a black and white Christmas Eve

It was a great Christmas Eve full of family, food, lights, bingo, an announcement, kids, presents, laughing, charity, a pinata, a goat, a llama and a sheep,

 

Couldn't have been better.

a very spooky and belated Halloween post

We had a sweet little Ford sized elephant join us for Halloween.

 Along with a Porter sized mummy.

 He really got into character this year.

 And wait... what's that red mask that creeping up behind the mummy?

 It was a Bridger sized Spiderman.

 These two picked out their costumes... and I'm pretty sure they have it figured out as to what they will be next year.

 They also wanted to see who could win in a fight... in case you were wondering, it was a pretty even match. But I think the mummy ended up on top.

 Poised and ready to pounce.

It was a fun Halloween. These three boys are a riot and they make this holiday so much better.

funnies

I was walking down the stairs and there was a toy car on the bottom step. As I got close to the bottom step, Porter rushed towards me and grabbed the car as I stepped over the bottom step.
"Whew!! Mom, I just saved your life! You almost died! It's a good thing I got the car out of your way, huh Mom?"

Bridger. "Mom, you are beaubiful... that's Spanish for beautiful."

We sat down to play Hi-Ho Cherry-O  the other day and Bridger started giving me my options of what fruit I could be.
"Mom, I'm going to be cherries because I like red. Porter is going to be the blueberries cause he likes blue. So, you can be oranges or goobergobblers. What do you want to be?"
"What are goobergobblers?"
"The green ones... I don't know what they are, so they are goobergobblers."
"I'm pretty sure they're apples, buddy."
"Oh, right.  You can be oranges or apples."

Porter: "Dad, I think you're not going to like this... I swallowed some toilet paper... up my nose."
He had had such a stuffy nose and was trying to wipe out all the snot. Ended up shoving toilet paper up his nose to remove all the snot and accidentally shoved the toilet paper all the way up his nose until it could not be found or retrieved. Which then led to an Instacare visit to try and find the toilet paper wad (Porter has insisted that it was about the size of my thumb). When no wad could be found, we realized that perhaps he really did swallow it... I hope so... or maybe he's remembering it larger than it actually was. I really hope so.
And he learned his lesson not to shove things up his nose.

pumpkin patch

 Annual trip to the pumpkin patch. I was very happy to have someone ask if they could take our family picture... too often I get distracted and it's not until I'm going over photos later that I realize I should have asked someone to take a picture. And she did a great job... sometimes you never know what you're going to get when you pass your camera over.

 This little peanut was quite content while the boys went running back and forth to everything.

 There was a semi-petting zoo, big slides, the corn pit and hay rides. All of which we did and the boys finished up by playing on the big hay bales until it started getting cold. 

 

Then we went for a quick hayride and out to pick our pumpkins.

I shouted to the boys to hug.

Porter assumed that meant to hug himself... that's when Bridger jumped him

We wandered the patch until it was too dark to take pictures and finally these boys picked their pumpkins.
It was a great night... I think the cost of pumpkins has significantly increased, however... so perhaps next year we'll purchase one pumpkin here to commemorate the night, and head elsewhere to select the rest of our pumpkins.
But we'll definitely be back, these boys love the patch.

Ford

 This sweet little peanut is just over 3 months old now. And he's getting huge.

Big milestones so far... he received a name and a blessing just a little over a week ago. 

He had oral surgery just a little over a week ago as well. He had a lip tie and a tongue tie and now he's got a sore little mouth while he's recovering.

He may not look it in these pictures, cause he's got a little cold going on, but he is a happy, happy baby.

Ford smiles all the time. He's a very content and pleasant little boy. He loves his older brothers and I don't know of anyone that can get him to smile as big as Bridger and Porter can.

Every once in a while he'll let out some giggles. He's very ticklish, but he's not quite sure what to think of being tickled yet. He has a very hesitant laugh when you tickle him.

He loves light and ceiling fans and will crane his little neck to try and see either one as much as possible.

He consistently sleeps for 8-9 hours every night.

He's a chatterbox. He's found his little voice and he thinks it's pretty cool that he can make noises.

Ford has beautiful blue eyes. I get lost in them all the time.

I think at this point he looks mostly like Bridger, but when I've backed up and looked at baby pics of Porter, they look just the same... minus the red hair.

Man alive he's a cute boy. And he's got his Momma wrapped pretty tightly around those cute little fingers of his.

this kid...

 This little boy is just chock-full of personality. And he's got the energy to match it!
Bridger is a character and you are never sure of what's going to come out of him!

Porter started pinching his nose to speak the other day. Bridger looked at him and very boldy said, "I don't speak Nose, Porter"

Bridger calling to Kyle from his room
Bridger: "Dad!! Porter isn't saying his prayers!"
Kyle: "Bridger, are you Porter's dad?"
B: "No!"
K:"Then stop worrying about what he's doing."
B: "You have to say mom and teacher too!"(Meaning Kyle should have asked him if he was Porter's mom or teacher too)

"Yeah Mom, I have Grandmas and Grandpas and cousins and Uncles and Uncs."

B:"My teacher told me about Francis Scott Key. He was trapped on a ship and he saw the flag and he wrote the Star Spangled Banner."
Me: "That's awesome Bridger, so you learned all about Francis Scott Key today?"
B: "NO, Mom! I learned about pumpkins!"

Me: "Bridger, what's on your thumb?" (He had a nice little blood blister on it that I hadn't seen)
B: "Remember the black thing that has a yellow thing that holds a black thing with bumps on it that's yellow and has a black side and it has yellow on it? Do you remember that?"
Me: "No, I don't."
B: "That's what it's from mom."

