It was a lot of fun to tell our church all of our exciting news today. I stood up during the time that people often share their news, good and bad, and ask for prayer. I told everyone we had finally sold our house, and everyone cheered us on. It felt really really amazing, because I know there are people in the group who have been praying for us. I told them that our goal was to be starting our build in six months at the latest, and I then told them that we would be expecting our fourth child right around then. It was met with the same reaction as the first bit of news 🙂 I can safely speak for my family when I say we felt very loved and celebrated. It was so lovely to have such a good sized group excited for our family to grow, and to be closer. We also hope that, by spreading the news, we’ll have a bit more of a hope that someone will have an idea of where we can rest our heads for the upcoming months while we wait for our home.

We spent the afternoon mostly at home with my parents, but enjoyed a tea date with some friends from WAY back in the day. I don’t think we’ve seen them in around six years, and it was really really nice to catch up for a bit today. But for the most part, we hung out at my parents while the kids got their fill of grandma and grandpa. Its been a while since they’ve spent a day there, and now its all decorated for Christmas and very exciting. We ate incredibly yummy food (Brady and I both overeat there at every visit) and the company wasn’t half bad either 😉 It was a truly lovely Sunday.

Tomorrow is unscheduled (yay!) but I think Brady will work a shorter day than the last little while, so it’ll be really nice to see him sooner than usual. Maybe we’ll actually get to all of the many things we have to do this week! Wrapping gifts, baking, packing, researching, etc. Lots and lots and lots to do! At least its all exciting stuff 🙂

Rowan hit a very exciting milestone today! He started army crawling!!! Dekker never even legitimately crawled with his legs, if I remember correctly. He just dragged himself around with his arms. Laela started with army crawling and moved up to speedy knee crawling in no time. Rowan has been exercising his muscles for a while already, working on his “hands and knees” stance, rocking back and forth, doing the classy ground-humping move that we all know and love. So Brady and I have suspected that crawling isn’t too far off. Just a day or two ago, we watched him stand in his crawling position and agreed that Rowan would be crawling before Christmas. Now, lo and behold, he started today!

This is certainly not the deepest of posts, but mostly just a ridiculous thought I had. Maybe all of you have had this thought. Brady figures I’m unoriginal. I think I’m hysterically witty. I think army crawling has nothing to do with the army, and much more to do with the limbs used for the crawling. As opposed to a leggy crawl. Get it?? I know, its spectacular. You don’t have to clap.

Besides Rowan’s mad army crawling morning (I think of it every time I say it now…) we spent the afternoon at Kim’s celebrating her youngest son’s first birthday! It was, as usual, a lovely time spent with her family and friends. I’ve now met all of her siblings, most of their kids, her parents, her inlaws, and lots of their friends. It was a lot of fun, and the kids did great! We hit up the city for some groceries afterwards and got home late, but the kids are all in bed, and Brady and I are winding down for the evening. It doesn’t feel like there is more weekend to come, but tomorrow is another work-free day, and I’m SO excited for it.

But first, sleep for everyone. Its been a lovely, full, fabulous day <3

You wouldn’t think I, as a mother of three small children, would ever be sitting down twiddling my thumbs. But the last few days I’ve found to be incredibly long. Not in a bad way really, but there is so much anticipation in my life, I hardly know what to do with it!! December is a big month whether you’re moving, or pregnant, or single, or in school, or working, or living at home, or whatever! Its a big, busy, bustling, fabulous month, right? But obviously, we have some extra factors. Here is why I feel like a sitting duck.

