mother's day 2014

Mother's Day this year started a little after 9:00, because I have the best husband in the world who let me sleep way in.  I was greeted with breakfast in bed, as well as entertainment.  Ky and Kade performed magic tricks and told jokes while I ate.  I also got to open gifts from them, my favorite of which are always the homemade cards, which I know I will cherish forever!

Church that day was so great.  I got to listen to the speakers talk about the divinity of womanhood and motherhood, feeling so grateful to be a mother to these three sweet boys.  I also feel blessed that soon I will have a daughter-someone to teach about how awesome it is to be a woman and a mother, and watch her grow into those roles.  Meanwhile, Krew fell asleep in my arms, which he hasn't done in a very long time (and there is nothing sweeter than holding a sleeping child).  At the same time, I could feel this little life wiggling inside, and I just felt overwhelmed with how lucky I am to be a mom!

We had a little Mother's Day photo shoot before church, and looking at these pictures makes me smile.  These three boys have my heart.  They are all so handsome, so smart, so sweet, so fun, and their personalities are all so different.  I can't believe that they are mine!

Krew and his mama

Ky and his mama

Mommy and Kade

baby bump!

I wasn't very good about having my picture taken when I've been pregnant before, and I always regret it after the fact.  I want to make sure I get lots of pictures of my ever-growing baby bump this time around.  

 17 weeks!

21 weeks!

22 weeks!

baby #4 gender reveal!

The night before my 20 week ultrasound, we all guessed whether we thought baby Boots is a boy or a girl.  (Baby Boots is the name we have been calling this little one for the past couple of months.  I wanted something to call it until we knew if it was a boy or girl.  Krew came up with the name, Boots, and it stuck!)  Kade was the only one who was brave enough to guess against the blue theme we have going on in our family.  We posted the following picture on Facebook, and everyone who commented on the picture guessed girl too.

The next morning, Bart and I went to the ultrasound appointment, both excited and nervous.  It's scary to think they could potentially find something wrong with the baby, but exciting to be able to see your little one moving and squirming in there!  It's seriously amazing every single time!

 After the ultrasound tech looked at and measured every inch of our baby, and after trying several times to determine the gender, we finally got baby Boots to uncross those legs, and let us have a peek!  The doctor confirmed that everything looks good, and that the baby is growing well.  He did move my due date back a week to the 13th of September, but that's fine with us.

I then spent the afternoon preparing these cupcakes, and waited for everyone to get home so we could surprise the kids and they could find out if they were getting a brother or sister.

 I told them that the inside was either filled with blue frosting, or pink frosting, and they were going to have to bite into their cupcake to find out which color it was!

 Here, all three boys were waiting for the big reveal, and Kade looks a bit nervous!

 It's pink!! We're having a girl!!!  I still can't believe it.  Kade and Ky seemed pretty excited, Ky was mostly happy for me, and Krew cried and said he wanted a boy baby.  Of all three of the boys, I really thought Krew would be the last one to have an opinion, and certainly the last one that would cry about it, but I guess I was wrong.

I spent that evening, alone, shopping for baby girl clothes!! I have looked (briefly) at the little girl clothes many times when I have been shopping, and always had to pull myself away, reminding myself that I had no reason to look at all the cute girly things.  But it was so fun to realize that not only can I look at the little girl clothes, but now I have a really great reason why I need to shop for little girl clothes!

 Since then, I have also started making cute hair pretties, designing the nursery, and thinking of girl names.

 I'm so excited that I'm going to have a daughter!  Bring on the pink!

Here is a video of the boys breaking into their cupcakes and their reactions.  It's pretty fun if you can ignore the extra voices--we were video chatting with two other groups at the same time!

easter 2014

We had a great Easter this year, including egg dying (which took about 6 minutes to color 20 eggs!), 

Waiting to see what the Easter Bunny brought, 

 And an Easter egg hunt, which due to the cold, rainy weather, took place mostly inside.

 We tried to get a nice "everyone in their nice, matching Easter clothes" picture, but it's difficult, as you can see:

Oh well, it was a great day, and we loved the chance to be together as a family and remember the death and resurrection of our Savior!  Happy Easter!

"happy (3 months later) birthday to you!"

Toward the end of last year, Ky and Kade began to complain that their birthday is so close to Christmas.  They said when they get presents for Christmas, and then four days later they get presents for their birthday, it just feels like more Christmas.  Plus, then they don't get any for almost an entire year.  I don't blame them for feeling this way; I completely agree with them.  So, they were given the option of celebrating their birthday a few months late.  They were hesitant to agree to it at first, but they did.  On their actual birthday, they got to open a few presents from grandparents and aunts and uncles, pick what they wanted for dinner, and have a simple birthday cake, but that was it!  Which meant we saved all the presents and parties and celebrating until the end of March.

March 28th was the big day!  I have to say that it was lots of fun to celebrate a birthday in the spring. All of our real birthdays are at the end of the year, so it was refreshing to celebrate one in March.

Oh, and it's hard for two year olds to understand that it's all the other boys' birthday, but not his.

Ky and Kade used some of their own money to buy each other gifts this year.  I loved their generous attitudes, even if it's just more stuff that they get to share with their brother.  Being a twin must be so awesome!

We invited six of the boys' friends to come over for a movie night themed birthday party.

We had popcorn cupcakes, and root beer cupcakes.

We put up some simple party decorations (afterall, these were eight year old boys we were trying to entertain)

We started the party out with pizza.  I'm not kidding when I say that dinner lasted 8 minutes total.  I looked at the clock after they had all left the table and thought, "What?  We still have 2 hours and 52 minutes left to keep these boys entertained!?"  It only took minutes after they finished eating to have found all the swords and light sabers, and toy guns, and bows and arrows and to proceed to run through the house "attacking" each other.

After they played "war" for a little bit, we settled them down with popcorn and movie concessions to watch Turbo in 3D!

We finished the party with presents, cupcakes, and playing video games.  I think everyone had a good time, and my house was still standing after 3 hours of nine boys running through it, so I call that a success!

We sent all the boys home with these fun party favors.  They included microwave popcorn, candy and a code for a free redbox movie, so they could have their own movie night at home.
Happy (really late) Birthday, Ky and Kade!