Charles Dixon Ellis

I had the baby finally! Charles Dixon Ellis was born at 1:31 am on November 23, 2012. He was 8 lbs. 3 oz. and measured 19 inches long. It has taken me the past week to start feeling mostly normal; postpartum stuff is pretty hard for me. It's been good having my mom here to take care of Joseph and Annabelle and they have loved spending so much time with her. She'll be heading home tomorrow to take care of the many things she has neglected while being with us. Charlie is a really good baby, mostly sleeping and eating all the time. He doesn't cry or really make a fuss about anything. Joseph and Annabelle enjoy having a baby brother a lot, especially Joseph. I don't have any pictures to post because Mitchell has done the photo taking with his iphone. Let us know if you want to come for a visit!

Happy Birthday, Annabelle!

Today was Annabelle's 2nd birthday. I can't believe that she was born 2 years ago. In many ways, it seems like she has been with us much longer than that, but it also seems like the time has gone too quickly. She is such a joy in our family and I can't imagine what things would be like without her. She and Joseph are best friends and do everything together. And she has her daddy under her complete control; yesterday, she got 5 cinnamon bears from him because she just kept asking him with such cute faces that he couldn't resist.

We had her birthday party on Saturday so that a lot of family could come. Jason had been staying with us for a couple weeks, my mom drove down, and Samantha and Athena were there. My cousin Emily and her fiancee, Josh, came. Aunt Marianne and Annemarie were able to make it. And we were really excited because Popi and Doreen came up for the party. It was so wonderful to have so many family members with us. 

Jason, Joseph, Popi, Annabelle, Doreen, Samantha, and Athena

It took her a few tries, but she was able to blow out her candles all by herself.

 Opening presents this morning. She was so excited to open everything.

We went to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen, where she got a free birthday meal. This red balloon was just floating by one of the tables across the way when we got there. It eventually floated right over to us all on it's own, and it became her birthday balloon.

Eating her birthday brownie. The whipped cream was her favorite part.

Even though she had some very cranky 2-year-old moments, she had a good birthday. We are all so grateful that she is a part of our family. 

Home School Revisited

After doing lots of thinking and talking with family, I've realized that I don't have to have a strict school schedule for Joseph, which is what I had planned. I don't think Joseph is ready for something like that anyways. As I get more pregnant, I because less able to do something that strict. I have a tendency to go either too far or not enough; I'm terrible at balance. I've always felt like I either have to follow a very strict schedule for things and then I burn myself out and do nothing at all until I've recovered. I think that working on home school is going to be the same for me. I need to find the proper balance for me and my kids. Joseph has forgotten a lot of the stuff that he knew, so he isn't even ready for the program that I had planned. That lets me know that we need to take some time to review and work on the basics again. I think I'll just take time to help him remember his basics, but do it in a way that will be enjoyable for him. Today we played Go Fish! with alphabet cards. It was good seeing that he at least remembers his uppercase letters. Next week, we will start review lowercase. He also did a page in his tracing workbook. His lines aren't as neat as they were and he's forgotten a bit about how to hold the pencil properly, but he's slowly getting better. We also had fun playing Uno and he's good with knowing his numbers. I think I'll just gather a lot of fun ideas for reviewing things and getting him ready for higher level stuff. I'm glad I didn't go out and spend money on a phonics primer and handwriting workbook because it's definitely not time for those. I think we'll review through the end of this year and then see where we are. That will also give me time to get through this pregnancy and have time to get used to another little one in the family.

Home School

For several months, I've been planning on starting a home school Kindergarten program for Joseph. Yesterday was our first day. I don't have the curriculum that I originally planned on starting with, but it turns out it's fine because he's forgotten a lot of his letters and their sounds. He seems to think that school means "playing games", so yesterday he was annoyed when we were reading and practicing letters and their sounds; he was constantly asking, "What game are we going to play now?"

This morning, I had the hardest time waking up because I was so tired. Mitchell doesn't get home from class until after 9 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but he leaves before 9 in the morning. We obviously wanted to spend time together last night, so we stayed up late. Also, spending the entire day with the kids by myself really wore me out. Today, I have no motivation for doing school with Joseph or really much of anything else. I think I'd be content spending the morning in front of my computer eating a box of Poptarts.

I don't know if taking on the task of schooling Joseph was a bad idea, at least for now. This school semester is going to be trying on Mitchell and on me. I'm also having a baby in 2 1/2 months. But I keep thinking, "If I can't do a simple Kindergarten, then maybe I'm not cut out for homeschooling at all..."

One thing that's good about home schooling for me is that it gives me things to do with Joseph and Annabelle. I've never been very good at spending time WITH my kids. Planning school activities helps me come up with things to actually do stuff with them instead of just letting them do their thing while I do mine. There seem to be a lot of pros and cons for me with doing this home schooling thing, the real problem is deciding what to actually do.

Labor Day

We had a good Labor Day weekend. We did a few fun things today since Mitchell didn't have to go to work. The kids let us sleep in pretty late, which was nice since we usually have early mornings with Mitchell working and going to school. We went and browsed around the mall for a bit and had some lunch in the food court there. We went to a park in the afternoon. The kids had fun playing while Mitchell drew for some assignments and I worked out homeschool lesson plans. We had a nice quiet time and I read a Sherlock Holmes story in my book. We were excited about getting some awesome new Star Wars shirts from Baby Gap with a 30% off code we had, but after not getting the code to apply, we realized that line is excluded from coupons. :(  Later, we took the kids to another park and they had fun playing there. We also did a mini photo shoot to get some pictures for the invitations I want to make for Annabelle's birthday party. That was pretty fun. The kids are so hard to get pictures of because they are either moving around like crazy or they are making really stupid smiley faces. It doesn't help that our camera is TERRIBLE at taking pictures. I was surprised at how many I got. We ended the day by watching new episodes of 2 of our favorites shows, which happen to be cartoons on Cartoon Network. They are Adventure Time and Regular Show; we love watching them together.

