my children like to eat

i am not really sure why i took pictures of my children eating but i did so here they are. the one of asher is him eating his first cheese. he really liked it! lily and jackson were eating some pumpkin cheesecakethat i made and were really enjoying themselves as well. i am grateful that jackson is such a good eater. most days i have such a struggle getting lily to eat things that when i can give jackson salad and he eats it i feel so fortunate. i never thought that food would be one of my biggest battles so it makes me extremely grateful when i don't have to fight someone to get them to eat. i pray that asher is like jackson when it comes to food. i would be happy if he had a little less of jackson's energy but would be thrilled if he got his eating abilities.

jackson growing up

my little boy has finally moved into a big boy toddler bed. i was worried that he would be getting up all of the time but once we put him to bed or down for a nap he doesn't get up until he is done sleeping. when he wakes up he yells, "i want to get up now!" and then all i have to say is "ok, come downstairs then" and down he comes. it is so fun to see him growing up. it was really hard getting him to sit still for the pictures so these are what i was left with. enjoy!

 

EMG christmas party

well we went to salt lake city for steven's work christmas party. we took baby ash and left lily and jack at home with steven's family. it was a lot of fun. we stayed with his sister lani for two nights and stayed at the hotel the night of the party. the pic of ash was on the plane (his first plane flight). the picture of steven and i was at the party. we left asher at his sisters for the night so we could hang out with our friends after the party was over. we stayed up until 2am and in the morning, i wondered why i hadn't gone to bed early and took advantage of not having to get up with a baby in the middle of the night. i tried to sleep in but 8:30 was as late as i could. oh-well i guess that 6 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep is better than normal.
steven's sister also took us to dogwood and sent us home with a ton of clothes for jack and ash. it was the most amazing thing to just pick out anything i wanted and just take it home. they look so cute in their dogwood duds. dogwood really makes the cutest boy clothes ever!

getting ready for christmas

this is definitely late but i thought it was necessary. these are pictures from when we were decorating our christmas tree. lily and jack had the best time. they couldn't give the ornaments to steven quick enough. jack would yell more 'ments, more 'ments! well anyways the pictures are self explanatory. enjoy!

baby ash

baby ash is well loved by jack and lily. lily has decided that she likes dressing him up, thus the minney mouse ears. they both love taking pictures with him and just being around him. if he is near either one of them, they are always holding one of his hands. he is growing like a weed and is loving eating more than just milk now. he will eat anything you feed him (except mashed potatoes) and who knows why he wouldn't eat those. he is the happiest baby i know and i am grateful that he is my baby.

hello again

lily and jack like to get in bed with baby ash

jackson loving his brother

jackson's first ice cream cone

yes he has had ice cream before just not on a cone

lily enjoying hers as well

i have truly failed in my attempt to write something everyday that i am grateful for. well i am writing now and there are so many things to be grateful for. it is three days before christmas and my children are excited and i have to say that even though it has been kind of hectic getting everything ready, i am pretty excited too. i am grateful for the birth of our Savior. i am grateful that we have all been given the atonement because i need it desperately. i am grateful for loving parents and friends who are constantly helping me in some way or another. i am grateful for my loving husband who has learned to be mellow when i am not. i am grateful for a loving heavenly father who has entrusted 3 beautiful children into my care. i only hope that i can be the mother that he would have me be and boy do i have a long way to go. i love everyone who reads this and thank you for your friendships, i don't know what i would do without you girls to talk to throughout the week. 

October 28, 2007

11:32pm
we carved pumpkins at steven's sisters house tonight and here are a few pictures we took on our walk to her house. it is starting to get cold so we broke out the hats for our walk. i am so grateful that we have the opportunity to take so many pictures now that we have digital cameras. maybe if we had them when i was growing up, it wouldn't be so hard to find a baby picture of myself. since my children have been born, i haven't really seen a newborn one of myself. i am grateful to be able to look back at every moment since my children have been born. i want to be able to share this with them when they are older. i want them to be able to look back at their baby pictures and see if their children look anything like they did as babies. thank you Heavenly Father for the digital age.

october 24, 2007

8:25pm
hey i am actually writing at a normal time of night. i had a quick thought so i thought i would get it done early. i am grateful for health. we have been dealing with a sick jackson for a week now and i am so ready for my healthy rambunctious boy to be back. he was actually a lot better today so i am expecting a ball full of energy tomorrow. here are a few pictures from his birthday party that i wasn't able to add before
.

