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Congratulations?

Boy has it been too long and boy do I really miss getting life down in writing. It's true, the 3rd child throws your entire world upside down. You are thrown for what feels like a never ending loop. It feels like I will never catch up on anything and before I know it, the week is to an end. By the end of the day, I have so much that still needs done but I have no energy to accomplish it. Therefore nothing gets done. It feels never ending. And all within the 3 short months of having Trenton, Gunnar is home for the summer and Brecken has stopped taking regular consistent naps. It makes for some really long days. One of the things that I do regret is writing about Trenton's birth while I was in the hospital like I did with Brecken. I'll have to get that a little later.

What has been on my mind lately is what happened on Sunday. Jeff was called into the Bishopric as the 2nd Counselor. Being called or having the calling is not really what I want to focus on. I sensed for years that we would find ourselves here, so it was no surprise to me but once the call is actually made, it's a really humbling thing. I know it will bring great blessings to our family but it will be some hard times too. I'm going to be a widow in Sacrament meeting with 3 young BOYS for who knows how long. Should be great entertainment for our ward. The Relief Society President has already asked me if they need to make a special assignment to someone to help me out. haha. We'll give it a few weeks and see how it goes...

What I really wanted to talk about is other's reactions to calling like this. It's a little strange being on the other end of things (even as a wife to the person called). The Bishop remained the same but the counselors were changed only. After Sacrament, so many people were telling me congratulations for the calling Jeff just received. It was a little strange. To me, congratulations implies that we ran for some sort of position or office and won. Or that the calling was more important than any other calling (I didn't get highly congratulated for becoming a primary teacher). It was just weird and to congratulate me? I know that people most likely didn't know what to say. Many did tell Jeff that he would do a great job, or they were excited to work with him. Those are far more appropriate. When the stake president extended the call, Jeff asked how appropriate it was to have family come. We've seen some where so many family members showed up to support that it was incredibly obvious what was happening and who was getting the call. He mentioned that some people have family come and some choose not to. It's really up to us. But he did say that so many people look up to Bishopric members, almost too much, for teaching/direction/anything really, when he wished that members would put that amount of energy into seeking out that same direction from their Relief Society presidents or Elder's Quorum Presidents. Those auxillary leaders are there to also guide and direct those that they are responsible for and to take some of that load off of the Bishopric to allow them to focus on their many other duties. Those in the Bishopric hold an extremely important calling however, sometimes it almost appears that they are viewed more on a pedestal type status. They are also normal human beings. They are just like you and I. It's just been interesting being on this side of things with Jeff in leadership positions for years and now a Bishopric.

One of the fun things about being the wife of a bishopric member is that there are times when I am included in things. For example, the Young Women of the ward are having girls camp next week and the bishopric and their wives are invited to attend one of the nights. The bishopric is in charge of an activity and then a devotional type setting. The girl in me kicked in and I told Jeff that they have to bring something for the girls. Pinterest pulled through and I found these Personal Progress holders where they can keep all of their books together. I am excited to make them for the girls for the bishopric to pass out. I'm excited to go. We are taking Trenton but Mindy will be with the other two boys. We will be home the same night.

I'm excited for this opportunity for our family and Jeff. Trenton is 3 months, Brecken is just shy of 3 years and Gunnar is 7 years old when Jeff got called. It will be a learning and growing experience for all of us. Tomorrow will be my first Sunday alone and Jeff's Sunday to conduct Sacrament meeting. Wish us all luck!

Empower Me Pink Tour 2013

Hannah Hamilton, Rachel Kirby, Me, Shauna Tuft, Jennifer Libengood, Jennifer Burton

Call me crazy but there was ONE thing that I was wanting to reach before having my baby. The Paparazzi Empower Me Pink Tour was coming to Boise the week before I was due to have our little guy. I wanted to be there so bad! I was determined to make it to that date. After that, I really didn't care. Members of the corporate team were touring only 10 cities around the country for a training so I didn't want to miss it. Plus, I was so excited to go with several of my team members.

In all of the excitement, I wanted to make something for my team that was there. I made these cute gumball and Sixlet candy things with a fun little card that I whipped up. I just love how they turned out.

One of my highlights of being there, was to reconnect with Rachel Kirby. She was so incredibly kind to drive up from Orem, Utah for my team. She also provided fun little gifts for all of us as well. I had SO much fun. 3 of us met up with Rachel beforehand for dinner and then all of us pictured went out to dessert at PF Changs afterwards. I wish I had a picture because I was totally making fun of myself at PF Changs. I ordered this ginormous chocolate cake dessert because it looked so darn good. Everyone else ordered these nice sized yummy things and here comes the pregnant lady...I just had to do it. I ended up taking some home too. It was that big. We stayed out until the restaurant closed, I had a great time with some of my team and so glad that my little man decided to stay put 9 days before his scheduled due date so that I could attend.

