Well, everyone has been asking for more photos of Courtland, so here are lots of photos and a couple short video clips. He is such a little cutie! He is the only one of our boys who has a cute little cleft in his chin (like his Daddy). His hair is a light brown color, and his eyes are dark blue. He has a good little personality – he seems to be trying to sleep pretty well the last day or so, and since visiting a lactation specialist this afternoon I think we’ve got this whole nursing thing down, so things should be getting a little easier from here on out. He likes his baby swing and his pacifier, and since he was giving me a hard time with nursing the last couple days we found out that he takes a bottle really well too. When he was born Courtland had lots of red blotchy spots on his face and we thought that maybe he had really sensitive skin, but it has mostly cleared up since then.
His brothers all seem to like him – we haven’t had any jealousy issues yet (cross your fingers that things will continue to go well in that department), and every once in a while even little Isaac will come over and give him and kiss or hug without us even asking him to (we often ask him to give us kisses and hugs). I thought that the boys would do well with the new baby, but was a little concerned about how Isaac would react, especially since he seems to be more attached to Michael and I than the older boys were at his age, and because with moving to Utah we aren’t really around anyone else with kids Isaac’s age or younger so he hasn’t been around little babies at all, but he has done very well with Courtland so far.
Well, here are lots of fun pictures of this cute little guy:
Showing posts with label Annette. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Annette. Show all posts
10 February 2009
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25 January 2009
Kolby's Post
So, this week Kolby said he’d like to write our blog post for us, and I’m just going to type what he says:
I love my manta (blanket). And I love preschool. I like church because I love Jesus. I love my toys. My favorite toys are my cars, and my favorite car is my new car from Christmas. It is my favorite because I like it, because it makes noise. My other favorite toys are my trains. Making a train track is fun.
I’m going to write what our family did this week. On Monday we didn’t go to school because it was a holiday. On Tuesday it was Isaac’s doctor’s appointment, and Mommy’s doctor’s appointment. And Camden was sick that day. On tv we watched the parade for the new president. On Wednesday we went to the temple open house. The temple made me feel good, it was quiet and beautiful. My favorite part of the temple was the room with the baptismal font. Later we went to my piano lesson. I played three songs on the piano. And then on Thursday it was Eli’s birthday party. Before the party we decorated the house with balloons and ribbons. People came to Eli’s birthday party. Kaitlyn and Nikki, Chelsie and Emily, Paige, and my cousins, Jaden and Kyler, and aunt Mel and aunt Annette all came. When people came, we got out cars to play with. I played in a box too. After we played, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Eli and ate cake. It was a car cake. After everyone else left, Jaden stayed for a sleep-over. We played together and then we went to sleep. The next day we played and colored together. On Saturday I helped Mommy get some food out of the food storage. And I helped Daddy move the clothes because my brothers and I moved bedrooms. Today was Sunday. We hade stake conference at church, it was a special meeting where we listened to people talk. And that’s what we did this week.
I love my manta (blanket). And I love preschool. I like church because I love Jesus. I love my toys. My favorite toys are my cars, and my favorite car is my new car from Christmas. It is my favorite because I like it, because it makes noise. My other favorite toys are my trains. Making a train track is fun.
I’m going to write what our family did this week. On Monday we didn’t go to school because it was a holiday. On Tuesday it was Isaac’s doctor’s appointment, and Mommy’s doctor’s appointment. And Camden was sick that day. On tv we watched the parade for the new president. On Wednesday we went to the temple open house. The temple made me feel good, it was quiet and beautiful. My favorite part of the temple was the room with the baptismal font. Later we went to my piano lesson. I played three songs on the piano. And then on Thursday it was Eli’s birthday party. Before the party we decorated the house with balloons and ribbons. People came to Eli’s birthday party. Kaitlyn and Nikki, Chelsie and Emily, Paige, and my cousins, Jaden and Kyler, and aunt Mel and aunt Annette all came. When people came, we got out cars to play with. I played in a box too. After we played, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Eli and ate cake. It was a car cake. After everyone else left, Jaden stayed for a sleep-over. We played together and then we went to sleep. The next day we played and colored together. On Saturday I helped Mommy get some food out of the food storage. And I helped Daddy move the clothes because my brothers and I moved bedrooms. Today was Sunday. We hade stake conference at church, it was a special meeting where we listened to people talk. And that’s what we did this week.
24 January 2009
Happy Birthday, Annette!
We decided to have Eli’s birthday party a little early, just in case the baby came early, so we planned it for January 22nd, which happens to be Michael’s sister, Annette’s, birthday. Luckily Annette was able to get the evening off work and make it for Eli’s party. And of course we had to stick a candle in her piece of cake (I was willing to just let her blow out her candle, but Michael had to be a big brother and make all of our friends sing “Happy Birthday” to her too. She only looks a little embarrassed, right?) Happy Birthday, Annette!
Eli's 4th Birthday Party
So, we had Eli’s birthday party on Thursday (he will turn 4 on January 31st). I made a Lightning McQueen car birthday cake which turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. The boys were excited to help me curl ribbons and hang them from the ceiling, and to blow up balloons too. Since it was a Cars themed party, we got out the boys’ box of matchbox cars for all the kids to play with. We also got out several little boxes that the boys like to play with like they are garages for their cars, and a large box that we happened to have from the dishwasher that had to be replaced earlier this week. The kids enjoyed climbing in and out of that big box until it finally collapsed at the end of the night. Eli liked his cake and ice cream, and enjoyed the treat of drinking soda (we usually only get soda for birthday parties). And of course he had fun opening a few gifts from his friends, which he has been carrying around and having fun with the last couple of days since the party. Although it was a traditional Bradshaw family kid’s birthday party [lots of loud kids running around for the entire evening], the kids had fun and it was nice to see the parents and get to say hi to them too. You can tell from the pictures and video clips that Eli enjoyed the night – he has a big smile in every photo.
18 January 2009
Yes, I know this is another long post . . .
So, this has been a nice week for our family. We started out on Monday with the Hymases coming over for family home evening. It was nice to see them, let the kids play together, and just sit and talk. We did a little lesson from the new nursery manual (if you have young kids and you don’t have a copy of the new nursery manual, I would suggest getting one. The new manual has great lessons that are just the right length for the attention spans of our kids, and the coloring pages, activities, and photographs and church art are included right in the lesson. You can order it online from the church distribution center, with free shipping, for less than $10, and then you have a family night lesson all ready and you don’t have to scramble to think of something to teach the kids at the last minute. Anyways, we’ve really liked using it for our kids so far).
On Tuesday I had another doctor’s appointment. I am down to having appointments every week now. At my last appointment they explained to me their policy about elective inductions – that as long as the cervix is favorable, you can choose to be induced at 39 weeks up until 7 days after the due date (if the baby doesn’t come before then, then they recommend you be induced, but they say it’s medically indicated, not an “elective” induction if it goes that long). So, I talked to Michael, and we both feel like we shouldn’t do an induction early this time, but that scheduling it for right around the due date would be fine (I don’t really like the idea of having a Valentine’s Day baby). So, at this appointment we tentatively set an induction date for February 10th (the day after the due date). I thought that was a good day – exactly one month after my birthday. But really I’ve felt for quite a while now that this baby is going to come on his own, and I’ve really thought that he would come sometime in the week before his due date, but it’s nice to have a date scheduled as a back-up, just in case, so if he doesn’t come then we won’t have to wait too long after the due date. So, she said that how it works is they never schedule a specific time for an elective induction (because there is always a chance that there will be several other women who need to be induced for medical reasons and they would get in first). So, they call you from labor and delivery the night before the induction is scheduled and give you instructions, like to call them back the next day at a certain time to make sure they weren’t too busy with other patients before you come in. So, it feels nice to have a plan. Although I really still think he will come before that date, if I do go in to be induced, I think it will work out well, as I was induced with Kolby (he was full term and they decided to induce because I happened to have high blood pressure that day), but being induced with Kolby worked out just fine – I have heard horror stories of women getting the pitocin and it causing them to have a pattern of terrible contractions followed by labor stopping, but when I was induced with Kolby the pitocin seemed to work just as it was intended with no problems at all. So, either way I expect everything to go smoothly.
