When I was in the hospital having the girl, my sister-in-law organized my baby stuff for me. I hadn’t done it before. It wasn’t that I didn’t have time… I was living with my parents, and I didn’t have an official nursery, so I guess I took that as my Get Out Of Nesting Free Card, or something.
Well.
I did take up crocheting again, so there’s that.

With my son, I didn’t have anything ready because he came so early. and so FAST.
With this one? I’m determined to be armed and ready. Again, I don’t really have a nursery (I’ve given up on the notion. I’ve talked myself into the idea that having a nursery is something for the purple-blooded American class… I’m a simpleton).
I’m not going to lie. It hasn’t been easy.
I’m pretty sure my husband wants to put away his wife.

Today was the day we were going to go to our storage unit, pull out all of our baby girl stuff AND our Christmas stuff and get it all set up and taken care of.
Can’t you see me with my can-do face on, dusting my pants and smiling at my perfectly set up house?
Ha.

Once we got to the storage unit, we ended up completely cleaning it out and reorganizing it. And you might as well sweep it up while you’re at it, says my husband.
We came home a few hours later.
I died on the couch.
My husband ate.
My children sang “Gangnam Style” in their very best American.

Over the summer (or was it last summer?) our storage units were sort of ravaged with rain water. I managed to rescue some of my books (it WAS last summer, it’s all coming back to me now). I didn’t dig around enough to realize that of all the cardboard boxes to be on the very bottom of the storage unit…
My boxes full of baby girl clothes were buried, trampled, musty, and moldy.
But we pulled them out anyway. Since my boxing them up over 5 years ago, we’ve switched to storing things in plastic bins (we’re slow, okay?) so when I pack them away again they will be much safer.

Anyway: I pulled one item at a time out of the back of our truck and into our house.
I thought by the end of the day we’d have it all tackled and conquered. But my husband realized that he didn’t want a Christmas tree up until the ceiling had been painted.
So he painted.
Is painting.

Have you ever lived with a perfectionist? Well, if you’re not one… get one. He’s indispensable when it comes to stuff like that. Paint the ceiling? Psh. Who cares? Not me! But he does. And really: someone OUGHT to care.

While he toiled away at the ceiling, I washed and rinsed and folded and completely REMOVED MOLD from clothing. I’m feeling pretty accomplished about the whole thing. It was a long process involving intense bleach-soaking in the bathtub (a few teensy pink outfits were harmed in the making of my magic), hot water washing with bleach, and a second wash with delicate baby detergent that I WHIPPED UP all by my lonesome.
See my smoking gun?
I am. The Kitchen Mother Chemist: cheap.
My biggest bragging right? I completely SAVED the outfit I brought my eldest home from the hospital in. Fairly SWAM in it, she did.

Betcha can’t guess where her feet are in that newborn onesie. Also: the bruise on her head makes me relive labor and delivery all over again.
It’s all about preparing mentally, right?

Just before I turn in tonight, I want to share with you what I’ve done. It isn’t like my methods are revolutionary or THE BEST or really even worthy of showing off at all, but it’s all fun and new for me.
I’m esscited, okay?
Plus I need validation that something actually got done today. You’ll see why in a minute.

I put that together all by my bad self. Okay, my little brother helped… but he’s such a nice kid, he’d give me all the credit. I know he would.

I don’t actually HAVE any diapers or wipes yet, but I will so very soon. Can you believe just last week my TV was sitting where the blankets are? And my DVDs have been relocated to make room for pink, frilly, sweet smelling, tiny, cute and wonderful BABY clothes. Those preemie size outfits are just downright irresistible. No one with a heart can look at them and NOT melt.

The 3-12 month clothes are not folded. They are SHOVED in there. Ahem, neatly.
ish.

I love that I can close the doors and hide it all away. It makes the room feel so much cleaner. And the knobs are great bib holders. They were born for it, I think.

A close friend of mine made me a nursing cover! I’ve never had one before and I am THRILLED. Even if this baby doesn’t take to the (I want to say “tit” but I don’t think Mom would like that)… I’ll still use it. eet’s for fun.
And I know the next two pictures are ridiculously unremarkable. But hey. That’s me.
The girl who never had a nursery and uses words like (tit) in parenthesis.

The bathtub is bleached and ready to go (complete with a girly hooded towel, all folded up). And here’s the bouncer. We never got much use out of this bouncer chair.
My daughter hated it, and she used it maybe 3 times before figuring out that it was nothing more than a wobbly vehicle. She used it as a step stool -just like she used EVERYTHING at her level as a step stool.
Oh, my house was one filth-hole in those days.

