it's a boy. . .

. . . and his name is Micah.

He came to us in Jana's suitcase. A gift from Grammy.

Baby Kate spent the night in the stuffed animal bin, and now she is lost.

Surely, she's feeling abandoned and neglected.

But Micah,

Micah is getting snuggled to sleep every night.

Micah is getting sung to every morning.

And Micah spends several meals a day wedged into the highchair next to his momma.

But.

Micah, too, might be in trouble.

Meet Boom Boom Baby:

thoughts on a sunday

• We really miss Jana and Mark. They left on Tuesday and I was left with an empty feeling as they drove away. We so loved having them here. More about that later though. . . hopefully :)
• Guess what? I don't edit my photos. Occasionally I'll get rid of some red eye. I wish I did more, but blogging takes enough time as it is. I just wanted to tell everyone.
• My dad once told me you really just need one friend to be alright. I'm alright.
• Ellery is totally napping again. Kind of since we got here. She will usually nap every other day, as long as she doesn't wake up too late. I am loving this because I put her down when McKay goes to school and I get about an hour of being alone, which lately is a pretty huge deal. I'll explain that later too.
• I can do more crunches than Brian. This is quite possibly the only physical way that I dominate him. I like to talk about it.
• I'm trying not to freak out about the swine flu. I'm trying. And I'm doing pretty good, but I did go on a hand sanitizer and children's medicine spree. I bought eight bottles of medicine and four bottles of hand sanitizer. I'm kind of a hand sanitizer snob. I only like Germ-X Lavendar scented. And when Jana was here we went to Walmart specifically to purchase said hand sanitizer. Walmart is one of the only places where I've seen it.
• Walmart is 30 miles away from my house, so we haven't been since we moved here. Oh how I miss it. I felt like I was visiting an old friend.
• My hair has lightened up quite a bit. There are things I like about it and things I hate about it. One of the things I hate most is the haircut. She hacked my hair. I know it was damaged, but she was having way too much fun with my split ends- letting her delight in removing them distract her from making sure my hair was evenly cut. Mental note: Never go eight months without getting a trim. Ever. The other day McKay looked at me and said, "Mom, why do you keep talking about your hair?" So after that little update, I'm done talking about it.
• Just a little bragging about my little student. Brian continues to do extremely well in school. He's working so hard and it's paying off. Test scores to prove it! Proud of him.

Happy Sunday!

k b

*post entirely by McKay. Title, picture, content.

I made a dog house for my real dogs. I love them so much. I like our new house. I love my mommy. And my daddy, too. I love Ellery, too. I like to play in mud and I like to jump in mud puddles and throw mud balls. I think you would love that too. I think you're going to come to me for a wish. I wish you would come to my house.

I'm all done doing my blog.

one thought on a saturday night

It's a rainy Saturday night and I am lying on the bed listening to the rain fall outside. I love that I can hear the rain from inside my bedroom. I always wished that we could hear the rain in our old one, but we couldn't because of the deck above our window.

I'm lying here on my bed with mostly one thing on my mind. Today I dyed my hair. I intended to have it dyed to my natural dirty blond color. A sacrifice I decided to make.

I have brown hair now. It's not dirty blond, it's not even light brown. It's brown. I don't know how to feel. I'm just shocked by it. I don't know if I can love it. It's not what I expected. I've come to the conclusion that bringing your hair to your natural color is not as simple as it may sound. And perhaps having brown hair is part of the process. At least the process I chose.

Although, I did get a little annoyed when the stylist said, as she was washing the dye out of my already-dyed hair, "We should have done low lights and that may have been a better way to get what you wanted." Hmmm, thanks for that. She then tossed around words like ashy, follicle, absorb and split ends. I kind of stopped listening.

Here's what's bugging me. I wanted hair the same color as my kids. I think that is what my natural color is. Maybe I should have brought Ellery with me. But like I said before, perhaps it isn't that simple. My hair is now very much darker than my kids. I guess I should have been more clear in what I wanted.

I think I look older. I think my skin looks weird. I think Brian keeps looking at me like he doesn't recognize me. I think McKay said he liked it better the other way. I think Ellery keeps saying, "haircut?" while stroking my brown locks. I think I keep telling myself that my hair does not matter that much. I think that I don't feel like myself.

And. I think if I let myself, I feel liberated.

And a little bit lost.

