Gomm babies

So this whole 18-month-old in his own big boy bed is getting a little ridiculous. LOGAN is driving me CRAZY! Last night for example. I wake up at 2 in the morning cause he has crawled into bed with us. That would be fine if he would sleep. But no he thinks it is playtime. I said, "GO GET IN YOUR BED" and he said "Kay" and leaves. Only to come back a few minutes later. Sigh. That happened a few times. Then when I woke up in the morning, I found him asleep with Jenna in her bed. OH and did I mention a few days ago when, around 11:00 at night Kaitlyn woke up screaming and we go upstairs to find LOGAN lying in the CRIB with her!!!! He coulda killed her! (he did it again the next day, yeah now the rail of the crib stays up permanently so it won't happen again.) I have found him asleep on the floor too. He woke up as I took this picture.


Poor kid doesn't know where he belongs. See I put him down for naps in the crib still. So he's all, am I a big boy? Am I a baby? Bed confusion.

But I guess he thinks he's a big boy cause he loves eating at the table with the other kids now. No highchair for him! I think it's cute.


Yet the crib thing has worked out great for Kaitlyn, who is sleeping awesomely these days. Too bad it's at the expense of Logan's sleep...

ANYWHO. A few days ago Nate took these of me and Kaitlyn...


(the fact that I look disgusting AND have something spilled on my shirt is sorta the story of my life) ... anyway, I realized the last time someone took a picture of me and Kaitlyn together was when she was born! And I'm like, aww no mommy and me pics since then, how will she know I love her? :) just kiddin... but then I had fun looking at my other babies, all around 2 months old, Kaitlyn's age. Look how they've grown! (and see the other mommy and me pics are much better.)

Here's Jenna.




Here's Carter.




Here's Logan. Baldie!




So what do you think, does Kaitlyn fit in with the fam?? :)

Happy Anniversary! To us!

Ahhh Christmas Dance. High school. 2000. (it's a picture of a picture... I was not in high school in 2008.)

Nate and I were almost 4 years into friendship and almost 4 months into our LEAP to the other side, DATING. It was a couple weeks before Nate officially confessed the L word to me.

In between one of the songs at the dance, Nate went off to talk to a friend. And unbeknownst to me at the time, THIS is what he told his friend,

"I just danced with the girl I'm going to marry."

My my, aren't WE a little confident!!!!!

If I'd have known he said that I'm pretty sure I'd have been just a lit-tle bit freaked out. I was a little more cautious in relationships...

But, I am SO glad that he was right!!!!



And now, to celebrate our 7 years of marriage, we celebrated that romance on Friday night with some mini golf. Then we had dinner at...

Wait for it.... wait for it...

The food court at the mall.

Don't you worry! That fact in no way indicates the nature of our marriage!!!

Still going STRONG, BABY!!!!!

I am the one who totally wanted a pretzel and orange julius, hence FOOD COURT! We laughed about it all night. Dude I never get to go to the mall anymore. It was pretty thrilling. We got a variety of our favorite food items and stared into each other's eyes in the midst of low riding teenage boys and texting teenage girls.

You can go ahead and think that is sad, but I think it is, in a word:

AWESOME.

I love it!!! I really do!!!! I'm just sayin, a suprise trip to hawaii is fine and all, but it takes a special couple like us to be crazy over each other at the food court!

I will have you know, Nate can make anything romantic. :)

I did take pictures, (of COURSE!) but my camera is lost at the moment.

Happy anniversary to us!!! Love you Nate.

Oh yaknow, random things!

So let's laugh some more at my carrots. Some people post pictures of the delicious food they make. I post pictures of the deformed food I grow. :)




Hey they still taste good!!

And here's another picture to amuse you.


My kids get ahold of my camera EVERY DAY. Most pictures they take are boring, but I thought I'd keep that one. Notice the foggy lens. Drives me crazy!!

Oh yeah so I totally forgot to follow up on the CAR cause I know you're dying to know what the heck was WRONG WITH IT!! Turns out it was the solenoid idle air control, a $50 part that was so easy to replace the guy didn't even charge us for labor. (I think he just felt sorry for us.) Yeah ARE YA KIDDING! Woulda been nice to know before we spent hundreds of dollars fixing unbroken things. SOO the good news is we now know some really nice mechanics in the area. Bad news: We still need to sell the car! Any takers... it runs great now!

