Gone Again!

This morning we dragged the troops from their cozy beds at 4:30 so we could drive Jaron up to the airport.  My brain is too foggy to concentrate on homework so I decided to do something else "productive" instead - write on the blog. :)  Jaron's off to Idaho to spend the week interviewing for JOBS (we've gone way too long without a real job in our family!) - for rural family practice residencies, to be exact.  I'm crossing my fingers that they like him.  Western Idaho is close (enough) to family and Boise sounds like a really nice place to live!

"Wait," you say, "didn't Jaron just get home?"  Why yes, yes, he did.  Right now we are in month 5 of a seven month span where Jaron will spend about 7 cumulative weeks with us.  He's got lots of away rotations in a row and lots of traveling for residency interviews squeezed in between.  The kids are utterly confused.  They'll pray for him to have safety on his trip when he's upstairs sleeping and they're constantly asking, "Where is Dad again?"  Haha.  He will be home the weekend of Christmas but he'll have to drive back to South Dakota (where he'll be at that point) on Christmas day. :(  Each rotation away is a really good opportunity for Jaron to get to know residency programs and for them to get to know him so they're too good of opportunities to pass up.  His being gone so much sure makes us grateful for when he's around!  Jaron's a great Dad.  The kids love to wrestle with him.  Last night he spent a long time playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark with them.  And he's a great mediator when "mean mom" starts to show her face!  We miss him when he's gone but I'll still always be grateful that he's working toward something great for him and our family.

On the homefront, things have been busy and tough at times with short relaxing intervals in between.  We are excited to be expecting a baby in May(!) but having Jaron gone during my sickest weeks was tough.  The kids just so happened to get a stomach flu about 6 weeks ago so they began to see my daily retching bouts as an extension of their stomach flu.  It was amazing to me how oblivious kids can be - I would be turning my insides out over the toilet and Alden and Eli would bang down the door, fighting over something.  Geesh, can't I have a moment?!  I also remember being tired in previous pregnancies but I don't remember being so downright exhausted.  One day I realized that this is the first pregnancy that all my kids haven't been napping.  I'll admit, there were a few Sundays that I bribed the kids with Halloween candy if they'd let me sleep an hour.  Haha, that was only marginally successful.

We are really excited at the prospect of having another little one come to our family!  I feel so honored to get to be a mom.  Without us prompting them to, the kids have long since been praying for another baby to come to our family.  It was hard to keep the news from them but we didn't tell them until Jaron came back from Arizona when I was 13 weeks along.  We told them first thing one morning and Alden said,

"OHHH!  That must be why you're so fat, mom!"

Haha...ha.  He made up for it that night, though.  Jaron and I were heading out to be wined and dined by a residency program here in the city.  Alden asked if we were going to a healthy restaurant.  I told him I thought it was healthy and asked him why.  "Because you need to eat healthy food for the baby, mom."  Sweet kid!  Alden is definitely the most excited for #4's debut.  For Eli and Gracen, it seems to be too far away and too abstract a thing for them to be much affected by the news.

It took more than a year for us to become pregnant this time.  Throughout that year, I'd have moments where I'd be convinced that Gracen might be my last baby.  And then I'd have moments where I'd be grateful that we didn't have one more thing on our plate yet.  Now that we are expecting, I am once again really grateful for the Lord's timing!  Although it's going to take a little stepping up of the effort, I just might be able to finish my degree before baby comes.  If I'm not quite able to, I'll have only one course left and I'll be allowed to take a three month leave of absence.  I'm trying to get done as much school done as I can right now but it's funny how "life" still happens when you're trying to accomplish something. :)

Yesterday we had a year-end appointment with our bishop at church.  He was asking about what's coming up for our family and after we discussed what's going on for us he said, "Wow, a lot of big changes for your family all at once."  And it made me realize that we DO have a lot of big changes at once!  In May Jaron will graduate, I will (hopefully) graduate, and we'll welcome a baby to our family!  Then approximately 5 weeks later we'll pack up our house and move across the country!  Yikes!  Are there any other big family changes we could add to that?!  I guess change is good!

