Here I am at home, I thought I would be at the hospital cuddling a new baby. But because of scheduling conflicts at the hospital, the baby isn't coming today, unless he comes on his own timing, which part of me hopes that he does! But the other part of me thinks it's best that he waits for a few days so that I don't have my stitches tear through. So I thought today would be a great day to relax and do almost nothing. Kyrie and I have been watching The Little Mermaid over and over while the boys have been at school. I love having them back at school, it has been a good change, and it is so nice the boys are both full day. We did 1/2 days with Hayden for 4 years, and those half days were hard. I am used to this already and I love it. This week has been quiet and my house stays clean longer. Dusty loves being back in class and Hayden says he likes it except for how long it is. He comes home tired and ornery, but I know it will take just a little time for him to adjust, or maybe a nap for him after school would be nice too! It's hard for me to believe I have a child in 3rd grade! I took a few pictures of their first day and it was so bright outside that they didn't turn out very well, so I tried editing some of them and I'm not too good at that.

Dusty got put in the same class as one of his best buds Joshua. They were best friends in kindergarten, but haven't been in the same class since until this year.Kyrie couldn't be left out, she had to get her backpack all ready to walk her brothers to their first day of school.For family home evening last week we made tie-dye shirts. I didn't realize what a mess it would make. We are waiting for the baby to come and we'll get a picture of us all wearing them!

Just before school started we had a couple more family outings. One of them was going back to the reservoir. It was the perfect day to go, there was hardly anybody there. We had a lot of fun and it was nice to relax! I love the time I have been able to spend with my kids and Chris this summer, but I am gladly saying good-bye to summer and the heat this year. I am so ready and excited for the fall festivities and weather!

The perfect week!

I love this time of year! We spent Saturday morning outside and it felt like fall, and fall is my absolute favortie. I love the feel of the chill in the air, I love the colors and the smells and I love Halloween - it is the best. I love pretty much everything that is included in the next few months. There is something or maybe everything about the fall that makes me so happy! And this year I am super excited for the boys to go back to school, I have never looked forward to it as much as I have this year. And what is even better is the fact that they are even more excited about it than I am! They kinda started this morning, they are gone for half the day for assessments and the excitement in the house this morning was about more than I could handle. Dusty was so hyper and wild, he just couldn't seem to contain it all. He is always full of so much energy, but today it was a whole different level. I finally told him that he either needed to spend the morning jumping on the trampoline or reading a book - either spend the excitement outside or do something quiet. Finally 8:15 came around and we headed out the door. Hayden is happy to go back to school too, but mostly is proud that he is going to be in the first grade! I am happy about that too! I love having my boys at home with me, and I usually look forward to longer weekends with them and summer break, but there is something about him being at school for a full day this year that I am really excited about. He does so much better at home on the days that he has school. He respects his teachers and listens to them and usually comes home so happy. So this week has started out awesome already, a little feel of fall and school - I am going to be loving life.

And the next big change will be later this week. We get to go to the hospital to get a baby. My body has felt ready for a few weeks, and now I finally feel ready. I can't wait for him to get here and have him join us. I have a few mixed feelings about it though. I don't think being pregnant is all that enjoyable but it is so beautiful and amazing. I am ready to feel comfortable again and be able to walk without the pain. I don't like being on restrictions, and this time around I have felt a lot of cervical pain. I am ready for this pregnancy to be over with but at the same time I am kind of sad it is coming to an end. This might be and probably will be my last experience of being pregnant. I love feeling the movements inside my belly, it's almost magical. I love to look at my belly and the kids have enjoyed it too. Kyrie thinks it makes a pretty good pillow. I love labor and delivery, I think it's kinda fun! I love having a newborn baby, there is nothing more special than to have something so precious in your arms. I love what each child brings to the family, and I can't wait to see what this one will be like. So I am sad the pregnancy is soon to be over for certain reasons, but I also can't wait to feel well again. But mostly I am SO excited to meet a little boy and introduce him to his siblings and bring him home. This week will be great!

