RIP Corolla, hello Odyssey

A few weeks we got rear ended while waiting at a stop light and then got pushed into the people in front of us. Gosh, being in an accident is such a crazy and fast experience. It just happens. You have no idea what's happening, it just does and you roll with the punches until it's over.

I've been so grateful for a peace of mind during the whole situation. We were all buckled properly in our respective seats. Our car was was registered properly and licenses were up to date. We have great auto insurance (more importantly the person who caused the accident is insured wonderfully). All our ducks were in a row. There were no "I wish we had…" in this situation. The Lord was truly watching over us and all those times we ask in our prayers to be safe and watched over we were even through an accident

I then was suggested to go to the hospital by my doctor and get checked out to make sure the babies were both ok and all was still well with the pregnancy. Yet again, a peace of mind knowing we are all safe and looked after and cared for by insurances is truly a priceless thing.

Less than  week later we found out our beloved Toyota Corolla was totaled :( so many mixed emotions when we heard the news.

That was the car we dated in, our first experience together I asked him for a ride from one end of campus back to my dorm at BYU. The first talks of marriage happened in that car. So many make out sessions, ha. It was "our" car even though it was originally Casey's. We've lived in Utah, California, Indiana, New Jersey and Nebraska in that car. Countless road trip across the country including Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New York, Iowa, Kansas. It's been through WAY more states than just those though. We drove completely across the country probably 4-5 times in that car. We brought Maxson home form the hospital in it. Learning how to use baby seats in it, so many crumbs in the back because of that cute little rascal. So many amazing memories in just our first car and now it's gone.

That car was so good to us, 209,000 miles and no problems ever, just normal maintenance. We're both sure it could have lasted us at least another 100,000 miles because Casey took such a good care of it. 

When we learned we were having twins we debated for months on what to do about our car situation. We knew a mini van was an absolute must (that was always in the plans for after graduation but now we had to bump it up a few years) but now suddenly all was changed. We were wanting to get through dental school with one car, and one car only, there was absolutely no need for a 2nd car but we didn't feel great about giving up our little car. We figured we'd get so much more use out of it over all the next years than we could possibly sell it for.  We had come to a conclusion, we weren't going to sell it and it would see us through so many more years. 

But then the accident. Our emotions were everywhere. Was it totaled? Was it worth fixing and keeping? Should we keep it? If it is totaled will the insurance company even give us a fair value for a car? So many conversations. Oh and the accident happened like 4 days before we were leaving for Nauvoo and we were only going to have 1 day between Nauvoo and traveling west for 4 more weeks. Awful timing.

We learned it was totaled and at the same time learned of the amount the insurance would give us and we were OVER THE MOON. We would have never been able to sell it for that price but that number was what the Corolla was worth to us and helped us exponentially when buying a new car.

As we went back to the auto shop to clean our car out we both felt very melancholy during the whole ordeal. It was like cleaning out a locker from high school: so many great memories, knowing you'd never come back to it and it will never be the same. So many great times yet all good things must come to an end. I couldn't believe how sad it was leaving that Toyota Corolla behind!!!!

But onward we had to go. We cut our trip to Nauvoo short by a day so we could car shop 2 days instead of 1 in Lincoln. We were disappointed at the selection we found in Lincoln and thought maybe we'd find something in Wyoming, Utah, or Arizona.

After another 4 or 5 days of car shopping, countless (exhausting) hours visiting dealerships and then talking through all our options over and over we settled on a car that would work well for us at a decent price point. 

So we are thrilled to introduce the newest member of our family:
the 2011 Honda Odyssey! 

It has lots of room to grow, will be perfect with twins and Maxson and  young family. I foresee lots more road trips in its future

PS- I NEVER WANT TO GO CAR SHOPPING AGAIN. I would rather go swim suit shopping, now that is saying something!

trip to Nauvoo

The week after school we took a quick little trip over to Nauvoo, IL. Nauvoo is a place with lots of rich, deep church history for members of the LDS church. The church has reconstructed a bunch of buildings there and just made it really fun place for families to learn all about the history of church. We got in in the super late afternoon one day, saw a tony little music show, walked around their country fair area and then saw the Nauvoo pageant that night. They did such a wonderful job with the production of it all. Maxson did ok during it, near the end we just had to switch out with Maxson so he could run around. We really loved finally getting to go watch the pageant (I've officially now seen all the church pageant productions!)

And to my surprise we were having camera card issues!!!! We got there and it wouldn't read the card we scrounged up! (Maxson lost the main one I use days before). It was great not having to lug that behemoth thing of  camera around for this adventure, a nice break from needing to take pictures of everything. But I did miss having the end result of all the nice pictures. Luckily for us we did have our phones for pictures and that's what matters most!

