Monday, August 29, 2016

Summer Vacation...Final Leg...Idaho...

Our final stretch in our month long summer vacation road trip was to my parents house. In years past, this stop has been a little bit longer which has given me time to do a couple projects such as cleaning out their garage, building in closet shelving or having my dad help build a table that he so lovingly helped me attach to the top of my car for the drive down!

This year the stay was a little shorter. We had time to play with cousins, see a couple friends and enjoy the beauty of Idaho. With 5 kids we travel with Thule on the roof so it would be difficult to bring a project home anyway!

First things first - my parents are amazing to let us stay with them every summer. I know it's not easy to have people stay with you for any period of time and 5 children makes it a little chaotic. My parents might even say really chaotic. They turn their lives upside down to accommodate us and I love our time with them. Chaos and all.
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Hunter's highlight of the trip sadly has no pictures to prove it even happened. He went on a camping trip with his cousin, my brother, my dad and some of the local scouts. I heard stories of fishing and rain and fishing and treats and more fishing. Sounds like a total downer to me, but he was in heaven.

Hunter's second favorite part of the trip - time at my brother's house where he practiced his archery skills.
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When he wasn't hunting or fishing, he was collecting treasures from the mountains and rivers - mostly shell casings. Not surprising, we were in Idaho.
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Bennett's favorite spot was on the four wheeler or the little motorcycle my brother has. My brother was a good sport as he took him round and round and round some more around his property.
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We went to many parks - the favorite being the "Death Park", kindly coined by my sister-in-law who grew up going to this same park and all the original playground equipment is still in tact. You know all the equipment that has since been removed from every park in America because their too dangerous; long metal slides that burn you all the way down, fast metal merry-go-rounds, large metal monkey bars and teeter totters taller than me. I'm shocked we walked away from that park with only minor injuries after going to it so many times!

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Not surprising - we were able to fit in a couple games of spikeball and frisbee golf.
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I'm pretty sure his face looked like this for two weeks!

To be continued...

25 weeks...

It was a rough week. It started with an eye infection on Sunday morning that seemed to come out of nowhere. After two days, it had spread to the other eye and he was unpleasant to say the least.

If he was searching for extra snuggles, he got them. He was held and loved on despite the green gunk coming from his eyes!
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Thursday, August 25, 2016

Empty pink bins...

They say you never know for sure that you're done having kids, but chances are you know in your heart when you're done and both Steve and I felt that with Briggs.

We also let the kids know that this baby with be the caboose to our family. Which is why Hallie more than anything was hoping for a sister, she knew it was her last chance. Her disappointment was visible and it was heartbreaking to see her having a hard time. Shortly after we found out another boy would be joining the family, I made it a goal to go through the bins of girls clothes we had stored in the attic. I had been hanging on to this clothing since Hallie was a baby. Never did it cross my mind, in my young and naive state, that Hallie would be my only daughter. Obviously, I wouldn't have held on to that clothing for that long had I known otherwise.

I went through bin after bin of clothing and aside from a few special pieces, I donated the contents.

One afternoon, Hallie came into the laundry room and saw me drowning in pink clothing. She recognized some of it from pictures we have of her wearing the clothing. This is how our conversation went down:

Hallie: What are you doing?
Kara: Just going through this clothing so we can give it to someone who needs it.
Hallie: But what if we need it?
Kara: Oh honey, we're not going to need any of this for a boy.
Hallie: But what if we have another baby?
Kara: I don't think that's going to happen, and even if we did - chances are it would be a boy too!

She looked around the room and left. I started talking to her as she walked away and I could tell she didn't hear me. I went to find her and found the bathroom door shut. When she walked out a minute later, her eyes were red and swollen.

We talked. The fact that this baby was a boy cut her deep and she was having a hard time accepting the fact that she would never have a sister. I asked what would make her feel better. She asked if she could go through the clothing with me and keep some of the clothing to give to her daughter someday. It was a great idea.
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I probably went through 7 or 8 bins of clothing before Briggs was born, knowing very well there was more in the attic I hadn't touched.

This week, I completed the task. I went through the last 5 bins of girls clothing. And out of 5 bins - this is what I kept:
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A couple dresses I made and a few other pieces that Hallie can remember wearing. There were moments of nostalgia as I touched each piece checking for stains before being donated. I could picture Hallie in almost every single item of clothing and we've got more than enough pictures as evidence. It was quite therapeutic for both of us to sift and sort and talk. And now we're done.

We kept a little, we donated a lot. I now have stacks of empty pink bins and a lot more attic space that needs to be used!


Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Childhood...

He's at the age where being out on the tube doesn't look nearly as fun as sitting behind the wheel.

Every now and again he would look over my way and grin ear to ear - so proud of his work as the driver. Childhood is too short.

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Nikon D750 | Lens 24-120 mm | Aperature 4.0 | Shutter 200 | ISO 320

It must be something with this age because I have a picture of Hunter at the wheel and Bennett at the wheel as this exact age and not a single picture of them older in this same position.
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They're learning young!

