Bountiful Basketts

I'm fairly new to Bountiful Basketts, while in Prescott Valley I had many friends that participated and they loved it. While living in Hurricane I remember my mom doing it a few times too. We've been in Alton now for almost a year and all my sister-in-laws participate too. I don't know why it's taken me so long to jump on the band wagon and participate myself. About 6 weeks ago my sister-in-law called and asked if I wanted a baskett. Instead of creating my own account she'd order an extra one for me. I went ahead and gave it a try. I loved it and even Kory loved it. After we recieved our 1st baskett Kory asked me why I had never done it before. Uh.... Don't really know.  Being lazy I have still never created my own account. My sister-in-law is great to call me each monday morning to tell me what they have to offer. Sometimes I participate by ordering a baskett or one of the many extra's they have to offer by placing my order with hers.  This past week she told me that one of the extra's was strawberries. I was very interested in those. I was told that each person could only order 8-1lb. containers of strawberries which would be about $1.30 a piece. Having recently been to the grocery store and seeing strawberries still at $2.50 I thought this would be a great deal.  My sister-in-law only wanted 2 containers so I told her I'd take the rest. I THOUGHT I was only getting 6-1lb containers of strawberries. You can imagine my suprise when I ended up with this on my kitchen table saturday morning. It wasn't 6-1lb containers but 6 flats of 8-1lb. containers. What do you do with an unexpected 48 containers of strawberries?

Saturday I quickly pulled out all my canning supplies. To my delight I had many, many, many boxes of pectin left over from last season. I then pulled out every Freezer Container we owned and made some fresh freezer jam. I was able to use up 1 entire flat and made about 23 containers of jam.  

Still having 5 flats left I took one flat, rinsed and cut the stems off, froze them on a cookie sheet individually and then put them all in a freezer bag. During the summer we make fruit smoothies almost on a daily basis. I think these strawberries will make a great contribution to our smoothies this year.

 

For family home evening tonight the kids and I dipped 4 containers of strawberries in melted chocolate. Some we left plain and others we dipped in coconut and nuts. They were so yummy! Maybe a little too yummy. I had to tell the kids NO MORE several times! I'm afraid they all may be visiting the bathroom a little more than usual tommorrow. We should probably wait a day or two and then the kids would like to dip some more.

I spent most of my day in Cedar today and seriously "cleaned out" Wal Mart's stash of freezer containers and pectin. Unfortunately they only had 4 boxes of pectin but I'm hoping with the boxes I still have left from last year I'll be able to turn most of the remaining strawberries into jam. I don't know though. I still have 3 1/2 flats left. That's a lot of strawberries.

Brayden's 3rd Birthday

Brayden celebrated his 3rd birthday this past Friday.  When I started going through his pictures trying to pick out the ones I'd like to share to show his milestones these came to mind. I don't have any pictures taken of Brayden at the hospital without all the wires and tubes he was attached to. He was born exactly 3 weeks early and weighed 8lbs. It brings tears to my eye's remembering what his 1st week of life was like.  It was a rough week for our family.

The above picture was taken when Brayden was still in the Prescott Valley Hospital. He was about 3 hours old. The below picture was taken when he was 4 days old. I had been warned the night before I left him at the NICU in Phoenix that the next day his I.V would no longer be in his leg. By this time his little veins in both hands and his legs could no longer be used. I was told his I.V would be placed in the side of his head or his neck. It was still a bit of shock to see his I.V sticking out of his head. When I saw him, I couldn't hold back the tears. I sat and cried and cried and cried. It was hard to see him with a needle sticking out of his head! 

        After getting Brayden home my best friend, April, took some newborn shots. These are my favorite. I love the green bow!

    I love his wrinkles!

Grandma Heaton made his blessing outfit. 

Then we were celebrating his 1st birthday!

This is one of my most favorite pictures of Brayden. He is such a fun, loving little guy!

                  Then we celebrated his 2nd birthday. He loved/loves animals so the cake was perfect!

