Happy Halloween!

We had a fun surprise on Thursday when Jason's dad called and wanted to come for a visit the next day. The kids were soooo excited and they were bouncing off the walls the entire time he was here. I've learned that I can rate how much they like somebody by how hyper they get when they're here. Apparently they REALLY like Grandpa. All the sugar didn't seem to help much either, but atleast they had a fun weekend. I thought I was doing good on Halloween morning to make some orange pumpkin shaped pancakes for breakfast, then I clicked on my friend Jodee's blog and saw all the creative Halloween meals she had made the entire week. There's always next year... Then we started Halloween night with me waiting in line for an hour at Papa Johns (one of the employees even commented that I didn't look too happy. Ya think??), so we got a little bit of a late start with the trick or treating. Jason and Grandpa took the kids out while I stayed home to pass out candy. Maddox was pretty ticked that I had to interrupt his feeding every 5 seconds to answer the door. The kids definately got loaded up with candy and I decided that I'll never have an October baby again, not only because of the heat but because it's impossible to lose the baby weight when I'm eating candy three meals a day. After trick or treating Jason took the kids to our neighbor's house where they projected a movie on their garage door, the kids loved it. While they were there Jason was telling them how I had found a baby scorpion in our bed earlier that day (yes, I said IN our bed. Freak out.) so half the neighborhood came over for a good old fashioned scorpion hunt. They found like 7, which was definately a creepy ending to our Halloween. The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with Grandpa. We took lots of walks to the park, had a barbeque, played lots of games of hide and go seek, went swimming (well, Jason and the kids went swimming, me and Grandpa were the smart ones to just watch). They also all went to this new Asian mall and out for Dim Sum while I stayed back with Maddox. He even took the kids shopping for a toy, which Jayden still has yet to put down the Bumble Bee transformer that he bought for him. Jayden also made it his personal mission to teach Grandpa every word to the Transformer song. It was so fun having him here, he is such a cute grandpa. The kids loved every minute and it was cute to see him holding Maddox every chance he got. So yes, we definately had a happy Halloween!

It's Not Me, It's Picasa

Before

After

Before

After

Several of you guys asked about the pictures I took of Maddox. Unfortunately I didn't get a new fancy-shmancy camera, but I did find my new best friend--Picassa. I've used it before to make collages and stuff, but I didn't realize all the glorious editing options. Just go to http://picasa.google.com/ and download the program. Once all of your photos have been uploaded, click on the photo you want to edit. All of the editing tools pop up on the right, just mess around and go to town. My favorites are the sharpening (the more you cick it, the sharper it gets. It's under the "effects" tool), the"I'm feeling lucky" under the "basic fixes" tools, and the "highlights" under the "tuning" tools. Once you've edited to your heart's desire, then click "hold" on the bottom left to save it in your photo tray. Once all your photos are edited, click on the "export" button on the bottom right and you can save them to a folder on your hard drive so that you can upload it to your blog. Hope that makes sense!

Before

After

Oh, and here's a little plug for the recipe blog since our contributors have been dwindling....hint, hint :) (http://www.whowantsdinner.blogspot.com/)

Traditions

Here are pictures from the annual festivities. I won't lie, the pumpkin carving was a memorable experience, just not in a good way. The kids were fighting and cranky, the baby was crying, Jason didn't make it home in time, the dinner got burned....but dangit, we carved pumpkins. Thankfully the ward trunk or treat did not disappoint and was a much better start to the holiday fun.

After carving pumpkins, I thought it would be a fun family activity to make caramel apples. The extent of family involvement included me making the apples while the kids did this:

Love It!

