Halloween 2012

Halloween was an eventful day. We were super busy, and I wore myself out. But they kids had a great time, so that's what's important. They dressed up as dragons. Thanks to Tindy and Ben for the dragon tails they made the kids for Christmas last year. They made costumes super easy. If I was going to have 3 ferocious dragons running around, I definitely needed a knight in shining armor to keep them in line. So thanks Aaron for filling that role so well. I went as a damsel in distress, but I didn't really dress up...I was feeling pregnant.

To start off the day, Ivan went to preschool and had a great time seeing all his little friends in costume. They made a super cute skeleton craft that I want to remember for next year. It's basically a paper chain, but you trace the kid's hands and feet to stick on. So sute.

Next we headed to Aaron's work, because they always do a big trick-or-treat and Halloween carnival.

After a mummy-dog lunch and naps we went to the Main Street trick-or-treat with some friends and had a lot of fun there. But I didn't take any picture. Then we came home and had dinner in a pumpkin, which is basically cut-up pork chops, brown rice, and a ton of veggies, baked inside of a pumpkin.

Here's Adelia trying out some monster teeth she got on Main Street.

Then we suited up and hit the streets for a few hours more of trick-or-treating.

We ended the night with a visit to Grandma and Grandpa Swan. I wish I could say that my children were well behaved during their sugar-high, but we'll just leave it at they were very excited to see their grandparents. The good news is, when we got home, we'd given out all our Halloween candy.

Happy Halloween!!

Ultra Sound

We got to see the baby for the first time today. And I have to say, it was the best ultra sound we've ever had. The technician was really relaxed and took his time with us. He'd stop on different spots and let us watch the baby for awhile. What a miracle to see a little life moving around inside of you! I'm glad we have the technology to see it. 

Everything looked good, baby is healthy and moving around all over the place. Baby was also very eager to display his gender, which of course tells you right away that he's a...

So Oliver it is. :) Our little Ollie, and we couldn't be happier about having him be a part of this family. Here are a few more pictures of the little guy.

Halloween Crafts

 The kids and I have been working on some fun Halloween crafts the last couple days. 

 Jack O'Lantern Sun Catchers

The Spider and Web are a modification of this craft combined with this craft.  Twirly Ghost

 Green foot print ghosts with hand print trees. Lincoln even added a scary face and a bat to go with his.

Lemmon/Sparks Halloween Party

Over the weekend my family got together and had a little Halloween party up in Hooper. There was chili, dessert galore, a doughnut eating contest, and some bobbing for apples. The pictures do it more justice than my words, so here they are:

 Ivan won the doughnut eating contest between him, Lincoln and Graham. He was SO excited to finally beat Lincoln at something. Adelia won the contest between her and Burke.

Nelson kicked Aaron's trash. And Kyle beat Tanner by a hair.

The Three Pregga-lleros

Kels is due in June, Me in March, and Tanya in December

Watching the kids bob for apples was probably the high light of the evening. Look at Ivan with his cute little bum in the air! Love it. That's Tanner bobbing in the bottom corner to show the kids what to do.

 

Some of the adults bobbed too...we cleaned out the water.

Time Out for Women

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Time Out for Women in Salt Lake this weekend with my mom and a few other fabulous ladies. I don't think my words will be quite adequate in relating my experience.

First of all, I desperately needed the break. I love my children...dearly... but am very rarely separated from them for any amount of time, and after awhile this starts to wear on me. I just needed a couple of days of separation to rejuvenate and think about all the little (and big) things I love about being a mother to my kids. Love them from a distance, I call it. :) And when the weekend was over, I felt totally refreshed and ready to save the world again. I think my mom knew how much I needed this, and I'm really thankful to her for inviting me to come. Sometimes it's just nice to be mothered, instead of being the one doing the mothering. So thank you Mom.

A weekend away with the ladies would have been enough...but we also got to gather together with thousands of other women, and listen to some amazing, and very inspiring speakers. Every person we listened to gave me something to think about that uplifted me spiritually. In their own way, they made me want to do better and be better, without making me feel guilty or like a huge slacker.

My favorite speaker was Sheri Dew. I wish I could find the text to her talk and share it, but I've looked all over the internet and can't find it. She talked about  how the women in the church have been getting a lot of media attention lately because of the presidential election, and quite a bit of that attention is negative. People that don't know better, think that women in the church are oppressed. Sister Dew talked about how women in the church have the capability of receiving all the highest blessings the same as the men do, and how God really intended us to be equal partners in the eternities. She really has a way of taking a topic that can be complex and frustrating and making it simple and clear. I really wish I could get the text of her talk. I've never struggled with feeling like women were less in the church, but I know people do. And I loved the perspective Sister Dew used, but I don't feel like I can explain it clearly, so I'm not even going to try and paraphrase.

