Halloween

Well I'm only a month behind. That's not too bad.

Halloween this year was loads of fun! We got Evelyn's Halloween costume several months ago. She spent the next couple of months SO excited to be Minnie Mouse.

Her costume came with Minnie gloves and apparently they are terrifying. So those were a no go, but once I put them away, everything calmed down and we had a fantastic evening. Provo has downtown trick or treating at businesses and we opted for that since it happened early in the day and there were so many fun costumes for Evelyn to see on the street.

 So Excited for candy!!!

 Our Minnie Mouse :)

Daddy is the only reason we went Trick-or-treating. I'd been having sciatic back pain so his presence was necessary to manage our little ball of energy!

Well, now I am 33 weeks pregnant and in the home stretch. I can't believe we'll have another baby in just a little over 6 weeks. The past couple of weeks have been SO much better around here as far as how I've been feeling. I only get sick every few days now.

I am SO grateful for so many things right now. I suppose it is appropriate for this time of the year. I don't feel like the time of year has caused the gratitude though. I am so grateful for learning. I am grateful for the things that God teaches us. Sometimes I don't appreciate the methods, but I can definitely understand why God teaches us the way he does. What a great opportunity we have to be alive and learning. 

Catch up!

Boy! My well intentioned blogging came to an abrupt halt when life got crazy with leasing for the year. Now that all 196 of my tenants have moved in and settled down I can resume regular life. Work pretty much dies around here in October, and during the 'off season' I get my projects done and try to re-order the chaos that has become most of our closets :)

BABY!!!

I suppose I can't blame my lack of time or effort entirely on leasing and work. After all, this spring Kevin and I found out we were expecting baby #2! We are thrilled! We found out in August that we will be adding a BOY to our little family.

Roses are red, violets are blue
Where there was one, now there will be two.
Now we are three, but soon we'll be four.
Kevin was outnumbered, but not anymore!

Looks like we'll be spending Christmas and New Years at home since traveling anywhere at 38 weeks pregnant sounds like a bad idea to me :)

Those of you who know my pregnancy history know that I spend most of my time super sick. I have a fairly common hormone disorder that would make pregnancy very hard to achieve and maintain without treatment. The medicine that treats the disorder increases progesterone and a rise in progesterone is often linked with 'morning' sickness. This time around I felt better from 20-25 weeks before the nausea came back. I think this pregnancy has been rougher that way. It may be going away again. I've had 3 good days in a row so hopefully I'll feel better for the duration.

I have to tell myself that we all have our own trials and pregnancy is one of mine. Being sick all day for months at a time is no fun, but the result is worth it! I have days all the time where I run that through my brain as a mantra. "The result is worth it!" And it is. Evelyn has been the perfect complement to Kevin and I. She teaches us so much every day. We know we are lucky to have her and another baby on the way. We are so thankful for modern medicine!


Evelyn!!!

Evelyn turned 2 this summer. She is an incredible little girl. She started speaking in full sentences this spring and seems to have a knack for being social with all of our tenants. She loves to sing and rarely listens to music without singing along. My favorite is listening to her sing "Brave" by Sara Bareilles, or the cover by Vocalpoint. This was back a few months ago, when she was first starting to sing. Now she knows all the words and generally sings them while running in a circle.

A girl after my own heart, she loves Aaron Copland's 'Rodeo', and Ravel's 'Bolero'. She will even sit down and listen when I turn on Jonas Kaufmann...*sigh*.

Evelyn has always been too busy to sit and read books, but during the past month she has begun to take an interest in sitting long enough to read. It is kind of nice for this pregnant lady to just sit and snuggle while reading "Micky's Picnic" or "Bunnies New Shoes" a dozen or so times before lunch.

While lots of girls love princesses and castles, Evelyn LOVES cars, dinosaurs, and monsters. She even picked out 'The Nightmare before Christmas' last week and laughed through the whole thing :)

This fall we began to realize the power of bribes....ahem....a reward system. It is really funny, but Evelyn will do almost anything for a tic tac. We alternate that with letting her take a bath, or sleep, with her zoo animals and I rarely find myself in power struggles these days.

We marvel all the time about everything she is learning and are so grateful that she is ours. She is super excited to have a little brother ( I don't think she actually understands though) and has come up with names for him on multiple occasions. So far the best are "Toes" and "Mater".

Here is a massive photo overload of the past 7 or 8 months...