Lookey, lookey how cute is this?? A huge thankyou to my talented friend, Chelsea who makes these totally cute necklaces. Check out her website, they would make the perfect Christmas gift! http://sayitwithcharms.blogspot.com/. Now my kids will always be close to my heart (cheezy phrase not included :)

Life With Three

(The hardest part of having three kids is trying to take their picture! Aiyiyi! I won't deny that I used up half the halloween candy as bribery)


They say that the thid one is the easiest and so far I have to agree. Of course he still does sleep all the time, but when he is awake he is just so chill. He lays there so relaxed just looking all around. He doesn't do too bad at night either. I usually go to bed around 9:00 and leave Maddox with Jason to watch Sports Center all night (except on special occasions like Thursdays "The Office" night. I have to gear up by taking a nap so that I can wait up for Jason to get back from basketball and we can watch it together. Long gone are those late nights together, it's sad). He usually sleeps for 4 hrs after his last feeding, then gets up again about 3 hrs later then goes back down until morning. The nursing isn't going quite as planned. I had high hopes with the herbs and prescription from my doctor, but I am still lacking in the milk department. Oh well, I tried my best. I haven't given up completely, I'm doing both for now and I have to admit that I had forgotten how much I love the convenience of the bottle. I'm not as stressed about it as I was with the others, in fact, I'm not as stressed about a lot of things. I feel like this time around I kind of know a little more what I'm doing and with such a big space between him and Jayden I don't feel so overwhelmed. I don't worry about spoiling him, if he cries I hold him. I don't worry about sticking completely to a schedule, if he's hungry I feed him. I don't worry about forming bad habits, if he starts waking up at 6:00am I snuggle with him in bed until he goes back to sleep. I don't worry about trying to keep him awake during the day so that he sleeps better at night, if he's tired I let him sleep. I think we're both a lot happier. My recovery is also soooo much better this time around. I still don't know what was worse, the C-section or the 4th degree tear, but this episiotomy thing is a piece of cake (sorry, a little too much information). And I've managed to keep my emotions in check this time around too. Jason was expecting the infamous phone call on his first day back to work where I'm sobbing and pleading for him to come home, but so far I've been doing great. Things may change in a week or two, but for now I'm enjoying each day at a time.

Sharin' the Love

I think the hardest part about the adjustment for me is making sure that Kylie and Jayden don't feel neglected. I've noticed that my patience is shorter and I can't even count how many times a day I say "not now, wait until I finish feeding Maddox". So we've also been trying to do some special one on one time to help them adjust to the change. Last Monday while Jason was still home from work I let Jayden skip school and they had a boys day out. They went to the mall and picked out his Halloween costume, saw "Wall-E" at the good old dollar theater and even squeezed in some quality Chuck E Cheese time (I forgot to send the camera, but if you've seen one Chuck E picture, you've seen them all). Jayden was in heaven. Last night it was Kylie's turn and we had a blast with the girls going to see "High School Musical 3" and then getting ice-cream afterwards. We stayed out way past mine and Kylie's bed time, but I loved just hanging out with my little chica. It was weird to leave Maddox for the first time, I totally missed him but it was also nice to be able to give her my undivided attention. I knew it meant a lot to her too as she snuggled up to me in the theater and whispered in my ear "you're the best mom in the whole entire world!"

First Bath

He hated it. My other two loved taking baths, but not this little guy. It surprises me because he is such a mellow (knock on wood) kid. I feel bad that he screams the entire time, but I seriously can't get enough of the way he smells afterwards (yes, even with my smelling disability I can still catch a whiff :), or the way his skin is so soft, or the way his hair just poofs up, or the way he snuggles up to me after being so exhausted from crying....

I Could Eat Him Up.

I'm completely smitten. I'm head over heels in love. I'm total mush in his teeny tiny hands. I seriously can not get enough of this boy. I could sit and hold him all day long....

.....Of course when I do sit and hold him all day, this it what happens.....Kylie turns Jayden into a superhero tinfoil robot.
Even superheros have to eat sometime

Three Kids and Thirty-three

A birthday shout out to my main squeeze! This was definately a low key birthday for Jason, but it was nice just being together with our little family. After playing super dad and super mom for the past week, I think Jason was ready to take full advantage of the "no working on your birthday" rule. The kids were so thoughtful and wrapped up pretty much every toy they owned to give to him for his presents (don't mind that I'm in the background nursing while cooking breakfast. It's all about multi-tasking these days). We sure love you, Jay/daddy! We can't tell you enough how grateful we are to have you, thanks for all you do!