Improving Talents

I never thought that I had much talent in anything but I have periodically taken (and slacked off on) piano lessons. Michael has always been very supportive in my desire to play the piano even if I feel like it's a hopeless cause, he has bought me pianos and keyboards through out the years and found people willing to give me lessons but although I enjoy playing little tunes I have never learned anything very useful, until recently. My sister-in-law Amy who lives a few minutes away from us is an excellent pianist and teaches all her kids how to play Michael asked if she would teach me too and I have been taking lessons from her once a week since last October or so, well she has taught me so much and helped me actually practice because I have to report to her every week, but I have been learning how to play some hymns and on Sunday May 17th I played the piano during our branch sacrament meeting, I played all of the prelude music, the three hymns for the meeting, and a rest hymn. I was scared to death and shaking hysterically, my stomach was in knots all morning before church and during the first half of sacrament! I did make mistakes but luckily I was able to keep going and they weren't disastrous. I am very grateful for Amy in helping me to learn a useful skill and encouraging me even when I don't believe I'm ready for such a task as to play for sacrament meeting. I'm very glad to say that I have done it and I'm also very glad to say that its over now! I am still working on learning how to play new hymns since I only know how to play 5 right now but it's fun to work on a challenge and witness the results.

Playing Catch-up

I have been awful at keeping my blog up-to-date so here's a bunch of stuff that we have been up to (except all the things we've done that I forgot to bring along my camera).

EASTER!! On Easter morning the boys woke up and Ryker quickly found the goodies on the table! He is my little piggy, he's constantly eating! He loved the jelly beans in the eggs and his noddle nest they were in. Jonah liked his chocolate bunny and hunting for eggs. He had a blast coloring eggs too!


After church, which was cut short due to a wild fire that started across the street from the church and filled the building with smoke! We had a delicious ham dinner with Michael's brother Clay and his family then we colored eggs and let the kids hunt for them! Ryker was way excited about the one egg he found!
Michael is always drawing on Jonah, or whoever is nearby when he has a pen. Here is what Jonah and Ryker will look when they grow facial hair! Pretty cute!


We have also been busy working on our garden. Since we live in an apartment we have our garden at Clay and Amy's house. Michael had the idea to "go green" and use old tires from the community as planters for our garden. It is looking good so far and I'm excited to have fresh herbs and veggies!

Clay and Amy have a horse so after working on the garden Michael took Ryker for a ride, which he loved then Jonah got to ride the horse all by himself like a true cowboy!


Jonah even knows the lingo, he kept saying "Giddy up horsy" and "yeehaw" He did a good job steering the horse and making him stop so I could get a picture of him!


And finally here is a picture of me at 81/2 months pregnant. Okay mom, now you can see that my stomach is getting bigger!

oops!

I added a new post from our vacation that was quite a while ago but it got posted below my last post because I started it before and couldn't get the pictures loaded and stopped. So I finally got it to work and posted it but didn't change the date to have it show as the newest post, so check below for the whole vacation adventure!

Battling the Binkie

Ryker has been hooked on the pacifier from birth and Michael an dI have been trying to decide when an dhow to get him off of his dependence on it. While we were in California we had lunch with some old friends, Brad and Reiko Lamb, Brad was telling Michael that if you screw the pacifier to teh wall at the kids' height they can still suck in it whenever they want but they have to keep their nose to the wall, which will eventually make the kid realize it's not worth suckin gon at all. SO on tuesday we took Ryker's paci and screwed it to the wall, he thought it was so funny and just laughed at it, he does go to it and suck on it every now and then but I still give him a pacifier to sleep with, I'm not ready to listen to him crying himself to sleep! anyway here are some funny pictures of the paci on the wall.

California Vacation

I know it has taken me forever to post this but I was having problems with uploading the pictures for some reason but here is what we did last month on vacation! Our trip from the pictures I took, which sadly aren't that many! we must have been having too much fun to think about pictures! or too busy running from my parents house to Michael's parents, it's good and bad to have both our parents living in the same place, it's nice to only have to plan one vacation and see almost all of our family but it's hard because we have to split up our time. I think we should take vacations that are twice as long!! We had a lot of fun with everyone and wish we could have been there longer to enjoy it more!! Our vacation started by driving to the Grand Canyon and stopping along the way, here are the boys playing in a Tepee at one place we stopped, and then we stopped at Walnut Canyon in Arizona and hiked along the canyon wall where Indians had once lived, we could hike to the little caves they lived in that were stained black from fires so long ago. The whole time I was thinking about how many kids could have easily died from falling off the edge of the canyon, scary thought!




When we got to the Grand Canyon we got dinner and went to bed, in the morning we got up to drive to the Grand Canyon to see the sun rise, but when we went outside, we were surprised to see that it was snowing! We went to the Grand Canyon look-out anyway but couldn't see much of anything so we went back to the hotel packed up and ate breakfast, but went to the lookout before leaving for California. The sun had broken through the clouds and we could see the whole canyon, it was beautiful! We were cold but enjoyed looking at the beauty of the earth and its diversity.



