4th of July

We had a great 4th of July this year up at the lake. It seems like forever ago (16 days ago), but it only seems like so long ago because we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of little dude then, and here we are almost to 40 weeks and still waiting.
For the fourth, Mike, Laura, Shawn, and Caleb came up to the lake. They put their big pontoon boat out on the water and camped out at Kalispbell Island. Kyle, Ryker and I did our sleeping back home, but Gunnar enjoyed himself sleeping on the boat.
We had a great time kayaking on the lake, boating, and using the wave runner. It was really perfect weather. They were out there for about 4 nights.
Over the weekend our friend Jacob came up and spent some time with us. Kyle took him up to the natural waterslides and they seemed to have a good time there too.
Overall it was perfect. Good food and great fellowship with friends and family.
The co-pilots.

 Kyle and Caleb kayaked from the shore to the Island. Gunnar joined them about 10 minutes from shore.

 How we keep crazy Ryker under control.

 Us kayaking with the boys. There was a lot of crying, but also a lot of laughing.

 Gunnar playing catch on top of the boat.

 Haha...you won't see this everyday, 37 1/2 weeks pregnant and in a wet suit.

 Ryker knows how to roll when we are in the boat.

 That's Kyle on the wave runner.

Looking back on lower Priest Lake, ready to go see Upper Priest Lake.

Smores and more

(Written July 2, but just now getting to the internet to post)

Kyle ended his rafting season on Friday, and we have enjoyed having him home. I am pretty sure he is awfully bored going from being very active every day to being at home with two toddlers and a pregnant wife, but he is coping.  I am thankful for him ending his season a month earlier than the rest of the crew to be with us before the baby arrives, which they say could be any day now (they said that with Ryker too, and it was still 3 weeks until he was born).

We had a smores night, Friday and we had tons of fun besides all the bugs. There are these tiny black flies that love my family. They leave a nasty bite. Despite our bug repellent, they just can’t get enough of us. We really can’t stand them. Luckily for the most part the mosquitoes leave us alone if we have our bug spray on. The boys loved the smores. We made some extra special ones with Reese Peanut Butter Cups and they were amazing!

Monday we got a bit more adventurous. We had heard about the natural waterslides up here, but have never checked them out. So we packed our lunch and headed that morning. It was about an hour drive around the lake and up to Lion’s Head State Park, and then about a mile and half hike. The hike was beautiful and totally worth it, even 36 ½ weeks pregnant. We got about 200 yards from the slides and couldn’t get to them because the bridge was washed out and there was no way we were wading through the waist deep, ice cold water with Gunnar and Ryker in tote. We had to cross plenty of streams with them and that was challenging enough. We decided we will visit them kid free next time. Gunnar did a great job of walking, but Ryker would walk about 100 yards and then want to be carried the next 600 yards….on the way back Kyle took to carrying both of them.

Kyle and Caleb did decide to get into the water despite not being at the slides and the freezing cold temperatures. Gunnar decided to dip his toes in, but that was all the further I allowed him to go. He wanted to jump in with his dad and Uncle Caleb.

Anytime we are outdoors we are reminded of God’s awesome power and strength. Our God is truly an AWESOME God. I am so thankful that He has afforded me the opportunities to see so many of His beautiful creations. 

33 weeks

I realize that my blog in general has been quite neglected (minus my two recent posts),which means that writing anything about my current pregnancy or even sharing an ultrasound picture has also been forgotten. It’s just simply not easy keeping up without having internet at home. I can drive less than a quarter mile in either direction on the highway and use their free internet. But, this in turn means slow internet, and trying to put any pictures on the blog takes forever,and with two little boys in the backseat waiting patiently while mom uses the internet means I don’t have forever.

But alas, I am here to give an update on my pregnancy: I am about 33 weeks along. I don’t know if the next 7 weeks or so could possibly goby fast enough to please me. I have been measuring 2 weeks big the last couple of appointments, but they say I’m doing good, however, if you ask me I feel like a whale and possibly even look like one. I’m not exactly sure how my belly can grow for another 7 weeks. Kyle even commented that I have never been this big with either Gunnar or Ryker, it was said with love, and it’s true…so no hard feelings towards his honesty. My midwife told me to plan on not having a 5 or 7 pound baby again, that I needing to be thinking 8-9 pounds. She then assured me my body knew what it was doing…so comforting.

