"Me fwee and a half!"

It is high time I update the blog and past time as well, to write out updates of the kids so I'll hit two birds with one stone and start with the Little Miss who is now "fwee and a half" (as she informs everyone).  It is so hard to believe she's grown up so quickly but we are enjoying her every stage. 

Vanna has gotten into the same habit that I have allowed Cash to get into, and that is watching a few minutes of cartoons when she first wakes up (whether in the morning or in the afternoon after a nap). Cash has always needed a few minutes to wake up before he's ready to get moving, eat breakfast, etc. and although Vanna doesn't require the same time to get happy after awaking, she thinks she should receive the same treatment as Cash and that is a little cartoon time. So often the first words out of her mouth in the morning are, "Will you turn me on a cartoon?" To which I usually respond, "Sure pumpkin!" Go ahead say it, I'm a bad mom :).

But like I said before, Vanna wakes up chipper and happy as ever in the mornings.  She usually starts to gab right away (and for some reason she talks so loud - on a regular basis we have to remind her that we're right next to her and that there's no reason to raise her voice to yelling all the time - it's quite comical actually) and she loves to sing in the morning as well - we call her our little songbird.  Lately, when she joins us for breakfast, she'll request not to have milk in her cereal (this is usually our breakfast of choice when Daddy works but on his days off we enjoy nice, yummy breakfast food - so no, you can't say I'm a completely bad wife too :).  She'll sit at the table and eat her dry cereal and then often fill up her bowl again and carry it around snacking on it later in the morning too.  Of course, she still picks off any sweet parts first (marshmallows first, the 'frosting' off frosted Mini-Wheats, etc.).

What an easy-going morning eh?  What could be better than that - Lucky Charms in your bowl and cartoon to watch, all while snuggling with a favorite blanket and pillow pet?

Vanna's sweet tooth carries over into snacks as well.  Her favorites include:  spoonfuls of peanut butter, gushers, wheat thins, any kind of fruit, and oreos...or rather, the frosting from oreos.  I found this many "leftovers" when I dug into the oreos the other day.  Apparently, Vanna's been sneaking into the pantry and swiping oreo frosting. :)

Vanna loves to play in the water.  She usually begs for a bath and gets so excited to go swimming.  For some reason we often find Vanna's little tongue sticking out when she's playing and usually when she's running - which scares us to death. We keep trying to tell her that she's going to accidently bite her tongue right off if she has an accident when she's playing but it doesn't matter what we say, we'll see it hanging out again. Maybe she really does think she's a puppy (she LOVES to play/pretend she's a puppy or a kitty, crawling around on her hands and knees saying woof woof or meow :) 

Vanna also loves to pretend at being a mommy.  She always goes up to Cash and points at his chest while saying "Cash you be daddy and I mommy".  She really is such a good little mommy too.  She takes her baby dolls (whom she has named Amy and Lisla - no that's not a typo, she insists the baby's name is LISLA!) for walks in her stroller, shopping in the grocery cart, feeds them whatever food she can stuff into their tiny mouth openings, drips water down their face while she gives them a bottle full of water, tucks them in at night with their blankets, and even tries putting diapers on them occasionally. 

Today, she had at one time put her baby in the corner for being bad.  Later in the day, she grabbed a pillow from the couch to carry into her bedroom at naptime, when I asked what she needed it for she explained that she was going to put it under her baby's legs because "baby's legs hurtin'!" - Vanna's legs often ache in the night (something she inherited from me I think) and she wakes up crying in pain.  We always give her a touch of medicine, raise her legs up on a pillow and rub them for a little while to soothe her.  Apparently she was taking care of her baby in the same way.   I have no doubt she'll be a wonderfully big help with her new baby sister.

Vanna thoroughly enjoys helping me clean.

Vanna can not get enough of puppies and wants to pet every dog she sees.  If she sees one in someone's car while we're passing it on the road, she'll say, "Oh, a puppy, so cute, I want a puppy like that."

