Growing

Like all babies my nephew is growing so fast. My boys still don't like him much at all:)

Toothless

Grandpa's Pool

This is the stock tank that my Dad bought for the kids to swim in. If you aren't familiar with a stock tank it is what farmers/ranchers use to hold water for their animals. It makes a perfect pool, don't you think! We had one exactly like this when I was little. I remember it being huge, but my parents say it was the same size as this one.
Of course the kids have to slide into the pool.

Right now she is more than happy to just watch and swing.

My Camera Is Back!!

I am sooo happy I'm dancing around the house taking pictures! Unfortunately the kids were all ready asleep when UPS delivered it, so I'm taking pictures of them sleeping. So here is my beautiful little girl with a head full of sweat. I keep a fan on high and the air turned way down to try and keep her from sweating but it doesn't seem to help. I'm hoping after her surgery and her heart is normal that she will not sweat so much. The Doc told us they don't know why heart defects make babies sweat so much, but I hope it goes away after the surgery!

Speaking of sleep, or the lack of, the baby is totally opposite to how she was as a newborn. Back then she would not sleep in the car at all but was sleeping awesome at night. Now she sleeps great in the car, but not so good at night! She has decided that after a couple of hours of sleeping in her crib she wants her human pacifier instead of this plastic synthetic one and will scream like she is being tortured if I even attempt to give her the plastic one. I quit nursing the boys at 6 months so I definitely didn't have this problem with them. It really doesn't bother me too much, though. I think I am so used to not getting any sleep and still somehow function. I don't think this princess is going to want to quit nursing anytime soon either, since she still won't take a bottle. Again, it doesn't really bother me either since it's not like I have much of a life where I need to leave her. I think that hubby is hoping that she won't ever take a bottle since that means that he will never be left with her:)

This Week's Accomplishments

• 2 out of 3 kids can now wipe their own butts, YEAH!!! I have some great quotes from Little Man as he was learning but I figured that not everyone would think they were as funny as I do and that some wouldn't be able to handle the graphic ways my kids discuss poop:)
• 2 out of 3 kids can now buckle themselves in the car with no assistance, another YEAH!!!
• I have done 3 P90X videos this week and hope that I will be able to move without crying soon.
• After this week our summer swimming and activities will be done and Big Man has become an incredibly good front stroke swimmer recently. Too bad he will lose all of his skills since he probably won't swim again for 9 months.
• Big Man is set to start school *sob* as I have bought all of the needed supplies and uniforms. His teacher is coming to visit us at home next week. I'm not sure how nervous I should be about that. I'm pretty sure his is the only school that does home visits since I have never heard of that happening before.
• Big Man's new adult tooth has appeared and is growing fast. I would take a picture of it, but my camera has yet to be returned to me. I don't understand what could take a month to fix but hopefully it will be delivered soon as I feel naked without it.
• The baby has mastered eating pureed baby food and loves it. I have enough homemade pureed carrots, sweet potatoes and acorn squash in the freezer to last a month.

That's my life in a nutshell, I'm sure you're jealous:)

Summer Funk

The excessive heat we have been having has put me in a permanently terrible mood! I just looked at the 7 day forecast and it has only depressed me more. I sit out at the kids swimming lessons with a spray bottle filled with ice water, and I'm still miserable. Just getting loaded into the car leaves me completely soaked with sweat. A couple rooms in my house are not able to get as cool as I like, so today I ordered some screens for 3 windows and then a type of house window tint to keep out the heat/sun light for my family room. I hope it works, too bad I didn't think about doing it last winter before this heat!

The kids are doing great at swimming. They are sooo dark. I've stopped putting sunscreen on them they are so tan. I think the heat has affected their moods as well because I feel like they are a little more crazier than usual. I have been making them go to bed very early they are so cranky at night. It feels kind of strange to have all of the kids asleep by 7. Normally I would be thrilled to have hours to myself, but I'm just so exhausted I just lay on the couch and do very little.Here is my water wrap. The baby will just sleep away in there on the days we stay after lessons and swim. I feel like an old lady in my big hat, but I don't want the sun on the baby and I don't need any more age spots on my face! I have no idea what that look is on Big Man's face. He was probably being his usual weird self:)
The baby is just as smiley as ever these days. She is rolling both ways all over the room and is trying so hard to pull herself up. It won't be long and I will have to get out the baby gates *sigh* I really hate those things. I'm hoping things are better next week because hubby and I are suppose to be starting the P90X workout on Monday and I am going to need a lot of energy for that. Time to finally attempt to lose the weight 3 kids have put on me:)

Camping Pics

We went camping outside of Payson last weekend with my parents and sister and her family. We were suppose to stay for 3 nights but only stayed for 2 because there was a little mix up with the campsites, but it was still worth it to get out of the heat. The first night there the boys were sleeping in my parents trailer and my Mom woke up at 5 in the morning to Little Man puking (talk about me gettin lucky with that one!) Here is a picture of him sitting outside minutes after puking. He sure doesn't look sick. He puked probably 8 more times that day as well. We had been making him sit outside, but he wanted to take a nap so he went inside my trailer to lay down and as I was walking over to him with a bucket he puked all over my bed as well! So much for my luck. Other than the times he was puking he seemed fine, kind of strange.