   He's sure grown up. I'm so thankful this little guy is a part of our family. He makes me laugh all the time.

       And now he's 3!  

As with tradition we had pancakes for breakfast, his favorite.

    He asks for pancakes for breakfast/lunch and dinner.

It was HILARIOUS to watch him blow out the candles. They each got blown out one at a time. By the third candle he kept putting his hand on his forehead. The closer his face got to the candle the closer his hand got to his eyes. When asked what he was doing he said the candle was HOT! It was burning him.

Trying to get a decent picture of this little guy in nearly impossible right now. He puts his hands up to his head like he's holding the camera and says "cheese".

This little man loves letters. His favorite show to watch is Leap Frog, any Leap Frog. He knows and recognizes every letter. He can almost tell you what each letter says correctly too. He reminds me of Hunter, he loves to learn new things. So, for his birthday we got him the Leap Frog magnet that sticks to the fridge. When a letter is placed in the box "Tad" says the letter and the sound it makes. Being I bought it off eBay it came with a word Leap Frog magnet too. When a 3-letter word is spelled out "Tad" again sounds out all the letters and says the word. He's loving this. He got some lacing farm animals which were a big hit when we took them to sacrament meeting this past Sunday. He also got 2 battery operated cars that drive themselves on Hunter's old car track and some "Disney Cars" bath supplies. I think his absolute favorite was a book that we gave him, "The Three Little Pigs". I don't remember when or exactly how it started but several months ago at nap time and bedtime instead of reading him a story I would tell him a story. He quickly took a liking to The Three Little Pigs story. Almost on a daily basis I am asked to tell him the story. I love it and he loves it. When I saw the book on Amazon a few weeks ago I knew I had to get it. Especially when the price was only $2.75 and had free shipping with our Amazon Prime. He Know's the story almost by heart. Many times, since Friday I have found him "reading" the story out loud to himself. He's got the basics down and is learning to tell the smaller details now. I wish I had a video camera to catch it on. It is so fun to see!

Brayden wanted a "Diego" cake. I had plans of making Diego out of fondant and an animal to go by his side. However, I got a bit busy trying to finish up my last online class and waited till the day before his birthday to begin. Fondant takes about 72+ hours to dry hard so when I wait like I did I have to add gum paste to it so that it will harden much quicker. Thursday night I realized I didn't have any gum paste to add. Not having a Wal Mart or Michaels down the street and knowing that plain fondant wouldn't work I had to grab 2 of his toys to use as our cake topper.  I also had the intentions of making some animals out of royal icing to place on the side of the green cake. OOPS!!! Didn't have one of the main ingredients for that too. I really didn't plan very well for his cake. Even though I didn't get the cake done the way I had envisioned or wanted to do it, Brayden was thrilled that his name was on it. If Brayden sees a word with a B and Y he thinks, and will argue with you, that it says his name. He loved the fact his name and letters were on his birthday cake.  I realized to late what horrible lighting I had when I took his pictures. This is the best I got!

Happy Birthday big boy!

I love you.

 

Kylie's Car Seat

Before Brayden was born, I wanted to "re-do" his car seat. I don't remember what happened, but it never got done. When I discovered I was pregnant this go round I wanted to once again redo the car seat to something a little more unique. I wanted a "WOW" car seat that I had made!

 Many weeks ago, an awesome friend gave me her old car seat that they won't be needing anymore. It's a typical, normal infant car seat that we've all seen around. It was neutral colors and just an average car seat.

 When we learned that I was pregnant with a girl I started searching for fabric. Being this will be our last baby I want it to be "girly".  Last time we went to Prescott I finally found some fabric that I wanted to use.

The past few days I have giving the car seat a "re-do" and I absolutely LOVE it!!!

 It took me several days to accomplish but I've finally gotten in 100% done. It is ready to go.

 I love the hot pink/black. I love the frills. I just love everything about it.

 As with most projects I had to make a few changes along the way (like running out of the black fabric). But in the end, I'm in love!