I like to think that this one will absolutely BASK in the bouncer. She’ll coo and squirm and never soil it because I’m sure the baby that is sitting tight in my stomach literally KICKING her way into the world and never, ever letting me slouch (kick in the ribs, anyone?) will be downright docile.
Right?
My view tonight as I sat down to watch an episode of “Hart of Dixie.”

There’s just not enough room for my organs and a baby. I’m tellin’ ya…
I have my to-do list taped to the inside of one of my kitchen cupboards, and I can’t even begin to tell you how relieving it is to cross at least one thing off that list every day.
And yes. I did write “name the baby” as something that definitely needs doing.

So here it is… the reason I need validation that something got done today… my house presently looks like this:

My perfectionist, people, is hard at work.
Staring at it makes me anxious and crabby, so I’m holed up in my room. I’ve got my calf on a heating pad (I was hit with the most painful charlie horses I’ve ever had in my 27 years last night, and my right calf is one big, fat knot tonight), my giant 9-foot pillow standing by, and a small bit of baby’s life organized.
I’m officially more organized than I’ve ever been before bringing a baby into the world.  *fist pump*
It’s a happy thing, really. And only slightly sad (poor previous kids. Mom loves you just as much, promise).
Goodnight.

While we were away visiting family, we were able to attend Grammy’s Harvest Party. For a few months, my mother in law has been planning a Harvest Party for her grandchildren.
Everything about it was adorable -from the candy bars wrapped up to look like mummies to the soda labeled with “poison” labels to the hay to the lights to the… everything! She even sent out invites in the mail, and my kids were beside themselves.
“PARTY FOR US! PARTY FOR US! WE ARE GOING TO A PARTY FOR US!”

My sister-in-law made the most amazing witch finger cookies -everyone LOVED these babies:

While she made those cookies, she was sweet enough to share her kitchen with me while I made “Carnival Apples.” We make carnival apples every year just for our little family, but this year we wanted to share our tradition with everyone. I ended up not being able to find the kind of caramel I usually use (in the city! say wha?) and in the end I settled for something else. I had to make the apples in a hurry. They looked sloppy, but they tasted okay. That’s what REALLY counts when it comes to carnival apples.
PS: I have no idea why my kids decided to call THESE apples carnival apples instead of caramel apples. Maybe it’s the white chocolate covering? They’re definitely carnival worthy, though. Definitely. My kids can’t get enough of them. I was worried I wouldn’t have enough for everyone at the party, so I wouldn’t let the kids have one until the very end of the party.
But my son…
I found him sneaking into the kitchen, snagging an apple, and BOY HOWDY. There was no prying that thing from that boy’s grasp. He’s no dummy.
Aside from all of the delicious snacks and pizza and candy, Grammy had tons of games set up:

Apple bobbing -a harvest classic!


The kids all went bonkers for the games, and they all showed up in COSTUME!

I just love this:

And what kind of harvest party would it be without Charlie Brown?

Grammy even had a CAKE WALK put together, and it was so sweet watching the kids devour their little cupcakes:

The entire party was so well put together and so enjoyable! The kids AND the parents loved every minute of it.

Thank you so much, Grammy!!!
You are definitely well loved by all of your kiddos.
Even the vampire ones:

I don’t remember the last time I went so long without blogging. I really don’t. Do you want to know the worst of it? It drove me mad. I was out of town, and during that time I had some fun experiences, some crazy experiences, and a HECKUVALOTTA hormone issues.
And I had nowhere to write it all out.

On my way back into town, we stopped off at my baby doc appointment. For weeks, I’ve been concerned about how big the baby is. She feels much heavier than my others did, and she always measures at least a week ahead of schedule. According to my cycle, I should be due on Christmas Eve. I should be 32 weeks.
But according to my ultrasounds, I’m 34 weeks. I’m due on December 12th.
I could have SWORN the doctor only bumped my due date up to the 19th. But I was wrong.
And THAT’S why the baby feels so big. Because she is so big.
She’s right on track.
When I had my son at 36 weeks, I went in for my 6 week visit and my OB said something along the lines of, “Remember next time you get pregnant… you cook them fast.”

Apparently so.
I must have an accelerator button on the inside of my uterus, or something.
Anyway, knowing that my due date has been bumped up a week and knowing that I’ve never carried a baby past 37 weeks… I kind of went a little nuts.
I’ve spent the past few days in a whirlwind of emotions.
I’m really scared to have this baby. I’m stressed. I’m nervous.
I know I’ve done this before and I know the baby will come and everything will work out, but you can’t speak Normal to Crazy. And I’m CRAZY.

