Boating and Birthday Fun

We started out Mallory's birthday by going boating on the lake. Mallory's cousins Kori and Audrey were in from out of town and they came with us so it was fun to spend time with them. We don't get to see them very often. Craig's parents, Marc and Treesa, came along too. The person that had the boat and took us out on the lake is actually their neighbor in their ward. So it's because of them that we actually got to go! We had a blast! The kids loved to go fast! They would all sit up at the front of the boat and let the wind whip their hair around and blow in their faces. We would stop every so often and let them jump in and swim around in the water to cool off. Some of the kids were scared to get in the water at first. It's not like a swimming pool where you can see the bottom so they were a little hesitant about the dark water. But by the end of the day they were all begging to jump off the boat! There was an inner tube thing that the kids took turns riding on.

We took turns trying to wakeboard. Key word - trying. We had never been wakeboarding before so it was a learning experience. Craig couldn't hardly get up - when he finally did get up he had no problem staying up. I had the other problem. I got up almost every time - I just couldn't stay up for longer than 10 seconds! Craig's parents were both actually pretty good at it. His dad had been lots of times before so he went for a long time. His mom had never been but she made it look easy! She did great! We ended up bringing the baby. I had my reservations about it, but they had an infant life jacket for him. I was worried Clark would hate the wind in his face and that he would just cry the whole time. It was almost an all day thing so it was going to throw his nap schedule off and I wasn't so sure he would be a happy camper about going. But we had no problems with him. We didn't hear a peep out of him! He's usually pretty talkative, but he didn't say a word! We put him in the water a couple of times and he was totally mellow about it. The life jacket was pretty restricting so he just sat there like a sausage the whole time! He looked so cute in his life jacket! We had a great time!

We had pizza for dinner and Mallory got to open some of her presents. Her Grandma Treesa made her a Belle dress.
And Kori and Audrey got her a My Little Pony! One of Mallory's birthday requests was to go see the movie Wall-E. We went to the 7 o'clock showing and it didn't get out until almost 9 o'clock! I was surprised they made a kids movie that long! I sat out in the foyer area with Clark the whole time. He was very wiggly. He had been stuck in that life jacket all day. He looked at me like, "Yeah right Mom, you want me to sit through a movie too!" So I let him crawl around on a bench out in the foyer area and play with my sunglasses. He got plenty of attention from people going in to see their movies! We celebrated Mallory's birthday with my family the next day. She got a pink guitar that I actually found on the clearance table on an after Christmas sale. It was only $7.50! And she loves it! Chase loves it too so unfortunately it has been the object of many fights lately. Which speaking of, the guitar is actually in time out right now. If they fight over a toy the toy takes a time out. (It's been in time out for 3 days. I think they forgot about it. Hee hee :)) Anyway, Mallory's birthday weekend was a blast. We were sunburned and worn out from the lake, but we really enjoyed celebrating our Miss Mally girl!!

The post below has some fun facts about Mallory and pictures of her over the last three years. Enjoy! ;)

Happy (Belated) Birthday Mallory!