Last week I was ready to move Kaitlyn into her own room, which meant kicking 18-month Logan out of his crib. I wanted Kaitlyn to have her own room for now while she is learning how to sleep through the night, so we threw Logan in with the other 2 kids.


Jenna and Carter were so excited. Logan wasn't sure how he felt about it.


Well let me tell you how he feels about it. HE LOVES IT. He has so much FREEDOM! He can play with toys until midnight! He can walk anywhere he wants! He can go get a snack in the kitchen! Yep I love it NOT so much. I mean I've gone through this with Jenna and Carter, but it's still not fun to put him back to bed 8 billion times a night. And it doesn't matter if we yell at him or sweetly put him down, he WILL get out of bed again. It's cute though, he loves getting in bed with Jenna and we find him like this a lot:


A couple times I've found him wide awake next to her while she is fast asleep. It's cute. Yeah Jenna and Carter have been great about going to sleep while he is still up running around. And he does fall asleep in his own bed... eventually. But then he wakes up a LIT-TLE grumpy.


Cause on top of him getting to sleep MUCH later, he also used to sleep in until like 9 when he was in the crib. NOT ANYMORE! Poor guy. Hopefully he'll get it soon!

Kaitlyn's first night in the crib she slept for SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT!!!! I did a little dance in the morning. Too bad that hasn't happened again... BUT she IS doing better. We rely on the binky a lot.

Logan never liked a binky. Until now.


Little stinker steals it from her all the time. YUCK for her!!

He also keeps licking the top of her head. WEIRD!!! But also cute, in a National Geographic sort of way.

And here is how I found him the other day.


He must have been REALLY thirsty. And I guess with 3 other siblings, he is learning how to fend for himself.

Here's Kaitlyn, almost 2 months!







She's cooing, growing eyelashes, and having some spectacular diaper explosions. We love her!!!

Gardening ups and downs

When I planted carrots I didn't know if they were gonna come up. Finally I saw what I thought were SEVEN carrots. I was like, yay, I grew seven carrots!

Later, on closer inspection I could see that OOHHHHH no I had MUCH MORE than seven.

So wanna know what happens when you don't thin your carrots??

They look like this!


Yeah at first I thought this was ONE carrot. Turns out, there are EIGHT trying to grow in the same spot. So for each of my "seven" carrot spots there are really like 8 there. Yeah I have like 56 carrots.

Too bad they will all look like this!


No room to grow! My poor deformed carrots!! Lesson learned!

AND THIS is what happens when you don't put cages on your tomato plants in time.


They are like old people. Stooped over and a little shriveled, but they can still grow decent fruit!

Gardening has actually been pretty fun. Going out in my backyard and picking food?! So cool!! I mean, I GREW stuff! Out of the GROUND! A lot of my plants did die in the beginning. But the ones that stuck it out have been awesome. I LOVE tomatoes. They make everything better. A sandwich is no sandwich without a tomato. And I can't grow enough cherry tomatoes. I eat 'em like they're candy.

I even grew green beans, which I have never liked... UNTIL NOW!!! That's right mom and dad I AM EATING GREEN BEANS WITHOUT WASHING THEM DOWN WITH MILK! I guess in order for me to like green beans they need that extra ingredient of "Erika grew them."

I grew zucchini, and holy cow those things grow fast. I mean ya don't check the garden for a couple days and BOOM they're like the size of a freaking boat!! But I tried some yummy zucchini recipes. I even craved one recipe a couple nights ago, where you dip it in egg and then in flour and fry in butter OH MY HECK it is so good.

I can't believe I just said I craved zucchini. You see! Gardening is good for my health! Except for the frying in butter part...

I grew green peppers!


Beautiful, huh!

And we even have a pumpkin growing out back. Wahoo!!! I said at one time that I loved pumpkins so much Nate could give me a big pumpkin INSTEAD of roses and I would be just as happy. I love pumpkins THAT much.

Of course the downside to gardening is the DANG WEEDS!!!! There is just no keeping up on them. I don't have the time. That is why right now it's hard to tell the plants from the weeds. But when I do get to weeding it's not so bad, because you know how much I love dirt.

Yes I definitely think gardening is for me.

Tough questions!

Yesterday during sacrament meeting Carter leans over and whispers in my ear, "Mom. I have a grape in my pocket."

He smiles secretively and sure enough, pulls out one grape. Must have snatched it from the fridge on our way out the door. It made me laugh. I said, "Oh, you better eat it before it gets smashed!"