My first date. 

My basketball coach.

My karate partner. 

My ski instructor.

My teacher. 

My fishing expert. 

My go-to-guy for all things home-improvement.

My encourager.

My camping guru.

My ice-cream connoisseur.

My prime example of a hard worker.

My friend.

My Daddy.

All this and so much, much, much more...

Love you Daddy, and a very happy birthday to you.

raising boys... a glimpse into my future.

We were coming home from a lovely drive and hike to the grotto. As Kyle backed into the driveway, I was scanning through photos from our hike when I looked up and I saw this at the end of our street.

 I could not stop laughing... do you want a closer view?

Here we have two of my neighbors sons. One is riding the bike which is connected to a wagon by a very long rope. The wagon contains a plastic trash can, pillows, blankets and his helmet-clad brother.
Believe it or not, the older boy is the one in the trash can.

Oh, and that's Porter running as fast as he can to see when he can have a turn.

As the boys slowly walked the bike towards me and I started to joke around with them about their brilliant idea, they informed me that I had missed the best part.

The street behind them there is a straight road that does not dead end, but turns into a U shape at the end and curves around to make another back street. They would start at the top of the U and the one on the bike would get going as fast as possible so that when he took the quick turn at the U bend, it would abruptly yank the wagon onto its side and throw the trash can (and his brother) hurtling through the air and across the asphalt.

As long as you wore a helmet (and packed the blankets tightly around you), "You can't get hurt!" they pronounced.

I praised them for the helmet part.

I laughed for a while until I realized that I was looking at my future boys. My boys are also creative little daredevils... so I'm betting it's only a matter of time before my boys come up with something like this.

The rest of the night all I could think of was Brian Regan shouting, "Get some leaves!"

slowing down

I feel like daily I'm making attempts to keep up.

Attempts to clean a house, be a good mom, read my scriptures, keep to a schedule, make dinner...etc. Sometimes my attempts work and some days I feel like I've failed. 

One of my recent attempts was to get some family photos. We were rushed, as we are most days, and we headed up to the mountains after Kyle got home from work to snap a few pictures.

I had it in my head of what I wanted. We had found this beautiful spot from one of our gorgeous Sunday drives and we knew the changing colors would be perfect at this time.

We had had a bit of a rough start and we were running a little late, so I was hurrying to try and get things set up before we lost light. At some point early on in the setting up process my shutter speed on my camera was accidentally changed and slowed down... a nice little metaphor for what I would learn from this whole experience.

It was slowed down so much that many of the shots I had wanted to get all turned out blurry and didn't work out. 

I know what I set my shutter speed to. 

I don't know how it got changed... or why it didn't ruin all the photos.

When I got home and started searching through the pictures I quickly found that I was disappointed with the majority of the family shots. I started going through the in between shots desperate to find something. I didn't want the whole night to have been in vain... and as I found out, this night had been more than worth it.

Not getting the shots I wanted made me focus on some of the photos that I didn't really intend on taking. Most of the following pics were taken to help me adjust my camera settings to the changing light of the setting sun and taking some practice shots while I posed the family members.

Here's what I found.

A picture where I was making sure that the remote would work and giving Porter a chance to try it ended up giving me one of my favorite shots of me and my redhead.

 Bridger and Porter taking a dancing break while I fed Ford and tried to decide the next beautiful back drop of our family pictures.

 A perfect picture of my indescribably handsome husband holding our sweet Ford and trying to make him happy. I was waiting for the sun to go down so there wouldn't be that stark line in the background.

 Two little boys trying to make my third happy... and what I believe to be the first picture of all three boys together.

Everyone trying to give tickles and hugs and smiles to Ford while I was changing settings ended up giving me the first picture of my four boys together.

Too often I'm not focused on the important things... just like these pictures. I have it in my head what I want my days to look like and when they don't turn out the way I had planned I feel like I'm running behind. I get frustrated and feel like the world is moving 1000 times too fast and that there is no way to possibly catch up. 

What I've realized is that it's not about catching up, it's about slowing down.

I'm going to slow it down. I'm going to watch for all those little moments each day that I normally let pass on by without so much as a glance because I'm too busy planning for the next item on the agenda.

I'm really grateful that I didn't get the photos I was hoping for. I never would have noticed the ones that did work out, and that would have been the real tragedy.

Plus, I realized that blurriness can't completely ruin a photo... at least not when you've got my four handsome boys in front of the camera.

two months

 He's getting big. 

11 lbs. 12 oz. of big to be exact.

He is such a sweet baby.

Ford is a good eater and a good sleeper. 

He averages about 7-8 hours of sleep every night.

He loves to smile, and he gives them away like crazy.

He holds up his head really well.

He's got beautiful steel blue eyes.

He is finding his little voice and is starting to talk to us more and more each day.

He'll sleep through any noise. Vacuums, yelling kids, noise at the grocery store... he's following Porter's example (Porter didn't even wake up once during the crazy night we had last week).

Ford loves to be swaddled. It calms him down when he's fussy.

He loves being the car. In fact he likes being in his car seat, and he rarely fusses in it 

(whether it's in the car or not). The only time he fusses in the car is if he's late for a feeding.

I think Ford looks more and more like Bridger every day. 

I can see the brotherly resemblance.

Speaking of brothers, his brothers adore him.

Briggs has early morning preschool and Porter has afternoon kindergarten which makes it perfect for these boys to share their little brother. They each have their own time alone with him each day.

It's been an adjustment here in our house to be sure...an adjustment of the best kind. 

This little boy brings out the best in all of us and I'm just so happy he's ours.

I love you, mister Ford.