Ryan, Katie, Joshua, Carter & Landon

While the Cat's Away...

2012-01-09T21:07:00.001-05:00

We've had a bit of a busy time here in Lawton. My mom came to visit first, then my dad and sisters Erika and Nicole.

My brothers came to visit on Christmas and stayed keep me company while my family is in Utah. We had a good time going to visit his mission in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Here are some things we did:

BYU beating Tulsa at the Armed Forces Bowl:

A Museum in Ft. Worth (a few van Gogh's, Michelangelo's first painting, Matisse, etc):

We also visited the areas Scott lived in. An average home in Southlake, TX...

My cousin Becky and her family were nice enough to let us stay at their place, which was a lot of fun.

After my brothers went home, I got a nice phone call from my buddy Charles from NYC. It seems he was dying to see Lawton and its numerous attractions. So he came and stayed the weekend. Always stylish, Charles drove up in his dream car:

Beautiful car Charles, beautiful...

We have had a lot of fun, and to be honest, I've been surprised at how many visitors we have had lately. Ashley, now it is your turn.

However, now I'm all alone. I don't remember the last time the house was this quiet... or this clean... :)

Happy Birthday Baby!

2011-12-30T21:59:00.003-05:00

Today was the day. Landon turned one! We didn't do much today--I've been sick with a stomach bug, Ryan's back in Oklahoma while we're here in Utah, and Grandma and Grandpa were taking Uncle Tom, Aunt Sissi and baby Sam to the airport, but we were able to squeeze in getting some yummy cupcakes at a little place here in town. Luckily we were able to celebrate with Ryan before leaving for our Utah trip and we opened presents, ate cake, and did the whole chi-bang. Not that Landon really cared. :)
I just love my little Landon. He sure is a busy little thing. He is getting into everything, especially here at my parents' house, where they aren't so baby proof! He's always opening the cupboards and pulling everything out that he can, trying to get into the bathroom, pulling toys out of their places...basically trying to get into whatever he thinks he shouldn't. He'll be about to do something he thinks is naughty, look back and wait for my reaction, and then go ahead and do it. He is super tough. He loves to wrestle and fight dirty, such as going for the hair or skin. He has such a great laugh. He's gotten this belly laugh that he'll use when I'm teasing him; I love to hear it. He loves to dance and he loves music. He also loves to be read to and will cry every time I close a book or any time he thinks we're done. I love him. Happy birthday my baby!

Happy

2011-12-19T00:19:00.002-05:00

Family Pictures

2011-12-04T21:51:00.002-05:00

Ryan's mom was here for Thanksgiving time, and we absolutely loved having her with us! The time passed way too quickly, but we were able to squeeze in family pictures. And I say squeeze because the one and only day that worked (before Linda left) to take them was on Thanksgiving. We were able to get a few good ones I think!

I love these last two pictures so much!

Quick update

2011-11-21T21:07:00.004-05:00

Here is little Landon in his bumble bee costume. I think this is the only time he smiled for the rest of the night. :)

Here we are at the Simmon's house ready to go out trick or treating. Ashton was a firefighter who didn't want to wear a hat, and little Capri was a cupcake. Oh, and my boys were duct tape knights.

The other night I had the boys spit out their gum before dinner. Josh gave me his teeny piece, Cooper (our next door neighbor friend) had his medium sized piece on his plate, and then Carter pulled out this huge honkin' piece of gum out of his mouth. It just kept coming and coming. It was about the size of his tongue. Hah. I told him that he had a pretty big piece of gum in his mouth and his reply was, "I have big teeth." We got a good laugh outta that one.

I don't know if I should have intervened, but Josh tying himself up in his kite kept him entertained for a nice amount of time...

Who doesn't love seeing their kid's face squished up against the window? I know I do!

Angels. Little sneaky angels.

Halloween

2011-11-05T22:23:00.012-04:00

More pictures to come...

We had a lot of fun for Halloween. In preparation, I asked the boys what they wanted to be. Josh said he wanted to be a ghost. (This would be the third year in a row...) Carter said he wanted to be a witch. Hah. Ryan said there would be no witches allowed for his boys, so Carter, Josh, and I looked online for costumes under the name of "boy witch". Carter didn't want to be a wizard, and he only wanted to be a warlock for about 5 minutes, until he decided it was too scary. So that idea went out the window....luckily, we saw some knight costumes online and viola! Both boys wanted to be knights. I typed "how to make knight costumes" into youtube -isn't the internet a crazy thing?- and knew that all this cardboard breastplate creating stuff should be handed over to Ryan. What we ended up with was a helmet, a breastplate, swords (from Ryan's previous creative moments) and boot covers all made out of card board and duct tape. They were so cute! I wanted Landon to be a dragon, but the boys wanted him to wear the bumblebee costume we have. They seem to think that it's some right of passage for each Allen baby to wear the bumblebee for their first, and maybe second, Halloween. Since I had yet to attempt making a dragon costume, it didn't take me long to agree.

The beloved bumble bee costume.

Josh and Carter with their buddy Ashton.

We first went to our ward "Fall Harvest" party, which was a chili cook off. Umm, I tried to make some chili for this thing. First bad idea was substituting ingredients for the ones I didn't have. Second bad idea was trying to fix the resulting chili by using my new "figure-out-what-flavors-are-missing-and-add-them-in" policy I got from watching the Food Network show Chopped. (I usually can't figure out what is missing, and then make very interesting flavor combos...) Anyway, after a lot of sweat and near misses, I finish the chili and ask Ryan if it's edible or too embarrassing to take to the ward cook off. He tastes it, thinks about it for a minute, and says, "Well, it's nothing to write home about, but it's okay for chili. Just don't get it judged." Awesome. Well, I end up getting it judged, and guess what? It won for "best traditional" chili. I might add that most of the chilis won for something...but at least I didn't win the "tootie frootie" or "best smelling" certificate!

On the actual day of Halloween, we went over to our friends Tiffany and Aaron's house for dinner and then went trick-or-treating with them. They live in a nice neighborhood...and man it was busy! Here in Lawton you can trick-or-treat from 6-8pm. Once 6pm hit, Aaron was at the front door giving away candy. They had a huge line from their house bending back down the street, three to four people thick! Ryan stayed with Aaron while Tiffany and I headed out with the kids. Her son Ashton is three and was a fireman. Her little baby Kapri was a cupcake. We had fun, but didn't get a ton. Landon had had a enough pretty soon into the whole process and was screaming and fussy and trying to get out of the stroller. Carter kept tripping and having a hard time getting up because his breastplate doesn't bend. So I had a screaming baby in the front of the stroller, by the handles sat a squishy-face-uncomfortable-in-his-unbending armor-Carter, and Josh, walking along, barking, very loudly, like a dog because he figured it would calm Landon down. And I was in some sort of la-la land I guess, because I was walking around like we weren't crazy. It was a lot of fun, actually. Fun memories.

Talking about memories....I have one Halloween memory that stands out. When I was little, I was into anything princess and anything that made me gorgeous. So naturally I was anything beautiful and girly for Halloween. One year, I must have been around seven or eight, I was a ballerina. (I just typed ballet dancer, hah.) I had the pink leotard, the tights, some shoes, and the perfect tutu. I was so excited to go and look pretty for everyone to see. Sadly for me, though, Halloween ended up being on a freezing cold day, with plenty of snow. And now we come to the point in the story where I disagree with my dad's view of it. He says that I refused to wear a coat because "ballerinas don't wear coats". I think I probably just suggested that I go with out one and see how I felt. Whatever the case, my dad came up with this horrific (but genius, I concede) plan to make me a fat ballerina. He had me first put on snow pants and a sweat shirt. Yes, you read that right. Snow pants. Then he put my tights and leotard on top of those snow pants and then bulked up my middle by adding some stuffing. I looked hilarious, but I was so mad! As we went trick or treating, people got a kick out of my "costume". I was walking down the street and someone yelled out, "Hey look! A fat ballerina!!" I was not happy. To have such high hopes of being so so cute literally blown up in front of my very eyes was truly tragic....Luckily for my vanity, my dad let me be a normal ballerina at the school fair which was more important to look good at anyway. It almost made up for the trick or treating part.

Is it just me or does everyone else look a little underdressed?

Pictures galore

2011-10-16T23:21:00.006-04:00

I found this "amazing deal" at Wal Mart...beach balls for two bucks. Little did I know how big they were! I blew one up and let the other one hang out in the garage. I think the first one sprang a little leak, though, since it was half-way deflated by lunch time. The boys had fun with it though, rolling over it and smashing their faces in the grass/dirt.

Carter's face post smash. I love this picture of him. It sums him up completely.

Josh has really started to enjoy drawing. He's become very meticulous with his pictures. I mean, look at those fingers! Look at those earrings! It looks just like me!

We decorated a "Halloween House" during General Conference weekend. (For those of you who might not know, that's when the leaders of the LDS church speak to all the members of the church. It's broadcast on radio and television).

Landon loved Josh's jawbreaker sucker that dad the dentist gave to him....

Some of the boys' new friends, Ethan, Mason, Ashton, and Sloan. Josh calls the Gailey boys (the three blondes) his cousins. Little Ashton and Carter are little buddies, especially when it comes to chasing after the neighbor's cat.

Landon also appreciates Carter sharing his juice box....

Ryan's superior officer gave him tickets to an Oklahoma Sooners football game, so he and Josh had a daddy date. Or a dad-son-hang out-cool time.

It wasn't until later that I realized Josh was making goofy faces. I still can't look at this picture with out busting a gut. Next time I'll take the gum out first....maybe.

Cute Missionary

2011-09-26T15:44:00.005-04:00

My baby brother Jeff, I mean, Elder Farnsworth is on his mission in the Philippines until January. He asked me to start a blog for him so that friends from America and the Philippines can read it if they'd like. So, here it is, for anyone interested!

By the way, this guy, this Elder, is hilarious. Ryan teaching him to how drive a stick shift is one of my favorite memories ever. :) He's also one of the nicest guys I know. (Even though he probably wouldn't want me to say that). I'm proud to be his big sister.

Pre-mission photo.

One size fits all

2011-09-21T14:47:00.005-04:00

I've had many many people tell me my babies look alike. Of course I agree. The fun part is to hear who looks like who to other people. These pictures are all taken when the boys are around 8-9 months of age....and I have to admit, they look more alike than I realized! (The first two are Landon, second set of two are Carter, and the last two are Josh).

Luckily we think they are cute. :)

Late Welcome for Baby!

2011-09-18T21:10:00.002-04:00

On August 27th, little Sam Allan Farnsworth was born in Germany. In Germany, far away from his auntie Katie who really wanted to snuggle up to his newborn self. He belongs to my younger brother Tom and his wife Sissi. I'm not going to lie, it's always been a little hard being away from family, (especially since the last time I've been with all of my immediate family at one time was back before Josh was born) but I've really been missing everyone lately. Maybe it's because I'm still coming down from the high of seeing both Ryan's and my family for so long, maybe it's because we're all missing cousins and friends from New York and Utah, or maybe it's because we wish we could share in all the big moments of our families' and friends' lives. Whatever the case, we are missing loved ones! In spite of all that, how lucky are we to have so many good friends and family to miss?

Okay, I've digressed from my original point--We love Sam! We love Sissi! And we hope to meet both of you soon! If any of you are in Germany, please stop by to give sweet Sam some hugs and kisses from his aunt...

See past what it seems...

2011-09-15T22:12:00.004-04:00

I was blog surfing, and found a link to this article. It really touched me, so I thought I'd share it with you. If you take some time to read it, I'm pretty sure you'll be glad you did.

Oh, and here are a few cute pictures because I just can't resist...

Carnival, Joy School, and My Joys

2011-09-12T22:13:00.007-04:00

I love the look Landon is giving to Josh, kind of a suspicious, what are you doing here kind of look. The carnival man in charge of this ride told us we could put Landon on the ride...I didn't really want to, but I've got no back bone, so we put him on and told Josh to hold him nice and tight. He survived, and after the ride the old carnival man rushed to pick him up and hold him for a minute (with me next to him). I wasn't too excited, but sometimes it just feels good to hold a baby, and I figured this guy must need a baby fix.

Landon's just happy to be watching his big brothers have all the fun.

What a lucky girl I am to have four handsome, happy men in my life!

Our joy school group. Poor little Maggie has to put up with these ruffians! I am absolutely loving joy school. The kids are loving it, and it feels good to have some organized, fun, teaching time with the kids.

Carter is absolutely hilarious. He has started this new little giggle that melts my heart. He is also completely accident prone. Luckily he looks prepared.

Josh is a great kid. He lets Carter tackle him and picks up Landon under the arms now. :) He's gotten into the young kid, not toddler, speech, and he reasons everything.

Little angel. Especially now that he can crawl to whatever entertains him. Heaven.

Okies

2011-08-21T21:45:00.002-04:00

We are getting settled here in Oklahoma. The weather has been fantastic, over 100 degrees for the past 3-4 months. You walk outside and feel the hot wind on your face--nothing better. Because of the weather, we've been doing a lot of staying inside and taking small trips to Walmart. Say what you want about the place--it has nearly everything you need in one place at not too bad a price. I grumble as I feel guilty about not shopping at the little guys' stores, but I can't help shopping there all the same.
Ryan's getting settled into work at Fort Sill. Not that he's actually worked on any patients, he'll be doing that next week, but he's going to classes and doing "stuff", leaving a little before 7am and getting back a little after 5pm. The other night we went out to Meers restaurant with all the dental residents and had a good time. The food there is pretty awesome. They have amazing burgers and delicious peach cobbler with home made ice cream. It looks like a dump, but turns out to be a champ. Hah.
The boys are doing well, but really really missing their New York friends. Today Josh wrote a letter to his friend Hannah that said, "Dear Hannah, I love you a lot so I'm going to marry you. I like you a lot so we should get married some day. I'm going to come visit you so please don't leave until we get there. Love, Joshua Ryan Allen." It melted my heart. The only issue is that he wrote it during sacrament meeting...:)
Carter is getting potty trained. With Josh we struggled so much (from pushing it on him too early) that I was really not looking forward to potty training Carter. Well, I had nothing to worry about, because he has done great. We've even gone to the store and he told me to stop for the bathroom, day two of potty training. I know. Awesome.
Landon is crawling around and teething up a storm. We'll say it's due to the teething, but he sure has found his screaming voice. He loves to kick both together legs super fast and he's the quickest smiler around. He's a doll and he loves his brothers. His brothers love him too. That makes me very happy.
So all in all, life is good. I love living in a house, I love my family, and I love the gospel. We're so lucky that wherever we go, we have new friends awaiting. We never forget our old friends though. We love you guys and miss you. Any one wanting to visit, we know of a really good place to stay!

The boys "riding" a car at the mall. The mall has a little play area for the kids that we took advantage of one day.

Ry and the boys making Texas sheet cake. Ryan is funny and will perfect certain dishes that really appeal to him. This is one of those. Too bad he placed it in the oven to get it out of the way, and I happened to forget and burnt it a teeny bit...

A few good ones

2011-08-09T00:22:00.003-04:00

The boys definitely missed the rough play they get with their dad!

Carter loves to hold Landon. And Josh likes to be big and pick him up while walking around. You how kids hold cats awkwardly? That's what it looks like with Josh before I am able to snatch Landon away...

Ooh I just want to kiss that dirty little pirate's cheeks!

Dad and the boys reunited at last! Josh was a bit hyper from all the excitement...:)

Ryan with his buddy Matt from officer training camp.

Picture post

2011-07-17T00:03:00.009-04:00

Here Carter's walking hand in hand with grandma, going to the Renaissance Fair that Cedar City puts on every year. It was great this year! The boys shot arrows, rode a tractor/train, got their faces painted, jumped in the bouncy castle, played games, and ate cotton candy. We loved it so much the first day (well, at least I did) that we went again the next day.

And here, Carter's getting his face painted, the second day. The first day they were dragons too, but a different kind...I loved the face painting...obviously, since I paid for it twice, heh.

It took the painter about three minutes to paint. She was amazing!

Here's Josh! I love the squinchy face.

He makes a pretty fierce dragon. He was pulling the "dragon face" all day.

Here's my sweet non-dragon Landon.

We went and flew kites up at Cross Hollows. There's a huge field and the wind is always blowing up there. I love this picture of Carter and his grandma.

Funny story: Josh wanted new pants to wear (as he often does) and he pulled out Landon's pants. I told him that they wouldn't fit, but he swore they would. Guess I was wrong!

The boys were having a foam war in the bath tub. Poor Carter doesn't quite have the hand-eye coordination that his older brother has.

We went up to northern Utah to see my grandparents, so the boys and I stopped at Ryan's parents for the night. It was great because everyone came to dinner. Here, aunt Nikki and uncle Scott are playing duck duck goose with the kids. Scott is single, by the way, and he plays well with children...just sayin! :)

Carter was so kind to brush my hair. Afterward he told me I was "a princess".

I bought cousin Lucy the game "Pretty Pretty Princess" for her birthday. I loved it when I was little and figured she would too. She did like it, but not as much as all the boys!

Here's cousin Michael all blinged out.

Elder Gourdin, well David now, was a missionary in Staten Island. We got really close, so he and his family stopped by on their way to Nevada one night. Josh and Carter were so excited!

Carter is such a ham.

One day I decided to get Landon out on the grass to see his reaction to it. Josh absolutely hated it as a baby, would lift up as much as his body off the grass as he could. Landon's the exact opposite: he was bent in half trying to get his face in the grass, touching it, laying on it. It was pretty cute.

For Daddy

2011-07-04T00:17:00.006-04:00

Since Ryan's at officer training camp in Texas, I thought I'd post some pictures of what we've been up to while we've been missing him.

Landon has started doing the cutest thing: he gently grabs your face with both of his hands. Sometimes you're lucky and get a kiss. Josh got about five slobbery kisses here.

Landon has found his toes. It has helped in the keep-the-baby-entertained-for-a-minute department.

Mr. Cool. He got these glasses and ring pop from a package from his daddy along with other toys and goodies. He (we) loved it!

Crazy, cute boys. Carter was into his character the whole day.