kiddos

My kids are great, they are all so different, but I love them all the same. Dusty is such an independent person (except for when it comes to sleeping), he could run the house if he needed to. He quite often is like a miniature adult and feels the need to make sure everyone and everything is being taken care of. He is such a great helper, and an awesome big brother. He watches out for his siblings and is so good to them. He is a great parent to Kyrie and LOVES to take care of her needs and pretty much anything she wants as well! He loves to please us and I am proud of who he is. Hayden is great because he makes us laugh. He says the funniest things, has weird ideas and has got some awesome moves. If music starts playing, he has a very hard time controlling himself and can't help but dance. He doesn't care where he is or who is watching, he lets it all out and it is sometimes hilarious. I love that he makes us laugh! He is great at making friends, other kids love him to play with him.

This post is mostly for my memories of Kyrie. She is the sweetest person I know. She makes me smile everyday and I don't think I could ever get enough of her. She really cares about others and is concerned about others feelings. She will ask us and make sure that we are happy. She always makes me happy, so as long as I have her around, I'll be doing good! She has been extra sweet the last couple of weeks, that it makes me want to burst with emotion. She melts my heart and makes me feel so loved and special. She runs up and wraps herself around my leg and tells me she loves me. She wraps her arms around my neck, and strokes my cheek. As she is playing I hear her say "I love my mom" and she calls me "princess mommy" . She is always doing something to make us feel loved and special, she is very sweet to her dad and her brothers as well. I have always felt greatful for her, but recently even more than ever. I am
so happy to be her mom, I love having her happy self around, and I am greatful we have her as part of our lives. I can't say enough about her, I guess it's one of those things that there are no words to describe your feelings. I never want to forget the way she makes us feel, I don't think there is a chance that I could. She was sent to us this way and I'm guessing that's how she will always be. She will soon no longer be the baby of the family and it will be fun to see what we love about #4!

Ha Ha!

We have been trying really hard to get the boys to feel comfortable sleeping in their own room and in their own beds. I'm not sure why it has really even been an issue, and it has hardly anything to do with Hayden, it's pretty much just Dusty. The other night Chris offered Dusty 100 extra points on his job chart if he would sleep in his own bed. Dusty wanted to turn the offer down and said he would try it the following night. Chris told him the offer wouldn't be any good, it was available for that night only. The boys went to bed and Chris later went to check on them. He came back into the bedroom laughing and said I needed to take a look at the boys. Their beds are usually about 18 inches apart. They moved them as close as they could and slept as close as they could to each other while still being on their own mattresses. What smart kids we have!We spent a few hours in the hot sun at the county fair over the weekend. With all the cool freebies the kids got and their school music teacher waving at them as he performed on stage, the Oscar Mayer Weiner-mobile was the next best thing. Dusty has always been a vehicle lover, and it is rubbing off on to Hayden, so they were both exicted to see this hotdog.
And Kyrie loved the petting zoo, No really I am posting this picture because it is one of the very few pics that I have of me and the baby all squished together, and probably the last. Only 1 1/2 weeks left! I am SO ready for this pregnancy to be over!

Summer is almost over!