He said, "No, I'm going to save it."

Funny. Then it reminded me of a couple Sundays earlier when Jenna FINALLY asked me THE QUESTION. She has never asked me before, and somehow during sacrament meeting she was JUST bored enough to contemplate it. I guess. She asked me out of the blue,

"Mom, how did Kaitlyn get out of your tummy?"

I had not even prepared for that moment. YIKES! I said, "Um, the doctor got her out of mommy's tummy."

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

"How did the doctor get her out?"

Uhhh. "Through a hole."

"Oh."

Whew!! Made it through that conversation!

Nope, cause this morning, a couple weeks later, she asked me again, "Mom, how did Kaitlyn come out of your tummy?"

Seriously what do people tell their 4 year olds?

I tried the "hole" thing and she looked fairly confused and REALLY concerned. She said, "And the doctor fixed your hole?"

YEP!! :)

On having 4 kids

For the first time, when we are loaded up in the van, I panic for a second— "Oh my gosh do I have everybody?!!!" My friend, who has 5 kids, told me that yes, it was around 4 that she started having them count off.

Then yesterday I glanced over at the family room, where I saw Kaitlyn in her carseat and 3 kids running around. It must have seemed crowded or something cause I briefly wondered, "Wait who is THAT kid??" Yeah it was Logan. I had to laugh. OH all those kids ARE mine!

Oh yeah, it also hits me when I am folding laundry and surrounded with SIX piles of clothes.

I don't know, the crossover from 3 to 4 kids has seemed to be the jump from "kids" to "lots of kids." From "average family" to "big family." Not that we're the Duggars or anything.

At the same time though, I am a very adaptable person and 3 to 4 kids hasn't been a HUGE deal. Of course what else can you do but adapt?!

Yes there are times I want to rip my hair out. Fussy baby, fighting kids, and messes GALORE! Yes it can be overwhelming.

But like I've said before… I am totally cut out for this. I am the stereotypical "it's in the female nature" MOTHER. And I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I definitely wouldn't love it so much if it weren't for having the perfect partner in crime, Nate. Oh that man keeps me sane and laughing and loving. Hallelujah.

Kaitlyn is starting to grin more and more. That's the best!

I keep thinking the older kids are going to get sick of her. But nope. They smother her with hugs and kisses all day long. They want to hold her all the time. She is the first thing they want to see when they wake up and the last thing they want to see before they go to sleep. It's very cute. Logan is still young and is a little rough on her sometimes (till I say, "Soft, Logan!" and he starts whispering and stroking her hair.) If only they could treat each other the way they all treat their baby sister!!

No long stretches at night yet. *SIGH*! Sometimes she can be very fussy at night too and won't even sleep. I am very familiar with the sound of the binky falling out of Kaitlyn's mouth and hitting the bassinet. PLOP. And then I'm like, wait for it... wait for it... WAHHH! Dangit. I still have faith. She is totally going to get her days and nights figured out. I need to move her into the crib so I don't hear her every move though.

On another note YAY FOR FALL COMING I can SMELL it in the air!!!! Love it. It reminds me of leaves and Halloween, which means Thanksgiving, which means Christmas. Our anniversary is in September so I have great memories of our wedding and fun anniversaries. I love being outside this time of year. If I had time maybe I'd even start running again. Someday soon.

Nate LOVES this time of year too. YOU GUESSED IT, COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS BACK!!! Wahooooo.... (that was very weak.) Oh well. The season hasn't even started yet and I'm already burned out. I've already heard BYU this and BYU that. Something to do with them going independent or something??? (ha ha oh i know all about it.) Okay THIS YEAR I will TRY to watch football! I CAN CHANGE!! :)

Well anyway things are good here. Here are some random pictures off my camera.

Why bother cooking the mac&cheese when your kids will eat it like this??


Yep Logan and Carter were crunching away. And Logan keeps getting more boxes out of food storage, ripping them open, and spilling them everywhere. Vaccuumed the whole house yesterday, and guess what, today there is macaroni alllll over the toy room.

LOGAN what did you do??


Guilty.

And I tell ya, my kids and masking tape...


Found the kids running around like this the other day. Use the force, children! Use the force!!



Look how big she is! 6 weeks old tomorrow!





I was trying so hard to get her to smile. I'm glad you can't hear me.

So sweet!


All right... go Utah tonight, ha ha just kiddin.