Vanna loves to jump on the trampoline.  She has mastered the tricks of jumping and landing on her knees and bouncing back up to her feet WITHOUT hands, as well as doing the same by but landing on her bottom (she thinks these are such accomplishments and says over and over "Mom, watch this!" while Cash remains very un-impressed).   She loves to play "Dead-Man Dead Man" and "Keep Away" with Cash and Daddy on the trampoline too.

Love the static!

Even more than jumping - Vanna loves to swing and could do it ALL day!  And quite frankly, Vanna just loves to do ANYTHING with her dad.  He's so fun to play with!  The minute he lays down, the kids consider him a jungle-gym and are immediately climbing all over him.  She loves to sit on his lap while watching a movie, etc.  She just loves him too much!

 The kids with their dad in the back of our van for a late night "Drive-In" movie.  We had a great time trying that out this summer.

And even though we still struggle with their bickering often, Cash and Vanna are inseperable (whether they realize they're driving each other crazy or not).  They do everything together - one of my favorite things to see them doing is riding on Cash's four-wheeler together.  Cash gives Vanna rides all over the place and she just hangs on for dear life - loving it all the while.  Cash is really rubbing off on Vanna I think too as now, she can not resist teasing us.

Here they are wrapped up in our hand-towels.

The kids love to build "forks" or in other words, forts.  This was our creation the other day.

Swimsuits...bike helmets...socks & shoes...mmm - can you see why I still pick out their clothes anytime we're leaving the house? 

Vanna has turned into a bit of a pack-rat similar to her big brother as well.  She always packs up her shopping cart full of toys (as you can see in the picture above) and parks it right next to her bed where she insists it stays throughout the night.  And if you look at the above picture, you'll see how she sometimes hangs all her babies along the rails of her bed so she can sleep with all of them.  Funny girl :)

As I've mentioned before, Vanna likes to sing.  She likes music period.  She loves to dance and prance around to music as well.  And speaking of prancing - the other day Cash was running in place and we asked Vanna to try it - she absolutley can not do it.  Mainly because rather than actually running she prances and it's hard to do that in one place. :)

Vanna loves  to ring the doorbell AND knock at the front door.  When we open the door for her, she'll pretend she's lost or that her family is dead (learned that from Cash - don't know why they're so morbid) and that she needs a place to live.

Vanna still loves to primp up - loves her nails painted, etc.  She's so good to sit still and let me do her hair no matter how long it takes and has even started practicing hair-do's and primping up her rocking horse as well (she also brushes it's teeth with her own toothbrush - ahh :).

For as girly as Vanna is, we find it interesting (and not so lovely) that she finds it hilarious to make herself burp.  She has mastered the technique and we are forever reminding her that burping is not very ladylike.  Of course she always follows up a burp with a "scuse me", but still!

Vanna is just our little sweetheart.  She has ALWAYS been so good to randomly say, "I love you Mom!" in just the sweetest, melt-your-heart kind of way - several times a day. Now she adds even more emphasis by saying, "I weally weally weally super love you Mom!" She does the same thing for her dad. Ahhh - it's just the best!  She never goes to bed without giving us kisses goodnight and often uses it as an excuse to get out of bed to give us more kisses - which we simply just can't deny right!?

Vanna can't resist picking any and all dandelions (flowers to her) for her mommy - how sweet!

Vanna still always announces the fact that she needs to go potty.  And sometimes she'll come to us with that "look" and practically ask for permission to go potty in the way she announces it.  We always hurry her and say, "Just go honey - run to the bathroom!"  Don't quite know why she does that. :)

She's great at correcting Cash when he's done something wrong and coming to me to tattle and let me know she thinks he should go in the corner. Or sometimes she'll even lecture/yell at him with her finger pointed at him when he's in trouble (yikes - do I do that?:)  My favorite though is when she tells me about Cash saying a bad word (like stupid or something similar) and while she's telling me about his misbehavior, she repeats the same bad word about ten times. 

