Made in Michigan

Devin was born Tuesday and we saved a little Michigan hat from when Caleb was born, and we decided to use it for Devin since he is our last Michigan baby. I was really amazed how many people at the hospital recognized the M for Michigan. One guy even confessed to being a Buckeye. Who would have thought so many people in AZ follow Michigan ball. Go blue!!

Induction date

So I got a pleasant surprise at my 38-week OB appointment today. The doctor asked, "So, do you want to be induced?" Umm, yeah! So they set it up for next week, Feb. 23 first thing in the morning. So I'm counting on no baby this week so that next Tuesday I can get a good night sleep, wake up, drive to the hospital without having contractions for the whole half an hour drive, get my epidural early, and have my sister all set to watch my kids, and hopefully have a baby by bedtime. And I seriously think I'll need the whole week to get everything ready. Wash the clothes, do deep cleaning that won't happen after the baby is born, sterilize bottles, find a diaper bag, buy a nursing bra, etc, etc, etc. Should be fun!

Cutest nephew ever

So do I have the cutest nephew ever?? And the craftiest sister-in-law ever? This is the cutest thing I've ever seen. Maybe I can have this baby soon and copy their idea. Bring on the contractions.

Your IPod is my IPod if you don't listen up

Ever heard the mom song? Well, if not, google it and listen (I'm too lazy to give you the link). The title is one of our favorite quotes from that song/parody. The reason I bring it up is because my new favorite website has your own candy IPod that my sister has promised me she'll make for the boys for Valentine's Day. Having a really crafty sister in the house has been great for the boys. They really like arts and crafts right now and we've been able to do some really fun things. Another reason this little craft is so applicable to our family is that Michelle is a big time music lover and it has also rubbed off on the boys. Yesterday she was doing craft time with them and they were all singing Cowboy Casanova by Carrie Underwood. Often she'll bribe Caleb to go running with her by saying he can listen to her IPod while he sits in the jogger. Last time she took him he wouldn't get out of the jogger because he wanted to keep listening.

Christmas Casualties

So you can't get a large number of people together (we had all of Mike's family in town) without a few casualties. Our first was Caleb. Christmas Eve he didn't want Mike to change his diaper, so he tried to pull away when Mike grabbed his arm. All the sudden he's a puddle of tears on the ground and it's not getting better. Anyone familiar with nurse-maid's elbow? I always thought it was the actual bone in the elbow dislocating, but I guess it's just a ligament that pops out of place. So 2 hours and $75 later Caleb was back home super happy because his arm was fixed. It's a really simple fix. So simple in fact that a couple days later when our nephew did the same thing, his dad just grabbed his arm, did what the doctor did and fixed his son's arm instantaneously. Mike had looked up how to fix it on the Internet and wanted to do it himself, and was a little bummed his brother-in-law got to fix his son's arm and I made him take Caleb to the ER.

A couple days later Mike was at Urgent Care with a different brother-in-law. They had gone mountain biking and about 20 minutes into their ride Jason got a spine from a cactus stuck into his finger. It went through his finger and was pushing against the skin on the opposite side and broke off so that there was no way to pull it out. So again, a couple hours later, they were back home without much biking and Jason having had his finger cut open, pliers shoved inside the incision and (finally) a spine-free finger.

Mike's dad was our next casualty, he caught some bug and had to miss two days of vacation staying in his room with a fever, cold symptoms and throwing up. No fun! Thankfully nothing serious happened, and we really had a great time together. Maybe when I get pictures from the others I'll post about all the fun things we did.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, Brayden's bed as our last casualty. When we bought it the sales lady tried so hard to assure me that "engineered birch wood" was more durable and hard than regular solid birch. Yeah right. We didn't believe her, but it's hard to pass up $200 for good looking bunk beds and considering the price of really good, solid hardwood bunkbeds seems to be between $1200 and $1600, we figured we could replace these cheapos many times and it would still be more cost efficient. At last it will be cost efficient if nobody jumps on them because they will break in half. Literally. I wish I had a picture. Thank goodness for a handy husband who had the bed better than new the next morning with one trip to Ace Hardware. I'm still glad that we went with the cheap beds, and I'm glad we knew the sales lady at Art Van was blowing smoke when we bought the beds or we might have been pretty disappointed. "Just don't be disappointed. Don't be it." (Caleb)

Jumping Cholla

We live off of Jumping Cholla, but we have found it is also a plant. A jumping cactus, that when you touch it in the slightest, has a big ball that pops off and implants into your skin, despite clothing. Then it has tons of spines all over it that close in on your skin, and then there are microscopic burs on the spines that stick themselves into your skin so that when you try and pull out the spines, the burs stick the opposite way causing removal to be very painful.

Michelle ran into one of these while running and it got her a little bit, and then she fell into one while mountain biking with Mike, and they had to extricate about 100 spines. Her whole arm was destroyed. Too bad we never got a picture.

But then on Sunday we wanted to take a family picture, and there aren't tons of choices for backgrounds, so we decided to be by a jumping cholla with the mountains in the background. We warned the boys, don't get too close and tried to be careful. We got a few good shots (thanks Brian) before Brayden was attacked. Poor kid, it bit his leg and then he tried to pull it out and killed his hand. We basically had to hold him down and rip the spines out as fast as we could and Brian pulled the big ball out of his leg (somehow without hurting himself, I don't know how he did it). I think next year we'll look for some architectural backgrounds rather than desert landscape. :)

Cowboy Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I planned on having a quiet, low-key dinner after moving and trying to set up our new house, but when Mike found out everyone he worked with would be gone all week, we decided to take a trip. My grandma had invited us for Thanksgiving, so we checked last minute to make sure it was okay that we came and we packed up and took off. My cousin was super nice and let us stay overnight with her to break up the trip, which is a good thing, because the 13 hour drive turned into a 18 1/2 hour drive thanks to two car accidents and traffic. We got to see a couple of my brothers, a sister-in-law, and my mom and a fair bit of extended family, which was nice. My grandma even made twice-baked potatoes, a little tradition I have with her--she made them for me every Thanksgiving while I was in college.

The boys were in heaven--their dad took almost an entire week off, they had attention galore from multiple uncles, and they found out my grandpa was a cowboy. (They are obsessed with cowboys right now. Michelle and Brayden sing "Cowboy take me away" together.) Grandpa even let them use one of his cowboy hats to play with. An uncle of mine took them all shooting. I watched from the car. And they got to go fourwheeling. Brayden is old enough to be cautious, but Caleb isn't and he kept egging my brother on, trying to get him to go up steeper and steeper mountains and to go faster and faster.

Then even more spur of the moment, my sister-in-law gave Mike her ticket to the U of U vs BYU game and so we extended our driving time and hit up Provo. The boys and Michelle went to the game and the other Michelle and I took the little boys shopping, to see Santa, and to Red Robin. And apparently I totally bummed out my sister-in-law by the size of clothes I had to buy to finish out this pregnancy. Well, what can I say, I always get really big when I'm pregnant. I don't think she'll have my problem since she's 15 weeks and you can't even tell she's pregnant, where as I'm wearing maternity clothes by 15 weeks. So all in all, not a quiet Thanksgiving, but a good one. And I expect Christmas will be the same.