Eli's Birthday

We had a fun day on Eli’s birthday Saturday. In the morning the boys were very excited to have the chocolate milk that I had gotten as a special birthday breakfast item. And Eli surprised us by choosing to have cereal (what he has most every morning) for his birthday brunch, instead of the muffins we got.

After breakfast he opened his gift from us: several new animal toys.

Later that morning I cut Michael’s hair while the boys watched cartoons, and Isaac must have been pretty worn out from our game night the night before, because he fell asleep on the couch and napped for about half an hour.

Eli was excited to open his gifts from Nana and Papa that arrived in the mail right on time – he was excited about the new trains and asked if he could take them to bed with him later on.

Around noon we all met Grandma Bradshaw at Coldstone and she treated everyone to ice cream for Eli’s birthday. (I was such a kind Mommy – I let the boys choose whatever they wanted, not even worrying that Camden’s chocolate ice cream would likely leave a big mess or that Kolby’s peanut butter ice cream with gummy bears in it sounded like a rather unpleasant combination to me). [Actually, all the boys did end up being really clean and none of them spilled their ice cream at all, which was nice.]

After we got home, the boys took naps, and while they were napping Michael and I went to pick up his car from the mechanics. When we got home, we were glad to catch the Owens before they left – they unexpectedly showed up with a birthday gift for Eli – how thoughtful! The boys played together for a little while before we had to head out. Before leaving, Eli opened his gift from Grandma Faun, a fun book about a zebra that a friend of her had written – he also insisted on reading his new book later on that night and taking it to bed with him. We ended up going to Café Rio for dinner (did you know that if you dine in, you get free quesadillas for all of the kids?) Then we went to Toys’R’Us for Eli to pick out some gifts with his birthday money from Grandpa Dick and Grandma Debbie and from Grandma Faun. After the boys had fun shopping (and playing) in Toys’R’Us for a while, Eli ended up with quite a little stash of gifts: two new Disney movies (Wall-E and Sleeping Beauty), two new Eye-Spy puzzles, and three more of the plastic animals that go with his set. It did take a little explaining for him to understand that he was picking out what he wanted for his gifts (not looking for wrapped gifts at the store), but he was excited about what he got. We ended up putting together one of his new puzzles for family home evening last night, and the three older boys really enjoyed that activity.

28 December 2008

We’ve had a busy week this week, as I’m sure many of you have. Kolby and Eli had last week and this upcoming week off of preschool for the holidays. And Michael got one day off of work this week, December 26th, so we decided to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas day each a day late (which worked out fine since the kids are too young to realize that we didn’t do our Christmas on the actual Christmas day anyways). So, the days before Christmas were filled with last-minute gift wrapping (I had most of my gifts done early, but we ended up getting a few more things last-minute), running some errands – I got a nice piece of red fleece on sale and cut and tied a baby blanket for Courtland to match his brothers’, I helped Grandma get all of her programs set up on her new computer that arrived in the mail (her old one crashed just after Thanksgiving) and I uploaded all of the music from her CDS so it could be added to her Ipod, and of course the boys also enjoyed taking one link off of their chains each night to count down the days until Christmas.

On December 25th (our Christmas Eve), I got some laundry done so the boys would have clean pajamas to wear on Christmas morning and I gave them all a bath at the same time by myself (an event that takes a lot of preparation and time, and therefore doesn’t happen all that often). While I was getting them all cleaned and dressed, I pulled Eli out of the tub and cut his hair, vacuumed up the floor, washed him off again, and got him back out of the tub to get him dressed. We noticed last time that I cut Michael’s hair that the little plastic ¾-inch guard for our hair clippers had gotten broken somehow, and that, of course, is the one I use for Kolby’s and Eli’s hair when I cut it short. So, I decided to use the next smaller sized guard (which would mean it would be longer before I’d have to cut Eli’s hair again the next time). Well, the end result was definitely shorter than I had intended – I never really wanted my boys to have a buzz cut, and that’s basically how it ended up – but of course Eli is as cute as ever, and it will grow back before too long. I also have Isaac his first haircut that morning while he was in the bath (I learned that giving haircuts in the tub can be helpful, because the kid has water to splash and play in to keep him entertained and then it is easier to just rinse down the child and the tub afterwards). Anyways, I just trimmed Isaac’s hair around the edges – I didn’t want it short (and didn’t want to lose the few cute little curls around his ears), but it had started to get kind of fuzzy looking lately, so it definitely needed a trim. I think it turned out nice – it still looks really cute combed to the side.

After Michael got home from work and the boys woke up from their naps, we started some of our Christmas Eve traditions while we were waiting for dinner to cook. Michael’s family has a tradition of reading the story of Jesus’ birth while acting out the nativity, complete with bath-robe costumes. We don’t have any robes, so we wrapped towels around the boys’ heads and shoulders and had them act it out (luckily Camden is still young enough that he didn’t mind being Mary, since I was video-taping, so we didn’t have any female actresses). Afterwards we got out the two special Christmas Eve pop-up books that are a tradition in my family: The Night Before Christmas and The First Christmas. Isaac wandered around the room while the other three boys sat and listened and moved all the little pieces of the pop-up books while Michael read. After dinner we piled into the car to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We had heard of a place in Sugar House called “Christmas Street” because of it’s impressive lights display. We drove and got near the street before both the older boys announced that they needed to use the bathroom. It’s rather difficult to find any kind of store or gas station that’s open on Christmas night (we found one restaurant that was closing, and the employees inside wouldn’t even open the door for me to ask them if our children could use their restroom). Fortunately we eventually found a Walgreens that was open. When I took the boys inside it was raining out, and when we came back out to the car it had started to snow. We drove back to the street with the lights, and there was one street that had a different verse of scripture on a poster displayed in each yard, telling the story of Christ’s birth. Then the next street up had the lights display (which didn’t seem much more impressive than other houses decorated for Christmas, except it was nice that every house on that street was lit up). But by that time the snow was coming down hard, and it was hard to see the lights very well, and Camden had fallen asleep in the car. We headed home, and we saw a man walking in the snow and offered him a ride. I’m glad we did, because we drove for what seemed like 15 or 20 minutes in what was by then quite a blizzard (that would have taken him forever to walk) – he was going to meet some family who’s car had broken down, and it wasn’t snowing when he started walking. So, I felt glad that we were in the right place at the right time to offer him some service as part of our Christmas.

When we got home we put Isaac down to bed and we tried to wake Eli up, but he asked if he could go to bed too. So Kolby and Camden stayed up and found the one gift under the tree that Santa had left before we interrupted him by coming home from looking at Christmas lights, so he would have to return later than night for the rest of the gifts (this is another tradition from Michael’s family – and this gift is always a game that the family can play together that night). So, the boys opened the gift, and it was a 300-piece puzzle that we had fun putting together. We were surprised that Camden enjoyed staying up the entire time and handing us pieces to put together. And then we let the boys put their gifts for family members under the tree, which Kolby was especially excited about. And Kolby left out cookies, carrots, and egg nog for Santa and the reindeer, of course. After we put the boys in bed, we got the gifts out and put them under the tree and filled the stockings, which we set out on the couch next to the tree (Grandma’s fireplace doesn’t have a mantle that we could hang stockings from). Then we went to bed after a while.

