e turns three!!!

 this little dinosaur turned three this month.

 we celebrated this little rawr rawr with family

and his traditional donut cake.

 we played pin the tail on the dinosaur. 

it was a hit.

e loved it and took a turn a few times.

 love this picture of this little cutie.

 uncle tyler and uncle thor got in on the action as well.

thor was really funny to watch because instead of guessing he felt his way to the perfect spot.

obviously it's been a while since he played the game.

 i scored these awesome dinosaur masks on clearance 

and they were the perfect addition to emmet's birthday party. 

all of the streamers you see in the pictures and balloons were bryan's doing.

so grateful to have a husband who can take charge and really decorate for his son's birthday party when his pregnant wife is feeling sore and sleepy.

a family of rawr rawr's 

we could not be luckier to have mr. e in our little family.

he makes our days brighter and more relaxed.

his laugh is the best and we love him so.

from g's point of view

 

 this was our second to last weekend together as a family of four.

g and i started out the day being the only ones up and we made a pan full of german pancakes.

i thought it would be fun to eat them outside, 

especially since g is always asking if we can have a picnic. 

 later today we had to make a quick costco run and then went to grab dinner.

she grabbed my phone and asked if she could play on it.

 i said yes and she proceeded to take almost 100 pictures with my phone.

 i had no idea that was what she was doing.

it was so fun to look through and see life in her world.

 there was one adorably blurry picture of her unicorn purse that i had to include.

what if one day this small detail escapes our memory.

 she is pure magic.

this age she is at is one of my favorites although it can be challenging at times, it is so magical.

her and e love eating here gobbled down his cheeseburger and then a fourth of my double double. 

this was such a wonderful weekend with my family.

i hate to see it end.

thoughts on having a third child

in less than two weeks we will have a new member of the family. 

up until then he has been with us in my belly.

hanging out, moving, living, 

kicking, rather strongly i might add.

soon he will be in mine and bryan's arms,

cooing, crying, eating, sleeping

and doing whatever other things he will do.

the things that will make him him.

i can't wait for them to place him on my chest.

to smell his head.

oh that baby smell is intoxicating.

to introduce him to his big sister and big brother for the first time.

to take him home and discover how we will do life as a family of five.

as exciting as all of this is,

i am also a little terrified.

i know that he will complete our family.

i know that as soon as i see him i won't ever be able to imagine life without him.

i also know that i haven't done the up in the middle of the night with kids thing 

in what feels like a very long time.

i don't know how i will keep up with a newborn and an energetic sister and brother.

 it will be interesting trying to tag a baby along to preschool drop offs and pick ups and just do daily life with a wee little one.

it will work out, but it feels daunting to me when i try to picture it in my head.

so here is to you baby boy.

i can already feel how strong you are and i can't wait to discover a thousand more things about you.

we already love you.

all four of us love you and the puppies will too.

in just two weeks from today you will be here in our home hanging out with  us.

total craziness boy.

 love you boy.

don't ever change

Dear Grace,

your little brother emmet took this picture of you.

your hair was pulled back in a pony tail by grandma pound and when she did your hair you said,

"now that's a hair do!" in the cutest little voice.

you sing a lot of taylor swift songs from 1989.
especially shake it off.

you also love the "cups" song from pitch perfect.
you love it so much that i downloaded it onto my phone.
  anytime there is a cup or can of soup laying around you immediately
brake into your rendition of the song.
it's pretty cute kid.
you love sticker books, counting buttons, playing shop and
having picnic's full of food from your little kitchen.
you love everyone.
like seriously child you do, you do!
it's kind of amazing really.
you and betty snuggle every night - on my bed i may add.
you are going through a "i must sleep in mommies room phase."
you do not like the book where the wild things are at all.
it terrified you one day at preschool.
the teacher stopped reading it,
but you still have a hard time trying to grasp why max would dress up and scare his dog.

basically you are just the sweetest mix of sugar and spice that anyone could dream up.
i love you and those gorgeous huge green eyes.
i die over your little ringlets in your hair everyday.

i hope with all my might that these core things that make you you never ever ever change.

you are my best friend little lady.

mom

tyler gene graduated from high school

 i was so proud of tyler for graduating from high school!

it is so crazy to me that my little boy is all grown up and done with high school.

it was actually a pretty good ceremony as far as high school graduation ceremony's go.

we had dinner after wards at la fountain.

then tyler had a party with some of his friends.

ty we are all so proud of you! 

you are super talented and super handsome.

love you!

what's up in our neck of the woods

   these two are at the best ages.

they dress up, they are starting to really play together.

they love being outside and exploring.

their lives are wonderous to them.

it's so beautiful and i am so lucky to witness it.

 i love this picture.

emmet took it while we were waiting for my second ultrasound at 24 weeks.

i love that he captured this moment from his point of view.

 a little over a month ago we took the kids up a f canyon for a little picnic.

we had so much fun.

the littles just soak in the wild air up there and become even more alive.

 we took up the bubbles they got from the easter bunny and they loved chasing them around.

this girl performed taylor swifts shake it off for us.

it was adorable just like her.

 this is a daily sight.

all of us in our bedroom.

relaxing, talking, watching tv, monkeys climbing up the bed posts

all while i have my belly out watching and feeling little august's kicks and nudges.

emmet also captured this moment for us.

we have a budding photographer on our hands.

and i had to throw this picture in here of these two littles sporting their thor t shirts.

tulip festival

 look at these two cuties at the tulip festival.

 this was our last night with bry before he had to return to work.

we had a hard time adjusting to him back at work, but i am so grateful that his surgery went well and that we were able to spend so much time together as a family while he recovered.

 they are my whole world.

 the tulips were so amazing and in full bloom.

we have had warmer weather earlier than usual this year and it sure made the tulips pop.

the littles had so much fun.

e tried to touch each flower and g showed us which ones were her favorite.

