Only 10 More Days To Go

I had my doctor appointment today. I'm dilated to a 3 so that's good...

I'm 38 weeks but my doctor said my uterus is measuring full term so I really could go into labor at any time. I just think that was her way of telling me I'm getting pretty fat! ha ha ha!

No matter what happens, at least I know I won't go past March 9th because my induction has already been scheduled for that day at 7:30am! Phew!!!

5 New Posts!

Check out my blog below for 5 new postings I just did. Sorry I'm such a blog slacker these days!

Pregnancy update: I have a doctor appointment tomorrow. Last week I was dilated to a 2+ but not effacing. Let's hope for some improvement tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

Side note: I have some amazing friends!! The past few weeks have been kind of rough because Parker has been under the weather and he's been extremely grumpy. My friends Natalie and Amy called this morning and asked if they could take Parker to the zoo, and I gladly obliged! They picked Parker up at 10am and brought him home at 3pm. I had lots of quiet time and it was the perfect remedy. Thank you so much Amy and Natalie, you will never quite understand how badly I needed that break!

Volcano Of Goodness

My friend Cathy Gilmore and I are working on a project, which includes baking over 100 cookies. Sam was begging me for some of those cookies tonight and I just had to keep telling him to "stop asking because the answer will still be "no"!"

Lucky for him, I had a little chocolate cookie dough left over so we wrapped the dough around some marshmallows and baked some cookies just for him. The marshmallows oozed out during the baking process and when Sam saw what they looked like he said "Oh, it's like a volcano of sweet goodness just for me!"



It's the simple things in life that excite Sam, that is one of the many reasons why I love him so much! Enjoy your volcanoes of goodness babe!

Ding Dong One Fish Is Dead

If you remember, after my nephew Aaron got married last August, Fern gave us 2 goldfish, which were part of the wedding decorations. Carson loved "no name" and "grandma" and excitedly had to show all his friends who came over to the house his awesome fish. I, on the other hand, would wake up every day with a little glimmer of hope in my heart, that one would be belly-up. Yes, I'm a mean mother, get over it.

Well, Sunday night after Shandy's birthday dinner, I found "no name" like this: (not for the fish-lover or faint of heart)


So long "no name" may you rest in peace in the bowels of my toilet.

The next morning Carson said "Hey, where is no name???" and I had to tell him what happened. For a second he looked like he was going to cry and then he got a funny boy-smile and said "ha ha, he went to the sewer!" And that was the end of that.

Happy Birthday Shandy!

It's been a big birthday week...we celebrated Shandy's birthday on Sunday. I'm really a dork because this is the only picture I have of the birthday girl! DUH!


It is always fun hanging out with the Clark's and Oram's and celebrating Shandy is a great excuse to eat, drink, and be merry! Happy Birthday Shandy, we love you so much and we're so glad you married Curtis!

Of course since there were 3 pregnant people in the same room, we had to get a picture. I'm being induced on March 9th, Nalani is due March 5th, and Kami is due in July. All three of us are having boys and Nalani and I are in a race to see who has their baby first! To be honest, every time I stand up I'm positive my water is going to break due to all the pain and pressure, but it never happens. I think I've pretty much reached the end of my rope with this pregancy. Everything hurts and no matter how hard I try to remain positive I just can't because I'm in so much pain. It will definitely be a happy day on March 9th!!


Curtis and Shandy had borrowed our Bassinet when Dexter was born. They brought it back to us on Sunday night and it was FILLED with fun things for little baby Sweet. I seriously couldn't believe how much stuff Shandy packed into the bassinet! Diapers, wipes, bibs, onesies, bottle brush, baby wash, crib sheets....That was a welcome site because once you have a baby the baby showers go away. :) Thanks you guys!!

Cindy's 50th Birthday Bash

Cindy, my sister-in-law, turned 50 this week so Fern put together a sweet (punny) party for her. Check out the spread of food! I think Fern was cooking/baking/preparing for at least a week. Amazing!!!




Fern always has great last-minute brainstorms and she came up with a doozy for Cindy. Around her living room she did a timeline of Cindy's life. She had pictures all over from various phases of Cindy's 50 years. Then she had a sheet of paper by those pictures for every year that Cindy has been alive and there were facts about Cindy during that year as well as facts about what was going on in the world during that time. It was awesome because it gave all the party go-ers something to look at and laugh at because we found some awesome pictures of Cindy!