Nauvoo temple

b. Casey walked with Maxson in the children's parade
c. children's parade again
d. wagon ride around old nauvoo. maxson was enamored by those huge horses

a.-c. Thanks goodness for this kids station. It was the only area where we could finally enjoy some of the activities they offered without having to stop Maxson from touching everything and running everywhere. He was at such a hard age for visiting Nauvoo, just so active and busy but you couldn't quite be in that setting. So we were ever so grateful for this kids games area.
d. He FINALLY fell asleep after the kids game stuff and we were able to enjoy a couple of the house tours without chasing after him, glories.

a.-c. Definitely a favorites of Maxson's was the blacksmith shop. The loud banging was right up his ally. The fire also got too hot and started throwing out sparks like a sparkler, which was fun.

a.-b. We finished the Nauvoo area with a visit to Wilford Woodruff's home. An original home in the area. He's my 3rd great grandpa so it was special to me!
c.-d. We then drove the 30 minutes to Carthage to visit Carthage jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith was killed. What a sacred building. It was amazing to be there and see it all. The stories of the past are so richly with the filled the spirit.

I am so grateful for all the effort time and money the church has put into this history site to remind people of the stories and sacrifices of the Saints in the early days of the church. There were SOOOOO many wonderful senior missionaries making that place function so smoothly and then the sister missionaries and summer performer missionaries were so beyond awesome too. Can't wait to take my family back when we all my kids are older!

picturas de iFono

a. collecting sticks at the park
b. otter pops post park
c. 4th of july parade
d. buying 4th of july fireworks (casey's fave)

a. haircut time
b. astronaut maxson
c. camille stopped through lincoln with the kids on their drive out to arizona and we just LOVED seeing them for that brief hour
d. jade gave maxson a yoohoo and maxson devoured it

a.-d. splash pad time. definitely more fun when dad is around

a. eager for the park and ready with his buckets and shovels
b. for some reason we had a billion computers out at one time
c. found ourselves one of those free tiny library's on a street where you just take a book and put it back when you're done
d. not every moment is happy

a. artichoke for dinner, one of my favorites. casey's is starting to warm up to it after 5 years of experiencing it (and when i say warming up i just mean not complaining anymore)
b. begging to go into the neighbors house but they're not home
c. the tractor museum
d. one day lincoln and mesa weren't far off from each other!

my birthday day!
a. library time with a million kids
b.-c. dinner at sebastian's table
d. this boy knows how to get his target shopping done

a. peach cobbler in my spiffy new pie pan
b. back to the library
c. nebraska scenery
d. owies :(

a. sleepy car rides with monkey
b. hopefully this picture was him trying to clean up a mess he made
c. can't fit enough cars in his hands
d. putting all his ducks in a row

a. 

a. first tomato of the season!
b. maxson wouldn't end up eating it although he was the one who wanted to pick it
c. contemplating important life decisions over breadsticks and endless salad at olive garden
d, gave maxson a keebler cookie in the car and he made a MESS

a. getting energy out on our car trip by throwing rocks on a highway off ramp
b. family history work
c. tomato watering with grammy in wyoming (and joyous tramp jumping)
d. poor casey. this pregnant wife takes up way more than half the room on the bed. this bed seemed bigger than our queen at home but more often than not, i'll wake up in the middle of the night and find that there's about 1 foot of space between the edge of the bed and my body pillow for casey's legs to rest. that man never complains, he's a saint.

picturas de iFono de casey

finally got casey's phone on the computer and pictures downloaded, here ye be.

a. teeth brushing
b. post bath
c. basketball time
d. balloon sword

a. back in utah months ago, lounging in the blow up tent
b. bike ride
c. lotion fun
d. casey's workout

a. emergency weekend doctor's appt for ear infection
b. puddle playing
c./d. pretend picture taking, didn't let him touch that for long ha

a. golfing in wyoming
b. messes
c. messes
d. finding happiness in the back seat

this next segment are pictures from casey's trip to wyoming for the wyoming dental conference (a glorified boy weekend if you ask me). he texted me a bunch of these pictures during the trip which was great for me.
a. taking a tiny plane to jackson, wy

a. dinner with josh and (graduated) adam

a. lon and casey tried running up this ginormous mountain in 20 min for $50. they didn't quite make it in 50 min but it was a great workout!
b. dirty fett from such an acitivy
c. the "mountain" they climbed 

a.-d. making the toddler bed with josh.
we still haven't stained/painted it but i'm excited to have it in our house!

a. churching it
b. sand box playing
c. churching it
d. church twins

the difference 5 days makes

you guys, i kid you not, the difference in these pictures is FIVE DAYS.

FIVE DAYS!

#growinglikeaweed (or watermelon)

the first pics were taken on tuesday and the second ones on sunday.
holy moly that's growth!

22 weeks

gardens and bubbles

this was our sunday evening.

blowing bubbles and admiring our growing garden.

it was a good evening.