In the morning the boys actually slept a little – they were up pretty late the night before – and Kolby came into our room around 7:30 or 8:00am and we were still able to get a little more sleep after that. Michael and I each took a shower and got dressed before getting up the other boys and Grandma and heading upstairs around 9:30am. The snow outside was pretty, and we enjoyed a white Christmas. The boys liked opening their gifts. One gift we got for them was two sets of wooden train tracks that go with the ones they have so they would have enough to build complete tracks they could all play with at the same time, and I had the idea to wrap lots of the pieces separately, so the boys would have more little gifts to unwrap. Then, last week a friend from church offered me another set of these wooden train tracks because she said she got them for her grandkids and ended up with a duplicate set, so I wrapped lots of those separately too. I guess that was a little much, because the boys were still working on unwrapping gifts an hour after we started, which was definitely too long for Isaac and Eli was getting really hungry for brunch by then and saying he didn’t feel well. But other than that it was a really enjoyable morning. The other big gift for all of the boys was a Fisher Price nativity set, complete with stable, tents for the wise men, the inn, all the people, and the animals. And they each got a church movie in their stockings to watch on Sundays. They were also pretty excited that they each got a new “brushtooth” (toothbrush) in their stockings too. They got some adorable outfits from my parents and from Grandma Faun. And there were lots of fun coloring books and sticker books, which they love. They enjoyed picking out gifts from under the tree and handing them to each person (although they weren’t always patient with the idea of waiting while each person opened their gifts), but it was fun to see them give their gifts to each other and give hugs after opening them. Michael and I had quite a laugh after I opened one of my gifts from him: a favorite board game, Thurn & Taxis, and then he later opening the exact same game from me. This is a game that can’t be found in most normal stores, and it ends up that we both got it from the same specialty game shop. So, that was pretty funny – especially since both of us were so sure that the other would be really surprised and have no idea what their gift would be. I also gave Michael another board game, Ticket to Ride Europe, some new white temple pants (since he’s recently grown out of his from before his mission), and a tile sign that I made with his favorite quote on it that he can put in his office someday. And he gave me this beautiful set of Willow Tree figurines of a father, mother, and four boys for our family – now we just need to find one more little boy and it will be complete. The boys had fun giving each other the wooden puzzles they had picked out, and giving Michael his church socks he had asked for. And I really liked the pretty place mats the boys got me for the new table we are planning on getting when we move to New York. Oh, and thank you to both of our parents – Mom and Dad gave us a Clearplay DVD player which edits movies that you buy or rent, so you can watch movies at an appropriate rating (no mater what they are originally rated) and you can filter out things like violence, inappropriate language, etc. for yourselves and your children (we are looking forward to Michael having a better work schedule when he finally finishes this rotation next week so we can rent some new movies and try it out) – and Dick and Debbie gave us money that we decided to put towards our table when we move to New York (I am very excited to have a nice table that isn’t a hand-me-down with matching benches and chairs that will seat our entire family plus guests, it will be so nice). Thank you to all of our family members and friends for the thoughtful gifts, treats that have been brought, and nice Christmas letters and cards that have been sent!

So, we had a nice Christmas. Since Christmas I’ve started to have Braxton Hicks contractions (which is happening a lot later on in this pregnancy than in some of my earlier pregnancies, so at least we know this baby is going to get here before too long). It’s kind of funny too – I only have the contractions in the evening and at night before I go to bed – not during the morning or daytime at all – I’ve never only had them at a certain time of the day with any of my other pregnancies. Although I feel pretty ready for this baby to come, I haven’t hit the really impatient part of this pregnancy yet (probably since we’ve done this a few times before, and we remember that it’s harder after the baby is born, with the lack of sleep and the fun of breast feeding and everything. I’m ok with whenever he comes, as long as it’s after New Year’s day (actually, after January 10th – my birthday – would be preferable) and before February 10th (since he’s due February 9th, and Camden was 5 days early and Isaac was 7 days early, I think I’m being pretty reasonable to say that I would wait until the due date – but for some reason strangers in the grocery stores lately think that it’s a really good idea to say that maybe I’ll have a Valentine’s Day baby when they hear that the due date is February 9th. I don’t think that’s very nice – to say anything about a baby coming more than a couple days late, plus I don’t think Valentine’s Day would be the ideal birthday – I’ll have to talk to the midwife and see how she feels about inducing before Valentine’s Day). Oh, and I don’t want him to come on January 31st, since that is Eli’s birthday, and I’d prefer that each of the boys have their own special day – two birthdays back to back would be better than them having to share the same day, I think. So, I’ve got lots of good ideas – we’ll see what happens. I know that I always said when I was pregnant with Kolby that I’d never have a Halloween baby . . .

So, yesterday was Michael’s and my 6-year anniversary. We are planning on celebrating sometime this upcoming week (waiting until tomorrow to find out which day Michael will get off of work this week). We have always splurged and done something really fun (something that we wouldn’t normally do) for our anniversary – like one time we went and spent the night at a beautiful room in an Anniversary Inn and last year we splurged and had a really nice dinner at a fancy fondue restaurant. This year we have some fun ideas, but we’ll have to see if they all work out, since we don’t know the work schedule yet. But yesterday Michael had one of his late nights at work and so I did a quick dinner of leftovers with the boys, finished up their bedtime routine early, and then I let them stay up late and we watched one of our new movies, Enchanted, together with Grandma Faun. Michael got home during the movie and surprised me with a pretty little bouquet of beautiful gerber daisies for our anniversary. They smell and look beautiful! How sweet!

So, today was church. I am SO looking forward to the new church schedule starting in January – 11am church will be so much easier with the kids, not to mention the fact that Michael will be on an outpatient medicine rotation in January so he will actually be able to go to church with us every Sunday (he hasn’t been able to get a Sunday off from the hospital for at least the last 8 weeks during this rotation, if not longer during his last rotation, I think). Eli is starting next week in a primary class – he is done with nursery and is excited to go to primary like Kolby. Camden still enjoys his nursery class, and I can’t wait until Isaac hits his 18-month birthday and is old enough to join Camden in class, since he hit the point a couple months ago where it is impossible to get him to sit through the adult classes with us, so the majority of church is spent out in the hallway with him. But I had a sigh of relief today when Michael walked into church at the beginning of the third hour – he never gets off work that early! – and we got to sit together as a family. We got through most of Sacrament meeting before he finally had to take Isaac out in the hall, where Isaac fell asleep in his arms for the last few minutes of church. But none of the other boys had to be taken out (I think they knew it was different because Daddy was there too). After church and lunch we put the boys down for naps and we each tried to read a little bit before we both ended up falling asleep on the couch. The younger two didn’t nap well (Isaac never did end up falling asleep), and when the boys got up we watched one of their new church movies – Kolby chose the one about the prophet, President Thomas S. Monson. Then we had dinner and Kolby practiced his piano songs before bedtime. Michael is now sleeping on the couch and I have stayed up later than I should have working on the computer (since I haven’t gotten on the computer in several days, and I’ve been trying to catch up with photos and the blog, except the internet won’t connect and let me post anything on the blog tonight for some reason – I’ll just have to post what I’ve typed tonight another day). Well, I’d better get to bed.

