And so it Begins....

I dread this time of year. I start getting stressed weeks before, knowing that it's coming. This time of the year is when Scott has to go do open enrollment for his mining client up in Alaska--and he's gone for a long, long time. And I hate it.

Scott left this morning for Sun Valley--he has some conference there. He'll be gone for three days, which isn't so bad. But he'll only be home for a day before he leaves for Alaska, and he'll be gone 19 days straight. That's a long time to be without a husband. It's especially a long time to be without a husband when you have 5 kids and are 7 1/2 months pregnant. Then we'll get him home for 3 days, then send him off for another 5 days. When he gets done with all his traveling, we will only have 2 weeks before this baby is born.

We tried to get some fun in leading up to all this traveling. On Friday we got a babysitter and went out on a date (our first date together in months). We went to see "Inception"--it was a great movie. After the movie we went to a fun new frozen yogurt place. On Monday we went to "Build-a-Bear" in the mall with all the kids. Sara wanted to go there for her birthday, so we went and let her pick out a cute pink bear and a couple of outfits for it (she carries it around with her all over the house and even sleeps with it). On Sunday Scott and I spoke in Sacrament Meeting. We are both glad that's over with. Saturday was spent doing yard work and working on the window seat in the girls' room. Ever since we moved into this house, I've been wanting to build a window seat in their room, and it's finally getting done. It's on hold for the next month while Scott is gone, but he made great progress on it before he left. These pictures are mid-construction--Aaron crawled inside to read a book and fell asleep!

Doctor's Visits and Scott's Birthday

This week I went to the Pediatrician's office twice. TWICE! On Tuesday Sara had her 6 year check-up. Nate and Aaron got to come along. She's perfectly healthy and at the 90th percentile for both height and weight. On Wednesday, Savannah called home from school around 11 to say she had a painful earache and needed to come home. She had also called home Friday afternoon to say she needed to come home because of a stomach ache (which magically went away as soon as she got home). So on Wednesday, I loaded up my two little boys and went to the school to pick up Savannah. When she got in the car, she was holding her ear and saying how much it hurt, so I thought that just maybe she had an ear infection (we've all had colds, so it wasn't unreasonable to think that she might have one). I went home and called the pediatrician's office to see if I could get her in to get her ear checked. Our regular doctor wasn't working that day, but they said I could see the nurse practitioner. So an hour later I loaded up Nate, Aaron, Savannah, and Sara (who was now home from Kindergarten) and headed to the pediatrician's office.

The nurse practitioner that we saw was nice enough, but she had a medical student following her around that day, and she let the medical student do the exam. The medical student was nice also, but way too thorough. She went through every question imaginable (when did the pain start? is it constant or just sometimes? does it feel like a sharp pain or just dull? have you been swimming lately? on a pain scale, where does the pain rank?). As she went through 20 minutes of questions, I tried to keep Nate and Aaron happy and quiet, while I really just wanted to yell, "Just look in her ear and skip the questions!" Finally, she looked in Savannah's ear, but couldn't quite see because of some wax buildup. So she scooped some wax out, then pronounced Savannah's ear perfectly healthy looking. She then looked at Savannah's throat and discovered that it was slightly red. She decided we needed to do a strep test (even though Savannah was not running a fever). I wanted to scream. I knew Savannah didn't have strep, but how do you as a parent tell the doctor that you are too cheap to let them run the test they deem necessary? So, we sat in the little exam room (with 4 restless kids) while they ran a rapid strep culture--which of course came back negative.

Once we got out to the car, Savannah sensed my frustration. By now her earache had gone away, and she was playing with Nate. I told her she was going straight to bed when we got home. She said she wasn't tired. I told her that she had skipped school and just made me spend $100 at the doctor's office just so they could tell me that she was fine. I told her that if she was going to do that, she could at least act sick and take a nap when we got home. I also told her that it was only the second week of school and already she had come home "sick" twice. I told her that from now on, I would not come get her from school unless she was actually throwing up.