Life is Flying By!

Boy is life moving along at such a fast pace. Part of it can be that I am weeks from having our little boy. Knowing a life changing thing is happening soon, makes the days go by even faster when sometimes you don't really want them too. I have so many things on my list of things to do and when that happens, I tend to completely freeze and do nothing. So frustrating. One huge thing was taxes and I was able to get them done earlier this week. I also want to make a handful of baby ABC albums and get them listed on Etsy. Partly to clean out my paper supply that I have now, partly to make the money because those said supplies are just sitting and waiting for the opportunity to be in someone else's house,  and partly I need one for my little guy when he is born. I love having those for my boys and they LOVE looking through them all of the time. Plus I still have Paparazzi stuff mixed in there. I should be more motivated to make a huge push before the end of next month, but its been the opposite. I am just so tired to do much of anything beyond the daily grind. Then I just have little things here and there that I want to catch up on and do. We'll see what actually gets done. Oh ya, we need to start getting Brecken's room combined into Gunnar's before baby comes so I can get his clothes out. That should be fun. :/

I am currently 33 weeks pregnant and these pictures were taken about a week ago. Jeff is too funny and took one way close. You never know what you will get until you play back the pictures. I'm starting to feel bigger by the day. I can feel it. I am already way past the weight that I was when I delivered both of my boys. We'll see how it all comes off...I never obsess or worry about it. I just find it interesting how it all plays out with each child. I am currently down to 2 week appointments so that makes time fly by too. I am starting to get very excited about this little guy and completely content and happy about having another boy. If we just have the 3 boys, I will be completely happy with it. I have lots of little nieces to love on. We are so stuck on names. We have it narrowed down to Trenton and Walker. Jeff is all for Trenton and I am all for Walker. Neither one of us will budge much. We decided that we will have to wait and see what he looks like before we make a decision. His middle name with be Kulaniakea. It is very much a family name on my side. I love  having deep rooted family middle names for all of my boys. All of their first names are completely random. March 27th is coming very quickly when I go in first thing for my c-section.

Gunnar is an absolute pill lately. Mindy was telling me the other day that he has been so good. Well he is to other people. He really needs to get out of this stage he has been in for like the last 3 years! I hope his 7th birthday coming up matures him a little. I love him so much though and he is quite the funny kid. He is so full of energy and I wouldn't want it any other way. He still says things in funny ways like sunbeep for sunbeam or radio for rodeo or The Morax for The Lorax. Makes me laugh every time. One day while playing in the snow, he hauled in something awesome from the garden. He pulled up the gigantic kale plant that was growing out there! It was huge. I called Heidi all excited that she could have some for soups. After closer inspection, it was frozen and kind of yucky. That wouldn't really work but it was fun to see the big thing. It should be interesting to have Brecken and Gunnar in the same bedroom. The age gap is 4 years and they just don't really understand each other quite yet. We plan on making the transition when school is out in May as to not interrupt either one when Gunnar has to get up for school. Brecken will still sleep in most mornings.

Brecken is quite the love bug. He has always been my cuddlier one out of the two. I love it. He still demands that I rock him at night. Jeff likes to say that I created a complete monster. So right now Jeff has taken over that part. Gunnar likes to say that Brecken is in training right now with dad doing it because when baby comes, he can't always have that. Brecken totally breaks down after prayers when Jeff takes him but gets over it quickly and falls asleep. It has been entertaining to hear Jeff try to sing songs to Brecken while rocking him. Jeff will sing more of the hymns because he doesn't really know the primary songs. Brecken requests Christmas songs every night. I think he will know all of the words to Silent Night by the time Christmas comes this year. He's close. Brecken's speech is blossoming more and more every day. It's fun to hear him talk. He has a little lisp when he talks and gets really animated with his hands if he realizes that you have no idea what he is talking about. He still says "gago" for anything liquid. It is the strangest thing. Just a random word he made up. He is also a super busy boy, full of spunk, but you can tell he has such a tender heart as well. He understands that there is a baby inside my tummy. Yesterday he told me, "Mom, you big" as he patted my tummy. He makes me laugh. He still loves his time with Cami twice a week. They are both coming into their big kid personalities and get into fights quite often about random things. Brecken figures he can overpower Cami while Cami is hitter and goes that route. Makes for some interesting days sometimes. Also makes me very aware of boys and girls in general. Boy are they different! They are best of buds though and I hope they stay that way. I'm excited to have our baby so close to Mindy's. They will be even closer than Cami and Brecken in age! Cami has been invited to a therapy playgroup and Brecken was accepted as well as the "normal" control child they are supposed to have. They love going once a week! They will get to go until Cami turns 3 this fall. The entire transition when this baby comes, watching Cami and school things for Gunnar will be very interesting.