A few weeks ago I went out and bought some new bras and maternity pants. My maternity pants from my previous pregnancies are just not comfortable anymore proving that I really am larger this go around. My bras were not fitting at all making me miserable throughout the day. Kyle gladly sent me off to get new clothes because he understands that being uncomfortable doesn't equal happy. 

I have felt okay. I have horrible heartburn, and it keeps me from getting rest, it especially interrupts my afternoon nap attempt while bothboys are sleeping. Baby boy LOVES waking me up at about 3am each morning forsome kickboxing, so I don’t tend to be well rested. He is an active little dude, which I guess is just like my other two, so why should I expect anything different. I was lying with my belly against Kyle’s back the other night and Kyle woke up at 3am during one of the kickboxing sessions to tell me to rollover the other direction because the baby was keeping him awake with all the kicking that was being felt on his back. Funny, I wish I could have him rollover and be kick free and able to sleep well.

As for a name, we are still clueless. We have a couple ideas, but nothing even close to solid possibility. I wish when babies were born that they came out with a tag attached to a toe with the name God determined fit for them….it really would make my life a whole lot less stressful!

So, there you have it a bit of an update on pregnancy #3.Sorry I didn’t bring my ultrasound pictures to upload. We only had two ultrasounds this pregnancy which is so strange to me, and none of the pictures were any spectacular, other than I suppose the miracle of life which is pretty spectacular in itself!

7 years

Kyle and I have officially been married 7 years as of May 21. As I reflect on these last seven years, I realize we have done so much and have an endless list of praises.

Upon getting married I moved with Kyle to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Within five months of our marriage he left on a year long deployment to Iraq. I went back to Washington State, lived with my parents and completed my student teaching, then kept myself busy coaching tennis and substitute teaching. I moved back to Kentucky in September awaiting Kyle’s return.

Kyle returned and we were at Fort Campbell until February at which point we packed up and were moved across the world to Schweinfurt, Germany. We were in Germany for about four years. Kyle was deployed for 15 months to Afghanistan, and I was blessed with a job teaching Kindergarten at the American School on base. I kept plenty busy with teaching, but also took a little time to travel with friends. Upon Kyle returning from Afghanistan we had our little Gunnar. Together we travelled and saw a lot of great places across Europe. One of my most memorable trips would be our 95k hike across a stretch of the Austrian Alps. It was challenging, yet really gave us some quality time together away from the world. Kyle was deployed again to Afghanistan for what was suppose to be a year. I was busy packing up our apartment as Gunnar and I were planning on moving stateside setting things up for our transition out of the military. God had other things in mind for us. Kyle ended up badly breaking his ankle a month into his deployment and was sent home. Gunnar and my plans got put on hold. Kyle came home Dec. 23, 2009 from Afghanistan…he was the best broken Christmas present ever. I told him that first night that he was home I suspected I was pregnant again (despite our use of birth control). I then began caring for Kyle, our 8 month old Gunnar, and in the meantime tried to take care of my pregnant self. We also moved into a larger apartment off post. It was an interesting move, I was about 7-8 months pregnant, Kyle had a cast on his leg (not to mention his dislocated shoulder), we had a year old kiddo, and we were doing a self-move, talk about good times. Kyle went through a long recovery process and the day after Ryker was born in August we got the news that they were sending us stateside to complete Kyle’s medical evaluation board process.

This meant after Ryker’s birth things went into high speed. We quickly got his US citizenship paperwork, passport, and other documents in line, they packed up our house, put our car on a boat, and our family of four on an airplane and sent us to Fort Lewis, WA. We were in Fort Lewis for a year. There we saw the ins and outs of the military health system. Some days were better than others. We were told we would be there for about 6 months. After a frustrating year and 2 months, Kyle was finally medically retired from the military. We then took about a month to travel and visit our families over the holidays then finally moved into a ‘beautiful’ mobile home up in Priest Lake, ID, courtesy of Kyle’s dad.