Oh, I had to write something cute that Eli said a couple days ago:

The other day Eli was working on his Disney sticker book with Grandma Faun, and they were doing a page with Peter Pan stickers. Grandma had told Eli the names of all the characters, and she asked him who the pirate was:
Grandma: “Who is this?”
Eli: “Captain.”
Grandma: “Captain who?”
Eli: “Hanger.”
Grandma: “Captain Hook.”
I thought it was pretty cute that he made that association between Captain Hook’s hook and a familiar object that was also hook-shaped.

A Very Long Post

So, this has been an interesting week for us – mostly good, and a little bit not so good. On Monday afternoon Michael took our van in to have the locksmith fix a problem with the automatic locks on the doors that had stopped working and a beeping noise that the car had started to make every time the doors were opened – both of these things started happening since the locksmith replaced the lock on the van last week. So, luckily those things were quick fixes, and after that Michael drove to pick his dad up from a hotel in Salt Lake where he was staying for another work trip, so he came and spent the evening with us. We had dinner, family home evening, and then we played some sports games on the Wii for an activity. (It was fun to sit and watch Dick’s facial expressions as Kolby and then Eli continued to get high scores in bowling and in golf (Kolby beat Dick at bowling, and our boys barely ever play the games on the Wii). After the boys went to bed, we played a while longer before Michael dropped his dad back off at his hotel.

On Tuesday afternoon I had an appointment with the midwife and had that fun glucose test where they make you drink the orange soda, wait an hour, and then draw your blood. Everything looks good with the baby and I’m doing well. And then on Tuesday evening Grandma and I went to Enrichment over at the church. There were a few different classes offered, including a knitting class (which I didn’t sign up for), and a basic computer skills class. I went to the computer class (for lack of another place to go, and because I thought they might want me to answer some questions about the new Relief Society blog). The person who taught the class was knowledgeable, but I was glad that other than a few new shortcuts I knew how to do everything that she taught in the class. After she was done, they turned the time over to me and I showed people how to get to the blog, how to leave a comment (which some people had had trouble with), and what different things were on the blog. I was glad to hear that several of the sisters had looked at the blog at home already (I wondered, especially with a relatively large population of older sisters in our ward, if we would get much use out of the blog, but I was glad to find that people of all ages had started to take a look at it so far). And, the thing that I was most excited about from that evening was that they are starting a new provident living group and are planning on doing monthly trips to different canneries in the area. I signed up to go this Saturday morning and I’m looking forward to it, since I’ve never been to one before. And I’m trying to decide what foods to get this time – I think that a case of six of those big #10 cans of oats for about $13 sounds like a great deal (especially since my kids like oatmeal, so that is something I know we could actually use, plus they have a shelf life of 30 years and you can’t beat that).

On Wednesday afternoon Kolby had his piano lessons. He has his lesson at 3:30 and he still takes a nap after lunch every day, so the last two weeks I’ve had to wake him up from naps for piano lessons and he’s been pretty grumpy while I’ve tried to get him ready to go. I guess I’ll just have to wake him up at like 3:00 and give him a long time to get going before we have to leave. His lesson went well. He got a new song to play and he got to the part in the book where he is learning the different letters of the notes. So, for his practice this week he has been doing his song, and then going through and playing all the ‘A’s on the keyboard, then all the ‘B’s, etc. It’s pretty cool to see that he can find all of the correct keys without messing up most of the time, and when he accidentally hits the wrong key, he realizes that he did the wrong one, and he will say, “No, that’s a ‘G,’ not an ‘F.’” So, he is catching on to that pretty quickly.

Thursday was a pretty rough day for me. The boys did a lot of crying, fighting, and whining, and I did a lot of yelling, time-outs, and some spankings. Besides dealing with all their whining and not listening to me (which seemed like a lot more than normal), I was also struggling because for about the last week or so I had been having an especially hard time with Isaac. I think he has been teething, and he has been extremely fussy some nights (but fine on other nights, so I’m not sure – but it looks like one of his top teeth might finally be coming in). Anyways, Isaac has always had this strong bond with Michael. None of our other boys seemed to have any preference for one parent over the other (although I know that lots of other peoples’ kids do seem to prefer Mommy or Daddy at different times), but all of our other boys were just as happy with one parent or the other. Isaac has always especially liked being held by Michael, and especially cried a lot when Michael left the room. I actually liked this most of the time, with him being the fourth child, because if he was having a really hard time I could hand him off to Michael and he could often calm him down. But lately, especially with Isaac having these fussy times with the teething, he seemed to be crying a lot, and me holding him wasn’t doing any good. He clearly wanted to be held, but then when I picked him up he wouldn’t calm down and would cry just as much. At church last Sunday (Michael had to be at the hospital that morning) Isaac had an especially hard time and I held him in the hallway for over an hour before he finally calmed down and went to sleep, just to wake up about 10 minutes later and cry for a good part of the last meeting. The thing was, he seemed to want my Grandma to hold him more than me, and he even calmed down a little when this cute teenage girl in our ward came over and started to play with him. (He could probably just sense that I was getting stressed and needed a change of people to hold him, but it really felt like he liked everyone else better than me). And with him being especially fussy off and on this week, I felt myself getting annoyed with all his crying for no apparent reason. So, by the time Michael got home from work after a long call day at the hospital on Thursday, very tired and ready to go to bed right away, I kept him up for a while trying to figure out what to do about Isaac and how I didn’t feel like he and I had bonded like we were supposed to. I confessed that I wondered if the fact that Isaac never let me nurse him (I pumped milk and he was bottle fed breast milk for 6 weeks before I switched over to formula) was part of the problem. And Camden did nurse longer than Isaac, but it wasn’t for a really long time, but with Camden I remembered that I would keep him up when I put the other two boys down for naps and I would force myself not to do anything else for a while and lay down and hold him while he was taking his bottle and he would often fall asleep while I was holding him. But with Isaac I didn’t do that – I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t really think of doing it with him, and the idea of getting all 4 boys down for a nap at the same time so that I could have a couple hours a day of no demands and just time to myself was very appealing. And now that he just turned a year old, he takes less than 5 minutes to empty his sippy cup and he is constantly on the move, so I don’t think that I could get him to lay down with me at this point, even if I tried. So I wondered if I had messed something up with him and that I had missed my chance and I could never make it better. It felt good to say all this stuff out loud to Michael, even though it feels really guilty to admit that you don’t feel bonded with your baby. But we talked about it, and just decided that I’d have to try to do other things with Isaac and see how it would go in the future. I think I needed to get all that out, because since then it has been so much better.

The next day I decided to stay off the computer except when all the boys were asleep – it’s easy to get on to check e-mail, then just upload the pictures from the camera real quick while you’re waiting for the internet connection to re-connect to read that last e-mail. Then you need to post something to the Relief Society blog real quick that you received in an e-mail from one of the Relief Society presidency (because you feel bad for already waiting several days before posting some things she sent you last week, and then it turned out the coupons she sent were expired by the time you got around to posting them on the RS blog, so you had committed to being better at just doing it as soon as you got the e-mails). And then when those pictures get uploaded from the camera, you might as well just post them on the family blog while you’re at it – the kids are all happy playing with their toys at the moment anyways – and all of the family members who live far away have expressed such gratitude for you keeping your blog up to date with pictures and videos of the kids so that they can feel like they are there with your family too – plus our blog isn’t just a blog, it’s our family journal and we are printing it into a series of books to save for posterity, so we’d better keep it up to date, since we all know what a good idea it is to keep a regular journal – so anyways, you post those photos that you uploaded from the camera to the blog (but first you have to open the pictures in Photoshop real quick, just to get rid of the red-eye in the pictures that must be genetic, because your husband and all your kids always have red-eye in most of the pictures you take). And hopefully the computer was cooperating all this time, the wireless internet connecting quickly and the computer not freezing up or slowing down because you have a few different programs running at once. Anyways, you can see how hopping on the computer to get something done real quick might end up taking an hour or two, and that’s if I don’t even have anything ‘big’ to work on at the time, like creating a new blog for the Relief Society, making and printing birthday party invitations, updating the books that I keep of each of the boys’ art work, trying to get some genealogy done, etc.