1. We are out of our house first thing in the new year, and since that all just happened, we don’t have our next dwelling lined up. We knew this would be the case, and are ready for the challenge. I’m certainly not complaining! I’m very excited to start packing boxes, and preparing to move. But here’s the thing. We don’t know if we’re going to be able to rent, or if we’ll end up maybe house sitting for a bit. In one of those scenarios, we’ll just move our stuff over. But in another, we will need to rearrange our entire storage container to fit our furniture. So if I start packing boxes and sending 10-15 to the city with Brady every day, and then we find out we need to also fit our furniture in there, that will make for WAY more legwork to unpack and repack and container. So I don’t want to pack up a ton of boxes when they have nowhere to go. I could stack them up and wait, and I may end up doing that, but the only places to really line them up are right by our Christmas tree (which would be ugly) or downstairs in a spare room, which I feel would be a huge hassle when its time to haul them upstairs and take them out. Am I making sense? So I know this big move is coming, but I feel like I cannot prepare for it at all.
2. I’ve tried to move past the annoyance of my first point, and try to find other practical ways to occupy my time. I thought I could start wrapping gifts. But I always have kids with me! At least one, Dekker, who is old enough to know whats going on. So I can’t wrap his gifts, and I don’t want him to know what everyone is getting because he’ll tell! Therefore, gift wrapping with Dekker is sort of out. Again, I might just bite the bullet and do it anyway if I’m stuck in “sitting duck mode” for too much longer, but its not ideal.
3. One task I know is coming and I would LOVE to take care of is addressing envelopes for our Christmas cards. However, I ordered 5x7s, and they’re coming with envelopes. So I have wait to wait for them to arrive before I can even start. So that one obviously has to wait.
4. How many of you are thinking, “Ummm, do your Christmas baking??” I know, guys, I know. Without being too terribly dramatic, the kids have been incredibly testing the last two days, and I am quite dead on my feet. It is not the time to bring them into the kitchen with me and try to create things with them. They are SO argumentative these days and I’m just good to not bake with them. I really do enjoy baking with them, and they’re usually really great helpers! But today is sooo not the day for it.

So I’ve been feeling a bit stir crazy the last few days, not knowing quite what to do with things or what to do next. I spent the morning making a few lists, just to feel better about myself. I’ve chosen which treats I’d like to make, what things I can start boxing that we for sure won’t need this month, what we can leave behind, and all of the places I need to call to change our address. I’m not sure what else I can do while I just sit and wait for things to happen!! I’d appreciate any and all further ideas <3 Tis NOT the season to be anxious and bored, thats for sure! Bring on the jollies and joyousness!

I know this post won’t appeal to some people, and thats totally fine, but I also know there are some of you who, like me, love to follow a pregnancy. With all of the ups and downs, it at least appears mildly more interesting than some other things 😉 Regardless, I thought I’d recap the last little while for you who like pregnant talk.

I found out I was pregnant at the end of September. I was quite late on my cycle, but had taken a number of baby tests and they had all shown up negative. I decided to stop watching everything so close, and likely I’d just finally get my period when it was time and we could move on. A friend convinced me to take a test on the 25th, and lo and behold, there it was. That fabulous plus sign that so many of us wait for.

I don’t usually tell Brady in any extravagant way that we’re expecting, but one similarity is that I always give him a ring. He now has three thin silver rings, each one bearing our kids name on the outside, but quietly telling him we’re pregnant again on the inside. I always give him the appropriate ring when I tell him. This time around, I had Dekker bring it to him when he got home. I WISH the video wasn’t such a big file, and that I could load it on here, but these stills will have to do.

I felt great for the week or two following, though VERY tired. We had an early ultrasound, and found the baby to be another week smaller than we thought. (There’s a bit more to that story that I’m happy to share, but not on the internet at this point. Feel free to ask 🙂 ) So we changed our due date from May 30 to June 7 and called it good.

It was shortly after that when I felt quite sick. I would still say my sickness with Laela was by far the worst, but this is the first pregnancy I’ve had that has actually made me throw up. I had to be extremely careful what I ate, I had to force myself to eat and drink, to be honest. And I slept a ton.

There were lots of factors that have played into this tho. Since I got pregnant, I’ve been potty training Dekker, dealing with selling the house, having offers fall through on that, and discovering Rowans silent reflux. Its been a bit of a ride, and as soon as I gave in and started going to bed much earlier than usual, the majority of my sickness lifted.

So down to the doctor stuff. Its is a different set up for me this time around. My doctor ha switched clinics and is now training student doctors. I don’t see her as much at all, except for the last few minutes of the appointment, but I do see our student doctor, Jasmine. I’ll admit that I’m a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. Jasmine is great, and I know I’m still being followed by Dr. Guselle, but I do miss her exquisite care, and how comfortable I was with her. Its like I didn’t even have to explain anything to her anymore. She just knew us. But I have all the respect in the world for people learning, and Dr. Guselle is the best, and a fabulous example to her students. Its all ok, its just an adjustment.

I was lucky enough to hear the baby’s heartbeat just around 12 weeks. It was strong and in the 150-160s. The baby even gave the doppler a good kick before swimming off into the uterine abyss. I felt so much comfort in that. Whew!