But I'm trying to lean towards liberated.

"halloweens"

Halloween 2009

A pretty witch and a football player.

McKay got to wear his costume three days in a row. Trunk-or-treat, then preschool, then Halloween. He was not unhappy about it either. We had some mixed reactions to his costume. Brian warned me that some people are very passionate about college football. Many of the boys in our ward paid their compliments to McKay and we were asked several times where we got it. I got really annoyed at some man in our ward who in all seriousness kept calling a four year old "lame". I also got confused when a neighbor started referring to Yale. Anyway, enough about me. McKay loved Halloween this year. No matter how fast she was, Ellery was simply not fast enough to keep up with this trick-or-treater. He was pretty quick on the thank you too.

The pretty witch had been practicing saying "trick-or-treat. thank you," for days, along with 'happy Halloween!' She melted several hearts in the neighborhood and scored extra candy because of it. Every time we would come upon a house that had Halloween decorations she would say, "Look at the halloweens!" She had so much fun trick-or-treating that she had this little giggle/growl going the whole night.

The only way I could get McKay to agree to go home was to tell him that we could trick-or-treat at our house. Brian had gone home a few minutes before us to start getting rid of the candy we had bought. He was so excited about ringing our doorbell and getting a candy from dad.

How great is Halloween to a kid? Look at that! They could not believe their good fortune. McKay decided that we would all share the candy together and to dump it all into one big pile. (Although, today he tried to bribe me with candy if I played with his farm.) We were only out for an hour and just went around our little neighborhood when there bags were getting too heavy to hold. We live on a pretty quiet street and there weren't that many kids going around, so at almost every door we went to they were giving out handfuls of candy.

And now I can't stop eating 100 Grands and Butterfingers. I really can't. And although we were all feeling quite homesick without our family on such a fun holiday, we had a very nice Halloween.

thoughts on a sunday

• We had a great Halloween. The kids loved it. I always thought I loved Halloween, but I think the older my kids get, the more and more I'm not loving it. You see, we now have two huge bowls of candy. And the kids know we have two huge bowls of candy. And they know that it's their candy. And between the asking for candy, and the whining for candy, and the sugar highs from the candy, I'm thinking, why do I love Halloween again? They have actually been pretty good today and I'm sure they'll lose interest in it soon enough, but the other problem is that I probably won't loose interest until it's gone.
• McKay has been very interested in clocks and time lately. He will ask us when it's time for school, and we'll tell him when the long hand is on the twelve and he cannot focus on anything else until the long hand is on the twelve.
• We have some festive neighbors and there are a lot of skeleton decorations around our neighborhood. Whenever we walk by one Ellery will say, "Look! A pirate ship!" I haven't corrected her because I still think it's just as cute now as I did the first time she said it.
• My skin is going through an identity crisis. All the sudden it just decided to freak out. My neighbor said it's from coming from such a dry climate to a humid one. I feel like I'm fifteen.
• This week over half of McKay's preschool class was wiped out with illness. Two days this week he was one of five or six students at school, from a class of twelve. Our ward is taking hand sanitizer precautions like you wouldn't believe and almost every week they talk about having common sense when coming to church. Meaning, don't come if you're at all sick. After announcements like that I think everyone is afraid to even clear their throat. So then that makes me feel a little justified when the lady in front of me in relief society was coughing up a lung and I had really mean thoughts about her and her coughing germs.
• We are so excited to have our first visitors this week! Jana and Mark can't come soon enough!
• The other day McKay had a brilliant idea. He told us he needed three people. He was so excited to direct Brian and I into forming human letters with our bodies and I have no idea where it came from. Sesame Street maybe? But he doesn't really watch that. However he came up with it, it had Brian and I smiling.
• Brian is feeling so happy for the time change because now he won't be running in complete darkness in the mornings. I am feeling like I don't like it getting dark by 5:20 at night. Why is that so hard to get used to every year?
• I really love my parents. That's all.

Happy Sunday!

pretty pretty bones

That's what Ellery says every time she wears these jammies.

She's super excited to be a pretty-princess-witch, which is really just a witch, but that's what you say when you're girly girl wants to be a princess- and Mack has been practicing football plays with Brian all afternoon. That cougar is ready to trick-or-treat.

Happy Halloween!

this post is annoying. . .

