Leaps and Bounds

My last post was all about "moving forward". I've been collecting pictures to make this post for a while, but I was super surprised to come back to my blog and realize I made that post almost 5 months ago!

Looking back on the past 5 months, it feels like we're moving forward by leaps and bounds! Much faster than I'm normally comfortable with! But I guess that's the way life goes. And I know that it's good! I just wish we were where we were for a little longer!

But here's where we've been the past 5 months (I still can't believe it's 5 months!!):

We got to have cousins come play at the beginning of the summer and it was so fun! Remi and Emi are three weeks apart and they are two peas in a pod. They both had to have long skirts, buns and sunglasses

Saw Man used to LOVE to wake up Remi every morning. He'd jump all over her and yell until she'd wake up.

Grant has gotten into board games, and he's really good! It's taken me a while, but I can finally beat him in checkers! He loves things that make him think!

Grant and Biz both did swimming lessons this year. We have to drive to St. Johns because our lovely town refuses to build a pool, but that meant Remi got to have Wilson be her teacher, and that was awesome! She even made her a friendship bracelet on the last day of class.

I'm SO proud of Grant! He's my little fish! That's him in the background taking strokes. I can't believe he's 5 and he's already taking strokes! I hope he keeps loving swimming and gets the opportunity to pursue it.

We had a wonderful Fourth of July! For some reason, I can't find any of my pictures, but I had this one from Facebook, and I LOVED spending it with my little family!!

Coz got to come spend some time in Eagar and we got to go have fun at Grammie Kimmie's. This is the perfect picture of summer in Eagar to me!

Another perfect summer pic! Sammy took us fishing! We should've gone more....maybe then Sawyer would've known fishing etiquette, or maybe he's just wild! Either way, next time we go, we need two adults per Sawyer!

This was taken on Hyrum's 5 month birthday. The Temple was a wonderful place to celebrate eternal families and bear our testimonies to our kids that we will see our little man again!

This picture cracks me up! We were at Grandma Velda's house and couldn't find Saw. I went into Velda's office and found Sawyer typing away on her computer. When he turned around, he was wearing her glasses. I couldn't stop laughing! His eyes looked HUGE!

This was a fun Family Home Evening night we had. S'mores and a fire pit. I LOVE spending time with these guys!!

August and September have brought big/exciting changes!

Grant started playing soccer and we have LOVED getting to watch him play! He is so sweet and just loves playing! He had an AWESOME coach and she did so well with their team!

In mid-May, I took a part-time job at the hospital and Mike turned in his notice at Little Colorado. It was kind of a leap of faith, but we'd been debating for a long time about how we could get Mike through school faster. I kept feeling pushed to stretch out of our comfort zones after we met Hyrum, and although it's been scary, it's been SO good for our family! Mike's taking extra classes and we're hoping to get through school a lot faster!

Before too much time went by, we made another big change! It has been my dream since I was in High School to get to work at Mountain Avenue Clinic, where I worked in high school. The wonderful people there encouraged me to pursue nursing and seeing how they cared for their patients always made me want to!

Lucky me, in July, I found out there would be an opportunity to work for them again. It was a little complicated, because I couldn't work full-time, but they've worked with me so well and things have just worked out so smoothly. It was hard having to tell the hospital, but I'm happy to be working days again, and I LOVE working at the clinic! And I do still pick up shifts at the hospital from time-to-time.

We'd been concerned about how we were going to manage things financially with the change, and there were a few weeks when I was still working nights and training at the clinic on days and when I really wondered if we were going to make it, but it felt like the right move to make, and it's already proven to be such a blessing!

Grant started school! I was a horrible mess of emotions! (Turns out running late the first day is a great remedy!) I can't believe he's so big!! We are so proud of our little kindergartener! He's done SO well! He was presented with a character award in the first month. He's made a good little friend and he LOVES school! He has an amazing teacher and she gave him a "magic potion" (kool-aid) to drink the night before school and he was so excited about it. He told me a few weeks into school, "That magic potion Mrs. Hamblin gave me REALLY worked because I always want to go to school!"

The weekend before school started, our niece Elyse brought over games to play with the whole fam and we got to have some good conversations. I love my nieces and the relationships we have. They are awesome people! Seriously, what high school senior spends her last night of freedom with her aunt and uncle and little cousins?! The kids ate it up! Especially Grant! He's a Chinese Checkers fan now!