When I see these two little guys together, I have such a hard time imagining what our third little guy will look like. Gunnar has medium brown hair, with blue smiley eyes. He is such a skinny mini and tall. Brecken on the other hand is a blondy so far with round eyes that seem to change from blue to green regularly (I was like that as a kid and eventually settled on green). He is one stocky little guy. He is average in weight but you wouldn't know it because he is built like a solid concrete brick. He is heavy! What will boy #3 look like. Will he take after one of these guys or be completely different. Maybe we'll have a very dark haired little boy. It will be fun to see how similar or different he is.

The First Snow

Christmas Day while we were at my aunt's house, it started snowing and never stopped. Snow was on the ground and the boys were itching to play in it. A couple of days later I finally relented and went out there with them. They love the outdoors!

 Brecken ate tons of snow. You would have thought he was hungry or thirsty or something with the amount that he ate.

 Attempting to explain to Brecken how to make a snow angel.

 And he ate more snow. And more snow. And more snow.

Then we went inside to get warm and work on our inside chores after a fun time outside.

Merry Christmas 2012

Christmas was fun this year. Brecken is at the absolute best age where everything is just so magical and exciting! It never got old and just made it great for all of us. We were so excited to get the tree up, the decorations all up and the lights on the house. It was great.

It was interesting to watch everyone post their Christmas pictures on social media. I was blown away with the amount of "stuff" many people had. It was crazy and just confirmed to me that stuff does not make you happy no matter the quantity one gets or appears to have. Plus, where are you going to store and pile all of that stuff?! So many people also do not purge afterwards. I've gotten to the point where stuff drives me nuts! Unorganized stuff really drives me nuts especially when it comes to kids toys.

So last year I instituted a new thing for Santa. Santa would give one thing they need, one thing they want, one thing to wear and one thing to read. They get Christmas Eve jammies from mom and dad and then usually a couple of family gifts (movies and/or games) and maybe something else from us. And then of course a couple of random things in their stockings. With these categories it still looks like they came out with more than enough. Also coming up with categories and a game plan allowed us to shop for what we were wanting to give the entire year and find things at the best deals and the best quality we could afford. Thankfully this year Jeff was on a kick and wrapped everything the night before Christmas Eve so it was done!

Gunnar lost both of his upper front teeth. So all he wanted for Christmas was his two front teeth. I sang that to him when he lost the second tooth and he looked at me like I was crazy!

These were from mom and dad. He got the bug sucker upper from this series for his birthday from a family member and loves it! So throughout the year, more of the set would pop up on clearance. I would slowly collect them and as you can see Jeff does not know how to remove price stickers apparently.

Brecken wants to be like us in every way and we all have Camelbaks. Naturally he would not because he was not that big until recently. Jeff was determined to make his "need" his very own Camelbak. I was so excited when I found this one, hardly used, on craigslist for $25! It had been on there for about a month and had not sold so I asked them if they would take $20 and they did. This was a total score for a Mini Mule and I was shocked that it had not been sold prior. It was meant to be in our house. He was SOOOO excited about it. The orange version of Gunnar's blue. Just like Gunnar...

Gunnar received the construction version of this for his birthday years ago and loves it. Recently he has really gotten into following instructions to create these. He loves this and claims it was the best Christmas ever because he got this. This was his want.

What do you get a kid that is the second boy and really does not need anything. I found this truck on Amazon and thought he would love it. He does and it is pretty fun. It comes with a little drill that unscrews about 7 large screws that take the truck apart so he can put it back together. In time, I think he will really get into it. This was his want.

After Gunnar saw that everyone else had slippers, including Brecken, he wanted a pair. He was thrilled that Santa brought some. This was his one thing to wear.

Gunnar desperately needed a new alarm clock. He got our old one and it was doing some really dumb things. He slept with the radio on every night but if you reduced the sound, the station would be fuzzy so it was always pretty loud. Thankfully it was all Christmas music for the month of December. Plus when school gets out, the two boys will be sharing a room and Brecken sleeps to the ocean sound. So I wanted an alarm clock that could also be on the sleep mode and play nature sounds. I was so excited when I found one and Gunnar loves it! It was for sure a need!

