Kevin and I had a pretty productive weekend last week. My parents were gracious enough to take our kids Friday night and Saturday so we could get some projects done and so I could sleep since I worked night shift.We got our front room painted on Friday night and then Kevin got his floor put in for our shed on Saturday with the help of some great friends. I was able to start sewing the squares for Isak's quilt which I'm realizing is going to take me forever to finish. Its suppose to be a christmas present so hopefully I can finish in time. Anyway, it was fantastic to be able to get so much done! This is what people must be able to accomplish all the time who don't have kids!Our kids were so tired when my parents dropped them off, Isak fell asleep on the recliner and slept for an hour. I don't know if its nesting or what but all the half finished projects we have around our house are driving my absolutely crazy. That and I feel like the walls are closing in on me in our house and we really need that shed before the baby comes so I have a place to put everything! I don't even have room for its cradle right now and haven't been able to dig out any of my boy baby clothes because I can't find them. I have a couple months..I can do it, right??

Speaking of babies, Lucy really likes to sit in the bumbo chair and say, "I'm a baby". Its fairly awesome, especially when she's in her raincoat and blanket sleeper.

Isak loves me to play war with his army guys and the playdough with him. He takes his colored pencils and uses them as missles and they fire them at each other from their mounds of dough. I love him but oh my goodness he is so demanding. He gets upset whenever I talk on the phone with him there because I am not paying 100% attention to him all the time. Its exhausting. I love spending time with him but it would be nice if he would play be himself for 10 mins during the day! He's going through a phase where he loves to tell jokes that he's made up and he thinks they are hilarious. Its pretty funny. He says the funniest things. Tonight he was in bed yelling at Kevin and I because we couldn't find a stuffed animal of is and I heard him yell "why is no one paying attention to all the feelings I am having?!" He loves feeling the baby move and talks about it frequently, I just hope he loves it as much when he/she shows up and starts taking a lot of my time!

Halloween!!

We had our ward's trunk or treat on Saturday night which was pretty small affair. Isak was a leopard and Lucy was a ladybug, both costumes we were gifted to us by my sister in the past year so I had to do absolutely nothing! Thanks Valerie! The kids got some candy and Lucy quickly figured out that if she put her bucket back up towards people and the candy bag, she would get more candy. Somehow she ended up with twice as much candy as Isak.

On the actual day, Isak had a Halloween party at preschool that I got to go help at. He wore his costume and was extremely excited to go show all his friends and see their costumes. Spending 2 hours with several hopped up 4 and 5 year olds in costumes was definitely an experience.

Kevin was also out of town all day Halloween so I got the lovely job of getting the kids ready for trick or treating. As you can tell, Lucy was just so excited. But this picture pretty much explains her personality the last 3 days, apparently puberty hits at 2. Who knew? She is impossible to reason with and will throw giant tantrums over anything, like green watercolors or not holding owl puppet. She can communicate when she wants too, she just would rather scream and be completely irrational. I love her, yes I do, but when I got pregnant I purposely put 3 years between my kids in a hope that Lucy would be more independent since Isak was so little when Lucy was born. I didn't realize I would still have 2 babies! She has no desire at all to leave her crib, to be potty trained, to try and dress herself, or well do anything that requires any effort at her part. Isak was so completely opposite at this age, wanting as much independence as we allowed, that I have no idea what to do with her. Anyway, this is about Halloween so I shall continue.

Lucy eventually obliged to go outside when she realized she got to bring her candy bucket with her and fill it with more candy. My nice friend and her family offered to go with us so I wouldn't have to drag the kids around by myself.Isak as a leopard and his flashlight/sucker that I'm pretty sure he doesn't know is candy yet and just likes the face reflection that the laser puts off. Notice the new door in the back? We put it in on Saturday and I love it! It lets so much more light in our house and looks so much better. We trick or treated down our street towards Kevin's mom's house and the kids did pretty well. Lucy rode in the stroller and hopped out for every door. It was pretty cold but their costumes were very warm. They both got a decent amount of candy that has been relegated to the top of the fridge and I am attempting to control their daily intake.