Other than having morning sickness earlier in the game, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m really dizzy, as I usually am, but its a weird delayed light headedness. I’ll get up from sitting/lying down, and I’ll give myself a minute to get my bearings before walking away, but within 15-30 seconds, I have to sit down wherever I am, even if its in the middle of the stairs while holding Rowan. So its not an ideal circumstance but its not new either. Just something to watch. Also, I managed to lose 6-8 pounds in the first trimester. NO, I didn’t try to AT ALL. I was sick, its part of it. I just share that because I would normally share what I had gained. So far, nada. But I’m at a reasonable starting weight and I’m feeling nice and healthy and hungry again, so all is well in the belly department.

The biggest, most notable thing I want to share, though, is that Brady and I are in the best headspace we’ve ever been in during a pregnancy. Its just been different. I think he and I are just in a way better place then we’ve been in, and it is just a great time to be alive and to be having another little life join our crew. We couldn’t be more thrilled <3

WOW! Thank you so much, all of you who commented on and liked yesterdays post <3 My heart sure felt full, and it continues to. This feels like the craziest time of our life, just with things timing out this way, but I remember that we were getting ready to list our house when I was very pregnant with Rowan, and thinking the exact same thing. “We’re insane to be painting our entire upstairs while I’m 37 weeks along! This is the craziest thing we’ll ever do while I’m pregnant!” Wrong. We will do much crazier, I’m sure. And that is fine 🙂 Plant your gardens wherever you are, right guys?

I’m planning on doing some backup posts soon, and tell you guys more about the process of getting this place sold, as well as some more details on the pregnancy. But today, I FINALLY got to have Jerilee over for the first time since Laela’s birthday party, which was October 24th, I believe. So WAY too long ago. So my visit with Jerilee took vast priority over getting to blogging early enough to plan out my post before writing it, and taking lots of time. So maybe tomorrow I’ll recap a bit, but tonight was about catching up with a friend, eating good food, and chatting some more.

However, as things tend to go these days, we all tired out at a pretty decent time, and Jerilee headed home right around 9:00. Bradys just making his lunch now before we cuddle in and fall asleep nice and early. If you haven’t noticed in my last few weeks, I’ve been SO fatigued, we’ve become accustomed to going to bed much earlier than we used to. One week, I think we were asleep before 10:00pm at least three times. We are pooped, haha! But its so nice to get so much sleep. Happy bodies, for sure.

Ok, I’m just too sleepy to write more, and my nose is cold. Oh how I love winter. Off to bed to cozy in for the night! I hope you all sleep well!

I feel like I haven’t told you guys anything recently!! I’ve seen my posts get boring, and I apologize for that. While I love posting on here, and I do it a lot for my records, its also very public, and I don’t share my entire personal life on here. Because I shouldn’t. Luckily, things usually reach a point where I CAN share information with you! And today is that day!! And I have A LOT to share!

We sold our house yesterday!!! We started listing in May, I believe, and our house has FINALLY sold!! Its felt a bit like we’ve been through the wringer, even though I’m sure the process has been painless compared to some. We sold to the second interested party. You would think we’d have jumped on the first offer, but they were incredibly stingy, and had we taken that offer, we wouldn’t have even broken even at the bank. So we let that one go, and came to terms with the fact that we would be in our house until Spring, when we’d try again. We were genuinely at peace with being settled here over Christmas. And as God would have it, very soon after, He sent us the people who would offer an incredibly reasonable amount for our house. Very little bartering later, we accepted! Everything had lined up SO perfectly, and we were going to be able to begin our build almost immediately! In a bit of a crappy last minute turn of events, though, they managed to squeeze us for another chunk of money, and the build is off :/ Its been a bit discouraging, but we have a plan, and a goal, and the build is not off the table. Just delayed. Its silly that such a small amount of money (in the big picture of a mortgage, anyway) is affecting the timeline so much, but we’ve scraped together every cent of savings already, so we will just wait and save like every other person 🙂 As I’ve said, building is not off the table! It is very much ON the table! Maybe just more on the coffee table, tucked behind a plant or under a remote. Its there. Our goal (which is always nerve wracking to share in such a public setting) is to be set up to build in six months. Right around when the baby is due.

Oh. Had I not mentioned that?