I should tell you that before I went out of town, I had a steady pace going. I cleaned out from under the bathroom sink -our medicines are now organized. I dedicated an entire day to the kids’ room -I told them if they would just clean it up really quick (get the basic stuff off the floor) we would take a break and drink chocolate milk and eat lunch and then we would REALLY tackle their room.
I said that at 10 am.
And FIVE HOURS LATER, their room hadn’t been cleaned. It would have taken them maybe MAYBE 20 minutes.
My husband came home early to find his sweaty, huffing, unbalanced wife heaving toys OUT of the kids’ room and onto the living room floor.
“EVERYTHING IN THIS ROOM HAS A PLACE!” I shouted, dolls and Matchbox cars flying over my head.
“NOTHING IS IN IT’S PLACE!”
Stuffed animals, Barbies, plastic tools went sailing…
“BY THE TIME WE ARE DONE THIS ROOM WILL BE IMMACULATE!”
As if they even know what that means.
“NO ONE IS EATING LUNCH UNTIL THIS PILE IS GONE AND YOUR ROOM IS CLEAN!”
Tears, sobbings, groans…

That pile grew to even greater heights before we were through.
And finally.
At 5:30 P.M.
The pile was cleaned up. And lunch was served. I gave the kids some leftovers from the night before.
“Let’s hurry up and go to the store,” I grumbled to my husband, “I’ve got to get stuff for dinner and the sooner we leave the sooner we get back.”
My husband planted his hands on my shoulders.
“You are a grouch,” he said, “Go to the store by yourself. Take a break.”
I cried into his shirt for a good 10 minutes -I’m so grateful for him. Not just any man would be such a sport. In truth, I WANTED to go by myself. The last thing I wanted to do was haul my children around Wal-Mart. Two hours later, I was home. The kids were asleep. My husband and I stayed up late watching a comedy (heaven knows I needed that comedy).  It was called “Wild Target.”

via

I recommend this movie, BUT you should know that there’s 2 f-words and one sensual scene. Normally that would be enough for me to say, “Don’t watch it.”
But the weird humor in it was enough to make it really worthwhile. Which reminds me, don’t watch this if you have a normal sense of humor. But if you love British humor, this is definitely worth seeing.
It also could have been that my soul was humor-parched and anything remotely funny was just what I needed. Either way, it’s on Netflix Instant Streaming.

Moving on:
As I was crawling into bed after the movie was over, my daughter came running out of her room and into the bathroom.
Where she puked.
I went to her side and pulled her hair back, rubbed her back.
“I HATE THIS!” She shouted (can’t think where she picked shouting up…)
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” I said, trying to comfort her however I could, “What made you sick?”
“THAT FOOD!” She continued shouting, referring to the leftovers I had fed the starved children.
“The food?” I asked.
And she puked some more.
“I TOLD YOU WE SHOULD HAVE HAD SANDWICHES!” She shot me THE most accusing look on the face of the planet.
A few hours later, she was up again, sick.
And then the boy was up. Sick. Twice.
It was food poisoning for sure.

I felt horrible. I still do. And my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me. I don’t think she ever will, actually.
The next day, I did something I never do. I told my husband what to do with his day.
“The baby will be here soon and we need to clear out the corner in our room where the computer desk is,” I said, “That’s what we’re going to do today. You don’t have to help me, but it’s getting done one way or another. And you might not like the way I do it.”

Let’s just say that pregnancy brings out the TOWANDA in me.

via

“We can do it,” he said. He detests Towanda.

But then he had a TV offered to him at a price he couldn’t refuse. And I couldn’t refuse because my husband has talked of wanting nothing but a new TV for years. We’ve also never had our own TV. We’ve always borrowed.
We’re The Borrowers.

The price was so low and the TV so big… so he bought it. And we had to clear off the computer desk to set the TV on it because the TV wouldn’t fit in our entertainment Armoire.
We needed a new entertainment center and we needed to find a place for the old entertainment armoire.
And we still had to get rid of that BLASTED computer desk.

So we bought a new entertainment center. It’s one we’ve both wanted for over a year. We ended up dipping into our savings and using up some of our Christmas budget:

Merry Christmas to us.
And as sick as I am over spending so much money all at once, I am happy that we were able to get the entertainment center AND the TV for much cheaper than a brand new TV set alone. So that’s something.