So anyways, I didn’t even turn the computer on until after the boys went down for naps. And while they were playing with their toys, I tried to pick up Isaac and hold him whenever he was in between running after his brothers and crawling after a toy. It would have been kind of a rough morning, because on Friday Eli woke up throwing up (he has always kind of had a week stomach – not that he is sickly or anything, but every few months he will have a day when he just throws up for no apparent reason, no one else in the family gets sick, and he fully recovers before too long). So, Eli was throwing up, and he asked for toast for breakfast, but then he didn’t really want to eat it (which is strange, because even when he is sick I usually have to explain to him why we can’t eat a big meal when we are throwing up while he is pitifully crying for me to get him food). He and I had a holdy on the couch, and then he told me he needed to go potty. He was in the restroom for a while, so I went to check on him to make sure he wasn’t sick again, and he was sleeping on the floor (the only time I have ever appreciated bathrooms with carpeted floors). I covered him with his blanket, set his bowl near him, and shut the door so he could sleep (after taking a picture), and he ended up sleeping in there for at least an hour. After that he ate and told me he felt fine, and he didn’t act sick again, which is always nice when there is a quick and painless recovery like that. So, we spent the day inside, playing together, and things went a lot better with Isaac. And he started doing the best thing ever – I was holding him and he laid his head on my shoulder. When he picked his head up, I said, “Isaac, give Mommy a hug.” And he did it again – since then he has been giving me hugs on demand, every time I’ve asked him to, and I felt almost like that was an answer to my prayers that he does like me (no, I didn’t really think he didn’t like me, but it kind of felt like he liked being held by other people more than by me) and that we did have a special connection. Anyways, that was a very quick change – I went from crying and feeling like I had messed up on raising my baby one night, to feeling normal, happy, and like he liked me the next day. Michael was glad to find out that I was feeling a lot better and Isaac had done well when he got home that afternoon. And things have gone just fine with Isaac since then. So, sorry if I don’t respond to an e-mail or keep up to date on everyone’s’ blogs in the future – but I think that is one little thing that I can do to have a better relationship with my boys, is to spend more time having fun with them than writing about and posting pictures of the fun we’ve had. (But don’t worry too much, Michael and I will still try to keep up our weekly blog posts and I’ll always have nap time to catch up on things).

So, back to our week. Oh, I forgot to mention that I cut Camden’s hair on Thursday morning too. I noticed that it was almost to his shoulders again, after just cutting it while we were in San Diego. So, I decided to just trim it like I did last time, but do it a little shorter this time so it would take a little longer before I had to cut it again. I totally messed it up, though. (Boy, am I glad that I waited until after we had our family photos taken to cut it!) I got it wait, combed it all straight, and cut it all the way around his head in a nice, straight line, but when it dried and curled back up, the back curled up noticeably shorter than on the sides around his ears. So, it ended up looking to me a lot like a really cute short little girl’s haircut (no, I did not think Camden looked like a girl, but I think he looked pretty silly with a girl haircut – which is kind of funny, that I would think a shorter haircut would look girly, even though I know others thought his long curls didn’t look very boy-ish). Anyways, I left it for a few days, thinking of how I would need to fix it, and then last night right before bed I ran him into the bathroom for a quick fix trim, because I couldn’t stand taking him to church with that haircut the next morning. I trimmed it shorter around the ears, and I think that fixed it – although I should have just left it how it was in the first place, this second trim looks a lot better than the first one (and a lot more like a boys’ haircut), and it can grow back out now. I couldn’t help thinking today, as he wore a little sweater to church that Kolby used to wear, and as his hair is now a similar length as Kolby’s used to be when he was that age (although still more curly), that Camden really reminded me of Kolby. I know that everyone thinks I am way off whenever I say I think Camden looks somewhat like Kolby did, but we’ll just have to wait and see – I wouldn’t be too surprised if they looked more and more alike as they get older.

Well, yesterday was long, but I got a lot done. I decided that I needed to get all the Christmas gifts and wrap them all before Thanksgiving, because both my family and Michael’s family will be here, so we can give everyone their gifts and avoid paying to ship them in December. So, I made a list and discussed it with Michael, and then went out and got it all done yesterday. (Oh, I guess I had already made the gifts for each of our parents a couple months ago, and I went and picked up something for my brothers on Friday evening, but I got everything else done on Saturday). I got everything done for the parents, brothers and sisters, and cousins (so I do still need to do it for Michael and the boys, but I don’t have to worry about shipping their gifts). Now there is one gift left that I need to make, and I’ll print some family photos for the parents and grandparents like we do every year, and then all we’ll have left to do is the wrapping. I’m pretty proud of myself that I could get it mostly all done in one Saturday – it only took trips to 4 different stores and about 5 hours (with three of the boys with me the whole time). While we were out, we also got some new jeans for Kolby and Camden (each of them had a pair that wore out in the knees in the last week or so), a new pair of pajama pants for Michael since his old ones got a hole in the knee this week too, and stuff for dinner last night. Oh, and Michael hit a milestone – I bought his pajama pants in a size large because the other sizes didn’t look like they’d be big enough for him, and when I brought them home and he saw that the tag said “size Large, 36/38,” he said there was no way they’d fit him. He had always gotten 34/36 in the past. But I said he should just try them, especially since they had a draw string. Amazingly, they fit, and he didn’t even have to use the draw string to synch them up around the waist or anything. So, Michael has officially gotten fat (no – I would never say that, he was the one making this claim). But really, it is nice that he’s gained a little weight because it’s kind of difficult to find a size 34/36 in some stores sometimes, and I think he looks very nice now that he’s “filled in” just a little bit. I guess eating free hospital cafeteria food has paid off. :) Anyways, after a good dinner of spaghetti squash and garlic bread – spaghetti squash is one of our new favorite meals, since it is relatively quick and easy to make, everyone in our family likes how it tastes, and it is healthy for you – we got the boys down for bed and Grandma stayed with them while we went on a date. First we went to a store that I had seen advertisements for called Tai Pan Trading (kind of a weird name, but it was a really cool store). It was a giant store filled with all sorts of Christmas items, home decorations and art, and things that you could use to make your own Christmas decorations. We only had half an hour there before the store closed (and Michael was disappointed to see a sign advertising free fudge samples, only to find out that that part of the store had closed earlier in the evening) so we probably didn’t even see everything in the store, but it was fun to just walk through and see all the fun Christmas stuff. After that we stopped at Target and picked up a snow brush for Michael’s car (since the one he had before had broken last winter). And after sharing a banana milkshake, we saw a late showing of the new James Bond movie. Although we were both tired, it was still nice to get out and just be together.