Lucy apparently got a little too much candy and needed her glasses back on, as you can tell. She was sitting in the chair and noticed me reaching into her candy bucket. She yelled at me, "Hey! dats mine! top it!" (stop it). Then proceeded to go grab her bucket while giving me the stink eye. I guess I should know better than to try and take Lucy's candy. The kids had a great time and even Kevin got home in time to join us for a few houses. Speaking of Halloween, look at the giant pumpkin shaped baby in this picture....

Alright, I know you have all been dying to see this. Take a good look, the next time you see this baby it will be outside in a blanket :). I am about 28 weeks in this picture, not sure how I can get bigger, but I'm sure I will. Isak loves feeling the baby move and will often come up to me during the day and put his hands on my stomach. If he can't feel anything, he will say, "Mom, wake the baby up so he can kick me!". I am glad he is so excited, especially since Lucy will probably be having a much harder time with the baby and relegating her status of "the baby". I have awesome heartburn, upper right rib and back pain, but otherwise feel pretty good and have been able to keep running. I have done absolutely nothing yet in preparation, I should probably figure that out soon, like buy some diapers or something :).

Marks Wedding

My little brother Mark got married last Friday in Idaho Falls. I can't believe he's old enough to be married, it makes me feel old. They had great weather, which is suprising for southeastern Idaho in October, and it was pretty warm.

My kids outside the temple waiting for Mark and Jen to come out. They were happy at first. Then they got a little bored....
Then they were were! Jen looked so pretty, I loved her dress, it was all lace and she had cute cowboy boots on with it. The temple has done some remodeling and added some gardens outside so they had a lot of places to take pictures, despite the construction that was ongoing outside the temple. Mark and Jen did a lot of their picture taking in the morning before the sealing so we just mostly had family pictures left, which made it pretty quick.
The best part about Mark getting married was getting to see all my siblings at the same time for a few days. Since my sister lives in Wisconsin and Aaron lives in Texas and Paul in Boise, this doesn't happen very often. It was so nice to be able to go eat together and just hang out. My sister especially loved it since her and her husband were able to leave their 4 kids back in Wisconsin with her in-laws for a few days. Lucy had to wake up from her nap to come to the wedding and was insistent on bringing her stuffed bunny with her to the temple. She was having lots of fun with it, making it hop, feeding it bark, and trying to ride it down the hill.That is, until we told her she couldn't have it in the pictures with her. Yes, trying to reason with a cranky 2 1/2 year old doesn't work too well. Especially when its Lucy.They had a nice luncheon/reception afterwards in Rexberg and had this cute cake there. Their official wedding cake will be at their reception in Jen's hometown in Montana but they had this fun Fall themed one to eat. It was so cute!
And Isak really loved the way the cake tasted as well.

My brother Mark got married last week and we got the chance to see a lot of family. Above is Lucy with her cousin Conner helping Stephanie and I make cookies. We stayed with them on our way down to Twin Falls and on the way back.
My brother Aaron came up from Texas and Isak was loving all the attention he got from him and followed him everywhere. I was so grateful to Aaron for the hours of entertainment he provided for Isak. I just wish he lived closer so that we could see him more!
We also had the opportunity to visit the visitor's center at the temple in Idaho Falls and had a wonderful time. They have a touch screen computer with interactive games for kids and Isak and Lucy had a lot of fun with it. There was a beautiful exhibit of sculptures from the life of Christ on display that have been on tour around the country.

We picked about 15 pumpkins out of our backyard this year. We learned that if we would've snipped some off earlier, we could have gotten some really big ones. But we still had fun with the ones we collected. Isak was so excited to carve them and somehow I never got a picture of him with the finished pumpkin. Sadly, it is now rotting on my front porch but it was a lot of fun for the 2 weeks we had it!Isak's class went to the pumpkin patch last week for preschool and they could pick any pumpkin they wanted for $1. He picked out the largest pumpkin he could find, which was huge, and spent the rest of the time jumping off the hay bales. My kids were being too wiggly for pictures but Isak was interested in seeing how many pumpkins tall he was by this sign. My sweet Lucy sleeping with her menegarie of animals. I love how she says her prayers at night. She will repeat them in jibberish back to us with an occasional recognizable word but will say "amen!" very loudly at the end.
Isak takes lots of interesting pictures during the day if I don't hide the camera well enough. Most of them are deleted as they are fuzzy or random pictures of my foot or Lucy's hair. This was actually a pretty clear one he took last week, he's getting better! This also documents Lucy's current obsession with "Old Mcdonald had a farm" videos on youtube. Also why I hide my phone from her during the day as she is in love with children's music videos and memorizes the songs, only to sing them repeatedly throughout the day. It is very entertaining.