With our center all set up, my husband worked tirelessly to get the house back in some form of working order. In the middle of it all, he was called out of town for work.
Which left me alone (adult wise) to pack for a four-day vacation to the big sunny valley. I packed us up and drove us down on my own. I left the house in shambles because Towanda had lost her oomph somewhere between her backache and her insatiable hunger.

Our vacation will need a post all on it’s own. And it will get one.
But first.

As we drove home from vacation together, we were excited to go into my doctor visit and hear the baby’s strong heartbeat. Little did we know, we’d be walking out of the office completely dazed.
And then we’d come home to a house in shambles. There was clean laundry piled on the couch, cardboard and Styrofoam overtook the living room, a giant bag of trash I’d forgotten to take out was waiting for us…

That’s when hormones and stress did a complete takeover. Luckily, my husband handed me his debit card and begged me to PLEASE order a pack n’ play online before I lost my mind.
We don’t have a place for the baby to sleep, and we’ve saved for a pack n’ play but we hadn’t ordered one yet.
So I did. I ordered it. I closed my lap top. I stood up.
“I’m going to bed,” I said to my husband, leaving him in a filthy house with two awake children.

I wanted to feel badly about it, but I couldn’t. I didn’t. I was so stressed that a removal of my company would be nothing BUT a blessing on his head.

I closed my eyes and drowned out the thoughts of the filth I would wake up to and how the next day was Halloween and how I NEEDED to make it homey and fun and warm for the children because THAT’S WHAT MOMS DO.
I woke up the next morning, and my house wasn’t as filthy as it was supposed to have been.
SOMEone cleaned it. And that someone confessed that they’d stayed up until 1 AM cleaning.

And what do you know? Between ordering a pack n’ play, getting some solid sleep (I hadn’t slept well on vacation), and waking up to a house cleaner than it should have been was JUST the right formula. I was a happy lady. Halloween went off without a hitch, warm and wonderful traditions stayed intact, and we all went to bed filled to the brim with what the kids like to call “Carnival apples.”
More on that later as well.

Last night, my husband and I stayed up late late late again. We moved things around. Situated this and that. Pulled out this and that. Our house looks dramatically different. And how fitting since our lives are about to be dramatically different.
It’s a wonder our marriage has survived this pregnancy and no foolin’. I think if my husband hadn’t been an equal partner in getting us into this pregnancy thing, he’d be long gone by now.

I’m not on my best behavior.
And I WANT to be. I TRY to be. But I CAN’T.
In the meantime, I missed an entire week of my pregnancy and realistically speaking my baby could be here in 13 days (which was how far along I was when I delivered my son).
THIRTEEN DAYS!
Wouldn’t you be a mess of panic too?!?!
I’m not nearly as panicy today… mostly because the pack n’ play is in transit, the jalapenos have been canned, the computer desk is gone, and the armoire has been relocated to my bedroom where it now plays host to our linens AND the baby’s clothes.
Today I’m canning tomatoes.
Tonight, we’re decorating for Christmas and washing teeny, tiny, pink clothes and blankets.
And here’s a terrible picture of me in a dressing room at Ross. I was just a few days away from being 34 weeks and I didn’t even know it.
Also: I brought that shirt home with me along with a pair of non-maternity converse sweats that are so comfortable I haven’t really taken them off at all. They’re LONG. Do you know how hard it is to find long sweats?! And all I’m saying is that they were in the maternity section even though they AREN’T maternity. They were the only pair. And they’re a perfect fit.
We were Made For Each Other.

A few weeks ago, I cleaned my house like a champ. It felt good to tell my body, “I knew ya could.”
Soon after that, I took the picture on the left. A few DAYS after I took the picture on the left, I took the picture on the right. These both show my belly at 30 weeks:

I woke up Sunday morning and couldn’t get out of bed like I usually did. I couldn’t sit up, swing my legs over and hop up. I had to prop up on my elbows, grunt, scoot, grunt scoot… and eventually sort of dump myself out of bed. I walked into the bathroom to put my contacts in and stopped to look at myself in the mirror.
My belly was HUGE.
It hadn’t been so big the day before…

I blew my nose and held my head, willing my cold to go away. I had to go to church on Sunday -I didn’t have a choice. We’re preparing for the Primary Program and I needed to be there. I also had a meeting I had to be at. I bathed and got ready. I ate breakfast. I got my kids up and bathed. I fed them breakfast.
I went to my meeting.
It had been cancelled.
I came home. My husband told me he’d been called into work. I grabbed all of my Primary stuff, my scriptures, my FAT binder, my FAT bag and my two kids and we made it to church.
The Primary Program Practice was a little chaotic, but of course it was. I didn’t expect to be a reverent day at the spa. I had several people ask me when I was going to pop…
Not for a few months, but thank you for validating what I thought this morning, ‘I LOOK 40 WEEKS PREGNANT!’
I hated saying, “At Christmastime” because their eyes would boggle out of their heads.