some new pictures

here are my big kids just being their funny selves. jack likes to get into boxes and such and pretend that he is in a boat. this was a mighty small boat but he managed to fit a toy in there with him. this hat that lily has on is a pumpkin hat that she made at school. she was very proud of it!



our friends dena and brady brought their kids over to visit a couple weekends ago and here was my attempt at taking a picture of jack, lily and maddie with some pumpkins. surprisingly jack was the only one who would cooperate.


steven's sister lisa made these dracula cupcakes and i thought they were the cutest things ever. it's a good thing that someone in our family is creative because i am not. i told her that i was going to buy some halloween cupcakes and she said why don't i just make them. i am glad that she did!

october 20, 2007

2:00 am
well i am still having prob;ems getting my photos into i photo so i promise they will come soon. but yesterday we had jackson's birthday party. he was very cute! unfortunately he got crazy overwhelmed like he did last year and he didn't even want to finish opening presents. so lily and i open the last couple. he was really happy about his presents. he will never show as much enthusiasum as lily for presents and parties, he really doesn't care about them as much as she does. it seems like he doesn't like being the center of attention when opening gifts. it's like he doesn't know quite what to do with himself.

so my mom and mike are in town and tonight they decided to take steven't parents and us out to dinner. we wanted to go to the spaghetti factory but there was an hour and a half wait so we went to red robin instead. well right when we got our food, jack looked at his chicken and started crying. i thought great, he really doesn't want chicken! then the next thing i know, he makes a weird sound and in a split second i realize what is happening. i push his head slightly away from my body and he throws up everywhere. he got my jacket and purse as well as my whole left arm and somehow all over my bottom and thighs. if i hadn't have moved his head, i would have been completely covered. i couldn't even start my food. they brought us stuff to clean off but that was the end of dinner for me. i waited for everyone to finish then boxed my food up and came home to take a shower. i can appreciate that when he doesn't feel good he wants me but this is the third time he has done this and the second time in public. i hate throw up!!!!!!!!

lastly, steven and i saw the movie "across the universe" last night. i think that most of you who read this, especially kimmie braithwaite, would enjoy it. it is a musical based on only beatles songs. there are a few parts that were completely strange and could be taken out but for the most part it was really cool. kindof moulin rougeish.

i am grateful for good times and bad times. i would much rather have all good times but i know that with the bad, heavenly father is mostly trying to teach me patience. i guess i really have a lot to learn. i am grateful for my childrens birthdays and can not even believe how old they are getting. it is amazing how fast life is going.

october 17, 2007

11:00pm
i have tried on two seperate occations today to post a blog with pictures but i can't get my camera to sinc with iphoto, sooo you are once again stuck with my writing. i was just feeding asher and he spit up all over me. i had to completely change my clothes, don't you love that! well i had a day filled with yelling and screaming. when jackson doen't get the proper amount of sleep, he can't deal very well. i guess we are similar in that respect because i didn't get enough sleep last night either and i had a hard time dealing as well. so with that said, i am grateful for sleep. i am grateful for children who sleep. up until asher, i have always had amazing sleepers. i am not ruling him out yet but the last month hasn't been so great. i do believe that things are going to be getting better. it might just be wishful thinking but i can feel it in the air.

october 14, 2007

1:07am
today was a mellow day. we were able to get to church on time, our children weren't too crazy during sacrament meeting, we took a nap after church and steven's mom made a delicious cake after dinner. i am grateful for mellow days. it is nice to be able to just hang out as a family and not to have too much chaos. it helps me to see what it might be like when our children are older and less energetic. having a preschooler a toddler and a baby doesn't lend itself to mellow. it is nice to have a glimpse into the future.