But I just had to get it out. When we moved here in September, Brian had about three weeks before he started school. That meant lots and lots of time for us to fall in love with our new state as a family. McKay would call them journeys. We went on lots of journeys.

Multnomah Falls, etc. . .

So beautiful. Huge slugs were definitely a highlight for the kids.

The Big Journey

One day we were totally bored and decided to drive down the road near our house that leads to farm country and see what we could find. This was when McKay used the term journey. This has been one of my favorite days here so far. It was so fun just driving around waiting for the next cool thing. And there were some cool things!

Alpaca Farm

The kids loved this, especially McKay.

Apple Orchard and hidden park in the woods.

We drove by the cutest little apple farm and knew we had to stop. Plus there were signs telling us to stop. They had a big bouncy, blow-up apple that the kids could jump in. They had an empty pig pen, but McKay didn't even care that it was empty- he still was fascinated. We also enjoyed some delicious honey crisp apples and a few flavored honey sticks.

Then, as we were winding through the small streets on one of the many forest-covered hills, we came upon this fun little park. It had a great play ground, which the kids loved, and there were trails that led to a garden area where we saw bunnies, squirrels and the kids enjoyed wild blackberries.

Temple

In September we were able to take a tour of the temple grounds.

Beaverton Parade

We woke up to a rainy Saturday in September and were really bummed. We had planned on going to the Beaverton parade that morning and hadn't anticipated rain. We decided to brave the weather- bundled up in all our rain gear- and headed downtown. Let me tell you something- Oregon is used to doing anything in the rain! We felt like this broke us in!

That's all. Long. Boring. As sick of writing it as you are of reading it! ;)

thoughts on a sunday

• We've fallen into quite a wonderful Sunday routine. After a really early dinner we all snuggle up together in our comfy clothes and blankets and watch a family movie. Today it was Alvin and the Chipmunks. I love being all together in our cozy house with cold rain drizzling outside. I really love Sundays with these guys.
• Today was the primary program in our ward. We were so proud of our little sunbeam. His part was, "I like to help cook." He did a fabulous job, although he did not leave his tie alone for most of program- rolling and unrolling, covering his face and flipping it around. Loved getting little waves from our boy all throughout the hour.
• This week as McKay was squishing himself next to Elle in our single seat stroller, a lady behind us asked if they were twins. First time anyone's ever thought that.
• Ellery has started saying "Okay!" instead of "yes".
• We got pumpkins this week. A friend told us about a place that sells them for $1.50 each- any size! It was here, picking out our pumpkins, that I realized that Ellery really is two years old. She had a fit over not being able to ride on the garden cart and didn't want anything to do with the pumpkins because of it. These tantrums seem to happen only when we're at a store. So embarrassing. I just hold my head high and act like my child isn't acting like a little monster. Sometimes, if it's really bad, I'll tell her that she has to be quiet or else she'll wake up the babies that are sleeping. This usually stuns her for a few minutes as she looks around for "the babies". I'm glad that these store induced tantrums are all I have to deal with, because she really the sweetest little girl the rest of the time.
• You probably didn't know it, but this whole post was written by the new Wolf Den leader. I am totally excited to be in cub scouts! Lots of learning to do since I know nothing about scouting. And when I say scouting, Brian says, "Cub scouts is not 'scouting'."

Happy Sunday.

week four

Sorry for the bad photo, but the lighting in our bedroom is horrendous. I just thought I would tell you all a little bit about how school is going for Brian. . .through my eyes, I guess.

He's in his fourth week now and so far so good. When you're applying for anesthesia school I think they like to freak you out about it. People in the anesthesia community (online mostly) talk about how you can't have a life outside of school. They tell you to say goodbye to your family and friends until you're done and that you'll have little time to do anything but study, study, maybe eat, and then study some more. We [I] was completely freaked out by all that I heard about how grueling and demanding the programs are.

I came here knowing and expecting to be raising our kids mostly by myself for two years and a semester. Brian came prepared to see his kids only on the weekends. We were dreading that part of it, for sure, but at least we knew what to expect.

Well, I'm happy to report that "they" were wrong. Brian is really busy. Brian has long days. But Brian is still Brian. It's more like he's just a regular working man now. . .only sometimes it's even better than that. Sometimes he walks through the door at two o'clock. I like those days. Him working nights for the last few years was hard. It was SO hard to get used to at first, but then it just got to be normal. And it wasn't until we moved here and he started school that I realized just how great his night schedule was. He was around all the time, and was able to spend quality time, day and night, with me and the kids. I had no idea how good we had it.