My son fell asleep during church. I couldn’t take him to the truck -luckily my brother was nearby and helped me out. I loaded everything into the truck after two hours of Primary Practicing and I drove home. We all stumbled in the door.
I turned Netflix on and told the kids to sit. stay. watch.
I sat down at my computer with a brownie and took a deep breath.

And then they hit. Contractions. Not the Braxton Hicks kind -the real deal kind. They stung. They hurt.
I had to make it back to my bed -had to lie down. I slowly stood up, clutching the bottom of my belly. I couldn’t stand up straight. Tears began falling, and the second my bed was close enough, I collapsed into it.
I laid on my right side, a big pillow between my legs, and I took deep breaths.

The contractions came every three minutes -each one a little less intense than the last. For twenty minutes, they were so painful that I cried. I called my husband -who had called earlier from work to tell me he wouldn’t be home until close to midnight and that he would be miles away -and just hearing his voice made me cry more.
Because they were getting less intense, I knew I would be okay. But I still wanted him there -I still wanted his arms and his big hands and his presence.
Finally, the contractions -though never varying in their constancy -waned in strength and I was able to rest.

I overdid it on Sunday.

I’ve never overdone it in a pregnancy before. Then again: I’ve never been pregnant while I’ve had two kids before. It’s easy to forget that I have a growing baby inside because there’s so much going on that I can’t focus on what my body is telling me. It probably was giving me “slow down” cues and I couldn’t hear them.

For the rest of Sunday, I had Braxton Hicks contractions.
Since then, the REAL contractions have been coming around. They aren’t constant -they don’t come every three minutes, but they do come. I’ll be sitting down, minding my own business and
BLAM!
It hurts.

And I start to wonder what the deal is. WHY I’m so big and WHY I’m getting these awful contractions and WHY I can’t stay on my feet for longer than a few hours at a time before I’m back in bed or on the couch…
and then I remember: oh yeah.
I’m 31 weeks pregnant. I once birthed a baby at 36 weeks. I’m WEEKS away from holding a fully-formed teeny PERSON!
I’ve grown a heart, a brain, a set of legs, a set of arms, a liver, some kidneys, layers of skin… it’s all been forming inside of me. It’s the reason I’ve been hit with a slew of cavities and back aches. It’s the reason I can’t fully kick this cold.
It’s the reason I spend every waking hour and step feeling like I just unsaddled from a week-long round up on a rough horse. My thighs! Someone rescue them, please!
It’s all normal -it’s all very normal. It’s all The New Normal.

It will all be worth it when I hold my bright-eyed little person for the first time -when I feel her little fingers wrap around my thumb… when she cries for me and licks her brand new perfect lips.
And it will all be worth it when she calls me one day and says, “Mom, can you come over? I laid down on the couch and I’m having trouble getting up. This baby is HUGE.”
She’s so strong that I want her to have a name RIGHT NOW. It seems so strange that someone I can feel so strongly isn’t named. She’s very PRESENT in our lives, and we have no idea what to call her.
Little No Name is a favorite with my husband.
Little Sister is a favorite with the kids.
I prefer Tyler Jane.
There’s no meaning behind it or significance. It’s not old fashioned -the way I usually like names. It’s not a family name. What’s more: it’s a boy name.
But there’s something about it that just… feels right. It seems to fit this Little No Name. It’s still up to my husband to come up with a finalized name.
And today it’s up to me to get some nesting done. I can not bring a baby home to THIS!
I’ve already mucked out the cupboards under the bathroom sink. Today it’s the fridge and the kid’s room… unless my body tells me not to.
I’ve learned my lesson. And I don’t want to contract unless it’s going to count toward a birthing experience. Otherwise it’s just a really painful lecture from my baby about how I need to pay more attention to her.
Lesson learned, Little No Name Sister Tyler Jane.
Lesson learned.

I’ve been fighting this nagging cough for over a week. My house has suffered, and a few days ago I got sick of trying to keep up with it. I snagged my little man and just got us both the heck out of the house for a bit. We bought us each a Little Debbie snack, and we took a trip to the cemetery to visit Laynee Leigh.