Jayhawks

 We have a couple in our ward at church who are long-time season ticket holders for the KU Jayhawks' basketball team.  Whenever they're out of town on church assignments, they are generous enough to offer their tickets out to others!  A couple of Fridays ago they offered us the pair of tickets.  Jaron was devastated that he couldn't go but, as described in the last post, he's pretty much not going to be here for the entire basketball season!  So I decided to pack up the kids and take Alden to his first basketball game.

 

It was only possible because Jaron's brother, Abe, and his family just happened to move to Lawrence the week before!  Abe just started a double MBA program there.  Abe and Kayla were so super nice to take Eli and Gracen for me so that Alden and I could go to the game.  It made a really late night for all the kids involved so I really appreciated how willing they were to let us impose on them!

Alden and I had a great time.  It was fun to explain some of the rules of basketball to Alden.  He loved the cheerleaders (for their awesome two-tiered moves, of course!) and also had fun calculating the difference between scores.  The Jayhawks have a few great dunkers on their team and that added to the excitement as well. Our seats were right next to the students' seats which was fun because they cheer pretty much non-stop!

Go Jayhawks!

Dustin, Cassy, and Jarom come to visit!

From September through last week, Jaron spent a long seven weeks doing a rotation in Arizona.  He was blessed to be able to stay with his Aunt and Uncle - a financial blessing for us and also a great opportunity for Jaron to get to know them better.  It was a psychiatry rotation at a behavioral health institute and some of the cases sounded fascinating.  It was a L-O-N-G seven weeks for all of us, though, and we were glad when my brother, sister, and brother-in-law decided to come visit us! Their being here really helped break up the loneliness!

Dustin, Cassy, and Jarom made the visit with the primary goal of spending some relaxing time with us.  We went and saw a few sights around the city but we really spent a lot of time at home.  The kids LOVED having adults play with them.  This was a boat that Jarom designed for the boys out of Duplos.  Cassy and Gracen spent a lot of time with the Littlest Pet Shop stuff.

 We did get out to a few stores that they wanted to visit and also a few sites of historical importance to our church that are around the metro.  I was really bad at taking pictures all around.  I did remember to bring my camera on the day we went up to see the temple.  In our church we believe that the ordinances that take place in temples seal families together beyond life here on this earth.  I can't even describe how peaceful it is to have knowledge that I can be with my husband, my kids, my parents, and my siblings forever!!

 Eli was quite enamored with this replica set of the plates the Book of Mormon was translated from. 

We enjoyed our visit so much and it ended way too soon after only five days. It was nice to reconnect with my siblings and to get to know Cassy's new husband, Jarom, better.  Jarom and Gracen became quite the buddies while he was here.  The kids were devastated when we took them to the airport and actually left them there.

Come visit again soon!!

Jaron ended his rotation in Arizona last week and stayed an extra few days to take his USMLE step 2.  Phew!  We are SO glad that test is out of the way!  We're excited to get the results back in a few weeks and are hoping that might open up some more residency interviews for us.  Today Jaron's gone to Georgia to take the hands-on portion of step 2 and then he'll get a few days of relaxation before he's off on his next adventures!  Next week he'll spend several days interviewing at programs in Idaho.  Jaron has chosen to do rotations in South Dakota for December and Montana for January.  These are two of the rural family medicine programs that he's really interested in so being able to rotate there while he interviews is a great opportunity.  We will all be glad, though, when Jaron returns to us for good at the end of February!

Halloween

Here finally are our Halloween pictures!

Eli wanted to be a skeleton ever since we got him this Halloween shirt.  Alden watched The Magic School bus Halloween special over and over again and decided he definitely wanted to be a vampire bat.  My friend Amanda sewed this Tinkerbell costume for Gracen for her birthday (without a pattern!!) and that finally made Gracen decide "princess with wings" over being a cat.

 Halloween was extra fun this year because my brother, sister, and brother-in-law came to visit us from Canada!  I was really bad at taking pictures during their visit but I'll do a post on it next.

Don't they all look spooky?  Alden and Eli were all about looking spooky this year. :)

 We started celebrating the day by going to see Alden's Halloween parade at school.  I barely caught a picture of him as he whizzed by.

 

For dinner we all dressed up and went to Chipotle's $2 special.  We happened to get there early enough that we didn't have to wait in line very long.

 When we set out to start trick-or-treating, we didn't see anybody else out.  So we headed to the playground.  The kids' Uncles and Aunts ran them hard in a pretty good game of tag.  Then we drove around and still didn't see people out so we decided to check out this free Halloween carnival not far from our house.  The kids had so much fun on all the bouncy houses - I wish I'd gotten more pictures!