This was probably the stupidest thing I have ever bought and totally not typical of me to buy. Brecken and I were at the store sometime in December and he spotted out Caillou from about a mile away on an end cap. We went over after I figured out what he was talking about and he latched on to this guy. He talked to him and studied everything about him. I let him put Caillou in the cart all around the store next to him. He loved him! When it was time to checkout, I snuck him on the belt and told him that Caillou had to stay at the store. Brecken was completely fine with that. Now, both of my boys at 2 years old, would not get into TV at all except for Caillou. I have no idea why. The kid is like 4 years old, talks like a baby and like Heidi points out, the story on the tv screen never goes to the edge. I can tolerate the show and my boys are mesmerized by it but Heidi just doesn't get it. It makes me laugh. I knew Brecken would be so happy and he is. Reminds me of Brent's My Buddy doll when he was a kid. Remember those? Brent LOVED his buddy! Brecken sleeps with this every night and hauls him around often. This was from mom and dad.

Diesel even got stuff in his stocking. One was a much needed bone that he happily chewed while we carried on Christmas morning.

Jeff and I never buy anything for ourselves. We buy things throughout the year and don't need a holiday to give us permission to go crazy on buying things that we can smartly shop for and buy when we actually need them.

We had a great Christmas morning. We don't encourage or push our kids to wake up early. We just let it happen and it did around 8:30am when Gunnar woke up. It was pretty funny. He obviously scoped everything out and then woke us up. Then went and got Brecken who was so disoriented. He went onto the family room couch and turned on the tv to watch a cartoon. He had no idea what awaited him in the front room. When he did, he was excited!

Later that afternoon we headed to my Great Aunt Nancy's for the annual Christmas Day party. It is always fun spending time with my dad's side of the family and we love seeing everyone. Christmas this year was exciting and great and I felt totally relaxed and on top of it which was kind of crazy.

I am so blessed with what I have and surrounded by my fantastic husband and boys. Blessed to be able to have a third little guy in March. Have fantastic siblings and parents and great friends to spend time with. We are greatly provided for and very blessed overall.

Christmas Eve Blah!

Christmas week started out rough for us. Gunnar started throwing up the day before Christmas Eve. Thank goodness that kid can take care of himself. He can make it to the bathroom every single time, doesn't really need a bucket and just very independent when it comes to being sick. I just have to reassure him that everything is okay, to wash his hands lots to keep away germs and help him with little things to keep him hydrated. Unfortunately, Christmas Eve early morning, I came down with the same thing. It was awful and things like that never seem to end. I had a one day stomach bug when I was pregnant with Brecken as well and it was not fun then. This baby moved TONS for the 10 hour bug that I had. I think it was partly because my insides were just messed up and awful but I also liked to think that he was telling me that I would be okay and that he was completely okay. It was reassuring to feel him so much.

Unfortunately, Gunnar and I missed out on some of our traditional Christmas Eve fun. We always go to a movie and look forward to it every year. We were bummed but better off staying home and resting while Jeff and Brecken went. I was determined to make it to the dinner later that night. Not to eat, but to give Cami our present to her. We had the Tracy's this year and I went in total overdrive for Cami. I was stoked! Unfortunately I did not get a single picture that day because I was just excited to be there. It was that bad. I sat in a recliner and didn't move at all. I could hear everyone talk about how awesome the bacon was etc and I didn't eat any of it. Instead I packed my own bananas, applesauce and 7up. Yippee! Because I wasn't feeling well, I didn't get a picture of Cami's loot. I initially bought her the movie Wee Sing Sillyville. We had this as a kid and I think everyone needs this movie. It is the best. Mindy has already requested it from me for her kids. My boys love it and apparently Cami does too. BUT then I found out she was getting a baby doll from Santa and I went crazy. I was at a craft bazaar with Paparazzi and the lady next to me made little doll clothes etc. She had little diapers with booties so I bought 2 sets and then little jammies. And then my mind went crazy. I made her scaled down burp cloths, a small baby doll blanket, wipes case and wipes and the coolest baby doll diaper bag ever! I was SO proud of myself and it was so easy to do. I really need to get a picture of everything. It sat on our counter for a while and every time I would walk by, I would look at it. Jeff teased me every time. I was that proud and excited about it. And the best part is that it was all made from scraps and just required my time. For Ren and Heidi we bought them huge cans of hot cocoa from the cannery and a big container of those dehydrated marshmallows. They loved it and I knew that they loved that kind! I loved the presents we gave this year.

They got us a season's pass to the Discovery Center!! I am SO excited. The boys and I will have fun this summer going and checking out the special exhibits they have. I hope to make it to a few of the preschool days this year as well. They also have the Bodies Revealed exhibit going right now. I want to go so bad but really didn't want to pay the price to get in. Now we can get discounted tickets into it because we are season pass holders! Double score!!

Even though I felt cruddy Christmas Eve this year, I was so thankful that I was still able to spend time with my family. I love my family so much and we always have a great time no matter what we are doing.