Mallory turned three a couple weeks ago. I can't hardly believe my baby girl is already 3!!
I LOVE my Mallory! I have a very special bond with her. For those of you who don't know. . . . . we almost lost her a number of times while I was pregnant with her. At 18 weeks we went to go find out if we were having a girl or a boy. We found out we were having a girl and we also found out that my body was already halfway through the laboring process. We were devastated!
We didn't know if we were going to be able to keep her in there for the rest of the pregnancy. We got sent to one of the best high-risk doctors in the state. I was immediately put on STRICT bedrest. I had ultrasounds done every 10 days to measure my cervix and to see how stressed out the baby was under the pressure of the contractions. We had an in-home nursing company come in and I had to wear a contraction monitoring belt everyday, twice a day for an hour each time. The contractions I was having were strong enough to "ripen" my cervix for childbirth. This monitoring belt would measure the strength of my contractions and the number of contractions I was having. I would get the results to my nurse and judging by my results she would either tell me, "Good job you've been staying down like your supposed to - you only had a few contractions." Or I would get a firm talking to, "I know you've been up doing things you're not supposed too. Your uterus is going crazy!! If you don't stay down that baby's going to come early and she won't make it or she'll end up in the NICU for months! Do you want that?" It was horrible! Chase was always away at someone else's house being watched. I missed him so much! If someone came over to clean my house they would watch Chase too so I could at least spend some time with him - from the couch. I had my line-up of TV shows I would watch everyday. The only time I ever watched soap operas was while I was on bedrest. We had no cable and that's all that was on in the afternoon. I laugh if I catch a glimpse of one now! They are so unrealistically dramatic! I read books, but you can only read for so long. We had take out food, pizza, and meals brought in for 5 long months because I wasn't allowed up to cook. We tried some medications that were unsuccessful in stopping my contractions that also had terrible side effects. At 26 weeks after one of the many ultrasounds, I remember the ultrasound tech finishing up and she went to go take the results to my doctor. The doctor came right in and said, "Go straight to the hospital - don't go anywhere else - go straight to the hospital." I don't ever remember being so scared in my life! We kept her in 11 weeks longer. At 36 weeks I begged the doctor to take her! I was going crazy with not being able to get up, our marriage was stressed to the MAX at this point through all of this (it was just as hard on Craig as it was on me), Chase really didn't have his mommy, and I was done! I told the doctor, "I'm just done - I can't do this anymore!" We had an amnio done to see if her lungs were ready. They were and we had a c-section a few days later. I had NEVER been so grateful to hear a baby cry. A tear rolled down my cheek when I heard her cry. My arms were strapped to the table so I didn't get to hold her until I got to the recovery room after the surgery. She was perfect! And absolutely beautiful! After telling her I loved her I remember telling her something along the lines of, "Do you have any idea what you put me through?" I was smiling when I said it of course. The little stinker! I spoiled her rotten as a baby. I loved getting up in the middle of the night with her. I had a baby to get up to hold and to love and to snuggle! I was just so glad that she had made it to us! Getting her here has been my hardest trial in life by far. I think I feel especially close to Mallory because of what I went through to get her here. Her birthdays are very special to me. We truly have reason to celebrate her birth each year. She truly is a precious gift from God. Sometimes I think the only thing that kept her in there at times were the priesthood blessings that were given to me. I love you Miss Mallory!!

Three things about Mallory:
1. I swear this girl has an internal people magnet. People love her! Everywhere she goes whether it's church or the grocery store or to family things - everyone wants to talk to Mallory. I've had many people say they just love to be around her. She just wiggles her way right into your heart!

2. Mallory gives the best hugs! She squeezes so tight! Mallory makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world to her when she hugs you. She is so good at giving love!

3. She was high maintenance before she came into this world and I swear she'll go out that way! We always joke about her future husband. Being that he's married to Mallory he'd better like having Cling Wrap as his wife. She loves to smother with affection. She's very clingy - to anyone for that matter - that will accept her attentions. It's fine for now, but we've gotta change that before she gets into boys!

We love you Mallory!

New Photos

So I went and got the kid's pictures taken today. I do my babies every 3 months their first year. Clark just turned 9 months last week so he was due for a picture update. Mallory turned three last week too so she was due as well. And I didn't want Chase to feel left out so we got some pictures taken of him too. Just wanted to share them with you!

I have a lot of catching up to do! I just got back from being out of town on a girls trip so I need to blog that and Mallory's birthday and a boating trip we took to the lake. I don't have a whole lot of time right now (when do I ever?) so I'll have to catch up later!! But for now I just wanted to share the new photos of the kiddos! Enjoy!