Josh and cousin Lucy. Tell me this is not the cutest picture ever!

Landon gnaws on everything. More than the average baby. My mom has said, "I think he's teething" many many times.

Carter and Landon eating push pops, or whatever they're called. :) Actually, Landon was just holding Josh's while I took their picture...

Landon with Grandma Farnsworth. She is his go-to gal for snuggles and rockings to sleep.

Marathon

2011-06-24T22:44:00.007-04:00

So I've put this off for long enough. Time to blog about the race, the Utah Valley marathon, that is. I'm not really planning this post out, so sorry to all those who wanted a post that makes sense...I am proud to say I survived, and actually if I knew how it would be, I think I would have been a lot more nervous about the whole deal.
I felt really good on my runs before this marathon (thanks in part to my chiropractor bro-in-law Tyson who helped my hip feel good as new), but I didn't prepare as well as I should have in the other areas. I wasn't eating as healthy or drinking as much as a marathon runner should and I wasn't going to bed early enough. With everything being so busy the month previous, I guess I just didn't focus on it like I should have. The day before the race I ate a bowl of popcorn and at 11pm at night I ate candy (I was low) and a bowl of cereal. I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I went to bed a little after 11pm, woke up to Landon wanting to eat at 1am, and got up at 2:45am to get ready. Ryan was a gem and took me to the bus pick up place. We loaded a really nice bus and drove up Provo Canyon. I talked to the guy next to me, and he told me to try to run the 1st half of the race slower than the last so I don't die by the end...I took that bit of info and tucked it into my brain for later use. As I got off the bus, they were blasting the song "New York" by Alicia Keys (right?) and it made me think of all my girls back in Staten Island. I was missing all of them pretty badly! Before the race I unsuccessfully tried to clear everything out, so I was definitely regretting my late night bowl of cereal...which I knew would be coming back to haunt me during the race!
During my second trip to the bathroom, the race had started, so I started with the remaining stragglers. I used to be scared to be last, afraid that's where I'd end up, but luckily there are people slower than me, so for the most part I was passing people. The first seven miles were nice, but I had heartburn and stomach issues (darn cereal!), so I was a bit nervous. At mile 10, I checked my time and realized that I was taking that guy's advice a little too seriously because I was a bit behind where I should have been. I picked up the pace a bit and got a bit closer to where I wanted to be at the half-way point. I stopped here to check my blood sugar and my test strips were all wet, either from sweat or my water bottle, I don't know. That raised all sorts of issues! If I run when my sugar's high, I get nauseous, if I run when I'm low, I could pass out...so I decided just to give teeny amounts of insulin when I ate a gel pack (for energy when you run long distance) or drank some powerade. I met up with a really nice girl named Sarah, and we had the same goal to finish around 4:30, so I ran with her for a bit. After a few miles, I seemed to be a titch faster, so we split up. Then at mile 17, I decided to take a "break", but it wasn't until mile 19 that the stars finally aligned and I was able to make peace with my body.
At mile 21, we were out of Provo canyon and I met up with Ryan's sister Nikki. She was going to run the whole thing with me but hurt her leg a couple months before. It was such a downer, but she was awesome and said she'd run the last five miles with me. That was especially nice since the last five were straight down University Blvd. The first two miles I ran with Nikki were pretty good. We were keeping a really good pace, and even though I wasn't the most sociable running partner at that point, I was feeling alright. (Nikki was awesome this whole time, telling me how good I was doing...) By mile 23 though, I felt like I needed to stop and walk, which I really didn't want to do except at aid stations. When we stopped, I got all sorts of dizzy, and I figured I had hit the wall pretty hard, since we were making such good time the previous two miles. I stopped to think for a moment though, and I began to think I might have low blood sugar. It's hard for me to tell when I'm exercising, since the symptoms are dizziness, lightheaded-ness, and basically how I feel when I'm exercising, hah. I turned off my pump and ate and walked for a minute. Nikki got me to a sluggish jog, to keep me on pace for beating Oprah's race time (4:29, crazy, right?). I couldn't keep it, though. I kept stopping and walking, trying to decide whether or not I was low and needed more sugar or not. Finally I decided I needed to eat, and all I had was that gross gel. I downed two packets with no water. It was completely disgusting...hah! To make a long story short(er), the last three miles included me shuffling, stopping, walking with Nikki pulling my arm, feeling anxious the whole time. (I get really anxious whenever I go low, which actually makes me go lower). I knew I was going to be a few minutes behind Oprah, but by this point I just wanted to finish. Oh, and about 2 miles away from the finish I could see the finish line, which is not how I would ever plan a race. It's not very thoughtful. About .2 miles away, I decided to stop all this wussy behavior and I started shuffling again :) towards the finish line. There was a girl a little ways in front of me who was going pretty darn slow (did I really look that bad?) and I thought, "Well, she's going to beat me." Then I had an awesome moment and thought, "No! No she's not!" That's when I turned on my turbo-blast speed and ran to the finish line. I felt like Sonic the Hedgehog running to the end. (Looking at the video, though, I wasn't really that fast. Hah)! My mom, dad, and Ryan and father-in-law were at the end to cheer me on, but I had no energy to smile or even acknowledge them. (Ryan saw me and said to his dad, "She's low" and headed to the finish line right away). I am proud to say I passed the girl and ran to the finish line. 4:32. Not bad. Not what I wanted, but not bad.
Right after that, I felt the heaves coming on. There was a really nice volunteer who took me to the side while I threw up all the gel packs and powerade I had consumed during the race. I thought she and Nikki were so nice, standing there holding my hair back and patting my back while I did such a thing. Ryan came up to me and helped me get to the medic tent, all the while saying, "She's diabetic". That got me all sorts of attention and I was able to sit and suck on an orange. I was fine a few minutes after and went to see my awesome parents (who drove three hours to support me) and father-in-law.
Afterward we all headed to Ry's aunt's house so I could shower and we grabbed the rest of the family to go out for pizza, and I enjoyed eating all that goodness with out one drip of guilt. The worst part was saying good bye to Ryan after pizza and going home with out him. :(
I was sore for a few days after the race, but I felt pretty good much sooner than I thought I would. I think it has something to do with the last three miles...:) Maybe I should be grateful, right? I'm thinking of running the Deseret News marathon July 25th but can't decide. I don't know of when I'd be able to run another one...we'll see!

Nikki and I after the race. I might just have a crazy eye...it was that hard! Hah.

This 'n That

2011-06-05T23:52:00.004-04:00

We've been in Utah for a little over a week now. We miss our New York friends, but it's been really great to be with family. We've been doing lots of fun things since we've been here, but I'll let the pictures tell the story tonight. (More to come later).

All of the Allen ladies. Well, me with Ryan's mom and sisters.

Ella and Avery, our neices. Aren't they so cute? Ooh, I could just eat them up.

Ryan's mom wanted to get pictures of all of us. Here's one of me and Ry.

I couldn't resist putting this one up. Ryan said, "I don't think we've ever captured this face on camera." Hah.

This is an amazingly awesome picture for us. Especially considering Carter's track record. He didn't disappoint this night either...I think this is the one picture of him not grumbling and looking at the camera. Okay, so maybe he's grumbling a little.

Our pictures could turn out so well if we didn't have children....:)

This one's pretty good, minus it being a bit foggy...

Josh, Carter, and cousin Hayden. They were making soup out of ice cream and the leftovers of dinner.

We celebrated Ryan's birthday, and a few day's later we celebrated Josh's and Matt's. (Pics to come). The boys got Ryan a baseball bat and gloves for his birthday. It was their idea, and they picked it all out.

Ryan and his brothers, sister, cousins, etc. ran in the dirty dash. It was a 5k with a bunch of obstacles and as you can see--mud. Ryan decided to look ridiculous (or ridiculously good looking depending on your point of view) for the race. He kept saying, "Follow the muffin top, follow the muffin top!" Hah.

Landon and Leaving

2011-05-13T22:58:00.003-04:00

My sweet little Landon is almost 5 months old. He's rolling over now, from front to back and back to front. He was so cute at the doctor's office: he had just figured out how to roll from back to front that same morning, so the whole time we were at the doctor's, he was rolling over--or trying to. I kind of got the feeling he was trying to show off a bit. :) He is such a joy. He will smile and laugh for anyone. He definitely prefers to be held, but he likes to be standing up if you're holding him. Honestly, he loves to stand up. He's nursing much better, which is lucky for him, because I was about to make the switch to bottles. Hah, I've almost switched to bottles with all of my boys. Maybe it takes me being serious about switching them to bottles to get them to nurse well...Anyway, I digress. He just melts my heart.

The big boys with their Grandpa Allen

Oh, and we're moving this coming week. I'm not excited about it. We are going to miss our friends (but more like family) so much! It makes me almost sick to think about leaving such good friends, so I kind of avoid thinking about it. Too bad it's going to smack me in the forehead within the next few days! But to all of you Staten Islanders, we will miss you!

Not a single one....

2011-05-01T22:03:00.008-04:00

For Easter weekend my parents were able to come out to visit for a few days. It was the first time the had seen Landon, so it was pretty exciting to have them come! The weather was cah-razy, sunny one day, cold and rainy the next, but we still had fun. We spent time playing the Wii (Dance Mix II is a good one my friends)., the boys did their best to wear out grandpa, we went into the city and walked the Brooklyn Bridge one last time (sad to be checking off my last list), grandma and grandpa went to the Statue of Liberty while we went to our ward Easter party, and we basically had a great time enjoying each other. Oh, and we tried really hard to take family pictures. Successful?....um...no. We were looking through the pictures to see if there were any good ones, and I don't think I've ever heard my mom laugh that hard. Honestly. So with out further ado, here's a mini montage of our family photo shoot. Maybe we can all go into modeling....

Okay, Carter. You're going to sit down, you're going to smile for the camera, and you're going to like it!

Josh, scoot closer, sweetie! Carter. Really. Act like you're happy. Landon, look at grandpa! Or at least somewhere near the camera!

Here comes daddy's contribution: skittles.

Didn't work. Poor boys. Hah, I love that Josh is trying to be the responsible older sibling and force out a smile, that I look overly happy ("See kids? This is fun."), and that Ryan's got the strained I-hate-family-pictures smile going on. Oh, and Landon and Carter are, well, just plain done.

Josh's face cracks me up, and I can just hear Carter just letting out a big "hurumph!"

Oh man, it's so great to have visitors, especially ones that I really like. :) It's just good for my soul. And for my babies' little souls. And Ryan? He gets a bit of a rest, so I think it's good for his soul too. That's one thing that will make moving away a bit easier, we'll get to be with family for a good little while.

Pure joy.

Sister Sister!

2011-04-24T20:15:00.007-04:00

Man, we have been busy busy! Last week my sister Erin came to visit us (minus hubby and kiddos) all the way from Hawaii. It was so much fun! We honestly did not stop from the time we picked her up from the airport to the timewe dropped her off. She came bearing gifts...and I was blown away by how creative and talented she is! Honestly, she stole all of the creative genes. No joke. She made me a purse and the boys all got teddy bear backpacks. She bought the bears from Good Will; took out the stuffing and washed it and the bears; stuffed it all back, cut open the tummy and lined it; and put in a zipper and straps. The boys absolutely love them. Anyway, there's a bajillion things I couldsay, but instead I'll just go by days...

Tuesday we picked Erin up and hung out. Of course, picking her up was crazy because she dropped her phone and it shattered, and her flight said United Airlines when in was really Continental. Luckily, Erin called Jason who called me who was freaking out but drove to the right terminal to pick up Erin.

Wednesday, Catlin, my awesome friend/downstairs neighbor, watched the two older boys while Erin and I went shopping. (I've found it's dangerous to go shopping with other women...if I want to be frugal it's best to go with my husband). That night we went to the broadway play, Wicked. It was amazing, of course!

Erin did my hair, hemmed and added that yellow pleat deal you see there to my dress, just so I could enjoy "Wicked" in style.

Thursday, we went into the city so Erin could meet with her publisher. Yes, I just said publisher. Erin's getting her picture book, "'A' is for Muskox", published this coming fall. Honestly, she's got more creativity in her little pinky...back to Thursday. I was in the city, by myself, with three children, while Erin went out to eat with her publisher. We walked into McDonalds and all heads turned to us. I took a few deep breaths, pushed the double stroller in, with Landon in a carrier on my front, and ordered our chicken nuggets. We may have had a few crazy moments, but all in all, we did just fine!

That doesn't look too crazy, does it? Hah.

Friday, we went to the Statue of Liberty. That's it. Even though it took us about five hours. It was pretty cool, though. We got to walk into the base of the statue and see how big she really is, and how high up it is. Josh and Carter walked up the stairs all by themselves, and Erin saved the day by running down them with Josh to take him to the bathroom. To this day, I'm still wondering how they made it.

Cute little Landon was ready to go home after a cool/cold day at Liberty Island.

Josh wore this headband all over, the first day we went into the city. He insisted this was the way to wear it, too!

Saturday, Ryan watched the two older boys (they were worn out!) while Erin, Landon, and I headed into the city. We went to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), China town, and somewhere else...hmm. Maybe I shouldn't be typing this at night. Anyway, we both loved MOMA, but Erin loved it more. Being a creative, artistic soul, she couldn't help but be thrilled at all of the art. Funny thing, Erin kept laughing at different random pieces of art, she loved them, and they all turned out to be by the same artist. It was funny to walk into a room, see Erin laugh and love a quirky piece of art, and go over to see the name of the same artist, Marcel something or other, over and over again.

Erin and Starry Night: two pretty things in one picture.

Erin's favorite quirky artist's piece of art. If you don't get it, ask Erin.

Sunday, Erin came to sacrament meeting at church and then it was off to the airport.

It was a bummer to see her go. We had a lot of laughs, crazy weather, and good good conversation. We've always gotten along (well, like sisters do), but I felt like this time we were more similar. We've grown more alike, and it was funny to listen to her laugh, because I know that I laugh exactly the same way. Erin, thanks for coming, and next time, I'll come to you...in Hawaii!

Mr. C turns two

2011-04-04T15:07:00.007-04:00

Carter with Grandpa Farnsworth in August of '09.

On Sunday, my second born, my joker, my sweet little guy, turned two. We were going to have some friends over to celebrate, but that cough/fever that I had during the marathon transferred to my older two boys the following Sunday and then to my baby on that next Wednesday. Basically we were all still hacking up a lung, so we decided to cancel. Instead we opened presents, watched (or tried to watch) General Conference, and then went out to dinner. We got Carter a baseball and mitt, a plastic golf club set, and a rocket thingy that's already duct taped up. Josh got Carter a Dora book, because Carter loves him some Dora. Adding the presents from the grandparents into the mix, Carter's been enjoying life. Josh liked the presents too, and told us that he wants all the same toys for his birthday, hah.

Yummy birthday cookie!

For dinner, we went to Perkins, which is definitely a family oriented restaurant. Right when we walked in, we were the center of attention. I think it was partly due to having a baby (I kept hearing, "Look at the baby") and partly due to having three kids ages three and under. Luckily, theywere somewhat well behaved so we didn't get the "What were you thinking?!" looks we usually get. My favorite part was at the very end, when they came out to sing to Carter. At first he was like, "What's going on..." but at the end, he was smiling his bashful smile and trying to avoid the looks of everyone in the restaurant. He was happy, though, just to lick off the whipped cream and sprinkles from his cookie, while in the background, Josh kept asking where his whipped cream was. (Birthdays teach us a lot about being patient and being happy for others!)

The boys actually did really well helping decorate the cake. Carter could not stop licking his fingers...like his mama.

On Sunday, the boys and I decorated Carter's caterpillar cake, we tried to watch conference again, and then we had the missionaries over for Carter's birthday dinner and cake and ice cream. After getting three options (of which he wanted none), Carter was helped in his decision to have chips and dip for his birthday dinner. He ended up choosing it because he thought we'd eat at Anna's (his downstairs friend) house where they often eat it for lunch. Sorry, bud. Ryan made some chip dip along with yummy pulled pork that honestly did taste like the stuff from Cafe Rio. We had rice and tortillas with all the toppings and really had a great dinner.

Carter wearing his dinner

Then we sang to Carter and ate a somewhat dry but very awesome-looking cake and some yummy ice cream. We also all went around the table to say what our favorite things about Carter are. It was fun making the missionaries do it too. Josh said that his favorite thing about Carter is when he sits by him and watches movies. We won't say that he really just likes to watch movies...

Landon enjoyed the evening from his bouncer.

In honor of my favorite two year old, I thought I'd post some things about him that I never want to forget, things that make him Carter:

-Carter has some hilarious sayings:

-"I doan have money. Do you have money? Daddy has money."

-"Doan look at me!"

-"Doan laff at me!"

-"Josh, stop it! You go time out! 3--2--1!"

-"My favit!! (Favorite)

-"My favit Maffyew's house." (We ask what their favorite thing they did for the day was at dinner).

-"I doan like it. I full. My tummy hurt. I sick" (Liar).

-"Leave me aloan!"

-"He lock me out!"

-Whenever we pray, Carter will start praying for daddy to go to school to get home to go to church, to go to school...over and over. Usually that's all we can understand in his prayer, but he won't be persuaded to say otherwise.

-Carter has become very aware when others are watching him. He doesn't like for us to think he's cute/funny/someone to laugh about. He'll get very shy and bashful and that's when he tells us, "Doan look at me!"

-Carter is a protector. He can be rough with Josh, but if anyone else gets in a tussle with Josh, Carter totally has his back. He'll push around the older kids or use his mommy voice, "No (insert name here)! Leave him aloan!" He also tells Josh to leave Landon alone, hah.

-Carter is a bit bossy. :) Like I said before, Carter likes to tell people what to do, mainly Josh. He'll hold up his pointer finger and shake it at Josh, me, Ryan, or Landon and tell us to stop being naughty.

-Carter is a big tease. He knows when he's being funny, and he'll pursue it to get a laugh. I "accidentally" taught the boys to give wet willies (lick your pinkie and stick it in someone's ear), which they now do to me as well as my intended victim, their father.