Starting early on Personal Progress :)

This painting was my Valentines day present.

A broken pipe caused an eruption out in front of our house TWICE this summer!

A big family BBQ/pool party for Evelyn's birthday.

Opening presents with Uncle Paul

Trying out her new bike.

Foraging for candy during a game at Kevin's families reunion.

This is the type of thing that happens when Evelyn is quiet upstairs.

Evelyn had a stomach bug and since I am pregnant, sick and not up to dealing with puke it was Kevin's job to take care of Evelyn for the day.  Adorable.

Kevin teaching Evelyn about grass and bugs at the ward camp out.

Sunday afternoon dance off.

First trip to the temple in Provo.

Kissing a goat.

Loving the petting zoo.

I think she gets this from papa. We couldn't keep her away from the horses.

Simplify!

So I have never been great at having a list of New Years resolutions. Some years I have them. Some years I don't. The years I have them, they cause me stress for a couple of months and then slip through the cracks. Rather than making a list of things to do this year I prefer to have one thing I will do now. Once I have mastered this one thing I will think about what comes next.

Simplify

This has been my mantra since the beginning of December. It means multiple things to me, but all of them seem doable since I am only worrying about that one word...which I can interpret however I want. I love the diverse meanings this word has in our family right now. 

Simplify. Playgroups, workout groups, clubs, memberships, and associations are not super high on my priority list right now. Do we have play dates? Yes. Do I work out? Yes (Insanity again: month one). I am just working to avoid the commitments that usually add stress to daily life. Often I feel as though I am expected to be everywhere at once. Working, cleaning, cooking, play dates, department parties, games nights, dinners, weekends away...the whirlwind is incessant. Now we nix a lot of those things once we see that they are overly complicating life. We still enjoy getting away, but extended trips are challenging with a toddler and after about 4 days Evelyn is a crazy person. I like doing all of the above things, but just when it is really worth it. 

So far it has been very rewarding. I have had time for myself, and that hasn't happened much in the past couple of years. I just read a couple of books written by my friend Kristen Niedfeldt. They were titled "Ending the Rain: a fairy tale", and "Finding Ever After". I pretty much read each of them in one sitting. They were that good. By the time I was 20 pages into the 1st one, I was hooked! (Available at Amazon.com. I just thought I'd throw that out there in case you guys are looking for a good book to read)

Although I have been taking time for myself, a lot of that time has been devoted to thinking about how I can make life better for my family. I guess it is just something moms do. This leads into another application for the word simplify. I am trying to find alternatives in our home that will remove toxins and extra processed foods. I am not holding myself to a super strict standard, or a specific set of goals in this matter. I am just trying to find better options that feel like a step up, rather than a restriction. 

For starters: I LOVE homemade bread. I love how few ingredients it has and how wholesome it is. I decided that making my own bread would match my definition of simplify. I bought a bread maker and have been making my bread for all of 35 days! It has been great! I went to one of my favorite sites 100daysofrealfood.com and used their 100% whole wheat bread maker recipe. It tastes great, but I switch it up with a more complicated recipe from a lady in my ward. The more complicated recipe makes great sandwich bread to it is worth it. From that same website I have also started making my own toaster pastries, fruit roll-ups, crackers, and granola. Evelyn LOVES the whole wheat toaster pastries. I just fill them with homemade jam and BOOM, awesome healthy breakfast.

In addition to that I made my own deodorant. No, I am not a particularly crunchy person, but I realized I was out of deodorant on a Sunday and couldn't go to the store. Just like me to forget something like that! I could have used Kevin's, but I thought I would see if I had the ingredients to make my own, and I did! I scented it with lavender and tea tree oil. It works great! I may keep it up to avoid the aluminum in most other deodorants...plus this one works better. 

Sometimes I worry that by simplifying I will wind up with a super boring life, but I don't think that will happen with Evelyn around. She is a ball of fire with a HUGE personality! She just turned 18 months old and is everything a toddler should be. Crazy!

Her vocabulary has grown to include between 50 and 60 words now. She's learning so fast. She started nursery last month and loved it. Success! So nice to have my brain back at church :)

Kevin is doing well in school and is getting started on his thesis. I am so grateful for his mind and that he enjoys doing what he does. Software engineering is totally not my thing, but I am grateful that it is his!

We just began leasing for the year so life is going to be pretty busy again, but busy or not we have a lot to be grateful for!