We have now been here since January. We have been waiting for Kyle’s VA paperwork to come through. The VA considers Kyle 100% disabled and with that comes a lot of great benefits. We finally got the paperwork about 2 weeks ago (3 months later than expected) which means we are officially on the hunt for a house. The trailer has served us well as a transitioning location, but we are ready to move on. Kyle’s rafting season will end at the end of June, we will have a baby towards the end of July, and then we will hopefully we moving shortly thereafter. We are continually praying that God will show us just exactly where He wants this family of FIVE to go. Kyle is really feeling called to continue his work in outdoor youth ministry .

So here we are 7 years later….I think we have made the most of our 7 years, and honestly I can’t imagine going through all of this with anyone but Kyle. We really seem to balance each other, and I believe God really knew what He was doing when he placed us in each others lives. 

For our anniversary we dropped the boys off with Mike and Laura where they spent the night. I then went and spent the night with Kyle in his home away from home…a tent in the back yard of the warehouse of his work. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, and we got a peaceful, restful night sleep (the only thing that would have made it better was if I had a toilet). The next day we went and stuffed ourselves silly with breakfast at Frank’s diner then we hit up Manito park in Spokane. It was beautiful and we took tons of funny pictures of each other. It was great to be with Kyle, to relax, and just take time to laugh together. After the park we went and changed our cell phone contract from AT&T to Verizon, then picked up the boys so Kyle could spend some time with them too…I didn’t think it was fair I hogged one of his rare days off. It truly was a perfect day with each other.

Preschool

Gunnar finished up preschool on Thursday, May 24^th. I can’t even begin to explain what a blessing preschool has been in our lives. I was so worried about Gunnar socially after leaving Fort Lewis. Gunnar loved interacting with the kids at daycare usually at least twice a week, plus there were many kids for him to interact with at both Sunday and Wednesday night services at our church, so he was going from having quite a bit of interaction with other children to none when we moved.

Our church up here at the lake has two other little boys that are there off and on. They are brothers who are each just a couple months younger than our boys. So when they are there and when they decide they want to play in the nursery it is good. But other than that there is not a lot of opportunity for interacting with other young children up here. When we heard about the preschool that started in January, the month we moved here, we were thrilled. I probably would have paid big bucks for Gunnar to attend, but we were told they only thing required was that Gunnar was potty trained. Score for us. We were psyched as Gunnar was indeed potty trained (and he only had one accident and that was on a day when 4 kids peed their pants and they had an unusual schedule). The best part of it all is that it didn’t cost us big bucks, instead it is free! It is two days a week for three hours on those days.

Gunnar did pretty well he was the second youngest in his class that ranged from 4 kids to 15. He wasn’t always interested in their activities and if he got bored with something he would often just get up and go play. Luckily he became more actively engaged as time went on.

We have been impressed with all he has learned. He says his alphabet flawlessly, will point out random letters and numbers to us on signs and identify them correctly. He knows his shapes and can count to twenty if he is focused. Although if he messes up, which if it is going to happen he skips number three, then he just starts throwing random numbers out there and ends with ten or twenty. Colors….colors are his major weakness. We are constantly pointing out colors at home, he practices them at school, practices them at home, but he just doesn’t get it. It drives me bonkers. It does give us something extra fun to practice this summer, I can thinking up all sorts of games that involve identifying colors. We will also continue practicing his other skills (especially counting), and I would love to teach him to write his name over the summer. AND, we can’t forget we are working on him NOT speaking in third person. He will say “Gunnar wants candy” instead of “I want candy.” It’s cute and I was hoping he would just figure it out on his own, but I’m beginning to think it is something we might have to make him more consciously aware of.