We finally made it home. I had spent 3 hours running around for Savannah's "sickness". I had wanted to spend those 3 hours cleaning my house. It was Scott's birthday, and I really wanted to have him come home from work to a clean house. It didn't happen. It was a school night for the kids, so we couldn't do too much to celebrate. I made him a fancy dinner (using the recipes that I learned in Coeur d'Alene). He got his birthday present last week (an impact driver and new drill) to use in a building project that he started, so we didn't even get to do presents. It was a pretty lame birthday, if you ask me, but I did my best under the circumstances. I just am so tired and sore these days, that even my best intentions have to yield to my poor pregnant body's limitations.

Tonight I have a baby sitter lined up and we are going to dinner and a movie. I'm hoping to make up for not doing anything for Scott's birthday two days ago, and call this his official birthday celebration. And just maybe, if I start now, I can get the house clean before all my energy gives out for the day....maybe.

Days

4 days till Scott's birthday
8 days till we have to speak in Sacrament
21 days till Savannah's birthday
11 days till Scott has to travel to Sun Valley
3 days he'll be gone
1 day that he'll be home before leaving again
19 days straight he'll be gone to Alaska
3 days home before leaving again
5 days gone to Northern Idaho
27 days in total that Scott will be gone
58 days till this little baby boy arrives (16 days after Scott finishes his traveling)

I'm a little stressed. No, make that a lot stressed. And to top it all off, I'm sick. I always seem to come down with a horrible cold at the end of all my pregnancies and it usually doesn't go away till after I deliver the baby. I'm hoping that's not the case with this cold. I'm pretty miserable--stuffy nose, headache, painfully sore throat. If I have to make it through the whole next 8 weeks feeling like this, I will not survive.

Sara's Birthday Party

Yesterday was Sara's birthday. Scott, Aaron, Nate and I all took donuts into her Kindergarten class in the morning. Her teacher makes a really big deal of birthdays, so Sara felt pretty special. Earlier in the week, her teacher sent home a "birthday book" for us to make. It had a laminated cover, then just blank white pages for us to fill with stories and pictures of Sara. She and I had a fun time making it. When we went into her classroom yesterday, the teacher had the whole class sit in a circle and Sara got to read her birthday book to all the kids. She also got a birthday crown, and her teacher took a picture of her with us. Then we passed out the donuts and let all the kids enjoy Sara's birthday treats.

After Sara got home from school at noon, her Grandma Jo came and got her for her birthday outing. Grandma took her to lunch at McDonald's (Sara's request), then took her shopping for clothes. Sara had a great time.

In the evening, we went to the kids' back to school picnic and let the kids all play on the playground for an hour, then we went to Carl's Jr. for dinner (again, Sara's request). The kids filled up on chicken nuggets and fries and played on the playplace at Carl's Junior, then we brought them all home (exhausted) and gave them all baths and put them to bed.

Today the birthday festivities continued. Today was Sara's friend party at The Little Gym. Aaron had such a great time at his birthday party there a few months ago, so we held Sara's there, too. First was an hour of gym time...





Then the last half hour was cake and presents.









Present Time!




I think everyone had a great time and Sara came home and instantly started playing with her presents. Happy Birthday Sara girl!!!

Happy Birthday to Sara

6 years ago today, our little Sara Hope joined our family. How incredibly blessed we are to have her in our family. We love you so much Sara!

Potty Training

I hate potty training. I've done it 4 times, and it always is such a painful process. I hate sitting on the bathroom floor next to the potty training child, waiting while they decide to finally "go"--sometimes for hours a day. I hate being in the middle of Walmart with a cart full of groceries and a bunch of little kids with me, when I hear "Mommy, I need to go potty". I hate the accidents and the inconvenient moments that come along with potty training. I would rather change diapers than potty train. But....Nate thinks otherwise.

