26 weeks with numero 4

At 26 weeks I'm beginning to feel the feels of pregnancy. Harder for me to get off the couch, must use a body pillows to sleep with, not really into jumping on the tramp with Maxson. Maxson really wanted to race the other day at the park back to the car after saying no a few times and him begging a few times, I gave in and we raced, he definitely won and I was definitely trying.

I feel like this boy moves A LOT. I probably just don't have a great memory of the twins movement , I know it was a lot but that's what I expected, there were two in my belly there should be a ton of action. But this one is constant and everywhere. I've never had one so low at times nor so high either. I get contractions a lot. I don't know if it's more than my other pregnancies or the fact that I actually realize what contractions are this time around (rock hard belly). 

Maxson feels the baby kick a lot it's really sweet. 

and for fun here I am with the twins at 25/26/27 weeks, whewie! I definitely was  A LOT bigger with twins, lol, that makes me feel good. And here I am at 26 weeks with Maxson

the dearest of friends

I had a little video chat with these gals this week and my heart hurt after talking to them and my heart was also so full of joy after talking to them. We all moved away from Nebraska this summer after graduation and I miss everyone so much. These girls along with so many others were such a wonderful, supportive, caring, and genuine group of friends. I know I've said it before but I don't know if I'll ever have such an incredible group of girlfriends in my life again. We were pretty much all going through school (our husbands that is), no one was making money pretty much, we all became moms for the first time together, we all had similar goals, none of us had family around, and like I said the genuine-ness (is that a word?) of these girls was unparalleled (I'm talking about ALL you Nebraska girls!). There was never a competitive spirit of any form, no need to impress each other with any type of material things, gatherings were always thrown together at the last minute but everyone came and supported, there was ALWAYS someone ready and willing to throw in a helping hand. I miss them and that atmosphere oh so much.

I've been trying while here in Wyoming, I have but it's just different. Everyone's in different stages of life, there's not as much in common with whole family situations, people are just busier. I know it will get better in time, but right now I just miss all my friends.

Messes and cleaning

UMy house is bigger. Much bigger than the shoebox in Nebraska.

So yeah, it does get messy but the mess is spread out so it's honestly not as bad which makes it so much better. I can have a mountain of dishes next to the sink but the rest of the kitchen can still be clean and functional. It's incredible!

Someone posted on Facebook that they should use a rake to clean up a toy mess. And with me being pregnant and already hating to bend over and pick everything up i was like "YES. I am so doing this"

literally the pile I made the first day I did this, it was THAT bad, ha

I now have an indoor rake I use to clean up the upstairs family room and kitchen and it makes clean up so much easier. Then all I have to do is clean up one pile! So I can take all the shoes to the shoe closet at once. All the toys to the playroom at once. All the kitchen items that go in the sink to the sink at once. And it all gets done so much faster.

Bonus, when I'm feeling like there's too much to do and the kids will just make cleaning up worse we play the "M&M game". Essentially I give them a task or something to put away, they do it they get an M&M! And my lazy bum stays on the stairs the whole time. We all love it. You should try it.

As I've watched my children over the past few weeks I look at them make messes sometimes knowing and sometimes purposefully and I"m just like "Oh my gosh, that's all you guys do is make messes" In a matter of 5 minutes they can have 30+ items strewn over the kitchen and family room easily. The babies love trying on shoes and walking around the house with them, so just like that 5 new paris of shoes are all over the floor that no one even used! They pull down the kitchen towels on the oven just because they don't play with them, it's just something they can pull down so they do. I watched Max pull out 5 books off the kids bookshelf and just walk away. I've seen them put their hands on the counter and just start pulling random crap down in hopes that there might be something cool up there like markers or candy. I got a new chair cover for our rocking chair (bc it was HIDEOUSLY ravaged by spills stains and pen marks and could never be cleaned) the first week I put it on there were new permanent marker scribbles on the side, and then 2 weeks later someone added pen scribbles to it too. Thanks goodness I bought a machine washable one, not the absolute cutest but so much more realistic and functional for our family of savages. 

The messes continue everyday without slowing down.  There are so many more in my head but I'm too tired to write them, ha. The other day I started cry-whining to Casey while cleaning up that the twins NEVER STOP. They literally are like little tornadoes that just go from one place to the next without a break. It's exhausting cleaning up after them constantly but it's life and we're pushing forward.

I've found myself every time someone makes a mess I think in my head or sometimes even say out loud "I am patient, I am kind, I am loving" I have to remember these are just little kids still. The twins aren't even 2, Max not yet 4, they're just learning when they make a mess or break something it is NEVER to purposefully make you upset or mad, they're just learning not to be clumsy and results of their actions. A mess can just be cleaned up, really, not that big of a deal. Even Max is 1,000,000 times cleaner and more helpful than the twins. So in just 2 years the twins will be there as well!

I always feel like I need to vacuum our carpet, being whitish it shows everything. The kids love vacuuming, I hate that they love it because they make it last about 15 minutes longer than needed with crying to hold my vacuum, fighting over the kid vacuum, unplugging the vacuum, or just standing in front of me, ugh.

laundry forever

In an attempt to make my life more organized and cleaned but not feel like I get behind on tasks or wear myself out and do it all in one day I've made a cleaning schedule specifically to my family and home's needs. First I'm going to see how well it works (if I'm lacking in any areas around the house, if stuff needs to be done more often or not as often) and then hopefully I'll get around to making it cute on the computer and printing it out. I got the bones of my cleaning chart from littlegreennotebook but how I made my list was write down a list of things that needed to be done daily, weekly, monthly. The weekly ones I just started going through and assigning them to a random day trying to keep it even. Friday is when I rotate through the swing day list getting to each item once a month.