You heard it here first!!! Or, if you didn’t, shake your finger at the teller of secrets! YES. Brady and I are expecting baby #4 around the end of May, or beginning of June, depending on going into labour on our own vs induction, and everything else that is unpredictable about having a baby. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be expecting a new little bundle, and even the kids are excited! Dekker asks about the baby and likes the prenatal appointments. He really liked hearing the heartbeat last week! He and Laela both thank Jesus for “Bobby Baby” every night in their prayers. We nicknamed the baby Bobby Baby because, for some reason, its something that Laela says, so that way, she can call the baby by name. Its like how Dekker named Rowan “Jim” while I was pregnant. So both older kids are aware and excited about everything coming up! Let’s be honest, Rowan is wildly unaware of the situation, haha! For those of you itching to do the math, he will be 15 months old when the baby is born. Yes, potentially a big challenge, but Laela and Rowan are 17 months apart and they have a GREAT dynamic! We’re anticipating the chaos very positively!

I know. It seems a bit crazy to have all of these things happening at once. But there is a beautiful verse that I actually don’t recall ever really paying attention to until now. Its Jeremiah 29:5-7, and it reads “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage; so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” I want to be clear. I’m not saying that you HAVE to have kids. Thats not actually what I take from this verse at all. I read in this message that we are to live our lives well wherever we are, and not to hold back. Not to be irresponsible and just go crazy, but not to stop living because you feel in exile. Am I making sense? I hope so. This has resonated me, and we decided not to stop growing our family just because he didn’t like our house. We are now THRILLED beyond belief to both be moving, and expecting another bundle.

SO! Does that make up for the boring past posts? I hope so! Understand that we’ve had a ton going on that I haven’t been able to talk about. Hopefully now, I won’t be keeping as much from you guys.

This next month will be absolutely crazy! We need to be out of our house by January 8th, therefore, we need to find a rental THIS MONTH! No pressure, hey? Sooooo we’re taking any leads anyone can offer on finding a temporary place to live in my hometown for our family of five, soon to be six. I expect it to be a bit scary and daunting, but I feel strangely peaceful about this next part. A very large step has been taken in the process of moving. We are out! Now to find a new place to be “in.”

Lots of fun and exciting new challenges coming our way! What a crazy year 2016 will be!!!

The kids all woke up fairly early this morning. Ok, it was early for us. Maybe 7:30. Brady decided to sneak them downstairs and let me sleep in, which is SUCH a lovely gesture, but I woke up pretty quickly and didn’t fall back to sleep. My loving husband would have likely been more than fine with me hiding out in bed for a while, watching some YouTube, and getting extra rest, whether I was sleeping or not, but I wanted to join the fam for our usual breakfast and playtime.

Except this morning, our children were three bears. And not like the cute story where the three bears only whine a little bit over the temperature of their breakfasts. Our kids were BEARS this morning. They were very complainy. But we’ve had our kids be whiny before, its nothing new, so we powered through. We fed them a bit more to ensure they weren’t hangry, we entertained them and played a bit more hands on with them to make sure they weren’t bored, we broke out the laundry because they like having a task to do. Nothing worked. They just hated everything.

So finally we decided that everyone, even Dekker, needed a nap. So they ate (Dekker ate quite mournfully) and finally we brought them to bed.

It was one of those really choppy, unsuccessful naps. Dekker fell asleep immediately, but Laela didn’t. She finally fell asleep after a BIG cry, that of course, woke Dekker. Then we went to get him up, and since Laela had fallen asleep way too late, we had to wake her up a short time later. Needless to say, the kids were not well rested, and were just as grouchy as they had been in the morning.

But we kept our heads up and kept at it, like every parent with whiny kids does, and they did ok. We had company over for supper tonight, and amazingly enough, Dekker loved the honey chicken! He always does, but usually, he fights it in the beginning. This time, he just ate it happily! Laela was a bit more sceptical, but she ate around the chicken and ended up finishing most of her rice anyway. And she ate lots of cucumbers out of her salad. So it was a pretty successful meal. The kids then played downstairs and watched Paw Patrol while we visited with our guests, but they left right around 7:30, and the kids needed to go down.

Brady praised them up and down for changing their attitudes and being SO good and playing SO well while we visited, but it fell on deaf ears. Not just the kids deaf ears, but ours, as we couldn’t hear anything over their unbelievably loud wailing. Needless to say, it was time for bed.

Through lots of tears and arguing, the big ones are fast asleep, and Rowan is wildly overtired, so not sleeping yet, but he’s whiny and on his way out. And then for a soak for Brady and I. And then to bed. We are sleepy after being on our toes all day long. Time to give those feet a rest.

We stayed in this morning. We could have branched out and went to church, but we had a plan at 4pm that we wanted everyone to be rested for. We kept a really low profile and spent the morning playing toys, talking Christmas, and eating oranges. After lunch, we put Laela and Rowan down for naps, and Dekker stayed up and played quietly. It was a really uneventful day up until that point.