Here are few pictures I donated to the cause:


Sorry Fern, I couldn't resist adding this picture. Don't be hatin'


I still hadn't met all of Sam's family when he proposed to me. So there was a big Sweet party at Antelope Island one day and we figured that would be a good thing to attend because then I could meet everyone. Sam was carefully describing all his family members to me to ease my nerves and he described Cindy like this: Carrie, you are really going to like Cindy because she's just like you--loud, bossy, and she enjoys telling people what they need to do! I'm sure Sam meant that in the nicest way of course!!! He was absolutely correct, from the moment I met Cindy she was my buddy and yes, she likes to tell people what they should do and that's just fine by me...it saves me from having to do it!!

Nalani's Yummy Chicken Recipe

Once upon a time Nalani made dinner for our extended family and it was amazing! I quickly obtained the recipe from her, but never made the dinner for my family until last week. My taste buds were not disappointed and neither were Parker's. Parker threw a huge tantrum at the table because the dinner was "gross" and he "hated it" and he "didn't want it". Now, at this point he hadn't even tasted his dinner yet so you can imagine my annoyance. We finally convinced him to take one bite. He literally went from whining and crying as the food went into his mouth, to the happiest angelic child on the face of the planet as he said "Oh, I LIKE this dinner!" If I ever survive Parker's childhood with my sanity intact it will be a miracle.



Here is the recipe:
4-5 chicken breasts pounded fairly flat (I used chicken tenders)
1 can golden mushroom soup
1 cube butter (I didn't say this was a low-fat recipe!)
1/2 cup white cooking wine or apple juice
1 pkg. dry italian dressing mix
1 container onion & chive cream cheese
Angel Hair Pasta or Fettuccini noodles (I prefer the thicker fettuccini)

Place flattened chicken in the bottom of a 9 X 13 baking dish. In saucepan melt everything else (besides noodles) together and blend until smooth--don't boil. Pour over uncooked chicken. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour. Serve over cooked pasta.

Seriously, it's good the day you make it and it's good as leftovers too! Yummy!!

Snow Pictures From Last Week & A Sunday Surprise

Last week we had quite the snow storm and I haven't gotten around to posting pictures so here are a few nice ones:

This is the walkway heading to our front door. Insane in the membrane, insane in the brain! (I used to love that song!)


I love this picture. Check out the snow hanging from the roof! When it fell, my house rumbled! Plus, since we're ghetto and still have our Christmas lights on our house, it pulled some of the lights off their clips. So now, we are redneck ghetto trash with our lights hanging down. Sweet!


Sunday was quite the eventful day for us, thank goodness for my parents because besides church, we had meetings at 2:00, 3:00, 5:00, and 7:00 so they had my kids pretty much all day! Phew!

First of all, here is a cute picture of Sam on Sunday morning, teaching Carson how to tie his shoes.


Sunday at 3pm Sam and I were called into the Stake offices. Always a scary experience! Last Sunday at Stake Conference our Stake President told us the ward boundaries were being revamped and every ward in the Stake is going to be affected. So we didn't know what to expect at 3:00. It was quite the interview process with our Stake President, but at the end of the interview he asked Sam to be the 2nd counselor in the bishopric of our ward. I'm really excited for Sam because I think he is going to love this calling, but if I'm being honest, I'll admit...I'm soooo nervous about sitting by myelf in Sacrament meeting with my 2 boys and newborn baby. I'm sure a lot of you think I'm retarded, but that really is my biggest concern. I'm totally supportive of Sam being gone most Sunday's and several nights a week because he has supported me doing the very same thing this past 1 1/2 years as I served as Relief Society president. It's just that dang 1 hour and 10 minutes on Sunday that makes me nervous. So, if any of you reading this are in my ward, take pity on me when I look like I'm about to cry! :)

The great thing about Sam's new calling, is the 1st counselor happens to be one of Sam's best buddies in the ward, Davis Strong. You should have seen the smile that lit up Sam's face when he learned of this! Our new Bishop seems really awesome too, he was in a different ward before the boundary shifts, but we're so excited to get to know him. Also, remember my blog about the fireman hockey game we went to? Well, that is Chad Burnside and he is the executive secretary so that's going to be great too! Changes are good, I just keep reminding myself of that all the time.

I also need to thank my bishopric that was just released! Ryan Patterson, Paul Kocherhans, and Scott Festin: you guys rock and you did such a GREAT job!!! It's going to be so weird not having you up on the stand but I'm sure you are pretty excited about the idea of sitting with your families on Sunday! You have such supportive wives and I'm hoping to use them as my example over these next few years. Thanks for being so much fun to serve with, and Bishop, thanks for always letting me raid your "snack drawer" when I felt like I was going to pass out from lack of food since I've been pregnant! We love you guys!!