-Carter is busy busy. He likes tv, but would much rather being doing something else. He loves sports, football in particular. He'll hold the ball and say, "Tackle!" and run you down. He loves to be tackled himself. For about a year, he had a permanent bruise on his forehead from running around. He's a mover and always has been.

-Carter is very independent. Having Josh first made me think I was just an awesome parent. He just needs to hear a firm voice and he'll do what you ask. However, with Carter, I can't just tell him what to do. No, I have to get up and do it with him, or stop him, or run after him, or save him. Hah.

-Carter loves to sing and dance, as long as you don't laugh. When the intermediate hymn came on during conference, we heard him singing along, high notes and all. He'll be crazy at church, but sit and open the hymn book once the song starts. But once he sees you admiring his talent, he gets all bashful and won't do it again. This leads to him never performing. Like I said before, we can usually get Josh to perform for us, but not Carter. That's why your rarely see a photo with him smiling.

-Carter loves girls. He loves to be kind to them. He loves to get them things and give them hugs. He loves Josh's little girl friends. Hopefully that doesn't lead to trouble between brothers...

-Carter is a tough guy, but he's extremely scared of bugs. It's pretty funny. We have a teeny fake spider from Halloween, and for months Carter would jump a mile high if he saw it near him. He starts breathing fast and kind of giggles nervously. He doesn't like bug stickers or anything that looks remotely real. Once he figures out the bugs are fake, he's fine, but it takes a while for that to happen.

I'll just end this by saying that I love my Carter so much. I love his spunky personality, I love how much he loves me and his dad and brothers and grandparents. He is one great little man, and I'm grateful to be his mama.

Best buddies.

The birthday boy opening a present...wrapped in Christmas decor.

I like to move it move it!

2011-03-29T08:14:00.007-04:00

This past weekend, we headed down to Washington DC so I could run in the National Half Marathon with my good friends Catlin, Natalie, and Christy. The drive down wasn't my or Ryan's favorite....3.5 hours transformed into 6ish since we had to stop 3 times to feed Landon. We made it to the hotel, a ritzy Hilton, in time for dinner. Of course we couldn't afford the food at the hotel, so Ryan headed out to grab some for us. Long story short, he came back with a sandwich for him and a salad I couldn't eat because they forgot to take the crumbled blue cheese off. Hah. The poor boys were going to get Burger King on his way back, but it was closed. Luckily we managed to put together some sort of meal from our snacks and hit the bed. Well, Ryan and I did. Carter was in a hotel crib, Josh on the floor, and Landon on a bouncer. I'm sure the hotel people were impressed with how high class we were!

I was a little bit nervous about running, because I had gotten sick a couple days before with a cough/slight fever. Luckily the days were a bit better than the nights, so I felt somewhat okay, hah, the day of the race. The girls and I met in the lobby at six and headed out to catch the subway, which opened an hour early at 6am for the day of the race (definitely not New York!). Well, turns out that we chose two of the subway stations that weren't open at 6am. It was so stressful running to a subway (after my lovely map sent us in the wrong direction) to find it closed and the one after that closed...luckily we happened upon some other runners who showed us the one station that was open-right across the street. We ran on, all stressed out, Natalie in particular. Come to find out she didn't know we had a timing chip! Hah, once she realized our time would start once we crossed the starting line and not before, she relaxed a bit. I however, had some work to do. I got out my disposable nursing pump that I had begged off of the hospital the day before and pumped, using Christy's jacket as a shield, until we made it to our stop. Such a nice memory, let me tell you.

We made it to the starting point a bit after they started the race, but because there were about 16,000 people running the race, we were just fine to wait and hop in when we felt like it. Christy, Catlin, and I stayed together while Natalie ran ahead. Christy stayed with us for about 3 miles, but she couldn't stay with our 10 min pace--she kept running faster. She was like a little magnet being pulled along with the rest of the crowd. At first we kept calling her back because she wanted us to pace her, but we finally gave up and let her go. Catlin and I had a blast. In fact, around mile 8, Catlin was close to bursting out in song. She was talking talking talking about how wonderful everything was and how happy she was. It was pretty funny, because usually she's not a big talker, but she couldn't stop. It reminded me of when I ran the marathon with Ryan, I was gibbering on. Accomplishing such a big goal like a marathon or half and feeling good physically while running it can really lead to moments of euphoria, I don't know how else to describe it.

Around mile 11, our energy started slowing (looking back we should've taken some more glucogel), but we pushed through it, and around mile 12, we were only passed once while we were passing the other people. The end was my favorite, though. We were really pushing hard to finish strong. About 100 yards from the finish, Catlin called out, "Help me, Katie!" (I thought it was pretty amazing that she would ask for help when she felt she needed it). I got right next to her and "strongly encouraged" her to, "Push it! Push it! Beat this guy! You've got it!" We ran together over the finish line, and I've never had such an emotional finish. We were both near tears. We had run together the whole time, and we finished strong, together. We had three goals: First, to finish; second, to run it in 2:45; third (our ultimate goal), to run it in 2:30. We were so happy to find out we ran it just under 2:20! I loved running the race. It was the first race for all of us but me. They all did so well, Christy and Natalie coming in at 2:08 and 2:09 respectively.

After the race we zipped back to the hotel, I showered, and we left for home. The ride back took us as long as the ride to. Ryan was a rockstar. He was so supportive, and he watched the kids with out complaint, even though his day included trying to feed a baby a bottle with little luck, bundling the kids up and taking them all on the subway in time to be at the finish line, and then driving for 6 hours to get home. Honestly he was so great.

I know that's a long story, but it was such a good experience. It's reminded me that we're all capable of more than we think we are, and that often, we have the ability, we just have to have faith in ourselves that we can do it.

Now comes training for the Provo marathon June 11th. My awesome sister-in-law Nikki is going to run it with me. I've promised Ryan that I'll never run past 9am when he's home, since my last marathon training took over our lives...should be interesting!

Spring Break

2011-03-23T22:41:00.002-04:00

This last week was Ryan's spring break so we decided to go somewhere fun. My friend Ali told us about this great deal for an indoor water park in Queensbury, NY. It was $100 per night for both the hotel and water park. We went for a few days, hanging out with the Pilgrims for a morning before they left, and had a blast. It was so nice to have the hotel and water park connected, because Ryan could take the older boys to the park while I stayed to feed Landon and let him nap. I would join up with them later, we played, and then had nap time. How easy is that? As awesome as that is, the best part was the fact that the boys loved it. Carter is a stinkin' little daredevil. Besides the two slides he wasn't allowed to go down, he went down all of the other slides by himself. He would then wait at the bottom until Ryan or I followed after, so that we'd run into him and splash him. Josh liked the slides too, but he preferred the strategic move of hanging out at the spots where he could shoot water at us when we were coming off of the slides.

Josh showing us how excited he was to be at the water park. I'd say pretty excited.

Honestly, getting a posed picture is impossible!

Carter watching a movie on the ipod. I love his squished cheeks.

Me, Carter, baby Landon, Ali, and Cora watching the others play in the kiddie pool. Ali was so nice to sit with Landon while both Ryan and I played with the older boys for a bit.

Josh loved it when we'd wait "unsuspectingly" at the bottom and get splashed by him. He thought it was hilarious even after the 50th splash.

See that big green slide on the left? There's a blue one on the other side. Carter went down both of those. (So did Josh). It was so cute to see his little legs spread out as he slid down. When I asked the life guard if Carter could go down, he said, "Sure, but most kids end up crying at the bottom." I told him Carter wasn't like most kids (I'm sure he's never heard that before!) and we watched at the bottom: my little daredevil was laughing!

This slide was the best for Carter. Quick access and not a lot of traffic.

And here we go trying to get a cute picture of the boys...

Here Landon, eat this...

What, you want to see them too?

Okay boys, out of the picture!

All of us in the lobby. It was a gorgeous place.

Josh is totally getting that huge bear.

Carter loved to play with those water fountains. He'd get drenched in the face, but he wasn't too worried about it.

And here's our picture in front of Carlo's bakery, from the TV show "Cake Boss". It's in Hoboken, NJ which was on the way home. We just happened to be there on St. Patrick's Day, so that plus the popularity of the place made the wait in line 2.5 hours! Needless to say, all we got from the place was a picture.

It was great having Ryan home the whole week, but I think he might be ready to go back to school for a bit...something about a nursing baby and two eager boys didn't make for much rest as a dad. Honestly though, this break was great, and we're refreshed and somewhat ready to get back into the swing of things.

Opossum

2011-03-06T20:17:00.002-05:00

Today we had a very nice day. Elder Anderson from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and we had a spontaneous stake conference. It was nice for the kids to see an apostle/prophet. When he walked into the room, it got really quiet and they boys could tell something was up. I picked up Carter and pointed to Elder Anderson telling him that he was a prophet. Carter's response? He started patting his legs and singing "Follow the Prophet, follow the Prophet...". Josh's response? He thought it was very cool to see the 'a-possum-le-prophet'.

Oh Baby!

2011-03-03T21:12:00.002-05:00

Big boy Landon

Carter eating an orange with a fork. He was hungry and had to take matters into his own hands, I guess. I snapped the picture right as he bit into part the peel.

Cute boys.

So, I have some very sad news. Landon, my perfect baby, has decided to become gassy. Most of my friends in Staten Island have heard my sob story...but here it is anyway. Around 5 weeks, Landon wouldn't sleep all day like he had been and started getting a bit gassy during different sections of the day. It's just gotten progressively worse. If he doesn't eat well, which is hard for him when he's gassy, then he doesn't sleep well. (He will love reading this when he's fifteen, I'm sure). He'll wimper and cry out. Luckily he's not too bad as long as he has a binky. I've tried many different things, gas drops, fennel, changing my diet, etc., and it seems that changing my diet has been the only thing to work so far. I'm not eating nuts, chocolate, or any kind of dairy, including my beloved spray butter. I'm hoping that I'll at least lose some weight on this kind of diet! I hate that he's gassy (just like my other two boys) because you never really know how to fix it...you just do your best until they grow out of it...or you switch to formula. The problem with that is you have to buy the expensive stuff! I'm just grateful that it's gas and not something else.

I'm getting ready to run the half marathon in Washington DC on March 26th. It is an awesome race. I've run the half once and the full once already in Washington DC, so I guess you could say that I love it. It's a pretty easy course and beautiful, and it's on a Saturday! I'm running it with three other good good friends, so it's going to be a blast. One of the girls, Natalie, talked about running a full marathon, and that got my juices flowing, I guess you could say, so I'm planning on running the Salt Lake marathon on the 24th of July. We'll see how it compares to the DC marathon. I'm thinking I've been pretty spoiled.

Ryan's sitting pretty right now. He's done with everything, so now it's just clinic, and he's really good with patients and fixing their teeth, so no complaints for him! Just to brag a bit, don't get jealous, but he's been awesome. He watches the kids while I run, cleans the house, and lets me unload on him all of my woes. The other day I was watching him wrestle with the boys, and man, he was looking good! Good looking man who loves his kids and smells really good--what more could a girl ask for?

Josh and Carter are doing well. They're great kids. Josh is the greatest little helper. I ask him to do a lot now, and he's very good at helping out, as long as the TV is off. Carter is not beating up on Josh as much and is getting pretty good at entertaining himself. Tonight, I was telling the boys something and said, "Can you believe it?" and Carter yelled out like a hallelujah, "I believe it!!" Josh is the best actor in the house. The boys love to hide (in rather obvious places) and have us find them. Well, now Josh is in on it and pretends like he can't see Carter. Pretty funny. Last cute thing: Landon loves music. If he's fussy at all, Ryan will turn on some music and Landon smiles and watches in awe while Ryan sings to him. He was cooing and singing along this morning. It was so much fun to watch.

Despite the issues I have with feeding Landon, I've been feeling like I'm getting into the groove of having three kids. I'm starting to figure out how to work things around Landon's schedule. As I was sitting down tonight, impressed with myself and my mad skills of being a mother of too many kids (kidding), I realized that the amount of TV watched by my children has probably doubled...oh well, I'm still going to say I'm a rock star.

Oklahoma!

2011-02-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

For those of you who have not heard and have been waiting patiently, we are moving to Oklahoma! I'll be doing a year residency in the army at Fort Sill, OK. We leave NY most likely around the end of May. We're excited to experience this new phase in our lives, even if Lawton Oklahoma is know for being run-down and full of gangs...

So in case you were wanting to come and visit us in NYC, and haven't done so, you're time is almost up! Hurry and buy your plane tickets!

Pictures of my babies

2011-01-30T12:47:00.006-05:00

How can you not melt? Josh loves Landon, Landon loves Josh. Josh is always saying, "Oh, he's just so cute!"

Cute Mr. Landon. I love how Ryan's in the pictures but not really "in" the pictures.

We should start playing the "Where's Ryan?" game.

Landon's first time in the tub. He did not appreciate going in while hungry. It was pretty funny, actually. He kept trying to drink the water. No worries though, I told him no way.

Cute chubbiness.

Big brother Josh. He wears that helmet every day. All day.

Big brother Carter. He loves him some football.

My three sons

2011-01-24T13:50:00.009-05:00

Landon will be four weeks tomorrow. We've been doing well. We haven't done much. Considering the fact that now I have three kids, going anywhere just got a million times more difficult, and it's been snowing a lot, so any desire to go anywhere just got reduced to about zero. The snow has been nice, actually, because I don't feel guilty for keeping my kids cooped up inside. Other than Josh being sick these past few days, we haven't had much excitement.

I take that back, we have some news: Ryan passed his 2nd set of boards! He did really well on them, and since he took them early (a week after Landon was born...good timing, huh?), we don't have that stress hanging over our heads anymore. He took his NERB (licensing test) and hopefully passed, and now the last major thing he has is where he'll do some dental work on patients and be graded on it (can't remember exactly what the "test" is called, it's for his license though). After that, I'm hoping it will be easy sailing. Is that even a saying, or am I making it up? And I think the final dental school news we have is that we find out next week where we're going for our residency with the army. Oh yeah, Ryan also got a residency! Our top three choices were Colorado, Washington state, and Kentucky.

I'm going to be running the Washington DC half marathon the end of March. I have some friends running one for the first time, so we're all going to go down and run it together. Should be fun, if I don't die. If I die, hopefully it's still fun up to then. I actually feel pretty good, and I've started "exercising" again, but let's be honest: "pretty good" postpartum fitness isn't quite half-marathon material. Oh well, too late now!

Josh has been sick lately, but he's been such a trooper. He hates taking medicine, but luckily we just have to reason with him and down it goes. He's definitely a logical thinker. As long as we can find a reason he'll accept, we can get him to do what we want....but if he doesn't agree, you're in for a long argument! Honestly, he's often right and I'm wrong, but don't tell him that. He's doing well in the big brother department. He's remembered to be soft with babies, and he's patient with Carter, who likes to bug Josh when I'm nursing because he knows that's the time he can get away with it.

Carter is a hoot. Unlike Josh, if he doesn't want to do something, you're out of luck, but he's a great helper and listener minus the stubborn times. We have a happy announcement about him: He's gone peepee in the potty! (What good conversation:)! We just have the little potty out in our bathroom, and one day while I was talking on the phone to grandma, Carter had me take of his pants and diaper, and walked away. I had no idea what he was doing until I walked in the bathroom and there he was sitting on the potty. He's done it a few times each day since then. He's only 21 months, so there's a good chance he will have himself potty trained by two. Hah. We pushed Josh way too early, so we haven't thought of doing anything with Carter. I guess he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Lastly about Landon: he started officially smiling today! I know it's early, so if I didn't see it myself, I wouldn't believe it. He's been faintly smiling for a little while--both Ryan and I asked each other if he had slightly smiled for the other--and today he's actually smiled big smiles in response to my gibberish. Maybe that means he'll be a jolly, perfect, chubby baby! All of my babies have been perfect. :).....I wrote this yesterday, and I haven't gotten him to smile today. I think we might have to edit out "officially" and put "randomly" in its place...

Landon is showing off his cute rock star outfit...kind of. He's getting big so fast; he's too big for most of his newborn clothes. Carter and Landon (so far) have both been chubby, it makes me wonder if Josh was underfed!

The boys and Grandma Allen. She was a lifesaver. The boys loved having her here to play with them. When Ryan and the boys dropped her off at the airport, Josh said, "I don't like it when people come to visit and then leave." I don't either, bud.

One of the many cute newborn poses we get from Landon. I love the startled arms, the funny faces, the gassy smiles, and the poses newborns make.

Carter rocking his baby, which he appropriately named Landon. :)

Josh was reading a book with two huge apple slices sitting in his mouth for quite some time, so I went up to him and asked him what was in his mouth. He turned the page and nonchalantly said, "Nussing".

My three sons. I think--no--I know I've really lucked out with Landon being so easy and the other boys being so accepting. It's been a wonderful transition for us.

This is how Landon is if he is awake-Mr. Content. He'll be awake maybe an hour in the morning, and then maybe another hour at night, and I often have to wake him up to feed him. At night, he'll wake up two to three times. Not bad, except it takes awhile for him to eat.

The boys with aunt Nikki. We miss her as well. The other night we were watching a home video of me and Ryan, and Josh asked, "Hey mom, is that aunt Nikki?" I said no. The video then cut away and came back to me again and Josh asked, "Well is that aunt Nikki?" I guess we do look alike!

He's here!

2011-01-05T20:07:00.005-05:00

Baby Landon James has officially arrived! We are so happy to be on this side of things instead of the fretting/waiting side. He is so cute, and I'm not near as stressed out as I was with my other two. With Josh and Carter, I had a lot of anxiety, but with Landon, I'm actually enjoying the newborn stage. Of course, we'll see how unstressed out I am once Ryan's mom and sister leave....bleh.