I would love to get Ryker potty trained so he can start attending as he really wants to stay and go with big brother when we drop him off, but Ryker really isn’t ready yet and with the new baby coming potty training will have to wait a bit. I am hoping maybe by next January we can start thinking about potty training him, he will be almost 2 ½. Ryker does attend a lap sit story time at the public library here. He was actually the only “lap sitter” attending for a while, but now we have a little girl who regularly attends with us and today some 7 month old twin boys attended. Ryker’s behavior during this time has gone from interested to completely not interested! I actually just end up wrestling him most of the time, which gets frustrating. During this 30 minute time we usually sing songs, and look at books together. The songs are fun and interactive, but Ryker just wants to run through the library and push books over. They do capture his attention when they whip the bubbles out. I think they try to judge by my level of frustration with Ryker when to start blowing bubbles. This summer we may stop doing the lap-sit and start going to preschool story time with Gunnar now that preschool is over. I’m hoping that Ryker will see the older kids and want to copy them. It could go either way…but at least then Gunnar will be able to see his friends from school, and I know there is no way Gunnar would stay interested during the lap sit time, so I think preschool story time will be our best bet.

Keeping our kids socially engaged is so important to me, yet living in a very small and rural community makes his a bit of a challenge!

Birthday Extravaganza

Starting on April 22^nd, our family goes through a whirlwind of birthdays:

Ezra turned 9 the 22^nd.

Mike, Kyle’s Dad has a birthday on the 24^th.

Kyle has a birthday on the 27^th.

Sandi, My mom has a birthday on the 27^th (yep, her and Kyle share), and this year was a big one for her…something about being 20 with 40 years of experience.

Then finally, Gunnar ends the month with a birthday on the 30^th, and he turned 3.

This year since it was “a big one” for my mom she said that all she wanted was her family to all be together. She’s crazy if you ask me. But we all did as requested and got together for the weekend. My parents have a time-share type thing and got two big rooms right off of Lake Coeur D’Alene for the weekend.

My dad had a cardiologist appointment that Friday so it worked out nicely. I came into Spokane around 10 Friday morning, met up with my parents where they were getting their car worked on and kidnapped my sister (can you say “free babysitting”). We then went and got four HUGE pizzas and took them into Kyle’s work. They had a later start that day around 1, so it worked out nicely for everyone to meet and devour some pizza before they had to start preparing for their trip down the river that evening.

After pizza (and some cake), my sister, the boys and I went and did some last minute birthday shopping while my parents went to my dad’s doctor appointment. My boys actually spelt most of the time and I had my sister sit in the car with them while I did my last minute shopping. I hate last minute shopping as there is so much pressure, but it’s not like I have a lot of shopping options up here in Priest Lake, and I think I did okay this time around.

We then took the boys to a park in CDA while we waited until we could time it so we could meet up with my parents at the resort. Each child (Paul, me, and Jami) and my parents took a meal for the weekend, so the cooking was fairly easy and you only had to worry about one meal. We all just made sure to have something to eat before we got in Friday evening. The resort it pretty far from town, so you had to do your shopping/planning before you arrived.

The weekend was wild! 5 boys aged 9, 6, 3, 2.5, and 1.5), yikes. Imagine when we add one more boy to the mix here this July…that is a whole lot of boys. Gunnar couldn’t be happier than when he is around his cousins. He loves them to pieces; sometimes I don’t think Ezra and Owen appreciate how much Gunnar adores them, as he really doesn’t want to leave them alone. Ryker and Zane had plenty of fun too…we spent a lot of time swimming, rolling down hills, walking along the water, and terrorizing our rooms (which are more like apartments). The only sad part of the weekend was that Kyle was busy working. He would arrive around 11pm and have to leave early in the morning…but I can’t complain I at least got to see him which was more than if we were not in CDA which is closer to his work.

I made some cupcakes on Saturday for after dinner and we all enjoyed them celebrating everyone’s birthday. At this point in the weekend, Gunnar had pretty much declared everyone’s birthday was over and it was his turn. He was trying to wait patiently but it isn’t easy for a three year old. We didn’t do a ‘friends’ party (I’m not exactly sure who I would have invited), so I bought some pirate hats, and cupcake supplies, and we had a little pirate party. He had picked the pirate cakepops out for me to make and I was going to make them for preschool, but well, life happened (and he didn’t even notice). He was spoiled with gifts and happy as a clam.