On Wednesday I made dinner for one of the ladies that I visit teach and her family, because she had been in the hospital earlier this week. I tried a simple recipe for a strawberry dip that turned out very good (although I’m sure it is less than good for you). But you just whip together 8 oz of cream cheese with one jar of marshmallow cream, and it is very, very good to dip fruit in. (It’s always fun when you try out new recipes and they turn out good, especially the kinds of recipes that don’t call for a lot of ingredients and don’t take too long to make). Also on Wednesday I did Camden’s night out. I have been running low on good ideas for free kids’ nights out to do in the winter (in the summer, it is always nice to just go on a walk, a bike ride, or go to a playground), but in the winter the options decrease and I’m not too fond of taking the kids to McDonalds to play in their play area, walking around the mall, or going to a toy store just for fun. If anyone has any good winter ideas that are free and are things you can do in the evenings, I’m open to suggestions. This week Camden and I went to the library, which was fun. He was excited to sit in the kid-sized chairs there and to have me read books to him that he picked off of the shelf by himself. But the highlight of the night for him was definitely when we were leaving the library. We were going to the car and I saw a lady down the street walking her dog, so I pointed the “puppy” out to Camden because he loves dogs. That lady must have had amazing hearing to overhear me all the way in the library parking lot, because she turned around and walked over to us just so Camden could pet her dog, which was so nice of her. Although he absolutely loves animals, especially dogs, he was a little shy at first (as usual), but he did get brave enough to pet the dog a few times before we got in the car. Then the entire ride home he kept telling me that he wanted “his puppy,” that he wanted to go to the puppy’s house, that he didn’t want to go to our house, and that he wanted the puppy. Over and over. He was definitely excited to pet that dog.
On Thursday we had a fun, full day. First of all, after I picked up the boys from preschool, we went to the dentist’s office. I scheduled an appointment for Kolby, Eli, and Camden with a pediatric dentist over a month ago, and it was finally time to go. So, we had been to a pediatric dentist a few times before for Kolby and Eli in Milwaukee. We liked the dentist that they saw in Milwaukee, and I thought it was nice that they had a dental assistant to assist each of the boys in stepping up on a little stool, each at their own sink, and showing them how to brush and floss their teeth, and then they both sat together in the dentist’s chair (they were both still little then, and fit fine in the big chair together) while the dentist looked in their mouths and talked to them about brushing their teeth before sending them off happy with a new toothbrush and toothpaste. They thought the dentist was a lot of fun, and I was pleased with the dentist in Milwaukee. It was not until we went to the dentist here that I realized how run-down, cheap, and technically out of date our dentist in Milwaukee was (although he gave the kids good dental care, it was made obvious to me the difference between a dentist who accepts Medicaid and a more “normal” pediatric dentist). When we went on Thursday, the first thing that impressed me was the office. Of course, you don’t need fancy decorations or toy to have a good experience at the dentist’s office, but it was nice for the kids to have something fun to do while I filled out all of the many forms necessary for 3 new patients who were all coming for their first time that day. We walked in the door and a whole section of the lobby was fenced off and decorated like a jungle, complete with trees sprouting up from the floor and a little Jeep that the boys enjoyed sitting in and playing. The walls and furniture were all decorate in a jungle theme and there were plants, statues, and stuffed jungle animals all over the place. When we got back into the room where the boys would be seen, it was a large room with four kid-sized dental chairs in a row, a large fish tank right in the middle, and more jungle animals and decorations all around the room. Camden was especially excited about the stuffed lion sitting in the corner of the room that was bigger than he was. The dental assistants took all three boys in for x-rays of their teeth (The boys never had x-rays in Milwaukee). Then each boy got to lay down on the dentist’s chairs and they each got little headphones to wear so they could hear the sound from each of their individual televisions (that were imbedded in the ceiling above each of their chairs) that they could watch cartoons on while the dental assistants cleaned their teeth. And they used the normal dental tools and suction to clean their teeth (Kolby was pretty excited to tell Daddy that they squirted water in his mouth) – in Milwaukee they just used a toothbrush and a piece of floss. Afterwards the dentist came in and counted their teeth, looked at the x-rays, and told me that their teeth looked good. Then he took the time to give me a recommendation for an adult dentist, since I need to get a crown to cover a tooth that had a root canal when I was in high school. When I called my mom to tell her how cool this pediatric dentist was, she said that every experience they had had was similar to that (minus the jungle décor). So, I guess the one in Milwaukee was just a little low-tech. But either way, it was actually a really great experience, because all of the boys, even Isaac in the stroller, did wonderfully and I didn’t hear a single cry or whine the entire time we were there. The boys were also very excited to pick out a prize at the end of the appointment, and all three of them picked out little red sunglasses – Kolby told me that he gets to keep his sunglasses for the rest of his life.
So, on Thursday night Michael went to go play basketball with some other guys at the church, and after getting the boys to bed I was planning to just lay down and relax. For several days before that I had been spending long hours while the boys were asleep (and staying up far too late at night) trying to do research to figure out who the parents of my 3rd great grandfather, Cummings Gilmore Monk, were for sure. I had come into contact via the internet with several distant relatives on that side of the family, and two of them had given me different information on who his parents were. In 2006 one of the people who contacted me told me that his parents were George Shadrack Monk and Anne Wright. And then recently another relative contacted me with new information supporting the idea that his parents were actually a different couple, Shadrack Peter Monk and Margaret Anne Williams. The second person’s information fit better with the family information I had, and she had good notes and sources to support her research. I was very excited to find this new information! But after doing a little research on the family myself in order to familiarize myself with the research again after a few years, I started to wonder. The information about Shadrack and Margaret is good, solid information and they are definitely the parents of Cummings Gilmore Monk. The only problem is that I have found two Cummings Gilmore Monks who were both alive in the midwest at the same time, and I am not sure which one is the son of Shadrack and Margaret – if it is my 3rd great grandfather or the other Cummings. And with an uncommon name like that, and the fact that they were both born in Virginia within 5 years of each other and then both moved to the Midwest by the time they were old enough to get married, I am assuming that they were probably cousins, likely both named after a common ancestor (maybe their grandfather?). So, I spent a lot of time this last week trying to find out which Cummings was which. I ended up making a chart in excel showing both of the Cummings’ and all of the information I have found about each of them throughout their lives – trying to sort out what information went with what Cummings. But as hard as I tried I could not find any actual source that told me who the parents of “my” Cummings were for sure. I thought that if I put in enough time and effort in researching this, (and after praying about the research and trying to follow through with the ideas I’d had when I did that), I just thought that I would be able to find them if I tried hard enough. So I was pretty disappointed that I was trying so hard and not turning up any good information. So, I had decided that I was just going to have to move on to something else and not worry about that family for now, since I wasn’t finding any new leads and I was getting frustrated with it all. I e-mailed the relatives that I had been in contact with to let them know what I had been researching this week and ask if they had any last suggestions for me. And I was so glad that I did! One of the Monk descendants wrote back and gave me an idea about ordering a death certificate, and she even offered to pay for one of the orders if I paid for the other one (since we have a 10-year range for when Cummings could have died, so we are going to do two orders to find the death certificate, and we think that they will look at a 5-year range for each order). Anyways, I know that all this probably isn’t too interesting to most of you, but I was excited to get that idea and I am looking forward to hopefully getting a death certificate (there is a section on a death certificate for parents’ names, so if we can find a death certificate and if the certificate is filled out with the parents’ names, it will be really exciting!) So, the reason I went into all that in the first place was that on Thursday night I was pretty worn out from all the late hours of research and I decided that I was just going to relax – I told Michael that after the boys went to bed I was going to lay down, watch tv, and not do anything productive at all for the rest of the night. I turned off the computer, watched a couple shows, and went to bed at 10pm, and felt like I had caught up on my rest pretty well the next day. Oh, and Michael was pretty disappointed that when he went over to the church to play basketball no one else had shown up, so he just came back home. He found out today that he had gone to the wrong building, and so I think he will try again next week (the week after this one, I guess, since Eli’s birthday party is planned for this Thursday evening).
