Swimming, Zoo Trips, Potty Training, and Car Seats in Church

This week the boys enjoyed their preschool class. Kolby and Eli love their classes, and on Friday I even got motivated and took all 4 boys and worked out during their classes. Camden and Isaac went to their kid care, and I used the elliptical machine for a while. Afterwards I picked up the boys and it was all I could do to keep Camden from joining in with Kolby and Eli in their gym class. That was a fun morning.

On Tuesday it was Camden’s night out with Daddy and they went to the YMCA in Menomonee Falls because it has a nice kid’s swimming area with a little wading pool and slide. Unfortunately there was a problem with their heating system in that room that evening, so they got moved into the lap pool. Camden wasn’t able to go down the baby slide anymore, but they still had a lot of fun. And then on Wednesday night Kolby and Eli had their swimming lessons, and they both did great. Kolby is now able to jump in from the side of the pool without anyone to catch him and he can walk out to the middle of the pool. Eli is still as brave as ever – dunking his entire head under the water over and over. It’s pretty fun to watch.

On Thursday we had an Enrichment activity at Catherine Call’s house sharing all of our favorite children’s books, which was nice to have a night away from the kids. I enjoyed remembering the books that we loved as children and thinking about which ones I would like to add to our collection for our kids. Then on Friday evening we had a ward dessert night at the Spencer’s house and Alicia and Steve Taylor were there too. That was nice to get together with some ‘new’ people, and it was fun to see all the little boys running around together too.

And then yesterday was fun. We went to the zoo in the morning because it was a free zoo day (our membership had expired on Friday). We told the boys that there was going to be a surprise at the zoo (Eli was sure that the surprise was going to be the animals, but Kolby was excited to find out what it would be). When we got there we met our friends, the Hedgecocks, and Kolby was excited that the surprise was his friends, Jordan and Carter, at the zoo with us. My favorite part of the Milwaukee zoo is always the big cat house, because the lions and the cheetahs are always right there in front of the glass and they are usually active and moving around so they are so interesting for the kids to watch. We stopped on our way home and picked up some tennis shoes for Michael since his were getting his feet all wet every time he went out in the snow because he had so many holes in the soles. Then, after naps we took the boys to Denny’s for their kids eat free night. After we got home, picked up around the house, and put the boys to bed, the Kearls joined us for some games.

And today started out with Michael waking me up to help with the other boys because he needed to take care of Eli, who had had an accident. We are working on the potty training with Eli, and he is doing pretty well most of the time. He still wears a diaper at naptime and bedtime, and we have been using pull-ups for school and church (just in case), but during the daytime when we are at home he is just in underwear, and he has only had two accidents since we started this week, so I guess that’s pretty good – we are using less diapers, anyways.

Today went pretty well. After getting the boys ready and making bread, we headed to church. (On the making bread, if anyone has any good suggestions for getting bread to rise well, I would be open to them! I have made bread now every Sunday for the last five weeks and am starting to get a little discouraged. The first time the bread barely rose at all and turned out very thick, the next time it took hours and didn’t rise much but was a little better, another time it rose pretty well and then sunk right before I put them in the oven, last week they rose nicely and then they sunk while they were cooking, and this week they rose ok but still not very high. I know the recipe is good because my mom’s bread turns out great. I have tried letting the bread rise in the oven on “warm,” letting it rise sitting on top of the stove while the oven is on warm, letting it rise on top the stove on a cooking rack, letting it rise while the oven is on higher, and letting it rise just sitting on the counter top. There are just so many things that could be affecting it, and I don’t know which thing it is I need to fix – is the yeast bad? (but it has risen somewhat), am I letting it get too hot or not hot enough while it rises?, am I letting it rise for too long or not long enough?, or is it something totally different that I haven’t even thought of? At least the bread tastes really good and it’s nutritious, but I sure wish that it looked good and it made bigger slices for sandwiches. So, any suggestions would be appreciated!)

Anyways, on the way to church Camden fell asleep in the car, and Michael and I spent the entire ride to church considering options of how we might keep him asleep (church is hard with a child who is too young for nursery, too old to sit still, and too tired because it is right in the middle of naptime). Various ideas were thrown around, including taking a playpen and setting it up in an empty room at church, leaving him in the car, or putting him in the shed out behind the church – but none of these seemed satisfactory (and some rather illegal), so we ended up deciding on carrying his entire car seat in and setting it on the bench next to us. Now, Camden has long outgrown the little infant car seats that are meant to be carried with a child in them, and he is in an upright, forward-facing seat. Michael huffed and puffed and lugged that big old seat into the church building, and Camden actually slept through a good portion of the first meeting. Michael also decided to take a separate container of snacks for each boy to eat, and that actually kept them all entertained for the entire first meeting, which is uncommon. So, other than the fact that Camden can now open doors and escape from the classrooms at church and so the second two hours of church were not the easiest, it was a good day so far. Camden has two more Sundays before he is old enough for nursery class – yeah!!!