My son doesn’t remember Laynee.  She’s been gone for as long as he’s been here -it’s a little surreal, and I can’t help but look at my son and add about 10 months to him and wonder about Laynee and what she might look like/be like/talk like today.  What would she be for Halloween?  What would I have given her for her birthday?

In two days, we’ll pass the mark -the gone for 4 years mark.  It doesn’t feel like four year, and at the same time: it does.

I’ll never get over the surreal feeling of seeing my brother’s last name on a headstone… of knowing that a little body bearing his eyes and expressions isn’t running around and catching bugs with her sisters.

I’m so grateful for the sure knowledge that families can be together forever -that those little eyes WILL beam back into her father’s one day.  And I want my son to know -I want to teach him.  I want to acquaint him with the things that really matter in life -like love and eternity and families and laughter.  I don’t want to acquaint him with THINGS.  I want to acquaint him with Laynee.
We sat down on the dirt next to her little plot, and my son asked all kinds of questions about bodies and where they go and, “So can we start digging now?”
Um, gross. And NO.

After a bit, we got up and walked around visiting other graves. He was undeterred by my telling him once that he weren’t going to dig up any bodies.
“Can we just dig up great-great grandma and see her?” He asked twice, since two of his great-great grandmothers are buried pretty close to one another.
“NO,” I said. I wanted to be completely grossed out, but his honest curiosity and big, huge eyes were redeeming. That boy is adorable.

and heroic!
If you’re lucky enough to have little ones near you right now, please scoop them up and tell them how important they are.
Please?
Thanks ever so.

I live in Utopia.  I nearly always have, except for that one time I moved away for a bit to husband catch and degree get.

My father has a farm.  My grandfather own a huge stretch of ranch land.  My grandmother’s home has always been right there -and it is beautiful, warm, clean, and wonderful.  There’s always been an abundance of love and respect and order and family.  I’ve been handed so much of everything the world is short on these days.
And gee -you should see it all at Christmastime. The only thing more perfect than a red barn covered in snow is grandma’s Christmas village twinkling under her tree.

(That was the view from my yard one early December morning last year.)
There’s no Christmas music more gratifying than my grandfather’s organ melodies.

And there’s such freedom in knowing I can drive to my grandpa’s huge spread of land just outside of town for my personal devotionals. I can be alone out there. I can feel the spirit and refresh and get heavenly hugs.

It’s all so perfect and we’re all so together and life has always been this way.
Sure, it’s crossed my mind that maybe things will change. But they never actually HAVE, so it’s hard for me to really wrap my mind around the idea and fully accept it.
My great grandmother gave birth to five boys. The first died in infancy. The other four built their own houses within a block of their mother.
And that neighborhood, friends, is the center of my Utopia. I was lucky enough to physically live there for a season of my life, and now I’m barely a block or two away.

And yesterday, we lost a member of our Utopian society.

Uncle Jay. I found that picture HERE, and you really ought to click on that link because it tells the story of his POW days.
After Uncle Ross passed away, Aunt Sarah May married my best friend’s grandfather: Uncle Jay. It was like a dream come true. We’d spent our entire lives wishing we were REALLY related (as if being third cousins just wasn’t quite ENOUGH) and then one of my family members married one of hers.
Triumph!

Today I’m starting to feel that my denial -something I emphatically embrace -is in peril.
Things are changing. Utopia is slipping.
Maybe I should mesh those two sentences together: Utopia is changing.
It’s still Utopia in it’s own way. It’s always been changing, so why should it stop now? It has no regard for me, that’s why.

Will the farm always be in my backyard?
Will the ranch land outside of town always just BE there for me to gallop around on whenever I feel the need to feed my soul?
Will grandma’s village be there for my great grand kids to enjoy?
My denial says YES! That’s why I love my denial so much. It’s so appeasing.
But my head knows better… and so today I won’t worry about too much of anything that doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll whip out my great-grandmother’s old journals and type away the words of Utopia as it was in 1972, when she was living in the house that was the center of the village.
Maybe I’ll take a picture of the red barn.
Maybe I’ll go hug grandpa and beg for an organ lesson.
Maybe I’ll go cry for a while because I’m plagued with sentiment and pregnancy all at once and it’s fairly lethal… and if I don’t let it out somehow I’ll probably die.
And speaking of Christmas, my daughter decided she needed to write a letter to Santa Clause. I told her we would write them later when we could all sit together as a family, but that she could practice if she wanted to. Without any help from me or anyone else, this is what she brought me a few minutes later:

“I want a very cute dress
that is very
very cute dress.

And I am 10 size.

