November Wrap up

Here a few fun pictures to wrap up November.

Austin and his giant red vine.

Lydia and Austin at the park.

These are so funny. The kids love to make smoothies, but Austin does not love the sound of the blender. The funny thing is watching Caleb who follows Austin's lead, but does not quite get what Austin is doing so he just puts his hands on his head. So funny.

Austin "reading" scriptures. It is so cute, because he will say, "Jesus loves me, Jesus loves us...." and then turn the page and it is really great to see him learning about Jesus.

Lydia reading to Caleb.

I mentioned we love smoothies. So here is a popcorn and smoothie for dinner night. This never happens, but the kids must have worn down Shantel's resolve.

Sledding!

This is one of my absolute favorite things to do with the kids every year. It is especially nice when it snows so much on a weekend when I can spend a long time just playing with the kids in the snow. It was especially nice today because it was still snowing, so it was not as cold outside.

The whole outside was white and beautiful and we got all bundled up to stay nice and warm. Lydia and Austin of course jumped right in. Lydia got really good and towards the end (we were outside for about an hour and a half) Lydia could even jump in the air and land on the sled on her knees which would then start her slide down the hill, it was so awesome.

Caleb had fun for about 15 minutes in the snow and then fell down in the snow and got a little cold and was ready to go inside. It was fun to see him see what snow was all about since last year he was too little to go out. I even got him to go down on the sled with me one time.

Austin was awesome sledding too. He was much bigger this year than last year, so he did not get cold and he could do the sled all on his own. He was great at getting a good start and then sliding all the way to the fence.

They also loved sledding down together.

Lydia and I sledding down.

Austin and I sledding down.

Caleb played nicely inside and after a while I noticed him watching us from the window, it was so cute.

It was the best sledding day ever and the kids and I loved it.

Announcing: Baby #4!

I'm so, so, so happy to announce that Baby #4 will be joining our family in June 2019!

I'm 11.5 weeks right now and have been feeling some pretty big feelings (in addition to a good bit of nauseousness).  This little baby is just teeny-tiny right now, but already holds such a big place in my heart. We’ve been praying for another baby to join our family and I feel blessed that he/she is finally on the way to us. 

As details that probably only I will ever want to refer back to - we've been trying to get pregnant for just over 5 months. It took us many, many months to get pregnant the first time, which resulted in a miscarriage - but then we were able to quickly get pregnant again with Lydia. Austin took us about 11 months, but Caleb was ready to come right away. It's a little amusing that they all are just about 2.5 years apart (2 years 4 months, 2 years 6 months, and 2 years 3 months), even though they all took fairly significantly different amounts of time to be ready to come to our family. 

I’ve been feeling, well - pretty yucky lately. I’m more sick than I have been in my last two pregnancies and I wasn’t expecting it. When we went in for our first appointment, I was terrified that the baby wouldn’t have a heartbeat (I miscarried my first pregnancy and that’s the pregnancy when I was the most sick.) I was equally expecting to find out that we were having twins. But nope, just one little babe, who is doing great. We are so so grateful to be here, living this life with these children, and being blessed to bring another one home to our family.