Kory's comment was "wow, that's bright.....but cute!" It is bright. It surprises me every time I look at it.  But I still love it! I definitely got my unique car seat that I was after. 

Fire...

 This morning Kory decided we'd take advantage of our abnormally warm weather, a whole whopping 70 degrees and burn our burn pile. Our burn pile has been accumulating since we moved in almost a whole year ago now. We had everything from tree branches, hoses, broken plastic buckets, weeds, hay string, and left-over rotten wood from when we're assuming the big red bard was built 5+ years ago. Our fire got pretty big! While cleaning out the barn Kory picked up a box to bring to the fire. Luckily he looked in it before tossing it on the fire. Guess what he found???????

 2 Baby kittens, probably less than 2 weeks old!

These little kids could not leave the kittens alone. They were taken everywhere this morning. They were very gentle with them but still.... We finally had the kiddo's put them back in the box and made them leave them alone. Kory keeps telling the kids if they play with them too much the momma cat will move them somewhere else. I guess we'll see if there still around come morning. I'm not an animal lover and neither is Kory. However, we have seen the neighborly cats trotting around our property with mice in their mouth. I have never seen a mouse in our house or any evidence that we have mice. The barn however is a different story! I don't care how many cats take up residence out there. As long as they continue to do their mice catching job these cats can stay!

32 weeks...

Have I grown any these past 4 weeks?

Yep, I do believe I see a difference!

32 weeks down, just 8 more to go!

I have stopped teaching preschool and have requested to be released from YW's trying to stay down more and follow doctor's orders. To help relieve the stress part of things I am doing my best trying to finish up this year's school semester a little early. Taking online classes allows me to do this. I've finished one class and have just one more to go. It will be a relief when I'm done for the semester!

There are a few sewing projects that I've wanted to do in preparation for our new baby. I would like to re-do baby's car seat, make some burp cloths and get started on her blessing dress. If baby waits the full 40 weeks to make her presence, she'll be 2 weeks old when she's blessed. I don't think I'll feel like making her dress after she's born! I've started on one of these projects and will have pictures to show off soon!

The "moderate" bed rest seems to be making a difference. I honestly didn't think it would do any good and at the beginning of the week I couldn't see/feel a difference. Now that I've been doing the "bed rest" for a little more than a week I think there has been a change. Hopefully this is all that I will need to do. My next Dr.'s appt is in 10 days. I'm anxious to see if my body's made any changes. I've never made it to the full 40 weeks and this pregnancy probably won't be any different than the previous 4. My first was at 34weeks (my water broke). 2nd-39weeks, 3rd-38 weeks, 4th-37 weeks. Is this a pattern that will continue to go? Will this one be 36weeks? To think I could be done carrying this baby girl in 4 weeks is starting sound pretty good. However, I hope she'll wait till at least 37 weeks being that's considered full term. As much as I'm ready to start getting my body back I'm willing to wait as long as I need even if it's the full 40 weeks if it means a healthy, full term, baby girl!

Pind Wood Derby

Saturday was a busy day for our family. We started the day off getting up earlier than I would have liked. We loaded up our family and headed to Kanab for the Regional Scout Pine Wood Derby. It was a cold, cold day. We drove to Kanab and drove home a few hours later in a freak'n blizzard. We were blessed with less than 2 feet of snow which really isn't all that much, but it was crazy that it just kept coming and coming without an end in sight. By Sunday morning the storm had finally passed us.

  Despite the horrible weather Hunter had an absolute blast!

His car won 1st place out of all the other Wolf's cars.
After all the dens had raced, they then had the winner of the 3 dens race against each other just for fun. Hunter's car came in 2nd place. He was pretty proud of his car and how well it did.

He was pretty excited to be given a new pocketknife. It was engraved with the year and 1st place on it.  Good job Hunter!

1st Dance...

Saturday night Madelyn had her 1st dance.

Her elementary school was having a Spring Fling, a Daddy/Daughter dance!

Madelyn and I had so much getting ready for this special night.