So Mike has a sibling who he does EVERYTHING with! They went on their missions within weeks of each other. We got married within a week of each other. We had our first three kids, all the same gender around the same time. They even lost a pregnancy while I was pregnant with Hyrum. It's just been crazy how they always tend to have the same big life events going on at the same time!

Well, in July, they called and said they were pregnant...with TWINS! We figured it was finally time to jump off the train! I've still been really wrapped up in Hyrum's world and not wanting to let so much of it go. I couldn't imagine having another baby at that time. But we were SO excited for them! The day after they told us, I started putting together a "doubles" care package for them. I was so excited about the clever "pairs" that I found.

A few nights later, before I'd gotten everything together to send, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and realized it was the third time I'd woken up to go that night. Because of our history and the news we'd just gotten, I decided to take a pregnancy test. And would you believe....

 (we're not having twins though!!)

We got to go pick wild raspberries (which I've always wanted to do!) with the Brownings. I was hoping to make a pie out of them, but we ended up using them to make smoothies instead.

Bonnie and I made these flags for Hyrum and Harley. I'm so thankful to have a friend and example like Bonnie! We decided to make them every year.

This little monkey has been giving us a run for our money over the last few months. A few of his antics include: spraying down the living room with the garden hose, starting a fire in the kitchen, flashing the congregation at church, staying up 'til ALL hours of the night (literally, last night it was 2:30 AM), and still refusing to talk (even though he can). But he has the sweetest face and the sweetest voice and he gets away with pretty much everything.

Sawyer has a sweet friend named Koley (he calls her Koe-Kway). They are best buddies and we are thankful someone can help curb our rowdy little man! She showed a sheep at the county fair this year and we got to go watch. She did awesome!

The kids were so excited for the fair and their mom is kind of a dead beat! But we still went and I think they had a pretty good time! It's always good to get out and do something fun with these guys!

Hyrum's six month birthday was last month. Everyone told us the six month mark would be hard. And it was...REALLY miss our little man! Every single day. I've accepted that that yearning for him will never go away. That makes it a little easier to carry, to just expect it to be there. He brings so much good too, and I love that our kids know and celebrate him with us. Clif gave us a lantern to release for his six month birthday. It was perfect!

The kids and I went picking wildflowers around our house. I LOVED it! We finally started doing it a little too late in the season, but I'm so excited about it! Remi and I picked to big jars one day and she said she wanted to take one to Hyrum and one to her friend Sami.

She's such a good sister!!

I LOVE it when Mike sends me pictures at work! This was one I got one day. Sometimes it's hard to believe these two are brothers because of how different they are. But they look like brothers to me in this picture. They do have in common that they're both such BOYS!

And Remi is such a lady! She got to meet her baby cousin Layla last month and she was in Heaven!!

 Remi gave us a scare, after she slipped and hit her head on the sidewalk. At first I thought everything was fine, that she probably just had a little concussion, but then she started slurring words, couldn't stay awake, had glassy eyes and threw up about 7 times. I took her to the ER and her physical assessment checked out, but after she threw up a few more times in the ER, they did a CT just to be sure. We're so grateful everything turned out okay. She got to come home and by the time she got back to her brothers, she was her usual, sweet self! None of us know what we'd do without our little Bizzy!

"Mom's Wild Fella"...yup!

Saw got to see Sal and he was pretty stoked about it!

 Lately, when he doesn't want to do something or doesn't like what we have to say, he just plugs his ears. I wish that would make all my problems go away!

For conference this year, we did a little store. The kids got "conference cash" if they were reverent and could tell us what each of the talks were about. I forgot to take a picture until Sunday afternoon, but the kids did great, especially Grant. He helped Remi figure out how much everything cost and how much she needed to have in order to buy what she wanted. They were so good, we actually felt like we got to listen to the majority of it, and it was a great conference!

So I posted this on FB, but I needed to document it here. I really had big plans for how I was going to announce this pregnancy. I had such a hard emotional road at the beginning that finally feeling like I was ready to put it out there felt like a big step. I wanted to make sure I included Hyrum in the announcement, because a lot of my emotional turmoil stemmed from worrying that Hyrum would be overshadowed by the joy of a new baby.

Well Sawyer got ahold of the ultrasound picture before I could. So it seemed a little fitting that this was the way to tell Facebook that we're having another baby.

I showed the picture to Remi and she asked what was in Sawyer's mouth. I told her it was the picture of our new baby and she said, "AGHHHHH! That dang Soy-ya! He's such a nut!" For real, Rems!

What??