When we finally got to Bakersfield California, we were able to relax and let the kids run around. They did really good in the car and we had a lot of fun talking and playing together. Jonah and Ryker really wanted to go swimming at Grandma's house and they both got in, even though the water was freezing! Jonah jumped in twice but Ryker kept going back for more after each time Michael dunked him in. These boys were the first ones in the pool (voluntarily) this year. I say voluntarily because while were there my sisters came over to my mom's house so we could all go shopping together and my sister, Christa's, oldest boy Peyton (3) fell into the pool (un-voluntarily) and my mom jumped in to help him out.





Jonah wanted to go fishing so Michael took Jonah and his nephew England. They came home with these good sized catfish, we were all very impressed until Jonah said he knew a secret: The fish were from the store. They couldn't come home empty handed!!



Michael's parents live on a Ranch and have lots of horses, chickens, peacocks, and such. Michael's dad made a wagon from the back of an old truck, I think, so he hitched up some horses and we all went for a buggy ride around their property. Jonah had so much fun playing out on the farm, there is so much to do there and so many of his cousins live out there too! Ryker loved to walk around the yard playing on the toys and the teeter-totter and his favorite part about the farm were the chickens!






Playing at the park with my sister's kids and some old friends from Bakersfield. Jonah looks so grown up to me in these pictures! He was one of the biggest kids there!




Before leaving we had the opportunity to visit with my granny, despite her age and restricted movement abilities she is almost constantly crocheting something! While we were there she showed me all the quilts and things she's working on. I hope I can still be productive when I'm her age!

PINK ~ PINK~PINK

For Michael's spring break we decided to drive to California and visit our family who we haven't seen for almost 2 years! One of the things I wanted to do while I was there was make a crib bumper and matching quilt for our baby girl (that we think is a girl) I'm glad I decided to take the material with me to enlist my moms help instead of doing it myself, it was so much easier with my mom there and a fun project to do together! I wanted to have something really pink and girlie since I'm getting tired of all the neutrals and "boy" colors. Even though we're not 100% sure it is a girl I'm saying that it is after three ultrsounds of "I don't see anything to indicate it's a boy but, I'm just not sure" I decided it is a girl, if it was a boy they should have seen something by now right! so here are some pictures of the crib bumper and quilt I made with help from my mom, I think it turned out very cute and can't wait to have a little baby girl to sleep in it! Pictures of the rest of our little vacation will be posted shortly!

The kiddos!

I thought I would do a post about each of the kids and give a little update for them.

Jonah was going to pre-school but we recently pulled him out since he said he never learned anything and he would frequently ask to stay home. He even lost some knowledge he had such as the ABC's I asked him to recite them for me and he kept getting mixed up and would only get about half way through then start over again so I decided it would be better to continue doing home school. He is however continuing to go to the elementary school once a week for speech and he has improved quite a bit I'm looking forward to his continued progress so eventually we won't have anymore melt downs because Mom and Dad don't understand what he's talking about. He is full of energy still, and loves to be out side. He has a very active imagination and pretends that he can turn into just about everything. His favorite things to pretend to be are a wolf, fox (like Robin Hood), Indian, cowboy (he says when he turns 8 he will quit school and work as a cowboy and live in the desert), a Jedi (from Star Wars), and Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty because he kills the dragon. He is so funny and loves to make people laugh. He is a good big brother and tries to get Ryker to be like him.



Ryker is our sweet heart. He loves to cuddle I nick named him "bug" because he is our cuddle bug and because he is our stink bug too! He poops in the tub almost every time we put him in and on the occasion that he doesn't, he makes up for it by pooping as soon as he's out whether we've got a diaper on him or not, but he always tells us by running and pointing at the spot where the poopy is, I hope this means he'll be easy to potty train! He is 15 months old now and still has never said "Mama" but he does say 'Dada', 'juice', 'that', 'done', 'ball', 'baa' (for bath) and sometimes he says 'eat' and 'yes'. He is hooked on his pacifier and the bottle but yesterday I went cold turkey and only gave him sippy cups he doesn't drink as much which means fewer wet diapers but he's handling the adjustment better than I thought he would. I may let him keep his pacifier just a little while longer I didn't want to take both away at the same time. Ryker loves music and likes to dance whenever he hears it. When we're at the store or if I'm practicing the piano, or if a commercial is on TV with music I can always catch him bobbing his head along.


I also wanted to include a little something about our new baby. we have had two ultrasounds during the second trimester and both times we have been told that it looks like a girl but that it's not as clear as the ultrasound technician would like it so he wouldn't tell us that it is definitely a girl but he did say that if it was a boy there should be something else that he's just not seeing so I'm pretty confident that it is a girl. during our last ultrasound on Feb. 9th the baby was breech so that's what made it harder to see the tell tell parts. Since learning that I have actually had dreams where I have to have an emergency c-section because the baby is breech and won't turn. I didn't think I would be so worried about it but I guess subconsciously I am. I also feel like the baby is a girl because I was more sick with this one than with my boys and I feel like I'm carrying so low Jonah and Ryker were up higher like a big ball right out in front of me. but all of the kicks I feel with this one are at my belly-button or lower. I also really really really want a little girl!!! our ultrasound appointments give us the whole thing recorded on a disc but don't give any still pictures or print outs so until I figure out how to make some stills from the disc or shorten the long version to something more reasonable I don't think I'll be putting any pics of the baby before she's born. but I did have Michael take a few of me today since today marks 6 months so you can at least see the baby bump.