On Friday morning I had to go out to the WIC building for a class on breastfeeding, and Grandma had a doctor’s appointment so I had to take all of the boys along with me, even though I wasn’t required to take any of them to the class. So, we got out there and the majority of the class was taken up with general announcements about the WIC program. Then I had to take Camden to change his diaper, and when I got back into the classroom with all the boys they were finishing up what must have been a very short discussion about breastfeeding. Oh well. Not that I really think I need a breastfeeding class anyways – there’s not much they could tell me at this point that I don’t already know, I don’t think. So, after we got out of there, we went to Deseret Book store. Michael got me these beautiful Willow Tree figurines for Christmas and there was one with a father and a son, one with a mother and a son, and one with two brothers, but he couldn’t find a single baby boy figurine to finish off our family. So, I went back to the store and found a different figurine with a mother, a son, and a baby boy, and I exchanged that one for the mother and son figurine. Now we have the whole set for our family and I love how they look. The other thing we did while we were at the bookstore was exchange a DVD. For Christmas we got the movie, The Other Side of Heaven, and when we tried to watch it it wouldn’t work. We could get it to the DVD menu, but then it would skip repeatedly when we tried to play it. I tried it on 3 different DVD players, and it wouldn’t work on any of them. So I exchanged it a couple weeks ago, and the second one had similar problems. We finally did get it to play once the other day, after skipping the beginning of the movie. So I took the second disc back, and told them about the problem. I asked if we could exchange it again and then try to play it on the DVD player in the store before going home so I didn’t have to return again if there were problems. So she opened a new disc and it wouldn’t play on their player either. They must have gotten a defective batch of discs or something. She called the manager and they decided to keep opening and trying discs until we found one that worked. I was glad that the next disc they tried worked (and I was also glad that the one I brought back to exchange didn’t work on their player, so they didn’t think I was just incompetent and didn’t know how to work a DVD player). After that, we stopped for a few minutes at my new favorite store at the mall, Maurice’s, where I got a new shirt on a half-off sale with birthday money. I am planning on saving most of my birthday money to get some new clothes that fit after I have this baby and get closer to a normal size again, but I couldn’t resist getting a couple shirts this month, since they were so cute and on a good sale, and I haven’t bought clothes for myself in so long. Plus they should fit after the pregnancy, so that will work out too. After the mall we headed to Costco, with promises from the boys that they wouldn’t fight, whine, or be wild at all if I let them try each of the sample foods in the store for lunch. It worked out well – the boys started whining once, and I reminded them of their promise that they wouldn’t whine at all or else we wouldn’t come back to Costco for lunch again, and they did really well after that. And it was one of the rare days that the West Valley Costco happened to have lots of samples (for some reason this store doesn’t often have very many samples), and by the time we got through the whole store we had picked up a few items we needed, the boys had tried every sample except for the diet drinks that I didn’t let them try, the boys and I were all pretty full for lunch, I did something that I rarely do – I bought one of the foods that we tried a sample for so we could have it for dinner that night, and the boys were all tired enough to go right down for naps when we got home. It turned out to be a nice day out.
When we got home that afternoon I put all the boys except Kolby down for a late nap, and then Kolby practiced his piano songs before his lesson (it got switched to Friday this week because his teacher’s daughter had been sick earlier in the week). Grandma made it home from her appointment just in time for me to go with Kolby to his lesson. Before Grandma got home, Kolby was kind of concerned how he was going to go to his lesson, and he was asking me if I was going to get a babysitter to come stay with his brothers while we went. I told him that if Grandma didn’t get home in time, I would have to stay home. And before I explained the plan to him, he was quite concerned that someone might take him if he walked to his teacher’s house alone. I explained that if he had to go without me I would stand outside and watch him walk the entire way until he was inside his teacher’s house, and I would call and make sure his teacher would watch him the entire way home until he got back into our house afterwards (his teacher lives a couple houses down from us). Fortunately, Grandma got home before we had to leave, because I do like to go along and listen to him at his lessons. On our walk over to the lesson, he said, “Mommy, if I had to walk alone and you were watching me and someone tried to take me, you would run and get me, huh?” I assured him that I would run as fast as I could and I wouldn’t let anyone take him. He didn’t seem too worried about being kidnapped, he just wanted to know all the details of the plans to stay safe. I wondered about how I have done with teaching him about safety – you don’t want your kid going around being worried about being kidnapped all the time, but at the same time you want them to be aware of danger and avoid dangerous situations. I think Kolby is aware of danger, and he obviously thinks about making plans to avoid it, but I don’t think he’s going around being scared all the time. Things like that are hard to figure out just how much information you should give a small child. I guess that’s how it goes, being a parent, especially with your first child. There are a couple other things I’ve been thinking about lately with how best to teach Kolby at this age. Like, over Christmas, we took Kolby and Eli to see a movie, and before the previews started there were commercials playing in the theater that were meant to recruit people for the army. They showed soldiers shooting guns, and Kolby quickly said, “Those are the bad guys, huh?” How do you explain to a 5-year-old that, even though Mommy has always said that guns are unsafe and people who shoot other people are bad and that we don’t play like we are shooting our brothers or friends, that the people on these commercials who you see shooting people are really the good guys? I told him that they were soldiers, and that sometimes when there is a war soldiers are needed to protect the good people against bad guys (although I don’t really believe that there is really one good side and one bad side in most wars). But it’s hard to start explaining the grey areas, when a year or two ago everything Kolby asked me about would be black and white – Mommy, do good guys shoot people with guns? No, Kolby, people who shoot other people are bad guys and we don’t use guns because they hurt people. I guess there will be more and more of these “grey areas” that I have to continue explaining as Kolby and the other boys keep getting older. There was another one the other day, although less serious than bad guys with guns vs. soldiers protecting innocent people. A couple weeks ago Kolby was invited to spend the night at the Barker’s house. The Barkers have four girls, ages 10, 8, 5, and 3, and they were also having the Adamson’s two girls over that night too. I figured that since Kolby was just 5 he was fine sleeping over with girls there, because it’s all innocent at this age and he doesn’t really see any difference between his friends who are boys and his friends who are girls. Once the kids are older, I don’t plan on letting them sleep over with girls, but now while they are so young I don’t see any harm in it. So, then a few days later we were at another friends’ house for dinner and after Kolby and his friend, Kaitlyn, were playing they both came and asked us if they could have a sleep over. Kaitlyn’s mom told me that she had always thought her daughter would be about 10 years old before she had to tell her she couldn’t sleep over with boys, not as young as 6 years old. So, how do you explain to your 5 year old son that it’s ok to sleep over with some of his friends who are girls, but not with others? Luckily he didn’t press the question of a sleep over with Kaitlyn that night and I didn’t have to discuss it with him – I didn’t really want to tell him that Kaitlyn’s mom didn’t want her to sleep over with boys, because I didn’t want him to start thinking about why that would be. I just want him to stay as innocent as he is now about his little friends forever. I know that won’t happen, but he doesn’t need to be thinking about those kinds of things at age 5.