Here are a few photos that I really liked:

A Fun Dinner

Today was a really awesome day. Now that we don't have church at 8 am, I'm really beginning to enjoy Sundays so much more. I also LOVE our new ward. It's so fun to be in a real family ward with people in a variety of stages in their lives. I feel like I am able to learn so much more in my classes. Another couple moved into the ward the same weekend that we did and they also moved from Wymount. Today, before Relief Society began, the sister asked me if I missed Wymount yet. My response was "not at all." She said they are starting to miss their ward. This couple differs from us in 2 aspects: they haven't been married as long as we have and they have no children. I think this is what makes them miss Wymount when we don't. I do miss the friends that we made in our Wymount ward, but I feel like our new ward fills so many needs that Wymount couldn't. We are just so happy to be a part of the Pioneer Park ward.

We actually had some Wymount friends over for dinner today. It was really fun to have them over and hang out. I love trying out fun new recipes when people come over and I have a tendency to go a little overboard. The first time we had this couple over for dinner (about a year and a half ago), I made a burger from the Bobby Flay book that I gave Mitchell for his birthday a few years ago. They loved it and requested to have another great burger next time they came over. Mitchell picked out the Cheyenne burger for me to try this time. It had smoked cheddar cheese, homemade barbecue sauce, bacon, and thin onion rings on it. It was a really good burger. It would have been better when we ate it, but I timed a lot of the preparation wrong and they were kind of cold by the time we all sat down to eat. Nobody really cared about that, though. Mitchell made the onion rings almost entirely by himself (following Bobby Flay's recipe) and they were so good! I love good onion rings and these were just like the really good and crunchy ones you get at restaurants. They were a lot of work, but they were delicious. For some reason, I thought we would want fries to go with the burgers and I prepped them, but they were never fried; we ended up having more than enough onion rings to go on the burgers and eat on the side. We also had this amazing "Old-Fashioned Pink Lemonade" that I found online. It was SO good. It made 2 quarts and we finished all of it between the four of us. The last thing we had were Double Chocolate Milkshakes with Fluffy Coconut Cream. This was another Bobby Flay recipe and it was great. I've never been good at making milkshakes, I always seem to mess up the ratios and can't get good flavors. Following this recipe was easy and it was delicious. I actually made the chocolate syrup by hand earlier in the day; it made me feel so fancy. :) I didn't get the layering of the milkshakes quite right, but they were really good anyway. By the time we were done eating, we all felt like we were going to explode. It was a really fun evening and I'm glad we were able to have fun with some friends.

My kitchen is a DISASTER. I forgot to unload the dishwasher before I started cooking, so I couldn't just immediately put the dishes in there and they all just got piled on the counters and in the sink. And I accidentally left the frying oil on the whole time we were eating, so the house got super smoky and my dutch oven is full of pitch black oil. I want to just leave it all for tomorrow, but I don't think that would be a very good idea. I have to decide if I have the energy to get it all cleaned up...

P.S. If you are interested in any of the recipes, just let me know!

Busy and Tired

We have been so busy! We officially moved in on the 1st and then had until the 4th to finish our cleaning at Wymount. And since then, I've just been trying to unpack and organize as well as just get settled in. The only room that I've completely organized is the kitchen; everything else is still a wreck. and pretty difficult to maneuver around in sometimes. I've taken some pictures, but everything on and around my desk has been so messy that I kind of avoid my computer most of the time. We also have real cable for the first time in years, so I've been distracted by the TV. I've been watching a lot of the Olympics as well as enjoying having my favorite channel, HGTV.

The kids love having so much space to play in, so they are constantly running around. They've also been getting into a lot of trouble. We don't have any cabinet locks in the kitchen yet, so I'm constantly pulling them out of the cabinet under the sink (they like to pretend it's their car and they drive to places like Macey's and SmashBurger). They also like bringing all of their toys out to the living room and leaving them there, but they don't actually play with them. They like to be my helpers when it's time to load/unload the dishwasher or start a new load of laundry. Joseph loves watching the clothes "take a bath." The first couple naps/nights sleeping in their new room worried Annabelle a lot. She woke up after her first nap and was crying because she thought we left her. She would ask to go home whenever she got really tired, but now she's figured out that this is home.

I wanted to get pictures of the various stages of our moving in process, but that didn't happen at all. I could take pictures now, but it really just looks like we have a super messy house because most of the boxes are gone. I think I'm just going to wait to get pictures until we have everything set up. Some of the set up has to wait until the end of the month when we get our school loans in and can go get some bookshelves. Our Wymount apartment had built-in bookshelves, but this apartment doesn't, so we just have stacks of books laying all around the house. One of our bookshelves also fell apart during the moving process, so we have even less shelving than we were expecting to have. We also have no couch because they only way we could have gotten our old one into the apartment was to lift it over our 2nd floor balcony and bring it in through the sliding door. We decided we didn't want to do that for a $30 DI couch, so we are going to buy a more compact, but functional couch (it folds out into a full-size bed!) at IKEA.

All of this busy-ness has been very exciting and fun, but also very exhausting. I've been sleeping WAY longer at night because I keep getting so worn out, but I have been going (mostly) without naps, too. I think once things have settled down and I'm not doing so much organizing and unpacking, I won't be quite as tired. But it all could just be that I'm pregnant and I'll keep being tired for the next year or so...