She’s really 6 size, but whatever. It was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen, and I took her to the computer and let her window shop fancy dresses.
THIS one was her favorite (get a load of this):

via:http://www.lightinthebox.com/Ball-Gown-Off-the-shoulder-Chapel-Train-Organza-Satin-Flower-Girl-Dress—First-Communion-Dress–WSM0497-_p70135.html

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked, honestly wanting to know.

“DANCE!” She threw her arms up in the air and grinned from ear to ear, “AND EAT CAKE!”
And that, friends, is why kids know more than we do.
When I die, I hope I can leave that behind for my kids. If you do anything at all with this life… make sure that you dance. Make sure you eat cake. Make sure you wear fancy clothes when you do it, and most of all:
Make the most of your Utopia.

For Family Home Evening, we carved pumpkins. I know it’s too early, but my daughter has show and tell in a few days and she’s supposed to bring something that starts with the letter “J.”
She wants to bring a Jack o’ Lantern.

I used the pumpkins to teach a Family Home Evening lessons about yuckies. I told them every person on earth is just like a pumpkin.
We’re all yummy and wonderful and full of goodness, BUT we do have some yuckies inside too. I reinforced the point: THAT’S OKAY!
We’re supposed to have yuckies so we can learn about them and see the difference between the good and the bad.
“We can get the yuckies out of us ourselves,” I said, “No matter how hard WE work to be good and perfect and THE BEST… WE can’t do it. Heavenly Father and Jesus are the only ones who can take the yuckies out of us. We have to ask them too though.”
We talked about how we’re mostly good (we went around the table and each talked about the good in us), and when we do something bad it doesn’t mean WE are bad… even though pumpkins have goo and slime inside of them, they also have plump, delicious flesh that is SOOOOOOOOOO worth saving.

I told them the story of Alma the Younger -how he had a lot of yuckies inside. I even drew my own stick figures and they were oh so pathetic.
When the story was over and we pulled pumpkins out and started carving, I asked the kids:
“What story did Mom tell?”
*silence*
“We don’t know, Mom,” my son finally said.
“Al…” I prompted their little memories, “Al… Al…”
“ALLLLVIN and the CHIMPMUNKS!” My daughter cried out and then started quoting Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Awe. some.

At least the pumpkins turned out good, right?

I texted the above picture to my brother and wrote, “I don’t think they’ll last until Halloween, but at least they’ll last long enough for Lacy to take to show and tell on Thursday.”
He texted back, “I’ll be surprised if Cinderella lasts past midnight.”

It made me laugh out loud which wasn’t very attractive since the past few days I’ve been a mess o’ snot and phlegm.
Very UN-Disney Princess-ish.

My son has been making up words for just over a year now. He’s a master at it… I mean, when he finds himself in a situation that he wants to talk about but has no vocabulary for it, he doesn’t bloody let that stop him.
He MAKES vocabulary up, and he STICKS to it by jingo. And the next thing we all know, we’re using his words and working them into everyday vocabulary.
My son is a trendsetting genius.
His first trademark made up word?
Bon*e*yo [bone-ee-yo]
noun
1. the most vile insult imaginable, perhaps even lower than pond scum.

It didn’t take us long to figure that one out. But he’s starting to stump me… like last week when he was sitting in the backseat of the Jeep with his slushy… and as I drove snocked it all up.
“Argggg… I’m sorry, Mom, but I just SNOCKED my drink up all over my pants.”
I still have no idea exactly what went on back there.

Here’s the latest:
“Awww, MAN! I just SHONKED my NIBBLE!”
Nibble, it shall be made known, is actually his pronunciation of “nipple” and I don’t change it because it’s too adorable. And I’m actually hoping it will catch and people will start saying things like, “I just pierced both of my nibbles.”
But shonked.
Maybe he shocked his nibbles? I don’t know.
Will you be my Rosetta Stone?

A few days ago, I took my kids to pick apples from my great-grandmother’s tree.

I couldn’t help but think about planting a few apple trees myself for my great great grandkids to pick when I’m gone. A means to spoil grandchildren even if you’re gone before they get to earth? Sign me up, please!

(the view from under the tree.)

The kids were great about gathering good apples from the ground (I may or may not have convinced them that the ones that were left behind cried themselves to sleep because no one loved them enough to pick them up…) and I was so glad to have their help.
Picking apples, it turns out, brings out the Braxton Hicks in my body.

Ah, fall. Crisp, crisp, fall.
I hang onto you because when you end, so does my pregnancy. While I’m excited for my pregnancy to be over, I’m MORE nervous about the life changing that’s about to go on up in hur.