Well, this post is getting so long that anyone who might have actually started reading it in the first place has probably quit by now, but oh well. I guess I’ll finish off telling about our weekend. On Saturday morning I made 6 loaves of bread while Michael worked on laundry, and then I went over to the church for a visiting teaching interview. After we put the boys down for a short nap (I don’t know if any of them actually went to sleep, and we finally just decided to get them all up because they were all awake and making noise in their rooms after a little while), we got ready and headed to Lehi to visit Mel and Christian and Annette. We had a good afternoon and evening at their house, eating dinner and playing a game of Life. We headed home later that night, and all four boys were asleep in the car before we got home. When we got home, we learned that my mom had been hit by a snowboarder from behind while skiing in Mammoth and her arm had a bad spiral fracture. It sounds good that she probably won’t need a surgery, but she is in a lot of pain and it’s a bad break. Trying to make her feel better, I told her I could Photoshop a picture for her with her skiing off some cool snowy cliff, and she could show that to people as an explanation of her injury when she gets back to San Diego in a few days. Then I came up with an even better idea: a picture of her skiing off a cliff and being hit from behind by a snowboarder mid-air. Hopefully she can recover quickly, because it sounds like this is very painful for her.
So, today we went to church. I reminded the boys before we went inside of one of our family goals, to be reverent in church. And when I said that, Kolby said, “And Mommy and Daddy need to not yell,” (that was another one of our family goals, that the boys and the parents would not yell at each other), so I told him that we would remind them to be reverent in church and they could remind us not to yell. I’m glad to say that Kolby, Eli, and Camden all did quite well with being reverent in church today (and Michael and I did well at not yelling in church today too). Isaac had several loud crying episodes (so that he could leave the meetings at church today), but overall he did pretty well. I took him out for a while during the sacrament meeting (and he was happy in the hallway, as long as we didn’t go too close to the chapel doors), but he did last through the entire Sunday school class, and then he fell asleep in my arms for most of my Relief Society class. So that went pretty well too. . . . so, Michael just turned to me and asked if I was still writing the blog. When I said yes, he said, “No one’s going to read it [because it’s so long].” I told him it’s not for anyone else, just for us. Anyways, I know it’s long, but oh well. . . . So, at church a lady said that her granddaughter was moving in with her and brought her furniture, so she had a couch and two hide-a-bed couches that she wanted to give away because she didn’t have enough room for them. So, after church I called to ask if they were still available, and she asked us to come over and take a look at them this afternoon. We went over and told her we would take one of the hide-a-bed couches, and then when our home teachers came over later in the afternoon they went with Michael to help pick it up from her house. This was perfect timing, since we had been thinking the last couple days that we needed to switch the boys’ rooms around, because Camden has been waking Isaac up at naptime a lot lately and not letting him sleep, but we didn’t know how to do that since Kolby and Eli share a bed, and we didn’t have an extra bed for one of them to move into the other room. So, this little couch was perfect – we are going to keep it as a couch, because opening it up as a bed takes up too much space in the bedroom downstairs. Kolby had already willingly volunteered to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor in Camden’s room, but we thought this was a good alternative. He now has his own little couch, “his new bed,” in Camden’s room. Our home teachers helped Michael move the couch downstairs, move the table and filing cabinet into the storage room so there would be more room down there, and move Eli’s bed and dresser over to make space for Isaac’s playpen in Eli’s room. We’ll see how the new arrangement works out. We figured that Kolby would be a good match for Camden, because Kolby will continue to nap on our bed during the daytime, so Camden can be alone and not have anyone to wake up during naps (and so he might actually end up sleeping more in naps too, if we’re lucky), and then at night Camden does pretty well anyways and Kolby will also hopefully be able to help a little with Camden not doing certain undesirable actions that have started to become habits lately when he wakes up in the morning or from naps, such as taking off his clothes and sometimes his diaper or climbing out of the crib and turning the table upside down. Also, we hope that Eli and Isaac do well together – as long as Eli follows my instructions not to get Isaac out of his bed without my permission, I think it will all work out well. We’ll see. But it was so nice of that lady from the ward to give us that couch (and such perfect timing), and we were really thankful to our home teachers for their help with lifting all that furniture – I definitely couldn’t have done it at this point.
Well, that’s about it for our week. Tomorrow it is nice that we will have a relaxing day, since the boys don’t have preschool because it is Martin Luther King Jr. day (although Michael doesn’t get the day off work, of course). Also this week I have another doctor’s appointment (I hit 37 weeks tomorrow, (which, for all of you non-pregnant people, means that the baby will be considered full-term and they wouldn’t try to delay labor at all if he started to come anytime after then). And Isaac has his 15-month check-up this week too. So, we’ll keep everyone up to date on any changes with this pregnancy, and hopefully it won’t be too many weeks before we get to start posting pictures of our little Courtland.
On Tuesday I had another doctor’s appointment. I am down to having appointments every week now. At my last appointment they explained to me their policy about elective inductions – that as long as the cervix is favorable, you can choose to be induced at 39 weeks up until 7 days after the due date (if the baby doesn’t come before then, then they recommend you be induced, but they say it’s medically indicated, not an “elective” induction if it goes that long). So, I talked to Michael, and we both feel like we shouldn’t do an induction early this time, but that scheduling it for right around the due date would be fine (I don’t really like the idea of having a Valentine’s Day baby). So, at this appointment we tentatively set an induction date for February 10th (the day after the due date). I thought that was a good day – exactly one month after my birthday. But really I’ve felt for quite a while now that this baby is going to come on his own, and I’ve really thought that he would come sometime in the week before his due date, but it’s nice to have a date scheduled as a back-up, just in case, so if he doesn’t come then we won’t have to wait too long after the due date. So, she said that how it works is they never schedule a specific time for an elective induction (because there is always a chance that there will be several other women who need to be induced for medical reasons and they would get in first). So, they call you from labor and delivery the night before the induction is scheduled and give you instructions, like to call them back the next day at a certain time to make sure they weren’t too busy with other patients before you come in. So, it feels nice to have a plan. Although I really still think he will come before that date, if I do go in to be induced, I think it will work out well, as I was induced with Kolby (he was full term and they decided to induce because I happened to have high blood pressure that day), but being induced with Kolby worked out just fine – I have heard horror stories of women getting the pitocin and it causing them to have a pattern of terrible contractions followed by labor stopping, but when I was induced with Kolby the pitocin seemed to work just as it was intended with no problems at all. So, either way I expect everything to go smoothly.