Tonight we had some friends over and Isak enjoyed playing dress-up with their little girl. Luckily she thinks spiderman is as cool as Isak does. Sadly (gladly?), I cannot say the same for Isak and princess dresses.Isak has officially stopped taking naps. I knew it would happen, he's been 4 since May and I have really been lucky with how long he has lasted. However, it has been a rough transition for both of us. I am used to being able to sleep for an hour if I need to, which with pregnancy I usually do, and Isak gets tired early in the evening. I try to have "quiet" time for him but he doesn't grasp the concept of doing things by himself easily so usually I am involved with his quiet time. Which is fine, I just really need a break some days and don't get one anymore. We are spending lots of quality time together...lots of candyland, playdough, computer games, bad guy fighting, puzzles, and reading books. We did these things before, now we just do them when Lucy is sleeping and he really loves not having his sister there to interrupt his time with mom. With number 3 coming soon and Isak starting kindergarten next fall, I know I just need to take a deep breath and enjoy this time with him at home. That's just easier some days than others!
My mom and I canned applesauce this weekend, 26 quarts, it should last a while. I love it for breakfast with cottage cheese and I figure I will have a baby eating lots of the stuff come this summer.
We had some rainy days this week, I think fall has officially arrived. So the kids and I made a giant fort in our front room. It was huge!Lucy loved it as well. Someone needs to tell her that its now October because she keeps asking to wear her swimsuit and go in the "swimin pool!".Today I even put her in it to make her happy but instead caused a complete meltdown. She was also very loud during church today, singing "Old mcdonald had a farm" repeatedly and tracking down innocent babies and going "Oh hey, its a babies!" then patting them on the head. The lady in front of us said she was having flashbacks of Kevin's little sister during church. I would like to point out that all of our kid's crazy behavior comes from his side.....

Isak's soccer has one more week. To say the least, it has been entertaining. Isak isn't so much focused on following the ball as he is on doing summersaults, twirling, picking grass, and trying to wrestle down his teammates. But he is only 4 and he is having fun, I think I will try wrestling for him next fall and see how he does with that.

We had a very busy weekend but Sunday morning was wonderful. Kevin let me sleep in till 830 since I worked the evening before, then I got up and made breakfast and scones. We sat around in our pajamas and watched conference.

Lucy especially enjoyed herself. I let her hair go crazy, she got to run around with all her puppets, and Kevin was nice enough to let the kids jump on him like a jungle gym. On second thought, maybe watching conference was more fun for me than Kevin.....

We found an exercise band and the kids were loving playing with it tonight. I don't know why even buy them actual toys.

Isak was having Kevin stretch it across the living room down the hallway then letting it snap. They thought this was the greatest game ever.

Lucy and Isak love this show called zooboomafoo on PBS. It talks about different animals and their habitats. Lucy gets particularly excited, as you can tell. Listen closely, I swear she is saying "horse" and well, not something else.

BABY UPDATE

I was going to post a picture of my preggo self but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Maybe next week. I am about 25 weeks and carrying this baby lower than the other 2. I am guessing this is why I have been so uncomfortable so early on in this pregnancy. Either that or the 33lb 2 year old that still thinks she needs to be carried and picked up all the time. Or more likely is that fact that I am getting older, this is my 3rd pregnancy, and my body is just tired. I have been able to keep running which I think has helped, although my belly has started hitting the bar on the treadmill so I might have to revise my form. We have had 2 ultrasounds and the baby looks great. We decided to not find out the gender since the delivery with Lucy was so fun not knowing. Isak has decided if its a boy to name it pickles and if its a girl, strawberry. Kevin is convinced its a girl, and I have been wrong every time so I am not going to guess. But if it is a girl and she is like Lucy, Kevin gets to deal with her when she's 16. And he gets to brush out her hair.