A quick overview: Nikki, Ryan's sister, arrived Thursday morning. (She's a true life saver!) Ryan and I left the boys with her, and headed to the hospital to be induced. When we got there, the triage was full of laboring women. I was a bit nervous they would ask us to go home, since we were being induced, but that turned out to be a lucky deal for us. We got registered and placed into a room before the others because of "doctor's orders". Near the end of the day, they were actually waiting for beds to empty. --There were sixteen births on Thurs.-- They started me on pitocin at 11:30am and broke my water at 12:30pm. I got an epidural at 1pm and was in heaven at 1:05pm. The only complaint I had was that I was getting extremely light headed, and I thought maybe I needed oxygen or something. They checked my vitals and everything was fine, but the nurse suggested I lay on my side, and that fixed that. The nurse, Mary Jane, was awesome, particularly because she kept telling me that I was the easiest patient ever. Like every time she came in the room. I honestly felt great for being in labor, so I didn't really have much to complain about. I think the combination of that and a few other things that maybe aren't politically correct to speak about made me an "easy" patient. Anyway, a little before 4pm I was feeling some pressure, so the resident checked me and said, "Oh, the head's right there!" She and the nurse started running around, getting things ready, and then just the resident and nurse were there with me and Ryan to deliver Landon. I pushed 3-4 times and he was out. I was a bit more emotional with his birth, just because we were so worried about him. He's had no problems whatsoever.

Now that we're home, I am feeling really good. The boys absolutely love Landon, and the only adjustment issues they're seeming to have is that Josh is a teeny bit more emotional and Carter says "no" more often. Other than that things are great. Ryan's taking his boards tomorrow and Friday (talk about being stressed out, poor guy), but Nikki's here and Ryan's mom is here, so we're definitely taken care of. I have a feeling I'll be pretty lonely once they leave, but I always miss family once they're gone, so I guess there's no difference there.

We are so grateful for little Landon, that he's here healthy and strong and that the boys are doing so well

The waiting game...

2010-12-21T19:39:00.004-05:00

We got the results back from the amniocentesis and the baby's lungs weren't developed enough for us to be induced. So we weren't, and who knows when the little guy will come out. I was feeling a wide range of emotions last night; obviously we don't want the baby to come if he's not ready, but it's hard to keep him in there when we're worried about the placenta. Anyway, we're playing the waiting game. I wish he would've been ready so I wouldn't have to worry, but we'll take it one day at a time.

Me and the boys posing in front of the Rockefeller tree. You would not believe the crowd!

Early Christmas Present!

2010-12-19T15:21:00.004-05:00

We love baby boys!

Joshua Ryan

Carter Evans

Most of you know that I'm diabetic. It makes having babies a lot more interesting, but luckily I've had really good control throughout all of my pregnancies. (We've received help from above, I know). The difficult parts about diabetes and pregnancy are this: Consistent high blood sugar early in the pregnancy leads to congenital birth defects and high blood sugar late in pregnancy leads to big babies with underdeveloped lungs. Insulin lowers blood sugar. Insulin is a hormone. I probably don't have to explain it, but pregnant women have a lot of hormones going crazy throughout their system, and it makes it harder to keep your blood sugar under control. Also, the placenta kicks out a hormone that is insulin resistant, and it gets stronger the farther along you get. That's why some women get gestational diabetes when pregnant. Anyway, the later in the pregnancy, the more insulin I'm giving. In fact, I usually give 2 to 3 times more insulin than I do when I'm not pregnant. However, this past week and a half, my blood sugar levels have been going a lot lower, and I've actually lowered the amount of insulin I'm giving. The doctor said that's a sign that perhaps the placenta isn't working like it should. Luckily, Landon's moving around a ton, so we know he's okay, but tomorrow I'm going in for an amniocentesis and if his lungs are developed then we'll be induced Tuesday, at 36 weeks 5 days. I've had a few experiences where I got the feeling that we'd be having this baby early, so I'm not as nervous as I might be otherwise. As long as he's okay, we're all excited to have Landon here with us for Christmas. And this means that my mom come out to see him, so she's excited too. It's been fun trying to get everything, or the vital things, ready for this little guy. All I know is that I'll probably get the best Christmas present this year out of all my friends. :)

Update

2010-12-06T20:03:00.011-05:00

Posing in front of the largest crayon in the world. We headed out to the Crayola factory when Ryan's dad came out for Thanksgiving. We are sure missing Grandpa!!

Whoops. I guess it's time to do another post. I kind of fell off the blogging bandwagon for a little season. Luckily, most people don't really care about our day-to-day happenings (besides grandmas), so why worry, right?

Ryan was growing his hair out to see what it would be like. When it wasn't smoothed down he could really get some height!

To begin, Ryan's doing well with school. He's studying for his final boards, which makes me very proud of him. They're a little over a month away, and he's working hard to make sure he's ready for them and not cramming last minute. That's a good thing, since I'm due to have the baby in the middle of his 3 tests....The boys are both officially daddy's boys. Josh has been for a long long time, but I've been able to hang onto Carter's affections for a while. Not so anymore. I'm not too sad about it, though. Whenever dad's home, the boys want him to do anything and everything. And Ryan's awesome with the boys. We have a lot of sword fights and wrestling matches. Gives me a nice rest!

I had other pictures where the top of my head wasn't cut off, but at this stage of the game, I'm going with whatever picture is most flattering, not what might actually the best quality picture...tell me I'm not the only one who does that.

As for me, I am 35.5 weeks pregnant. I'm feeling really well for the most part...except that I've got cankles now. Blaah. I went to the doctor's office and they were like, "Hmm, you've gained a lot of weight; did you enjoy that Thanksgiving turkey dinner a bit much? (Real funny fat joke guys.) Are you retaining water?" I said, "Well last time, the nurse who weighed me was nice and rounded down my weight, and this time she was mean and rounded up." What I really wanted to say was, "I don't even count your weight measurements anyway because I always weigh myself in the morning after exercising and clearing out my system, before eating or drinking anything, and without 5 pounds (give or take 4 pounds) of clothes on." Anyway, needless to say I'm beginning the joyful swelling stage of my pregnancy. I've been exercising/running (aka doing the pregnant shuffle) up until now, but we'll see how long that lasts . I carry my babies so low that I don't think it's necessarily kind to the baby to be bouncing his face against my hip bones...maybe light smushing is okay?

I think Josh was trying to do a cool superhero pose. Each time I tried to take his picture, he'd pull out a pose and a tough guy look.

Josh is doing great. He's loving his joy school, and he's definitely not as shy as he used to be. He's asking a lot of questions and wants to know specifics. He says the cutest things. I was asking him the other day what he wants for Christmas, trying to get him to want what we got him...(a scooter). He thought about and said, "Hmm.....I want anything that we don't have." Honestly he gets that from his dad. One other funny thing, is that he's very into style. If he doesn't like a shirt, he won't wear it. Ever. There are some really cute shirts in his drawers that never see the light of day. He always says, "I don't want my friends to see me in this!" Sweet guy.

We dressed up for our ward party. Josh wouldn't wear the head thing (because he didn't want his friends to see him...hah) but Carter loved it! He looked like this the whole night. So cute.

Carter is still growing up too fast for me. He's his little brother's shadow, and luckily Josh is a patient big brother. For the past couple of months, Carter has started getting an attitude. He started throwing temper tantrums and really likes the word "no", but he seems to be calming down again, much to my relief. He is pretty hilarious very sweet when he's not showcasing his stubbornness. He talks a ton, not all of it understandable to the outsider, but great for the most part. If we can't understand him, we'll say different words until we get to the right one and he'll say "Uh-huh!" He signs quite a bit, so that helps as well. Both he and Josh love the missionaries. They'll run up to the missionaries to give them a five, trying to make it sting.

I'll finish up this post just by saying how much I love the Christmas season. We love the stories about Santa and the reindeer and all of that, and we love the story of baby Jesus and talking about the gifts that He's given us. It's such a happy time of year, and we wish you all a very merry Christmas. (Just in case I don't post again for a while!)

29 weeks

2010-10-28T20:05:00.006-04:00

So I am now 29 weeks prego. I'll just go ahead and pat myself on the back for making it this far, again. 3rd time around starts to get a bit more difficult. I've still had a pretty easy pregnancy, so I can't complain, but I will anyway because that's what pregnant women do, right? Hah! It seems that my body knows this isn't the first time doing this. Just like me, it's starting to complain more often than it used to. Ryan and I ultimately want six kids...here's to hoping, right? :)

This is a picture of me at 27 weeks. And yes, I'm kind of hiding my belly by accident. I don't know how to take professional prego pictures, I guess.

....And here I am at 29 weeks. Did something happen in there? I don't feel like I've gradually gotten bigger; my tummy growth seems to happen in spurts. And I'm not going to lie...I'm kind of hiding my belly again in this picture, but I looked skinniest in this one...and thanks, babe (aka Ryan) for taking it farther away, I think it helps. :)

Princeton, NJ

2010-10-10T20:03:00.008-04:00

Yesterday we were spontaneous and decided to take a trip to Princeton, NJ to see the university. Luckily, the Rasmussens and Gedges were willing to be spontaneous with us. It took a little over an hour to get there. I'm always surprised at how close things are back here in the east. Now if only traffic would cooperate...Anyway, we spent the afternoon walking around Princeton University's campus. A few facts about the University: it's an Ivy league school, it was founded in 1746, originally the college of New Jersey located in Elizabeth, NJ. It moved to Princeton ten years later. If you've seen "A Beautiful Mind", that was filmed at Princeton. I couldn't get enough of the beautiful buildings and greenery. It was absolutely gorgeous. Besides dragging along 7 kids who each took turns causing trouble (mainly Josh having to go potty...there aren't a lot of those on campus), and making it to a pumpkin patch just as it closed, the trip was a success and one of my favorites. Take a look and see if you think it's as beautiful as I do.

These lions sit outside the Nassau Building, the oldest building on campus. It was built around 1754 I believe. I was being an awesome tour guide and told Joseph and Catlin that the building was actually moved from the original college in Elizabeth...Joseph was pretty surprised, and I was saying things like, "Yeah, isn't that amazing? Who knew they could move things like that back then?" Well, they didn't move it, I just thought they did when I read about it on Wikipedia...

The best family picture we got that day. Which isn't too bad considering there are three boys!

I can't really tell you what the rest of the buildings are. Just that they're pretty.

I'd be willing to travel far and wide to get a look at this beauty anytime.

I was standing with our friends while Ryan was taking Josh on one of their many bathroom breaks. I mentioned to them how the campus reminded me of Hogwarts, and they all gave me a look/snort that said I was a big geek face. I might admit it's not the most mature thing to talk about Harry Potter like it's a real thing, but what is all that wrong with having an imagination I ask you?

Latest Happenings

2010-10-04T14:11:00.008-04:00

To review our past few months, we headed out to Utah during the last part of August and beginning of September and had a blast. We spent a little less than a week at both parents' houses, and to me, it wasn't quite enough time. Hah, I don't know if that can be said for the grandparents, but we'll pretend like they love to have us crash their homes for long periods of time. Josh and Carter did really well -except Carter got a cold (probably from the lack of sleep imposed by the unthoughtful parents)- and both Ryan and I thoroughly enjoyed the lack of responsibilities we had on the trip. We don't have a ton of pictures from our section of time spent in North Ogden, because Ryan bought a new, very nice, new camera (thank you army for that purchase) that was delivered to my parent's home. However, we had a great time at both spots, and trips like this remind me of how much I miss our families.

Josh playing at Park Discovery in Cedar City. Josh met a boy there and tried to hold a conversation with him. It got kind of difficult when the boy said his name was Rock Dude. Josh didn't think he could understand him (because who is named "Rock Dude", honestly), and kept asking him over and over what he was saying. (Can you see Carter in the background? Cute.)

Carter was able to keep up quite well with his bigger brother!

Ryan likes to say this picture is a tribute to my pokey-out ear. Not funny, Ry. Maybe I'll find a picture that's a tribute to something of yours!!

Somehow we luck out to be in Cedar over the Shakespearean Festival almost every year. I love taking the kids to the Green Show, and this year I think they actually enjoyed it. Maybe it's because we bought them a tart this time...He's getting to be so big. But really, he is.

Eating some corn from the garden. Man, store-bought corn does not compare! I'd like to say that it's because we're in New York that I don't garden, but actually I'm not what I would call an avid get-things-done kind of girl. I think I have a few more years I can get away with being a bit more lazy....

Ryan loves the Green Show. Carter too. :)

One of our favorite activities was playing in the sandbox. One day the boys were outside playing, and I ran inside to grab something. I feeling extremely guilty the whole time, allowing kidnappers the opportunity to swipe my kids. New York has forever changed me.

We found a potato bug, or a roly-poly if you prefer. I was proud of myself for holding it. I don't know why I've become one of those wimpy moms, but I do not like bugs. Maybe it's just the gross bugs with lots of feelers or legs...although potato bugs have a ton of legs...

Josh and Carter with their cute cousins Avery and Hayden. Josh and Carter, but especially Josh, were in heaven every time the girls came over. Now another girl has been added to the mix: little miss Ella. The girls are all sisters. We are totally in competition with them to make more boys than they do girls.

Private...Sort Of

2010-09-13T22:20:00.000-04:00

Many months ago I created tabs at the top of our blog to share things about our boys individually. I was so impressed with my skills that I couldn't stop patting myself on my back. It looked a little something like this:

But I'll be honest, those little buttons took me at least an hour to do. When it comes to making websites, I'm completely illiterate. But for all that hard work, I think my precious buttons went unnoticed. Anyway, now that I've pointed it out, I'm sure everyone will begin flocking to our boys' sites...

However, all good things must come to an end. I'll be making those links private. If you're not a weirdo, and don't plan on using things we post about our boys for nefarious purposes, leave a comment and I'll consider putting you on the VIP list.

For the time our main blog will remain open. I'm not sure my parents know what it means to "log-on", or even "leave a comment". Baby steps...

It's a....

2010-08-19T20:12:00.004-04:00

Boy!!!

I'm envisioning three handsome little men, sitting in a row on a church bench, wearing white shirts and ties....three little buddies running around the house, playing baseball together, and building forts...three sweet boys loving on their mom, ganging up on dad in a game of wrestling, and taking care of each other.....three little boys who are all slight variations of their attractive father.....

A girl can dream, right? :)

Happenings

2010-08-16T19:43:00.006-04:00

So the first big item news of the day is this: my little brother is married! Tom and Sissi got married on the 13th in Germany, in the Freiburg temple. (I honestly thought it was the Dresden temple, but there is no such temple on the lds.org website so I'm guessing I thought wrong). They'll be living in Germany for around 5 years...that's one incentive for us to move to Germany after dental school! Anyway, I really wish I could've gone; first off to support Tom and Sissi, and second off because I would love to go to Germany. :) Congrats Tom and Sissi!
Okay, so there isn't really any more big news. This week is a big one for us, though. We find out on Wednesday if we're having a boy or a girl (how do people not find out, I'm already going crazy!) and on Saturday we head out to Utah for some family time. We are super excited.

Carter loves wearing glasses. Especially when he gets his picture taken.

He's learned that if he's patient enough to sit for a picture, that he can come up to the camera to see himself after. He even lets me take a few. Smart, cute kid.

We went to play group one day, and Patty brought face paint. She ended up painting all of the kids' faces. (She's awesome like that). Josh was in heaven being a lion for 1/2 hr before he had to take it off for nap time.

We went to Central Park Zoo and Hecksher playground with our friends, the Amorinos, one Saturday. It was pretty fun! The boys kept holding hands at the zoo, but they couldn't coordinate their walk well enough for a good picture, so I had to step in to help steady them.

That's one large bear!

Carter wearing Josh's helmet. It was so heavy, he had to run to keep his head from toppling over.

One of the boys' favorite pastimes.

Cute boys.

Seventeen

2010-08-05T13:24:00.004-04:00

Seventeen weeks...seems like I've been pregnant for a long time. How long does pregnancy last again?

Familiar face

2010-08-04T19:35:00.005-04:00

I've been told I look like I belong in Ryan's family. There have been a few times that I was actually confused for Ryan's sister Nikki. I've always been extremely flattered and secretly proud to look like an Allen girl; I mean, have you seen Ryan's family? (Hard thing to marry into, my friends). However, it dawned on me the other day, that it's not that I look like them, it's that I look like everybody.
To support my case: In middle school, teachers always confused me with a friend named Heidi. In high school it changed to friends named Mary and Tiffany. At church, people thought my YW leader could've been my older sister. Here's a funny story: the 1st counselor in the Bishopric at my home ward (in high school), came up to me one day and asked me how Lagoon was. I told him that I hadn't gone to Lagoon. Turns out this man had actually gone up to talk to "me" at Lagoon, and came home still believing it was me who (or whom?) he talked to. I have also been told I look like Tara Lapinski, Mandy Moore, and Liv Tyler (Yeah...I think a few were meant as flattery since they came from the opposite sex....hmm...smart).

Since being here in New York, I've been literally confused for Jamie, Katie S., Aubri, Ali, and Catlin in my church ward. Ward members, landlords (apt is in the same house), and neighbors have all told Catlin and I many many times that we look like sisters....really Catlin, it's me, not you.

Maybe all of this mixing-up because I tend to adopt other people's mannerisms. I honestly can't stop myself from talking, laughing, or acting like the people I'm with. -I know I'm doing it, I just don't know how to stop it.- Maybe I'm just a wanderer with no true identity. Maybe I should dye my hair red...there aren't as many redheads in the world...Anyway. I don't know the true point of this post, except now I feel that because I look like everybody, I really look like nobody. At least that means I don't have some huge ugly nose or something...heh, just a pokey-out ear. :)
In all actuality, I look exactly like my dad, except I come in the female version. My sisters looks exactly like my mom. So, funny enough, my real-live blood sister, Erin, and I don't ever get confused for the other. Maybe it's because she has a natural tan. Life can be so unfair.

Here's my real family. Miss dark-skinned Erin is near the back.

Ryan's mom and sisters and me. Sigh, and I used to think I was one of them...

My pseudo-sister Catlin.

Jaimie, after we all ran the 4mile race around Central Park. (Wish you were still in Staten Island!)

Katie S. Tell me that's not gonna confuse some older women...

Aubri. And no, Ryan didn't grow 8 inches...

The man who started it all...

