Pregnancy Cravings

I have been craving mexican food when I feel like eating at all.  Not a lot has sounded good to me, so when something does I try and find a way to have it. It seems like I eat little stuff all day long, mostly to keep something in my stomach so I am not dry heaving all the time, (I know WAY TMI) and as of my doctor's appointment yesterday I am still down a pound from my pre prego weight.  Well craving mexican food in Minnesota is not good, because there is NO WHERE to get good mexican food.  And I mean no where.  About three weeks ago I was craving a Cafe Rio pork salad and there is nothing that I could come up with that would be even close to that here.  Thanks to Jake I also know that the closest Cafe Rio is in Montana, a 15 hour drive from us.  Not exactly doable.  So I was stuck craving my salad.  My sweet sister in law came to the rescue with a  recipe for a mock Cafe Rio pork salad recipe, complete with meat, rice and creamy tomatillo dressing.  The only problem I totally didn't feel up to making it.  Finally on Monday I found the energy and desire to make the salad.  Oh, was it good!  I think next time I am going to change it up a little more to our tastes but it was good, and now I am not craving that dang salad anymore.

But I am definitely having the real thing later this summer when we are on vacation.  

Oder Up

I thought this was too cute to not save a picture of...  we were getting lunch from a local burger joint that fixes all of their burgers made to order.  They come plain and you tell them what you want on yours.  Ashton had told me what he wanted on his as we were waiting in the drive up line, and then as we pulled up to order he handed me this paper with his order written out, "just in case you can't remember, mom"

In case you can't read what he wrote, it says pickles, ketchup, cheeseburger.  What a cute kid!!

Tour de Cherry Street

We finally made good on our promise to get Abbie her bike. Isn't she such a cutie on it?

Jake took an extra day off of work this week so that he could go to a doctor's appointment and then he, Abbie and I spent the rest of the day running errands.  At the top of our list was finding a new bike for the birthday girl.  Not an easy task in this little town.  Not as hard as finding dress clothes from a 6 year old boy, mind you, but hard. (But that is another story) We went to a little bike shop in town and they had this one in stock, just not put together.  They asked us to give them a few hours and it would be ready to go.  Sadly we left the store without the bike, much to the dislike of Abbie.  So after the big kids got home from school we went back to the store and what was waiting for her when we walked in the door?  The smile that never left her face made us know that we had made a great decision.  Unfortunately, there would be little time for riding Friday night.  But Saturday morning was named bike riding time. 

One thing that we realized when we got Abbie's bike home was that Ashton's bike was a little on the small side for him.  He has had a hard time figuring out the no training wheels thing and Jake said he would work with him to get him riding with out training wheels while I was helping Abbie get used to her new bike.  

Jake went for the sink or swim method, and took his training wheels off from the start, which actually worked like a charm.  He also used a little bribe incentive.  We told Ashton that if he could ride the bike he had without training wheels that morning we would get him a new bigger bike too.  TEN minutes later this was what I saw....

Ashton riding like he has always known how to ride a bike and it wasn't his very first day without training wheels.  Once he got the hang of it, there was no stopping him.  Around and around he went like a man on a mission.  

So back to the bike shop we went after lunch and came home with a bike that was 6 inches taller than the bike he had.  Ya, maybe his bike was a little small for him.  

And because of the size of this bike he has also stepped up to a bike with gears and hand brakes.  New things to get used to, but he took off once again like it was nothing new.  We decided to take advantage of the church parking lot to do a little uninterrupted riding, well I walked there with Abbie as she rode, and Lexie rode my bike that she has basically taken over anyway.  Even jake donned a helmet and dusted off his bike for a little spin.

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon as a family.  

Someone Wants to Say Hello

With Mother's Day just around the corner I though it would be fitting to introduce you to our new addition.  Well technically he or she isn't here yet.  But he/she is growing and waiting patiently for a chance to meet everyone sometime this November.  I am due Nov 28th, but if the past is any indicator, this baby will make its appearance some time between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

This is why I felt so terrible lately and why I have been "living under a rock."  Some days I still feel like I am, but hopefully by the time we get to come back to Utah for a visit in July, I will be feeling better.  At least that is what I am praying for.
 There are still a lot of unknowns for us right now, but I think I am going to become good friends with the vampires phlebotomists at the lab at the hospital since I have to go in every 4 weeks to have my blood drawn.  As of right now, the levels of the anti-M antibodies in my system is as low as they can be.  That is good. Really. Good.  If they rise to a certain level then I will have to start having more tests done to see how it is affecting the baby.  But for now, things look good.  Ya!

Birthday Fun

So I am finally getting around to telling more of the birthday celebration story.

 First off I feel the need to say something about Abbie's choice of clothing, this is her favorite shirt and favorite pair of pants she wears them together all the time no matter how many times I try and explain that they don't match.  She doesn't care she loves them and thats good enough for her.  I finally decided that I mostly don't care, she is getting herself dressed and thinking about what clothes she is wearing.  I guess that has to be good enough for now.

man she can rip some paper... she opened those presents in no time.  