.

 the littles were all sorts of excited when we came across two bounce houses.

 the bounce house with the slide was their favorite as proof from the grins on their darling faces.

they also had sno cones that my dear hubby so sweetly bought for me. 

it was delicious and the littles enjoyed it as well.

it was a fun night.

i am so blessed to be given a chance to raise, along with bryan these little beauties.

we are so excited to have another little one join us in just a couple of months.

e's first hair cut

 mr. e has some amazing hair. 

it had gotten so long over the past year and it felt like time for his first hair cut.

 he protested at first, but after i gave him a sucker he was okay with it.

 little bits of beautiful blond hair from his first haircut in the sink.

 i love how it turned out and i think he looks so handsome.

his little wavy curls are too much.

you sure do look handsome mr. e!!!

what makes a home

"A home is made of love, sacrifice, and respect. 

A house can be a home, and a home can be a heaven when it shelters a family.

 When true values and basic virtues undergird the families of society, 

hope will  conquer despair, and faith will triumph over doubt". -Thomas S. Monson

with a third baby on the way i can't help but think more and more about our home where we raise these three precious souls.
as a mother i feel that a part of that is creating a happy, safe, comfortable home that we can all thrive in.
i love decorating, but i have realized over the past couple of months that calming our surroundings is equally important and in some cases more so.
in short i have spent the last two months decluttering and organizing our home.
we live in an average sized 1950 sq ft home. 
i was wasting time dreaming of more closet space when it finally dawned on me that what i really needed to do was let go of a lot of this "stuff" we have accumulated over our 9 and a half years together.
it is hard for me to let go of so much, but i've noticed a huge difference in my stress level when i start separating myself from the "things" i thought i may one day love again or that i thought one day may be something i could use.
in the past two months we have hosted a yard sale and hauled three loads to the dump.
here is the kicker folks...
there is still so much more to do!!!
i feel like it is never ending. 
at times it drives me crazy.
what keeps me going is seeing the benefits.
for instance my daughters closet all organized. (you don't want to look in my closet)
my linen closet also had a makeover as well.
it's all a work in progress, but i feel like it is so needed to clear the spaces in our home.

i have noticed for instance in our living room that since we were more thoughtful about what we incorporated into the space it is easier to keep clean, not nearly as cluttered and seems to be a more inviting place for the children and i to hang out.

so this is my current mission before baby comes.
i will share the results of the spaces as well along with some tips i have discovered along the way.
here is to the next couple months to makeover and quiet the house!!!

april snow day

this year had been the driest winter utah has ever seen.

this means water rationing

and a little girl who gets sooooooooooooo excited when it snows!

she was in luck because last tuesday it snowed.

they were the biggest fluffiest, beautiful snowflakes we've seen so far this year.

mr. e joined her and he loved it.

in fact he ended up staying out in the snow for about an hour 

while g was out for about fifteen minutes.

i think a huge part of this is because he had gloves to wear this time

 and usually his hands get too cold.

charley harper joined in on the fun.

he was funny running around in the snow.

i love the last two pictures of the kids.

i love the huge snowflakes,

g's happy face,

and e's big blue eyes hidden under his beanie.

we are adjusting to bryan being back at work this week.

it has been especially hard on mr. e.

we are trying to get back in the rhythm of things.

i taught my last week of preschool this week.

not to mention i feel like the majority of my days this week has been spent cleaning. boo.

i'm looking forward to the weekend.

our future model

easter 2015

 the saturday of easter weekend we decorated our easter eggs.

we tried something new i saw on pinterest.

 we boiled our eggs and then drew on them with crayon while the eggs were still hot.

it melts the wax onto the egg and was super fun.

we are going to do this every year we all enjoyed it so much.

 we also did the traditional dying of easter eggs so that the kids could dip them in and see them come out a different color.

 that night i dressed up egg cartons with all sorts of different surprises depending upon who i was gifting them to. the one pictured was for my mom. it had candy and fresh eggs from our chickens.

i think this will become a new tradition for our family.

i really enjoyed putting them together.

 easter morning g could hardly wait to go see wat the easter bunny left.

he didn't disappoint by leaving a fairy for her fairy garden.

 little man was harder to wake up, but he was so into his chocolate candy eggs.

i'm not going to lie i was super duper excited to hide the eggs for their easter egg hunt.

i got the cutest package of decorations for your easter egg hunt at target and plan to use it from here on out. just look at the cute carrots. 

easter eggs in the chicken hole they use for their dust baths.

we put out more eggs than ever before.

g was all over it and by far got the most eggs.

my handsome hubby putting out some eggs.

we kind of love holidays especially now that we have kids.

they make it extra fun.

i hid the golden egg up in our peach tree.

and even though this guy, with the best hair ever, didn't find as many eggs as his sister.

his thoughtfulness paid off and he found the golden egg.

it can be so hard lately to get a picture of these two together and looking at the camera lately.

this was one of those moments.

g made the floppy bunny ears in preschool and e decided after the hunt was over that it was time to clean up the signs as well.

it was such beautiful weather that we were able to have breakfast outside.

we had chocolate donuts and milk.

betty was really hoping she was going to get a donut of her own.

or at least a crumb or two.

emmet was dying for the chickens to join the fun.

so after breakfast we let them out and he quickly picked up olive for a hug.

later that day we had a bbq at my moms where she had an egg hunt of her own.

here are my cue littles looking for eggs.

i love dolly's easter outfit.

emmet went more casual this year due to how warm the weather was that day.

i dressed them both in their easter best the sunday before.

i hope i took a picture!