Another of my favorite performances was by a singing group called Mercy River. They did a motherhood parody to the NSYNC song Bye Bye Bye. First of all, NSYNC was an icon of my jr. high life. I remember getting together with my friends and lip-singing and copying the dance to this song. So it makes it even funnier when Mercy River does a parody on it and it so totally and completely describes my life right now. I was laughing tears through the whole thing. It was so nice to know that I am not the only person on the planet that feels like this at bedtime, and relating to thousands of other women through humor was so refreshing.




 We also got to listen to this guy speak...he showed this Mormon Messages video clip to give us all the background on his story. And then he talked to us more about it. I was so inspired by his strong faith in our Savior. How would it be to know the Savior so well, and trust in him so much, that you could forgive so quickly, the deaths of most of your family. I know what it's like to lose someone you love, but my experience in incomparable to his, because it wasn't the stupid decision of another that caused my loss. I can't imagine the pain he went through and still goes through. But his story is inspiring, and I know it's an example of what we are all trying to live up to.


I am always surprised to rediscover how much women need other women. By now I shouldn't be, but when I go to things like this there is always just a moment where time slows down and the hustle and bustles around me seems to fade out of the background for a minute, and a strong reality hits me that it is true that women need other women. Whether it be just two women together, or 5,500 hundred crowded together, I truly believe that we get our strength in numbers. That together we can do anything. And I think the Lord intended it to be that way. Although, I have no idea why. But I loved being at Time Out. And I can't wait to go again next year.

F is for Fish

Last week we studied letter F for preschool, but I'm a little bit slow getting it posted. We did a fish theme. I couldn't find any way that I like to turn the actual F into a fish, so I improvised, and I thought it turned out really cute.

We played a couple of different math games with goldfish crackers. In the first game the kids had to put the corresponding number of goldfish into the goldfish bowls. And in the second game we sorted goldfish crackers by color. We also played Go Fish, the card game, a couple of times.

The kids' favorite activity, by far, this week was our fishing game. I made a bunch of fish out of different colors of craft foam and stuck a paper clip on the end of each. On one side of each fish I wrote a three letter word that Ivan could sound out, and on the other side I wrote a word with a vowel combination (such as ea, ai, oa, ou) for Lincoln to read. When Adelia fished, she had to tell me the color of the fish she'd pulled out. The boys had to read their word. They all had a BLAST.  The fishing pole we used was made out of Trios by Lincoln and had yarn attached to it with a magnet tied at the end of the yarn. We put the fish in the bathtub to add a fun water element to the game, but you could easily play it off the floor.

And for a snack we had blue Jell-O with Swedish Fish floating in it. Not my personal nominee for favorite snack, but the kids liked it.

Here are the books we read this week:

Also, at the beginning of the week, I thought it would be fun if we adopted some real fish to observe for our fish week. I took the kids to WalMart and they each got a $0.28 goldfish. Lincoln named his Pinta, Ivan's was 32, Adelia's was Gub-gub, and we got a fourth one just in case, named Squirt. The kids were really excited about watching their fish, but unfortunately, all four of them died within the week.

20 Weeks Today

It was nice of my biology to make it so that I'm a week further along every Monday. That makes it really easy to remember. So, here I am 20 weeks pregnant. I have a definite bump, but haven't taken a picture to prove it, sorry. I'm feeling pretty good, although last week I pushed myself too hard, and while I was recuperating over the weekend, I decided that it might be time to start acting like I'm pregnant. The problem is that my body is pregnant, but my mind is not. So, I'm always trying to push myself and push myself to accomplish the things my mind wants me to get done. Well, this weekend my body finally started protesting loud enough that I had to listen. :) And I've made a new goal for myself to try and be more conscious of my body. Which should include taking little breaks here and there throughout the day to put my feet up, so that hopefully in the long run I don't keel over. It's a nice idea, really. We'll see how it goes. Today I failed. :)

In other news, today begins the countdown. In 7 days we have our ultrasound to find out whether we're having a boy or a girl. I don't really have a gut feeling either way this time, although I lean slightly more towards girl because it would make our family nice and even. Aaron is fairly certain it's a boy. Lincoln thinks boy. Ivan thinks girl. Adelia swings both ways. But in 7 days we'll know. It's probably going to be a long 7 days for me. I love finding out what we're having. Then I can begin planning! Whereas up until this point, I can only speculate.