The kids were so tuckered out from the carnival that they only wanted to trick-or-treat for about 40 minutes.  At first I was sad for them.  Then, when we got home, I realized that I didn't have mounds and mounds of candy to deal with and I decided that wearing the kids out before trick-or-treating might become an annual tradition. :)

Happy Birthday Gracen!

In many ways, Gracen's birthday was a total bust this year.  I planned a princess party for her.  I made tulle skirts and bought necklaces and little crowns and ring pops for the eight little princesses we were going to be inviting.  I made a pin a crown on the princess game and a princess cake walk.  I made prince crowns for my special helpers, Alden and Eli, and even had a plan for my friend, Amanda, to come take pictures of all the festivities.

And then Gracen woke up throwing up on the day of her party with a high fever. :(

I hummed and hawed and decided to just cancel the party.  My brother and sister and bro-in-law were coming to visit a few days later and I just didn't want to juggle a party while they were here or when I was playing "catch up on life" after they left.  We delivered the princess outfits in packages to her friends, who were all sweet enough to give her a gift anyway.  Aubrie gave her some Dr. Seuss books and Ella gave her a doll car seat.  Ella's mom also made Gracen the sweetest little diaper bag and diapers for her baby dolls.  Our cute little cousins brought over a set of Disney princess ballerina Barbies.  Even Amanda brought over a gift - a handmade Tinkerbell costume that Gracen insisted on wearing for Halloween. Gracen is in love with all of her new treasures!!

Since I'd already made cupcakes, me and the kids celebrated with her that night.  She kept asking, "Now am I three, Mom?"  But she was too sick to eat her cupcake. :(

 On her actual birthday, Aunt Cassy, Uncle Jarom, and Uncle Dustin were here to help us celebrate.  We saved the gifts from family for her actual birthday.  Aunt Melissa sent Gracen a princess card with some money in it.  Aunt Genny gave her a purse full of "get pretty" stuff (hair dryer, straightener, makeup, etc.).  It's one of those things that I would never have thought to buy her but she absolutely loves it.

 Grandma Allred also sent some money that I used to get this wooden birthday cake set.  Gracen loves birthdays!  Jaron and I got her some Littlest Pet Shop stuff - her go to toy these days.

 Gracen and Aunt Cassy put in a joint effort on the princess castle cake.  It was so nice to completely let go of being concerned about how it looked.  Gracen had so much fun making it look the way she wanted it to.  Haha, beautiful, isn't it?!

Gracen has always been my happy girl and at three this is still true of her.  She is so girly that sometimes it astounds me.  She loves to choose her own clothes and often insists on not having any elastics in her hair so that she'll have "princess hair."  She loves to sing and dance.  The other night, she came into my room to sleep on the floor in the very early hours of the morning.  As she was going back to sleep, she was singing "Hush little baby" to herself. :)  She absolutely loves going to dance class and dances whenever there's music - even during church.  Gracen's at that great age where everything that comes out of her mouth is funny.  I really need to be better at writing them down!  Gracen is kind and thoughtful but is tough and can hold her own.  She loves to play with Littlest Pet Shop, dolls, dress ups, and is just discovering Barbies.  We sure love having you in our family, Gracie!

I Bribe My Kids

I have a confession: I bribe my kids.  Pretty frequently, actually.

Usually, I try not to be so obvious about it.  

I'll word things like this: "When you're done [fill in task] we'll be able to do [fill in reward].  If you don't do [said task], then we won't be able to [said reward]."  It sounds more like a natural consequence that way, doesn't it? :)

But sometimes, it's a little more blatant.  "If we all work together to clean the house, I'll treat you to ice cream at the ice cream store."

That was the line I used a couple of Saturdays ago.  Jaron's been gone a long time and the house had totally unraveled itself and I was tired.  So I bribed the kiddos to help me put the house together.

It totally worked. :)

Not sure why this photo decided to post sideways...

 Gracen is such a crack up lately.  She's getting pretty melodramatic.  She loves to sing and dance anywhere and everywhere and says the funniest things. 

 She thought this bench made a perfect stage to practice dance moves on.  Having a girl is so different. :)