Being April

The water in our pipes froze sometime between this morning, and this evening. I thought that sort of thing only happened when people were out of town for a few days, and weren't using their water... but apparently not. At first it just seemed like there was something wrong with the garbage disposal, but it seemed to be running just fine, except for the fact that every time we turned it on, the water would drain out of one side and come back up the other side, and if we turned it off, the water would come back up the first side. We called in the maintenance people and they found ice not too far down into the pipes. I guess this house wasn't built to code, and so the pipes are in an exterior wall with no insulation at all. That explains why we've always had to keep the water running for ages to get any hot water from that faucet. We're hoping that we'll be able to convince the owners of the house to just insulate the entire house. It looks like this hous...

The day started out... well, it started... both kids woke up with drenched diapers and wet beds. So they both spent most of the morning in just a diaper. Dean made chocolate chip blueberry muffins for breakfast, which DJ liked a lot while I washed bedding. Unfortunately bedding included a beloved Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal, and DJ did NOT want me to put it in the washing machine. Partially to distract him from his Pooh, and partially because they both really needed one, kids got a much needed bath. Dean charged up his RC helicopter, so after baths he flew his helicopter much to the delight of DJ. While they played, I made a cake in a Winnie the Pooh cake pan that was surprisingly difficult to find. Following helicopter flying, an episode of Blues clues, and general playing around... and a nap for Andrew, we went out to lunch at Arctic Circle. DJ loves that restaurant because of the cool playground inside... we wanted to go to the park, but it was too cold. for DJ we g...

me: "DJ, say one" DJ: "two" me: "no, say one" DJ: "two" me: "One!" DJ: "Two!" me: "fine, say two" DJ: "three" DJ likes to play in his laundry hamper, but I only let him when its empty. I washed his laundry yesterday so he had lots of fun playing in it yesterday, today however there were some clothes in it, so I didn't expect him to try to play with it. He's usually pretty good about that, but today he found his way around that little rule... at least in his mind. He brought it out into the living room to play with it, and I was expecting to see the clothes that he took out of it on the bathroom floor, but I didn't see them there, so I was a little confused. A little bit later I was getting him some socks and I found all of the dirty clothes neatly put away in his drawer... I guess he thought he was being helpful. First thing in the morning after waking up DJ: Cann...

Well, we have (for the moment) decided that we will be staying here in Rexburg to go to school. Dean has changed his mind back and forth so many times about going to school in Rexburg or being a police officer in Wyoming, but we think (and really hope that we won't be changing minds again) that we will be staying here. Today I'm turning in my application to be a night student, so in January I'll be able to take a class or two in the evening. I'm so excited! And very nervous. Things are going to be very busy for the next four years. For now though things are not busy at all. Dean is still technically on leave, and it's been nice having him at home all the time... but it also gets a little monotonous. He has been going to the temple almost every day that it has been open since moving here. I think he's making up for lost time. When we were in Colorado we found it very difficult to make it up to the temple and we didn't go nearly as o...

These last few days have been way stressful. We've been packing a lot, with tons of help from Heather and Daniel I think we might actually finish in time. Dean's last day of work was last Monday. This was his last day in the Army after over nine years. He has signed up to be in the Army reserves, and the plan was to go to school and then rejoin the army as an officer... but plans change... daily it seems. Dean got an email from the Green River WY police department the other day, and since then he has been thinking more and more that maybe he'll just go work for them instead of go up to BYU-I. Well, considering that moving day is in two days and tomorrow we're packing up the truck, we will still be going up to Rexburg, but we might only be there for six months. I guess it takes a lot of time for the police department to process applications, and do physical tests, and psychological analysis, and interviews etc. And Dean has to take a spelling t...

DJ is 22 months old now, he'll be turning two in November, but that isn't stopping him from having a two year old attitude. Every day is full of screaming and crying and me trying desperately to figure out just what it is that he wants. He's talking more and more when he's happy, but when he's upset about something he won't say a single word to give me a clue as to what is wrong. He will often reach for something that is just inches in front of him, but cry as though he just can't reach it, and if I try to hand it to him or move him closer to it he'll scream all the more. I finally just yesterday figured out that the tantrums that he has been throwing all week at naptime were not because he didn't want to take a nap, but because he didn't like the specific sippy cup that I gave him. Apparently he wants a specific kind of sippy cup when he goes to sleep, and as long as he has one of that kind, he's happy and goes to s...