Today things went pretty well at church. Michael had the day off today. We got ready this morning and the boys had enough time to watch a quick church movie while Michael and I were getting ready and then Michael played a couple songs on the piano before we walked to church (it’s so much easier getting them all ready for church when I’m not the only one doing it). Although Michael had a headache at church, and Isaac was being extremely wiggly in Sacrament meeting (by wiggly, I mean throwing his entire body back and forth as to make it difficult for any adult to keep him from falling off their lap) so Camden, Isaac, and I spent most of the last meeting in the hallway, but Isaac and Camden played together on the floor happily while I listened to a good talk on tithing, so that was a lot better than last week’s church meeting went for us. After walking home and having quesadillas (or “didas,” as Camden would call them) for lunch, we have gotten the boys down for naps and I think they are all finally asleep – after two additional potty trips for Eli (yes, we do always make both Kolby and Eli use the bathroom before going to sleep), 3 or 4 trips into Camden’s room to tell him not to get out of his bed/not to get into Isaac’s bed/and not to get things out of the closet, changing 1 poopy diaper on Camden, moving Camden’s crib to a different side of his room so he couldn’t get into the closet as easily, and going in to find Eli repeatedly doing some kind of hand stands and then flipping over in the corner of his room – now there is silence and I think they are all finally asleep.

So, sorry for the long post, but at least this kind of rough week ended up being a good week for us. Hope it was good for all of you too.

Carving Pumpkins

So, when Dick and Grandma Bradshaw came for dinner and family home evening we carved pumpkins for our activity. I enjoyed figuring out what the jack-o-lantern’s faces would look like, and I left the scooping of the pumpkin innards to the boys and the carving to Michael and his dad. I think they turned out pretty cute. I’ll have to get a better family picture of us all with the finished pumpkins – we took a silly one on our camera, and the only nice-looking one with the whole family ended up being on Dick’s camera.

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The Boys' Names

My friend, Kim, was asking about the middle names we picked out for the baby, and the stories behind all of our boys’ names, so I thought I’d share.

We have given all of our boys family names for their middle names. So, Kolby is Kolby Michael – Michael is his dad’s name (obviously) and his grandpa’s middle name. [Michael’s dad’s name is Dick Michael Bradshaw (Dick, not Richard), and I wasn’t going to use Dick, so Michael worked for him). And the name Kolby is just a name I have liked for a long time – a guy from our church stake was named Kolby (although it was probably spelled with a “C”), and although I didn’t really know him at all, I liked his name when I heard it. And I just thought it was nice to spell it with a “K,” although I have since learned that there are lots more Kolbys and Colbys out there, and that the majority of them spell the name with a “C,” so Kolby will have to deal with having his name spelled wrong all his life – but he’s already used to that – he tells people when they spell his name wrong and asks them to fix it.

Eli’s full name is Elijah Carl. We picked Elijah because in the scriptures Elijah was the prophet who would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and often it is said that if you are interested in learning about your ancestors you have the spirit of Elijah. And since I have always been very into genealogy, Elijah seemed like a great name. Eli is our only one so far who goes by a nickname, although we do call him both Eli and Elijah, but we probably use Eli more often now. We had decided to call him Eli when we picked the name, and when he was a baby we didn’t call him Elijah very often at all, so it was quite surprising when Kolby started calling him “Jijah” for Elijah, instead of Eli. We thought that was cute and we called him Jijah too for a while, until he got older and Kolby kept telling me that his name was Eli, not Jijah. So, now we call him Eli most of the time, but we also use Elijah. His middle name is Carl, after my mother’s father, Carl John Spohr Jr., who passed away before he ever got to meet Eli, but Kolby and Eli were both able to go with us to Grandpa Carl’s funeral.

Camden’s name is Camden James. As many of you know, we like to have names picked out really early – we usually have had a boy and a girl name picked out for each baby before we had the ultrasound to find out if it was a boy or a girl. Camden has been our only one that we “changed” the name for – although it was only a couple weeks after we had his ultrasound that we decided to change our minds on the name we had picked out. We had chosen Ezekiel, and were planning on calling him Zeke, which I think is really cute. But everyone we told that name to automatically said, “Zeke the geek!” Now, I know kids can think up a way to tease just about anyone about their name, but when I realized that it was the first thing that most people thought when they heard the name, I started to have doubts about using it. It was just too easy for everyone to think that up – I didn’t want him to be teased forever about his name. So I decided to change the name, but Michael thought that it was a fine name, so he wasn’t too motivated to look for an alternative. I spent days searching through lists of baby names on the internet, printing out lists of possibilities, and then Michael would come home and cross most of the names off the list. (The only ones he would leave on the list were names that I thought were nice, but just too common). So, then I came across Camden on one internet list, and I loved it. It’s similar enough to Cameron that it doesn’t sound strange, but different enough that it’s not boring. Michael said that he liked that name, but that he thought it was the “weirdest” name he had ever considered using (I think that by “weird” he meant “uncommon”). So I went onto the US Census website and looked up the data about US children’s names for the most recent year that they had posted. I was pretty surprised too that Camden was more common than Kolby, Eli, and Elijah (although not as common as Colby). That was all it took for Michael – it wasn’t too “weird” of a name, so Camden it was. And his middle name is after Michael’s brother (his brother, Alan, goes by his middle name, and his first name is really James), and for Michael’s mother’s father, James Albert McIntosh.

When we were looking for a name for Isaac, I really wanted a name that fit well with the other boys’ names. I felt like Kolby and Camden were both more modern sounding names, and Elijah was a name from the scriptures. And Kolby and Camden both started with consonants (and the same sound), and Eli was a vowel name. So, I wanted a name that went along with Eli’s name so that he wasn’t the odd one out. We liked Isaac, and that fit the bill: a scriptural name that started with a vowel. Also, I like the story of Abraham and Isaac in the scriptures and what great faith Isaac showed in both God and his father at such a young age. And I was excited to use the middle name, Steven, after my dad. So he is Isaac Steven Bradshaw.

And for our last little boy, we felt like we were running out of boy names that we both agreed on. (We had a whole list of possible girl names that never got used). So, we waited until a couple weeks after we had the ultrasound to decide on the final name. I liked Riley (I thought it was a nice name that ended in the same sound as Kolby’s name, and it is also a family name – but Michael doesn’t care for names that can be used for a boy or a girl, and Riley has become more and more popular as a girl’s name lately). We also liked the name Tyce, except I just didn’t feel like it fit well with the other boys’ names – it was only one syllable, and all of our other boys go by two-syllable names (I know, I get way too technical about this whole name-choosing thing, but I’ve got to use the names for the rest of my life, so I might as well pick something I really like). (And no, we didn’t like the idea of naming him Tyson and calling him Tyce). So, then I thought of my great, great grandfather’s name, Courtland. I like that name a lot, and Michael decided that he liked it too – he is planning on calling the baby ‘Court,’ but I think I’ll call him Courtland. (We talked about calling Camden ‘Cam’ too, but that hasn’t happened so far). The thing that I really had to convince Michael about was my idea for the middle names. Yes, I said names, not name. I really wanted to use both my brother’s names, and we are not planning on having another baby. So, I wanted to name the baby Courtland Matthew Aaron Bradshaw. Most people think that is weird, but I don’t really care what people think – we’ve had more than one person say they wouldn’t choose some of the names we picked for our boys, but they don’t have to go through pregnancy, labor, or raising any of our children, so I figure they don’t really get a say in the matter. :) Anyways, I was thinking about how it would be for him to have two middle names, and I was thinking that most of the time it wouldn’t really be a big deal. Lots of documents just ask for your middle initial, so that will be easy: Courtland M. Bradshaw. And for other things, like diplomas, they usually let you choose how your name appears, so that won’t be a problem. But this way he will get to be named after two wonderful uncles. So, even if people think it’s silly of me to want to give him an extra name, I think it will be a very nice name. Courtland Matthew Aaron Bradshaw.