I do think we've finally gotten some names picked out though. Last time I wrote, we were hopelessly flailing about for boy name ideas. Aaron came to the rescue...he sat down with me one night and we tried out a new baby name site called nymbler.com. It's a pretty fun site. You get to type in 6 names that you like, then, using those 6 names as a guide, it comes up with a list of 15 or so names that are similar either in sound, origin, meaning, or popularity for you to look at. You can add names you like to a favorites list, block names you don't like so they won't come up again, and switch different names in and out of the original 6 to come up with different results. If you click on the name, it will give you the origin and meaning, as well as the popularity. It's pretty fun, and a lot easier than scrolling down long lists of names you've never heard of and have no idea how to pronounce.

So our name choices...If it's a girl, we're still liking Ruby the most. And if it's a boy we'll most likely name him Oliver. Oliver is a name I've always liked, in fact I think it was on our name list when Ivan was a tummy, but Aaron wasn't impressed by it then. But when he was looking at names the other night, Oliver stood out to him. He likes it because it has English, Latin, and Scandinavian origins. Lincoln had an English origin, and Ivan has Latin and Slavic origins, so Oliver fits in that way. Oliver means, olive tree, which symbolizes peace, and also means kind and affectionate. All of which we really like. I would LOVE to have a peaceful child. :) So we feel like Oliver fits in really well with the other names in our family and kind of ties them together. Of course, we'll call him Ollie (spelled this way) for short, after Ollie the Stomper an Olivier Duneria board book that we love. :) So yes, there are the current choices, I guess we'll see what happens. But I should warn you, Aaron is pretty set on Oliver, and I am pretty set on Ruby. At least in 7 days we'll be able to stop calling it It.

Daddy's Little Helpers

The kids have been loving helping Aaron with the sprinklers. Saturday Aaron let them fill in some of the trenches he was finished working on. They did a good job. 

Carve 'Em Up!

Friday night Aaron and I hosted the Swan Family Halloween Party. Stacey and Rob and their kids were still visiting from St. George, so they were here, along with Ryan and Melissa, and Grandma and Grandpa Swan.

We ate dinner first. Debbie made an excellent tortilla soup. Really it's to die for. We also had french bread, pumpkin pie, and wassail (which for some reason in my family is a Halloween tradition, where in everyone else's family it seems to be a Christmas thing).

Then we carved the pumpkins. This was the first year we let our boys actually carve with the knife; heretofore, they've always painted their pumpkins. Don't worry, they were heavily supervised :)

Jeremiah's, Bennett's, Audrey's, Lincoln's, Aaron's, Adelia's, Ivan's, Krystal's

Hee Haw's Pumpkin Patch

Let's just call this the year of the pumpkin patch. Wow.  Think we've hit just about every pumpkin patch in Utah County. We belong to so many different groups, and it seems like this year every group decided to go to a pumpkin patch. :) My kids didn't mind though. Friday morning we went with Ivan's preschool co-op to Hee Haw's in Pleasant Grove.

Adelia, Ivan, and Lincoln on the hay ride.

Hee Haw's had a couple of different, fun slides, and of course a corn kernel sandbox that my kids enjoyed.

 Ivan, Adelia, and Lincoln in front of a very large pumpkin.

Ivan's favorite part were this large pedal carts, even though he couldn't reach the pedals.

They had this cool water pump, duck table, and my kids spent the good part of an hour there. Basically you pump the water to move the rubber ducks down the tubes.

 We got to pick two pumpkins to take with us when we left. Ivan picked a yellow squash and was pleased as punch with it.

We had a great time, but I think I'm all pumpkin patched out for this year!

Jaker's Pumpkin Patch

There are quite a few fields that grow pumpkins in Springville, so it's no surprise that we have a real-live pick-it-off-the-vine pumpkin patch just two blocks from our house. In the spring we watched the farmers plant the pumpkins, and marked the progress as the pumpkins grew. These last few weeks we've been watching the tractors driving down the rows, while the workers harvest the pumpkins and stick them into big cardboard boxes, probably to be sold to the local grocery stores.

My children have been begging for weeks to go the Jaker's (the patch by our house), and today was the day. Aaron's sister Stacey and her family are in town this week, so we've been spending a lot of time with them Today we decided we'd take the kids to the pumpkin patch. It was a good choice. The weather was beautiful, and the kids had a great time. I think we spent just over two hours there going through the straw bale mazes, looking at the animals, taking a tractor ride, playing it the corn kernel sand box, and of course, wandering through the rows and rows of pumpkins, deciding which ones to take home. I took a lot of pictures. :)

Ivan came and grabbed my hand and lead me over to the straw pyramid and asked me to climb up with him and take his picture. He so rarely wants his picture taken that I had to comply, and I think we got some great shots of him.

These two on the other hand, are far from camera shy, they kept coming up with silly things to do in the corn kernel sand box and wanting me to take pictures.