Happy Birthday Abby!

Really, Abby had a pretty miserable birthday. She’s had a horrible cold for the last few days and wasn’t feeling any better today. She laid on the couch and slept for most of the day and was not at all excited about celebrating her birthday. When the kids got home from school they kept asking her if she wanted to open her presents. “No.” Then, “do you want to have some cake?” “No.” We seriously considered just postponing the celebration for a day or two, but our other three kids wouldn’t hear of it. We gave her some Tylenol in hopes that a lower fever would improve her mood. It worked. She still wasn’t very animated, but she managed to open her presents, eat some dinner, and blow out her candles. She even smiled for a minute when her aunts and cousins called to sing “Happy Birthday” to her.

Nate stayed home from work, but he was about as happy as Abby. He has been super sick the last couple of days too. In fact, Ben is the only member of this household that managed to avoid illness this last week. Hopefully this little string of sicknesses is almost over. Abby was actually running around and playing with her sisters for about an hour before bedtime, so maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

We sure love our Abby. She is sweet and smart and funny. Every day she surprises us with how grown up she is getting. It seems like she is growing up lots faster than our other kids did. I guess it is just part of being the youngest and following the lead of her brother and sisters. She is a fun kid and we feel blessed to have her as part of our family.



The highlight of the day was watching Abby blow out her candles. It took a full two minutes to blow out two candles. Who knew it was such a tricky thing?

Scene on the Screen

I’m happy to announce the big unveiling of Nate’s new website – SceneOnTheScreen.com

Always the list maker, Nate starting keeping track of all of the movies we watch a few years back. He made up his own 1-10 rating scale and assigned each movie a score. Then, when our good friends Sean and Gwyn moved to New Hampshire, Nate and Sean started sending each other movie reviews as a way to keep in touch. Since watching a movie together is pretty much what goes for a date in this house, Nate has written quite of few of these mini-reviews. Keeping with his list-making ways, he thought it would be fun to put them together in an online database that he could add to with each new movie we watch. He’s always wanted to learn more about programming and writing code, and this seemed like a fun way to sharpen those skills. It ended up being a bit trickier than he originally thought, but he stuck with it and has learned a ton. I, for one, am so impressed with the way it all turned out.

Along with the movie reviews, Nate added a section all about home theater. He did an inordinate amount of research when we were building our own home theater. It seemed like a waste to keep all of that random knowledge locked up in his head. This is his way of sharing with the world what he has learned (mingled with some of his own opinions).

My favorite part of the website is the “Home Theater of the Week.” Since Nate does real estate photography, he has access to lots of home theater pictures. We looked at all of them when we were planning our home theater. Some are amazingly cool and some are amazingly ugly. We thought it would be fun to feature a different masterpiece/monstrosity each week.

Nate has no delusions of becoming the next Roger Ebert (especially since we NEVER see a movie before it is released on DVD). This is a just a fun hobby (or a combination of 4 hobbies) for him. He is still working out a few kinks and getting everything up and running, but it is mostly functional. Some of the movies don’t have reviews (just a rating on Nate’s 1-10 scale) and some reviews are just a couple of lines long, but feel free to check it out the next time you are looking for a movie to rent. Maybe Nate will be your Vincent {joke for Seinfeld fans only}.

Random Assortment

Some random photos from the last few weeks:

Cinderella is Abby’s new favorite.

One more picture of Abby with her cousins. They just look so cute together.

Elise is all about letters these days. She loves writing words and names. The other day she was sitting at the kitchen table and asked me, "How do you spell 'princess'?" Abby said, "E - M - D - S." She spoke with authority, like she really knew how to spell it. She even dragged out the S, as if to say 'write that much, then I'll finish for you'. Apparently we do a lot of out loud spelling in this house.

Emily had a fieldtrip to the Treehouse Museum last week. She got to be part of a little play they did and she loved it! She brought home a paper that she had traced on a light table. Nate said that the other kindergarteners would trace one or two letters and then move on to some other activity. Not Emily. She had to do the whole page. She is one meticulous little girl.

The other day, Elise and Abby were playing with play-doh. Elise made an ice cream cone and pretended to take a bite. Abby always wants to do just what her sisters are doing, so she took a big bite of her playdoh too. I’m glad it is non-toxic.

