Pinewood Derby

What a fun night! We spent the evening at the church enjoying fast cars and popcorn. :) The boys were all so excited about their cars, but if you have ever been to a derby you know they are nothing compared to the fathers! They were hilarious! Brandon had a really good time working with Ben and getting his car ready for the races tonight. Ben did the cutting, but Brandon designed, sanded (some), and painted his car. He won one race and that was pretty exciting. He didn't place in the top 4, but he got the special and most important award--the Sportsmanship Award. I'm proud to be his mom. :)

His troop sang a cub scout song before the races. It was cute.

Here's Brandon's car. Yes, the driver is driving backward. Brandon thought this was great! He also won the award for most courageous because of this. It must take a lot of guts to drive backward. ;)

The track!

Last minute preps by some of the dads. Ben was late getting there from work so he wasn't in on all this stuff. It was pretty funny to watch all the dads. The boys were off running around and the dads were doing all the work.Here's Brandon weighing his car. It couldn't weigh more than 5 oz. Brandon's was like 4.8 oz or something so we were good (after hot-gluing pennies to the bottom).

Brandon's car getting ready to race. It's the one in the middle.

Here he is receiving his Sportsmanship award!

Congratulations Brandon! I'm so proud of you!

A Mighty Prophet, A Mighty Man

President Gordon B. Hinckley

1920-2008

I was so sad to hear of our prophet's death last night. I was glad to hear that he was surrounded by his family and I know he was ready to be reunited with his sweet wife again. Happy day for him!

He was a mighty man in so many ways. He served in the church for so many, many years. He has been the prophet my children have grown up with. I told them in the car this morning on the way to school. They were sad and quiet. I'm glad they know him and hopefully will always remember him. He was so genuine when he spoke. It always felt like he was speaking right to you and letting you know how much you were loved, even though he was speaking to millions of people. He had the best sense of humor. I always loved hearing him speak.

I was closest to him in real life when I went to Southern Utah University. I sang in the Institute choir and he had come for some special ceremony and we were to sing. It was held in the large sports venue. We got to stand on bleachers just behind him and the other speakers. When he walked in with his sweet precious wife they were holding hands and they both just glowed. What happiness and love shown from their persons. It was a special time and it was another time that the spirit bore witness to me that he was the prophet on the earth to lead and guide us. I will always remember him.

This slide show presentation on BYU's website is very sweet.

http://photo.byu.edu/video.php?cat1=Slide%20Shows&cat2=General&cat3=2008&cat4=Hinckley%20Tribute

Teeth and Sundays

Those two subjects go together, don't they? :) Last night Megan lost her first tooth! It was pretty exciting. We walked in to the ward chili cook-off (in which Ben placed third with his yummy chili) and a couple minutes later here she comes with her tooth out! She was thrilled. It wasn't bleeding or anything so it was definitely ready. She got her first dollar from the tooth fairy so it was a fun morning (thankfully, the tooth fairy remembered! She doesn't have the greatest record with our family...)

So here are our toothless girls. Kate lost her two top middle teeth last summer and then lost the one to the right. Now the one to the left is about to fall out and there aren't any new ones in sight. She has quite the whole in her mouth.

This is a cute one of Carli when we were outside playing yesterday. Nice messy face and all. :) Ok, now on to Sunday--today. Ben was not feeling well at all this morning. Usually I would leave Carli home with him so I don't have to deal with all 4 kids during Sacrament meeting by myself. However, he was down and out so I decided I would bite the bullet and just take them all with me and just pray it didn't turn into disaster (even with both of us there it usually turns into this). We walked in and I chose a side bench (so I could corral them in) toward the back so it would be a somewhat easy exit if I had to leave.

As soon as we sat down I noticed the lady in the next row back take one look at us and get her things and move (with her sister and her neice). I was half thinking, "Well, at least we won't bother them since they obviously think we will" and the other half thinking "How completely rude." Did she not think I would notice or did she hope I noticed?

I'm just not sure how to take this or feel about this. I'm actually pretty put-off that she would get up and move. There was one other occasion when we were sitting in front of her that she got so put out by us that in the middle of sacrament meeting she got up and moved to the middle.