On Wednesday I made dinner for one of the ladies that I visit teach and her family, because she had been in the hospital earlier this week. I tried a simple recipe for a strawberry dip that turned out very good (although I’m sure it is less than good for you). But you just whip together 8 oz of cream cheese with one jar of marshmallow cream, and it is very, very good to dip fruit in. (It’s always fun when you try out new recipes and they turn out good, especially the kinds of recipes that don’t call for a lot of ingredients and don’t take too long to make). Also on Wednesday I did Camden’s night out. I have been running low on good ideas for free kids’ nights out to do in the winter (in the summer, it is always nice to just go on a walk, a bike ride, or go to a playground), but in the winter the options decrease and I’m not too fond of taking the kids to McDonalds to play in their play area, walking around the mall, or going to a toy store just for fun. If anyone has any good winter ideas that are free and are things you can do in the evenings, I’m open to suggestions. This week Camden and I went to the library, which was fun. He was excited to sit in the kid-sized chairs there and to have me read books to him that he picked off of the shelf by himself. But the highlight of the night for him was definitely when we were leaving the library. We were going to the car and I saw a lady down the street walking her dog, so I pointed the “puppy” out to Camden because he loves dogs. That lady must have had amazing hearing to overhear me all the way in the library parking lot, because she turned around and walked over to us just so Camden could pet her dog, which was so nice of her. Although he absolutely loves animals, especially dogs, he was a little shy at first (as usual), but he did get brave enough to pet the dog a few times before we got in the car. Then the entire ride home he kept telling me that he wanted “his puppy,” that he wanted to go to the puppy’s house, that he didn’t want to go to our house, and that he wanted the puppy. Over and over. He was definitely excited to pet that dog.
On Thursday we had a fun, full day. First of all, after I picked up the boys from preschool, we went to the dentist’s office. I scheduled an appointment for Kolby, Eli, and Camden with a pediatric dentist over a month ago, and it was finally time to go. So, we had been to a pediatric dentist a few times before for Kolby and Eli in Milwaukee. We liked the dentist that they saw in Milwaukee, and I thought it was nice that they had a dental assistant to assist each of the boys in stepping up on a little stool, each at their own sink, and showing them how to brush and floss their teeth, and then they both sat together in the dentist’s chair (they were both still little then, and fit fine in the big chair together) while the dentist looked in their mouths and talked to them about brushing their teeth before sending them off happy with a new toothbrush and toothpaste. They thought the dentist was a lot of fun, and I was pleased with the dentist in Milwaukee. It was not until we went to the dentist here that I realized how run-down, cheap, and technically out of date our dentist in Milwaukee was (although he gave the kids good dental care, it was made obvious to me the difference between a dentist who accepts Medicaid and a more “normal” pediatric dentist). When we went on Thursday, the first thing that impressed me was the office. Of course, you don’t need fancy decorations or toy to have a good experience at the dentist’s office, but it was nice for the kids to have something fun to do while I filled out all of the many forms necessary for 3 new patients who were all coming for their first time that day. We walked in the door and a whole section of the lobby was fenced off and decorated like a jungle, complete with trees sprouting up from the floor and a little Jeep that the boys enjoyed sitting in and playing. The walls and furniture were all decorate in a jungle theme and there were plants, statues, and stuffed jungle animals all over the place. When we got back into the room where the boys would be seen, it was a large room with four kid-sized dental chairs in a row, a large fish tank right in the middle, and more jungle animals and decorations all around the room. Camden was especially excited about the stuffed lion sitting in the corner of the room that was bigger than he was. The dental assistants took all three boys in for x-rays of their teeth (The boys never had x-rays in Milwaukee). Then each boy got to lay down on the dentist’s chairs and they each got little headphones to wear so they could hear the sound from each of their individual televisions (that were imbedded in the ceiling above each of their chairs) that they could watch cartoons on while the dental assistants cleaned their teeth. And they used the normal dental tools and suction to clean their teeth (Kolby was pretty excited to tell Daddy that they squirted water in his mouth) – in Milwaukee they just used a toothbrush and a piece of floss. Afterwards the dentist came in and counted their teeth, looked at the x-rays, and told me that their teeth looked good. Then he took the time to give me a recommendation for an adult dentist, since I need to get a crown to cover a tooth that had a root canal when I was in high school. When I called my mom to tell her how cool this pediatric dentist was, she said that every experience they had had was similar to that (minus the jungle décor). So, I guess the one in Milwaukee was just a little low-tech. But either way, it was actually a really great experience, because all of the boys, even Isaac in the stroller, did wonderfully and I didn’t hear a single cry or whine the entire time we were there. The boys were also very excited to pick out a prize at the end of the appointment, and all three of them picked out little red sunglasses – Kolby told me that he gets to keep his sunglasses for the rest of his life.
So, on Thursday night Michael went to go play basketball with some other guys at the church, and after getting the boys to bed I was planning to just lay down and relax. For several days before that I had been spending long hours while the boys were asleep (and staying up far too late at night) trying to do research to figure out who the parents of my 3rd great grandfather, Cummings Gilmore Monk, were for sure. I had come into contact via the internet with several distant relatives on that side of the family, and two of them had given me different information on who his parents were. In 2006 one of the people who contacted me told me that his parents were George Shadrack Monk and Anne Wright. And then recently another relative contacted me with new information supporting the idea that his parents were actually a different couple, Shadrack Peter Monk and Margaret Anne Williams. The second person’s information fit better with the family information I had, and she had good notes and sources to support her research. I was very excited to find this new information! But after doing a little research on the family myself in order to familiarize myself with the research again after a few years, I started to wonder. The information about Shadrack and Margaret is good, solid information and they are definitely the parents of Cummings Gilmore Monk. The only problem is that I have found two Cummings Gilmore Monks who were both alive in the midwest at the same time, and I am not sure which one is the son of Shadrack and Margaret – if it is my 3rd great grandfather or the other Cummings. And with an uncommon name like that, and the fact that they were both born in Virginia within 5 years of each other and then both moved to the Midwest by the time they were old enough to get married, I am assuming that they were probably cousins, likely both named after a common ancestor (maybe their grandfather?). So, I spent a lot of time this last week trying to find out which Cummings was which. I ended up making a chart in excel showing both of the Cummings’ and all of the information I have found about each of them throughout their lives – trying to sort out what information went with what Cummings. But as hard as I tried I could not find any actual source that told me who the parents of “my” Cummings were for sure. I thought that if I put in enough time and effort in researching this, (and after praying about the research and trying to follow through with the ideas I’d had when I did that), I just thought that I would be able to find them if I tried hard enough. So I was pretty disappointed that I was trying so hard and not turning up any good information. So, I had decided that I was just going to have to move on to something else and not worry about that family for now, since I wasn’t finding any new leads and I was getting frustrated with it all. I e-mailed the relatives that I had been in contact with to let them know what I had been researching this week and ask if they had any last suggestions for me. And I was so glad that I did! One of the Monk descendants wrote back and gave me an idea about ordering a death certificate, and she even offered to pay for one of the orders if I paid for the other one (since we have a 10-year range for when Cummings could have died, so we are going to do two orders to find the death certificate, and we think that they will look at a 5-year range for each order). Anyways, I know that all this probably isn’t too interesting to most of you, but I was excited to get that idea and I am looking forward to hopefully getting a death certificate (there is a section on a death certificate for parents’ names, so if we can find a death certificate and if the certificate is filled out with the parents’ names, it will be really exciting!) So, the reason I went into all that in the first place was that on Thursday night I was pretty worn out from all the late hours of research and I decided that I was just going to relax – I told Michael that after the boys went to bed I was going to lay down, watch tv, and not do anything productive at all for the rest of the night. I turned off the computer, watched a couple shows, and went to bed at 10pm, and felt like I had caught up on my rest pretty well the next day. Oh, and Michael was pretty disappointed that when he went over to the church to play basketball no one else had shown up, so he just came back home. He found out today that he had gone to the wrong building, and so I think he will try again next week (the week after this one, I guess, since Eli’s birthday party is planned for this Thursday evening).
