, we have several holes in our floors and around the perimeter of the house and most of them are pretty deep. You can see how we had to take up some of the wood floors to accomodate the holes. The nice thing about real wood floors is that if you're careful when you take up the slats, you can put them back down again. We also have a couple of cartons of the flooring in the attic that we can use to fill in the gaps and then we'll just have them refinished. Luckily, we were able to avoid tearing in to the floors in the front room, so we just have to deal with the family room when they're done.

Meanwhile, we're subletting a furnished apartment about five minutes from our house (which is nice because not only did we not have to move any furniture, but it also allows us to make a run every night to do laundry and collect the mail - as well as pick up whatever we realize we've forgotten or decide we can't live without). It's a bit kitschy and much smaller than we're used to, but it does have a beautiful big screen TV and the kids think it's a great adventure!

I have discovered, however, that when you actually live in someone else's place, you find that your standards of cleanliness are much higher than you give yourself credit for at home. For example, I like my walls and appliances to be free of food splatter - something not so important to the person we're leasing from. She also apparently had some sort of small long-haired animal that I'm very allergic to - at least while I'm pregnant - so I've been vacuuming several times a day to try to get up all the hair, but it doesn't seem to be doing much good.

While it's been great to have a place so close to our home and Leah's school, I'm sincerely hoping that we'll only be here three more weeks. Here's praying that the work on the house goes quickly!