Ok, usually sacrament meeting is a nightmare for us. Carli is now refusing to sit still and does not understand "being quiet" yet. Brandon would be up and down and talking and crawling under the benches and asking for things to do, but not wanting to do anything we suggested. Kate would have a sour attitude and fight with Megan and never be happy with anything there was to do in the bag of activities. Megan usually is humming or whining and also complaining, loudly. Yes, we have had a hard time controlling our children in sacrament meeting. Yes, I usually end up in the hallway with Carli and then there was that fiasco in November when Ben and I were speaking and I was up there taking my turn, Ben had to take Carli out, and the girls proceeded to come up to the pulpit and play around. Just thinking about it makes me want to scream right now.

Fast forward to today. I get in there and sit down with the kids and this lady up and moves. Whatever. I'm still praying that I can just get through sacrament meeting (actually ward conference so all the stake people are there). We get through the sacrament and everything has been smooth. The girls are coloring quietly (I had new coloring books so that probably helped a ton--but they actually shared and colored together), Brandon is doing origami, and Carli is coloring/playing with little dolls and looking at the hymn book. Ten more minutes go by, the youth speaker has finished and we're still doing great! Musical number comes and almost is at the end when Carli gets upset. The room is quiet enough to hear a pin drop besides the beautiful singing (mom and 2 daughters--they sang so perfectly together) and Carli starts getting loud and doesn't want to sit. I get up and walk out with her. I am freaking out slightly over what my other children are doing with mom not sitting next to them. I took one walk around the building with Carli and decided I had to go back in. The kids were still in there quietly coloring and doing origami! I wanted to kiss them all right then. Amazingly, we made it through the rest of sacrament meeting without so much as a shush to the kids. They were SOOOO great! Kate and Megan even had to go out to the bathroom and came right back in very reverently. I was so proud of them. Brandon made some cool origame projects, too!

Wow, I was just over the moon that I made it through all by myself! I almost feel like I could do anything now. Brandon is just doing so well. The girls were on their best behavior and Carli was a mellowed version of the usual. What a blessing today was from Heavenly Father. It was simply amazing how smoothly everything went today!!! So :P to that lady who moved. My kids were great today. Maybe I'll sit by her again next week and make her move again...am I terrible?

I found Brandon pics!

I didn't scroll down far enough in the folder I was looking in, but tonight I was uploading new pictures onto my digital frame (my favorite thing ever!) and found these! Brandon got lots of Lego sets for Christmas. He did them all Christmas day, but they got thrown by the wayside a bit and last week he did them all over again. He loves it! He was so proud he wanted me to take pictures of him with all of his creations. Here's my little man.

I found this one of Carli, too. I was making chili last week and she decided to come help me. She pushed the chair over all by herself and climbed on up there. She was pretty darn proud of herself. :) I need to get her a little chef's hat like Megan!

Just some fun pics

Here are a few fun pictures from the past few weeks. Enjoy!

Megan taking Carli for a ride in her new bike. Megan pedals and Carli sits in the little basket in the back. She loves it!A couple weeks ago it was actually warm enough to go out and ride bikes. Wouldn't even think of it right now, though. Too cold!!!
Megan zooming around on the scooter.
Carli in her fuzzy pink hoodie NaNa gave all the girls for Christmas.

Get a load of that outfit. ;) I have no pictures of Brandon! I'll have to work on that. He doesn't much enjoy having his picture taken. I can say he is a changed kid these days. Only great reports coming from school! YAY! Sunday I was substituting for Kate's teacher so I was in sharing and singing time. Before Brandon could not even sit in his chair for 5 minutes. He actually sat IN his chair for the entire time! He usually plays with his scriptures and causes a disturbance, but he sat quietly with them on his lap and didn't play around once. WOW! He's still happy and doing the things he loves, but he has simply settled down. Prayers answered here!

New baby! :)

Ha, ha--not mine, but close! My sweet cousin, Stephanie, and her hubby Richard welcomed their little miracle baby into the world yesterday. She is named Eliza and is just the most precious little baby. She was about 3 1/2 weeks early and weighed in at 6 lbs 4 oz and 17.5" long. I got to go see her today and just hold and cuddle this little bundle of love. I keep using the word little, but she really is! Isn't she adorable?!