October 13, 2007

12:36am
well, i have already missed one day and it hasn't even been a week yet. i am grateful for communication. i think it is so important to communicate with your spouse. i am grateful to have a husband that cares enough to want to communicate with me. we had a little argument today and he truly was disappointed that it had happened. he really wanted to talk it out and i love that. i am grateful to be married to such a loving and helpful man (i hate saying man but boy just doesn't really work here.) i mean out of nowhere he just went ahead and cleaned the bathroom (of all chores) tonight and i was so extremely happy. he is a good husband i don't think i tell him enough. i need to try harder.

october 11, 2007

12:08am
today was pretty normal until i got into a car accident tonight. Heavenly Father really looks out for me! the accident was my fault and all i kept thinking was, if my children had been hurt, it would have from my lack of attention. i forgot my glasses and i was having a hard time navigating my friend dena was in the car so i said i'll let you drive. well i decided to turn left off a one way street an i turned in frount of a car. fortunately he hit my car in a way that no one was hurt. the car hit right between me and jack. the kids didn't even cry. i am grateful that Heavenly Father can teach me to be more attentive as well as to always wear my glasses when driving without anyone getting hurt. i am thankful that my babies are safe.

october 10, 2007

12:14am
i really am not sure what this entry is going to be about. i am having a hard time with nursing. asher eats ok but at night, he wakes up so much and when i choose not to feed him he is now really hard to get back to sleep. i have never had a child with sleep issues before. i guess my frustration with nursing is i have no way of knowing if he is getting enough food during the day. he was sleeping amazing untill about three or four weeks ago. he was sleeping from like 7 or 8 untill 4 or 5. now he gets up at around 11:30, 2, 4 and sometimes 6. i know that he doesn't need to eat! he is a big boy so i know that he is gaining weight. i am just at a loss. i was up from 1 until 2 this morning tyring to get him back to sleep, and that was after nursing him. would giving him formula help or has he just gotten into a bad habit and i just need help breaking him of it? what do i do?

October 9th, 2007

11:19pm
i watched oprah this afternoon and it was about couples who weren't able to conceive. they were talking about using surrogates from india. it was sad listening to the desperation these people felt about not being able to have a child. i can't even imagine. i totally take for granted the fact that i am fertle mertle. i know that i would be totally crazy if i couldn't have children. i am so grateful that i have my beautiful babies and watching this show has made me appreciate them even more than i already did.

October 8th, 2007

10:59 pm
well i have to admit that it is the second day that i have decided to do this and i almost forgot. i guess Heavenly Father is trying to help me keep my promise. i am truly grateful that i have the opportunity to stay home with my children. sometimes i get really frustrated and then one of my children will unexpectedly hug or kiss me and the frustration melts away. how do they know how to get to us? they have this amazing ability to change my mood in a split second. i guess what i am trying to say is that Heavenly Father is teaching me patience which i definately need.

Henry B. Eyring

well, i have a new mission. after watching the morning session of conference this morning October 7th, i have decided to add something new to my blog. For years, President Eyring would write a couple sentences (every day) about where he saw the hand of the Lord in his everyday life. i am going to try to do the same thing. i want to be able to leave my children knowing that i could see the positive in everyday. if i can teach them to do at least that i will be happy. here it begins:

October 7th, 2007
i am grateful for conference. i am grateful to be able to hear from the leaders of our church and see how they have lived their lives. today has made me want to be a better mother, wife and daughter. i hope that i can learn to achieve this someday.

my baby ash

i love it when there is moisture in the air because this is what happens to his hair. curley hair and a dimple, what more could you ask for? during normal weather it is curley for a while after his bath then it gets wavy but flat against his head. i still have high hopes for his to turn into the fro that steven had as a kid.

this kid is so funny. he smiles quite frequently but has only laughed a couple of times. he is a pretty hard sell and i am not very funny. this was pretty much how jack was but now i am the funniest person in the world to him so i guess i grew on him. hopefully i grow on ash.

lily goes to school

well the day has come that my little baby girl started school. i thought this first picture was funny because her backpack is almost as big as she is. even though it might look silly, her school insisted that they have full size backpacks and here is the result. my children are hard to get good pics of because they have taken after their father with the eyes closed pictures. these are the best that i got. she didn't want to be taking pics, she just wanted to get to school.


she never even looked back when she walked into class. she was very excited when i picked her up though, it was very cute! i can't believe that she is this old already.

lily teaches jackson to fingerpaint

there is nothing more that i dread than to get out the fingerpaints. they are messy and a pain to say the least. lily had been asking me for a long time to let her fingerpaint and i told her that when my mom visited that she could. well needless to say that when my mom finally came to visit, the first thing out of her mouth was can i paint? well i decided not to deny her any longer so here are the results. Jackson had never done this before so here is what she taught him to do. jackson had a blast!