I realize that we're only a month into the semester, and that this isn't necessarily how it's going to be the whole time, but I'm relieved that at least we didn't have to jump right into a life like that. I do, however, anticipate that it will only get harder from here. Plan for the worst? Maybe that's best in this situation.

I've been so impressed with Brian- he's doing really well with the actual schoolwork part. He's really smart. I don't know why I am so surprised by this! I've always known he was smart, but sometimes my mind goes back to the freshman-in-college Brian, which was pre mission and before he really had any direction as far as his collegiate future. But I am constantly finding myself so proud and impressed with that big old brain of his.

So far, he has been able to do all his studying at school. Several days a week classes finish in the early afternoon and he'll just stay at school and study for a few hours. It's nice because he hasn't really had to bring much home with him.

The faculty, second-year students and program directors seem so supportive of the students. I think it's been pretty interesting, yet great to have such an intimate, encouraging learning environment. He is one of fourteen (I think) students in the program, so I can already tell that they will be very close.

So there's my update. I know this might be a post that only his mother will read all the way through (Hi Adele!) but I wanted to record it just the same. And also, because I'm proud of my Bri!

oregon education

*Just went through my draft box and posted a bunch of (new) old posts, but some of them were a long time ago. . .like 2008. I wrote this a couple weeks ago and just found it again.

Maybe it's because Brian and I have had pretty limited social interactions for the last month. Maybe it's because moving to new state brings out the best and worst in you. Or maybe it's the clear Oregon air. Whatever it is, somehow I have been enlightened and learned some things about myself and my husband. I'm gonna share.

• I like to think I'm a pretty organized person, but sometimes in my efforts to be organized I put things in weird places, thinking it's a brilliant idea, and I forget where they are.

• When Brian thinks of something, or has a new idea, he likes to take immediate action. He just gets it done. I've actually known this for a long time. I, on the other hand, will get an idea and I have to think about it for a long time before I take action. Often times I run into over-thinking. Somehow, I just realized this about myself and I really don't like it.


• Brian hates excuses and he hates talking about excuses even more.


• I am really creative when it comes to excuses. I can analyze and determine just why this happened, or dig deep into my emotions to figure out why that didn't happen.


• If Brian it's not right in front of his face, Brian can't find it.


• I am a much better wife and mother when my husband has a job or school or somewhere to be besides home all the time. I missed him now that he's in school, and the days can be long, but I'm happy to be back in my routine.


• Brian can be really friendly . . . more friendly than me. Who knew?


• Living outside of Utah and away from family has made me feel different. In a good way though. I am reminded often that I know who I am. I am really feeling attached to my beliefs and happy for those things that I know. I feel like my personal, spiritual identity has taken on a whole new meaning for me. Maybe because my beliefs are more unique here. Maybe because I need them more. Maybe because other people that I interact with don't know what I do. . .


• Brian is addicted to chips and salsa.

• TV has become something that is comforting to me. I guess because it's one of the only things that is the same. I like this and hate it at the same time.

• I am really brilliant at analyzing song lyrics. Talent that I didn't even know I had. I've been amazing both Brian and myself with this hidden skill lately.

two

day one, year one, year two

I can't believe my girl is two years old today. I was looking back through all our pictures of when she was born, trying to find one to put on here. As I looked at them I thought two things.

One, it's funny how when your kids have grown up a bit and you look back at them as newborns you can see the child that you know and love now in that little baby. The baby that you certainly loved, but didn't know quite as well. I was in love with my Elle the moment I saw her, but I couldn't have imagined then what a sweet, funny, beautiful girl I had there in my arms. She continues to become more sweet and beautiful the older she gets.

And two- I don't have very many great shots of Ellery as a teeny baby. She's either become more photogenic with age, or my photos have improved. I'm betting it's the former. I was tempted to put on the picture of her where her red birthmark looks like a former German dictator's mustache, but maybe another time.

Our little family definitely wouldn't be complete without her. And, I feel so sad for taking her away from the big family. Because she really is extra adorable right now- the way she talks, the things she says, the way she jumps and how she runs around- and they're missing it all.

Happy Birthday to my Ellie girl!