Savannah potty trained when she was just 2, but the other three kids waited till after they were 3. And here comes Nate, just barely 2, and he thinks he's ready to use the toilet. I've tried to dissuade him, but he is insistent. He goes to the toilet and begs to have his diaper off so he can put his "peep peeps" in the toilet. The other day, he wanted to put his poops in the toilet--and he did! So, here we go....

Projects

Our Saturdays for the past month have been taken up with yard projects. Three weeks ago, we decided to redo some of our flower beds. We have this little flower bed in the front yard off the side of the garage, that has a chain that drains water right into it every time it rains. Because it's so small, and because it has the curbing around it that holds water in, the bed floods every time it rains. And when it floods, all the bark floats up and buries the little plant that is in it. We've had that plant there for a couple years, but it doesn't seem to be growing because it's always buried in bark. So, we decided to replace our bark with rock. We figured the rock would be heavy enough to not float up and bury the plant. And since we were doing that little bed in rock, we figured we'd do the other flower bed that is on that side of the yard, so it would match. And since we were replacing the bark with rock, we figured we'd rake up the bark to use elsewhere in our yard. Are you starting to see how this project just kept getting bigger and bigger? Well, you have to do weed barrier fabric under the rock, so we bought some of that to use. And since we had that on hand, I decided to place weed barrier around all our garden boxes. For some reason, that is where we have the biggest problem with weeds growing. We used to have the last garden box functioning as a sand box before we built our new one, but it was so small, that the kids could never keep the sand actually in the box, so the whole area is covered in sand (which makes it even easier for the weeds to take root). So, since I could never keep up with the weeding around the boxes, I decided to place the weed barrier fabric down and never have to worry about weeds anymore. So, I spent the day in the heat, bent over (which is really hard to do when you are 6 1/2 months pregnant) placing the fabric all around the boxes. Then we raked up all the bark out of the front beds and wheel barrowed them back to place the bark on the fabric. It was A LOT of work, but it's been three weeks now and there isn't a weed in sight around my garden.

The project then entailed getting a truck load of rocks to replace the bark in the two front beds. We got the little bed done and half of the big bed, before the day came to an end. We needed another truck load of rocks to finish the project, but the "rock quarry" (as Nate calls it) was already closed for the day, so we decided it would have to wait till the next Saturday.

The next Saturday rolled around (two Saturdays ago), and we ended up working on another huge project the whole day. Remember when our yard flooded after we got back from vacation? Well, we ran the sprinklers again and had the same problem--a huge flood in our back yard. I spent Thursday and Friday scooping water up out of the grass into a 5 gallon bucket and then dumping it elsewhere (I think I totaled about 30 5-gallon buckets full of water). On Saturday we went to work on fixing the problem. This last spring we had curbing installed along the bottom of our hill. In front of the swingset, one sprinkler had to be moved out further into the grass so the curbing wouldn't hit it. Because the flooding was around the area of that sprinkler, Scott figured it was leaking. He dug it up and discovered that the screw that was holding the saddle clamp on had come off, and when we ran the sprinklers, it was just shooting water out of the pipe under the grass.

So, Scott fixed the sprinkler. But, we couldn't figure out why the water wasn't draining away. When we bought this lot to build our house, we discovered that we had a big ugly sewer drain in the middle of our backyard. Because we are the last house on the street, and the whole street slants our direction, we had to have a drain to drain away all the water that we collected from our neighbors. Our landscaper had covered it with gravel, then landscaped on top of it (it's actually under our swingset bark). For years we've had no problem with flooding, so we couldn't figure out why the water wasn't draining out through the drain. So, we dug it up to see why. When the developers installed the drain, they placed a fabric under the grate to keep dirt and rocks out of the drain. Our landscaper had failed to place a fabric on top of the grate, so there was an inch of sludge and rocks trapped between the top of the grate and the fabric that was just beneath. So, we spent quite a while trying to pry up all the sludge out of the holes of the grate so the drain could function again. Then, to make sure the water was able to make it's way to the drain, Scott dug a trench from the lawn (which is the low spot in the yard) to the drain. Then we filled the trench (and covered the drain) with landscape fabric, then gravel (another trip to the rock quarry), then piled all the play chip bark back on top so you couldn't even see that the trench existed. It was A LOT of work. The boys loved helping with all the digging. Savannah took it upon herself to scoop out all the water that was in the sand box (the boys had a hole dug, that the water kept pooling in). She'd get all the water out of the hole, then wait 10 minutes as more water drained into the hole, then she'd start all over.