Whenever we are outside playing he always says something about their being “lots of birthdays” in reference to all his new toys he got for outside. I’m not really sure he understands the whole birthday thing yet…

 Kyle did get this lovely look while guiding. Hazards of the jobs...teenagers with paddles!

Battles

Battles. As parents we have to carefully choose which battles we determine are worth the fight...

Kyle's whitewater rafting season has started. Which consequently means that the almost three year old, the 19 month old, and the pregnant lady (26 weeks) are all hanging out together....alone, unsupervised! We are gauranteed one day a week of seeing Kyle, but we have seen him 2-3 the last couple of weeks. Let's just say the boys and I spend a lot of time outside. There are no outside toys up here (we are working on this), so they play with the sticks, mud, rocks, in the back of pick-up trucks, climb on everything, and turn every thing they pick up off the ground into a gun. (Ryker is especially accomplished at this, my sweet little 19 month old.)

Okay, back to battles. I used to try to fight the "gun" battle, but quickly learned that only defeat was in sight, and surrenedered. They boys know guns can hurt people and that we only shoot bears, deer, moose, and wild cats (oops, did I say wild cats?). I ignore the dirty looks I get from other moms at the park when my 19 month old picks up sticks and turns them into guns. I had a mom tell me a couple weeks ago that Ryker was "playing inappropriatly for a baby." Even the ladies in the church nursery have learned its not a battle worth fighting. Apparently they tried playing animal doctor with some of the stuffed animals in nursery one Sunday with my boys, but all Gunnar and Ryker wanted to do was get their guns (yes, they have pretend guns in our church nursery) and shot them.

The most recent battle that Kyle decided to take on was the issue of clothing. Gunnar is our little nudest. Mind you, I should clarify, he isn't completely nude, he almost always has on his underwear, but that is it. If you tell him we are going somewhere, the store, church, school, or even just outside, he will not put up a fight about having to put clothes on and he keeps them on. But as soon as we are back inside the closed door of our house, his clothes are off within 5 minutes.

So Monday on one of Kyle's days off he decided Gunnar is no longer allowed to only be in his underwear...he MUST wear clothes. So during breakfast Kyle got up and got clothes for Gunnar. Gunnar screamed, "Daddy I don't like clothes, no clothes!!!!" over and over again. Throwing a fit only made Kyle more determined, so he held him down and put clothes on the poor kid. Gunnar proceeded to cry off and on the remainder of the morning about wearing his clothes. But he is no dummy, so he proceeds to pee his pants. We won't make him wear wet pants....so he tells us he peed and then only gets a replacement pair of underwear to put on, no pants. At this point Kyle decided Gunnar didn't have to wear a shirt, but only pants. Not acceptable for Gunnar, he wanted only his underwear, so he pees in his pants again.

I'm not sure at what point Kyle held up his white flag, but all I know is that by the end of the day Gunnar was only in his underwear (and had peed a ridiculous number of times in his pants) and when I went in to check on him one final time before I went to bed, he had taken off his pajamas as was sleeping in only his undies.

I feel bad for Kyle knowing how it feels to be defeated when it comes to parenting. You can call us weak, but really I think it's okay to at times admit defeat....I just hope Gunnar decided that wearing clothes is cool before he becomes a teenager, I don't think I can handle my teenage boy(s) sitting around in their underwear all day.

One battle we recently took on and are winning is night time bed-wetting with Gunnar. We probably went all about potty training wrong as we didn't night train at the same time we did day training. We tried, but Gunnar never made it through the night, and would pee always more than 3 times a night (one night 7 times!!!!), so we decided to wait that part of potty training out. We valued our sleep and the amount of laundry that was piling up more than night training (priorities). I told Kyle before Gunnar was three, I wanted him to be COMPLETELY trained, not just during the day. Kyle had been bugging me for a long time about night training, saying that we should just try without a diaper, because Gunnar knows when he has one on and could care less about even trying to use the potty at that point...but I had alot of great excuses built up. However, recently I took the plundge. The first week went great, Gunnar only had one accident at night, which made Kyle feel awesome knowing he was right about the whole thing.. Now we are about 85-90%...which is better than I imagined. He wakes up at 2am like their is an alarm set and goes to the bathroom, if he happens to not get up at 2, he has an accident. Some nights when I notice he hasn't gotten up, I want to go wake him up so he doesn't pee the bed, but I figure that won't help in the long run, he needs to be the one learning to recongnize what his body needs. So I just suck it up and deal with the extra laundry.