I took her shopping during the day, because I hadn't been up to going before that.  I was feeling pretty good about just being up to celebrating at all after getting food poisoning on Saturday.  She picked out a few things, but her big present is still coming, we are getting her a two wheeled bike, but with Jake's schedule and me being sick we haven't had time to get one for her yet.

play-doh is one of her all time favorites.... 

She had fun opening her presents and then we had cake and ice cream for both of our girls since we never had a cake for Lexie's birthday.   I didn't think to check if we had the right candles or not before so this is what we ended up with.  10 plus 2 for Lexie and a four for Abbie.

Here they are blowing out the candles.  

All in all it was a fun day.  

Abbie's Birthday

Abbie turns 4 today!  I can't believe that my baby is FOUR.

 I remember so well the day she came, I was so nervous because she was so early.  I was just 36 weeks and in labor-I knew that I was in good hands at the hospital, but still I didn't know what to expect.  We were so blessed that everything turned out so well for us.  More on the birthday celebrations later...

Cabella's

While our family is definitely not a hunting, fishing, camping sort of family we do enjoy an occasional trip to Cabella's.  While it is quite a bit further to Cabella's here than it was for us in Utah we decided a few weeks ago to make the drive to the closest one for a Saturday outing.   (that decision may have been heavily influenced by Jake's desire to look at and handle a particular gun that he had his eye on, but we did have a fun day although mom was completely warn out by the end)  The general idea of Cabella's was still the same, but the displays of animals were quite a bit different from what we were used to.  Pretty cool though.  First the African safari display had this massive elephant that was really cool.  We were trying to imagine how you would get that from Africa to the United States.

Ashton and Abbie both had a lot of fun looking at this display while Jake and Lexie were looking at guns.  

Ashton liked the rhinos,

and Abbie liked the baby zebra (until she figured out that the lions were trying to eat it and it's mother)

This was part of the big display right in the middle of the store that we walked all the way around.  Ashton read every sign identifying the animals and Abbie had fun trying to find all the animals.  

Abbie likes to crawl into every display that she can, and I took this picture of her in this sleeping bag because it is probably as close to camping as she will ever get with our family.  

And there is Lexie in the corner with her new best friend.  The phone she has had for a while, but only recently has she been able to text.  And boy does that girl ever know how to text.  

Toothless Joe

So if I hadn't been hiding out under a rock these last few weeks I would have taken this picture 3 weeks ago and posted it then, but better late than never right?  Ashton lost one of his front teeth and then about 3 days later he lost the other one.  He pulled the last one out all by himself.  I was amazed that he did it by himself, but then again I wasn't, he can be pretty stubborn when it comes to certain things.  Anyway it was really cute listening to his lisp for the first few days as he learned how to talk with a big whole in his front teeth.  Now the new teeth are already growing back in, but I had to get a picture before it was too late.

It's Somebody's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Lexie.  I can't believe that you are 12 today.  We had a rather low key celebration today.

She opened a few presents and we tried to have cupcakes (but I burned them, or the stupid oven did) we will have a bigger, better party next weekend when Jake is home.  (It seems like Jake always ends up having drill on somebody's birthday)  

Easter 2012

So I have finally clawed my way out from under the rock that I feel like I have been living under for the past month with the help of a little white pill I am so fond of these days... zofran I love you.  Things have been going on business as usual around our house thankfully, without much help from the mom.  I am so glad that I have such great kids.  We had a whole week off of school for spring break and I had all of these great plans about what we would do with all of those days off of school.  None of them happened.  Well I guess that isn't entirely true we did go to the park one day and got some of the spring cleaning chores checked off our list, but mostly we just hung out at home and took things easy.  We did get our Easter eggs dyed one afternoon and that was really fun.

each kid gets a dozen eggs to dye.  Here are most of them.  

We made special arrangements with the Easter bunny to come on Saturday because of Jake having to work on Easter.  It kinda worked out better that way then anyway cause then all of the sugar rush was over way before Sunday and church.  I didn't get any picture of the actual easter egg hunt because we did it first thing and I was barely able to watch myself let alone take any pictures.  But the best thing the Easter bunny left us this year were these little mini green houses that the kids wanted to plant first thing after the egg hunt.  I did manage to get a few pictures of this....

first they had to get the dirt pellets wet and put them in the cup planters.

then plant the seeds.

Here is Ashton with the "boys" planter.  It has mini vegetable plants in it.  Tomato, cucumber, and pepper.  Jake helped him get everything just right.

Here are Lexie and Abbie with the "girls" planter.  It has flowers.  I don't remember what kind except for forget me nots.  Luckily for me Lexie helped Abbie and I didn't have to do anything but watch them have a good time and take a few pictures.  I was really surprised at how fast some of the seeds sprouted, some of the girls seeds sprouted the very next day.  

Overall we had a good holiday.  Too bad I didn't get more pictures....