Happenings

Chelsea and Dan went to a Father-Daughter activity days activity. (Wow. Talk about an awkward sentence...) Chelsea's halloween costume wasn't ready yet, so we had to do some quick brainstorming. I remembered some friends that were an old couple (Tasha, that's you!) and have always that it was so awesome. Dan was a trooper and designed his own costume. 

A lady at Dan's work told of us a field next to her house, that the local college's agriculture program uses for trying out different ways of growing crops. This year they planted onions, peppers, peanuts, and sweet potatoes. They grow them, count them, and leave them. It's hard to believe that all that food goes to waste! We thought it would be fun to have the kids see where peanuts come from.

 

 None of us really like sweet potatoes, but we tried them as sweet potatoe fries. And well, anybody have a good recipe they like for that?

We did pick quite a few, because I know someone who will be eating them like crazy here in a few months...

 

This guy! 

Looks like he's biting his nails, a disgusting habit taught by his brother and sisters.

 

 This boy is trying to grow up too fast. He's already able to sit in a bumbo, at 4 weeks! Not cool.
He's been my fussiest baby. I think he's got bad gas. I think it's because I eat chocolate. Bummer.

I'm doing a co-op preschool with 5 of my friends. The kids meet Tuesday and Thursdays for 2 hours. We each teach for one week then rotate. For my week we learned about the letter L and number 3. We went on a leaf hunt and read the three little pigs. Then we made houses for the pigs and pig puppets. They are a cute bunch of kids!

It's a miracle! The two kids at home are sleeping at the same time! I should be getting some chores done, or even taking a nap, but that would be selfish of me. How could I deny friends and family the chance to see pictures of my cute baby! :)

Tyler Stewart Perry. 

Our biggest baby...so far. ;-)

8 lbs 14 oz. 

21" long

Reader's Digest version of birth story:

• Went to 39 week checkup on Thursday, Sept. 13th. (Also the longest pregnancy I've had) I'm dilated to a 4, and %80 effaced.
• Dr. asked if I wanted my membranes stripped. I said yes. Done. 11:45 AM
• We also scheduled me to be induced on Saturday.
• Picked Brinly up from preschool picnic. 
• Resumed sewing a nursing cover.  Brinly fell asleep.
• 1:00 PM started feeling contractions. (I had several nights of false-alarm contractions that felt like the real thing, so I didn't get my hopes up)
• 2:00 PM Started timing them with my phone.
• 3:00 they were hurting. Bad.
• Called my friend to pick Chelsea and Michael up from school
• Called neighbor to take Brinly
• Finally called Dan at work, and told him to come home
• Ran around packing kid's bags, while trying to finish sewing the nursing cover. I did not want to come home to the mess of a sewing project, but knew if I put it away, it might be a while before I would finish sewing it!
• 3:30 PM: Dan gets home, I finish the last, seam, clean up the mess, and we hop in the car.
• 3:45 arrive at hospital. It's a busy birth day. There are no rooms for me.
• Finally get a monitoring-waiting room cleaned and ready. I get all hooked up
• 4:30 Epidural arrives. AHHH.
• 5:30-ish A delivery room is finally available. 
• 7:15 I get checked and you can see the head. It's time to push!
• 5 pushes later, I have a boy!! (7:21 PM)

 My friend Christy was watching the kids, and graciously brought them to the hospital at 8:30 PM to meet their new brother.

 Names. Ugh. We BOTH hate picking out names, and procrastinate as long as we can. Dan printed out a list, and we started by crossing off names we didn't like for sure. Slowly, we came to about 10 maybe's. We decided on a middle name first, Stewart, after Dan. (His middle name). Then there were only a handful that sounded good with Stewart. The nurse comes in with our release papers and so we just pick one. Tyler. Done. Hope he likes it! :)

 Our friends helped our kids make these fun signs to welcome us home!

 My babies! They all look the same!

Tyler

Brinly

 Michael

Chelsea

More cute pics of Tyler. 

In other news: Just had to post this picture of Chelsea. This is part of her Jazz class that performed at an event last week. The costumes were super cute and she did such a great job. They danced to a circus themed song. 

Bye for now!

Overheard at our house

Setting: Tyler is crying


Brinly: Mom! I think Tyler needs hims binky!
Me: I think he needs to eat his breakfast.

(silence)


Brinly: I think he's talking to Jesus!

Overheard at our house

Wanted to write this before I forget too much...

After picking our kids up from our friend's house, on our way home from the hospital from having Tyler.

Michael: Mom, why do you still have a huge belly?
Brinly: It's a girl! It's a girl this time!

Overheard at our house...

OVERHEARD #1
Michael and Dan went to a Father son's campout.

For breakfast they were having sunny-side up eggs. (Michael has only had scrambled. I'm not that fancy...)

Michael cut into his egg, and some of the yolk squirted out on his arm. Dan was helping to cook.
Michael: "Uh....dad?! We have a slight emergency over here!" (loud enough for everyone to hear, cause that's just his normal volume...)

Dan: "What's wrong?"

Michael: "Someone put MUSTARD in my eggs!"


OVERHEARD #2
Michael had his friend in the neighborhood over to play.