And, since we were digging a trench, we had a lot of extra dirt we needed to find a place for. So (here is where the project just grows some more) we decided to pile it behind the retaining wall behind the swing set. On the right end of the play area, the hill was pretty steep, so we added 15 new blocks and piled the dirt behind them to make the hill flatter. Of course, it required two trips to Home Depot to get the blocks, and then wheelbarrowing them back a few at a time (they weigh 70 pounds a piece), then leveling the ground they had to go on. It was A LOT of work.

The next Saturday we were living it up in Coeur d'Alene, so no projects got worked on. But, today we made it to the rock quarry for two more trucks full of rocks and got the front beds finished. We also got the last block placed back by the swingset and all the bark raked back into place.

And now we are hoping that we are done with all our big yard projects for the summer. I think we are. Of course, in a few weeks I'll get to start in on all the fall pruning of the hundreds of bushes we have in our yard and on our hill in the backyard. And then the fall leaf clean-up from all those bushes and trees. Lucky Scott, he always is in Alaska when the fall cleanup work has to be done--leaving it all to me. It should be extra fun this year doing it while almost 8 months pregnant!

Routine

This week we are trying to settle into our new fall routine. The kids started school on Monday. I'm amazed at how much crazier mornings are for me to try and get three school kids ready instead of just two. I also am remembering how much life revolves around school when you have a kindergartner. It seems I just get the kids off to school, get the two little boys fed and ready for the day, and then it's time to head to the bus stop to get Sara. Then we do lunch and naps and then it's time for the other two to come home.

Tuesday morning Aaron had his first fall semester gymnastics class. He was thrilled to see that Miss Catti was still his teacher. Today the older three kids have their first gymnastics class (Savannah 4:15-5:15 and Josh and Sara 5:15-6:15).

On Monday Scott got to sit on his first jury (he was called to jury duty this week). The judge estimated that the trial would last through Wednesday, but when Scott showed up on Tuesday, they sent the jury home because of a mistrial (apparently, the guy did something in jail the night before--suicide attempt?--that made the judge decide he couldn't stand trial).

Last night the laurels' mutual activity was babysitting for a few families in the ward. We got to drop the kids off at the park, then got an hour and a half to ourselves while the laurel girls entertained the kids. The kids loved it, and Scott and I got a quiet date of grocery shopping (when it's without kids, even grocery shopping counts as a date).

I'm looking forward to this long weekend. We've got some yard projects that need finished up on Saturday, and the kids are going to get some playing time with their Kraupp cousins on Monday. I'm just looking forward to a morning of sleeping in and not having to get up for school. Oh, and I'm finally down to under 10 weeks left in this pregnancy (9 weeks 3 days, to be exact). I just may survive after all!

Coeur d'Alene

Last week Scott and I got the opportunity to sneak away on a 4 day trip without the kids. His work invited us to attend the Governor's Cup again this year. This is the 4th year we've gone, but the other three times it was in Sun Valley. This year it was in Coeur d'Alene. For those of you who have never heard of the Governor's Cup, it's an event they hold every summer to raise scholarship money for Idaho students attending Idaho colleges. They charge a whole bunch of money to attend the event, then fill it with fun activities and great food--and all the money goes to scholarships. And since Scott's work always sends us with all expenses paid by them, it's one of our favorite things to get to go to.