PS. Please don't be mad if I posted about you....:)

Party of Five

2010-07-17T22:55:00.005-04:00

That's right. We're going where most New Yorkers (i.e. NYC dwellers) have never gone before: we're having baby number three! If there wasn't an LDS ward on the island, we could've set the record for most babies born in the shortest amount of time...Josh will be 3 1/2 and Carter will be 21 months....but we'll be okay with 3rd or 4th place. We are very excited to have this little baby. Ryan and I both think we saw some boy anatomy on the ultrasound ( it's still a bit early, I'm 14 weeks), but Josh is convinced we're having a girl. Either way, we're pleased. Jan 14th is the "official/unofficial" due date.

Joshua Ryan

Carter Evans

Blank Blank

They all look so much alike, don't you think?

Summer days

2010-07-08T09:42:00.005-04:00

We were lucky to have Ryan's mom and brother come out to visit us this past week. The boys loved every minute of it! We went to Philadelphia for a day, went into the city to go to a temple session (then the boys split from the girls and went to a Yankees game), went to the beach, and stayed up way too late at night. We were sad to see them go, but luckily we'll be out in Utah in a little over a month. After we dropped Grandma and Uncle Scott off at the airport, Josh asked if we could fly to Utah once daddy got home from school. He also said he wanted to live in Utah, once he found out his cousins live by Grandma and Uncle Scott...such is life. :)

Josh and Ryan digging a really big hole. Josh loved the beach, much to his surprise. He's been convinced for months that he didn't like the beach...until Uncle Scott suggested it, then he acted like it was the greatest idea since sliced bread.

He's getting so big!

Carter was in heaven. Being able to get messy with out many regulations (besides no eating of sand or trash) was his kind of paradise.

Scott and Linda. The favorites for the week.

Josh and his beloved SpongeBob Popsicle (big thanks to Grandma for watching the boys while we went to the temple). He gets it every time we get cold treats in the city. Maybe it's because of the gumball eyes. That would've gotten me...

Carter riding the subway. It's so weird to think of what's normal life for my kids compared to how I grew up!

Independence Hall. One of my favorite places.

Josh and Uncle Scott. He definitely misses him!

Carnival

2010-06-18T07:38:00.005-04:00

A few days ago I got off school early, and we thought we'd take a gander at a little carnival that was set up in the parking lot of the Staten Island mall. Classy location right? Well... to be honest, can any carnival really be described as being 'classy'? Probably not.

Regardless, the boys absolutely loved it! I didn't think Carter would be totally in to the rides, but he wanted to do it all. Josh had so much fun flying high in the helicopter & airplane rides, and didn't seem nervous at all (also a surprise).

I tried to keep Carter under control by putting him on my shoulders. That lasted a whopping 20 seconds. He didn't want to be held or in the stroller. Either he was walking, or he was screaming.

Katie mentioned that she never ate at the carnivals they went to growing up. Once I heard that, I knew we had to buy some type of nasty carnival food to make up for all those years. It was an easy decision for me to go for the fried Snickers. Heaven on a stick if you ask me. I think that all Snickers candy bars should be fried. Josh & Katie wouldn't touch it, but Carter and I downed it in under 37 seconds.

Big boy

2010-06-06T20:27:00.005-04:00

Joshua turned three years old. What a big boy! His birthday was on Friday, so Ryan and I switched our friends for babysitting co-op and had a birthday party for him with the kids. I wish we could've (or would've) invited more of his little friends but I don't think we could've handled more parentless kids, and I doubt the parents that don't do co-op would've wanted to hang out with a bunch of little kids on their Friday night (is this confusing?)... so we stuck with the co-op group. Anyway, the kids had fun, and Josh loved it. He surprised me when he willingly hugged and thanked all of his friends for their gifts, and he shared with all his new toys.

Funny story about his cakes. I told Josh the morning of his birthday I was going to make him a baseball cake. He was adamant against it, so I asked him what he wanted instead. He said he wanted a triangle cake with a big bunny on top...I asked about 5 times if that's what he wanted, and that morphed into him wanting a bunny cake. We looked online for bunny cake ideas, and we came across a video showing how to make these bunnies. We had to watch the video about three times for Josh, and he wanted the same color of bunnies as in the video. Thus Josh got pink and purple bunnies for his birthday cake.

Josh with his birthday presents.

Another funny story: The one thing Josh wanted for his birthday was Batman. He's never seen the show. We had a batman theme party, and Josh loved it. The morning of his birthday I asked him if he wanted me to find him a Batman show on the computer. He said, "No, Batman would scare me."

Still celebrating the birthday boy, we were planning on going to the beach on Saturday. Ryan tucked Josh into bed Friday night and came out saying Josh was refusing to go to the beach. I had my suspicions about Ryan coaxing Josh into not wanting to go :), but in the morning Josh was still adamant about not going. We ended up going to the Children's Museum, and although we've been there a number of times, Josh was still heartbroken when we had to leave. After that, we ran to Target to pick up cute pictures of the boys and then headed to KFC (per my request) and then to McDonalds. After dinner we headed home and played in the kiddie pool Josh got for his birthday. The water was cold and the boys were freezing, but they ,and Matthew, (Josh's "best friend" from downstairs...Josh has about five besties) loved it. All in all we had a fun day together as a family , and I think Josh has gotten the age of three all figured out.

Swinging in a hammock at the Children's Museum.

Josh giving us his fake smile.

The boys freezing in the kiddie pool.

We Are Fam-i-ly!

2010-06-01T21:14:00.004-04:00

This was a regular occurrence with Josh and uncle Tom.

Josh and uncle Tom in Central Park. Right here, there was a completely white statue guy (honestly, he would even roll his eyes back so you only saw the whites of his eyes) that started following us. It was funny at first, but then we started getting nervous. Heh.

My brother, Tom, came out to visit a couple weeks ago. It was so much fun! I have to admit, I was excited, but I figured we'd all be exhausted at the end of the week. Usually guys are great fun, but they don't naturally think to help with the kids or clean up much (single guys, mind you). Perhaps my opinion is wrong, or my brother is just really awesome, because I think Tom was the most exhausted at the end of the trip. He helped clean and most of all, he entertained my kids whenever he was with us. Josh loved him the second he saw him, and there wasn't a time that he wasn't asking Tom to read to him, play swords, go in the fort, or look at something with him. Josh usually takes some time to warm up to people, but not with Tom. In fact, Josh didn't even acknowledge Ryan leaving for school when Tom was around, which shocked us all, since Ryan is Josh's favorite.
Thinking about it though....Tom might have been exhausted because New York is not a "vacation", it's a "trip". It includes a lot of public transportation using and walking, walking, walking . One day, Tom walked all the way from the ferry at the bottom of Manhattan to the temple (around 66th street)! He spent all day by himself, and he walked everywhere the whole day until I met him in the temple; and he saw a lot (Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, China Town, Times Square, etc)! I was really impressed and have made a new goal to walk more in Manhattan.
Anyway, we had a great time, and we miss having Tom around! (Except for the times Tom would poke me or kick my shoe off my foot....old habits die hard, I guess).

Cute Carter holding on in the subway. Safety is always our number one concern.

Tom and Josh spending quality time together in the fort.

Getting ready to take Tom to the airport...to Germany!

Five Years

2010-05-21T09:58:00.004-04:00

Today's our five year wedding anniversary. I think that we can now be considered "old-timers" with today's standards, right? It's been a great five years. It's been five years of learning, compromising, playing, laughing, hoping, and loving.There's a quote that someone gave us from Gordon B. Hinckley, the previous prophet from our church, and it says: "I believe in the family where there is a husband who regards his companion as his greatest asset and treats her accordingly; where there is a wife who looks upon her husband as her anchor and strength. The cultivation of such a home requires effort, and energy, forgiveness, and patience, love, and endurance, and sacrifice; but it is worth all of these and more."I love that. When we first got married and I read the quote, I was like, "Alright, Ry, I'm supposed to be your greatest asset!" But I didn't really think of my part in the equation....As life has moved forward, I've begun to learn that I have to improve myself first (which, surprisingly I have a lot of improvements to make :) before I can improve my marriage or family.I feel like this is a confessions of sorts, but I'd like to share a learning moment: One day Ryan mentioned something that he was frustrated with about me, but I knew I was in the right, and I was frustrated with him for not being more understanding. He let it go, and I went to get ready for the day. When I was alone, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was %100 wrong. I was not only taking advantage of Ryan, but I was being ungrateful while doing it. The worst part is that I was in the wrong for quite the extended period, and Ryan hadn't made a big deal about it. The whole time I had no idea I was being inconsiderate until that day (even though Ry had made hints, I just thought I knew better than he did, I'm mature like that). I felt pretty awful...and...humbled? I was grateful that Ryan had been so patient with me. Had roles been reversed, I would have been on his back trying to get him to "change". I've always been trying to learn how to relax the "high-nagging" mode I tend to be set on, but now I'm taking this quest seriously. To me, in that instance, Ryan showed true love ("wuv...twue wuv"). The love that isn't always fun (sorry, my fault), but that keeps things glued together. I love the "dating-I think-I'm-in-love" love and the "engaged-oh-man-this-is-it" love, but this "married-sacrificing-and-putting-up-with-each-other-best-friend" love is pretty awesome. And Ryan is pretty amazing. He's patient, he's much better at being non-judgmental than me, he's witty, he's smart, he's good looking (had to add that), he's in love with his two boys, and he's committed to our marriage, and I know it. What more could a girl ask for? Love you, Ry.

The Perfect Day

2010-05-08T09:32:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was a wonderful day. The kids were content, I was relaxed, and Ryan met up with us at 2pm. Couldn't ask for much better.
We have been with out a car for a week and a half. We've taken the bus to church, I've run with Josh in the jogging stroller to the grocery store, we've borrowed Catlin's double stroller (ours is in our car) to go to play at some parks, and we've stayed put at home. One thing I've realized is that we can still do a lot with out a car. The grocery store I go to is a little over 5 1/2 miles round trip, and what better way to get in a great work out, hang out with my buddy, and get groceries all at the same time than to jog there? Also, taking the bus to church took us 15 min. That's about 2 min longer than it takes us to drive there....that's what we'll be doing when we have visitors from now on.
That being said, I still feel a bit stranded with out a car. It's a lot more difficult to get around with two wee ones. Yesterday, I had had enough of that and borrowed Christy's double stoller (she drove it over to us, that was really really thoughtful) and headed on the bus, then ferry, to get to Manhattan. The boys and I went to Hecksher's Park, it's part of Central Park, and spent the whole day there. The boys loved it! They loved chasing after balls, digging in the sand, climbing around, and playing in the water. The weather was perfect; it was in the 70s with no humidity. When Ryan came, it just added that much more fun. Then to top it off, we grabbed some ice cream from a cart and watched part of a baseball game. Okay, it was a softball game. Ryan kept trying to tell Josh that it was a softball game because the ball was bigger, but Josh wasn't falling for it. He knew that ball was a baseball..."See it's a small ball, Dad? It's a baseball!" We headed home, had a quick dinner and bath, and put the kids down to bed. It was just what the doctor ordered.
I don't think I fully appreciate NYC. There aren't too many places that you can hop on a bus, then ferry, then subway to get to anywhere you want to go. There's so much history, shopping (not that I can afford it), great places to eat, an amazing park, great bridges, and the list goes on and on. So thank you, New York. I had a lovely day.

Proof

2010-04-21T21:34:00.003-04:00

Carter's a walkin' now a days. I love this stage where he's still wobbly. Here's a cute video of my two boys.

Happy Days

2010-04-17T21:06:00.005-04:00

Happy late birthday to me.

I never thought I'd walk the Brooklyn Bridge on my 25th birthday....with friends....because I live in NYC.....with two kids....because they're mine.

Never thought I'd come home to a clean house....because my husband cleaned it....even though he's really busy.....because he's busy studying. ;)

Never knew what it would feel like to be 25. Now I know and to tell you the truth, I'm satisfied; not because I've checked everything off of my "to do" list, but because I am happy with who I am as a person. And that feels good.

Happy day to all of you.

All about the man

2010-04-11T23:45:00.003-04:00

It's really really late, and yet here I am, blog surfing. I get sucked in and before I know it, it's past my bedtime. However, while blog surfing I found an old high school friend and his wife who wrote 100 things about their spouse and I thought it would be a fun venture....yes it's late and yes I might say weird things, but I'm stuck in that "too tired to get ready for bed" phase, so I'm doing it anyway.
1) Ryan sleeps well with the light on and me on the computer
2) He's nice and won't make me turn it off and stop typing
3) If he starts snoring all I have to do is tell him I'll scratch his back and he'll turn over
4) He thinks he's getting the better deal
5) He probably is
6) He loves to master cooking certain things: eggs, cakes, and cookies
7) He wins at everything
8) His friends always ganged up on him in high school to beat him in games and now I see why
9) He loves to play basketball on Saturdays
10) He won't miss it for anything
11) He's a people person
12) He's very intelligent
13) and witty
14) This is one of the reasons we got back together
15) I dated a guy who didn't get my jokes and I thought, "Oh man, where's Ryan when you need him?"
16) I love to hear him laugh
17) He loves to read
18) We love to read the same type of books (at least I like to think we do)
19) I love to discuss books with him
20) He doesn't like it when I give away endings to books
21) He's got a great singing voice
22) He thinks I'm biased
23) He does great with his dental patients
24) He knows how to interact with them well
25) Ryan is smart with money; I'm frugal
26) He was a great missionary
27) He loves to talk about his mission
28) He loves Brazil
29) He loves to eat Brazilian food
30) I love to hear about Brazil and all of his stories
31) Ryan doesn't like to dance but will when forced
32) Ryan will also perform magic tricks when asked
33) He also has a plethora of card tricks
34) The kids in Brazil loved him
35) He sang the Rainbow Connection to me in a Kermit voice on our first date
36) He held my hand on our first date
37) He gets his wit from his Grandpa Allen
38) Ryan gives good massages
39) This is another thing I missed when we broke up
40) Ryan is really good about my diabetes
41) He doesn't get bothered about me poking myself
42) and he remembers to take snacks in case my blood sugar goes low
43) This is another thing I missed when we broke up
44) There were a lot of reasons for me to get back together with him
45) Another reason is that he has a great family
46) He's very clean for a guy
47) He cleaned our house for my birthday
48) including the bathroom
49) something he said he'd never do again because I told him -once- he couldn't clean it :)
50) He's a master organizer
51) and he decorates the house more than I do
52) He tends to rearrange furniture
53) Whenever we watch t.v. he usually has the computer going as well
54) He doesn't like to go on walks
55) or take long drives
56) He likes to take the quickest route possible
57) Ryan's good at impersonations
58) The electric guitar is one of my favorite impersonations, also Scooby Doo
59)Ryan taught me how to do laundry better than I did before
60) He's very quiet about his opinions
61) probably because I'm loud with mine
62) Ryan loved high school
63) and still keeps in touch with a lot of his friends
64) Ryan had awesome friends in high school (he still has awesome friends :)
65) Ryan has a lot of quirky talents like rolling his stomach and walking on his toe-knuckles
66) The latter talent was performed at our ward talent show
67) He has also won best-dressed awards at our ward's 80's dance and Halloween parties
68) Ryan has beautiful blue eyes
69) and beautiful dark hair
70) and white skin that burns really easily
71) He freaks out when he gets burned because of bad past experiences
72) He ran a marathon with me because he wants to move to Germany when we're done with dental school (I told him he'd have to run one in order for me to move....never thought he'd actually do it)
73) although now he's trying to push for Italy
74) I think he should just be happy with Germany
75) He's very manipulative....or convincing
76) We'll probably end up in Italy
77) Ryan hates being told what to do
78) Ryan adores his boys
79) He's really good at working with them
80) He's helping Josh learn to read
81) and Carter learn to walk
82) The kids get so excited when he's home
83) I'm chopped liver once Daddy's home
84) Ryan listens really well
85) He remembers things I say
86) even though he struggles saying "mm hmm" after everything I say
87) because I love to talk to him
88) a lot
89) Ryan falls asleep easily
90) He loves to spend time with friends
91) He's really thoughtful about gifts
92) He's easy to please when being fed (for the most part)
93) He loves chips and salsa and Subway
94) He has written me some really sweet poems
95) He makes up stories for Josh at bed time
96) Ryan honors the priesthood and is genuinely good
97) Ryan supports me as a mother and in my calling
98) He doesn't get much free time once he's home
99) He is very good looking ;)
100) I love watching him talk about funny things and seeing his face light up and hearing him laugh at the funny parts.

Smorgasbord of happenings

2010-04-04T10:04:00.004-04:00

Life has been coming at us quickly the past few weeks it seems, and we still have a lot of fun busy-ness to come. (We have Easter, Carter's birthday 4/3, my birthday 4/8, Mother's Day, anniversary 5/21, Ryan's birthday 5/31, Josh's birthday 7/4, and Fathers Day...we like the spring). Carter took his first steps on St. Patrick's Day and is walking more and more every day. (I'll have Ryan post a video:). We also have been celebrating his birthday for the past couple of days. It was our turn for babysitting co-op (I highly recommend it) on Friday, so we decided to turn it into a birthday party for little Carter. We didn't end up doing much since we were busy watching a lot of kids...but we did open a few gifts and have birthday cake. (I also made wands, but they turned out to be more like whips....sorry parents:).Then Saturday we went to watch Ryan play football, opened more presents, had Carter's own personal cake, watched conference (a broadcast meeting of our LDS church, for those who might not know), dyed Easter eggs, tried to have dinner, and said goodbye to Ryan as he went to the priesthood session of conference. Sunday we celebrated Easter and enjoyed another day of relaxing and watching conference. We got little gifts from the Easter bunny (Ryan surprised me with a piano book and the Percy Jackson book series) and also spoke with Josh a little on why we celebrate Easter. I've come to love speaking with Josh about our Savior and about the gospel in simple terms that he can somewhat understand. The gospel is beautifully simple and also so profound. Simple enough for anyone to understand and yet so profound that we always have more to learn. I am so grateful for my Savior; that he suffered and died and was resurrected so that we might have joy in our lives, comfort when we face sorrow, and peace in the knowledge that we will all be resurrected.