Here is my blue eyed baby. I'm beginning to feel pretty optimistic that they are going to stay blue now that she is 6 months old. I'm expecting her to pop out a tooth any day as her gums seem to really be bothering her. (Speaking of teeth, thankfully the tooth fairy did not forget. It was close, though, as the tooth fairy went to sleep and awoke in the middle of the night to complete her duties!!)
While camping the kids spent a lot of time in Uncle's new hammock. The baby loved it. We could put her in there, swing it a few times and she would go to sleep. Almost made me want to get one to go in my living room!

It was my sister's first time going camping with kids. Mimi had so much fun getting dirty and I can tell she is going to enjoy camping.

As for me after camping for a couple of days with 5 young children (one of whom was puking!), I just felt like I needed another vacation that included a hot tub and room service:) We have yet another camping trip in a few more weeks. After that I think I will likely be ready to let the trailer rest for a while.

Toothless

Big Man lost his first tooth! Yesterday when he was talking to me I noticed that the teeth on the bottom front did not look right. I looked closer and the tooth wiggled and I immediately thought there was something wrong, like some gum disease or something. Then I was thinking that he was just at the dentist, wouldn't she have noticed if something were wrong. Then it hit me... that he is old enough to start losing his teeth and it must be time! He kept wiggling it and then when hubby left for work this morning he told him that it would be coming out tonight. So when hubby got home Big Man watched Sponge Bob and hubby worked on it with floss and tweezers (what he was doing I have no idea, but it looked like minor surgery!) After an hour hubby tied thread around it and pulled it out. It didn't hurt Big Man one bit so whatever hubby was doing worked. He doesn't want the tooth fairy to come until tomorrow night because he wants to show the tooth to his friends tomorrow, I hope the tooth fairy doesn't forget:)

Happy 4th

We had a very busy 4th of July week! On Thursday the kids and I went to downtown Glendale where they had a patriotic concert in the park. The music was really great, but man was it hot! The next day the kids went to my parents and decorated the trailer for a little parade they were going to participate in around the neighborhood. I think they played more than helped decorate, but they had a good time.

Early on the 4th my parents and I took the kids up to Prescott where we met up with some friends and watched an awesome parade. There were tons of horses, guns and tractors so the kids were very entertained!

Our favorite Senator, almost President, was also there. He was walking down the street and came over right up to Little Man and asked if he could shake his hand. Of course he would not even look at him or even think about shaking his hand *sigh*.

There were tons of flags so the kids got very good at standing and taking off their cute hats.

They really do love parades.

The baby was great too! She didn't even cry when they shot off guns right in front of us.

After the parade and lunch we came back to town, met up with Hubby and went out to his Dad's house for a few hours and then went to my parents for their little parade. Little Mimi was really happy that night, but I didn't get it on camera!

She is at the tongue sticking out and blowing rasberry stage. She thinks she is hilarious!

Here are the kids on their nicely decorated bikes as we went around the block with the tractor and trailer as well. They had a lot of fun and then came back and went swimming in Grandpa's new stock tank (aka swimming pool).
The next day we left to go camping in Payson. For having done so much driving they did great and we had an interesting time camping, but that is another post:)

Another Dr Appointment

Went and met the Dr at St. Joseph's hospital today and LOVED him. Everyone was so nice at the office. They even took us over to see the ICU where she will be staying and again everyone was great. They explained everything they will do and spent a ton of time with us. So as it stands right now we will go back the end of August to do another ultrasound of her heart and make sure that it hasn't miraculously closed on its own. Then around the first week in Sep she will go in for the procedure. Probably stay only one night in the ICU and go home. Once it is done she will be checked again every year until she is 4 or 5 and then shouldn't need anything more at all, Yeah!! It sounds so simple and nice, but I'm sure the 3 hours she is in there, away from me, will be the longest 3 hours of my life. I wonder if they can give me some drugs too:)

Garden

Here are my 2 zucchini plants. They just started flowering today, so hopefully we'll have baby zucchini's soon!

These are the cucumber plants that are trying to take over everything! They have climbed up and over my shade cloth that I put out to to protect them from the sun and have started spreading out as well.We ate this cucumber last night. I couldn't believe the way Big Man went on about how good the cucumber was and he never realized how much he liked cucumbers etc... It was pretty funny coming from a kid who HATES all vegetables. He ate most of it, though, by himself and can't wait for another:)
Here is one of 3 jalepenos that are growing well. I'm thinking I will make salsa this weekend with them. I'm not sure the kids believe me when I tell them we can't pick it and eat it like the cucumber, but hopefully they won't do that because I don't want to listen to the crying if they do!!

Here are my pumpkin and butternut squash plants. I had to keep replanting these because something was eating them. I put chicken wire around them until they were bigger and so far that seems to have worked on keeping the bird/cat away from them. On this part of the border I did a lazy man's garden and just pushed the rocks out of the area that I wanted to plant and dug it up. In the winter when it is cool, if I'm still into gardening as much then I'm going to completely remove all of the rocks so that I can grow even more and it will look so much better.