(Oh, and I mentioned that Kolby called Eli ‘Jijah’ before he could pronounce the name correctly. It’s kind of funny to hear all the ways that the boys have pronounced each others’ names when they were little: Kolby called Eli ‘Jijah,’ and Eli called Kolby ‘Bo-bee,’ Eli called Camden ‘Mamen,’ and now Camden pronounces Isaac ‘Igaak.’ So, if you think that we should have chosen some different names for our kids, I guess it could always be worse: we could have had Bo-bee, Jijah, Mamen, and Igaak instead. :) We’ll see how Isaac ends up pronouncing Courtland after he starts talking).

Boise

We went up to Boise for the weekend of Michael's birthday and his 10-year high school reunion. Here are pictures from him opening his birthday gifts, some pictures with friends at the reunion, then some at a little preserve in the park that we walked through after the reunion with a few friends where the boys got to see lots of fish, some that Jennie and Dalin took with the boys while we went out for Michael's birthday dinner, and a nice shot of Michael wearing the special birthday fish hat at McGrath's seafood restaurant when Dick and Debbie took us out for his birthday. It was a fun weekend, but way too quick -- I wish it wasn't a 5 or 6 hour drive to get there, so it wouldn't be so tiring to go visit for a weekend.

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"Big Old" Man

Well, we have had a fun week. Michael’s rheumatology rotation has been wonderful – allowing us to spend a lot of time together as a family these last few weeks. Last weekend we went down to Lehi and had dinner with Mel and Christian and Annette. That was really fun. Then on Thursday morning I took Isaac for his 9-month check up. I quite like the new pediatrician we have – she seems young and knowledgeable, and willing to take time to explain things if needed but not too long-winded when we are going over the basics. Isaac was 19 pounds and 31 inches long – tall and skinny just like his brothers. He is healthy, and everything was pretty routine, except we did express some concern that at 9 months old he had just barely started to sit up. She asked some questions, had some blood drawn (which came back totally normal), and gave us the number to call for a state agency that does physical therapy for babies. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned, just thought we should have him seen and maybe do some work with him to get him all caught up. I had a long phone call today with the person at the therapy agency (who I think is really nice), and she is coming to our house with a nurse and an educator to evaluate Isaac on September 9th. So that is good. (And, of course, over the last week since Isaac had his doctor’s appointment, he has become even more mobile – scooting and rolling all over, and even pulling himself up on little things like the bottom step of the basement stairs or the toy boxes – so I think it will be good to work on some exercises with him to get him crawling and walking when he should be, but I’m not concerned that he will have any long-lasting problems because of this. Kolby and Eli had swim lessons last week, and had a lot of fun, as always. I signed them up to do one more session of lessons before school starts, and Camden will be starting too, which I am really excited about since he would love to be in the water each time we go to watch his brothers swim. We have thought a lot about it, and I think we are going to have to take a break from swim lessons once school starts, unless we can come up with any other ideas. I am pretty frustrated with the fact that I can’t find AYNONE in the area at all who offers swim lessons year-round just once a week. In Milwaukee we took the boys one evening a week, all year round, to the pool at the YMCA and we really enjoyed that. But here I can’t find anything like that. Right now their lessons are on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but once they start preschool they won’t be able to go swimming during the day anymore, so the only option the rec. center offers is Tuesday and Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. I just think that doing preschool several days a week, plus we were hoping to get Kolby into piano lessons this year, and adding 3 days a week of swimming on top of that sounds like a lot for such little kids. I really don’t want to over-schedule our 3- and 4-year-old. But I have spent a lot of time searching on the internet and calling all the rec. centers, public pools, gyms, and several high schools with pools within a half hour drive of us, and have found none at all that offer swim lessons once a week. I would love to have my boys swim year round – they love it, it is fun for them, it is good exercise, it gets me to get out and swim with them more often than I otherwise would, and it’s a good skill for them to have for safety around water. We’ll see, but right now we just can’t figure out any way to make it work without making their lives way too busy. Well, on to something else: we drove up to Boise this weekend. It was Michael’s 10-year high school reunion and his 28th birthday on Saturday (I asked Kolby if 28 was old or young, and he said “Old.” I asked, “How old is it?” And he said “Big Old.” Way to go, Michael – you have finally attained the status of Big Old Man. :) We hit traffic on the drive up to Idaho Friday night, and got there late. It is a long drive through a lot of nothing to get from Salt Lake to Boise. But once we got there we had a lot of fun. Michael’s reunion was really fun – it was just a BBQ at a park, but we both enjoyed talking to his old friends for several hours. Then we went home and got to go out to dinner for Michael’s birthday with Dick, Debbie, and Grandma Bradshaw (thanks, Mindy, Dalin, and Jennie for watching the boys for us so we could do that). It was a really nice dinner at a restaurant called McGraths. Then on Sunday, after going to church, we enjoyed a lunch of taco salad (Michael’s favorite), with dutch oven peach cobbler for his birthday “cake.” The drive home was long again, especially since Michael had pulled a muscle in his back just before we left Boise, but luckily he said that the pain wasn’t as bad at the end of the drive as it had been at first. So, we got home safely and everything has gone well today. And we will have to enjoy this week, because next Monday Michael starts his internal medicine rotation, which will mean a lot more hours at the hospital and a lot less time off with the family. Hopefully that 4 weeks goes by quickly. Oh, and last week we did a couple other things too that I forgot to mention – I cut Kolby and Eli’s hair again. Eli’s needed a trim to make it short enough to spike again, and when I asked Kolby how he wanted his cut he said he wanted it “up straight” so he got spikes too. And the boys and I made a fun t-shirt for Michael for his birthday with the words “No 1 Dad” and each of the boys’ handprints on it. It turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. I’ll have to post photos of that later too. Oh, and I hit 14 weeks today with the pregnancy. Just a quick update -- I am mostly over the morning sickness, as long as I get enough sleep and eat at certain times, and I have started taking a couple Flintstones children's vitamins a day as an alternative to prenatal vitamins, which has been working a lot better for me. So, things are going pretty well now.

A Fun Week with Family

This week was a lot of fun for us. Last Sunday Michael’s dad and two of his sisters, Annette and Mindy, came with us to church and stopped here for lunch afterwards. It was fun to see some of the pictures from their recent trip to Palmyra, New York and for the boys to play some games with their grandpa.

Then late that night after the boys were in bed we went to the airport to pick up my mom and brother. Mom and Matthew got to stay for almost a week, and we had a lot of fun together. And it was especially nice because Michael got time off from work for the state holiday of the 24th of July, so he got to spend a lot of time with us too.