Funny things Vanna has said recently:

-It almost seemed out of habit, Vanna would say, "Hey Mom, hey Mom, heeeeey Mooom," until I answered.  Then it was sometimes followed by a bewildered look and a, "Can't talk about it." - meaning I don't remember what I was going to say.  She was just so used to saying, "Hey Mom" that she didn't even know why half the time.

-I need a swack! - meaning I need a snack!

-Vanna will give me this big explanation of a particular thing she wants to do and when she wants to do it and follow it up with this phrase, "Okay, Mom, that's the problem."  When she means, "Okay, Mom, that's the plan."

-If Vanna has something yummy and I ask her for one she'll say, "One muy (more) and that's it, okay Mom!"

-When Cash just sits at the table without eating, Vanna will try to persuade him to eat in the same manner that I do with something like, "You need to eat buddy."  Or when he first wakes up, Vanna will ask Cash (again, just like we do), "Did you sleep good buddy?"  I just think it's funny that she calls him 'buddy' like us.
-When Cash shares a toy with her she'll ask, "I have this forever?"

Vanna also went through a short couple month phase where she did a lot of baby talk (she'd kind of stick her tongue out a bit, just between her lips, and talk teh way she thought a baby would talk).  I just kept hoping it would pass and sure enough, it did.  It's just so funny what they decide to do isn't it?!

Just had to add this picture again because it is still one of my very absolute favorites of our silly girl!

Anyway, our little girl is still her very independent, beautiful self and we are enjoying her ever growing vocabulary and wit.  She truly is such a very good girl (it's when we combine her with her brother that we sometimes run into misbehavior, etc. - imagine that? :) .  She is so excited to have "fwee" girls in our family.  She's a great sister to Cash - trying to stay caught up with him in every way possible - and will be a great big sister too, I have no doubt.  What fun she is to have in our family!!!

What Was Your Guess?

Well, if you guessed we were having another girl, you were right!  We are SO excited!  I have to admit though that anyone's guess was as good as my own as I was more inclined to believe we were having a boy for some reason (guess I'm not blessed with that motherly inclination). 

We had our ultrasound on Thursday and were relieved to see all is going as well as can be expected with the pregnancy and that our baby girl seems to be as healthy as can be!  When we told the kids, of course Vanna started squealing and saying, "Yay!" while Cash said, "Oh man, I wanted a boy, I like baby broders."  Then he jumped right back into playing and we haven't heard a word of complaint since.  The kids are both helping us out with little girl names and it's been interesting to see what they come up with.   We were pretty set on a boy's name and a little undecided in the girls department.  We were so undecided with Vanna (who wasn't named until day two after her arrival) and since I have a couple pretty good ideas this time around, I hope that won't be the case with this bundle of pink.

I already had Ty get all my saved baby girl stuff and am in the process of rummaging through it all.  Only about half of our clothing will work (as Vanna was born in April and baby #3 is going to be a winter baby) but I figure if I buy some sweaters and leggings/leg warmers maybe I can make the other half work too.  We'll see :). 

We are very happy to welcome another princess to the family, so relieved she's doing well, and really just feel so overwhelmingly blessed!  I have been strongly determined not to take such a blessing as a healthy baby for granted.  We just had a dear friend of ours lose their beautiful baby girl due to a very pre-mature birth and our heart aches for them.  In the short time their baby lived, Teagan Faith and her family-through her and her stuggles- have made a lasting impression on me and so many others.  Our sincere prayers are with them and we hope for their strength and comfort during such a difficult time.   I thought her name so fitting and have found so many thoughts, books, lessons experiences, etc. over the past few months touch my life in regard to faith.  You know how you hear things repeated over and over until one day it clicks in such a personal way?  I have really felt that in regard to the principle of faith recently.  Perhaps I needed a lesson in faith or perhaps it was that I finally opened my heart to the true understanding of it.  I have learned so much in my studies and thought maybe I'd share just a clip of what I began to feel in regard to faith and our pioneers as I recently had to speak on the topic:

OUR FAITHFUL PIONEERS

As I’ve studied and read through histories of our pioneer heritage and all the early Saints of the Church endured, I found myself asking “How?”

