Halloween Pics...explanation to follow at a later date!

I should hire Shaun out for face painting at birthday parties! He did a great job on Frankenstein's face!


Captain Huggyface falls asleep
Word Up! Its Word Girl and Captain Huggyface!
Thanks for taking this picture Ben! Good Job!

First Piano Recital

Ben has been taking piano lessons at USU this fall and is really enjoying it. (Phew! I was worried my scheme would backfire.) I think much of his enjoyment, at least initially, is due to the fact that he has a male teacher, Pete, who is a very hip, long-board riding, young college student, which is a good example for Ben (as in boys who play piano aren't sissies!)

Ben is in love with the National Anthem lately. Yes I'm talking about the good old Star Spangled Banner. His school sings it together in the gym every morning along with saying the Pledge as part of their "Morning Greeting." As soon as he started piano, he begged me to find him some simple sheet music for it and teach him to play it. He memorized it so quickly (its a page and a half long!) and happily pounds it out on the piano several times a day after school. Ben takes the fact that the piano is a percussion instrument quite literally! He's taught Erik some of the words, so now I am regularly serenaded during the day with strains of "gave poof through tonight, that our flag was over there..." and other close-but-not-quite lyrics. It always puts a smile on my face.

This video is his very first piano recital at USU. They had a special Halloween one where all the kids got to wear their costumes and go to a halloween carnival after their recital. Ben played "Old MacDonald's Ghost" for his song. (Ben is Frankenstein this year, more on that in a later post). Ben and Erik had a blast and Grandma Joy and Grandpa Steve came over for the occasion. We were sitting in the audience, and Erik asked if he could have a turn. "Sorry, Erik, maybe next year," I told him. Well, after it was over, Erik went down to the piano and gave us this number:




Ben likes to "teach" Erik some of what he's learning at piano lessons, and Erik seems to love it, too. We are so lucky to have been able to move my Grandma Ericksen's piano to our little house. I have fond childhood memories of tinkering around on it at my grandma's house and I have always loved that piano. Its so beautiful. Shaun thought I was nuts when I said I wanted to move it over here and enroll Ben in piano lessons because our house is so tiny, but it has already paid off. Ben plays the opening song for us for Family Home Evening each week. (We're getting to know The Star Spangled Banner pretty well!) and Erik plays his own original composition for the closing song. Having kids interested in piano make me feel like such a good mom for some reason! Listening to them pound out chopsticks or the PBS Kids jingle (which Ben figured out himself...have you noticed we watch a lot of PBS?) is so satisfying and just makes me feel like I'm doing something right. Ben also still plans on learning guitar and drums when he gets older, so I look forward to having our house filled with music often.

New Pictures of Alex

I'm glad to have met my goal of posting more than once during the month of October!

Here's Alex at 15 weeks old. Such a handsome little guy! He is just starting to laugh a little. He is also reaching for and holding on to toys. He prefers to chew on his fingers the most, though. He is also very drooly! He likes to smile at the cute baby in the mirror and bounce and jump when we hold him on our laps. So much fun! Sleeping through the night would be nice, but it will come someday...

Believe it or not, he has much more hair than Ben or Erik did at this stage. Its so fun when we wash it and it fuzzes straight up. He's also missing my major frontal cowlick, so I think he must have inherited Shaun's hair. I'm thinking he looks most like Ben at this stage in his babyhood...but I can see some of Erik's cheeks in Alex sometimes, too.

Alex's Blessing Day (was in September!)

We finally had Alex's blessing on September 14th (and I'm finally posting it over a month later). He had almost grown out of his special white satin suit! His blessing was beautiful and we had a small brunch with family in our backyard (with our new grass!) afterward and the weather was sunny and perfect.

If you look closely you will see that his pants don't match his shirt. He caught a virus the day before that gave him diarrhea and he frequently overloaded the holding capacity of his diapers. We were sweating it all morning hoping he wouldn't leak on the fancy clothes. Well, we did make it through his blessing and most of sacrament meeting before we finally had a blow out. Grandma Joy's quick-rinsing in the restroom at church saved the pants from total loss. Can't say the same for a couple of his onesies later during the week which we actually cut off of him rather than trying to get the messy shirt over his head. It was a two person operation with Shaun operating the scissors like it was the Jaws-of-Life while I held his hands out of it. And at 3 AM, of course! Ah, babies...so wonderful and yet kind of gross.

Back when I started this post at the beginning of October, I was debating if I should put the outfit on him again to get pictures. I failed to get any special pictures of my other children in their blessing outfits. We tried with Ben, but his Blessing Day also happened to be his first day of colic. We held him and rocked him while he cried all morning trying to figure out what was wrong instead of getting the photo op. I do have a lovely, blurry photo of him screaming, and one of his face nestled against Shaun when he finally fell asleep hours later. I forget what the no-photo issue was with Erik...we have a few photos from his special day, but I know I always planned to put him back in his outfit for some portrait-type pictures before he grew out of it, but alas! Life happened and pictures didn't.

I was trying to decided whether I should try extra hard to get the fancy outfit pictures for Alex, or if that wouldn't be fair for the other boys who don't have nice fancy outfit pictures. Well, it was decided for me in a way because Alex got very unhappy when he developed an earache and wasn't too happy on the antibiotics either. (A side note here: Alex had just gotten over two weeks worth of diarrhea...10 poopy diapers a day for 14 days straight! Finally he got it all out of his system and then earache comes accompanied by 2 days of near incessant crying (poor kid!) and a nursing strike. Our pediatrician gave us Amoxicillan and what did it say on the bottle? "May cause diarrhea!" and it did, again!) Anyway...no one was sleeping well, and getting pictures in his white suit was the farthest thing from my mind. I'm pretty sure he's grown out of it now, so I guess I have no fancy pictures of any of my kids in their blessing outfits after all. At least I've been equally negligent! No favorites here!

