My birthday

Today was my 30th birthday and I survived. That seems old but like I told John, I am about to have my 5th child so if I wasn't that old I might be accused of being a teen bride or something. Anyway, John will always be older so that's consoling.

It was a good birthday. Kaylynn volunteered to watch the girls so John and I could go out to lunch which was great. I got a bunch of great material from Pam that I think will help me finish one of my quilt of the month projects, season tickets to BYU plays from John, maternity clothes and a new pocket hymn book from my mom, and assorted handmade necklaces and bracelets from the girls (very cute by the way)! It was good! Thanks to everyone for all the great gifts!

John and I played games after putting the girls to bed. I lost both games but it was still fun. Anyway, life's good, even if I am 30.

I-Spy quilt #1

I finally finished one of the I-spy quilts. As you can see, the original target date was before our summer vacation so the girls could have them to play with in the car. Alas, this didn't happen. I made them some very nice pillows but the blankets didn't get done. It actually turned out to be a good thing because the girls ended up helping me embroider some of the squares for their quilts. Emma helped me do two or three, and actually did some independent fill-in embroidery on one of the flower pictures. She did a great job.

Anyway, so when we got home, I decided to make them for their birthdays since most of the girls' b-days are in the fall. Emma's is first so hers got done first. They turned out pretty cute and I even taught the girls how to use them to play I-spy today and they were thoroughly entertained. It was fun. She liked it.

The Dress

Today my friend in my ward came up and asked me when I was due. I told her in December. She said, "Dick (her husband) and I have been going back and forth. We didn't want to ask if you were pregnant but today when I saw you in that dress I told him, 'She's pregnant. That's her pregnancy dress.'" I laughed and said she was right. This dress I can wear throughout my pregnancy and I've had it with all my girls. I didn't know anyone paid attention to my wardrobe though. I thought it was pretty funny. I guess there's no hiding it now. (Besides I stood up in RS and announced that we're having another girl just in case no one was paying attention.) The picture above shows me wearing 'the dress' right after I had Mary.

Doogal

I never knew this movie existed until Mary got a Doogal puppy in one of her happy meals. It has been a favorite toy since and I have spent a lot of time looking for it. It is pretty cute. I guess it is a testimony to the power of advertising to little kids.

Anyway today we saw the movie. It wasn't exactly what I expected but it was all right. The girls liked it. There was only one scary part when skeletons came to life. But even that had an edge of humor so they quickly got over it.

Kate says her favorite part was, "When the big blue guy was standing in front of all of them and the snail was like, 'Come on we can get him!' and he's going at a snail's pace saying 'Charge!' really slow until he reached the blue guy(who was the bad guy)."

Mary says her favorite part was, "When they were in an air balloon and the bunny said, 'We don't know where we're going, but we can follow them!" (I must have fallen asleep at this part because I don't remember it at all.)

Emma says her favorite part was, "When the puppies friends got away and the bunny said, 'Come on puppy!'"(Again I really don't remember that part but Emma really liked it. I asked her three times and she said the same thing every time.)

Well now you've heard it from the kids who know. It might be a movie best rented and wandered in and out of by adults.

Maternity clothes

I went shopping for maternity clothes today. Now I'm going to give my true opinion about maternity clothes nowadays and I won't be offended if you totally disagree with me. But it's been my experience the last two times I've been pregnant that the clothes out there are, well, 'out there'. They are mostly super trendy and not that practical. I wouldn't have a problem with this if I were 19 and having my first baby. I might dress that way anyway. Who knows? But I just can't bring myself to even try most of the stuff because I feel like I'm trying to look like the 13 year olds in my ward (who aren't pregnant by the way).

Most of the pants have this new wide waist band that only goes halfway up my belly or is designed to go under the belly. I have a few problems with that. First of all if you have any other kids and are constantly bending down and picking up things, the pants never stay up. They slide down and you literally feel like your pants are falling down, because, well, they are. This requires lots of probably inappropriate public adjusting that others probably don't want to see, but the option is worse.

Second, there's not a lot of room to expand. I don't know who these pregnant people are who never get very big, but they don't live in my house. These pants are a great option when I'm say 4-6 months along but after that they're crazy, because then they really won't stay up and I'm forced to do more constant adjusting. Admittedly, I get huge when I'm pregnant, or so I've been told. I don't gain tons of weight but let's just say my belly doesn't hide well. I have people asking me when I'm due, with that anyday soon look in their eyes when I'm only 5-6 months along.