On Friday morning I had to go out to the WIC building for a class on breastfeeding, and Grandma had a doctor’s appointment so I had to take all of the boys along with me, even though I wasn’t required to take any of them to the class. So, we got out there and the majority of the class was taken up with general announcements about the WIC program. Then I had to take Camden to change his diaper, and when I got back into the classroom with all the boys they were finishing up what must have been a very short discussion about breastfeeding. Oh well. Not that I really think I need a breastfeeding class anyways – there’s not much they could tell me at this point that I don’t already know, I don’t think. So, after we got out of there, we went to Deseret Book store. Michael got me these beautiful Willow Tree figurines for Christmas and there was one with a father and a son, one with a mother and a son, and one with two brothers, but he couldn’t find a single baby boy figurine to finish off our family. So, I went back to the store and found a different figurine with a mother, a son, and a baby boy, and I exchanged that one for the mother and son figurine. Now we have the whole set for our family and I love how they look. The other thing we did while we were at the bookstore was exchange a DVD. For Christmas we got the movie, The Other Side of Heaven, and when we tried to watch it it wouldn’t work. We could get it to the DVD menu, but then it would skip repeatedly when we tried to play it. I tried it on 3 different DVD players, and it wouldn’t work on any of them. So I exchanged it a couple weeks ago, and the second one had similar problems. We finally did get it to play once the other day, after skipping the beginning of the movie. So I took the second disc back, and told them about the problem. I asked if we could exchange it again and then try to play it on the DVD player in the store before going home so I didn’t have to return again if there were problems. So she opened a new disc and it wouldn’t play on their player either. They must have gotten a defective batch of discs or something. She called the manager and they decided to keep opening and trying discs until we found one that worked. I was glad that the next disc they tried worked (and I was also glad that the one I brought back to exchange didn’t work on their player, so they didn’t think I was just incompetent and didn’t know how to work a DVD player). After that, we stopped for a few minutes at my new favorite store at the mall, Maurice’s, where I got a new shirt on a half-off sale with birthday money. I am planning on saving most of my birthday money to get some new clothes that fit after I have this baby and get closer to a normal size again, but I couldn’t resist getting a couple shirts this month, since they were so cute and on a good sale, and I haven’t bought clothes for myself in so long. Plus they should fit after the pregnancy, so that will work out too. After the mall we headed to Costco, with promises from the boys that they wouldn’t fight, whine, or be wild at all if I let them try each of the sample foods in the store for lunch. It worked out well – the boys started whining once, and I reminded them of their promise that they wouldn’t whine at all or else we wouldn’t come back to Costco for lunch again, and they did really well after that. And it was one of the rare days that the West Valley Costco happened to have lots of samples (for some reason this store doesn’t often have very many samples), and by the time we got through the whole store we had picked up a few items we needed, the boys had tried every sample except for the diet drinks that I didn’t let them try, the boys and I were all pretty full for lunch, I did something that I rarely do – I bought one of the foods that we tried a sample for so we could have it for dinner that night, and the boys were all tired enough to go right down for naps when we got home. It turned out to be a nice day out.
When we got home that afternoon I put all the boys except Kolby down for a late nap, and then Kolby practiced his piano songs before his lesson (it got switched to Friday this week because his teacher’s daughter had been sick earlier in the week). Grandma made it home from her appointment just in time for me to go with Kolby to his lesson. Before Grandma got home, Kolby was kind of concerned how he was going to go to his lesson, and he was asking me if I was going to get a babysitter to come stay with his brothers while we went. I told him that if Grandma didn’t get home in time, I would have to stay home. And before I explained the plan to him, he was quite concerned that someone might take him if he walked to his teacher’s house alone. I explained that if he had to go without me I would stand outside and watch him walk the entire way until he was inside his teacher’s house, and I would call and make sure his teacher would watch him the entire way home until he got back into our house afterwards (his teacher lives a couple houses down from us). Fortunately, Grandma got home before we had to leave, because I do like to go along and listen to him at his lessons. On our walk over to the lesson, he said, “Mommy, if I had to walk alone and you were watching me and someone tried to take me, you would run and get me, huh?” I assured him that I would run as fast as I could and I wouldn’t let anyone take him. He didn’t seem too worried about being kidnapped, he just wanted to know all the details of the plans to stay safe. I wondered about how I have done with teaching him about safety – you don’t want your kid going around being worried about being kidnapped all the time, but at the same time you want them to be aware of danger and avoid dangerous situations. I think Kolby is aware of danger, and he obviously thinks about making plans to avoid it, but I don’t think he’s going around being scared all the time. Things like that are hard to figure out just how much information you should give a small child. I guess that’s how it goes, being a parent, especially with your first child. There are a couple other things I’ve been thinking about lately with how best to teach Kolby at this age. Like, over Christmas, we took Kolby and Eli to see a movie, and before the previews started there were commercials playing in the theater that were meant to recruit people for the army. They showed soldiers shooting guns, and Kolby quickly said, “Those are the bad guys, huh?” How do you explain to a 5-year-old that, even though Mommy has always said that guns are unsafe and people who shoot other people are bad and that we don’t play like we are shooting our brothers or friends, that the people on these commercials who you see shooting people are really the good guys? I told him that they were soldiers, and that sometimes when there is a war soldiers are needed to protect the good people against bad guys (although I don’t really believe that there is really one good side and one bad side in most wars). But it’s hard to start explaining the grey areas, when a year or two ago everything Kolby asked me about would be black and white – Mommy, do good guys shoot people with guns? No, Kolby, people who shoot other people are bad guys and we don’t use guns because they hurt people. I guess there will be more and more of these “grey areas” that I have to continue explaining as Kolby and the other boys keep getting older. There was another one the other day, although less serious than bad guys with guns vs. soldiers protecting innocent people. A couple weeks ago Kolby was invited to spend the night at the Barker’s house. The Barkers have four girls, ages 10, 8, 5, and 3, and they were also having the Adamson’s two girls over that night too. I figured that since Kolby was just 5 he was fine sleeping over with girls there, because it’s all innocent at this age and he doesn’t really see any difference between his friends who are boys and his friends who are girls. Once the kids are older, I don’t plan on letting them sleep over with girls, but now while they are so young I don’t see any harm in it. So, then a few days later we were at another friends’ house for dinner and after Kolby and his friend, Kaitlyn, were playing they both came and asked us if they could have a sleep over. Kaitlyn’s mom told me that she had always thought her daughter would be about 10 years old before she had to tell her she couldn’t sleep over with boys, not as young as 6 years old. So, how do you explain to your 5 year old son that it’s ok to sleep over with some of his friends who are girls, but not with others? Luckily he didn’t press the question of a sleep over with Kaitlyn that night and I didn’t have to discuss it with him – I didn’t really want to tell him that Kaitlyn’s mom didn’t want her to sleep over with boys, because I didn’t want him to start thinking about why that would be. I just want him to stay as innocent as he is now about his little friends forever. I know that won’t happen, but he doesn’t need to be thinking about those kinds of things at age 5.