Michael: "Let's go to your house."
Friend: "No, my mom doesn't want people in the house right now."
Michael: "Why? Is she naked?"

OVERHEARD #3
Brinly: "Mom? Can you shake your booty?"
Me: "No." (I've been trying to discourage this kind of talk and dancing from Brinly...)
Brinly: "Why? Are you too big to shake your booty?"

Rhino Mud run

Have you seen those fun pictures of the crazy people doing "extreme" 5K races?

You know, the ones where they are crawling through mud...

Or it looks like something from a war movie...

...and they have to jump through fire?

Well, Dan signed up for one of those. 

And he signed Chelsea up for the kid version. 

I think it would have been lots of fun, but not sure the belly would have cooperated. 

Unfortunately, it was a BIG disappointment. 

Here is Dan's before:

And the after:

Yeah, not much of a mess, eh? Shoes are a little muddy, and socks have changed color, but that's about it. 

Obviously I was in no shape to chase along side of him to get pictures of all the obstacles, but you can get the idea.

They had two hay bale hurdles about 100 meters from the start of the race. Yeah, kinda wimpy. 

 This is the "fire" at the end they were to jump over. 

L.A.M.E. 

It was just smoldering hay. Probably could have been hot, but definitely NO fire. 

Regardless, of the mediocrity of the race, he still did awesome, especially since he didn't have time to train. I can't remember how many were in his heat...maybe 100? He came in 11th or so. 

Then it was Chelsea's turn...

Hers was only a 1/2 mile run, so Dan jogged along to try to get pictures.

The first obstacle was this tower. A.KA. major people jam. 

Of course, Chelsea is too sweet to get her elbows up and charge her way up. When there was finally a spot, she took it. 

Finally!

She said this one was the toughest....

They also had some monkey bars, but I guess they were super slippery and she lost her grip on the first rung.

Lastly, they had the tires to run through. 

I didn't bother timing her, since it was mainly a just-for-fun race. 

I think Michael wants to do it next year. 

Brinly was super excited to see her again. :) I was a long 7 or 8 minutes. 

We'll find a dirtier race next year...

Happy Birthday Brinly!

I know why I don't blog very often. Our internet is being really cruddy lately, which means it's s...l...o...w......

So, I'll sit for an hour and wait for my pictures to upload. But then, I'll get distracted. And when I come back, someone has closed the window. 

Argh.

I probably should do more frequent, shorter posts, but I don't. 

Anyway, without further ado, 

Brinly's 3rd Birthday!!!

Brinly has been talking about her Birthday, for months. MONTHS. 

She was super excited when it was finally HER day. 

The traditional run-through-the-streamer-to-oficially-turn-a-year-older.

We opened her presents before school, so she could play with them while the kids were at school.

But then waited to have her cake until after Dan got home from work, and moments before we loaded up in the car to go to Grandma's house.  Hence the giant Costco cupcake....

Brinly has been obsessed with Dora, so I was excited to throw another Dora party. However, the last few weeks before the party, she discovered she liked Diego more. But, I was already in Dora mode...besides, they are practically the same thing...

She invited just four little friends (one couldn't make it). 

We held the party during Dan's lunch break, so we hosted a little BBQ and invited the moms' and siblings to join us. 

After lunch, we brought out the cake, but...

So the girls had to go on a quest to find Brinly's cake!

First, you need your map and backpack.

(Aren't they the cutest!?)

 The first stop, was to go through the gate. 

Brinly found a clue that said in order to open the gate, they had to go in the dark cave and find the missing letters to Brinly's name. 

Enter: Big dark cave. Er...as dark as you can make a tent in the middle of the day...

First they looked in their backpacks for something that might help them see in the dark cave, and found mini flashlights. 

I missed the final picture, but they were able to complete the task. 

Next, they had to go down the silde. But a grumpy OLD troll stopped them, and said they needed to have frienship bracelets in order to pass. So, they looked in their backpack to find supplies to make their bracelets. 

I found these super cool bracelets at Hobby Lobby, the fits pony beads perfectly, and connects to the opposite end easily, but securely. It was perfect for little fingers. 

With bracelets done, they were able to pass by the Grumpy old troll, and go down the slide to continue their adventure. 

Another clue took them to Boots' house. But Swiper had been there already and swiped all the colors from Boots' house! They were asked to help Boots put the color back into his house.

(Side note: This dang thing almost had me in tears before the party. We were running late getting things set up, and I finally got the darn thing together. It was awkward and flimsy, as one can only expect from cardboard, and I had to tape it together. 

....only to discover it wouldn't fit through the door. I had to take the whole thing apart, re-tape it together, plus all the parts where it was starting to rip, and then made a mad dash around the house to get food out on the tables, somewhat decorated, and try to tidy my house, all in 10 minutes. Luckily, the guests were running late too. My sincere apologies to those who received this as Christmas gifts! Hopefully it lasted longer for you!)

Finally, with all the tasks completed, the lost cake was found. 

This Brinly keeps us all laughing. She was the one who sang the birthday song the loudest "happy BIRTHDAY to BRINLY...." She knew it was her day. :) 

We love you!