Josh and Ethan

Christmas

Joy School

Kate's room

Spencer's Turkey presentation at school

Ethan Almost 2 months

Ethan had a check up the other day and weighed nearly 11 lbs and was approximately 22 inches long He's doing great and measuring around the 60th percentile. He is up a lot at night with mom and is starting to look around more and more every day.

Kate

Kate missed her first birthday party invite due to her nasty bout with hand foot and mouth disease. Luckily for her Ayva's mom sent a tutu and a princess crown over for Kate to enjoy and to include her. It meant a lot to me and it meant a lot to Kate. She instantly started twirling around in her tutu and smiled really big.

Hand Foot and Mouth Disease via face book posts

Spencer went from saying, "mom I seriously just want to cut my feet and hands off!" with tears in his eyes to having a popcorn catching party and star wars in less than 30 minutes thanks to pain medication and a priesthood blessing. Ibuprofen, sudocrem, Aveeno anti-itch cream, ice packs, Christmas crafts, ward friends bringing us food you have all saved us these past few days.#handfootandmouthdiseaseisstraightfromyouknowwhere#imsupposedtoblessmybabyonsunday #nothappening

After several days of trying to take care of Ethan and manage two pretty miserable toddlers I decided to work on a craft. I thought it would keep their minds off of screaming and keep them in one place...buckled into a booster chair and high chair. It killed about an hours worth of time and I think everyone really enjoyed it. It was easy and I had everything on hand to make it. Any one have other ways to pass the time with cranky toddlers?

This cream is amazing...after dealing with itchy painful hands, feet and face all day I put this stuff all over josh and he said, "Ahhh, that feels better!" Poor kid #hfmd

Spencer turned 9

It seems life never quite slows down enough for me to catch my breath or at least to focus on what I really want to do, clean my house, make it cozy, make yummy food and do the laundry. Next to having fun with my family and decorating, exercising and photography that's all I want to do. Those things are my favorite. But illness, divorce drama, car problems, money problems, arguing problems, health problems, dog problems, yard problems, bill problems, insurance problems...all these unwanted intrusive problems sneak in and they never stop. So I find myself scrambling and exhausted after dealing with these problems left with not even close to enough energy to put into the things I cherish.  I am left unable to fully enjoy the things I love the most. Please tell me this will change. I am praying to know what I can do differently so I can more fully enjoy my time with my family.  I realize that probably is a weird intro into the Spencer turns nine post but its appropriate to me because I looked forward to this day for a really long time and even though it was really great to celebrate with him and make it a special day for him...I was soooooo tired. 

Spencer requested IHOP for breakfast, BLT's for lunch, a fishing trip that included a chance to throw the football around at the park, Pesto with chicken and broccoli for dinner followed by the BYU football game and then some pie in place of a cake. We fit it all in except the BLT's. Plus Spencer had no chores. We like to celebrate birthdays on Saturday so the birthday kids can take the whole entire day off of chores and enjoy there special day.

Another tradition we have is to let the kids all pick out birthday presents for each other. This year we got to use a coupon with Amazon prime now for 20 off an order. The order arrived within two hours of placing it. That was a pretty fun experience. Spencer got a couple nerf swords, some legos, and a croquet game. 

We love this little boy so much and I really want him to stay little forever. It's so hard to be present and enjoy each day as they are and not wish away all the problems but I am really praying hard that I can do that in order to minimize regrets as I look back. I want to enjoy every minute.

Catching up

I am so very far behind on posting pictures I don't even know where to begin. I believe my last post talked about how easy and sweet and great having five kids was...that lasted a day!  IT'S HARD!

But really good too. I am living on very little sleep and to make matters worse Josh and Kate have somehow contracted hand foot and mouth disease. They have been miserable.

So much has happened around here that I can't even remember. The main things are Spencer's birthday (he turned 9) Thanksgiving with Grandma a Grandpa Young. I will have to locate those pictures. They are mostly on Tyler's phone

 Grant loves to play basketball sooooooo much. We get him down to the church gym as much as possible which doesn't equate to much but we do what we can. Tyler is pretty good about playing with him at least once a week.

The boys gave Bella a bath last month with warm water they brought out from the sink. I was happy to see Grant Washing Bella just how Tyler taught him to and showing Spencer how to do it too.

 Kate and Josh helped me make some Halloween cookies. It was a lot of fun. Ethan was still sleeping all the time at this point so it was easy to do.

 I was surprised at how they were able to figure out how to roll out the dough and use the cookie cutters so quickly. Smart little kids.

 Kate was especially into the rolling of the cookie dough.

 I think a tradition has been born with this one.

 Dental cleanings went well this time. No one had any new cavities, Spencer has one that's being watched from last time. Josh was brave and let the doctor look in his mouth this time.