Catching up on Photos

So, I’ve put off adding photos and videos to the blog now since just before Thanksgiving. All the boys are down for their naps right now, so maybe I’ll try to get caught up a bit.

Here are a few random shots from November:

Some plastic animal cracker jars from Costco that I’ve converted into food storage containers. I just cut up the bags from the food items that I wanted in the jars, then taped on the labels so it shows what is in each jar, and there is nutrition info on the back. I was pretty leased with how they turned out. (Now we’ll just see if the boys can eat enough animal crackers so that I can get a few more of these jars for food storage).

A couple cute shots of Isaac and Camden in the bath when Kolby and Eli were at preschool one day.

One day Kolby and Eli’s friend, Hannah Johnson, came over to play for a little while after preschool. They played well together, but the boys got a little wild – showing off for their new friend. It was funny to watch them play, though, and see the obvious difference between boys and girls. Hannah had two of the Fisher Price “Little People” toys and was talking for them: “I love you,” “Why do you love me?” “Because I love you.” And then she made the people kiss. Eli, on the other hand, had a Little People bird and a crocodile which he was waving through the air (because the bird was helping the crocodile to fly) and every once in a while his animals would dive-bomb some of the other toys.

A rather unsuccessful attempt at pictures with Santa at the mall (we couldn’t even get Santa to look at the camera, let alone any of our boys). [Not that we would expect Isaac to sit with a strange man and smile for the camera].

When my family came for Thanksgiving, we met Michael at the hospital one day so that he could give everyone a tour of where he worked. These are of my brothers giving my boys piggy-back rides on our way into the hospital.

Michael wrapping a White Elephant gift for his work party that we went to.

And here are a couple shots of our boys with their cousins, Jaden and Kyler, on Thanksgiving at Grandma Bradshaw’s house.

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.