How could our pioneer Saints have worked so hard and under such harsh conditions?: James Bleak of the Martin Company recorded their experience as they crossed the North Platte for the last time in October of 1856:  “The crossing of the North Platte was fraught with more fatalities than any other incident of the entire journey…Blocks of mushy snow and ice had to be dodged…Some of the men carried some of the women on their backs or in their arms, but others of the women tied up their skirts and waded through like the heroines they were.”  Following that crossing Patience Loader recorded: “We had to travel in our wet clothes until we got to camp.  Our clothing was nearly frozen on us.  That night the ground was frozen so hard we were unable to drive any tent pins in and the tent was wet…We stretched [the tent] open and got under it until morning.”

I thought how could they have ate so little?:  Rations were such that each adult received 10 oz. flour per day, 10 oz. pork per 20 days and short rations of tea, coffee, sugar, rice and apples.  It was said that “any hearty man could eat his daily allowance for breakfast” alone.  And later when times were severely despairing, it was recorded by one man (John Jaques) of the Martin Company, “you felt as if you could almost eat a rusty nail or gnaw a file”.   Children chewed on bark, leaves, twigs and the tattered leather from the boots of those who had died.

How could our pioneer mothers have survived burying their children in shallow, unmarked graves for sake of the frozen ground – knowing that the wolves that tarried behind the companies would soon dig them up again?

How, even after finally arriving in the Salt Lake valley, could husbands and fathers so willingly leave their families for missions that were termed “generally not to be very long ones” it was announced that “probably from three to seven years will be as long as any man will be absent from his family” (The Willie and Martin Handcart Story)?

How could the pioneers have endured SO much? What carried these Saints through such struggle? 

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland answered this beautifully, so if you’ll bear with me I’d like to read a portion of his message found in this up-coming month’s Ensign called “Faith to Answer the Call”:

What are we seeing in these examples of faithful pioneers? It is what we have seen down through the dispensations of time and certainly down through this dispensation…What we saw then and what we see now among the blessed Saints the world over is faith in God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, faith in the Prophet Joseph Smith, faith in the reality of this work and the truthfulness of its message.

Little wonder that faith always has been and always will be the first and abiding principle of the gospel and of our work. It is the heart of our conviction that the work not only should go forth but that it also can and will and must go forth.

…The fundamental driving force in these [pioneer] stories is faith—rock-ribbed, furnace-refined, event-filled, spiritually girded faith that this is the very Church and kingdom of God and that when you are called, you go.

Elder Holland goes on to issue a call for conviction, he says:

“ we all must have burning in our hearts that this is the work of God and that it requires the best we can give to the effort. My appeal is that you nurture your own physical and spiritual strength so that you have a deep reservoir of faith to call upon when tasks or challenges or demands of one kind or another come. Pray a little more, study a little more, shut out the noise and shut down the clamor, enjoy nature, call down personal revelation, search your soul, and search the heavens for the testimony that led our pioneer parents. Then, when you need to reach down inside a little deeper and a little farther to face life and do your work, you will be sure there is something down there to call upon.

We must have faith in this work—faith in what all believers are called to do, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in our Father in Heaven. We need to conform our will to Theirs and then make that will rock-ribbed and pioneer strong indeed. If we do that, I know we will be safe and secure in the inexorable onward movement of the Church and kingdom of God on earth.

I too know that we must have faith.  We must have faith to sustain us in our future.   We were taught by Elder Russell M. Nelson in our last General Conference:

We live in a time of turmoil. Earthquakes and tsunamis wreak devastation, governments collapse, economic stresses are severe, the family is under attack, and divorce rates are rising. We have great cause for concern. But we do not need to let our fears displace our faith. We can combat those fears by strengthening our faith.

He stated: Our faith now becomes part of our posterity’s faith later.  Which I might just add –  is a statement I believe the pioneers well understood – but Elder Nelson further taught:

Start with your children. You parents bear the primary responsibility to strengthen their faith. Let them feel your faith, even when sore trials come upon you. Let your faith be focused on our loving Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Teach that faith with deep conviction. Teach each precious boy or girl that he or she is a child of God, created in His image, with a sacred purpose and potential. Each is born with challenges to overcome and faith to be developed.