We’ve had the trampoline up for a week and the kids are in love with it all over again.

We’ve started having Lego parties every Sunday night at this house. Ben lets everyone pick one of his Lego sets and then we get to take it apart and rebuild it. Elise and I work as a team since she isn’t quite up to building on her own. It has been fun, and I like that Ben’s Lego collection is no longer for display only.

For the first couple of weeks after we watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ben would hurry home from scouts and put on his Indiana Jones gear. He thinks it is awesome that young Indy was a Boy Scout.

Ben loved skiing so much that he decided to spend some of his own money to go again. Nate took him last night, so we had another girls’ night. Most of our time was spent cleaning the girls’ bedroom. It was a disaster! We rewarded ourselves with frosties from Wendy’s and pedicures.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We had a fun St. Patrick’s Day. To be honest, I wasn’t really feeling it this year, but I pretended. I figure we only have a few years left where our kids will be into the “magic” of holidays. It’s worth a little effort to make them memorable. (At least that is what I keep telling myself.) Ben and Emily had a quality green omelet for breakfast. Elise and Abby weren’t so brave. They settled for Froot Loops. I tried to do the girls’ hair in a fancy shamrock hairdo that I found on a hair blog. It didn’t turn out quite like the one on the blog, but the girls were happy.




After we took Elise to preschool, Abby and I started to make some sugar cookies. We had to run to the store and when we got home, a leprechaun had walked right through our flour and left us some clues to find a pot of gold. The kids were so excited to see those little footprints when they got home and had a great time on their treasure hunt. They played outside with their friends for most of the night and then we finished the day with some yummy cookies. I’m glad that the kids had a good day . . . and I'm glad that I have a whole month to work up some Easter excitement.

Ski Trip and Girls' Night

Nate took Ben skiing yesterday after school. This was only Ben’s second time skiing, but Nate figured that he would pick up where he left off last year and just make progress. No such luck. They pretty much started from ground zero. It took half the night to get to the point where it was actually fun, but by the end of the night Ben was doing great. I guess we’ll have to be more frequent skiers if we want to avoid spending half of the time in teaching mode.

The girls and I had a fun night. We picked up takeout from Maple Express and stopped at redbox on the way home to get Tinker Bell. After our yummy Chinese dinner, we got in our PJs and watched the movie. Emily and Elise both gave running commentary throughout. Emily mostly just said how beautiful everything was, but Elise was actually talking to the characters “What are you thinking Tinker Bell?!? I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” She was cracking me up. Abby has just started to really watch movies with us. She is funny too. Whenever there is some tension on screen (as much as can be expected from a G-rated Disney movie), she’ll turn to me with wide eyes and an “oh no” expression and kind of hyperventilate. She’s a drama queen in the making.

Gavin

Heidi and Aaron had their baby on Monday night. He weighed in at 8 pounds, 3 ounces and has an adorable round face, double chin, and little chubby legs. Zack and Austin got to have a slumber party at our house. They played here all day yesterday and then got to play some more today. They are cute boys and were so good. Having three 2-year-olds in the house is fun (and a bit of a workout). I was very grateful for quality friends and family that helped me out with my “mom” stuff yesterday, so I could be an aunt for the day . . . Jennie got Elise to and from preschool, Nate took my spot at Emily’s fieldtrip, Jody came to watch our kids/feed them dinner/make puppets while we went to the hospital, and Claudy took Ben with her to pack meeting. I love nice people!

I also love holding newborn babies. I love the way they smell, and the funny little faces they pull, and the way they are still pretty much curled up in a ball. I could have held him all night, but there was a line of other people waiting. Gavin is going to get lots of lovin’ when they take him home. I think Zack kissed him 28 times in the short time we were at the hospital.

It’s been good for Abby to have some friends her age to play with. I was a little worried about how she would act, but she was great and shared her toys and books (and mom) amazingly well. Elise and Emily did a fabulous job of keeping everyone entertained. They were good helpers. It was fun pretending to be a family of eight for a couple of days. It’s funny how the house felt a little empty tonight with just four kids around.

