Life with a boy

When I first got pregnant I thought, "I am meant to be a mom to girls." I love everything that has to do with girls. The ruffles, the ribbons, bows and curls. I dreamed about kittens and butterflies, we would play dress-up and have tea parties. Chase would make this fabulous doll house I have already designed. I would make her all kinds of dolls and head bands. I had 3-4 blankets already started for her, I had her name picked out for years. Her clothes were hanging in the closet and I was ready for her...

Week 18 of my pregnancy came and in we went for our ultrasound. We were sure it would be a girl...99.9999% sure it's a boy. I wasn't convinced, I still held out hope for a girl.

The pregnancy came to a close, out he came and my doctor announced "it's a boy" my heart swelled with joy, I held him in my arms and I knew HE was just what I wanted. I didn't care about all those frivilous things anymore, I finally had my baby.

Wow do plans ever change with a boy! When I knew we were having a boy, I was scared! I don't know anything about boys! I don't do trucks, I don't like playing in the dirt. Boys love mud and bugs and getting dirty. I do not. How would I raise a boy to be a strong man? To be prepared to be a worthy priesthood holder and serve a mission for the church? Ruark was born and all my worries flew away.

Summer is here, and I love being a mom to a boy!! Yes, I am constantly pulling rocks out of his mouth because he is chewing on them. Yes, I change his outfit probably three times a day because he's constantly getting dirty. I love playing with trucks and listening to his little boy truck sounds. I adore watching him use his Hanny Manny tools to try to fix things, like building his bed. I love running outside with him all day, chasing after him, playing swords with him. I love watching Chase play with him, to see all of his dreams unfolding of having a son. I love life with MY BOYS!

The other day we were outside burning our weeds, Ruark really wanted to play in the fire and we were having a hard time keeping him out of it. So I gave him the water hose and let him play with it. He put it in the dirt and started making mud. Then he piled the mud on top of his slide, keeping one eye out I watched him make a little mud pie...I giggled...then he started licking the mud pie!!!! Oh my heck, I cringed, I laughed, I ran for my camera and just missed getting a picture. But here is the aftermath!

The water was cold...

Getting angry he's wet...
Soaking wet!! We ran him in for a warm bath and a long nap...

I wouldn't change one minute of my life with my son, although I still dream about ribbons, bows and ruffles, I am happy to trade them in for swords, dirt and little boy truck sounds.

My Garden

I am so excited this year to plant my garden, I've woken up in the night for the past few months having an idea of what I want to grow. Last year was our first real garden and we made a lot of mistakes. Such as not planting things that we really eat, so a lot of vegetables went to waste. We didn't thin out the plants and we didn't use any plant markers, so we didn't know what a lot of things were. One of our biggest problems was the weeding, because we just started our garden in a new spot this year, the weeds were OUT OF CONTROL! I'd weed for hours and come out the next day and it would be just as bad, so this year we're getting fertilizer that kills weeds in your garden YAY!

This year my garden will include:

Tomatoes ( for canning)

Cucumbers ( so I can make my own pickles)

Zucchini ( for zucchini bread, and casseroles)

Onions

Pumpkins (for Halloween and hopefully so I can can some pumpkin pie filling)

Corn (freezes great)

Peas ( freezes great)

Beans ( excited to can these too)

I also bought 50 raspberry plants last year that should be coming up and plan to add in blueberries and even some blackberries this year.

For my garden stakes I found this darling idea from JoAnn's...love that store...it seems really fast and easy and I love pretty things! Won't this make my garden so pretty!!!

If anyone has ideas of what more I can grow ideas would be greatly appreciated I want a really good yield this year!

Cartoons

The last little while Ruark has started LOVING cartoons, during the day when the TV is on it's usually tuned into the disney channel. But where are the classic cartoons that I love?!? There's a whole new lot of cartoons, that to me, seem to lack any storyline or excitement. So here is a look back at all the cartoons I'm looking to buy on DVD so I can have a library of great shows for Ruark and I to watch.

I didn't get to watch these ones very often because we didn't have the channel it came on, but man I loved these too!

I'm excited to find these shows, I know I loved them growing up and I can't imagine my kids not loving them. I cannot imagine watching Spongebob Square Pants for the next few year!

Craft Time

I love crafts! I just started organizing my craft projects last week and realized how many I have bought, cut and prepared to finish. But these were put away because

A- I had ran out of time and I had company coming over, so I needed to clean up
B- I found out I was having a boy, not a girl like I had been preparing for and decided I should hold off on making all the little girls things
C-I'm going to have a girl at some point and so I should just buy and make them anyway so that I can have them ready when she finally arrives
D-Didn't realize how much work I was making for myself, and decided to go buy the finished project instead

So I called Dixie and told her we can't start any more crafts until I finish some of my old ones. She agreed because she is having the same problem. Later that day I decided to go to Porters to pick up some things for a baby shower I am throwing for my little sister next month. BAD IDEA!! I found an awesome fabric for making fabric paper dolls, which I think will be a great church activity for my girls, and while I was at it I decided to pick up extra to make a quilt. The quilt even has a little pocket on the back to put all the doll clothes in to go along with it! Then I bought even more fabric to make a few extra kits for Christmas gifts. Dang, now I'm in trouble!!

I LOVE FELT! Don't ask me why! I hated felt all my life and then when I made Ruark's Pinnochio outfit for Halloween I fell in love. Then I moved on to the felt food for Christmas, and now I have so much felt left over I need to start using it up! We got on the Internet and I found templates for quiet books, and a felt playhouse courtesy of Dixie. Now we have just as many pending craft projects as we have sitting in our closets!! I am really excited to start working on these projects, now that Ruark is playing by himself more and more I think I might finally have the time to start working on everything!

