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Our family had a great Halloween. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids. I also added yet another slide show of Halloween. Ariana was a butterfly. Bria was a “princess-butterfly-robot-fairy” at least according to her. Cole was a tiger complete with ROARS. The weather he was fabulous, the only thing that stopped the kids from doing more trick-or-treating was that Mom and Dad were tired. We went to two costumes parties before Halloween, both of which Cole worse his costume the whole time with the head up and we didn’t get any pictures. Of course on Halloween he was not into the hood and kept it on for one picture that he wouldn’t even look at the camera. He was super cute anyway. Cole loved his “candy” and would even yell “trick-treat”. The girls have been very possessive of their candy and Mom has gotten in trouble a coupe of times because she was caught with her hand in the bag.
If any of you ever wonder why our news entries are full of errors and hard to follow sometimes you should see what I have to go through to type these up. Cole is climbing up and over me and then cuddling for a minute turning around, trying to type and then starting all over again.
The pregnancy is still going ok. Hips are still out of alignment even with help from a chiropractor. While it is better, it is still far from comfortable. Both Bria and Cole are sad about how much less I am willing to hold them, but they’re killing me. Here’s hoping the next 16ish weeks go fast. Apparently, people think I’m “finally showing”. Austin says I’ve been showing for a while, which I agree with. I always feel like people must think I am always chubby to say I am now only barely showing at almost 24 weeks. Ok, not really. I have finally started to gain weight, which is good, but I still don’t like to see those numbers go up on the scale. Here's a picture of Ariana and I showing off our tummies 6 weeks ago. I was 18 weeks pregnant.
Well, it's been 6 (and a half crazy years) since the first pregnancy, it's pregnancy number 5, child number 4 and girl number 3. How's that for a nifty pattern? She's looking great and the ultrasound tech even took a 3D picture for us even though we didn't pay for one or anything. She looks so precious. Bria is beyond excited and Austin and I can't wait to have another little girl. Ariana still doesn't know. Cole probably won't figure out for a couple of years that he'd rather have a brother! The only problem we're going to run into is her name. Good thing we have over 4 months to decide. We've never fought about names, but it might happen. LOL! Not really. Here are a few pic of her and the 3D one is on our main page.
Apparently, my hips are out of alignment which is why I can hardly walk and also is what I suffered from the last two months of Cole's pregnancy. I didn't know it was anything I could get fixed last time, but I am glad it is since I'm just half way through pregnancy and can't walk without tons of pain. I feel like a car needing to have my "alignment fixed". I've stopped losing weight, which is good because at 16 weeks I was still losing weight. It's still a chore to eat, but I am keeping most things down. I am still so tired all the time. I don't think this will go away for 20 plus years if ever!!!
Everything else on the Hammer front is going well. Ariana, Bria and I just celebrated our birthdays a few weeks ago and we had way too much cake and treats around the house. Cole is adding more and more word to his vocab and he is getting cuter every day if that is even possible. His fits are getting more and more "impressive" too. Ariana is becoming a math wiz and is figuring out more multiplication every day and Bria is starting to figure out how to write more letters and words everyday.
I added a new slideshow of some September and late August pictures. I added a few of our new couches for Austin's mom, who hasn't seen them. I also added a picture of the paint and couch that we've put in the playroom; the sun made the picture turn out not so good.
Today I found the girls cuddling in one chair together watching TV and had to take a picture. It was really cute to see. They do get along for the most part, just not that close to each other. It's usually "Mom Ariana/Bria is touching me". So it was really sweet to see. There are first day of school pictures. And some pictures showing how grown-up Cole's becoming. He's blowing bubbles (at least attempting), climbing the play wall in the backyard, and helping me clean windows.
Too much has happened all summer and the website has taken the back seat. We’ve gone to the zoo; the girls had their end-of-the-year gymnastic performances; we went to Thanksgiving Point; we went to the pool; we vacationed on the Oregon Coast and in Beaverton; and lots of other things this summer. I will put some more pictures up to show all the different things that we’ve done.