Thursday morning we hopped on a plane and got to Spokane by 10. We then rented a car and drove to Coeur d'Alene (it's about a half hour drive). Scott Mom came and stayed with our kids Thursday and Friday, and then my parents came on Friday night and stayed with the kids through Sunday. Once we got to Coeur d'Alene, I dropped Scott off at the famous Coeur d'Alene golf course (it is known for it's floating green out on the lake). Thursday was a practice round of golf, then Friday and Saturday were a golf tournament. Scott had brought one of his clients from Alberton's with us, so while he and Mike golfed, Mike's wife Marie and I headed over to the resort to pick up all our stuff from registration. We always get lots of great gifts as part of our Governor's Cup regestration--shirts, jacket, chocolate, luggage, etc. After picking up our Governor's Cup bags, we went and checked into our hotel.

After getting settled into our hotel, I headed back to the resort. Marie met me there and we had lunch together at one of the restaurants inside the resort. Then I headed over to the resort's spa. Scott had scheduled a pregnancy massage for me at the spa. It was wonderful! I felt so pampered and relaxed. After my massage, I called Scott to see when he would be done golfing, and he had just finished, so I headed to the golf course and picked up him and Mike. We went to the hotel and had about an hour to relax before dinner. Dinner was with Scott's boss and two other insurance guys (Greg and Nate) that Scott's office had invited to come to the Governor's Cup. We had dinner at the Cedars Floating Restaurant (it's built on stilts out in the lake to give it the appearance of floating). We had great food and an amazing view of the lake.

Friday morning Scott left bright and early to go golfing. Marie and I had breakfast together, then I headed back to my room and napped and watched TV. In the afternoon, I headed back to the resort and attended a cooking demonstration at the restaurant Beverly's. We all sat at a long table in the back of the restaurant (overlooking the lake) and watched as the head chef cooked a full course meal in front of us. Then they served all of us the food (they had it prepared nicely in the back and would bring it out as he finished each recipe's demonstration). It was amazingly good. Most of it was stuff I'll never attempt to make again on my own, except for the sun dried tomato parmesan soup--it was very good and seemed relatively easy. I'm planning to make it for Scott for his birthday. After cooking, I met up with Scott and we went back to the hotel until dinner. Dinner was an elaborate buffet at the resort with live entertainment (a great local country band).

Saturday Scott left early again for more golf. I did the same things as the day before--had breakfast with Marie, then napped, then went for my cooking demonstration. That day I sat next to the Lieutenant Governor's wife and got to know her pretty well. At the end of cooking class and golf, Scott and I met up again and rested till dinner time. First we attended the award's ceremony at the resort. Scott got a trophy (crystal vase) for taking 3rd net in the low handicap category (which is quite an accomplishment). Then we boarded boats and rode across the lake to the golf course for another elaborate buffet dinner. I made it through the entire trip without taking a single picture, except for this one that Scott took on his cell phone of our desert. It was all edible, the chocolate cup filled with cream and even the gold foil on the chocolate bar. It was so perfect, we had to take a picture.


Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast, then loaded up everything and checked out of the hotel. We drove to Spokane and stopped to visit Steve and Debbie. Steve used to be the head HR guy at Tech (Scott's client that has all the mines in Alaska). Steve and Debbie had always come with us to the Governor's Cup in the past, but Steve retired last year. It was fun to see them again and for Scott and Steve to talk about all the changes at Tech since Steve retired. We stayed a bit too long visiting and left us with only an hour to get to the airport and get on our plane. We were cutting it pretty close, but we made it in time to board the plane. Once we got to Boise, we hurried and got our luggage and drove home as quickly as we could. We stopped at our house for just a minute to throw on church clothes, then went to church. Josh had been assigned to give a talk in primary, and we told him we'd do our very best to get there in time to see him. We walked into primary just as he was walking up to the microphone. He did great on his talk, and he was so excited we made it to see him give it. It was fun to see the kids again--they all were so excited to see us pick them up from their classes at the end of church. We missed them so much, but had such a wonderful time while we were away. And even though they missed us, I think they had a pretty good time with their grandparents while we were gone. Thanks Grandma Jo and Grandma and Grandpa Sorensen for making it possible for us to get away on such a great little vacation!!!