Teach of faith in God’s plan of salvation. Teach that our sojourn in mortality is a period of probation, a time of trial and testing to see if we will do whatever the Lord commands us to do.

Teach of faith to keep all the commandments of God”… for in order for us …“to prepare to meet God, one keeps all of His commandments. It takes faith to obey them, and keeping His commandments will strengthen that faith.

Teach of faith to know that obedience to the commandments of God will provide physical and spiritual protection. And remember, God’s holy angels are ever on call to help us.

Elder Nelson asks:

Why do we need such resilient faith? Because difficult days are ahead. Rarely in the future will it be easy or popular to be a faithful Latter-day Saint. Each of us will be tested. The Apostle Paul warned that in the latter days, those who diligently follow the Lord “shall suffer persecution.”¹² That very persecution can either crush you into silent weakness or motivate you to be more exemplary and courageous in your daily lives.

Our beloved President Thomas S. Monson has given us his prophetic witness.  He said:  I testify to you that our promised blessings are beyond measure.  Though the storm clouds may gather, though the rains may pour down upon us, our knowledge of the gospel and our love of our Heavenly Father and of our Savior will comfort and sustain us and bring joy to our hearts as we walk uprightly and keep the commandments.”  He further encourages: “My beloved brothers and sisters, fear not. Be of good cheer. The future is as bright as your faith.”

I love that – The future is as bright as your faith.  I do believe hard times are ahead, hard times are already here, but I gain much courage as I rely on our Prophet’s promises and hang on his encouraging words.  I know that we must develop that rock-ribbed, furnace-refined, event-filled, spiritually girded faith that Elder Holland taught us about in order to endure and survive all that life here on Earth throws at us but I know with an absolute assurance that we can make it through, for it has been done before.  How grateful I am for the examples of our pioneers who displayed powerful faith in their struggles – that we might learn from them how important the gospel is and should be in our lives – how important faith is to rely upon in trying times and how worthwhile our efforts in the Kingdom of God are.  In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

You Saw This One Coming Right?

Well, we traded in our car and bought a ...

minivan!  Neither me or Ty were too excited about getting a van.  Ty would tease that minivan=miniman :)  But three kids = need for larger vehicle, so we had to get something different that would fit our growing family. 

So we looked a lot at the adorable third row cross-overs (that packed you in like sardines with no additional storage/trunk-type space) and SUV's (many of which felt like I was driving a bus - Ty didn't like the price on those monsters either) and, of course, vans.  After looking at many, thinking a lot, and test driving a few, we decided the van was best for us.  We ended up getting a 2008 Toyota Sienna that was in amazing condition with hardly any miles.  We're pretty happy with our decision.  The van is growing on us because gosh, they sure make those things convenient for families. 

The kids were so excited to get a new vehicle.  We've had it a couple weeks and they still act like it's an amusement park ride each time we load in. We've had to put rules and limits on the DVD player and the buttons for the sliding doors (the kids just can't seem to keep their little fingers off those things!) but still their fascination with these items is constant.  I am really enjoying all the space and will really love it I'm sure when the baby comes.   

Thought I'd throw in a belly picture too.  It's the first we've taken and really was only taken because Cash got hold of the camera and said, "say cheese mom".  So I quickly posed and there you go.  He did pretty good and it was probably time to get a shot of my growing tummy to scrapbook.  I definitely feel like I'm growing quicker and larger than with the previous two but I'm starting to feel better and things seem to be going pretty well so far - we have much to be grateful for and little room for complaining. :)  I am now 18 weeks along and for some reason I can not wait to find out what we are having.  I'm so ready to get things out and ready for the baby and re-decorate the kids' bedrooms that it's driving me crazy not knowing.  Only two more weeks until my ultrasound and we'll let you all know!  Yay!