Baby,
Be sweet to your mama. And please. At least TRY to pretend the womb is the nicest place you’ve ever been to and NOT a 3 dimensional trampoline. I don’t think you realize how strong you are, precious.
Thanks ever so.
Love,
Mom

Dave Ramsey isn’t a woman, and if he were I might just be 100% on board with his plan.  I’m about to be barfingly sexist, so hold onto your moral…
If he were a woman, he’d have an entire section in each of his books regarding home decor and how to successfully integrate it into his plan.
Besides, Decorating With Dave sounds so crisp.

Anyway, my cute kids have been begging me for WEEKS to get ready for Halloween. At first I thought they were talking about their costumes, so I explained that we weren’t going to be wearing costumes for a few weeks, but after a while I caught on: they wanted a SPOOKY house.
“If you can get the living room all picked up before you go to school,” I said to my daughter, “Then we will decorate when you get home.”
The kids and I sat on Pinterest for about half an hour getting ideas. I thought it was a good idea until my kids started pointing to all the Martha Stewartesque porches and mantels and saying, “Let’s make our house like THAT!”
Their eyes fairly sparkled.

What we came up with wasn’t too bad, far from Martha tho’ it be. We decorated from 4 pm until after 9. Well, the kids gave up somewhere around 6:30, but two and a half hours is a pretty good run for little kids.
I drew a couple of bats on some white computer paper and used them as stencils for these:

I cut the bats out of black card stock and folded their wings in a little. The kids helped me tape them to the wall, and they were so thrilled. They giggled.
“Dad’s going to be like, ‘AH! Bats!’… so spooky,” my daughter said.
I should also mention that we were listening to my kid’s Halloween station on Pandora -the kids were in heaven.
For a few months, I’ve been saving empty glass bottles because I’ve been wanting to make my own apothecary collection. I didn’t know if it would turn out, but it did! I soaked the bottles in a bowl filled with hot, soapy water (with some ammonia added). The labels scrubbed right off.
The kids painted the bottles, I printed the labels from THIS site, and then I used adhesive spray to attach them (I stuffed what little I had left of my burlap in the tops of the jars because I don’t keep corks on hand  Maybe I should start…). This was my son’s favorite feature.
“Is there poison in there?” He kept asking. Should I be worried?

It’s not the best picture, but you get the idea.
I have had some blocks of wood on hand, so I had the kids paint them black. My son helped me sand the edges after they had dried. My daughter helped me rip pages out of a book.
I used a glue stick to attach ripped up book pages to computer paper, and then I printed one letter on each page.
After they came out of the printer, I ripped (instead of cut) the letter out. I chalked the edges with soft pastel black chalk and modpodged them to a block. THIS is my favorite craft of the night! I didn’t have any cute Halloweenish paper to print on, so I made my own out of an old book.
I swear my house is turning into a morbid sort of book slaughter house.

The font I used is a circus font that I downloaded for free from dafont.com (Thanks, Brittany, for recommending that site to me! I love it so much).
I also pulled apart a dead tomato plant that never actually made it from the store to our garden. Wal-Mart sold us a huge tomato plant at 70% off because the tips of it had frozen in a late freeze. We were going to bring it home and trim it up nice and plant it.
But we only got as far as bringing it home. Yesterday I ripped it apart. I’m going to use the dead tomato plant branches in another project, but I had the kids paint the bottom pot black.
My daughter found two HUGE sticks.
I thanked my husband for not weeding the farthest back corner of our yard because I used the weeds (and blue duct tape that I hid with fabric) to make brooms:

The chalkboard is something I made for a Primary Project. It’s just the back of a picture frame (the part that holds the picture in and has brackets on the back. Does that make any kind of sense?). The frame to the picture broke, but I’ve had the glass and back to it in my closet for a couple of years. I ALMOST threw them out last month… good thing I didn’t!!!
I painted it up!! It worked perfect for a WITCHY sign.
And here’s the mess after I cleaned half of it up:

The white butcher paper was the perfect base for our mess. Before heading to bed last night, I slathered a huge portion of it in black paint. Today, I’m going to cut a huge owl out of it and hang it up in the kids’ bedroom window.

Notice there’s no pictures of us actually crafting together (or any step-wise instructions).  My hands were generally covered in crap the entire time we sped-crafted.

The cost for everything we did yesterday? $0!!
Does anyone have Dave’s number? I’d like to text him.  I’m pretty sure he’d text back a picture of a gold star, or something.