We did get the trampoline fixed and the kids have enjoyed it all summer. It’s in a safer place where it shouldn’t blow away, but we still are going to get some stakes for it. We have decided not to put it in the ground, because Austin isn’t really too into digging a huge hole by himself. Plus we don’t really want it somewhere permanently. And we did find out it was because of our mishap that our neighbors put their trampoline in the ground.
Ariana is starting school next week, and we all can’t wait. Also gymnastics starts back up next week. Ariana’s favorite hair-do this week is having me crimp it every day. It reminds me of pictures of me from the 80s with my perms!
Bria will probably start preschool in another two weeks if I can ever decide what we are going to do for her. Bria has also lost her Woof-woof about 5 times in the past two days, once for a very long 24 hours, found in a zipped-up purse in the very messy playroom. The whole day he was lost there was lots of spontaneous crying. That night neither Bria nor I was allowed to sleep through the night. Austin probably didn’t get to sleep either. You’d think today she would hold on to him better, but he’s gone missing twice today with full-blown waterworks both times. I think I might tie him to her!
Cole is finally talking, and I never thought it would happen! His favorite word lately is ‘don’t’. He’ll just be sitting somewhere and kinda whine/chant it. Today ‘apple’ was a new one. He doesn’t say ‘no’ much, but loves ‘don’t’. He’s still signing some, which really helps me to understand him. He discovered The Wiggles two weeks ago and loves the ‘go-gos’ all of the sudden. He didn’t watch TV at all before this. It’s nice to be able to have him watch a little something and give me a break.
The garden is looking nice and kinda out of control. We have one spot that is just overgrown with weeds. I took a lot of them out and found 4 tomato plants that decided to re-seed themselves in the spots we planted them last year. So we have LOTS of tomatoes. Some of our sunflowers have grown 10 feet tall. I can’t believe how huge they are.
Today is going a lot better than yesterday. This is what happened yesterday: I had four boxes full of kids clothes from about 10 feet up fall on me while I was trying to get summer clothes out for Bria. I had killer cramps all day. Ariana felt "like jumping on something". Girl language for "I wish we had our tramp and no one can play right now". And I found stinging nettle in the garden. I wasn't wearing gloves and didn't recognize it until it bit me. No idea where that came from. This is our third year with the garden in the same place and we've never had any.
Good News on the trampoline front: I just ordered the replacement parts and it isn't going to be near as much as we thought to replace it. The company surprisingly doesn't overcharge on the price. I was quite surprised to find out the cost. It was a forth of the price that another company was going to charge me. Luckily this other company didn't have the parts so I had to look else where.
Our neighbors just had a hole dug for their tramp, I wonder if it had something to do with our bad luck. After watching them yesterday Bria and Ariana have decided that is what we need to do with our trampoline when it is back together. The only problem is I don't think we can get any machinery in the backyard to get it done. I don't think Austin will want to dig a 13 foot wide and 3 foot deep hole by hand! I think we'll just get some anchors for it.
Other Good News, at least for me is that Cole has started calling me 'Mama' instead of 'this'. It is so nice! Yesterday when he woke up from his nap he started on and off to call me 'mama'. Today it seems like it is sticking. YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!! I'm not 'this' anymore!!
Oh and we bought some plants for the garden, we're just waiting for it to stop being windy and rainy and we'll get them planted today! Looks like it's clearing up right now!
We had a wind storm last night. Check out our photos to see what happened. The sad part is our was the only tramp out of all of our neighbors 5 out of six of us have tramps. The miracle is that nothing else and no one else was hurt by this. It tumbled over our fence in to one neighbors backyard, into another neighbor and then stopped in the street next to the neighbors house, our house isn't even on the street it was on. Austin just happened to peek out our window at the time of lift off. It missed another tramp and a really nice new swing set along with a couple trees and missed everyone's houses and cars!!
It also worked out really nicely that one of our neighbors house that it landed by looked out his window as we were starting to move the tramp (to see if his was still there) and saw us. So he helped us move it back to our house to where it wouldn't hurt anybody or anything.
Mom and Dad were really worried to tell the girls about the tramp. The first thing they did when they saw it was laugh. I guess when you don't have to worry about the money and time involved in fixing it it's not such a big deal!