Madelyn chose to wear her new spring/easter dress and a necklace that I had that matches perfectly. Even daddy got dressed up. Kory wore his one and only missionary suit. Something he has NEVER worn in our 10 years of marriage. When he stuck his hands in his pocket, he found something he hasn't seen in many, many years. His missionary tag! It took her a while to choose her hairstyle now that her hair is so short. In the end she asked for a few flipperoo's and then we curled her hair. She looked beautiful!

She came home that night with her dad on cloud 9. The first thing she said to me was how AWSOME her night was. How this particular night was "the best night of my whole entire life".

I'm so glad her special night with just her and her dad were so enjoyable!

31 weeks...

I had a Dr.'s appt. this past Monday. I was given some good news and bad. Let's start with the good. The baby's heartbeat is strong and I'm measuring what I'm supposed to. YIPEE!!

I was telling my doctor that I feel like the baby has dropped already. I've felt this way for about 3 weeks now. 2 weeks ago, at church a lady came up to me and said that I must be due soon because it looked to her like the baby had dropped. She was surprised to hear that I still had 11 weeks to go at that point. I agreed with her though, she has dropped. I also seem to have more than usual discharge. Sometimes it's so much that I wonder if I'm losing my mucus plug already. I also mentioned my daily headaches that I still have. However, I have found that as soon as I feel it coming on if I stop what I'm doing and eat something the headache will generally subside. It doesn't completely go away but it doesn't turn into a migraine either. I can still function. I've also been having contractions. I know most of them are Braxton Hicks, but I do get some that are starting to hurt, and I have to stop what I'm doing. I'm much too early to be having these.

I don't think she believed me when I said I felt like the baby had dropped. When she measured my belly though she said something like, "Oh wow, this baby really had dropped. She's head down and everything likes she's ready to come". Uh..... Yeah! That's what I'm saying. My doctor now agrees that baby has dropped, with the discharge and contractions to go along with this she has put me on "moderate" bed rest. I've got another appt. 3 weeks from this past Monday. I will be 2 days shy of being 34 weeks (Hunter was born at 34weeks+2days ) Anway's she plans on checking me then and if I've dilated at all she'll put me on "complete" bed rest for the rest of this pregnancy. Moderate bed rest is not doing the things that bring on the real contractions like, vacuuming, sweeping/mopping, being on my feet all day long (preschool/mutual days). I should also be laying down (not sitting down) for an hour mid-morning and another hour midafternoon.

Monday I also took the pregnancy glucose test. It came back high. The nurse told me that the "normal" scores were somewhere between 29-139. My grand score was 156. WOW!

I was told I needed to come back this week and take the 3-hour glucose test. Apparently, the 1st one is a prescreening, and the 3 hour is the actual diagnosis for gestational diabetes. The nurse told me I did have a small chance of passing the 2nd test, but she'd be surprised if I did due to my high score on the 1st one. Gestational Diabetes in most women causes their babies to grow extra big. The babies aren't developing faster there just getting fat! If I were to go the full 40 weeks the baby would most likely be too big and cause for a c-section. We want to avoid this. With extra monitoring this baby could be taken as early as 35 weeks. Most babies are taken between the 37-38 week. I would be put on a special diet. I would be given a special little machine that would check my blood at home every 3 hours. Poking myself to withdraw blood every 3 hours for the next several weeks would not be fun. If for whatever reason the diabetes wasn't being controlled with my diet, I would have to give myself insulin shots.

So today I made a trip back to Cedar for the 3-hour test. I arrived at the hospital fasting a little after 8:30am. My blood was drawn for the 1st time at 8:45. I was given another sugary drink that actually had twice as much sugar in it than the drink I took on Monday. I had 5 minutes to drink it. I started chugging it and the nurse stopped me. She said drinking this drink on an empty stomach makes most people sick. She didn't want me puking and having to start all over again so despite the nasty sugary taste I did my best taking the whole 5 minutes to drink it. My blood was then drawn at 9:50, 10:50 and 11:50. My arms are now bruised! I had to stay at the hospital the entire time.