And third, I wear underwear that covers my belly and it's just not cool to have your belly sticking out when it makes your underwear show. I realize many people may not have that problem and think it's sexy to hang the belly out, but since that's not really possible in my case I wish they made more normal maternity pants for people like me.

Now for shirts. I'd just like some normal t-shirts or even button up shirts that don't cost $30 dollars a piece. Is that so hard? Luckily today I happened upon a maternity clearance rack that had tons of normal t-shirts for $5 each. Apparently my opinion must be in the minority because they had all these normal clothes on clearance and all the trendy clothes were still full price. My problem is I'm not really trendy and I probably never will be. I like to be comfortable which in my book means not tight-fitting. I guess tight fitting and layered is in but I'm not doing it, especially when I'm pregnant. I get hot enough without having a form fitting shirt stuck to me every where. I need some breathing room.

Sorry, it's just been on my mind. Luckily today I found some really cute tops and a pair of capris. It was the first time in a long time that I'd seen maternity clothes that were appealing to me at all and didn't cost a fortune. I was glad and now I'm outfitted for the rest of my pregnancy. Hooray!!

Video games--Mario

I have to say right up front that I am not a video game/computer game fan. I can't play them longer than about 5 minutes before I am a)bored, b)frustrated, or c)sick and have a head ache. Honestly, I think there must be something wrong with my brain, but they send me into meltdown. Anyway, this is definitely not an interest John and I share.

That said however, I can't believe how kids are mesmerized by video games. We have an old Nintendo 64 that John occasionally pulls out and plays. Yesterday, I had a really bad headache and I just wanted to be left alone. I layed down on the couch and was just trying to block out all things like noise and light so that my head would stop pounding. So John, in an effort to distract the kids and let me rest turned on the video game Mario. Now he was the only one playing but from the kids' reactions you would have thought Mario was a live person and they were all cheering him along. Kate, Mary, Emma and Ruth all sat around John and cheered Mario on. "Go Mario!" "Run faster!" "Get Bowser by the tail!" etc. Now although the noise level wasn't exactly conducive to getting rid of the headache, I could tell the girls were having fun. They contentedly played along with John for at least an hour, never tiring of Mario's different adventures. I'm glad they can do something fun with their dad that I don't have to do too. When Kate used to ask me, "Mom will you play Mario with me?" I would just say, "No, I don't really do that. Why don't you talk to your dad."

Corpse Bride or the shortest movie we've ever been too

The girls and I have a series of movie tickets for Monday afternoons and Wednesday mornings. It was like $10 a person for the whole summer. This year, since we were gone half the summer, we split them with my sister's family. So for $5 a person, we go to the movie twice a week. The girls love it. They show kids shows from the past year mostly with a few older ones thrown in to balance it all out. Mostly the girls just like getting popcorn. It's 2/$1 and they love it.

Anyway, so today we got up bright and early and got all ready for the 10:00 show, which is a feat in itself. The girls kept saying, "What's the movie today?" and I kept saying, "I can't remember. We'll find out when we get out the tickets." Well, about 5 min before we left, Kate got proactive and found the tickets in my purse and found the right date and brought them to me. And what was the movie? Corpse Bride. It was too late to turn back, but I knew the movie might be a little scary for the smaller ones of our party. I'd never seen it but I know Tim Burton and he's not writing for 2 year olds usually.

So on the way to the theater I told the kids that the movie might be a little scary and that if they wanted to leave we could and it was ok.

So we go into the theater and the movie had just started. We sat down and it seemed ok. This guy was getting married, he couldn't remember his lines, all the characters were a little gothic, but I thought, "Hey, this isn't too bad. Maybe the girls will be all right." So then the guy goes out all dejected into the middle of the woods to rehearse his lines for the wedding, gets the lines right finally, playfully puts a rings on a knarled tree root, and it comes to life and starts chasing him, eventually turning into a "corpse bride." This is where the screaming began. At one point, the guy comes to the top of a hill and thinks he's outrun the girl corpse. He takes a deep breath and turns around and of course AAAAAAh! He screamed. Emma and Mary screamed. We decided to make a hasty exit.

I still got them popcorn so nobody was really very upset. We went to the library instead and picked up their prizes for the summer reading program. Everyone seemed happy. I guess I'll have to catch that movie some other time.