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Eli's clothes with all the labels.
Well, it is my turn to write out weekly letter. It has been kind of a long weekend – Michael was on call since early yesterday morning until around 2:00 this afternoon. On Saturday I went to a baby shower for Melanie Brumwell, a friend from Michael’s class who is having her first baby in December. That was fun to see several school friends that I haven’t seen for a while and to let all the kids play together. The baby shower was in the afternoon, and we got home pretty late, so instead of taking a really late nap around 4:00, the boys had an early dinner and went to bed early, which was nice for me. Kolby and Eli went to bed around 6:00 and Camden at 7:00, and they slept until I got them up to get ready for church this morning. So, as you can probably tell, I had plenty of time last night (with boys in bed early, Michael gone all night, and nothing good on tv) to update the blog with much of this past week’s goings-on. So, just look at the other posts below this one to see the ultrasound pictures I got last week, the pictures from Michael’s day off Monday when we took the kids to the Milwaukee Public Museum, my thoughts on the 6-year anniversary of September 11th on Tuesday, the good news I got at my doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon that my midwife will induce my by November 1st if this baby comes after his due date (October 30th), the video of Camden walking across the room for the first time on Thursday evening, and pictures of Camden scarfing down an entire cake at his first birthday party on Friday. That gives a pretty good summary of our week.
Other than that, I spent a lot of time this week getting all the fall and winter clothes ready for all of our boys. I keep storage bins full of boys’ clothes all divided by size, and I spent one night just sorting through all of those and trying things on the different boys to see what fit and what didn’t. Camden, our big boy, is now wearing 18-24 month sized clothes, even though he only turns 12 months old this week. Throughout the week I went to all of the different clothing stores that I shop at in our area and am finally feeling like we are pretty set for warm clothes for the upcoming seasons for all four boys. One store I really like is just up the street from us, Once Upon a Child, and they sell used kids clothes, but much of what they sell looks new and is still in style (as opposed to the other used kids stores around here that sometimes have a good deal, but mostly just sell worn out junk). Anyways, after spending probably two hours there the other day, picking out clothes and trying each item on the different boys, I purchased a large pile of jeans, long-sleeve shirts, and sweatshirts, etc. The lady who checked me out made some comment about how I was buying a lot of stuff, but I told her that I had really done a pretty good job to get good deals on the majority of winter clothes I needed for all four boys. Anyways, that’s one less thing that I need to do now before the baby is born, so it’s nice to have it done.
And there were just a few other things that happened this week that I should mention. On Wednesday morning I went to visit teach a new sister in my ward, Alicia Taylor, for the first time. We had a nice visit, even though the boys were a little distracting. Then I came home and babysat the Hymas girls while Amy went for an ultrasound. And then on Wednesday evening I got to go to a new service enrichment group where we planned a service project for the women at the META House downtown, a place for women with children who are recovering from addictions and trying to get back to normal life. The META House staff requested that we bring pumpkins and help the women have a fun night with carving jack-o-lanterns (since many of them have not had a chance to do that before), which sounds like it should be a fun activity, although I hope it is not too challenging to get donations of pumpkins, since one of the girls there mentioned that she heard the heavy rains of last month ruined many of the local pumpkin crops so pumpkins are expected to be expensive this year. On Thursday and Friday we cleaned the house in preparation for Camden’s birthday party Friday evening. And on Friday Michael had his last day off for the month, so we went down to Chicago in the morning to go to the temple. We usually go with our friends, the Hedgecocks, and trade off babysitting, but Michael’s call schedule made it so that we couldn’t go with them this month, so we just went on our own and traded off watching the boys. That was a good trip, and each of us was able to get about 10 initiatories done for family names. That night the Wellses and Amy Cortez and her kids came for Camden’s party, and we had fun watching him eat almost an entire cake by himself.
And Kolby will be starting his preschool classes again tomorrow. Michael is going to give him and Eli each a father’s blessing tonight, which should be a cool thing to do. And I will definitely have to take some back-to-school photos of Kolby in the morning. And both boys will start up their swim lessons again this week, which will be kind of busy for me for the next couple weeks because Michael won’t get home early enough so I’ll probably be taking all the kids by myself, but it will be good for them to start up their swimming again after the 2-week break between sessions. And on Thursday, September 20th, Camden will turn one year old. He’s getting to be such a big boy.
