Vacation Part 1

We were able to take a 10 day trip to see family. We saw all of Timothy's immediate family and all of mine except for my Dad who lives in Missouri. It was so good to see family and spend time with them.
On our way down to Utah we stopped to visit Aunt Katherine and her new little baby Emma. Emma was in NICU so only I could go see her, but I was glad we did.
Then Aunt Katherine joined us for a picnic in the park before she went back to the hospital to take care of Emma and we drove the rest of the way to Grandma's house.


While in Utah, my mom and Brittany took us to a place that Brittany likes to play called Jumping Jacks. It is a room full of huge blow up jumping places and blow up slides. The kids loved it!




We spent three days at Grandma and Aunt Brittany's house. We got to play with Aunt Brittany,
and her piano,
and baby Mikayla (Aunt Tasha's baby).

While at Grandma's Hyrum learned how to put ice cream buckets on his head and made his hair so sticky- it stuck up for days!
The other kids thought it would be funny to put things on their heads too.


We had a great time visiting Grandma and Aunt Brittany. We also got to visit with Uncle Brett and Aunt Tasha and their baby, Mikayla. We went out to Uncle Jason and Aunt Marji's new house and got to play with cousins Kaitlyn and Faith. while in Utah we also went to my 10 year high school reunion- which was interesting. I wish more of my high school friends had come, but it was fun to visit with those who were there.

Playing in the mud part 2

We've sure had a lot of mud this spring and this time the children really got "into it!" They started out just jumping in it, but then they got out the buckets...

I put Marc and Hyrum down for naps in the middle of the mud play so they didn't get as dirty.
Brigham and Rebekah and one of their friends were soaked and covered with gunk!
I had to run them through the shower and wash their hair and I still didn't get all of the muck out. But, they sure had a good time.

Lions, tigers, and bears oh my!

On Tuesday we woke the children up early and drove to the zoo. They're still trying to wake up in the picture above. We've been trying to make it to the zoo for over a year now and we finally made it.
The kids loved seeing all the animals. They were all fairly well behaved at the zoo because there was just so much to look at.

The favorite animals to see were the monkeys and elephants.

Here are the lions.

We got a lot of crazy comments from people about our large family and our stroller.

I dressed the children alike so that I could keep track of them easier and I also put signs on their backs that said, " If I'm lost please call Mom" and my cell #. Luckily we didn't lose anyone, although, Marc ran off for about 30 seconds I couldn't find him, but he came running right back.
We sure had a great time at the zoo, the children keep asking to go back.

Parenting

Being a mother to four toddlers is hard. Especially when one of the toddlers is a foster child and is dealing with insecurities.

This week I have done a lot of praying, asking for guidance in helping Marc to control his behavior because he has been out of control lately. First I was asking about how to stop the biting because that was getting more and more frequent and Rebekah was starting to bite again too and they were leaving horrible bite marks on everyone. As I was praying about it the other night the inspiration about stopping biting came! It was that Marc is VERY motivated by food, especially sweets. And when he bites someone, I was to offer everyone who was using their teeth the right way some candy. When he asked for some too I was to say -with empathy, “Oh, no, Marc, you didn't use your teeth for food. Brigham used his teeth for food so he gets some. Bekah used her teeth for food...” and so on. I only had to do that three times before the biting stopped. Then, later he almost bit Brigham, but he stopped himself, looked at me and said, “teeth for food”. I applauded him for not biting and gave everyone candy including him so they could use their teeth for food. What a blessing that inspiration was! It's been so nice not to have to deal with biting 4-5 times a day! And all the bite marks are beginning to heal!

Well, with that behavior under control I began to pray about the other problem behaviors. Last night I was thinking about it after the children were in bed and I got the impression to read an early childhood newsletter that was sitting on the counter. So, I did and the first article I read was about a mother who had been dealing with a toddler who had a lot of behavioral issues with her son. She started to spend 10-20 minutes a day just sitting on the floor and letting him choose the activity and just playing- letting the child direct the play. That and a few other things changed the mother's perspective of her child, and the child's behavior began to improve immensely. I thought, I need to do that with all of my children, but especially with Marc. So, we're going to try it this week and see how it goes.

Fire!

This morning I woke up to the smoke alarm going off. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my glasses (of all things.) We rushed the children out the front door and to the mail boxes (our designated meeting spot.) Timothy said he thought the fire was in the oven. He left us outside and went back in to check on things. Sure enough there was a fire in the oven. Here's how we figure it happened.