CHASE - 4 3/4 years


MALLORY - 3 years


CLARK - 9 months

Our Busy 4th

As with all holidays, our 4th of July was busy, busy, busy! At the end of the day I think I found myself just as exhausted as my children. We had a fun day, but I crashed into bed last night!!

We got up at 5:30 because our ward did a 4th of July breakfast for everyone. I was actually really looking forward to it. The bishopric got a hold of a fire truck (not sure how) and they took the kids for a couple of rides around the block. The kids LOVED it! They thought it was the coolest thing to get to ride on top of a fire truck! We had a pancake breakfast and they turned the sprinklers on so the kids could run around and get wet. Chase very quickly figured out that he could turn and aim the sprinkler heads at the other kids! That's my Chase - always looking for trouble somewhere!
The bishopric had filled the fire truck up with 500 gallons of water to spray the kids with too. They thought the 500 gallons would last about 5 minutes for the kids to get wet in but it really only took about 2 minutes for the truck to empty! I couldn't believe the water ran out so fast. Someone called the fire station up the street and they asked if we could fill up the truck again. To our surprise they let us bring the truck back to fill it! So the kids got to get sprayed again.

After the breakfast we came home and let Clark take a morning nap. Then we went over to Craig's parents house and barbecued hamburgers and swam with them for most of the afternoon. Craig's mom made a pasta salad and Clark ate a plate as big as mine. He loved the noodles! His new favorite snack is pretzel rods so he snacked on a few of those too.

We goofed off with the camera:


And Mallory ended up falling asleep in her car seat on the way back home. My kids fall asleep in the funniest positions when they're in their car seats. Her head was tipped back - she was just worn out!


We went back home to my parent's house and all of my siblings came over and we had more hamburgers and hot dogs. We bought a few poppers for the kids to do their own "fireworks". Chase loved them! He was right in the middle of all the action! Mallory on the other hand hates fireworks and poppers and anything related to making loud noises. She has very sensitive hearing so she stayed as far away from the noises as possible. She just drove the little coupe car around the patio while we did the poppers. It was starting to storm when we went outside. The wind was blowing like crazy! Mallory could hardly stand up straight! After we finished firing off all of our little poppers we came inside and the boys played XBOX together. It was a fun day. I love it when Craig has a three day weekend! It was fun to get to know some more people in the ward and to spend time with our families. And the storm was a nice relaxing end to a busy day. I stood outside and just watched the storm blow in for awhile. Too bad there was no rain, but it was beautiful! Happy 4th!!

I've Been Robbed!!!

Yesterday was most dreadful! One of my bras broke this weekend and I took a trip up to the mall to get a new one. One of the lovely ladies at Victoria's Secret was helping me out and asked me how long it had been since I had a bra fitting. I pointed to Mallory - my almost 3 year old daughter - and said, "Not since she was born!" I've been avoiding it. Each bra fitting I have after birthing another child is NOT a good one. Somehow after each child my "cup" always seems to end up half empty. After the results of yesterday's bra fitting, it's official, somehow my children have each successfully managed to steal a cup size from my chest on their way out of my womb. The little devils!! I am now the proud new owner of yet again - a smaller bra size. If I were to have another child, and that child took what the others have on their way out, I am 100% convinced that I would become chestless - maybe even concave at this rate!

I had enough chest for two women when I was in high school. Let's just say my "cup" runneth over - I was HUGE! My best friend from high school recently visited and she brought some old pictures to reminisce about. I left them sitting on the counter and when Craig came home from work and saw the pictures he said, "Is that you?" I watched his eyes roam the length of my body in the picture and then his eyes traveled to my chest and he said, "What happened?" I said, "Tell me you did NOT just say that!"

Do you think we get to pick our own cup size after we're resurrected? I sure hope so, if not I will be doing some serious negotiations with whomever's in charge of that! At this point I think I'd even resort to bribery!! HeeHee :)

Alas, I love my little thieves! They make me smile everyday! Even if I do have to wear a shirt that says, "This side front." Ok, just had to get that off my chest. . . . . my non-existent one, that is :)

Mr. Mobile

First of all I wanted to say thank you all for your nice comments about our last post! You are all very kind :)

Clark is eight months. He's been VERY mobile for the past month now! It's so fun to watch him crawl after Chase and Mallory. He has to be in every room that they're in and he LOVES to be in the middle of whatever they are playing with! Sometimes they like it when Clark plays with them and they laugh and giggle about him chasing them around, but sometimes it bugs them. When Chase spends half an hour building an elaborate train track and then Clark comes along and rips it apart in under two minutes - Chase gets very upset! He tells Clark, "You listen to my words, stop breaking my track, buddy!" Then we have to explain to him that, "Clark's just a baby and he doesn't know better and he just wants to be a part of what you're playing with." But it's fun to see all three of them play together! It's great when they are all entertaining each other!

Clark is all over the place dicovering his own little world! He has been pulling himself up on everything he can. Yesterday he took two steps sideways along the couch. He loves to pull himself up on the bathtub!

And he loves to climb! If we're laying on the floor he always crawls right over and starts climbing all over us. (You gotta love the smile behind the binki!)

I'm pretty surprised that he's as mobile as he is being as big as he is. He weighs 22 pounds! He's been wearing 12 month clothing since he was 6 months old. So yes - he's big, but he's also long. He has the footie pajamas for bedtime and his feet reach all the way to the very bottom. He's going to be tall!

He has already learned that when he wants picked up he reaches his arms up. I don't think Chase and Mallory learned that unitl they were closer to 10 months. He is definitely turning into a Mamma's boy! He cries if he can't see me or if I walk out of the room. It seems like he started the whole seperation anxiety thing early. But he's our last, so we are really enjoying him. I swear the more kids you have the faster time flies! Sometimes the busy-ness is overwhelming, but they sure are fun!

Lessons Learned

Wow! I feel like I don't even know where I should start with all this! Life and the move has had some unexpected twists that have left us a little disoriented. So I guess I should start from the beginning. . . . . February.

(Sidenote: This post is EXTREMELY long! I'm using it for a journaling purpose as well. This has been a very BIG trying and testing experience and many of my personal feelings are expressed. This has been quite the spiritual experience. Just thought I would warn you :) Congratulations if you make it to the end!)

THE IMPRESSION:
A few months ago in February I was talking on the phone to our good friend Abe. He had called to get my dad's information. My dad works in the real estate business and he and Donna wanted to put their house up for sale. I have to say I was devastated when he said that. They are our best friends! I didn't want them to move! I asked him why they wanted to move and he said they wanted to be closer to family. I gave him my dad's info and got off the phone with him a few minutes later. I will admit I did start feeling a little sorry for myself - our best friends weren't going to live around the corner anymore! But good for them I remember thinking; Abe will be closer to his work and they will be closer to family. I was sitting in the office chair after I had gotten off the phone and I had an impression that first of all - came out of nowhere and second of all - caught me off guard. This feeling came over me that we too needed to move closer to family. Both of our parents and my siblings live more on the north side of town. All of my extended family lives on the north side too. My first thought was that it would be fun to live closer to family. Then I specifically remember thinking, "Yeah right Heavenly Father, sell our house in this market! That could take years!!" Houses just aren't selling right now!! But again I had the feeling that we needed to move closer to family. If He wanted us to move, He would help our house to sell. I wasn't sure what His time frame for us moving was, but I needed to have faith. After talking about all this with Craig and some more praying we decided that we should do this. A week later I called my dad and had him put our house up for sale . . . .

UP FOR SALE:
We didn't put a sign in the yard. And we really didn't tell people. We didn't want to have to explain and answer a bunch of questions to everyone that we were trying to move, but the market's bad, blah, blah, blah. We just figured we'd put the house up for sale and whatever happened happened and that was the Lord's plan for us. Some of you might be thinking, "How does your house sell without a sign in the yard?" Our home was listed on the MLS - a place on the internet where all realtors look for homes to suit their clients who are looking to buy a house. Nothing happened the first two months. Then we got a call - someone wanted to come take a peek! I was excited! This could be it! I had the house spic and span and . . . they never came by. I was crushed! I remember praying that night and asking Heavenly Father, "Are we really supposed to sell our house? Is this really what you want us to do?" The answer I got was, "Where is your faith?" LESSON LEARNED: It's ok to pray for an increase in faith.

SOLD:
A month later still no one else had called on the home and no one had come to look. It was a Thursday night. My dad called and said he had a buyer for our home. I thought he was joking. No one had come by to look. Why would anyone want to buy a house they hadn't seen? The buyer was from Budapest - yeah, across the world. He wanted the home for an investment property and he wanted to pay cash for the house. He was going to pay our asking price which we were very excited about. We were going to come out a little ahead on our home!! When we heard that this guy wanted to use it for an investment property we asked him if we could rent back from him until we found another home to move our family too. He said no, and he also said he wanted us out in 12 days! Talk about feeling kicked out! But we were ecstatic that the house had sold. My parents immediately offered for us to stay in their home. They are empty-nesters and have 3 open bedrooms so they said we were welcome to come and stay until we could find a new place to live. LESSON LEARNED: I want to be that kind of a parent one day. (Thanks for the great example Mom and Dad!)

THE CATCH:
Here was the catch. Since the buyer was paying cash for the home he didn't have to qualify for a loan - making it possible to close on the home in the 12 days. We were supposed to close on June 4th and the buyer wanted us totally out of the home on the 4th! But Craig had a week long business trip that he had to leave for on June 1st. He wasn't going to be back until the 6th. We had to be out before then. So that kind of threw a wrench in everything - we had to move out before Craig left and before the home actually closed. Talk about scary! What if the buyer backed out and our stuff was already out of the house? Moving out before the home actually closed! Yikes! We did pray about this decision first. It felt right to move out of the home and scary as it all was we felt very much at peace that this was the right thing to do. LESSON LEARNED: Sometimes leaps of faith are required. It's part of the test.

THE MOVE:
We moved out on May 31st - the day before Craig left on his business trip. We got most of our stuff put in storage. What wouldn't fit in storage went to Craig's parent's garage (thank you Marc and Treesa!). And we went to my parent's house with basically our clothes and our toothbrushes!!

UNSOLD:
June 4th - our close date - came and went. Craig got back from his business trip and the house still had not closed! It was hard to communicate with the buyer and he had to get a power of attorney because he lived across the world! So things were taking longer than expected. We were on pins and needles waiting for the house to close! I swear I plead with the Lord every night that the house would just close so we could stop worrying. After EVERY prayer I always got the same feeling, "It's all going to be ok." At this point my faith had been stretched to the max, and it was starting to wear thin. But if Heavenly Father says it's all going to be ok - then it's all going to be ok.

Last week my dad (our realtor) got an e-mail from the buyer's realtor saying that the buyer had backed out. The buyer no longer wanted to purchase the home. No reason why not - no explanation - he just backed out. I cried. And I never cry!! But I cried. Many times. I was angry. Does this man in Budapest realize that he just kicked a family with 3 young children out of their home? We did everything he asked us to. We moved out by the 4th, we left the house clean, we signed all the documents. We did everything he requested - and then he backed out. I was livid! How does he sleep at night knowing he did that to a family? Oh, the things I would have said to him had I seen him face to face! LESSON LEARNED: People don't always follow through.