Lucky for me my mom just happened to be working in Cedar and had a break during the time I was there. I brought a book to read but couldn't seem to concentrate on it. It was great to have my mom as a distraction and to keep me company. When my last draw was done my mom treated me to a much-needed lunch. It was great to spend some more time with here just one on one.

I was told my lab results would be in by 4pm and that my Dr's office would give me a call. At 4:45 my patience got the best of me, and I called them instead. They still hadn't received my test results, but the receptionist was able to pull them up online. She told me the "normal" range was 29-179 this time. I scored 130. Yeah! No diabetes. The doctor hadn't had a chance to look at the results yet, but I could expect a phone call sometime tomorrow with what happens next. She may want me to take the test again due to the conflicting numbers. Yuck! At 6:30 tonight my phone rang. It was the nurse from my doctor's office. I passed and I don't have to take the test again. YIPEE!! I still need to stay on moderate bed rest, but gestational diabetes is no longer a concern. I don't know why my score was so high on Monday. After drinking the liquid today, I didn't know how anyone would score a normal reading with the amount of sugar in it. I felt like I could stick my tongue out and see sugar granules stuck all over it. I had twice as much of the sugary drink today and my score was less than it was on Monday. What the heck happened? We've told the kids that my body might be sick and that was why I had to go back to Cedar again this week for a special blood test. Every prayer offered I have been mentioned. Our prayers were definitely answered today.

I feel like we have been blessed with our own little miracle.

We've Had Another Birthday...

This past Monday we celebrated, the best we could, someone's birthday in our family. I forget how small this little guy started out as.

Hunter weight 5'10 when he was born. My sister, Hanna, who at the time was about 8 years old picked up a grapefruit off my counter. To her utter delight she realized the normal sized grapefruit was a bit bigger than Baby Hunter's head. Like I said, he was kind of tiny when he was born!
It's hard to believe this little boy of mine is now 9 years old! Where has all the time gone?
The morning of Hunter's birthday this year we were still in hurricane due to a dr's appt. I had in Cedar. It was kind of a rushed morning being we needed to leave about 8am. Before breakfast mom and dad gave him one of his gifts, an Angry Birds T-shirt. Grandma helped us keep with tradition by fixing pancakes with candles to blow out for breakfast.

After breakfast he was able to open a gift from Grandma/Grandpa and Aunt Hanna and a gift from Aunt Sheri and Uncle Jason.

Grandma/Grandpa gave him the pringles (his absolute favorite), Aunt Hanna gave him the frisbees, and paddle ball. Aunt Sheri gave him the Star Wars lego set which he put together while we traveled. It was great to have something new that entertained the kids during our travels home.

When we FINALLY got home later that afternoon Hunter requested his favorite meal for dinner; mashed potato's with shredded chicken gravy and homemade noodles. YUM! When dinner was over he was able to open his last gifts from us. More lego's!

We've kind of had a busy week thus far and he still hasn't had a chance to put them all together yet. I won't let him skip scouts to "play" with Lego's. I keep reminding him that the Lego's aren't going anywhere, and he has plenty of time to put them all together!

Fun Facts about Hunter

1. Loves french toast for breakfast.

2. Hunter does not like butter/margarine because it is unhealthy. He won't put it on french toast, scones, toast, vegetables, absolutely NOTHING! If I've put it on something like, hot broccoli for dinner, he'll try scraping it off and has even rinsed it off, so he doesn't eat it.

3. Loves the Harry Potter movies and is reading the series right now. He's on book #4

4. He loves scouts and wants to do EVERYTHING in his scout book RIGHT NOW!

5. Hunter loves to surf eBay looking for "good deals" on Lego's.

6. Hunter does extremely well in school, and he likes school. However, if asked in front of his peers or a lot of people he'll claim he does not like school.

7. Hunter loves his younger brother. He takes time to play dinosaurs, cars, or a Harry Potter game that Brayden has made up almost on a daily basis.