And, I'm happy to report there's finally no more diarrhea! HOORAY!

New Month...New Post...New Grass!

Oh, I have been such a lazy blogger lately! Here's the reason and a warning: don't move your computer into your kids bedroom. I'm sure you are all thinking this might be a good idea, but I'm telling you, I've tried it and I do not recommend it!

Due to space issues and infant napping needs, I got this "brilliant" idea to move our computer from the master bedroom into Ben and Erik's room. Alex is still sleeping in our room in his bassinet, and the computer was literally 18" from his bed and our glider was sitting in front of both our dresser and our closet door. Getting dressed for work in the morning in the dim don't-wake-the-baby-or-the-tired-wife light was truly an obstacle course for Shaun! Ben and Erik's bedroom is actually much larger than ours, so we moved the computer. Well, it has been nicer to move around our room, but I have since realized that I did all my email catch-up and blogging after Ben and Erik went to bed, and with the computer in their room, this has become pretty much impossible. Not to mention the fact that it is too tempting for them to have a "Good Night Computer Game" instead of a "Good Night Story." No, its not good at all. But, this quaint little 80 year old house we live in has a rather limited number of 3-hole electrical outlets suitable for plugging in a computer. So, until I get up the guts to move Alex into his crib in the boys room, this is where it stays.

In other News... We have new grass!



We were able to put sod in the backyard and west side of the house the last two weekends. There was an old shed right behind the house that was torn down this summer. And what little grass that was living in the back was torn up when the waterline to the house had to be replaced this spring before we moved in. So the back yard was looking extremely desolate. It was hot, dusty or muddy depending on if it rained or not. The new grass has been glorious and looks fantastic! I love to step out the backdoor and take a big breath of fresh air because it looks so rejuvenated! A big thanks to Shaun, Grandpa Steve and Grandma Joy for their help getting the ground leveled, hauling sod with their truck, and putting it in!

Alex is Smiling!

OK, OK, I know that new pictures are loooong over due! The truth is I lost my camera for about two weeks, so I couldn't download anything. I eventually found my camera exactly where I thought it was supposed to be. I blame some form of momnesia-induced selective blindness. Anyway, here's what we have. Alex started smiling at us about 2 weeks ago...the REAL smiles where he smiles at you after you smile at him first. In fact, the above pictures captured his very first responsive smiles...we happened to be outside at my cousin Jonathan's birthday party at the time and Shaun was smiling and cooing at him when he suddenly smiled back! I love this stage! Finally we can tell there is really someone in there!

He is such a great baby. Although he is not sleeping through the night yet, he falls asleep really easily...he often puts himself to sleep after grunting for about 5 minutes in his bed...no crying! He is possibly the mellowest baby ever! He only cries if he has a very good reason and even then he calms down after a few minutes. I can't believe it, honestly, it seems too good to be true, but I keep reminding myself that I must have earned it by surviving terrible colic with baby No. 1!

Here he is in his one Church outfit:

His big brothers can't get enough of him. Ben can't wait to start playing with him as soon as he gets home from school each day, and Erik is still declaring him to be "the cutest baby ever" all the time. (Today in fact, Erik said, "Aren't Alex's hands the cutest hands, Mom?")


Here he is doing his best E.T. impression (big blue eyes and wrinkly neck):


Hope you all like the pictures. We miss our Colorado friends so much and wish that you could meet him in person!

August Update . . .

Well, yet another very eventful month has gone by and very little posting has been done!

First of all, Shaun started work part-time 3 days a week on August 3rd. Since he is licensed, he can work in the clinic, but can't assist with surgeries on the other two days until his other paperwork gets processed by the bureaucracy. But still, it is a great to have even part-time income after the 3 month drought of being out of work. Also, having him go just three days a week means that I still have lots of help at home, which I still need! I don't know how anyone else does it with a newborn and other kids to take care of on their own during the day! You are all SuperMoms! We think Shaun will start full-time sometime in September. And the good news is that he is really thriving in his job and we feel so blessed to have gotten this great gig straight out of school.

August also began with swimming lessons for Ben and Erik. The announcement that they would be in swimming lessons nearly brought tears to their eyes, and I don't mean tears of joy! They love playing in the water and it was high time for them to develop some actual skills, but they did NOT want to go to swimming lessons. Shaun and I were shocked at their negative reaction. I tried to tell them it would be fun and they would get to go swimming every single day for two weeks, (they are always begging me to take them to the pool) but they most definitely did not believe me. They went grudgingly the first day, and of course loved it (Erik even complained because it was over so soon) and couldn't wait to go back the next day. They both seemed to think that their swim instructors were the funnest teenagers ever.

Here's Erik with Instructor Kevin:

Ben floating with Nate:
I was a bit nervous about the 3 kids : 1 parent ratio since it would be up to me to single-handedly get two wet, shivering kids dried off while juggling Alex on the sidelines, but he kindly obliged to nap in his stroller on most days. Phew! They can't wait 'til next summer to do it again!

And, since announcing swimming lessons went so well (ha!) I decided to get Ben into piano lessons this fall at USU. This idea, as you can guess, went over like a lead balloon at first, but I seem to have successfully talked him into it. He has gotten on this "I want to be a rock star" kick lately, so I used that as leverage. (I swear he has never seen Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers except on commercials.) We'll see how it goes...lessons start in September!