Well, this post is getting so long that anyone who might have actually started reading it in the first place has probably quit by now, but oh well. I guess I’ll finish off telling about our weekend. On Saturday morning I made 6 loaves of bread while Michael worked on laundry, and then I went over to the church for a visiting teaching interview. After we put the boys down for a short nap (I don’t know if any of them actually went to sleep, and we finally just decided to get them all up because they were all awake and making noise in their rooms after a little while), we got ready and headed to Lehi to visit Mel and Christian and Annette. We had a good afternoon and evening at their house, eating dinner and playing a game of Life. We headed home later that night, and all four boys were asleep in the car before we got home. When we got home, we learned that my mom had been hit by a snowboarder from behind while skiing in Mammoth and her arm had a bad spiral fracture. It sounds good that she probably won’t need a surgery, but she is in a lot of pain and it’s a bad break. Trying to make her feel better, I told her I could Photoshop a picture for her with her skiing off some cool snowy cliff, and she could show that to people as an explanation of her injury when she gets back to San Diego in a few days. Then I came up with an even better idea: a picture of her skiing off a cliff and being hit from behind by a snowboarder mid-air. Hopefully she can recover quickly, because it sounds like this is very painful for her.
So, today we went to church. I reminded the boys before we went inside of one of our family goals, to be reverent in church. And when I said that, Kolby said, “And Mommy and Daddy need to not yell,” (that was another one of our family goals, that the boys and the parents would not yell at each other), so I told him that we would remind them to be reverent in church and they could remind us not to yell. I’m glad to say that Kolby, Eli, and Camden all did quite well with being reverent in church today (and Michael and I did well at not yelling in church today too). Isaac had several loud crying episodes (so that he could leave the meetings at church today), but overall he did pretty well. I took him out for a while during the sacrament meeting (and he was happy in the hallway, as long as we didn’t go too close to the chapel doors), but he did last through the entire Sunday school class, and then he fell asleep in my arms for most of my Relief Society class. So that went pretty well too. . . . so, Michael just turned to me and asked if I was still writing the blog. When I said yes, he said, “No one’s going to read it [because it’s so long].” I told him it’s not for anyone else, just for us. Anyways, I know it’s long, but oh well. . . . So, at church a lady said that her granddaughter was moving in with her and brought her furniture, so she had a couch and two hide-a-bed couches that she wanted to give away because she didn’t have enough room for them. So, after church I called to ask if they were still available, and she asked us to come over and take a look at them this afternoon. We went over and told her we would take one of the hide-a-bed couches, and then when our home teachers came over later in the afternoon they went with Michael to help pick it up from her house. This was perfect timing, since we had been thinking the last couple days that we needed to switch the boys’ rooms around, because Camden has been waking Isaac up at naptime a lot lately and not letting him sleep, but we didn’t know how to do that since Kolby and Eli share a bed, and we didn’t have an extra bed for one of them to move into the other room. So, this little couch was perfect – we are going to keep it as a couch, because opening it up as a bed takes up too much space in the bedroom downstairs. Kolby had already willingly volunteered to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor in Camden’s room, but we thought this was a good alternative. He now has his own little couch, “his new bed,” in Camden’s room. Our home teachers helped Michael move the couch downstairs, move the table and filing cabinet into the storage room so there would be more room down there, and move Eli’s bed and dresser over to make space for Isaac’s playpen in Eli’s room. We’ll see how the new arrangement works out. We figured that Kolby would be a good match for Camden, because Kolby will continue to nap on our bed during the daytime, so Camden can be alone and not have anyone to wake up during naps (and so he might actually end up sleeping more in naps too, if we’re lucky), and then at night Camden does pretty well anyways and Kolby will also hopefully be able to help a little with Camden not doing certain undesirable actions that have started to become habits lately when he wakes up in the morning or from naps, such as taking off his clothes and sometimes his diaper or climbing out of the crib and turning the table upside down. Also, we hope that Eli and Isaac do well together – as long as Eli follows my instructions not to get Isaac out of his bed without my permission, I think it will all work out well. We’ll see. But it was so nice of that lady from the ward to give us that couch (and such perfect timing), and we were really thankful to our home teachers for their help with lifting all that furniture – I definitely couldn’t have done it at this point.
Well, that’s about it for our week. Tomorrow it is nice that we will have a relaxing day, since the boys don’t have preschool because it is Martin Luther King Jr. day (although Michael doesn’t get the day off work, of course). Also this week I have another doctor’s appointment (I hit 37 weeks tomorrow, (which, for all of you non-pregnant people, means that the baby will be considered full-term and they wouldn’t try to delay labor at all if he started to come anytime after then). And Isaac has his 15-month check-up this week too. So, we’ll keep everyone up to date on any changes with this pregnancy, and hopefully it won’t be too many weeks before we get to start posting pictures of our little Courtland.
27 July 2008
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.
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.
24 June 2008
Cousins!
It has been lots of fun to visit with some of Michael’s family members since we’ve been here in Utah, especially for the boys to have fun with their cousins, Jaden and Kyler.
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08 June 2008
Getting Settled In
A lot has gone on for us this week. We arrived in Salt Lake on Tuesday, and on Thursday Mel and Christian came to help us unpack the furniture and heaviest boxes from the pod. That didn’t take too long, and then we got to enjoy playing some games with them while the boys ran around together and had lots of fun. We worked hard and got everything organized and unpacked, which feels nice. Now our biggest thing we have to get done is to find a car for Michael, since we ended up getting rid of his old one in Milwaukee.
This week we’ve had lots of fun getting settled in here. The boys have been great – they love having all the extra space to roam around, and they have actually been very good at playing or reading downstairs and entertaining themselves without getting into trouble while we’ve spent a lot of time unpacking. Hopefully that continues.
The day after we moved in a nice girl from church, Emily Harker, who lives just a couple houses away invited us over and we had fun getting to know her and letting our kids play together. The boys were especially excited that their new friends have a tree house and several kittens. We’ve also had a chance to get together with Faith and Tyce a couple times this week, since Faith’s sister lives not far from here. And yesterday afternoon I went down to Lehi to pick up Mel, then to Provo to pick up Annette, and we drove to Spanish Fork for Jenn’s baby shower. Although I made us quite late by getting lost on the way to Mel’s house, we had fun at the shower, and enjoyed seeing Jenn and Alan’s apartment afterwards too.
Church today was a little hard for me. We are so excited and grateful to be here staying with my grandma, but I have been thinking that I would have to try hard to make friends and not just be ‘that family who’s visiting for a while.’ So, in this ward they have the classes first and sacrament meeting last, and after I dropped Kolby off at his primary class I went into Relief Society. A nice lady who had a three-year-old girl in Eli and Camden’s nursery class had introduced herself to me, and when I walked in I sat near her. Since I came in just after class started because Kolby took a little longer to drop off since he was in a new class, she pointed out that I was new and they asked me to introduce myself. I stood up and said that I was Stephanie Bradshaw and that we had just moved from Milwaukee. And then I was so disappointed when they said, ‘Oh, you’re Faun’s granddaughter, the one with all the little boys, you’re just staying for the summer, right?’ I told them that we were here for a year. And I know that it doesn’t really matter, but I felt pretty bad -- just don’t want to be a temporary visitor that no one will take the time to really get to know because it’s not worth it to invest that much effort in building a friendship with someone who is just going to leave. I felt like there were a few younger women in the ward around my age, but other than the lady I sat next to and Emily (who is Camden and Eli’s nursery teacher, so she wasn’t in the class anyways), no one really talked to me at all except a couple people saying “Hi, we’re glad to have you here,’ as they walked by. And there was a nice lady named Diane who came and talked to Michael and I out in the hallway during sacrament meeting while we each had our kids out there (Who ever came up with the idea to have sacrament meeting last? They must not have had babies or toddlers!) I said a prayer that I would feel comforted, and I did feel better. I guess I’ll just have to really go out of my way to try to make friends. I suppose that friends are so important to me because since we got married we haven’t really lived close to family, especially for the last four years in Milwaukee, so we depended on our friends so much for all the things we would normally have depended on family for, and they really meant a lot to us, so I can’t stand the idea of putting my life on hold for a year until we get into our own place again to make good friends again. I guess I’ll just have to do something about that then, huh?