Carter and his birthday cake. We couldn't get a straight shot of him smiling. He was done, so we had to jump and dance and pull funny faces to get any kind of smile.

Carter looks pretty happy with all of his presents. Thanks to all the grandparents for the packages and cards!

Carter entertaining the guests at his "birthday party".

One of the "guests" decided they wanted a bit of Carter's cake! And believe me, that cake took a lot of effort from a non-crafty person like myself.

The cute birthday boy.

Josh helped decorate the cake for the friends.

We are still alive

2010-03-23T10:11:00.004-04:00

We did it. We survived. I don't know if I would've said we'd survive the marathon the night before (we got to DC around 10:30pm), but we did. I absolutely loved it and want to run more. Ryan said "it was a good experience" and checked it off his to-do list. Here's a quick break down of events.

Like I said, we got a late start on Friday. Ryan didn't get back to Staten Island until 3pm, so I went with the boys to pick up Hasini (our wonderful babysitter) and then went to get Ryan. Due to traffic, we didn't leave the city until 4 something. It was not fun. We were traveling with our friends the Rasmussens, and after many many pit stops (mainly due to us) a late night dinner at Subway (we spent 40min trying to find an Olive Garden) and a venture through city roads (hoping it would be faster than the highway....it wasn't), we pulled into the hotel, more nervous than when we had started.I slept pretty well, all things considered, but Ryan was tossing and turning. We got up early, headed down to the lobby to meet up with our two friends (Ian and Conrad) a bit late....and headed out on the subway. By the time we got to the start line, Ryan, Ian, and I wanted to use the facilities. Conrad went ahead and we waited in line. By the time we were finished, the race had already been going for about 8 minutes. Then Ryan wanted to put his Nike chip in his shoe....I was going crazy. We were at the very very end of the race. In fact, all the marathoners were gone and we were with the half marathoners. I was already nervous about being slow and even finishing due to my sore hip and knee, so being at the back wasn't sitting well with me. It turned out to be great, though, because there were people slower than me, imagine that! We passed people most of the race, which felt really good. :)Ryan had talked me into running with him for at least until the half-way point (he wanted to go at a slower pace so he could finish...since he had only run up to 15 miles in training...should I be offended?), but we ended up running 21 miles together. The whole time we were talking, well mainly me to him, and I couldn't get over how great I felt. He kept me from going too quickly (he kept saying "calm down, calm down"), and my knee and hip weren't bothering me at all really. I was so surprised that I was feeling great and enjoying myself, that it made it all the more enjoyable. I guess if you go in with low expectations, anything better seems great! There were a lot of spectators cheering us on, times when loud music kept us going, and nice runners there to talk and laugh with. The weather was perfect. It started out in the high 40s and there was a slight breeze the whole time. It only started to get warm during the last 5 miles or so. Anyway, at mile 17, we were able to see our friends and babies. I tell you what, nothing is better than seeing your kids watching for you. We had to wait a minute or two because Josh was at the bathroom, but it was worth it to me.

Waiting for Josh. Look at that excitement!

We're so fast you could only get our back sides...:)

Around mile 20, Ryan started slowing a bit (remember he had only trained up to 15 miles), but I was still feeling good. I kept trying to urge him on, but I couldn't tell if he was annoyed (yes), if he'd rather me stay or go or what....so eventually I decided to keep up my pace and leave him at mile 21. Afterward he told me he was fine with it, so that's a relief! Once I left him, it got a bit harder. I no longer had anyone talk to, so I tried to force myself not to think. I felt great until about mile 24. There were some cruel race planners who placed hills at the end of the race. I was fine on the hills, but they looked intimidating. By mile 25 I was stuffed full of gel packs and powerade, but I still had a drink because of the advice to drink at every aide station....they probably didn't mean to do it if you were still full from the last station, but oh well. So the last mile, I trudged on, full of fluids, to my destination. Everyone always says the last mile is the hardest, and I've always felt that way too, so I kept telling myself that the finish line was really far away and to not think about it....should've rethought that strategy. It's really dumb to try and make yourself think you're really far away if you're actually pretty close...I came to mile 26 and thought, "Oh man, this next .2 miles is going to be so far". I thought I had to run into the stadium (why, I don't know), but around the curve was the finish line, so I was able to pick up some gusto for the end. It wasn't quite the Rudy experience I was expecting, but it felt great to finish.

I finished at 4:43 and Ryan came in at 4:52. We went back with our friends (Conrad was 3:48 and Ian 3:56 I believe) to the hotel, ate, and drove home that day. We were a bit sore that day and the next (and my knee was feeling it), but it wasn't anything like I thought it would be.
A big thanks goes to Hasini for watching our boys (she was awesome), and to the Packs and Rasmussens for helping out with the boys and praying for and supporting all of us.
I loved the experience. I never thought I would run a marathon, and I never thought I'd enjoy a marathon. I'm sure this all wouldn't have been so monumental for me if I had always been a runner, but I just feel good to have accomplished this goal at this point in my life. I never would have done this in high school (wouldn't have wanted to), but I've changed enough to become a person who would do such a thing now. It's kind of refreshing.

Help the poor girl!

2010-03-17T07:56:00.003-04:00

The marathon is a few days away and I'm starting to get a bit nervous. Nervous about the fact that I'm actually running a marathon, nervous that we're having a a young woman from church watch the boys for us at the hotel until she meets up with our runner-friends' wives (she'll be fine, I know), nervous that Ryan wants us to drive back that same day, nervous because my knee started hurting a couple weeks ago and it still hurts when I jog, nervous because Carter just came down with a gunky cold and isn't sleeping at night, and nervous because I have a sore throat that's lasted since last night....I'm beginning to wonder how many chips can be stacked against a normal non-marathon runner person before they back out....I'm sure true blue marathoners would not see these things as much of an obstacle, but to be honest, I'm not even a marathon runner yet!

Now I'm not backing out yet (I might just save that for tomorrow), but I need help if anyone has advice. I'm going to get a knee brace and take ibuprofen...anything else I can do for the knee? Any other last minute advice?

We'll get back to you to let you know if we survived the weekend. I'm betting 50/50 that we make it....

A few random smatterings....

2010-03-08T20:28:00.006-05:00

Ryan always laughs at my word choice, because a lot of the time I use big words in the wrong context. Smatterings is one of those words I'm not sure about, so just let it work, even if it doesn't.
In two short weeks Ryan and I will be running in a marathon.....that's a scary thought, believe me! I'm pretty sure I'll finish, but I don't know about my other goals: finish in 5 hrs; finish in 4.5 hrs (the 4.5 hr time is my ultimate goal). Sounds slow, yes, but I have short legs. It'll be great running in DC, though. We get to run past the Washington Monument and through the center of town. We're going down with our friends the Rasmussens and the Packs. They're all planning on going back home the same day, so Ryan wants to drive back to Staten Island the same day too (it's 3.5 hours away), and I'm thinking he's probably crazy. The others all have non-running drivers....actually, he probably will try and make me drive, but either way I think we're in trouble!
Life is good right now. It's pretty busy with church callings and school, but like my grandma always said, it's better to have too much to do than not enough.
I'm really grateful for my life. I'm not perfect (neither is my life) but I am so blessed. I've got an amazing husband who is fun and funny, I've got two sweet boys who make me smile and laugh each day, I've got wonderful parents [friends] who give great advice and support, I've got siblings who [hopefully] have forgiven me for my past sins :) and help me learn from their lives now, I've got an awesome family on Ryan's side who are giving and accepting, and I've got great friends, past and present. I'm also so grateful for the gospel. It gives my life purpose and understanding, and I am able to learn and grow in ways I couldn't on my own. We have a picture/quote thing :) that says: The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. It reminds me to be grateful for what I have today and to not worry about being perfect just yet. That's a good feeling to have.
And now for some things that make me very happy:

Carter sporting some 3D shades that Ryan and I got from "Alice in Wonderland". I liked the movie. I was expecting it to be really weird, so when it was simply weird I wasn't weirded out. Ha.

Josh's smile just makes me laugh. He's so good at smiling for the camera, and this was I think the third or fourth take for this pose. He's really trying to hang on to it. On a different note, we had spring break (end of February is a bit crazy) but didn't go anywhere. We broke out our tent and ate camping food. It was a lot of fun.

Carter's smile lights up his whole face.

Josh made this lion for our "craft day". He didn't like it at first until I showed him how to shake his mane.

Sick and Tired

2010-02-04T19:37:00.005-05:00

I thought that we might be lucky, that we had been passed by....not a chance. Our friends the Donovans had sick kids (i.e. throwing up all over the place kind of sick kids) about two weeks ago, and since then, I swear, the bug has spread like wildfire. (Not their fault, their kids were healthy once the next kid got sick.) Anyway, it seemed like it was going away, but Josh started throwing up last night.... Carter threw up just a bit, so I was hoping that he had the same thing and was just really tough, but tonight Carter can't keep anything down. Hmmm...should make this next night even more interesting than the last!

Hip, healthy Josh.

Josh during lunch today. He woke up once I took the picture.

A little somethin somethin

2010-02-02T09:27:00.002-05:00

Life is busy as a stay-at-home mom, I've decided....:) I'm sure the hubbies wonder what goes on all day (especially when the house is nice and dirty when they get home), but trying to clean, feed, dress, play, nap, and teach your kids takes a lot of work! It was brought to my attention (by a cute little 2 1/2 year old) that I spend too much time doing the "work" when my boys are awake and in need of some mom-time. Last night, I was getting the boys ready for bed (Ryan was still at school, blah) and as usual, I was in a rush to dress them, brush their teeth, read them stories...you all probably know how it goes. While I was getting Josh dressed, though, instead of wrestling his pajamas onto his skinny arms and legs, I started tickling his belly and singing to him. (Usually, I have half of my brain devoted to Josh and the other half devoted to Carter, but I made myself pay all of my attention to Josh....Carter was safe, heh.) He crawled into my lap and snuggled up to me and put my arms under his legs so I would hold him "like a baby". He and I cuddled for a few songs with him sweetly smiling (I'm not making this up!), and then Josh calmly went to bed, and I could tell he felt satisfied and knew that his mom loved him. :) Makes me wonder how many special bonding moments I've missed! My new goal is to use my time a bit more efficiently (i.e. cut out the t.v. marathon after the boys go to bed, perhaps get up earlier....perhaps) so that I'll be more available to my boys' little needs and wants, instead of being tied to the laundry, and so I'll have more bonding moments with my kids. Nothing like a good cuddle to remind me to get my priorities straight!

I love watching the boys play with their dad. He's so goofy with them, and they love it! Nothing beats having a dad, or a good lookin' hubby, like Ryan. :)

Hat picture...I tell you what, I would love to have a little girl someday, but I love having a crazy house full of boys.

One night I went to help Josh in the bathroom, and I left the tub of desitin on the floor in the boys' room. As I was helping Josh (I must of only had 25% of my brain devoted to Carter at that time), I was thinking that Carter was being really quiet, which is not his style, and decided to go in and check on him. You can't really tell from the picture, but the desitin was about a 1/4 inch thick on his face (or maybe 1/8 of an inch but 1/4 sounds better), on the rug, and all over the floor. While I was taking pictures, Josh was cleaning....you can see him in the background.

Okay, okay, I'll do it....

2010-01-16T21:29:00.006-05:00

It's definitely Ryan's turn to do a blog post, but since a lot of women do not have the luxury of a blogging husband, I'll give in and post again, even though it really is Ryan's turn to post. This will be short and sweet, but at least we'll be back in the blogging world, right?

We had such a good time in Utah for Christmas. We were able to go to Bear Lake for Christmas with Ryan's family, and we were able to go to the homecoming/farewell of my two brothers the next week with my family. Josh still talks about his family in Utah and says, "Remember when we flew on a plane, Mommy? To Utah? Remember?"
Some of my favorite memories from our trip:
-Josh not being as hesitant as usual. He was screamin' and hollerin' and having a grand ol' time. It sounded so good to hear him like that around other people. Normally he's very reserved.
-Carter crawling the day after Christmas.
-Being able to see cousins and family I don't usually get a chance to see.
-Spending Christmas at Bear Lake (Josh was excited to go to a lake with bears) and hearing grandpa Allen tell his version of "A Christmas Story".
-Seeing both brothers at the same time! Could've only been better if Erin and her gang were there.
-Playing games with my family and Jeff's pre-mission "friend". Lots of laughs.

Josh and Carter sporting their Thomas the Train Engine pajamas from Grandma and Grandpa Allen. Ryan and I sporting our Christmas pjs at his parent's cabin Christmas morning. It was great having Christmas at the cabin. No one could leave :), so we were able to spend a lot of time together.

Silly, silly Carter.

Cousin Hayden and Josh playing around with Aunt Nikki.

Josh loved Avery's helmet and goggles. She was sweet and let him use them for quite a while.

Ryan and Josh getting ready to play in the snow at the Allen's. We started building a fort, and I'm pretty sure Ryan was more excited than anyone else. Josh loved sledding and throwing the snow at his dad.

Carter and me for our "Christmas" at home. Since we left early for Christmas in Utah, we opened presents early at home. Honestly, the day I wrapped the presents, Ryan came home and tried to convince me we should open them.
My mom's family Christmas party. It was a lot of fun to see everyone, exchange marvelous white elephant gifts, and laugh about 2010 predictions.

Ryan and Josh our "Christmas" morning. Actually, it was Sunday afternoon.

How many pics can one post hold...

2009-12-10T19:50:00.008-05:00

Man, it seems if you let things go for a little while, there's no catching up! I guess I'll just do a quick catch-up--more pictures, less talk--that'll make things better.

We had a great Thanksgiving. We hosted it at our apartment this year. We had 16 adults (4 missionaries, need to make sure they're covered) and 9 kids/babies. It was a little cramped, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I cooked the turkey and Ryan helped with the gravy, and I made pretzel salad. Everyone else brought the rest. I think I'll invite friends over every year, because it was so nice to not worry about the other food items. My turkey gave me enough grief.....Funny story, all the women will gasp.....So this was my first year cooking a turkey. I called my mom the evening before Thanksgiving to see when I should take the turkey out of the freezer to defrost. Yes, the night before. After gasping herself, my mom proceeded to tell me that turkeys take a few days to defrost, not hours. Thank goodness for the internet! I looked online and learned that you can defrost a turkey in around 10 hrs if you stick it in a sink of cold water. That's what I did, and we magically had a pretty good "first" turkey the next day. This day was a good reminder of how grateful I am for the gospel. All of our friends on Thanksgiving were from our ward. We love them as our family-from-home, and I'm grateful to have a church organization that helps us connect to great people.

We're going home for Christmas this year, in a little over a week. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone! Every time I ask Josh what he wants for Christmas, he says, "A bow and arrow and scary eyes." I don't know if that means he'll have scary eyes when he uses the bow and arrow, but I do know that he'll be one happy little guy when he gets his little bow and arrow. It's so nice to have a simple, sweet Christmas with little kids. He probably won't be so satisfied when he gets older, but maybe we'll luck out. One thing we've tried to do to remember the real reason of Christmas is to talk about Jesus' birth. Josh loves to talk about baby Jesus, but he will fight you to no end on who's birthday is on Christmas: his. I guess that makes sense, since he's getting the presents...Anyway, I've always loved Christmastime, especially the commercial part, and my parents will tell you, I've always loved the presents. I love the smells of Christmas, I love the music, the decorations, and the old-fashioned feel of Christmas. I do, I love it all, but now I wish the world would go back to some of the old-fashioned values and remember what Christmas is truly all about: our Savior's birth. I'm grateful for good parents who've always tried to stress the true meaning of Christmas in our home, and I'm now trying to do that with our children. I'm grateful for His love and for the miracle of His birth. Luckily, we have wonderful friends who are great examples of how to live more like the Savior, so I know our children have many great people to learn from. Merry Christmas!

P.S. Don't mind the mixed-up assortment of pictures, please.

Josh and Ryan decorating "Santa's house". Josh made sure we knew it wasn't a gingerbread house, it was Santa's house, and he was inside talking to people.

Here's a cute little present to put under the Christmas tree....

Josh and Ryan put on a lot of Christmas lights on the tree. I don't know if Ryan thought that meant he wouldn't have to put any lights up outside, but if so, he's wrong. :)

While the boys were putting the lights on the tree, Josh kept tangling himself up in the lights on purpose and going over to the wall to check it's heart beat.

Carter hard at work....actually, he's become dangerous in his walker. He'll grab anything he can, including the rack that holds the silverware and bananas. (Or I guess I should say, used to hold the bananas. Now the garbage holds those.)

I asked Ryan to take a picture of Josh after we got home from church because I thought he looked so cute. Little did I know Ryan did a whole photo shoot. Josh will basically pose however you ask, nowadays, as long as he can look at the pictures after.

The "guys", Thanksgiving night. Grant, the one in blue, was very uncomfortable in this picture, which made it even more funny.

The cute girls, Thanksgiving night. I was the tallest one there; it felt really good, oddly enough.

Ian and Christy Rasmussen. Very social, up for any kind of party.

Carter, Ryan, and Katie Allen. Lovers of food and games.

Aleisha, Grant, and baby Garret Peterson. Enjoy good conversation and competition (at least Grant likes a little comp).

Catlin and Joseph Gedge. (Obviously not pictured). Awesome neighbors and fellow game players.

Missionaries. Good guys, and deserve to eat as much as they can.

I was cleaning in the kitchen and walked into the living room to see both boys reading a book. Priceless.

You can get this little stink to pose in any way....:)

Welcome home!

2009-11-30T20:33:00.004-05:00

I have some more exciting news, even more exciting than running a marathon :). My brother Tom is back from his mission! He flew home from Germany on Friday (nice scheduling, eh?) and is trying to adjust to "normal life" in Utah. I was able to talk to him on Sunday, and it was really nice. We're excited to go out to Utah for Christmas and see him! Although, we're kind of sad, too, because it will be our last visit before my brother Jeff leaves on his mission to the Phillipines! I'm so proud of Jeff for going. It'll be great, right RMs?