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

This is what Easter looks like in Idaho! We had such high hopes of running around on a warm day, but with all the snow and wind lately we had to bundle up for all our outside activities.

We had an amazing Easter weekend, it started off with "The Amazing Race", a huge treasure hunt all over Idaho Falls that my mom puts on for all of us. We had a great time figuring out clues and running around town with all of my siblings and their families competing for the trophy. Chase and I took 2nd place this year, which I find pretty amazing seeing as how one of us had to stay in the car at all times because of Ruark, my brothers and sisters all have 2-4 kids each to help them! We look forward to Easter all year, and this year did not disappoint!

We stayed up late Saturday after my family party and started hiding eggs and Ruark's Easter basket. My family has always hidden the Easter baskets, I have such great memories of running all over the house searching for my basket. It was the first time we've ever been able to do these things as parents.

His Easter Basket...

We woke up this morning and walked into the front room fully expecting to have to lead Ruark around to all the Easter eggs. Not our son!!! It's almost as though he could smell the sugar from the candy in the eggs, and he went running around picking up the eggs and pulling out their sweet contents, his overflowing basket of goodies couldn't compete with those pieces of candy. :)

He found a snickers bar, he was very excited

After he found the candy eggs, he pulled out all the extra eggs we had to see if they had any yummy treats too. Look at that smirk!

My cute boy all dressed to color eggs

Our finished project

We had a wonderful relaxed Sunday. We watched General Conference, dyed eggs, played with toys, flew Ruark's new kite, played with bubbles and chalk and read Ruark his books. Finished off with Chase making us dinner which was so yummy, I feel so lucky to have a husband that is a good cook!!

Flying his kite

Playing with chalk

We had such a wonderful day at home together. We are so thankful this Easter for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and for eternal families. We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and that you were all able to take some time to think beyond the bunnies and the candy to the wonderful Ressurection of Jesus Christ. Happy Easter everyone!

My Future Dentist...

Our Future Dentist...

Ruark is growing up SOO fast these days, I'm not sure when it happened but it seems like over night, he looks like a little boy instead of a baby :) Right now he is so funny, he LOVES brushing his teeth. He brushes twice a day, when he wakes up and when he goes to bed, and then every time he's done eating. I get him cleaned up and out of his highchair, he runs into the bathroom and wants to brush his teeth clean :) I brush them for about 15-20 seconds and then he brushes them for about 3 minutes afterward. When I take the toothbrush from him, he screams and cries. Heaven forbid when he learns about flossing!!! I'll spend all day cleaning his teeth! I'm hoping this trend will last with him, as for now we call him our future dentist! Who knows!

Keep Moving Forward... the theme of Ruark's FAVORITE movie, Meet the Robison's. So as we move forward and look toward the horizon we are finding so much joy. Spring is coming, we bought flowers and plants for our gardens. I can't wait for the blossoms and for my beautiful Roses. Chase bought we tons of rose bushes last year and all summer I had beautiful arrangements inside of my house! This year I'm planning on adding even more roses and lots more flowers I can add to my arrangements.

Our house will...soon be our house!! We're finally going to be able to finish up our loan. Last year when we went to close, the stupid government put up new regulations on self employed people. So we had to wait until we had our second year of self-employment taxes, which is this year. The people we are buying our house from have been AMAZING waiting so long!! They will be lasting friends. I can't wait to close!! We have such a beautiful home, and I feel so privileged to live here and to raise my children here.

We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends to lift and support us when life gets hard. One thing I've realized through this process, no one has an easy life, and everyone at this time is experiencing their own trials. So as I have been lifted, I hope now to be strong enough to lift all of you and bear your burdens in return.

Calming the seas...

My life has gotten more crazy since the last time I blogged. I feel continuously bombarded with problems. Not small problems. But scary, keep you up all night thinking about them problems. Handfuls and handfuls of them. This has been going on for over two months and at this point I felt dead inside. Numb to everything. My mind was exhausted, my body was exhausted and my spirit was weighed down. I prayed, I tried to feel the spirit, but I felt unable to really connect with anything. I laughed with my son and my friends, for a few moments but then felt pulled down into the despair.

Then I found out I'm pregnant, something neither Chase or I were planning on, but what a joy we felt. We started thinking about Ruark being a big brother and what a wonderful life we would have as a family of 4. Now when my hormones change, my body does not handle it well. Even with no stress with Ruark I was continually having problems with panic attacks. The calls did not stop, the stress continued to build. My hormones went out of control, I couldn't calm myself down. Panic attack after panic attack came and went. Until finally, I lost the baby at only 6.5 weeks.

I called my mom, I told her I was trying to be strong I was praying for strength to get through these trials. She told me to stop praying for strength and to pray for peace. Peace to calm the storm. I prayed with all I could muster, and yet the phone kept ringing with more problems.

Dragging myself to sacrament meeting last week I heard words I really needed to hear from the youth speaker. My ward has the most spiritual youth, we currently have out 17 missionaries and something like 36 priests getting ready to leave. We are so blessed to have Ruark grow up in this ward. The youth speaker said, "Sometimes the Lord calms the sea, and sometimes he calms the sailor in the storm."

I went home and prayed for my family to have peace in the midst of the storms around us. Alas that night the problems escalated into a very scary encounter. The storm beat against my home, and we were kept safe and peaceful inside. That disconnect I was feeling now only pertains to the storms around us. For the first time in months, I have even forgotten about the storms for a few hours. What a relief.

I am finding joy in the small and simple things. I am thankful for a loving Heavenly Father who knows my needs and has calmed by soul.