I've gotten to the point where I finally feel comfortable cutting DJ's hair. I cut it kinda short once, but since then I've kinda let it grow out, but I keep trimming it around the ears and at the neck. Then the other day I decided that Andrew needed to have his first haircut, because he was mostly bald on the sides and it was about four inches long on top, so I cut off about 2.5 inches from the top. I think it looks a lot better now, he doesn't look like he has a comb-over anymore. Well, then I decided that I need to cut my own hair. Last year Heidi showed my a cool way to cut my own hair, and it turned out pretty well except that I cut the front a little short so it wouldn't fit into my ponytail anymore, so I just had to clip it up... it worked pretty well, so I was did the same thing again, just being careful to keep the front long enough. I just did it yesterday morning, before church and I think it turned out pretty well. Then I put it...

So, we were hoping to be moving into our house back in February, but due to maintenance stuff that house was no longer available for us and we had to begin the search for a house once again. I must say that we were quite disappointed by that, but it's all for the best I guess. We decided afterward that that particular house was probably out of our price range anyways. We were very close to getting another house, but decided not to because the house was on the market meaning that I would have had to keep the house clean all the time and people would be coming to look at it, and we might have had to move again if someone chose to buy it. So we kept looking and then we found this house. It's bigger than any of the other houses that we looked at, but because it's an older house it was more within our price range. It does have a funky smell to it, but mostly just upstairs. I'm not entirely sure what the smell is, I think it might be tobacco, but w...

Andrew was born Saturday March 19, 2011 at 4:09 am. He weighed 8 pounds and 11 ounces, and was 21 inches long. I went to the hospital at 10 pm on Friday with really strong contractions about 4-5 minutes apart. I got an epidural around 12:30, and after that things were really easy. Around 2, they decided that I wasn't progressing enough. After 4 hours my contractions were still 4-5 minutes apart, so they gave me some pitocin to speed things up a bit. A couple minutes before 4am they came in and told me it was time to push. After only about 10 minutes of pushing Andrew was born. So far he has been a really easy baby. He sleeps most of the night, and he only cries when he's hungry or needs a diaper change or just wants to be swaddled. He caught on to nursing really easily too. I feel really good too, you'd never guess that I just had a baby a week ago. I feel completely back to normal already, and it's so great not to be pregnant anymore. DJ ...

I am now 37 weeks pregnant, and getting extremely large and very uncomfortable. I am way bigger than I was when I was pregnant with DJ, and I've been having a lot more contractions and other things that are just obnoxious. I'm ready to be done with this pregnancy, even though the thought of having two children terrifies me slightly. I don't think I am ready to have two. DJ is still so much a baby still, how can I possibly handle a newborn too? Sixteen months old seemed a lot older nine months ago. Gratefully though he's not nearly as clingy as he used to be. He has gained a streak of independence, which allows me to get some things done while he is awake, so I don't have to save all of the housework for his naptimes anymore, which is really good because he is almost down to one nap a day. He loves to help me do the dishes and the laundry, although he gets in the way more than he helps, but it's still fun. He has started helping me cle...

A lot has been going on in the last few months. I keep meaning to write about it, but then something else will happen and then I'll decide that I should write about that too, and I want to wait until I have more details... and time passes and then too much stuff has happened for me to write about everything. The biggest thing going on right now is that we're moving in a few weeks. We'll still be in Colorado Springs, but we're going to be renting a house. The apartment that we're in has so many things about it that we both can't stand, so Dean and I decided to look elsewhere to live. The big one on my mind right now is the dishwasher. They put in a brand new dishwasher just a few months ago, but it still doesn't clean. I completely rinse and scrub every single dish, wash them in the dishwasher, and then when I go to empty them they're dirtier than when I put them in. It's just so frustrating! And in the last week or so the ...