Announcement

2009-11-24T20:08:00.004-05:00

No, it's not anything to do with babies...but it's similar in a lot of ways: It's exciting but scary at the same time; it takes a while to prepare for it; after it you need time to recover; it takes a lot of will power to make it through; it's painful; some people think you're crazy for doing it, but you're glad you did it anyway; and despite all the difficulties, it's totally worth it!

Yep, I'm running a marathon! Woohoo...:) I never did sports in high school, and I never ran more than a couple miles until I got to college, so thinking of running a marathon always went like this, "Wow, that's so awesome that people can do that. Good for them. I'll never do that." I just thought that despite how amazing it was for people to complete marathons, I'd never be able to do something like that. Well, you only live once, and no one else is going to do cool things for you, so you might as well do awesome things yourself, right? I really hope I make it through, and if I do, I think it will be one big check mark off of my pretend bucket list.

The marathon is in Washington DC, on March 20th, a Saturday, and it's a good, mild course...I know the first 13 miles, because I ran my 1st half marathon there. I have to admit, it's really neat to run past all of the sites that are in DC, but I distinctly remember when we halfers split away from the marathoners, I was so very happy. That won't be my feelings this time...they might come closer to dread, but I'm going to work on my mental strength...haha. My first goal is to actually finish the marathon, my (hopefully) attainable goal is to finish in 5 hours (hey, it's my first, who knows what will happen), and my ultimate (but hopefully attainable) goal is to finish in 4 hrs 30 min. Wish me luck!

Oh, and if anyone wants to join me, or cheer me on, Washington DC would be an awesome place to do it!

This is after my half marathon in DC. Hmmm, maybe by our fourth child I'll have to run a Century. Hah.

Sleepy Hollow

2009-11-19T08:19:00.013-05:00

A week and a half ago we decided to take a little trip upstate. We had heard that Sleepy Hollow was a cool place to visit, so we packed up and took off. Our friends the Gedges decided they would like to come as well, which we were excited about. The next time we do a trip like this though, Joseph isn't leading. He took us over the Brooklyn Bridge and across and up Manhattan. I still don't know why we went that way, but they're the ones with the GPS, right Joseph?

Lunch was a disaster. Why do we keep thinking that going to lunch with 4 adults and 4 kids, all of whom are 2 and under, would ever be easy? But once we started walking around and looking at the sites, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Josh and Matthew had fun playing in the leaves, especially Matthew.

Here is where the bridge was in the story of the Headless Horseman, by Washington Irving. There is a little wooden bridge off on the side, which borders a little lake. On the other side of a lake was a cool old manor. Unfortunately we were there too late to go and check out the buildings.

As I was looking up more info on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I found some interesting things. One of which was the inspiration for the name Ichabod Crane. Washington actually knew an Army Colonel with the same name, from...... Staten Island.

Here is the old Dutch Church, right by the bridge and the cemetery. We went inside where they were having an organ concert. It was pretty cool. I must admit that my first thought was "Rameumptom". Anyone?

Here we are in the cemetery. The picture of all of us is right by the burial site of Washington Irving. We found out that there were lots of famous people buried there, like: Elizabeth Arden, members of the Astor family, Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, William Rockefeller & of course Washington Irving.

Walking around the cemetery. We were hoping that the leaves would still have some color to them. We were a little disappointed when we got there and most of the color was gone. Oh well, maybe next year.

Sick days

2009-11-09T20:45:00.005-05:00

Man, tis the season for being sick! Josh came down with the croup two Thursdays ago. When we put him to bed, he was just fine, but when we got him up at 10:30pm to go to the bathroom (love potty training), he was having a hard time breathing and couldn't talk. I called my mom, and we looked online, and all of his symptoms pointed to croup. So for that first night, Ry and I took turns sleeping with the little guy.....

Hahahahahaha. Okay. I just realized I already told this story in the last post. This makes a good point, though: I've been exhausted! Josh got sick, then Ry, then me, and then Carter.....Yes. The baby. Once the toddler and baby get sick, you can say goodbye to sleep. Carter's been waking up about three to four times a night. One night, he was fussy from 3:45am on. (I'm sure the moms with teeny new babies are just rolling their eyes right now). What can I do but go comfort my sick baby? I mean, I've gotten a dry throat at night, so I'm sure he has, and what can he do about it, besides cry for mom? (Which he does. Who can say no to "mama. mama. mama. mama."?)

This has led to us not doing much. Josh and Ryan stayed home from church the first week, then this past Sunday Carter, Josh and I stayed home. It was so. not. fair. Josh was going to go with Ryan until his cough came back and he had a fever. No rest for mom. I hope Ryan payed attention in church! Anyway, I've already learned to do with out eight hrs of sleep ever since I had our first born, but I've noticed that lack of sleep to this extent has caused me some problems, such as:

-Not being able to get out of the mall. I spent 20 mins. trying to remember what side of JC Penney I needed to get out of in order to get to our car. I couldn't even find the section we came in. Ever. So I went out one set of doors that looked familiar, since it was past bedtime at this point, and walked around the mall, outside, in the cold wind, to get to our car.
-Not calling my brother on his birthday. I've totally forgotten the calendar days, but still, that's a big deal to miss such a thing. He'll never turn 19 again! He's going to the Philippines on his mission, by the way. Good thing I got him a pilot hat for those cold nights in the Philippines! (Average temp. for the whole year is 88 degrees). :)
-Not being able to understand instructions. I was asked to give a talk at an "emergency preparedness" meeting this last Saturday. The Sis. who asked me to speak emailed me some information. I couldn't understand it at all, what the point was, or how it made sense to what I was speaking on. English is her second language, so I figured it was just difficult for her. Nope. She copied and pasted the info from the institute manual. I started to piece things together on the fourth read-through.
-Forgetting our downstairs friend's name. (It's Joseph, by the way) This is particularly embarrassing when you're good friends, and your talking to the friend's wife about him...I came up with it in a minute or so.
-Typing up a new blog post about the exact same thing you typed about in the last blog post. I was even thinking, "Oh, I've got to mention Halloween!"

I'm not the only tired one though, and once Ryan gets home to help me, I'll have video and pictures to prove it. :)

And as a side note, Ryan told me there is such a thing as a delete key, that I didn't have to leave my retold first paragraph in the post...but where's the fun in that?

Halloween and other things

2009-11-01T19:18:00.009-05:00

For Halloween this year, Josh wanted to be a "scary ghost". I kept asking what he wanted to be and that was his response every time, except for the day he came home from Lexi's birthday party with pirate garb...that time he wanted to be a pirate. I have to proudly admit, I made his little costume, as homely as it may be. I'm not one of the crafty, decorate the nursery, make artistic dinners kind of mom, so with Catlin's help, I made a ghost costume. Josh was a pretty cute ghost, even with the costume. :) The week before Halloween, we went to the ward trunk or treat. I used to think those were lame, but now with little kids, I love them. Carter was Winnie the Pooh (I got the costume from his baby shower), but he didn't love it. Most babies don't seem to like the idea of uncomfortable costumes...hmm. Josh seemed to enjoy it, but he really enjoyed the actual day of Halloween.
Poor thing, Josh came down with the croup Thursday night. It was pretty scary. I woke him up around 10:30pm to take him to the bathroom, and he was wheezing and had a barking cough. We took turns sleeping with him that night (Ryan was so nice and held him on the couch for hours) to make sure he didn't die on us, and luckily the next day was a bit better. On Halloween, though, we didn't do much and had to miss a fun birthday party; but we decided to let him go trick or treating to a few houses. He loved it! He held my hand the whole time, went up and knocked on the doors, and said "trick or treat" even repeating himself if needed, and then said "thank you" at each door. For my quiet little Josh, that's quite a big deal! We went with Catlin (the Gedge's live beneath us) and her son Matthew while our hubbies stayed home with the babies. Matthew was hilarious, bouncing around, not wanting to wear his costume, etc. It's fun to see the different personalities of little kids. I tell you what, they come as they are and there's not much you can do to change it! After trick or treating, we went back home and had chili and watched Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. It was a good night for us.
On a different note, I just finished a personal progress value project. For those who don't know, personal progress is kind of like boy scouts but for young women in the LDS church. You complete different "experiences" and value projects (projects are 10 hrs long) designed to help you progress in different values. The values are: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity, and virtue. Okay, enough of the introduction. I decided for my one of my projects, I was going to exercise at least 1/2 hr every day, except for Sunday, and record my food intake for two weeks. I couldn't have snacks unless my blood sugar went low (gotta love diabetes!) and I ended up counting calories as well. I am really surprised how it went. I've always felt like I've had a good grasp on eating healthy, since I'm always counting carbs, but I was surprised at the amount, or lack of, calories in certain foods. I also couldn't believe how many calories I add on from my mindless snacking. No wonder I was having trouble losing the last few pounds of baby weight! I'm relieved to be done with the project, because it was a lot of accountability (guess the value), but I really think it opened my eyes a lot.

Along with that project, I've come up with a few more I want to do: run a marathon, memorize a song to sing and play on the piano, memorize the world countries, and make some church folder games for my boys. Surprisingly (I've used that word quite a bit), I've been really excited to do these things. Every once in a while I think, "man, I'd like to do that" or "I'd like to know those things", but that's as far as I'd go. I'd think about marathon runners and about how I'd never be able to do that, but to think I'll actually train and run a marathon myself, or work to learn all the countries in the world is really invigorating. I'm really glad that I've been able to get the motivation, and excuses (ever feel like there's not enough time), to do some personal growing from Personal Progress. It really is an inspired program.Here Carter's pretending to be in the spirit of Halloween and Ryan's not even pretending. Last year he was Napolean Dynamite...I vote for a redo, Ry! Josh found his old bee costume and had to wear it.

I don't think Carter liked the prunes....

Josh wanted to wear Carter's hat. In fact, he wore it to the park the other day. Better get him a hat of his own.

Just a cute picture of my sweet baby.

Workout Videos

2009-10-31T20:09:00.004-04:00

I'll be honest, I can't understand workout videos. Katie's tried bribing me to do them with her. I just feel silly.

For those who know my wife, I'd think you'd have to admit how impressive it is the amount of time she spends working out. I'm lucky in a week if I exercise 1/50th as much as she does. She is crazy, though not certifiably. She's going to be running marathons into her 60's, while I'm in a walker.

Here is her most recent purchase off Ebay:

There's only one workout series that I could watch and do over and over. Body Flex with Greer Childers. This woman is amazing, see for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyxpXgS5deU&feature=related

The reason I bring this up is because of a guy I saw on the subway the other day. He was watching a workout video on his iPod, sitting there on the #4 train. I spent a good 15 minutes watching him, and trying to come up with a single reason as to why he was watching that video. I came up with exactly... none.

Like I said, I can't understand workout videos.

Under Construction

2009-10-13T19:19:00.001-04:00

We're in the process of updating our blog. We lost all the links to friends blogs, so if you feel yours should be on here, post a comment with your blog address. Don't be shy.

Also, if your blog is private and you'd like to invite us so that we can read it, ryanballen(at)gmail(dot)com & katiefallen(at)yahoo(dot)com. If you're reading ours, isn't it fair that we can read yours? :)

In other news, Carter has started trying to scoot around, Josh is trying to poop in the potty, and Katie is trying to keep from going crazy due to all the poop that doesn't end up in the potty.

Finally

2009-09-10T22:05:00.021-04:00

Don't you just get the worst feeling towards the end of any vacation? Who really ever wants to go back to real life and everything that comes with it. It's so nice as an adult to go back and stay at your parents house, where the cooking & cleaning are all done for you. Not only that, but you have a default, handy babysitter for the kids when you have spur of the moment activities. I could never be a mother, they get no credit. Thanks Mom.

Well, now we're back from our extended trip from Utah, with lots of pictures to show for it. Let's goooooooooooo.

Let's start off with a couple dandies: Fake smiles all around. First Hayden on the left, then Josh on the right.

How about a trip to the coolest children's museum in all of Utah, the Treehouse:

What would a trip to Utah be without fireworks, right?

Hanging out with some old high school friends. Aaron & Heidi, Kayla & Brandon, and Christy (solo this time). Josh, Austin, Zack & Cole all enjoyed feeding the ducks & playing on the benches. At the end, Josh learned what it means to be a leader, and a man. Holding other dudes hands and showing them where to walk... He was actually too good of a leader, as you can see in the action shot, Austin is face-planting because Josh was pulling too fast.

Carter & Gavin were also good sports, giving us their best staredowns:

Lots of good times were had on our little trip back to Utah. One of the events that Katie was most excited about was the Top of Utah half-marathon. Somehow, I've no idea how, Katie was able to convince me that I could do it, and that it would be fun. In preparing for the race, I made a few goals for myself:

1 - Don't be a wimp. If you start the race, you finish the race.
2 - Let's be honest, if you're going to say you ran a half-marathon, don't you think you should actually run it? Otherwise you just finished a half-marathon.
3 - If you could run a mile in less than 5:30 in high school, shouldn't you be able to run at least a 9 minute/mile pace? Thus setting my finishing goal at under 2 hours.

The day before the race Katie approached me very politely, and asked me a question, obviously afraid of offending me. "Would you be mad if after the first half of the race I press on without you? I want to see how well I can do." To which I just laughed. I was getting ready to ask her the same question...

Well the morning of the race came, and the bus ride up to the starting line was waaaaaaay longer than I thought 13.1 miles would be. For goodness sake, it felt like it took us 45 minutes to DRIVE it. Doubt started creeping in, as did a little IBS. I had to make 3 bathroom trips in the hour prior to the race. TMI I know.

Before we knew it we were off and running. My first thoughts were a little rude. I mean honestly, who thought it would be a good idea to put 1,000 people at the FRONT of the pack who were WALKING after the first mile. It was madness trying to navigate around these people. If you know you run a 20 minute mile, let's start a little further back in the pack.

So Katie and I are cruising along, feeling good. Around mile 6 we each picked out a person that we wanted to beat. Around mile 7 our pace was not quite fast enough for us to keep up with the guy I selected, so I was forced to speed up, slowly leaving Katie and the target she was locked into. It was about that time that my competitiveness kicked in. "Heck," I said to myself, "I'm not letting anyone behind me beat me to the finish line." Easy to say at the halfway mark. Within a couple miles 2 50 year old women went cruising past me. Again I had to speed up a little to stay with them. I thought if I could stay within 50 yards of these out of control grandmas, I would be able to reel them in within the last mile. True enough, in the last half mile I passed grandma #1, and within the last 100 yards I passed grandma #2. However I did get overtaken by a teenage girl with about 20 yards to go. Big mistake on her part, as I had just enough in the tank to sprint past her 5 feet from the finish line!

I'm proud to say that I completed all of my goals. I finished the race, I ran the whole time, I did it under 2 hours (with an average time of 8:59/mile), and nobody passed me after the halfway mark.

Here's the proof. My cousin Kylee (who didn't train at all and ran it), Erika (who hardly trained and ran it), me (who half-way trained and ran it), & Katie (who trained the most and ran it. I think Katie could've completed another half marathon that night. The rest of us were dying).

Here are the Allen kids. Ashley, Nicole, Erika & Me. We'll never know how Ashley & Nicole would've done. They stopped around mile 10 to carry this kid to the finish line. I think he was faking it so that he could get Ashley's phone number. Why didn't I come up with something that clever in high school?!?

Livin' it up Utah style

2009-08-20T17:08:00.005-04:00

The boys and I, minus Ryan, have been visiting with my family for the past week. We're out here in southern Utah for two weeks while Ryan studies, in New York, for the boards. This is the major test he takes in order to be a legitimate dentist. I don't know whose idea it was to have me fly cross country solo with two boys ages two and 4 months, but let me tell you, it was a bad one. Okay, so it was actually Ryan's idea. The flight was five hours long: the first hour went well, the middle three went bad, and the last hour went well compared to the middle three. Honestly, though, the boys did well all things considered. The nice guy who sat next to us kept telling me what a wonderful mom I was which made me feel better. It wasn't all bad, though....in mental preparation for, and as consolation after, the flight, I bought myself some nice running shorts.
This leads me to another bad idea...Ryan and I signed up to run the Top of Utah half marathon in Logan on the 29th of August. A lot of Ryan's family is running in it, so they convinced us to run it. Luckily I've had a great running partner here in Cedar: my brother Jeff. In fact, I convinced him to run the race as well. We've made it up to running nine miles (okay, so I've made it to nine miles. Jeff could do more, but he's nice and sticks with me) and on Saturday we're going to run 11 miles, so I'm hoping I won't die in the race. The verdict is still out on that one. But just to reiterate this fact--Jeff is a great running partner. He keeps me going, but he doesn't push me (very much appreciated), he pretends not to notice that I'm out of shape, and he's easy maintainance because he's in shape, unlike me.
Actually, he's also just a great brother. It's been fun hanging out with him this trip. He's been watching my kids (Josh has decided he likes Jeff more than me), and we've gotten to talk a lot and do a lot of things. He sure is a great kid.
Another shout out goes to my dad. He's watched the kids every time we've gone running. He's had to pull out all the stops to keep my boys entertained. No wonder they love their grandpa. And my mom--Josh has finally warmed up to her (he still remembers when she came to visit when Carter was born...she was nice and did the disciplining for me since I couldn't move much). But I tell you what, Carter took to her right off the bat! He saves his biggest smiles and coos for grandma, honestly. Now that Josh has gotten over his temper tantrum throwing transition to Utah time, he's having a blast. My parents have a yard, a sandbox, and a basement--things I really miss...things Josh will really miss here in a couple more weeks.
The one thing missing here, though, is daddy. Josh misses Ryan a lot. He talks to him on the phone every day, for as long as I'll let him. We'll be glad when we can trade in the phone for the real thing.

New Running Shoes

2009-07-31T22:09:00.008-04:00

So a couple of months ago Katie got all excited about a race she wanted to run in Central Park. She spread the word around the ward, and got others excited. Promises were made, "I'll do it if Ian does it," I said, to which Ian replied "I'll do it if Charles does it," to which Charles replied... You get the idea. So with my guys backing me, I told Katie I would run in her 4 mile race. Perfect excuse for new shoes, right? So I ran a few times before the race to break them in and to get my fat butt into shape.