Well, only 18 more days until Match Day when we find out where we will be going for the next four years. We are not-so-patiently awaiting that day. So, tonight we are heading over to Amy and Vicente Cortez’ house for dinner, which will be nice since we haven’t had a chance to visit them for a while. We’d better get ready to go to their place now.

Five Years

I came across this fun post on a friend’s blog, and thought it’d be nice to write one of my own. So, this last week Michael and I celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary. Five years sounds like such a long time – it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. Although I still feel like we are one of those newlywed couples, I guess we are really more like a “real family.” So, looking back now it is interesting to see what we’ve accomplished in the last five years:

We have lived in four different apartments: our first one south of campus at BYU, our second in Wymount married student housing at BYU, our third was our 2-bedroom apartment in Mayfair Manor apartments in Milwaukee, and our fourth (and current) apartment is our 3-bedroom place in the same complex in Milwaukee. (Maybe our next home will actually be a house – we’ll see).

We have had four boys (all born within four years of each other): Kolby, Eli, Camden, and Isaac. So, we have eight little shoes, forty little fingers and forty little toes, sometimes eight crying eyes at the same time, often four cute little smiles, and always several diapers to change each day.

We have had four jobs and two internships: When we met, Michael was working for BYU’s IT Services and I was working for The Museum of Peoples and Cultures on campus. When we lived in San Diego for a summer Michael had an internship with a company that produced skin grafts for burn victims and diabetes patients and I had a fun job working in a scrapbooking store. Before we moved to Milwaukee I had an internship at the family history library at BYU. And after Michael’s first year of medical school he had a summer research position conducting telephone surveys to pharmacies and eventually compiling his research in a paper.

We have been to eight places: Beside living in Provo, Utah and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we lived at my parents’ house in San Diego, California for a summer after we were married (and we had a fun day trip down to Tijuana, Mexico while we were there). We have also enjoyed fun trips to visit family in Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. And monthly trips to the temple in Chicago, Illinois makes that destination quite familiar to us. Other than the states that we drove through on our move out to Milwaukee and the places Michael has flown to for recent residency interviews, the other location we have visited is Nauvoo, Illinois for a fun family vacation a couple years ago.

We have received three degrees: Although I attended Ricks College in Idaho before I met Michael, I was still finishing up the last couple courses at BYU that I needed to transfer in order to receive my associate’s degree in social sciences from Ricks. Michael and I both later graduated from BYU – I got my bachelor’s degree in genealogy and Michael got his in microbiology with a minor in Spanish. And we are anticipating Michael’s degree from medical school in May 2008!

We have had five cars: We used Michael’s little red Ford Tempo while we were in Utah and Wisconsin until it died on us a couple years ago. We also had a blue Buick for a little while that my Grandma gave us when we were at BYU. When our friends, the Gordons, graduated and left Milwaukee they gave us their old car which we were able to sell for a few hundred dollars. After the Tempo died on us, we got a green Mercury Villager minivan. And then last year when Michael needed a car to get to and from his different rotations, we got a little blue Toyota Tercel from the Johnson’s when they were getting ready to graduate.

We have gone through four baby strollers: In preparation for having our first baby we got a little umbrella stroller and a bigger stroller that a car seat could hook into. And my friend gave us a hand-me-down double stroller when we had our second baby. Later on, after the double stroller was damaged on an airplane ride and the airline eventually paid to replace it, we got a triple stroller.

We have gone through five baby car seats: We had an infant seat that we used for Kolby, but when we were hit by a car the insurance company replaced that infant seat for us (Isaac’s car seat). We have also had two convertible toddler seats (now used by Camden and Eli), and a booster seat (Kolby’s).

We have had four computers: I had a computer during college and Michael had his dad’s old laptop (which we set up on top of a book shelf so Kolby couldn’t reach it when he was a toddler and he grabbed the chord and pulled it down and shattered the screen). We got our pc a couple years ago and Michael recently took advantage of the school’s offer to extend student loans to cover the cost of a laptop.

We have celebrated 17 birthdays: five each for Michael and I, four for Kolby, two for Eli, and one for Camden.

And we have had hundreds of hours of laughing and fun, thousands of smiles, and lots of happy memories.

It’s been a great five years. Now we’ll just have to wait and see what the next five years have in store for us.