2 of everything

i feel like i'm beginning to accumulate 2 of everything in my life because of these twins. wow twins are way more expensive than a single child. i mentioned this to a mom the other day who has twins boys and then 1 younger boy, and she totally disagreed. i was mainly referring to clothes, so she said just do laundry twice as often, but that is not the case. so here is my list of everything that i will need twice the amount of the same size because it's twins:

winter coats.
winter boots.
tennis shoes.
church shoes.
shoes in general really (snow boots, rain boots, sandals, water shoes, etc)
swimsuits.
swim diapers.
church clothes (especially white shirts).
sports gear.
winter hats.
winter gloves.
snow pants.
fleece lined pants (maxson wore that 1 pair like all of winter).

and other items in life you must have 2 of:
carseats.
cribs.
pack-n-plays (because we're a traveling type of people)
high chairs.
sports gear yet again.
skis/snowboards.
baby carriers (ergo/bjorn etc)

and the list goes on. there's plenty more stuff i'm missing that twin moms end up buying 2 of because they twins and i will deal with that when i come to it, but for now, yes twins are much more expensive. ooy...

home video: june video

recently i went through my computer and cleaned up a bunch of the pictures to put on the back up hard drive to help my computer run faster. what prevents me from doing this more often is videos. you see, once the videos are off my computer and only on my backup hard drive it's hard to make these little videos. but sometimes i'm lazy and just never get around to making these videos. somehow i got june done whiz bang fast which means my computer is now lovely empty for more photos and videos to be downloaded. i present to you june 2014, maxson is 18 months old.

go here to see the video if you can't on the blog

song:
here comes the sun by Instrumental songs music

24 years old and 21 weeks a long

my 24th birthday came along quietly. quietly yet happily. i spent the day being the momma to my sweet little boy, and cheering on casey in his schooling. maxson did  give me a birthday present of sleeping in until 9 am, that was great. we went to story time at the library and we took long naps. once casey got home from school we went to this new spanish restaurant i've been wanting to try, sebastian's table (it's from the same creators of my favorite burger place in town, honest abe's). it was much different than we expected. more of a fancy, sit down, hipster type of place. the food was way delicious though. everything was served in the style of appetizers and you ate it all as a group. the dessert was incredible, churro like dough balls with pear filling inside.

afterward we took a quick trip to target to pick up  few birthday presents for me (few times in my life i can buy things at full price and not feel bad about it, this birthday was one of those).

once home we were outside blowing bubbles with maxson when my dear friend, tasha, walked up with a delicious red velvet birthday cake for me, such a wonderful surprise! as they sang a roaring happy birthday to me, the wind blew out my candles :( let's hope that's not bad luck. 

the next day i entered into the 21 weeks gang. you guys, i seriously get so much bigger every week, it's crazy. we learned the twins share a placenta this week, that means they could either be identical or fraternal, we'll find out when they get here! lots of movement from these boys. i had a dentist appointment this week and after an hour i was done, i was literally about to pass out after lying back like that for so long, ooy, gave my dentist a little scare. saw the baby boys this week in the ultra sound at our appointment and one was kicking the other in the head, ha, they are wiggly!

still so crazy we're having two babies at the same time. i'm over the shock and news of course, it's just so surreal to me still, i NEVER in a million years thought i would have twins. what's even crazier is that they will be here in less than 17 weeks, doesn't that sound SOON??!!?? this pregnancy is just going way too fast. with maxson keeping me so busy, a long trip around the corner, and the wish of having more time before we add 2 more children to our family is going to make this all zoom by. before i know it, we'll be back from our trips and i'll be nearly 30 weeks, that's the last push my friends! ahhh!

sick babies

sick babies are the saddest, don't you agree?

a couple weeks ago we woke up to maxson screaming and as soon as i opened his door i knew what had happened (during that 45 min of awake time in the night i was ever so grateful to have my husband at my side helping me and max through it all. single moms were on my mind so much, how do those brave ladies do it alone?). you just feel so bad for your little one. here's some tips i've learned over the past year or so of dealing with sick little babies and toddlers

1. as seen from the picture above, we put down heaping layers of towels (old towels usually that are kept only for the purpose of this or drying off cars or cleaning up huge spills on the ground). you never know how many times in the night this will happen so if it does happen again, you just peel off that top layer of yucky towel and your little one has a new clean layer to sleep on. so much less work than crib sheets in the middle of the night. (lucky for us this night only consisted of that first episode and the layering of towels was never used, but better safe than sorry)

2. if any throw up gets on the floor or a couch, first use 2 spoons to pick up as much as you can. it helps not rub it into the fabric.

3. for car rides we always travel with an old/extra 72 oz plastic cup you get from gas stations, so much better than a bowl. also for the car, keeping the plastic bib on your child that has the catching pocket at the bottom is great for unexpected bouts in between the episodes.

