Mel's Fantastical Insights

I don't know about you guys but man we have a lot of snow! Merry Christmas to us! Last year we barely got enough snow to cover the yard in a light dusting a few times, this year, well let's just say I am grateful for my neighbors who come to shovel my driveway. This is Charlie's first real time in the snow, literally, I put his snow pants on and stuck him in it. He is not a fan. Regardless, we have had a super crazy year, which I guess all people with 3 or more kids can say. In the last 13 months we have had 2 ankle surgeries, a new baby, a new nephew who came with his own special issues, a neice, another pregnant sister, a mission call for another sister, and a mom and dad who seem to now live in Utah. And that's only on my side of the family! Thus blogging has fallen way behind on my priority list. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and has a Happy New Year.

I constantly think about posting on my blog. My kids are so cute and funny. We constantly are going places and seeing amazing things. My husband and I are overly opinionated and boy could I write about any political issue or person if I really felt like it. Most of all, I feel like my mind is always in constant narration. Regardless of all the reasons why I should write more, there is one big reason why I do not. Don't get me wrong, Charlie is awesome but come on! He is not even 6 months old and he sits up, crawls, fusses because he can't get to Daniel and Alice fast enough, refuses to eat cereal or any other baby food, won't drink from a bottle, already has one tooth and most of the time hates Jason. Now sure, him not being on a set schedule is my fault, as I never live life in any sort of organized way. (I do try it just never works out.) But Charlie often drives me crazy. Then when he isn't driving me crazy these two are: Oh well right? It sure is an

Way back in April it was Alice's turn to have a birthday. She is adorable. She of course wanted a butterfly birthday and the hunt for butterfly things began! Luckily Target had butterfly party stuff (score!) and ROSS had a few butterfly random things that little girls would like. So it was fairly successful. For her party I found in Women's Day a butterfly cupcake recipe from Bakerella. I figured I could certainly get those done, apparently I learned nothing from Daniel's birthday. Now we didn't want to go through the whole shabang of party but we realized that Alice has never had a true birthday party so we invited some friends and cousins over and she had a "real birthday" according to Daniel. When the kids arrived at her unofficial party, the cupcakes were made, not frosted and the wings for the butterflies were being assembled. It was a step above the needing my sisters to frost things like at Daniel's party so I call it a success! While the

I know right, two posts in a row after months of nothing. Go me. Daniel turned five in March. He was so excited. He has a habit of declaring what type of birthday he should get. Last year it was space, and yes he excepted all space toys. This year was Star Wars and he expected all toys from that genre. Needless to say thank goodness Williams Sonoma had a bunch of Star Wars stuff for cakes and cupcakes. For his birthday weekend, Grandma was here so she took Daniel and Alice and their cousin Josh to Kangaroo Zoo. Now for those who have not been, Kangaroo Zoo in Lindon is super fun. A little pricey but man they had so much fun and ended up exhausted so who can truly complain? It is a whole bunch of bouncy things for the kids to play on. Mostly slides and a few houses. Especially since it ended up that Grandma paid! Daniel would have never left but Alice almost fell asleep on the floor. Charlie did great and slept the whole time. Way to go! For his birthday, it was emb

This shirt was awesome and I loved it. I wanted something to put Charlie in for church so I bought it (it was on sale for under $5). Washed it, put it on and behold the Charlie Chunk! At least he wore it once right? This picture is about 3 weeks old and low and behold the shirt totally doesn't fit now.

I know I know, is Charlie already 3 months old? Pretty close. Holy cow! I guess I should make more of an effort to write on my blog. Things are busy, I either you know, eat or shower or do dishes or laundry and by that time my kids won't let me on the computer. Oh well. So here is Charlie's story. I went to my doctors appointment on a Wednesday and was not progressing at all. So I decided that I could walk this baby out! I spent the next two days at the dinosaur museum, the aquarium, the park (since it was totally warm in February go figure), and taking my kids for walks. By Friday night my feet were so swollen they hurt and I was so tired. Of course, with the heartburn I was having I didn't go to sleep until close to midnight only to be woken up around 2 with what I thought was hip pain from all my walking. Every 15 minutes I woke up with horrible hip pain. Finally around 3:15 the pain was so bad I couldn't fall back asleep, duh! That's when I realiz

We had Charlie on February 18, 2012. More info coming soon. But here are his one month old pictures.          

The random things that get accomplished when you are waiting out your pregnancy. I have been cleaning like crazy and keeping up with laundry so my day to day chores have actually decreased. That is also because we have been hiring a house keeper which, why we haven't before is beyond me. We are finally feeling better other than aches and pains, I have canceled church for us until after the baby is born. I can't stand being sick anymore. The baby is due officially in ten days and we had a fake out last Friday, but are still impatiently waiting. Up until the last two weeks I was not swollen to ridiculousness, which now my feet are just comical. I mean who gets stretch marks on their feet? I also now can't sleep, either my back hurts or my hip or my lovely sciatic nerve which is awesome. As I said, impatiently waiting. So here's what I have been doing. I wanted to make my kids something to remind them they were once babies and that babies don't just cry, ea

I am not usually this bad at updating, regardless here is a quick recap of the holidays. We bought aquarium passes on google deals and they have been worth every penny so far. Jason loves to take the kids there. Although I heard when they passed Thanksgiving Point on Saturday that Daniel was really concerned that we did not have a current pass there. The things kids worry about.   I took the kids to the live nativity in Alpine. With the help of my sister and bro in law and their cute little boy. We did not freeze but it was chilly. My kids loved it and we would totally go again. Alice loved looking at all the animals and Daniel asked all the Jerusalem shop keepers everything about what they were making. Alice also really liked the baby Jesus and if it wasn't for a gaggle of girls behind us who would not shut up I am sure I would have been more in awe like my little girl.   We took the kids on this boat ride on the Provo river where they had all these lights on the riv