Hope you’re all doing well. We are really liking it here so far – it’s been great to be with Grandma and see some of Michael’s siblings again. And the rain of last week has let up for some nice, sunny days lately. The boys and I walked over to the school – about 2 houses down the street from us, and they played on the playgrounds and got excited that they would go there for preschool in the fall. This week we are looking forward to a fun trip with Tyce and Faith to Tyce’s grandmother’s cabin at Bear Lake. And Michael will be starting his orientation on the 16th, and that week there will be a few fun activities that our family can go too, so I am looking forward to going there and meeting the other residents and their families too.
14 March 2008
Video Clips from Our Trip to Boise in December
And now it’s time to play catch-up on posting videos of the kids. These are all the ones from our trip to Boise in December (except for the ones of the boys playing with Michael and Mindy that I posted last month). It was fun to watch these clips as I got ready to post them, especially since I hadn’t even seen all of the ones before that Annette took. These videos are of Isaac smiling, Eli climbing up Mindy’s legs and flipping over, Dalin teaching the boys how to do push-ups, and Camden at the Discovery center in Boise. Enjoy!
30 January 2008
Utah
So, I haven't really kept up on posting photos to the blog since we've been out of town for so long. Tomorrow we are leaving San Diego, so I figured it's about time that I at least posted the photos from before we even arrived in San Diego. Here are some from our short stay in Utah for Jennie and Dalin's wedding. It was fun to see family while we were there -- especially Mel & Christian and Alan & Jenn (Michael's siblings and their spouses who live in Utah). It was fun for me to finally meet Jenn and for all of us to get to hang out with all the siblings. Kolby especially had fun palling around with his cousin, Jaden. Too bad we didn't get to spend more time with them. Here are a few photos from Jennie's wedding luncheon on January 4th.
Michael, Kolby, Camden, Stephanie, Alan, Jenn, and Jaden at the luncheon:
Jennie and her bridesmaids:
Kyler and Isaac had lots of fun napping together
(these little cousins were born only a few days apart):
Eli had fun hiding under a table:
Camden and his new best friend, Aunt Jenn, had fun walking
in circles around the gym after he was done eating:
09 January 2008
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
We are finally in San Diego. We've been here a couple of days and had lots of fun. Besides my parents and brothers who live here in San Diego, we have also been able to visit with my sister Michelle and her husband Jake who returned to their home in Portland on Sunday, my sister Jennifer who just returned to school in Hawaii yesterday, and Grandma Faun who returned to her home in Salt Lake yesterday too. It was fun to have a little while while we were all here at the same time. Michael has been gone on interviews since early Sunday morning, and will continue to have interview trips through the end of next week, and then he will only have a couple more trips after that later on in the month.
I thought I'd take a few minutes now while the boys are down for their naps to post some photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas day.
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All of us with our snowman that Kolby and Eli named 'Frosty.'.jpg)
Jennie's fiancé, Dalin, and his parents came over Christmas Eve with little gifts for everyone. Dalin's father came dressed as Santa just for our boys. Afterwards the boys watched from the window as they left and Kolby asked, "Santa has a car?"
Isaac and Daddy relaxing:
Daddy reading the Christmas pop-up books to the boys on the night of.jpg)
The boys with their aunts getting ready to act out the.jpg)
Acting out the nativity -- Michael and I played Mary and Joseph and Isaac was baby Jesus. Kolby and Eli made very cute wise men and Camden was a shepherd:
Kolby left cookies and milk and a letter for Santa and carrots for his reindeer.
Michael and his sisters with the boys waiting to come upstairs to
The boys opening their gifts from Santa on Christmas morning (at the Bradshaw's house, they open gifts from Santa in the living room when they get up in the morning, and then after eating breakfast they open gifts from the family members around the Christmas tree):
Eli, Stephanie, and Michael opening gifts. (This gift was a water filter.JPG)
Camden opening his gift from Kolby and Eli. (This year we decided to start having the kids pick out a little gift for each other -- we hadn't really done this in the past, but now they are old enough to get the idea and it was fun for them to choose gifts for each other at the dollar store):
Kolby showing us the Boggle Jr. game he got:
The whole family in front of the Christmas tree.
Camden playing with one of Isaac's gifts:+--+edited.JPG)
Smiles from Kolby:.jpg)
Mommy and Isaac:
Merry Christmas, Eli:.jpg)
I thought I'd take a few minutes now while the boys are down for their naps to post some photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas day.
The whole family playing in the snow on Christmas Eve:
Isaac's first time out in the snow:
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Camden loved the snow until he eventually dropped his mittens and his hands got wet and cold. But Michael and I were surprised at how long he lasted before he got cold and had to go inside:
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Kolby in the snow:
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Eli with a snowball:
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All of us with our snowman that Kolby and Eli named 'Frosty.'
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Jennie's fiancé, Dalin, and his parents came over Christmas Eve with little gifts for everyone. Dalin's father came dressed as Santa just for our boys. Afterwards the boys watched from the window as they left and Kolby asked, "Santa has a car?"
Isaac and Daddy relaxing:
Daddy reading the Christmas pop-up books to the boys on the night of
Christmas Eve -- a Chidester family tradition:
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The boys with their aunts getting ready to act out the
nativity story -- a Bradshaw family tradition:
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Acting out the nativity -- Michael and I played Mary and Joseph and Isaac was baby Jesus. Kolby and Eli made very cute wise men and Camden was a shepherd:
Kolby left cookies and milk and a letter for Santa and carrots for his reindeer.
It's fun that Kolby is getting to be old enough to have fun with the idea of Santa Claus:
Michael and his sisters with the boys waiting to come upstairs to
open gifts on Christmas morning:
The boys opening their gifts from Santa on Christmas morning (at the Bradshaw's house, they open gifts from Santa in the living room when they get up in the morning, and then after eating breakfast they open gifts from the family members around the Christmas tree):
Eli, Stephanie, and Michael opening gifts. (This gift was a water filter
that we asked for for our 72-hour emergency kit):
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Camden opening his gift from Kolby and Eli. (This year we decided to start having the kids pick out a little gift for each other -- we hadn't really done this in the past, but now they are old enough to get the idea and it was fun for them to choose gifts for each other at the dollar store):
Kolby showing us the Boggle Jr. game he got:
The whole family in front of the Christmas tree.
(Isaac finally woke up and joined us just before we finished opening gifts):
Camden playing with one of Isaac's gifts:
+--+edited.JPG)
Smiles from Kolby:
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Mommy and Isaac:
Merry Christmas, Eli:
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