4. again for the car, putting down a big black plastic bag between your child and the carseat will protect the carseat from the worst of it (of course being safe to avoid belt attachment areas.)

what about you? i'd love for you to comment with any wise suggestions you do with sick babies/toddlers (this is a really enjoyable topic, ha), especially you mommas with much more experience than myself.

ps- speaking of sick little babies, maxson has surgery today to get tubes in his ears, he's had nearly constant ear infections or fluid on his eardrums since january so we're going to get it squared away. he's such a champ when it comes to pain, hoping he does well with it today!

fourth of july palooza

we had such a wonderful fourth of july this year. oh how i love this holiday oh so much! we celebrated this wonderful country with friends, food, games, fireworks, and memories. in the morning we went to ward's annual pancake breakfast. yet again, it was a little stressful for casey to get all the food cooked, griddles working, and other food warmed, but it all ended great. maxson loved running away from us to the playground. we came home and began getting ready for the get together that night. i do love planning get togethers, they always end up as so much fun but oh man, even with friends volunteering to help with the event it's a lot of stress to host, ha. there's so many things you can't ask people to help with or so many last minute things in your house you want to bring out that you think about at the last minute. so fun, but so much work ha. i might have to take a break from hosting over the next while to a) reduce my stress during this pregnancy and b) stay a live while having twins and maxson. but on to the party!

we began with the children playing in the front with kiddie pools and the sprinkler slip-n-slide, even though it wasn't hot hot that day, the kids still ate it up. and it's fun to watch them all interact together. not to my benefit, maxson's aim with squirt guns is getting better

some of the boys then pulled out a water balloon launcher and began playing with that in the street. funny how they all turned into teenagers in about 10 seconds. some went to the further end of the street and began trying to hit the launched water balloons with baseball bats. silly boys…maxson wanted all in on the action

we ventured to the backyard and began eating all the yummy food everyone brought (for most get togethers we do as friends it's bring your own meat and a side or dessert to share, and in this case for a special holiday it's a side and dessert, and then i try to assign out the paper products to others to relieve the burden/stress/cost. usually we always use ours and our neighbor's grill)

everyone always makes such great efforts on the dessert area, it seriously is spectacular every year, here's some of the first desserts i got pictured (not pictured were 2 delicious trifles and layered jello) (also maxson is too tall for his own good and swiped so many desserts off the table when we didn't see. let's just say his bowels did not agree with him the next day…)

maxson parked himself by the water jugs for a lot of the evening. he loves to push the water out of these jugs and in the special case of never before, one wasn't just water. it was (very concentrated) gatorade thanks to casey. maxson went hog wild.

a few of the families brought the little snapper popper things that even tiny kids can throw on the ground. all the children loved it. they would throw them and if the didn't pop they would go over and stomp on them , so cute. maxson did not like being forced to sit on casey's lap as he lit off a few of the first rounds of ground flowers, it took more than just those snappers to get him used to it all.

our great neighbors filled up a bajillion water balloons and the kids (and adults) had a flipping blast with them, i couldn't believe how long they lasted with the little kids just going over there and throwing them on the ground to watch them pop, they must have filled up so many. but they lasted forever and were tons of fun. we had an adult water balloon contest which was fun for everyone and then we had one with kids and they loved it.






the water balloon launcher came back out and the little boys dads saw how tall they could launch them and try to catch them in their shirts, they were hoots to watch



we did a few games with kids and adults
i don't have a picture of the funniest one, but we did one where each couple had a large balloon sandwiched between them, and without touching your partner we ran a race around the tree. so hilarious.

we had the 1 and two year olds do  straight up foot race and it was SO FUNNY. some kids sprinted from start to finish real well, some just happened to follow in the excitement of others which worked for them, some slowly walked over staring at all the parents on their way, and some just cried and cried and cried. children are the best. the finish line was filled with parents holding their best bribing object: mom, a cookie, pop, or in maxson's case, an iPhone


here's a really awful video of the race, it was so funny. at the end you'll see a little boy on the far left just barely, he cried his whole way to his mom, so funny/cute. i should have kept videoing but didn't.

the cookie face competition was great to watch everyone's strained faces.
for the first time in my life i got the cookie in my mouth and was SUPER proud of myself



the rest of the evening was filled with firework fun from small to big. most the little kids were not so keen on it at first but after 10 minutes warmed up to it. maxson surprised us by the end of the evening he finally wanted to hold a firework. such a sweetie. he parked himself on my lap during it all, very unusual behavior for him to sit for so long, ha.






casey had lots of fun with the fireworks again this year. each year we learn what things to buy and not buy with our little budget. it's fun for me to watch that cute husband of mine have so much fun with it. he's gonna be such a perfect dad to all these boys

ps- the goo sparklers are illegal in nebraska this year, how lamo is that?