On Tuesday we Mom and Matthew went with me, Kolby, and Eli to swim lessons, and then we all swam together afterwards. Kolby went on the water slide a couple times with Matthew (he hadn’t wanted to go on it in the past), and then after I told him he could go by himself, he spent the rest of our time at the pool going down the slide over and over again. He was so proud of himself and excited to tell Daddy when we got home. (Eli wanted to go to, but was not tall enough, so he played in the water with the rest of us). And that afternoon the girls got to go down to the Family History Library downtown, which was fun, although Mom and I were disappointed that the microfilm we had found did not include the information about our ancestors that we hoped it would. Mom and Grandma and I enjoyed a fun dinner out at one of my favorite Salt Lake restaurants afterwards, The Red Iguana.

On Wednesday we went to the Humanitarian Center run by the church that helps disaster victims and people in need all over the world. Matthew is working on his Eagle Scout project, with plans to tie 50 baby quilts that will then be sent by the Humanitarian Center to those in need, so we went and took a tour of the center, and it was very good. Michael and I both felt like we should get motivated and go volunteer there.

Thursday was the 24th of July, Pioneer Day. We got up early and went down near Liberty Park to watch the parade. We were surprised to see our friends, Dave and Natalie Gordon, who we knew in Milwaukee about 4 years ago before they moved to North Carolina for his residency. They were visiting family here, and it was nice to catch up with them. They are living in Louisiana now and have three kids. It was fun to see them, especially since they were one of the few graduating 4th-year student families who made friends with us when we first moved into the Milwaukee ward (since so many 4th-years have busy work schedules, are often out of town interviewing, and know they are leaving soon so some don’t take the time to really get to know the new class).

The parade was fun, but hot. We finally moved back from the curb to the sidewalk so we could be in the shade of a tree, and that helped a lot. The floats were fun, although Kolby and Eli were a little disappointed that they didn’t get any treats (the parade we always went to for the 4th of July near our home in Milwaukee was fun for the kids because they threw out candy and the boys always went home with little bags of goodies). After the parade we happened to stop at the aviary in the park, and it was a free day for the holiday, so we got to see lots of different birds, including the Bald Eagles (which are Michael’s favorite animals). I enjoyed seeing the flamingos because there was a baby one (which I’ve never seen before) – they look like baby geese – all grey and fluffy – but on tall flamingo legs. We were thinking of going hiking after the parade, but were all too hot and too tired, so came home and put the boys down for late naps instead.

We went hiking the next day. We went on a hike that Michael read about on Stephanie and Mickel Sharp’s blog to Donut Falls up Big Cottonwood Canyon. The hike was nice, and when we got to the base of the waterfall I thought that it looked nice, but nothing especially exciting. Then we decided to take turns climbing the rocks up to the top of the falls, where you could see water was pouring through a big round hole in the rock. And the climb was well worth it. When you get to the top, you come to the spot the water is coming through the rock, and it pours into this cave with a big pool in it. It had a nice cool mist spraying out and it was too cold to swim, but nice to stick your feet in for a minute and cool down. So we were glad we climbed up there, although that part of the hike was too steep for all the little boys. After climbing back down and driving through Guardsman’s Pass over the mountain into Heber Valley, we drove up to Lake Creek, to my grandpa’s ponds. We had lunch, and then walked around the ponds and took a look at the water ways – apparently someone who owns land nearby has broken the pipes that feed the water into the ponds in order to feed it onto his own land, and the upper pond was nearly dry. The water was rushing pretty quickly out of the lower pond too, and we wondered how long it would take before that one got drained also. It’s hard for my parents to do anything about it while living so far away, even though they are paying for the water shares on that land since my grandpa passed away. I don’t know what they’ll decide to do, but besides paying a lawyer to take the guy to court, I think they are just going to end up needing to sell the land to someone local who can monitor it and keep trespassers off the property.

Then we drove back down to Heber, and Matthew wasn’t doing too well. We thought he was dehydrated. We got some milkshakes at a good little place there called Granny’s, and then headed back to Salt Lake. The next morning we found out that both Matthew and my Mom had been sick all night, and Michael felt sick too. Later on Grandma said that she felt sick too. Luckily the kids haven’t shown any signs of catching anything yet – I don’t know if it was something the four of them ate or what – we couldn’t figure out what it was. So it was too bad they were so sick the last day of their trip here, but hopefully their over it by now. Michael is feeling a lot better today.

After I dropped them off at the airport, I took Kolby and Eli to a neighborhood 24th of July BBQ at the Adamson’s house, and after eating and the kids having lots of fun playing in their tree house and on the trampoline, everyone walked over to the Slade’s house to watch fireworks in their col-de-sac. It was a lot of fun, although we were all tired by the end of the night.

This morning Grandma stayed home from church with a bad headache, but she said she felt better when we got home. In my class at church we had an excellent lesson on ‘walking in the light,’ which I really enjoyed. And now all the boys have been fed and are down for naps, Michael is reading after having gotten the roast started cooking, and I am writing this. Tonight we are having some old friends, Emily and Lamar May and their boys, over for dinner. Emily and I met while doing a semester in Nauvoo together, she and Michael and I were friends at BYU, and she was a bridesmaid at our wedding. It will be nice to see them again.

Graduation Pictures

So, here are a few pictures from Michael’s graduation. It was really great that Michael’s parents, my parents, and my grandma were able to come for that special day. Thanks!

I'm graduated from medical school!!

Well, it’s official. After four long, busy, difficult, yet fun years, I graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin with a degree of doctor of medicine (MD) with honors in research. What a whirlwind week of activities and emotions. My mom and dad and grandma Faun arrived Wednesday afternoon and Steph’s parents came on Thursday. Not only have we been happy to have family here to be with us during this special week and to have fun playing with the kids, but also we are grateful for the wonderful weather that they brought with them.

Monday was my last day of classes in medical school. My final lecture was on bioterrorism, specifically on anthrax, the plague, and small pox – interesting note to end on. We had our pass/fail final test Tuesday morning (I had to score more than a 64% in order to pass), CPR recertification in the afternoon, and then I was done. Wow!!

Wednesday morning we went with the Lythgoes to the zoo. It was a beautiful day and probably the most active I have seen the animals. The jaguar and the cheetahs were the best, prowling back and forth in front of the glass; the elephants were playing in the water and with sticks; the monkeys were swinging back and forth and putting on a show; and even the black bear came out to say hi. The boys always like the fish and reptiles building. We met up with the Hymases a little later and had lunch by the new flamingo exhibit. The kids had so much fun playing together. On Wednesday night they got to see Kolby and Eli in their swim lessons and then grandpa Dick swam with Kolby, Eli, Camden, and me for a while afterwards.

Thursday morning I went over to the school to get some pictures taken with several of the other graduates in front of the school in our graduation robes. We took the family down to the lakefront to see Lake Michigan and play frisbee and throw balls in the grass. Then we went across the street to the Children’s Museum for a few hours. We are really going to miss this museum that has so many fun and varied activities for the kids. That night was the graduation awards dinner held at the Italian center in downtown Milwaukee. We were treated to a very nice dinner and then several faculty, residents, and people in the class received awards from various departments. It was fun to be there with all the family members and we received some good advice from those who got the teaching awards.