It's hard to believe our summer break is about over, the boys will be back in school in less than 2 weeks. We have had a very low key summer this year, we haven't traveled anywhere except for mine and Chris's little trip to Vegas and California. The kids don't seem to care much though, the boys would be happy playing cars and riding bikes all day everyday. Kyrie loves to do whatever they are doing. Chris was gone for the first half of the summer, and the second half we just felt it was best for us to stay home. We did want to go camping, but because of Chris traveling so much and the monsoon weather, we didn't make it. The kids have actually been living in water the last couple of months. We have gotten a lot of heavy rains this year with the monsoon, and they have spent a lot of time in the backyard with the pool, and at the splash pad and have taken 3 sessions of swimming lessons. I think they need to continue with their lessons so that they can then teach me how to swim. Dusty told me he thinks I should take level 1, maybe I should! I feel that they have still had a great summer, just staying around home and doing small fun things to fill our time. Dusty said he has really liked this summer except for one thing - there have been too many flies! With school about to start, it also means this baby's birthday is getting closer and closer. We are due Sept. 2nd, but we get to cheat a little and this baby will be here in about 2 weeks. The doc has a plan to take out my cerclage at about 38 weeks and he said to plan on having the baby that day - and I am planning on it! He took me off all my restrictions last week and said I can now do anything I want to do, and if the baby tries to come there is nothing he would do to try to stop it from happening. Now only if I felt up to doing what I want to do! Someday soon I am going to feel so good, and I am looking forward to that day! I have more exciting baby news, Chris and I have FINALLY decided on a name, well at least a first name. I had 4 girl names picked out from the very beginning of the pregnancy, and when we found out the baby is actually a boy I had to start searching for boy names. I have spent a lot of time searching and thinking, and had quite the list. About 3 dozen names have been crossed off the list and we were left with nothing. So I told Chris it was only fair that he came up with a list. A few nights ago I asked him about a name and he said he was actually thinking about that same name earlier in the day. And we haven't had to discuss names since, we have finally agreed. We spent some time picking out the spelling of the name and have the middle name narrowed down to 2, and we both would be happy with either one. Picking a name for #4 has been so hard, it is such a relief to have a name ready for this child, I was really getting worried about what we were going to do! The last few days have been a little more exciting for me, for some reason having a name makes this child feel more real to me.

I have more exciting news, exciting for our Chris and I anyway - the boys are finally sleeping in their own rooms again, without Dusty keeping us all up for 2-4 hours every night. Getting some sleep has been awesome! We started using an oline job chart that a friend told me about a few months ago. You assign points for each job they do, and they can mark off which ones they completed. They get to save up their points for rewards like alone time with dad, a slurpee, toys, whatever you want to reward them with. We put some rewards on there that my boys are really excited about. We explained the system to the boys and showed them that if they slept in their own room, without complaining they could earn points really fast. Sleeping in their own room is worth a lot of points. It worked like magic from day 1! We will soon change the high value points to sleeping in their own beds! I am a lover of this website, the points sometimes help with Hayden's behavior too! After a couple of months of being sleep deprived, it feels so good to be able to sleep again. Well I guess I get to sleep well for a couple of weeks, then I'm sure the baby will change that, I wonder if getting points would work for him? Like I said, we haven't done a whole lot lately, but here are some recent pics. We went to a 24th of July celebration and Chris decided to take on a whole bunch of kids in a tug-a-war. The next morning he was complaining as he got out of bed that his whole body felt sore for no reason, his muscles just hurt. I had to remind him that it was NOT for no reason! We found a fair parade to go to - we had too for 2 reasons. #1 Hayden said he was going to be in the parade, and Chris tried to find him a way in so that he wouldn't be disapointed. I then found out why he said he would be in the parade. Uncle Dallas, Hayden did not forget! Last year we were in Wyoming for the 24th of July and Dallas took a few of the kids in the parade on the fire truck, of course all the cousins couldn't go and supposedly Dallas told some of the other kids that they could next time! Dallas, don't worry, Hayden understood when we talked it over with him! And #2, I will always think of my Dusty Boy when there is a parade. He was 3 years old when we bought our first home, and as we were moving across little town of Vernal, UT from our rental into our house, Dusty had only one big concern about the move: Would we still know how to find the parade?

Kyrie loves to draw, and she just started drawing smiley faces. She does such a good job other than they kind of look more like frowns. She is about prepared for kindergarten I think, too bad she has to wait a few more years. She knows all of her letter sounds and can name each letter when you show them to her in any random order. She loves to work on her abc's. She is growing too fast, I am greatful she has a few more years before she goes to school - I don't want her to leave me! One of our favorites about Kyrie recently is her 2:00. When she gets tired at night, she says, "Mom, it's 2:00", and we know she is ready to go to bed! Last night we (well not me) were playing kick ball at the park with some friends and Kyrie came and told me it was 2:00, and I asked her "Oh, is it 2:00?" And she said "No, it's too bright". She later laid her head on my shoulder and told me again, "Mom, it's 2:00" and it definatley was time for bed!