Race day comes, and what's this? Ian & Charles didn't register? What? I'm the only guy in our ward running it? Thanks a lot. In Charles' defense, he came and watched all the kids. Anyway, long story short, I totally amazed myself. I ran a 9 minute mile pace, and was not even tired after the race. Not the greatest time, but hey, it far exceeded my expectations. Katie finished a couple minutes after, followed shortly by Jamie & Rachel. All in all it was a good experience. We'll see if this continues. Katie told me that if I run a marathon before I graduate, she'll move to Germany with me. Hmmm.

In other news, Josh is a true New Yorker. I find the NY accent so difficult to imitate. He sure seems to do well with it. I'm truly amazed that he's picked it up. Where in the world would he hear it? None of his little friends have the accent, nor does anyone else that he spends 99% of his time with. Here's the proof:

Our little Carter is getting so big. I guess I should say he is still big. But he is such a sweet little guy. He's always happy, and is so much fun:

Josh loves his little brother and always wants to be with him. Likewise Carter loves Josh.

Modest is hottest

2009-07-05T20:21:00.004-04:00

So this past week in Young Womens we had a chastity lesson. In the adult session of our stake conference, our stake president said that we aren't teaching our children enough about chastity and said because there's so much going on now in the world, that we need to have frank talks with our children about what is okay and what isn't. (Luckily we can wait for a while before having the talk with Josh). Anyway, this led to a lesson coming from the stake that we taught last week and today. Part of the lesson focused on modesty, so I had Ryan and my counselors' husbands come in to talk to the girls about what modesty means to a guy. I thought what Ryan said was really telling of what great girls he hung out with in high school. He told the young women that he didn't really hang out with immodest girls because all of his girl-friends (is that how you write non girlfriend girlfriends?) were modest. He said that because they were modest, he was able to get to know their personalities, like who they were as individuals (the guys were explaining that a lot of boys don't care about anything but looks and kissing in high school), and appreciate their intellect. He also said that he respected his friends because of their modesty. I can't repeat it like he said it, but it was neat to hear how important his girl-friends were to him and what a positive impact they made on his life. Thanks for your examples!

Late night picture of the new -do. See, Ryan respects me too because I throw random shirts over my shoulders to be modest. Besides the fact that it does wonders for my complexion.Carter pooped all over his one outfit at my friend Rachel's house, so he got to sport a lady's onesie for a while. He didn't seem to mind....although I have to admit, there's no way he could pass for a girl--he's too manly!My real-to-life photo shoot. Josh has entered the stage where nothing is safe from his curiosity. Today when he was supposed to be napping, I found his clothes all over his bed with him sitting in the top drawer of his dresser....

Kids!

2009-06-28T22:03:00.004-04:00

Man, we haven't posted for a while! Things are going well, we're basically moved into our new apartment, except for the odds and ends that will probably stay unorganized for a good amount of time...The boys are doing well. Josh is so funny, today I was singing him a song, and it wasn't the one he asked for, so after I finished he said, "Silly mommy. This is how it goes:_____" And he proceeded to sing the right song. He also is kind of a shy dude (but he's getting a lot better), so when people come over (for example, Wes) he'll say, "I scared of Wes." and I'll explain to him that he's not scared, probably just shy. So then he'll say, "Yes, I shy of Wes. I shy." It is so cute. And for our Mr. Carter, he is just one jolly little guy, always calm and smiling....except when he's at church or plugged up (sorry Carter, but it's true). Then you had better cover your ears because, I tell you what, this kid can scream! I think he's getting the reputation of being the screamer at church, so I doubt anyone would believe how happy he is, but at least I get to teach YW and have Ryan being the one to walk the halls with him.
Let's see, what else? Hmm, I dyed my hair a dark brown. Well, actually my friend Rachel did the dying, but I really like it. Maybe it's because it was purple for a couple of days before it got to the dark brown, and because I don't have 2 inches of roots showing anymore, but I'm pretty sure I just like it.
Anyway, we got the boys' 2 yr old and 2 months old pictures taken, and of course I like them. Kind of funny, though, Josh was being "shy"- no, he was scared this time, and was crying and causing all sorts of a fuss. The nice photographer was great and eventually got him to smile, but you can kind of tell he's still a bit hesitant with it all. And poor Carter was woken up from his nap, so every time she'd try to pose him, his head would start drooping. We kept yelling and poking him and clapping and looking like idiots, but he could not perk up. It was hilarious. We'd get the perfect pose, but by the time the photographer would get out of the way, Carter was face down. I loved it. I guess it just makes it real to life, right? But here are a couple of them.

What a week!

2009-06-07T22:21:00.007-04:00

I got tired of moving pictures around, so sorry about the array of out-of-order pictures.

Carter in his blessing outfit.

He's getting to be so big!

Josh blowing out Dad's birthday candles.

Josh smiling with his new baseball mitt. Yeah, that's a basketball. We couldn't find his baseball...

Man, it has a been a busy week! Full of good things to make us busy, but busy still the same. We've been celebrating continually since May 21st, our anniversary. That day was lame-o, since Ryan had to go to school, but that's okay, we'll get 'em next year. On the 31st, we celebrated Ry's birthday. We had a barbeque for him and some friends (who had birthdays too) that Saturday, and then had cake and a special dinner that Sunday with his family and the elders. (His family flew in last Sunday night to be here this Sunday for Carter's blessing...) Then on Wednesday, Ry's little brother Matt turned 13, and the next day Josh turned 2. For Matt's birthday, we made brownies and played a game of Settlers--thrilling, huh? Sorry Matt. :) Hopefully you'll get a big birthday bash at home...For Josh's birthday, we opened presents in the morning, said goodbye to the fam (they went to the city and Ry went to school), and headed out to the park. Luckily Josh is easy to please. He loved the baseball mitt and ball we got him, so he was happy. Yesterday, I picked up my dad and brother Jeff at the airport, and we all went into Manhattan to celebrate Jeff's graduation from high school. Man, I get tired just writing this down!
Today we blessed Carter, the main event that everyone came out for. He was so cute. We had bought his blessing outfit a while back, and I was afraid it would be too big for him, but it was quite snug. :) He was quiet through the whole blessing, he had just eaten so he was content, and at the end when Ryan held him up, he was just wide-eyed and bushy tailed. (Isn't that the saying?) When we got home after all of church, we had roast beef and mashed potatoes, with corn, salad, crescent rolls, and blueberries. Then we had Josh blow out the candles on his birthday cake, which he had been waiting to do for a few days.

In the midst of all of this, we found a new apartment and will now finish the moving process we tried to start last month. Phew! I remember my parent's somewhat laughing at me when I told them I was SO busy in college. They told me, "Just wait!" I figured they didn't know what they were talking about, but I've started to change my mind....

Josh as a baby. I think he and Carter look a lot alike, don't you?

Josh at one year.

Josh being his thoughtful self at the mature age of two.

Hiatus

2009-06-04T16:46:00.010-04:00

I recently took a little trip in the blogging world and noticed that our blog has fallen quite low on your lists, so here I am to bump it back up.

Life has been hectic for us all as of late. I had finals through May that kept me busy. I'm happy to report that it appears that I passed all of my classes for 2nd year. It also seems that I may have bumped up my GPA this year. I guess it would've been pretty hard to lower what I had before without failing classes, so that's not saying too much...

As previously mentioned by Katie, we have been in the process of moving. It has been very frustrating, as there is not much out there that fulfills our requirements for an apartment. I am to the point where I can't even look at our current upstairs neighbors without wanting to punch them in the face. My patience is spent. Luckily we found something yesterday that Katie can hardly believe existed in NY. Here are some pictures, what do you think?

Here's the closet in what will be the boys room:

The master bedroom:

Our closets:

The kitchen:

Bathroom:

Front room:

The pictures don't really show the size, but the rooms all have like 15 foot ceilings, so it seems huge. I'm really surprised that the owner would put so much effort into it. It's nuts! We also have a huge attic to store stuff, and our own washer/dryer in the basement.

The real reason that I'm blogging about this, in addition to try and get all you to come visit us, is to try and advertise for our landlord. There are 2 apartments below it, that are almost the same (minus the 15 ft ceilings and attic). A 3 bedroom and a smaller 2 bedroom. It's right by Clove Lake, and the express bus should take me less than 30 minutes to get to school. We want to fill the building with our friends, so that we don't have to share the backyard & garden with strangers. Also, it would be nice to have babysitters for Josh & Carter who live right by us. And who knows, maybe I'll get some commission... I wish.

Even more exciting than our new apartment is that my Mom, Dad & siblings (Ashley & Matt) are here visiting. Josh just loves having Matt & my dad here to play baseball with him hours on end. Carter is also enjoying more females around to dote on him. Carter would much rather hang out with the girls at this point, while Josh wants to play sports and play with his buddies.

However, we're having a hard time with our silverware. We're not used to using all the clean silverware this quickly. As you can see, this morning I had to use a spoon that barely fit in my mouth, while Ashley used on that barely held anything on it:

Speaking of eating, here's someone who's done a little too much of it:

But even with the 2 hour feedings, we're so happy to have Carter. He is such a happy baby (when he's not constipated or hungry). He is so easy going, and is always smiling now. He only wakes up 1 time during the night now. This according to Katie. Obviously I don't have the equipment to help him during the night, so I get to sleep.

Well, this blog should cover me for another month or so.

Short and simple

2009-05-24T21:55:00.005-04:00

Just thought I'd post some pictures from the past few days.
Ryan's mom bought Josh and Carter some matching outfits, and I thought it'd be a while before Carter would be able to wear them, because they're size 3 months, but as you can see, he fills them out quite well right now.We went to the beach yesterday for a YW/YM activity, and I put sunscreen on my face, but no where else....Ryan was the smart one and kept lathering himself, and Josh, up. When did I start to think my pasty-white skin tanned well?
We had the Yoshimuras and Carters over for dinner tonight. Out here friends are like family because no one has extended family members out here. Heh, that was an awkward sentence. Anyway, I talked everyone into play "Funny Bones" and took these pics. The game is from the 60's, but it's a lot of fun!

Busy bees

2009-05-17T20:58:00.005-04:00

Well, life has been pretty crazy for us lately, hence the reason for no blog updates. (Actually it's Ryan's turn to blog, but the stuff to blog about stresses us out, so I think he's been avoiding it). I hate updating though, it's like when I go a few weeks without writing in my journal and I just skim the surface of what's actually gone on because I don't want to write forever and ever....so sorry, but this will be more of a skimming-the-surface kind of post.
First, the fun stuff. Carter is huge. He's basically a baby monster. At 5.5 weeks he was 12.5 lbs. Now that he's almost 6.5 weeks, he's probably 13.5 lbs. At least that's how it's gone so far: almost a pound gained each week. For reference, Josh was 11 lbs at two months.... He's got lots of rolls in lots of places, and I love it. I definitely don't have to worry about him eating enough. So far I feel like the adjustment to two kids has gone well. I'm able to accomplish some small things during the day, and I can get all of us out of the door to the park most days, and sometimes we have a dinner on the table. Heh, see, I'm adjusting! :) Carter's really an easy baby, very calm and sleepy, just how I like 'em.
Josh is growing up so fast. The other day I was talking with my friends Katie and Susie about the first visit the older siblings make to the hospital. When Josh came to visit, the first thought I had was how old he seemed, and the second thought I had was how much he smelled....and when I changed his diaper, I felt like I was changing a little man's diaper. I couldn't believe he wasn't potty trained! He's such a good big brother though. He's really funny too. It's funny to hear what he picks up from us parents. He tells us, "Good job!" for everything. Tonight I was cutting cheese, and he said, "Good job cutting cheese mom!". I was nursing Carter, and Carter was grabbing my shirt, and Josh told him, "No pulling, Carter! It hurts mommy!"So, now the stressful stuff...I'll make it quick. Ry's nearing the end of the semester, which means lots of long days and lots of studying. We're also looking for a new apartment because of a "suspicious" rubbing alcohol smell that comes and goes. It comes into Josh's room, usually in the middle of the night, and we're pretty sure it comes from the neighbors. (Hmmm, illegal activity maybe?) After a visit from the plumber, the air conditioner guy, the gas guy, and the Health Dept. lady, we decided it was just best to move. Our decision to move was further supported when the sewer backed up into our kitchen/living room and the landlord simply had someone wipe it dry, meaning I was on my hands and knees in the muck with ammonia, trying to sanitize. We're having a hard time finding a place that fits all of our wants (location, price, washer and dryer) which makes life difficult, but mostly for Ryan who's trying to fit in parenting, schooling and house hunting into his schedule. Even with all the stresses of life, though, we've got a lot to be thankful for, starting with those chubby cheeks....

Life with the Allens

2009-04-11T10:36:00.005-04:00

Before (the night before, actually)

After

Well, while Carter's taking a nap on my lap and Ryan and Josh are gone to the ward party, I figured it was a good time to post.
Life has been crazy but great this past week. We went in to get induced last Friday morning, the 3rd, and had Carter at 6:40pm. I got an epidural around 10:30am and then we just played the waiting game until I was fully dilated. One interesting thing--I was given sugar the whole time. They had a line of sucrose going into my IV along with insulin, and then they regulate it by giving me small amounts of insulin to keep my blood sugar down and sugar just in case too much insulin is given. Well, I ate breakfast and gave insulin myself for that, and about two hours later my blood sugar went really low. They turned off the insulin and gave me sugar, and about an hour later, they had to give me more sugar and then more sugar, and then more sugar again. The nurses were looking pretty confused, considering the fact that I'm diabetic, but eventually they came to terms with my weird body and gave me sugar the whole day. The delivery went great, about 20 mins of pushing, and I loved the nurses. I was nervous about delivery and SI University Hospital because of what I'd heard from others, but for me, it was awesome.
The only complaint I have deals with the contractions I had afterwards (to shrink the uterus)--holy cow! A nurse told me that the contractions are the worst for babies #2 and #3, and I figured they'd be quick, but after 4.5 hours of pain I finally asked for some pain meds. Honestly, I don't know how people deliver these kids with out pain killers!A few days after we got home, we took Carter to his doctor's appointment and found out we had to readmit him because of jaundice. I was pretty upset (hormones anyone?) because we found out at night time which meant no sleep, and the next day was my birthday and no one wants their baby in the hospital on their birthday. Luckily Carter was able to leave at night on my birthday, so it turned out that I got a nice birthday present in the end.He's eating well, pooping all the time (once or twice a feeding, crazy), and sleeping just as much. I'm also more relaxed with him. With Josh I think I might have had the baby blues because I was really really anxious with him--of course he cried a bit more, didn't nurse well, and I was a new mom who didn't know what she was doing, but... you know. :) Josh still loves Carter to pieces. He likes to try and feed him crackers, read him a book, or give him his binky, and he loves it when Carter actually opens his eyes. Josh has struggled more with sleep, but all in all, I think the transition is going well.
Luckily I had my mom here to help with the first week. The first week is pretty rough--recovering from giving birth and trying to take care of kids at the same time isn't the easiest. Josh loves me to hold him, but of course I couldn't lift him up, so my mom did the major hauling and running around with Josh. She also cleaned my whole house, cooked us dinner, got up with Carter and I at night, and was much needed company--poor Ryan is so busy with school right now. Almost every day this week he was leaving early and getting home late and taking tests. Anyway, I'm missing my mom (and she's missing the little guys), but all good things most come to an end I guess. Thanks for all you did mom!Ryan, like I said, has been really busy, but he took a break this weekend, and it was great! Ryan played with Josh all day, and Josh couldn't get enough of his dad. Same for Carter and me....he's such a good guy. Love him.

#1 Big Brother

2009-04-05T07:48:00.003-04:00

Now you can see how excited Josh really was to see Carter.

Here Is Our Little Smurf

2009-04-04T21:52:00.006-04:00

Well Carter Evans Allen is finally here. We're very excited, and both he and Katie are doing great. He was born on April 3rd at 6:40 PM. He was 7 lbs, 13 oz & was 19.5 inches long. I'm so very tempted to tell the birthing story, but I'll leave that for Katie.

I probably don't need to mention this once you see the pictures, but our baby is a little Smurf. Really though you could also call him a blueberry and not be far off as well. It appears as if his little face was all bruised after he was born, but it is slowly going away. It was bad enough that we passed up the newborn photos, due to the fact that his face was a very nice shade of purple.

See for yourself:

Here is day 2 with Katie & Carter:

Probably the best moment for me was seeing Josh's face when he saw Carter. It was awesome! Here's a picture not long after the brothers met:

Josh was so excited he could hardly contain himself:

Never Do That Again

2009-03-31T12:12:00.004-04:00

I've been told I'm long overdue for a post. As I sit here trying to think of something to blog about, I recall something that Katie asked me not too long ago. I vowed that after this incident I would blog it, and the time has come.

Let me set the stage.

I've never been accused of having too much facial hair. In fact as I sit here in class I can pick out a few girls who can grow more facial hair than I can. I don't know who that reflects worse upon. But I digress. Unlike those guys who need to shave every day, I can usually go through a good 3 days without shaving, with no negative side effects. Sometimes I'll go 4 days, but by then I usually start looking like Adam Morrison. I try to avoid this.

Due to the sparseness of hair follicles both above & below my mouth area, I only use an electric razor. Fast forward to Katie's question...

"Ryan, does your skin burn after you shave your face?"

"Well," I respond, "every once in awhile it does, but usually I..." and then I think to myself, why in the world would she care?

At this point I stop answering, and begin asking why she is so concerned as to the sensitivity of my face. Katie began backpedaling, and became extremely reticent. Now I had to know what was going on, so I decided to hark back to the skills I learned on my mission for interrogating people. You know what I mean, discovering investigators doubts and then resolving them... Anyway.

After many back and forth comments, I found out that Katie, unable to find her razors, and with an overpowering urge to shave her armpits, decided that my facial razor would do the trick. Not so much. I wanted to be mad, but I could only laugh. And I laughed every time she complained about her armpits for the next few days. Lesson learned I think.

My only question is, how many of you women out there have done the same thing, and just not been caught doing it? Guys, I think we need to be more vigilant in defending our razors.