Snowman of the Year

This year we haven't had much snow. We finally got 3 inches of soft, wet snow and the boys hurried to make the most of it. They made 2 big snowmen and I made a little one for Micah to knock down, because he kept attacking the other snowmen and his brothers were getting mad.

Micah stabbing Conner's snowman with a carrot. Conner was not pleased.

I have been saving milk caps to use for buttons and I was happy to finally put them to use. Conner posing with his snowman:

It was pretty bright out that day but my camera seems to have amplified the whiteness, making it hard to see the snowman. Anyway, Alan and Alex made a cool snowman with a hat and arms and they were going to make a skateboard but they got tired.

1st Tooth Fairy visit

A week and a half ago Alan came home from school complaining that his loose tooth was hurting. When Reed came home he looked at it and said it was really loose and needed to come out. Alan agreed so Reed pulled it out. Alan was quite fascinated with the tooth and he was super excited that the tooth fairy would be coming that night. He doesn't really have a hole in his mouth since his adult tooth grew up right behind the baby tooth and was almost as big as the baby tooth. After his tooth came out Alan told everyone that he couldn't be the shark man anymore. Someone told him that he looked like a shark because sharks have rows of teeth and since then he was kind of proud to be a "shark man".
That evening Alan had A LOT of questions about the tooth fairy. He wanted to know how much money he would get. We told him we weren't sure, but that when we were little we each got a quarter for our teeth. Alan thought that over and then asked "Could I give the tooth fairy something?" Alan decided that he would leave some cookies and milk out for the tooth fairy so that maybe the tooth fairy would give him more money. The next morning he was equally excited to see that he had 4 quarters under his pillow and that the cookies were mostly gone and that the tooth fairy had left a small thank you note. I can see many more tooth fairy visits in our future!

Date night and family fun

One of our friends offered to have our kids over for a sleep over for a night so that we could go somewhere or just stay out late and then sleep in the next morning. We didn't really have anywhere to go so we decided to stay in a hotel here in town. We dropped the kids off Friday night at their friends' house and went and checked in. Then we did some shopping for us - it was so nice to do that. Then we went out for dessert and checked out the pool. It was so nice to sleep in the next morning and enjoy an uninterrupted breakfast that I didn't have to make or clean up. It was so nice to have a night to ourselves even if we didn't leave town. Then we went and picked up our kids. Our friend said they did pretty good, although Micah woke up a couple of times. We took them back to the hotel and took them swimming.

The water was kind of cold so Conner and Micah didn't last long but Alan and I stayed in and played for quite a while.

There was a bouncy house on the side of the pool deck. The boys loved it!

It took Micah a little while to get used to walking in it but then he started running all over. He would run as fast as he could and fall or crash into the wall and fall over and then he would just get up and take off again. He was so pleased with himself.

It was so fun to spend some time together having fun as a family.

Our family is growing!

Our family is going to get a little bigger this summer. I am expecting baby #4 to make an appearance in July and we are very excited! I am 21 weeks now so we had our ultrasound last week. And the baby is a ....................... SURPRISE! We decided not to find out the baby's sex. We have with our last 3 and we decided that we wanted to do something different this time around. It was kind of hard to not look at the screen when the ultrasound person was checking but we held strong. So another 4 months of suspense before we find out. So, if you notice that I refer to the baby as a "he" it is just because I don't like to use "it" and because I am so used to that pronoun that is comes naturally, not because we know it is a boy.

A nice profile of the baby's face. You can also see one of his hands, which he kept curled up by his head most of the time.

The baby spent most of the time curled up in a ball but they got a picture of him playing with his toes.

The day before Thanksgiving I started to feel sick occasionally and a couple days later we found out I was pregnant. I am grateful to be past the first trimester since I was sick for Thanksgiving, Christmas and my birthday. I have found that my energy levels have had a hard time catching up - I still seem to be tired a lot. We waited to tell the boys until I was about 14 or 15 weeks because that is when we told some members of our ward and I wanted the boys to hear the news from us. Maybe I should have waited because I don't think they believed me. When we told them they just looked at me with a blank expression and then smiled and nodded. I don't think it seems real to them since I am not showing and it is so hard for them to understand that the baby won't come for several more months. We tried to explain that the baby was going to come when the weather is hot and after Alan got out of school. Well, at this explanation Alan perked up and wanted to know how long he would be out of school. I don't think anyone had ever told him about summer vacation and he was quite excited about the idea when we explained it. Way more excited for that than for a new baby sibling. Oh well, maybe when the time gets closer we will try again.