Apples for days

I bought 24 lbs each of peaches and apples last month from and Idaho group that brought them in through the church and THEY WERE SO GOOD. Seriously, the apples were some of the best I've ever had and the peaches were perfectly juicy and delicious. We were just so happy with them! We ate them both all day long as much as we could but before they went bad we made a few yummy things with them.

Ironically enough, the week before we got our apples Max and I did apple painting and he was so intrigued by the seeds inside. SO the over the next week or two whenever we cut apples he wanted to play with them

We tried our hand at applesauce for the first time which was really fun for everyone! Max was a great helper at peeling all the apples. It was the first year I bought and used one of those nifty apple peelers and it made life so easy, blessings, ha. The boys couldn't keep their hands off the apples when peeling them.

Didn't have any lemon juice to keep them from not turning brown but I read if you soak them in water with a little bit of salt that does the trick too and it did!

too many helping hands makes the work much messier ha

THESE are the delicious muffins I made that Max broke his arm because, ha. Seriously you need to try them. We call them apple pumpkin muffins and they are so dang delicious

1/2 C Flour (you can do wheat flour here, you really can't tell)
2 C Sugar
1 T pumpkin pie spice
1 t soda
1/2 salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 C pumpkin
1/2c vegetable oil
2 C peeled, finely chopped apples (about 2 apples)

STEUSEL TOPPING
2 T flour
1/2 C Sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
4  t softened butter, cut into dry ingredients

Directions: Combine first 5 ingredients in bowl. Set aside. Combine egg, pumpkin and vegetable oil. Add to dry ingredients. Stir in apples. fill muffin cups 3/4 full. Top with Stresuel topping. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes (I found it takes less, I'd start checking on them 20-25 minutes)

In just 1 hour we started with 24 and the 5 of us fatties were down to only 8. They're that good.


We also made apple sauce, candy apple pie (my favorite and way easier than regular pie), apple crisp (casey's favorite), and steel cut oats with apples in it too.

Honestly, I wish I had another 24 lbs to go through!

Back to school feast and maxsons first day of preschool

Max began preschool yesterday and was a boss. He was excited to go but definitely contained his excitement a lot, ha. He'd say mean things or not be helpful in the morning and I'd threaten him with not going to preschool and he'd shape up right away, haha. It's a gal in a neighboring ward who is so sweet. It's twice a week for 2 hours. So just a little enough to get both our tastebuds satisfied. THere's another little boy in our ward who's in preschool with Max which makes him pretty happy.

But! Before school started we had a little back to school feast as a family! We chose a family theme for the boys to work on this year and chose "Choose the Right." There are a lot of choices they make everyday and we want to teach them to make the right choice, and for Max that involves making the right choice when mom and dad aren't around be that preschool, church, or in the other room with his brothers. 

Maxson 3 1/2

Bryson 22 months

Quinn 22 months

Our menu was homemade mac n cheese, homemade rolls, corn on the cob, their own chocolate milk bottles, chicken nuggets (BBQ chicken for adults), and caesar salad. I thought this meal was super kid friendly but something special and would go over well with the kids...not so much, ha. I think each child ate all of one things and refused to touch the other items, oh well. Also it may have been due to their chocolate milk bottles which they guzzled. Funny enough, I put apples on on their plates as a little decoration but as soon as they sat down and listened to Casey and I talk about the special dinner and theme they just ate those a ton too, ha


We were lucky enough to have Karelee join us! Brad and Nan were out of town, Derek wasn't feeling well.

Karlee was a freaking ANGEL and helped me clean up the kitchen and all the dishes for what seemed like FOREVER. After a long clean up and putting the babies down super early due to terrible naps and terrible church day at 6:30 we dug into the crockpot triple chocolate lava cake with a side of ice cream and it was delicious

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A little change to my sewing desk

A new and improved sewing desk! You can see the before picture at the bottom of this post. I suffered through it for 4 years, ha and then turned it pretty, yayyyyy.

(not) helpers

I didn't want to buy any supplies for this project (except the drawer knobs) so I just used what I had. Casey lightly sanded a lot of it for me, I did 3 coats of white (cheap) primer- the sister missionaries did one coat, my MIL did another coat, and I did the third coat. Then 2 very light coats of  white spray paint,taped it off and did 2 or 3 coats of gold spray paint.

I didn't have an exact knife for the lines so I had to do one corner by itself.

Don't trust a 3 year old to hold the boxes on tight to cover up the already spray painted side. your pray paint will unfortunately leak through just enough for you to notice it and have to do touch ups.

Before touch ups.

After touch up on the gold paint where I didn't secure the tape enough.

and then Maxson decided he needed to paint too, go for it buddy.


When we took a trip to Utah for a quick cousin lunch in the Logan area we stopped by Hobby Lobby (holy cow that store has a TON of cute things when you finally have a house you can decorate) to find knobs. I knew I wanted clear glass looking ones and lucky for us all the knobs were 50% off, praises.


Maybe my sewing won't be so quarterly any longer now that I have a cute desk to work on! Just need to work on a cute chair now...any thoughts?

Here is a before of the desk:

and the after!


Ps- my inspiration for this desk here