Retro Post - Abby's Practice Run

Friday, March 9, 2007 – Abby pretended she wanted to be born five weeks early. I woke up in the middle of the night in serious pain. I was actually relieved that the contractions were super strong so I was sure I was in labor. I had been a little afraid that I wouldn’t know when I was in labor with her since all three of my labors had been so different. This was definitely labor. I wasn’t really cool with delivering five weeks early and I was worried about how intense the pain was. Both Emily and Elise were born within two hours of my first painful contraction. I had a lot of fear of giving birth in the car. My mom did that and, while it is a funny family story now, I certainly didn’t want to repeat it.

I waited through a few contractions and then called my mom to come and stay with the kids. She and Holly set out and Nate and I timed contractions. By the time they got here, the contractions were lots less painful but still coming every 4 or 5 minutes. I figured since I had already woken up the whole family, I might as well go to the hospital. I was relieved when they confirmed that I really was in labor. I was even more relieved when it stopped. My contractions came regularly for a few hours, but things weren’t really progressing. Basically, Nate and I paid 500 bucks to watch a movie and play scrabble on his phone in the hospital’s triage room.



I felt like a bit of an idiot getting sent home from the hospital. You would think that with my fourth baby I would be more of an expert about the whole labor thing. Since I was only 35 weeks along, I earned myself a week of bed rest. It was kind of pseudo bed rest since I had three kids to take care of and Nate couldn’t take off work. I managed to be lazy enough and the kids survived with lots of movie watching and no-prep food. We were happy that Abby stayed put until she was good and ready. Three weeks later when nothing had changed, we began to wonder if she was ever going to come.

Ready for Spring

Yesterday, we decided to ignore the fact that it was 37 degrees outside and pretend that it was a nice spring day. We took the kids on a little outing to the pet store (they seriously think it is as cool as the zoo) and out to lunch. Then we came home and built some new shelves for our food storage room. We had been putting this project off for a long time because it has been too cold to work in the garage. It was still too cold yesterday, but we got over it. Home improvement projects make me happy . . . especially when they only cost $70 and take four hours from start to finish. Sometimes I worry about the makeup of our food storage – lots of Hamburger Helper, Campbell’s soup, Betty Crocker cookie mixes, and a year’s supply of fruit roll-ups. We have our token cans of wheat and powdered milk, but certainly not the amounts listed on the Provident Living page of the church’s website. Mostly I’m just happy that we won’t starve and now we have enough shelves to fit everything.

The kids were just as anxious to pretend it was spring. They played in the back yard for hours, in spite of the cold weather. Abby even joined them for most of the time. They kept coming in to get gloves or a hat or warmer socks, but they had lots of fun playing outside. This winter has seemed really long and everyone at this house is ready for it to be over.

Retro Post - Locks of Love

Saturday, March 3, 2007 – Emily had 11 inches of hair cut off to donate to Locks of Love. It was a drastic change to go from long hair to super short hair, but she was cute both ways. Okay, so I still cringe a little when I see how short it was right after the haircut. It grew on me. To Emily, it was no big deal. She felt good about doing something nice for someone else and didn’t seem at all put out by it. She’s already planning on doing it again. I think we might make it an “every three years” tradition.

Family Game Night

We had my family over for a game night last night. It was a good fun time. The kids mostly played pool, Wii, and Dance Dance Revolution. The grownups played Druthers and Outburst. The men recovered from a 20 point deficit in our Outburst rematch to win by one point. We were okay with that. You have to let them win sometimes so you don’t break their spirit. If we won every time, they would never want to play.

The highlights:

• Yummy pizza and Marie Calendar pies.
  
• Watching Emily do Dance Dance Revolution with her sparkly silver hand-me-down dance pants hiked up to her knees.


• The kids having a fun (LOUD!) time with their cousins with no fighting or trauma.


• Sharing funny Grandma Cardon stories with my brother and sisters.


• Laughing. A lot.


• Trying to do push-ups and sit-ups with Jody after everyone had left. She is buff (and a show off). She did more push-ups than Nate and let the kids take turns having airplane rides while she was doing sit-ups. I had a really hard time even doing a sit-up and that was without the extra weight of a 6-year-old being held up above my head at the same time. No more feats of strength at this house!