On that note, 3 weeks from yesterday is my induction day with the pregnancy. The end is in sight! Yipeeee!!!!!

Stupidity Is Paying Off

So I had an epiphany the other day. I have been working from home part-time for over two years now. Every time we have a company holiday I've put "zero" hours on my time card for that day because I didn't think part-timers got holiday pay.

As it turns out, I read the company policy on holiday pay and part-time employees DO get holiday pay! I talked to a guy in my HR department just to clarify that going forward I can put my normal hours on my time card for holidays and guess what he told me? He said that he would go back through my part-time time cards and pay me for the holidays I've missed in a lump sum on my next paycheck!

Unless I'm dreaming, that is over 22 holidays that I'm going to get paid for in a few weeks. It's really good timing too because part-time employees don't get maternity leave (I did read the policy on that one already!).

On another note:
I had my ultrasound yesterday and apparently, a normal woman has about 10 cm of amniotic fluid at 35 weeks of pregnancy. Guess how much I have? Well, because I try to do everything to the extreme, I have over 31 cm of amniotic fluid. There could be lots of causes or complications but the ultrasound tech didn't seem too nervous. He gave his report to my OB and since she didn't call me today freaking out I'm just going to assume that little baby sweet loves to go pee pee. So, if anybody wants to, feel free to donate some diapers to the cause once he arrives! I'm still set to be induced on March 9th so I only have 3 1/2 more weeks to go!!! Yay for me! These last few weeks have been pretty tough so I'm seriously counting the days now.

And another note:
We had a nice whiteout blizzard here today. It started at around 1:30pm and it's still snowing now. Sam caught a bus downtown at 4:45pm and he got home at 7:45pm. I went and picked him up at the bus stop and when we got home we almost got stuck in our driveway. Crazy snow.

And just because I don't have any fun pictures to post, here is a doozy from August of 2005. I don't know if we were forcing Parker to eat something gross or what, but gagging children are just plain FUNNY!


And just because I'm ready for some warmer weather, here is Carson, also August of 2005, swimming in Lake Sammamish in Washington. My kids don't lack in the personality department, that's for sure!


Okay, here is a cute one I just found of Parker. September 2005.

I Don't Believe In The Term "Nesting"

I pretty much hate it when people say "You must be nesting!" or "Wow, you are definitely starting your nesting period!" and etc. Obviously, it takes some work to get ready for a baby. Why is it so necessary to label that work and say someone is "nesting"? What else are we supposed to do, wait for the baby to come and THEN figure out what we need to support the child??

You will understand why I opened with that paragraph after you see how friggin' busy I've been this past week! Oh yeah, don't hesitate to call me "cranky" or "ornery" because I won't be offended at that, I actually agree with it!

Okay, first of all, a huge ol' Happy Birthday to my mom this past Wednesday. She is 65 years young and I love her more and more each day. It was my own fault, but I kind of overloaded my schedule last week. I got this brilliant idea to create a memory book for my mom that would have 65 memories of her for the big 65th birthday. I included all my siblings and their families and everybody totally pulled through with some AWESOME memories! In fact, we love my mom so much that we ended up with 71 memories instead of just 65.

As I was going through some old pictures, I came across this gem. Remember how I despise butterflies? Well, here is my mom, pregnant with me, and she is standing in my nursery. Check out my CRIB and WALL!!! There are butterflies on them! Well, maybe this is where the butterfly aversion came from.... Now if I could just figure out why I banged my head over and over into my pillow until I went to college....


Here is the opening page of my mom's memory book. I huge shout out to my friend, Cathy Gilmore, for helping me do all the formatting of the memories. Cathy, you are AMAZING!
The title page says "65 memories of Mom, plus a few to grow on)


Then each page included a different memory, and some pages included pictures. It was a huge stretch for me since I shy away from anything that is scrapbook-related. Here is a picture of me when I had a she-mullet. Yikes.


The best part of the book was that it wouldn't close. After I finished putting my sweat and tears into this project, the dang thing wouldn't close! Well, all I could do was laugh and come up with a reason for it not closing. So we told my mom "your life has been so full, there was NO WAY your memories could be contained in a closed book!" Phew, dodged that bullet!


My dad wanted a nice wedding-style cake for my mom so I enlisted the help of my mother-in-law, Fontella. She has patience for cakes and the end result was super nice. I will admit, I had the honor of actually baking the cakes and you should have seen my laugh as I was about to turn the big square cake onto the cooling rack. I laughed OUT LOUD and said to myself "I can't believe anyone is trusting me to do this!" Luckily for me, the cakes came out perfectly, thanks to my friend, mister parchment paper!