Timothy and the children had been up for about an hour and were letting me sleep in because I wasn't feeling well. Timothy had made muffins for breakfast and got them into the oven. Then, he went to change Hyrum's diaper. While he was changing him Brigham must have grabbed a measuring cup and an empty box of pepto bismal and opened the oven and tossed them in. Then they caught on fire and set the smoke detector off. (We found white melted plastic and half a burned pepto box in the oven after it cooled down.) Brigham said he threw a measuring cup in there. He also said that he would never do that again. (I hope he keeps his word.)

...

4 toddlers + diarrhea = lots of diapers to wash

Happy Birthday Marc!

Guess Who's Three?
Marcus!

Marc had his third birthday on April 19th! He was so excited about his train cake. This was my attempt at culinary creativity. I thought the idea was great, but the final product could use a bit of improvement, but luckily three year olds don't really care as long as it looks half decent and tastes good.
Everyone seemed to enjoy the cake. It didn't eat any because it had three things in it that I can't eat: Milk, wheat, and refined sugar.
He was blessed to have his grandmother "gran", his great-grandmother "grandma", his auntie Lisa, and his Uncle Troy come over to help celebrate his birthday! That made him happy, but aldo sad that he couldn't "ride in Gran's car." He wanted to go home with them. :(
But, while they were here we had a good time. Gran brought a pin the tail on the donkey game for the children to play. They had fun with it, although, they didn't really "get" it.

Oh, the things people say

When I took all four children grocery shopping the other day I got quite the reaction out of several people. One guy had his daughter with him who looked about 6 or 7 years old. He saw me pushing a cart with four toddlers he just stopped and stared. I smiled at him and with an astonished look on his face he said, "And I thought I had my hands full!" then he continued to stare, so his daughter counted the kids and said, "four, Dad, there's four." He said, "I know, I can count. Wow!"
Another couple watched me as I was bagging our groceries. Three of the children were trying to "help" but it was making things go slowly. Anyway, the wife asked how old the children were, and I told her. The husband said, "How do you do it?" I said, "A lot of patience and a lot of energy."
One lady that I had seen in a store last week and also this morning said to me that every since she saw me last week she just kept thinking how does she (referring to me) get anything done? I told her that's all I do is take care of them.

Another lady saw me and said with a little disgust, "Please tell me they're not all the same age."

An older cashier at wal-mart just assumed the older three were triplets and was telling me all about another set of triplets that comes into the store.

As I was leaving the WIC office one day I heard people talking behind me saying something like, "she sure has her hands full, but she's got a lot of patience too." That was nice to hear after wrestling with four toddlers through a WIC appointment I was about ready to pull my hair out inside, but luckily was staying calm on the outside. It was nice hear someone notice that I was doing a good job.

Annual Spring Ritual...Playing in the mud

How muddy can four toddlers get?

Not bad...

His pants looked worse than his face...

Okay, that's more like it, Marc!

But, Hyrum takes the cake, snotty nose and all.

Easter

We had a great Easter!




Brigham, Rebekah and I died eggs.

The Saturday before Easter we gave the children a little Easter egg hunt. They seemed to enjoy it. Sunday we enjoyed conference and family time.

and then there were four...

This little family that consisted of a dad, mom, and three children has just been expanded-whether temporarily or forever we can't be sure. (sorry I post a lot of bath pictures, it's so much easier to get them to stay in one place long enough for a picture when they're contained.) :) Last week we received a phone call asking if we would take a little boy (who used to be in our child care) as a foster care placement. I couldn't get a hold of Timothy because he was in class and the case worker needed to know within the hour. So, I said yes and an hour later I was the mother of four toddlers. Timothy came home to a surprise. "Congratulations we're going to have another child- he's already joined our family. Is that okay?" (Not that there was much he could do about it by then...but luckily he was fine with it.)
Meet Marcus: He is an almost three year-old boy who loves balls and fruit. He likes to play outside and play "with chickens". Marc (as we like to call him) has been in our child care off and on for about 2 years. So he is familiar to us and has made a fairly smooth transition into our family. Still, as you can imagine, he was pulled away from his mother and hasn't seen her for over a week and misses her and his other family members. He had a hard time going to bed and sleeping the first two nights with us, but is doing well now. Luckily his grandma sent his favorite blanket along with some of his other stuff two days after he was placed with us. He is attached to his blanket and likes to chew on the corners. As you can probably see in the picture below, the corners are black (but clean) because he chews on it so much. It has been a bit of an adjustment for all of us adding him to our family. It's also hard not knowing how long he's going to be with us. But for now he's ours and we'll love and take care of him.

Together forever

On Saturday, April 10th three beautiful children dressed all in white were brought into a beautiful room in the Portland Temple where their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends were waiting to witness the miraculous power of God bind these children to their loving adoptive parents for time and all eternity.

In the temple we caught a glimpse of eternity.

It was truly a beautiful experience.