Birthday Bash

We celebrated Carli's birthday last night. She still has a lingering cough and runny nose from being sick over the weekend, but I think she still had fun. However, she started a small coughing fit as we were singing Happy Birthday and had to move the cake away a bit so she wouldn't cough all over it. :) We invited some friends over to help celebrate. We had pizza and cake and everyone had fun. It was nice to have a small family and friend party instead of the big blowouts that the older kids want with tons of kids, treats bags, activities, etc. :)

Here are some pics from the party. I let Carli open a gift from Grandma in the morning so she would have a cute outfit to wear for her special day. Then it's time for the party. We did a heart theme for the party with the heart cake, plates and napkins in a heart pattern, too. I just thought they were fun and cute for a birthday party and easy to get since all the Valentine's Day stuff is in the stores. When we were getting everything ready for the party Kate asked why I did hearts for the party. I said I just thought they were cute! She said, "Isn't it because her middle name is Hart?!" LOL! I totally hadn't thought of that. Duh... Yes, her middle name is Hart (a family name) so the theme was perfect!!!

She loves pizza!

She has no clue why there is fire on her cake. ;) I made a cupcake cake for her. It was so easy and so fun! I love how it turned out!!!

Mommy and Carli

She loves the Baby Einstein videos. She got Baby DaVinci last night.

Grandma and Grandpa sent her this fun fridge magnet set. She loves it!

She got a double doll stroller for the twin babies she got from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. Our friends brought her baby bottles so she can "feed" her babies.

We got her a new bike. She always wants to ride the big kids' bikes so she is excited to have her own finally!

My baby is 2!

Yep, 2 years ago today Carli came into the world surprisingly 4+ weeks early weighing in at a whopping 5 lbs. 15 oz. She was the tiniest little thing and sooo sweet. What a crazy weekend it was! Friday evening we were at the stake center at Ben's basketball game. By the end my back was starting to ache, but I figured it was just because I had been sitting for a while. After we got home we put the kids to bed and Ben and I tried to watch a movie. I tried every position to get comfortable. The back ache would not let up. I tried going to bed. I laid there for a while, but nothing was changing. By 1:30 Ben was getting pretty nervous--understandably. Brandon had taken about 27 hours to get here, but Kate and Megan came flying into the world in 5 and 3 1/2 hours, respectively, from the first felt contraction to delivery. This one could have been a little scary!!! Luckily, it didn't look like it was going to be an extreme birth in that I had been feeling yucky for several hours.

Anyway, he finally talked me into calling my good friend, Kirsten, to come over so we could head over to the hospital. I do not like inconveniencing people and in the middle of the night?! Of course, she didn't mind and came right over at 2 am. When we got to the hospital I was only at 2 cm. :( So, we walked around for quite a while and slowly made progress. By 6:30 or so I was still only at a 4 so it wasn't going at quickly as we had anticipated. We spent time watching the Bond marathon that was on TV. However, 2 hours later I was really hurting and telling them I needed to push. No meds for this mama (that's a whole other story), but I was tempted this time. By the time it's really hurting, though, I'm already close enough to be almost finished so it's too late and I know I can get through that last little bit. The nurse was so great. She had a feeling once I got to a certain point it was going to go very quickly so she had been getting things ready. When I was ready she was ready! The on-call doctor (my doctor had disappeared upstairs to do rounds and they didn't know where he was) came rushing in and Carli was born after a few pushes at 8:53 am. My doc came in about 10 minutes later and she was already here! He thought he had plenty of time to make it back. Ha, ha.

She was here and she was perfect! We had debated calling parents before not knowing if we were going to be sent home earlier or not so since she arrived we figured it was time. What a shocker it was for them to get this call today! It was fun telling them the story. My mom hopped on a plane that afternoon and flew down. My inlaws were at a Mary Kay leadership meeting when we called. She was so excited to tell everyone around her that her newest granddaughter was here. We were not ready! We didn't have a stroller or new car seat yet. We didn't even have any diapers! We thought we still had another month or at least 3 weeks before she came. When My baby shower was scheduled for 2 weeks later so we ended up having a Welcome Baby shower instead. It was so fun! I felt great and Carli was doing perfectly! She was able to come home with me Monday afternoon. They had to do all the preemie tests on her since she was more than 4 weeks early (only by 2 days). She passed them all and was ready to go home! It was so wonderful having my mom there already. She is too incredible for words. How blessed I am to have such a mom in my life!

Right after she was born.

Daddy with Carli All four kiddos.

Sweet baby sleeping .
She was just sooo tiny! Still little. That Boppy pillow looks huge!
Blessing day. My aunt made this gorgeous dress when her first daughter was born about 35 years ago. I wore this dress when I was blessed and all my girls have, too. The whole fam on Carli's blessing day.She has the most beautiful blue eyes!
What a sweetheart she is. We are so glad she is part of our family! She brightens our days with her smiles and hugs. I can't believe she's already 2!