Our family is doing great. We are very excited that we are starting to see the end of winter. Any day now I am sure it will snow, and we'll have to bundle up. We are enjoying the great weather while it lasts.
This winter everyone except the baby managed to get through without anything more serious than a cold. Cole got pneumonia. That wasn't too exciting at all to say the least. He also had an ear infection to go along with it. It took 4 days before his fever was below 100. Three weeks later he had a double ear infection, but thankfully now he is perfectly fine. He's pretty dinky. At his 15 month check up (last week) he was just 19 pounds, 7 ounces. He's a ton of fun and trouble. He is running everywhere and up and down the stairs like crazy, not to mention climbing up ladders everywhere we go. He can get just about everywhere at the playground. He keeps me on my toes.
Ariana is doing great and is a big help. She loves to take Cole down the slide whenever he climbs up those afore-mentioned ladders. We only had one bad incident involving the slide. We were at our neighbor's house, and Ariana had been taking Cole down each time he climbed up. Well, Bria decided to climb up the slide. Ariana yelled, "Move Bria" and then quickly went down. Well, I had two screaming kids. Of course, bowling for Bria was hardest on Cole, and he had a good bump on his head.
Bria is really into pretend play right now. It is hillarious to listen to. She loves to play with her toes in the car. They will all be different people and go to the store or wherever. It keeps her busy while in the car and keeps me entertained. The only problem is that she stops when she notices I am paying attention or laughing. She also LOVES the trampoline that we just got, and I think she could play on there for hours.
Besides staying very busy with the kids and all that they do and the house, I have stayed pretty busy scrap-booking this winter. The past week I have started to get busy back out in the yard trying to get ready to plant our garden and finish planting things in the flower beds. Later this week I will be painting upstairs. I think I have chosen a color for our loft and the kids' bathroom. Eventually I will make it to our poor white-walled master bedroom.
Austin works a lot and spends all his extra time with the kids and I. He's a great husband! Maybe he'll want to add something else to it when he reads this and corrects all my typos (hopefully).
Merry Christmas to everyone out there! Our family is doing great. Yesterday we celebrated Cole's first birthday at Chuck E Cheese. We really thought we were going because the girls like going there so much, but we found out that Cole thinks it is pretty cool too. He was the life of the party. He loved watching the scary robots on stage, loved the pizza, the rides, the birthday song, the birthday cake and he even ripped the wrapping paper on the his present. Cole is also walking around like crazy and signs a handful of words and says a handful of other words.
Bria is pretty funny lately with hot sauce. She will ask for a specific kind of Tabasco sauce. She is following in her father's foot steps. She is also loving gymnastics class and practices all over the house.
Ariana is loving school and is loving learning to read and just about anything to do with school. My only problem with school is that we have to be out the door with three small children by 8:15 in the morning and it's hard for me sometimes to drag myself out of bed. In the past few months we have been able to bring home for the weekend the class spider, Hairy, and the class rabbit, Snowy. I took pictures of both so that I have evidence that I am a nice mom.
I am still trying to finish off updating the website, so I am sorry for the look and feel of some of it. It's a work-in-progress and really isn't at the top of any of my lists.
We've been a busy family, and I really haven't had a lot of time to update things. I think I am going to give the whole website a makeover soon, though. Here goes:
#1 Austin got a new job! The short story is he wasn't really looking, he got a phone call, an interview, an offer, we went to the temple and prayed about it, and we decided it was the right thing to do. He started working at a company called Heritage Makers the middle of June. He helps develop the software there. They are a story booking company. I love to digital scrapbook, so it was pretty exciting for me when he started working there.
#2 The kids are getting so old. Bria and Ariana will be 3 and 5 within the month, and they have both been placing lots of orders for birthday presents and what they want at their birthday parties. Cole is 8-and-a-half months old. He can crawl everywhere, and just a week ago he made it all the way up my stairs. I have to say that he was a lot more excited about it than I was. He is trying to walk and his favorite word is "dada". Oh, he is sleeping better and weighs 16.5 pounds.
#3 We finished our backyard. I will post some pictures in the next few days. I would right now, but Ariana thinks she needs to play on the computer. It is so exciting to have grass and sprinklers as well as the fence and other things we have in the backyard.
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