Then it was here – graduation day. The morning was spent around the apartment and just outside, playing with the kids and enjoying time together. My mom made me a really nice embroidered picture of a lighthouse with a really cool quote from our prophet, Thomas S. Monson: “The lighthouse of the Lord beckons to all as we sail the seas of life. Look to the lighthouse of the Lord. There is no fog so dense, no night so dark, no gale so strong, no mariner so lost, but what its beacon light can rescue. It calls ‘this way to safety and this way to home.’” Steph’s parents got us a really nice new digital camera – a Canon G9 series with 12.1 mega pixels. It has so many buttons and gadgets on it that it will take me a while to learn just how to use it. And grandma Faun gave us some money to put towards a graduation present. Thanks to all of you for your generosity, and to everyone else that has called to wish us congratulations.

We headed to the Milwaukee Theatre just after lunch in order to take pictures with me in my graduation robes. Then I had to separate from the family to go to the graduate waiting area and to say goodbye to some people who I probably won’t see again. It was a blur of feelings, thoughts, and emotions. We were lined up and marched into the theatre. Our graduation ceremony is done in conjunction with those receiving a PhD, a MA, and an MS. The speaker focused on what a privilege it is to be a doctor – it is a blessing and honor that comes with a responsibility to always help and serve your patients in order to find true happiness in the profession. Then I was walking up to the stage, across the stage while they were saying my name, and receiving my diploma, signifying that I am now a doctor. There is no way that I could have got here without the help of my wonderful wife Stephanie and all the family and friends who have supported us over the past four years. Thanks to everyone who was able to come and participate – it was so nice to have family here. And again, thanks to all who have called or sent congratulations our way. It is still a little surreal to have the degree – I don’t think it has hit me yet that I am actually a doctor – hopefully that will happen as I start into my intern year.

We were able to drop the kids off at a babysitter (thank you Hedgecocks) and go to dinner at Bartolottas, and Italian restaurant in downtown Wauwatosa. Our reservation was for 8pm, but the party before us didn’t want to get up from the table, so we didn’t end up getting seated until almost 9pm. The owner came out and apologized, and we ended up getting 2 free antipastos (one a mix of meats, cheeses, and veggies; the other delicious calamari) and 5 free desserts. That was nice. The dinner was pretty good – I got a nice seafood mix with some swordfish, octopus, mussels, scallops, and prawns. And we just had a great time spending time together. Thanks mom and dad for dinner.

Saturday morning we took the boys over to the hotel to swim with the grandparents. Grandpa Dick taught Eli how to dive into the water and he did it right away with no fear. It was so cute to watch. Nana and Papa took the boys to the mall to Build a Bear and Camden got a puppy named Quinton; Eli got a bunny named Benjamin; and Kolby got an Elephant named Rutherford. You can squeeze the hand and the animal says, “Nana and Papa love…(and then the boys name).” They are really cute and the boys love them. Steph got a new skirt and shirt and I got some new Levis – thanks again moms and dads. We went to a BBQ for dinner at Enderis Park with several other recent graduates and their families. There was good food and fun times seeing some of these people probably for the last time. The Nielsens and Tysons gave us a really cute frame, with a picture of me and the boys and a whiteboard, along with this poem:
“When Daddy write his name, he always writes M.D. That’s so people all will know that he belongs to me. So, M.D. means My Daddy, or something just the same, and that is why he always puts those letters on his name. Some letters in his name are small but those are big, you see. He always makes them big like that because he’s proud of me.” Thanks you guys. After the BBQ, we rushed home to put the kids to bed, and with Tyce babysitting, we were able to run to the mall to see Prince Caspian. I really liked it, and what a fun and exciting weekend.

It is now Sunday morning and we are just about to head off for church. The roast is cooking and the potatoes and carrots are ready to be cooked; the rolls are rising; the cake is cooked; the kids are dressed; grandma Debbie is playing beautiful piano music; the boys are playing with the other grandparents; and it is just a wonderful Sabbath day that we get to celebrate as a family here at home and then at church. Both parents leave tonight and Grandma Faun tomorrow, which we are sad about, because it has been so much fun to spend the weekend with them. This just gets us so excited to come to Utah to be closer to all the family.

February Photos

Here are some fun photos and video clips of the Bradshaw boys from last month. The video clips show Isaac laughing, Kolby playing the harmonica, Isaac eating rice cereal for the first time, and a fun game that Kolby, Eli, and Camden play. (I love this little game that they came up with -- it's kind of a mixture of Hide-and-Seek and Chase -- Kolby and Eli run into one room and hide in a corner or behind the furniture and Camden runs in and as soon as he sees them, they run into a different room to hide again and he follows, it's so fun to watch them play together).

The photos are of the boys playing with their train set, Eli on his first day of preschool (and Kolby's first day of school for this winter session), Eli with the trains that he got for his birthday from Grandpa Dick and Grandma Debbie, Isaac in his jumper, Daddy and the boys singing Eli's favorite song, "Wheels on the Bus," Kolby showing off his new favorite possession: his CTR ring from church [CTR stands for Choose The Right], Isaac after he fell asleep on the living room floor, and a few of all four boys together. It's so fun to see these pictures, especially the ones of all of my boys together, and think of what good friends they are (and will hopefully continue to be) as they all grow up together.

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Bedtime Routine

These video clips are from when we were in Boise in December. Michael and his little sister, Mindy, were having a lot of fun playing with the boys before bedtime. (And people wonder why my children are wild???) The funniest thing to me is that Michael likes to play like this, and then when he gets tired he says, "ok, that's enough" and expects them to calm down and get ready for bed. Although I'm sure they wish this was their nightly routine, it's probably good that it's not. They sure had fun, though!

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The Last of the Photos from Our Boise Trip

I am going to get the last of the photos posted from when we were in Idaho:


Before Christmas the boys and I went to visit my friend Colette and her daughter Lila who live in Boise. Colette and I were roommates on our BYU Semester in Nauvoo, Illinois. It was really fun to get together with her and let the kids play together. They have some horses at their house and the boys loved petting them.

Kolby, Camden, and Eli:

Kolby, Lila, Eli, and Colette:

Eli petting the colt:

Camden, Colette, and Lila:

And after Christmas Dick took the boys and I to a place called Kid Planet that is kind of like a McDonald's playland with all the slides, ball pits, and tunnels to climb through but about four times larger. The boys loved it there, and Camden was even big enough to enjoy it too because the tunnels were down low enough that he could climb in by himself.

Camden in the ball pit:

Dick and Isaac:

Kolby:

Eli chillin' on the slide:

Michael and I celebrated our 5-year anniversary while we were in Boise. We got all dressed up and went out to a nice dinner at a fondue restaurant downtown called The Melting Pot. Then we went and saw National Treasure 2, which we both enjoyed.

Dalin, Jennie's fiance, teaching the boys how to do push-ups:

And a few days later Dick took all of us to the Discovery Center. It had all sorts of scientific experiments set up and everything was hands-on so the kids really enjoyed it. There was also a room set up like a grocery store with plastic food, mini shopping carts, and kid-sized check-out counters and cash registers. And there was a section set up like a veterinarian’s office with toy animals and medical supplies. The boys all enjoyed that day and it was nice that we did it on a Saturday so Michael could go along with us too.

Camden picking out some groceries:

Eli on a 'bed of nails':

Kolby helping a dog in the veterinary office:

Isn't this the cutest picture ever?

Camden loves Isaac so much! He is probably our child who has shown the most interest in his younger sibling at the earliest age. He loves to hold his bottle while we are feeding him or give him his pacifier. And he is always giving him hugs and kisses. So I shouldn't have been suprised when Camden wanted to hold him too:

Isaac:

Camden giving Isaac kisses: