Here We Go Again

 Well...no surprise really, but:

We're pregnant!! (finally)

I'm SO excited this time around! I was REALLY hoping to be pregnant back in April for a January baby (then we'd have May, June, July birthdays and November, December, January birthdays), but a lot of stress hit back in April and caused me to not ovulate. I was pretty upset when that happened, especially since it felt like I had caused the stress on myself and should've just kept calm. But once it passed I realized I couldn't dwell and just had to focus on the next month.

May came along and I did ovulate, but it was such a weird month. It felt like it took way too long to get a peak ovulation result and I didn't feel comfortable with how my cycle ran that month. I had some mid-cycle bleeding right before I ovulated and I didn't feel like that was such a great sign, but still wanted to hold out hope. June came and we celebrated Lucy's birthday and I remember thinking "I might be pregnant, I still have to wait to test and then I'd still have achieved my goal of being pregnant by the first birthday", but a week later my real period came and I was a little upset (it didn't help that EVERYONE had asked me if I was pregnant that day because they are so used to that happening with us). But I figured with the mid-cycle bleeding and getting back on track after SUCH a stressful April I probably had to give it another cycle. 

When the next cycle came I just hoped so much that I wouldn't have that mid-cycle bleeding and when I made it to my ovulation date without any bleeding I was so so excited!! That was such a win for me. We went through our ovulation time and then played the waiting game. I made sure to pack my month with fun activities and things to do as much as possible to keep me from over thinking anything. I had bought a few pregnancy tests quite a few months ago, but had given 3 of them away to my sister (who has also been trying and I knew I only needed 1, maybe 2 so she could have the rest). I only had one left because I had tested back in April/May with a sad negative (my stress had pushed my period back a week) and I didn't want to waste it. I figured I should really wait till my period was late to test, but then realized the tests were getting old and even though I know they can last for a couple years, I don't know that I trust them to be good that long. So I figured I'd test this morning and just see. If it was negative well I can just buy more. However...

When I saw that positive I was so beyond happy. I feel very calm about this pregnancy, no stress or worries. I don't feel the need to shout it from the rooftops, just let people know as I see them and just keep hoping it's a strong and healthy baby. I won't be finding out gender this time (I'll let Larry know when we get to that point) so I guess this one I can just soak up the moments until delivery.

I told Larry the usual way, having the test on our counter in the bathroom to show him, he missed it because he was so tired, so I held it up for him to see. He had his usual happy grin and we just mini celebrated. This time I was more excited about telling the girls though. So when I woke Gwen and Cara up I told them that I had taken a special test that said a baby was growing in my belly. Cara got a huge grin and said "and we'll go to the doctors and they'll take the baby out?" I told her yes, but not for quite a few months. I asked them if they wanted a brother or sister. Cara said a sister and Gwen first said she didn't know and then said she wanted a brother. They were so funny and both so excited. I'm sure they are going to love this baby so much and I'm so excited to see them with a new little in the house. I'm just going to soak in these next 9 months and enjoy sleeping when I can and watching movies and having my nights to me. 

One funny thing is I decided to start watching this show, Mistresses, and it was the same show I watched right before I found out I was pregnant with Cara. I was hopeful that would be a good sign for me, even though I know it really can't be considering I chose to watch it again. But I like to think it was just another thing to put me in a good mind set for everything. Let's just continue to hope this is another strong and healthy pregnancy.

Baby #4 Prep

Yup, we started our prep for our 4th (and most likely last) baby back in April. While Larry would say we're having 16 more kids, I'm pretty firm on the 4th being our last (we always agreed between 3 and 5 and so 4 just feels like the right number). After having 3 girls we decided to research if we can do anything to try and have a boy. Now let me just say if we end up having a 4th girl I'll be just as happy, but if we can say we did everything we could to have a boy then I'll feel better. So on that note here is what we've done to prep for this baby.

Diet: There's something called a gender diet. It says for a girl you should eat more foods higher in calcium and for a boy foods higher in potassium. For a girl, less sodium and for a boy you can eat more sodium/processed foods. I started adding frozen meals into our dinner meal planning for about every other dinners. I started eating more chips and crackers and less sweets. I also stopped eating cheese and ice cream (hardest thing ever!) and more bananas and melons. For lunches I switched up between sandwiches and ramen noodles. I'm not usually one to eat ramen or frozen meals, but it does make it more convenient and quick for meal planning. I was worried we'd have trouble switching back after we get pregnant, but after a couple months I had decided to take out the frozen meals and eat like normal, but keeping in the no cheese or ice cream and adding in more salty snacks (like sunflower seeds and potato chips). I still miss cheese like crazy, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

Timing: there's a strong theory out there saying if you time "fertilization" right at or after ovulation then your chances of conceiving a boy go up. I have bought ovulation tests to track for a couple months to see what my cycles look like. Our plan has been to figure out how long my cycles run and we'll plan to hold off on any activity for a week or so before ovulation. Larry hates that part, but I really want to give it a try.

Lovely ovulation testing each morning

Mental: I'm working so hard on making sure I'm mentally ready for another baby. Lucy really threw me through a loop. She rocked my world and it was a pretty difficult transition. I've made sure to make notes that I'll add to a pad of post its to keep near me for harder days (post its so I can flip through them for each time I need a new mantra). Things that'll help me really soak up the last newborn days I'll have. I don't want to stress about sleeping or breastfeeding or anything else that may come up and just focus on what the baby needs. I've also been following some baby sleep helpers on Instagram and watching their stories and posts to help me feel better about what I'm about to get into.

Just a snippet of my newborn notes

I also was having a hard time that it was taking longer to get pregnant (we've been trying since February/March ish) so I started keeping a grateful journal to remind myself why my days were good, even if I wasn't pregnant. I also make a note on each kid and a silly memory I have of them from the day. It's really helped keep me focused on what's good in my life, rather than stressing so much.

Overall we're really excited for this next chapter. While I'm sure I'll be sad I won't experience pregnancy again after this (the sickness or discomfort isn't my favorite part, but the movements are the absolute best thing ever!), I do look forward to completing our family and enjoying the next next chapter of family vacations and sporting events and school functions.

Larry's Birthday Celebration

So Larry's birthday this year was way better than last year - for one, we had a new baby; second, he had JUST gotten PRK (lasik) done and was still semi-healing from it; and lastly, the lovely 'vid seemed to close everything down. This year I really wanted to make it up to him. His birthday was on Thursday and he took that day and Friday off (since we both had today off) for a nice long weekend. He did take a test for another certification he had been trying for a few months (this was his 3rd attempt) and luckily found out he passed! I told him that must mean this month is going to be a good month - we have a few other goals this month that I'd love to know are going to be achieved - so this is a good first step. He got to make some treats with the girls (and I love getting pics of them cooking with us). And then we ended the night going to Leatherby's (one of his favorites) and getting yummy food and LOTS of ice cream. My favorite part was the older lady who walked past our table and said we had a cute family - I love those compliments the most. 

This isn't from his birthday, but I love taking pics of these
Little moments with him and the kids!

For Friday, he just got to be lazy, nothing really special happened that day. Normally we'd let him celebrate Saturday, but then we had other plans that couldn't be rearranged so we decided to let him take today as his birthday day (then the Saturday plans kind of fell through, but because of other reasons he still had to wait till today for his birthday celebrations). 

He decided, for his birthday, he wanted to go to Wendover. Even though Le Bus wasn't running today and he hates the idea of driving on his own for 2 hours, it was still what he wanted to do. I was excited to have the day with just me and the girls - I've not done that for a whole day with just me and the girls (at least not where I felt comfortable leaving the house with them by myself) yet so I was eager to see how well it would go!

While I let Larry sleep in I got the girls up and ready and fed. Then we headed to the grocery store. We can't go out too far for too long in the mornings since Lucy still has a morning nap, but grocery shopping gives us a good excuse to get out and the girls wanted to help grab things we needed and so many people commented on how I had such great helpers with me. I also got a few people giving me horror head wound stories from when their kid (or themself as a kid) fell out of a cart or got into a car accident and all the horrible things that happened from that (because Lucy kept standing on the seat in the cart and they were getting scared and looking out for me...it was sweet, really). Once we got home from shopping I put Lucy down and let the older girls play outside while I put groceries away. Then we had a quick lunch and I put the girls down for a nap while I watched a movie.

Now, before I put the girls down they were, of course, complaining that they weren't tired, but I told them we were going on an adventure that they needed to be rested for so they had to lie down. Big fat help that did, I could hear them making noises until literally 2 minutes before I had to wake them up. I had already bought the tickets and reservations for Thanksgiving Point Gardens (thinking they'd love to see the lego displays they had going on and especially the big waterfall and walking around in the fresh air would do them good) so I couldn't just let them nap a little longer and felt so bad when I woke them up (bad and also anxious that they were going to have a meltdown, but they didn't do too bad).

What's funny is I went in and asked them "do you guys want to go on our adventure to the big waterfall?" and Cara popped right up so excited to head out. Gwen took a bit more influencing and poking and prodding, but eventually woke up and came downstairs. Luckily I had gotten their clothes and the bag all ready to head out, so once they were up I just had to get them out of diapers and get shoes and socks on and we were ready to go. I made sure to put snacks in the bag and grab plenty of water and sunscreen (it has been almost 100 degrees every day lately so those were a definite need). 

When we parked the car (accidentally in front of the Curiousity Museum instead of the Gardens) it started to rain. It was so funny to hear Cara yell out "Oh man, we just washed the car!" haha. I, however, LOVE summer rain storms and was so excited to walk through it with the girls. Even if Cara was also saying she didn't like getting wet haha. I was worried we were walking so far to the gardens that the walk back might not be fun, but I figured sometimes you just have to roll with the punches/go with the flow and just not worry too much.

I was so bummed when we got to the gardens and saw signs up all over saying the waterfall was closed for maintenance and kept hoping they were just old signs from the weekend and we would still get to see it (it was the biggest selling point to the kids after all! And it's just so pretty and I had this image of grabbing food and eating dinner in front of it). I was very disappointed to see the signs were not leftover and the waterfall was, in fact, off. I had text Larry to ask how his day in Wendover was going and he said he was actually headed home at that point so I knew I had to keep the girls out for a bit so he could have a quiet house for a bit (he hadn't spent that much time out there so I wanted him to have as relaxing time for his birthday as possible).

The girls and I had a lot of fun at the gardens. We started making up a little song in between looking for each lego statue (there were 15 total spread throughout). It started with "We're looking for number 3. I wonder what it'll be" and then just progressed in rhymes from there. After about an hour (and even after we had stopped for snacks) I was getting so hungry and it was VERY hot (I don't know why I wore black jeans, but it was a huge mistake). The girls were also getting sick of walking and would take turns riding in the stroller, which meant I was holding Lucy and pushing one of them in the stroller. This meant I was getting a SUPER workout this day haha.

So once we had found enough lego statues I called it and we headed out to go get some dinner. Luckily, a few more lego exhibits came up as we were leaving so the girls got excited to see those. We headed over to the cafe place in the front of Thanksgiving Point and ordered some yummy food. And luckily, it took a while (normally I'd hate this, but the longer we were out the more time Larry got to relax at home (the drive out to Wendover isn't what I'd describe as relaxing, but I also hate driving for a long time with no real exciting end to it). By the time we got home Larry had been home for a couple hours (or so he says). I asked him if he had fun and he said it was only okay because he had lost so much money, didn't get to spend that much time there, and driving felt like it was a waste of time (if he had taken the bus he could read or watch something instead) so it wasn't AS much fun as usual, but he said it was nice and quiet for him. I also made sure to put all the girls down for bed all by myself so he didn't need to worry about getting up and could just relax more.

So overall, his birthday was just another day in Wendover and this post was more about what I did on his birthday, but that's all I know to write about. If I wrote his take it would be:

Got to sleep in, drove to Wendover, lost a lot of money, drove home, had a quiet dinner, played games. Saw my kids for about half an hour and then they went to bed. Happy Birthday haha.

Independence Day 2021

Happy 4th of July!! 

I had a lot of fun plans for this year, thinking we could finally let the girls stay up to watch Fireworks and I was so excited to see their reactions. THEN I started to look up fireworks around us and saw they weren't planning on starting any shows until 10 PM. Unfortunately, I know Lucy could not hang that late and so going out to see fireworks was off the plan. Another unfortunate thing is Eagle Mountain has strict no fireworks rules in place (so strict that they won't even SELL fireworks within the city) so I knew we wouldn't even get to see them from our house. We did buy a huge popper set from Costco (despite Larry's "that looks messy, you're cleaning that up" comments haha) and had some sparklers and glow sticks so that was the win we'd have to take.

Now yesterday we were driving around (getting some meat to cook for a bbq, last minute 4th of July shirt/treat shopping for the girls, and doing some other errands in North Utah for some possible TBA plans) and that night as were watching our movie for date night I started coughing like crazy. I'm not sure where it came from, it wasn't like "I swallowed something wrong" or anything, just constant coughing. Larry was joking it was covid, but I knew it couldn't be. But I think because of that this morning I woke up feeling like C.R.A.P. My throat was SO sore, my head and nose felt so stuffy, just utter garbage. 

Luckily, once I got up and started drinking water I started to feel a bit better, but still not 100% great. Since I have tomorrow off (and my day with just me and the girls) I figured I'd save grocery shopping and laundry for then and could just relax today, but it also meant we couldn't do all the fun traditions I had hoped to start (watching or playing baseball, water play, etc.), but we did grill up our yummy meats for dinner and had our 4th of July donuts after lunch and dinner as a nice treat so that worked for us.

After dinner we just decided to go start our poppers. We didn't have any other plans so we figured we'd start early. Unfortunately, we scared a neighbor dog so badly and I figured poor dog wanted to have a couple hours to enjoy before being scared so we paused poppers at that point and let the girls play with sidewalk chalk. It started to rain as I had to take Lucy in for a bath and be put down for bed (I would've pushed it back, but she was pretty exhausted) and by the time I got back outside the rain had completely passed (side note: summer rain storms are my favorite and I keep missing them this year!). Larry, being the cutest dad ever, drew some fun obstacle course with the sidewalk chalk for the girls and they were showing me how they were going through it and it was so cute! 

Well at this point it was almost 8 so we decided it was fine enough to start the poppers up again, but nothing else was going on around us so it felt so weird. It ended up turning into "Cara finished the obstacle course so we'll pull a popper to celebrate that" over and over and over. Gwen just wanted to drink my water so she didn't care, but both girls were having fun with it.

We let them stay up about an hour past their normal bedtime, but by that point nothing else was going on and I realized we could use the poppers at any other point in the year (I doubt they'd be prohibited all year since it's just mini confetti canons) so we might as well save them. Of course after the girls went to bed the real firework sounds started up, but we couldn't really see them so it was a draw.

Luckily, the girls don't know what they are missing so it's okay, but I'm bummed we couldn't have a traditional 4th of July, it was pretty boring, but at least I wasn't sick or so huge pregnant I couldn't actually do stuff with the girls. Now wish me luck that tomorrow goes good with just me and the girls and I don't regret not at least doing laundry today haha.