8. Hunter loves to ride his bike. Any opportunity he gets he usually takes his bike. For instance, he rides his bike to get the mail, to the park, to basketball practice 2x a week, to scouts, to return or pick something up for mom. Every Sunday he rides his bike to church. 

9.Hunter likes to go to the shop with his dad and build things. He made a stool for his bathroom with a "stool kit" I bought from D.I. He's also made himself a toolbox in Scout's.

We love you Hunter and are so glad you are a part of our family!

Easter Weekend

Friday afternoon when Kory got home from work our family headed down to sunny, warm Hurricane for the Easter weekend. Friday night we left the kiddo's at home with Grandma and Grandpa and Kory and I went out on a much-needed date. We saw the Hunger Games and thoroughly enjoyed it. We both read the series over a year ago. I know there were some changes between the movie and the book, but it's been long enough since we've read the book that we didn't notice anything major. We loved the movie.

Saturday morning all the moms and kids headed over to the kids' old elementary school to participate in the town's Easter Egg Hunt. The had roped off several different areas of the field and then divided it into different ages. My 4 kids ended up being in 3 different spots. All the hunts started at the same time, so I didn't get very many pictures. Hunter and Madelyn did there hunt together. I stayed with Emily. I had Aunt Hanna help Brayden being they were in the same spot as Aunt Sheri and Cousin Jamie. Here's Emily before the big event. She was pretty excited.


Brayden loved his bag full of candy!
Later that afternoon we died easter eggs. Look at all those eggs!

Emily liked "painting" the best.

Brayden wanted his egg to be green. However, he wanted to use the same egg and kept dipping it in every color available to him. In the end he had a nice brown egg.

The Easter Bunny did find us. As with tradition our Easter Bunny brings a new book. Brayden loves stories and it was cute to watch him pick up his new book during the day and read it to himself.

Hunter turned 9 the day after Easter and I seriously thought that he knew who the Easter Bunny was. Madelyn and I had a conversation around St. Patrick's Day about Leprechauns being real or not along with the Easter Bunny. I thought Hunter participated too. Apparently not. This kid woke me up Easter morning before 6 am excited that he had been given Harry Potter book 4 in his basket. He just kept saying over and over, " I can't believe he brought it to me".
I guess he still believes!

Emily was thrilled with her Fancy Nancy book.

Madelyn's schoolteacher has been reading Flat Stanley books to the class. Needless to say, I've heard lots about them. I was a bit worried that she may have already heard/read this, but she hasn't. The Easter Bunny did a good job guessing.

After sacrament meeting Aunt Sheri and Uncle Jason blessed their newest, Brionney. After her blessing we went back to Grandma's for lunch in the back yard.

Brayden and Jamie quickly learned how to work this fun watering system.

Hunter and Noah had fun playing together despite their age difference.

These girls made me laugh. It's fun to listen to them talk and hear there giggling.

Madelyn and Carlaya

These 2 climbed in by themselves but then got stuck!

GG pa & GG came over for lunch too.

When lunch was cleaned up, we made the kids go to the front yard while the adults hid the eggs in the back yard for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Look at all the grandkids together. The only one missing in the picture is baby Brionney. Next year she'll be there with everyone else.

Miss Emily

Hunter loved being able to climb the trees to get to the eggs.

Brayden totally got the Easter Egg Hunt this year. He'd open each egg one at a time and exclaim, "More candy!" It was quite fun to watch his amazement with each egg.

Miss Madelyn

It was such a great warm sunny weekend spent with family. The kids thought the weather was great and were excited to wear shorts again. I seriously wonder if we will ever wear shorts at home. Madelyn came down ready for school this morning wearing shorts. I left it up to her but let her know it's supposed to snow this afternoon. She didn't believe me as there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I pulled the weather up on the computer to show her we have a 80-90% chance EVERY DAY this week until next Monday of snow showers. She changed before catching the bus. I miss the warm weather we had this weekend. It's going to be cold this week at home as the highest is supposed to be 55 over the next 6 days. Will it ever be Spring here?