I keep telling myself that parenting will get easier with time, but really I think the problems needing dealt with will just be different. All we can do is our best, pray for guidence and give them the encouragment and tools our children need to be successful....but boy, that sure is easier said than done. Until I get parenting all figured out I will just choose my battles VERY carefully.

The Ocean

Sometimes I feel like my family is on a permanent vacation. I feel so blessed that we have been given the opportunity and resources to go so many great places and partake in so many fun adventures.
This month has been crazy. Kyle has been away each weekend at whitewater rafting school and his rafting season starts in a couple of days. He will be taking groups down the Wenatchee River, Deschutes River, and mainly the Spokane River.
We all came down to my parents in the middle of March to spend some time with my grandma who was visiting from Tennessee. We all had a great time and enjoyed our time with grandma. I drove Kyle back up to Spokane on Friday and then came back to my parents to stay for a few more days while Kyle was off at rafting school.
The first day we were back we had two doctor appointments to attend, so we didn't even make it home until Wednesday evening. We were all ready to be home. We were a bit sad as a lot of our snow has disappeared from the rain, however our first night back we got 6-8 inches of new snow. So we had a good couple of snowdays. We even whipped out our snowshoes and went for a evening/nighttime adventure. It was fun to see the clear sky and hear the quite of the night. It was a bit creepy once we started hearing the wolves howl, but it kept me motivated to keep moving towards home.

 Sunday morning we took off to Spokane. There we had the opportunity to watch Kyle and some of the other guides from Peak 7 raft down the Spokane River. The water level was about twice as high as when they did their training on it, so they wanted the new guides to experience it when the level was higher. They boys had a blast running around the river and throwing what I can only assume was hundreds of rocks in the river. On our way into Spokane we spotted 3 bald ealges up in the trees.

Once Kyle was done we got back in the car and made our way to my parents. The next morning we left for the Oregon Coast. We made a stop  at Multnomah Falls on our way and the Lego Store in Tigard, OR. Gunnar loves both the water fall and the lego store. He was very pleased. We got to the coast at evening, we stayed in a vacation home with a great view of the ocean. Kyle's mom joined us on our trip.

Tuesday morning we got up and headed to find some tide pools during low tide, while we found some we were a bit disappointed. We then went up to Tillamook to get cheese of course. Our kids were getting cranky so we skipped the air museum, on the way home we stopped at another waterfall that was about a fourth of a mile walk into. Being outside and getting our boys to burn some of their energy was critical to the success of our days....so they did a lot of walking and running. Luckily they both did minimal complaining about all the walking we made them do. When I tried using the stroller the both wanted out, so I rarely even attempted to use it.

On Wednesday we went down to Yachats. We got a bit of a later start than we had planned and the weather was not cooperating. We attempted to look at tidepools, and just as we were about to give up we found a starfish...which totally made all our searching worth it.

We then went back towards Newport for some Mo's clam chowder. We had about a 25 minute wait for a table and then were a bit disappointed with the chowder. I have been making my own and we decided we are fans of our own clam chowder. After getting our bellies full we went to the OSU Marine Science Center.  The boys were in heaven, they had fun touching lots of things and running from fish tank to tank to check everything out. We then made a few more stops on our way back towards the house in Lincoln City, as we did on our way to Yachats.

 We saw so many beautiful things and had a fun time as a family enjoying the beauty of God's creation. We headed to my parents Thursday and have stayed the night. On the way Kyle decided to get off the interstate and take the Columbia Gorge Scenic Byway. While there we had a herd of turkeys run out in front of the car and we had great views.

We aren't sure if we are staying another night, or what. Kyle's rafting contract starts on the first, so we are all just trying to enjoy our time together.