I must admit I felt abandoned by God as well. He said "everything was going to be ok." To me, this was NOT ok!! Did I miss something somewhere? Did I do something wrong? What IS going on? I truly felt that I had put my trust in Heavenly Father. And we were left with nothing but a very expensive and time consuming move that got us nowhere!! (My attitude had become very poor at this point). (Yes, I have since repented.) :) I was left thinking, "Ok Heavenly Father, where do we go from here?" LESSON LEARNED: The Lord's version of "ok" might be different than our version of "ok". Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways . . . as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

DECISION TIME:
Craig and I laid out some options in answer to the question "Where do we go from here?" Option #1: We could move back into the house, yeah it would be a pain after all that packing and moving, but we could do it. Option #2: We could rent the house out. We owned a rental property before a few years back so we know the drill with having renters in our home. It's stressful and can be a hassle, but it's an option. Option #3: Let it go into foreclosure. It's definitely a trend in this housing market!

We very quickly decided that we didn't want to do option #3. We didn't feel right about letting the house go. Everyone's situations are different and everyone has their reasons for letting a house go into foreclosure, but at this point we felt that that option was not a good one for us.

Our second thought was, "Let's just move back in." We figured all of this packing and moving stuff could have just been a trial to see if we would do what we felt we were directed to do. After all, maybe this was our Zion's Camp! We were sent away from home maybe it was right to go back. Maybe there were a few more things that needed to fall into place before we actually officially moved closer to family. Maybe this part was just a test. But this is the cool part - both of us in our personal prayers felt VERY strongly that we were NOT to move back to Goodyear. That is not where the Lord wanted our family at this time. At least the Lord was keeping Craig and I on the same page!

So we were left with option #2. We decided to rent the house out. We told my dad we wanted to list the house to rent the night of June 9th. The next morning on the 10th he laid our rental paperwork on all of the leasing agents desks at work. Letting them know that our home was available to rent. Our house rented in two hours! TWO HOURS! If that's not a sign from God then I don't know what is! It's almost like Heavenly Father wasn't even going to give us a chance to think about moving back in! Everything had fallen into place. LESSON LEARNED: Heavenly Father is truly in control.

So now here we are - living in my parents home. If God wanted us close to family we sure are REALLY close to family!! I still have not quite figured out the reason we are supposed to be close to family. I have concocted a 100 different reasons why in my mind. Maybe Craig will get a job transfer out of state and we will end up raising our family far away, and this is a time to be close to family before we leave? Maybe Craig will lose his job and we'll need some help (sure hope that's not the case!)? Maybe something bad will happen whether it's an injury or a death in the family and we'll need family's support or they will need ours? Or maybe it's something positive like we're just supposed to live on this side of town and raise our family over here? Maybe we're supposed to move back to Goodyear in a year when our renter's lease is up, but for whatever reason we have something to learn over here? I have no idea.

For now we are letting the "waters" settle. We aren't going to jump head first into buying a home right away. We've looked in a couple neighborhoods at some affordable houses, but we just have the feeling to wait. Maybe the house we are supposed to live in isn't for sale yet? Or I don't know, but we have the feeling, for now, we are to wait. LESSON LEARNED: Patience is a virtue!

This has all been a very difficult experience to go through. My faith has been tested more than I ever thought it would be! The biggest lesson that I think I have learned overall has been that the Lord has a plan for our family. Even if I'm a little bit "in the dark" about what the plan is - He has a plan for us. He has only revealed to us what we have been ready to know. He hasn't given us the big picture. Thus far it's been revealed to us one piece at a time so that our faith has grown in the process. They say that we grow through our trials - let me tell ya - we're growin' like crazy over here!! Hee Hee!

Here's to hoping the renters pay on time - heck, pay at all - that they don't trash our house, and that they don't kill the grass. Who knows, maybe the market will turn around in the next couple of years and we'll end up selling the home and getting a lot of equity out of it? Maybe we'll end up moving back in the coming years? Doesn't the unknown just kill ya sometimes?!!! :)

And congratulations if you actually made it through this whole post. You deserve a prize - SERIOUSLY!!