Monday, August 22, 2016

Our Milwaukee house...

Have you ever moved from a home and then wished you could see it one more time to see what it looked like? When Steve and I visited Milwaukee a few years back we drove by our old house. From the outside it looked the exact same, except the pear tree we had planted in the front was much bigger. I was mustering up the courage to knock on the door to see if we could take a look when one of our old neighbors informed us they were out of town for the weekend. Part of me was bummed, and part of me was relieved, I wasn't sure I actually wanted to see what she had changed. I wanted it to live on in my memory just as we left it.

I was surprised this week when Zillow informed me of the house going up for sale, coming up on 6 years after we sold it. My curiosity got the better of me and I found myself excitedly waiting for the pictures to load.
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The first picture loaded and it looked like nothing had changed from when we left it. The entry was still painted red, the curtains we left still hung on the windows, the walls still painted stripes using flat/gloss paint and the clock and shelf we left in an alcove were still adorning the wall.
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The kitchen was the same as well including the curtains. Our bedroom. The bathroom. Hunter's room. The basement. Paint, curtains, everything...it was the same. It was the weirdest feeling seeing our exact house years later. Even the leather sectional we sold with the house was still there. After going through the whole slideshow, we realized they painted two rooms - Hallie's room and the bathroom downstairs. Thats it. The rest of the house was just as we had left it.

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I actually enjoyed seeing the inside again. I can't imagine someone moving into a house and not changing more than two paint colors, but that's me. In fact I look at that house and think how different I'd to it today. That house is where I learned how to renovate and my love for building started to take shape.

I'm sure the next time I see that house posted for sale it will look vastly different!

Sunday, August 21, 2016

24 weeks...

I feel like starting solids with babies is a necessary evil. In fact it ranks low on things I enjoy doing - pretty close to potty training. But we're doing it and I know 4 months from now it will be much better.

Until then, I put a spoon in his mouth and only a 1/3 stays in his mouth, the rest dribbles down his chin. Which I scoop off and feed him again, but this time only a 1/4 stays in his mouth. The whole time I'm holding his hands so I can get the spoon close to his mouth and as I go to reload the spoon with more rice cereal, he blows raspberries with the biggest smile on his face. The first time it was pretty cute and funny. And even the second time it was pretty entertaining as he surprised himself when food splattered on his face. After that it just created more mess to clean up and less food that he actually consumed. But I am nothing if not persistent!
weekly photo project

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Birth Announcement...

I designed these a while back. It took me some time to actually get them printed. Once they were printed they sat on my desk for way too long. I finally got most of them out just before we left for the summer, with a few stragglers still sitting on my desk. That my friends is the difference between the first child and the fifth child!

Birth Announcement design with hand lettering
Birth Announcement design with hand lettering

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Summer vacation...leg 2...Rexburg

After our week in Utah, we moved on to Idaho. Steve's parents have a house in Rexburg from when they served a mission there. If they were in the country, they would spend their summer there - but they're in Africa, so we enjoyed the home for them!

Rexburg is where Steve and I met, fell in love, earned diplomas and brought home our first child. Although 8 months out of the year, the weather leaves much to be desired - there's 4 months of beautiful weather and that's when we went to visit. We took the kids on campus and showed them around. We had made arrangements to visit some people we knew and we were surprised to run into several more people who we never thought in a million years we'd run into. It's a small world!

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My family joined us in Rexburg for a pseudo reunion - we threw it out to the family that we would be staying at the house and invited anyone to join us if they were available. Everyone except one brother-in-law made plans to be there and we had ourselves a good time.

We celebrated my birthday the day after we arrived. Steve got up in the wee hours of the morning to make a run to walmart to gather supplies. He decorated the kitchen, supplied the birthday bucket and even made me a cake.
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Being in Rexburg over Independence day was quite the treat - small towns know how to throw a party. The trick was trying to find activities that were suitable for the tweens, the baby/little kids and the pregnant lady. I think we kept everyone entertained.

We went to the local rodeo one evening and enjoyed the show. However, it always makes me a little nervous when I see kids on the other side of the fence competing. This is how we all looked at times:
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We went and explored a civil defense cave. Even after reading the plaque at the opening, I'm still not entirely sure what the caves were used for, if they were used at all. However, if during the cold war there was ever a nuclear threat, this place was where you wanted to be.

We traveled in to the depths of the cave with flashlights in hand and coats on our backs.
There was some difficult terrain, but mostly uneven terrain and yet we had three two year olds handle it like champs.
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We went to the carousel, the splash pad, the water park, visited the temple, spent hours playing spikeball and stayed up late into the night playing games.
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And I would've thought 4 1/2 days together would've been plenty of time, but we could've stayed longer - there were still things on our list we didn't make it to. Yellowstone - we're coming for you next year!
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