Births and more births

No cute pictures this time.  I haven't had time to breath, much less take pictures of my cute family.  I had 3 births in as many days, and 2 of them were very long.  It is good to be getting some numbers, but man oh man, it was intense.  My house was an absolute disaster until today.  I spent all day cleaning and it feels great to have a sanitary house now.  It was pretty bad before.  

School is going well so far.  I really love learning all about midwifery.  I have learned a lot at the births I've been attending.  

Jason is still working hard on his Masters degree.  I usually proofread his papers.  He is a really talented writer.  I am proud of him.  

I volunteered at James's school on Friday.  The kids are really cute.  I am impressed with how much James is learning.  He is reading really well.  He needs to work on his writing, but he is doing well overall.

Jayden LOVES Miss Carol's school.  He announces himself when he walks in the door.  Miss Carol, I came back!

Charlee is finally crawling.  It's still just an army crawl, but she gets around very well.  She said her first word last night!  I am proud to say her first comprehensible word was Mama!!  Both boys said Dada first, so it's fun to have a mama's girl.

That's about it for us!

First lost tooth of the Hope household

James came home from school yesterday with a very loose tooth.  He was super excited about it and couldn't wait for it to come out.  He had to make sure and tell everybody about it and made a point to show it off for daddy.  Well, Jason watched the kids last night while I went for a massage (long story) and when I came home, Jason told me to walk over to the counter where there was a glass and look inside.  Well, lo and behold, there was a tiny little tooth inside!  I went downstairs and James was beyond excited to tell me all about it.  So, the toothfairy came and brought him a $1 bill last night.  He woke up extra early (yay for me) to show it to me.

Since I mentioned Charlee's fraggle rock hairdo last post, I thought I'd provide a picture this time. She does not like to get her hair done!  But look how super cute she is!

On the school front, I am feeling very overwhelmed with all that I have to learn to become a midwife!  Ahh!  I am just such a newbie when it comes to all the medical side of childbirth.  I am learning to take blood pressure and I feel clumsy and ignorant even just with that skill.  I have a long way to go.

More snow and preschool

I thought I would put another snow drift picture on here.  This picture was taken AFTER I had been hacking at it for about 10 minutes.  Poor James had to climb several mountains of snow just to get to the school bus.

Jayden had his first week of preschool.  He was very excited.  He is not quite potty trained yet, but Miss Carol was nice enough to accept him anyway.  Well, she may be regretting it now because he pooped BOTH days of preschool and she had to change his pants.  Yuck.  I felt really bad.  We have been trying to work on it with him, but he is really resistant.  I hope he doesn't give me as much trouble over it as James did, or I may not recover.  If anyone reading this has potty training tips, I'd love to hear them.  This kid needs to do it, and fast.  I really don't want Miss Carol to have to change any more diapers.

Anyway, other than that, he's had a great time.  When I ask him what he did at preschool, he says, "Played and ate snacks."  That just about wraps up a kid's life, I guess.

I failed to take a picture of it, but Charlee had her first ponytail yesterday.  She was really mad at me for bugging her and fussing with her hair.  Once I finally got it in, she looked like a little Fraggle Rock.  It was pretty funny.

Saturday

Just thought you'd all enjoy some more pictures.  There is SOOO much snow in our yard.  We have the worst yard for snow drifts.  Our neighbor's yard is practically bare because all the snow blew into our yard and driveway.  We have had several friends comment to us on how crazy it is that we have such huge drifts.  Jason and I had to work late into the night last night to dig out his Jeep so he could drive it to work this morning.  Yikes.

Anyway, I took the kids to Home Depot for the kids project.  They had fun.  James even screwed in the screws (almost) all by himself.  They are very proud of their new bookends.  I, on the other hand, had a blast looking through the clearance Christmas decor and getting some cute new things for next year for super cheap.  Life is good when you know you got a good deal.  :)

Then, we made a stop at the mall and ran into friends in the parking lot who said I should check out the good prices at JCPenney for kids clothes (Shar, you'll enjoy this story).  So, of course, I did.  I found several cute, cheap things for each of the kids and was very happy to make my purchases and leave to go home.  It had been a long morning carting all three kids around town by myself and I was cheerfully looking forward to naptime.  I got to the car, and realized Charlee only had one shoe.  These were new Christmas shoes, so I couldn't just ignore it.  I ran back into the mall to retrace my steps.  I went back to the register and asked the lady who had rung me up if she had seen a baby shoe.  Of course not.  I gave up.  So, I got home and was putting the new clothes away when, to my dismay, I realized that some of the things I had thought I bought were not there.  I checked my receipt, and sure enough, I HAD bought them.  My cheerful attitude was quickly waning.  I called the store, and after being transfered here and there, they finally found my things and told me to come back and get them.  (GRRR.)  I thought back and realized that there had been ample opportunity for the cashier to correct her mistake when I had returned to the store and spoken directly to her to find the shoe.  Surely she had realized that she had not bagged all my items soon after I walked away because they would have been sitting right there on the counter!  (Double GRRR.)  Anyway, long story short, I dragged all the kids back out into the below 0 temps to retrieve my things and we finally got home and I even got Charlee and Jayden to sleep a little, and at the same time!  My evening was saved.  :)  

I am looking forward to NOT going to church at 9 am tomorrow.  We'll see how the kids do with 11 o'clock church.  Jayden will have his first week of Primary.  Oh my gosh, my kids are growing up too fast.  Somebody slow this train down!!

Holidays

Well, the holidays are over.   Crazy, huh?  We had an interesting Christmas.  Jason had an alert added to his schedule at the last minute, and so we had to make the hard decision of whether I would stay home with him, or go to Idaho with the kids to see my brother who only comes home about every 2 years.  Finally, we decided that it was important to visit with my brother, so me and the kids left on Saturday, the 20th, for Idaho.  That was earlier than we'd planned to go, but we wanted to beat a winter storm that was coming in.  It was fun being with my family, but we missed Jason.  We built a snowman, went sledding, played games, did some shopping, etc.  The boys absolutely loved played with their cousin, Kassidi.  Brent, my brother, cooked for us, which is always a pleasure.

We ended up staying 3 days after we'd planned to go home, again because of the weather.  I was anxious to get home to see Jason and get back on our routine somewhat (the boys were going to bed at 10 at night and not taking naps...ahhhh!).  But, eventually we did get home safe and sound.

We had a birthday get together with friends on Jason's birthday at Tony Romas.  It was fun.  We bought gag gifts for Jason and two others who had a birthday on the same day.  The food sucked but the company was good.  :)

Then, last night we were invited over to our friends, the LaDuke's house, for games and food on New Year's Eve.  I played the game Settler's of Catan for the first time.  I didn't really get it at first, but then when I started understanding, it was more fun.  We had our own countdown (several minutes after midnight, I think) and drank Martinelli's.  It was a lot of fun.  I love being with friends.

Well, that about wraps it up.  Me and Jason and James start school again on Monday.  Life will be pretty interesting after that.