Around 2:00, everyone started to lull and we got moving. We all got cleaned up and dressed and ready to go. Dekker insisted I put “some stuff” in his hair, specifically, and Laela rocked the side pony, which is basically one of my favorite things.

Hailey’s youngest son, Zaden, turned three today! We arrived at his party near the beginning of the festivities, as we tend to try to do. Not out of politeness and being on time, necessarily, but so the kids can settle in a bit before the actual party begins. We weren’t there long at all before the place began to fill. There were SO many people! It was a fabulous group, though. It wasn’t long before all of the kids, including Dekker and Laela, went downstairs and played together. We were amazed that they joined in, not because the kids weren’t great (they are!) but they were quite a loud, boisterous bunch, and there were lots of them! While we were surprised they went down with everyone, we weren’t surprised that they came back up after not too long. But they weren’t upset, and they went back and forth between the basement, and upstairs with the adults.

We ate pizza and drank iced tea and had a super yummy cake for dessert. It was all delicious. We left Hailey’s house in complete shambles, but she seemed to have expected such a thing, and brushed it off. It was a crazy, loud, energetic, busy, FABULOUS couple of hours before we headed out. We all had a really really lovely time, but it had to end at some point.

We made a quick stop for milk and headed home. Dekker slept most of the drive home, but was a total basket case once we got home. Our kids usually wake up well and are ready to go, even if we wake them up, but he was right ticked. Honestly, it wasn’t that off putting even, because we knew he was ready for more sleep. So everyone got their teeth brushed, and went right to bed.

Good night, sweeties. Rest up well.

Don’t get me wrong. We didn’t have much planned for the day to begin with. We wanted to have a relaxed morning, and then I was going to spend the afternoon being a bit creative and Christmassy, and Brady was going to do some repairs on his van that we learned of during his last tire rotation.

We had our morning, which was nice, but the afternoon was a different story. Brady discovered very quickly that while his brakes are worn, they are NOT even close to needing to be changed. Same with the calliper he was going to replace. Praise the Lord he didn’t actually install anything and we’ll be able to get our money back. But he had to bleed the brake lines and fuss with a few things like that, just from digging around and figuring it all out. Also, he had pulled two tires off and had the van up on cinder blocks. All normal things for vehicle maintenance, but a super pain when – surprise! – the vehicle didn’t actually require any. So his afternoon felt like a loss. I, on the other hand, had an afternoon of disconcerting phone calls and kids who didn’t nap well, so my crafternoon was also lost.

We fed the kids a supper they loved and didn’t complain about at all, which is always a treat. We were away from the table for a few minutes and upon returning, we found Dekker cleaning up some milk that Laela had spilled, all by himself, without being asked. What a fabulous boy! We praised him up big time. He was SO proud of himself, and rightfully so. Then we spent some good solid time with them downstairs before bedtime. We could really tell we hadn’t been the most present parents today, and we wanted to change that before they went to bed tonight.

They are now tucked in and feel more than ready to turn in for the night ourselves! But first – supper. I’ve felt so off all day, I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Its time.

I’ve been saying for several days now that we’re going to decorate the Christmas tree, but this afternoon, we FINALLY did it! This is our first year with an artificial tree. We’ve always used real trees, which I have loved, but their one downfall is that I have to wait until a ways into December before I can put one up! So we rocked a fake tree this year, and while I love having it up early, I admit that I’m a bit sad that it doesn’t look the same. Our tree is gorgeous! Its lush and very real looking, but its not the little charlie brown tree that I’m used to. Its darker. Weirdly, I think it’ll be an adjustment for me to love it. But either way, I know I should just be very thankful I have it at all 🙂 I love having the Christmas tree up.

Other than that, we did the rest of our Christmas decorating. Its not much at all, considering we’re trying to sell the house and have to be ready for a showing at a moments notice. The less clutter the better, always. But we did the few things we had decided one, and besides that, we’re just trying to keep our poinsettias alive. Easy peasy, and festive.

We had a SUPER yummy supper of potatoes and this delicious lemon pepper fish from Costco (that I haven’t been able to find in ages) and now we are tired and sluggish and ready for bed. Rowan has been having a rough go on his milk today, since he can’t breathe and all, so we’re hoping he takes after his siblings and sleeps his sickness off rather than waking up a hundred and one times in the night. He looks sleepy to me!

Now that our tree is up, it looks more Christmassy out here 🙂 When can I wrap presents for under the tree?! I’m so ready!!!