yo gabba gabba saves the day

there are many times during the week that i want to go crazy. on one day in particular, it seemed like all of my children were out to get me. no one would listen and i was very frustrated. at the peak of my frustration, yo gabba gabba came on and saved my life (or should i say my children's lives). jackson grabbed my hand and said in his cute little voice "dance." he wanted me to hold him and dance around the room to the song that was on. i started to laugh and quickly grabbed him up and started dancing with him. the next thing i know, lily has joined in and all of us were laughing and having the best time. it was amazing how quickly i went from pulling out my hair to having the best time with my babies.

i love this show. i know it is my friends show and some might say that i am biased but it is the best kids show around. i still love jojo and her cute little voice but as far as engaging my children and getting them up off the couch, it does the trick. the music is catchy and the dancing is fun and i love it when my kids at random start doing biz's beats. it seriously cracks me up.

thank you yo gabba gabba for making our house fun again!

asher sparks heller

well better late than never! thanks to jill, i am once again going to update my blog. i have had this for over a year now and she didn't even know that i had one. since my last update, we have rented out our house, moved to spokane and best of all had a new little baby named asher sparks heller.

he was born on the 3rd of june, which is the day after steven's birthday. this was a good thing because steven wasn't in to sharing his day. the 3rd was a sunday (which explains why my hair was so done up) so we went to our 11 o'clock ward and just after sacrament was over i started having contrations every 4 minutes. i told steven after sunday school and he suggested we wait and see if it continues. well i made it through half of relief society and i was just really uncomfortable so i got steven out of class, we left the kids with his parents and away we went. we arrived at the hospital at 3:30pm and he was born at 7:40. i never felt any hard contractions at all, it was great. i got there and they said i was dialated to a 4 so they broke my water and gave me an epidural. a couple hours and two pushes later, the little ash man was here. he came out so fast that his face was all bruised, he was what my doctor calls a smurf baby.

by the next day he wasn't quite so blue he just looked like he had been in a fist fight with black eyes and bruising on his upper lip and nose as well. it was so sad but fortunately, it all went away.

having three children is crazy. the 2nd day he was home, lily woke up in the morning and threw up all over the couch. steven had ran to work for a few hours so i called his mom and she came over to help. all i kept thinking was don't let the germs near the baby. just as i got all of that cleaned up my little jackson woke up. he was all cuddly and cute and the next thing i know is he was throwing up all over me. i thought what have i gotten myself into? since then life has definately settled down and it is much easier to deal with. babies are easy, toddlers are not.



asher has been such a blessing to our family and i am very grateful that he is here. now that he is almost 3 months old, he is smiling and cooing and is the life of the party. steven has been especially taken with him. his first 7 or 8 weeks of life was spent sleeping. steven was constantly cuddling with him. maybe it is because he is steven's twin.

thanks for listening! i will try and update more often, thanks for the reminder jill.

jana

jackson has allergies

about a month ago, i decided to give jackson some enfamil lipil formula and after drinking about 5 ounces, he immediately got HIVES all over his body. it was really scary because i was worried that he wasn't going to be able to breath. fortunately it never got to that point and all i had to give him was 1/2 a teaspoon of benadryl and he improved pretty quickly. the following picture is what he looked like when the HIVES began, they continued to travel down his little body and covered his tummy and back and started on his legs before the benadryl kicked in.


until about 6 months he was pretty much only breastfed and if he did have formula, i gave him nestle goodstart and he had no problems with that. i didn't really understand dairy allergies and thought that it couldn't have been the dairy since he was fine with the nestle which is also dairy based. i just assumed that it was something that enfamil has in their formula that nestle didn't. we a couple of weeks later i stupidly gave him a couple of bites of my ice cream and once again - HIVES. i then knew that it was the dairy. i researched and found out that people are allergic to the proteins in dairy and in nestle goodstart they have been partially broken down which is why he wasn't having the same reaction as when he had the enfamil.

we today jack went to an allergist and his allergies were confirmed. he is not only allergic to dairy but he also has problems with soy. my mom said that my brother had the same problems and he grew out of them so i am keeping my fingers crossed that jack grows out of them as well. it would be a really hard life keeping all dairy out of your diet. i couldn't imagine it. infact, i was still nursing once a day and the doctor said that i should either stop nursing completely or cut dairy out. so my baby is now done with nursing. i am just glad that i was able to nurse him for seven months. i think it was the best thing i could have done for him.