I'm so lame because I didn't get a good picture of my mom with the book, but here she is looking at it. :)


Next topic:
Our Bonneville, affectionately called "Bonnie", was rear ended this week. The lady who hit Sam had totaled her car 2 weeks earlier so when she hit Sam she asked to settle outside of insurance companies. We got an estimate for the damage: $2500. Ouch. It doesn't look totally bad, but the trunk won't close and it's a real mess. The lady finally agreed to go through her insurance company, but the insurance companies are all backed up due to all the bad weather/fender benders so we probably won't get the car fixed for several weeks. If anybody is going downtown, call Sam, he wants a ride to work! :)


Final topic, and don't call it "nesting":
I was very organized after Carson was born. Every time he grew out of his current sizes of clothes I would get a rubbermaid container, labeled with that size, and store it away. Then along came Parker. When he'd grow out of a size, I'd just put those clothes in a garbage bag and throw it into the back of the laundry/storage room NEXT to the nice rubbermaid bins. Or, I'd try to use the bins, but wouldn't even look at the labled size on the bin so each bin has a hodge podge mixture of sizes... Are you understanding what I'm trying to say? My storage room was a mess! Plus, our food storage shelves needed some attention and organization... So, this weekend we tackled the storage room. Here is what my family room looked like after we hauled almost everything out of the storage room:


Here is the nearly emptied room. It's really long and narrow, and DANG, we can fit lots of stuff in there!


And here is the room put back together again. It's hard to tell, but in the back, behind Sam's dart board, are about a dozen rubbermaid containers with very organized clothes in them! I guess I'm thankful I don't have any girls because that would DOUBLE my bins, right? Phew!!!


As we were going through our clothes we also created quite the D.I. pile because I refuse to let my 3rd child LOOK like he's a hand-me-down-third-boy! I got all my newborn to 6 month-old clothes washed and put in the baby's dresser. We got our crib set up, and we are 95% ready for this baby. I just have a few odds and ends I need to finish up.

I had a doctor appointment this past Friday and apparently my uterus is measuring large and my doctor thinks it's because I have excess fluid in there. So tomorrow I am going to have another ultrasound (this makes 4 this pregnancy) to determine exactly what is going on. I guess the risks of excess fluid are pre-term labor and my water could break...Ewwwwww! Who knows what else might happen, I have nightmares of my water breaking in public places. Anywho, regardless of what my ultrasound shows, my doctor has set my induction date at March 9th, if I don't go on my own before that. So, 4 weeks from yesterday is the big day and I'm very excited because I'm quite the uncomfortable grump.

Here is just a random picture of crazy Parker. Sam put one of the D.I. shirts on Parker which is clearly too small. I am pretty sure Carson or Parker never wore this shirt, so why did I keep it stored all these years? The answer escapes me...

Blizzard...Seriously

We had tons of snow in January and February is proving to be CRAZY as well. I woke up at 6am today (because I have early meetings, not because I'm crazy) and I couldn't believe how hard it was snowing and blowing. It totally reminded me of Southeastern Idaho winters when I was just a wee lad. Our neighboring Stake, which is only like 2 blocks from here, cancelled all their church meetings. Not our Stake, we are hardcore church goers and I'm happy about that!! It was quite the adventure and as Sam says "It's just something to shake up the day."

I couldn't believe the drifting in my back yard. I have 3 flower pots on my back patio and one of them was totally buried in the snow. At about 7am I opened my back door to take a picture and got SLAMMED in the face with the wind and snow. I laughed because I was such a dork for thinking that WOULDN'T happen! Anyway, you can barely see one side of the top rim of the flower pot in this picture. I'm guessing the drift was about 2 1/2 feet. Sam concurs.


Carson and Parker were kept entertained all morning with examinations of the snowflakes under a magnifying glass. Carson was really into it because, as he'll tell you, he wants to be a scientist when he grows up.


Sam had already shoveled the driveway once before we went to church. When he got home, here is how much snow had fallen while we were gone those few hours:


Just for fun, Sam buried Carson in the snow so all you could see was his face. Carson was a better sport than I would have been!



After Carson broke out of his snow prison, Sam told him it looked like he was emerging from his Rocket Ship. Parker heard that and for the next half hour all he did was sit in the "rocket ship". Carson and Sam came inside and Parker just sat on that pile of snow like he was king of the world. I kept saying "Parker, do you want to come inside and have hot chocolate?" He would shake his head "no" and say in a serious tone "no, I'm sitting in my rocket ship" I kept laughing because every car that drove by would wave at him and he would just stare off into the distance. One day I will totally understand Parker's thought process but for now I'm determined to keep laughing!