20 weeks

Sounds like a long time right? Well this first 20 weeks seems to have flown by. I had an appointment with the doctor and they did an ultrasound. Since I have changed doctors with this pregnancy things are sort of new to me. I wasn't expecting for them to have a huge flat screen TV for me to watch the ultrasound on. That was way cool. Then for the first time ever in one of my pregnancies....I have 3D pictures to share! I also was given a DVD with some video footage of the appointment, but that wasn't too spectactular. I showed it to Gabe and he said "really? next time just tell them to skip that part". I have been feeling really great other than being tired. I don't know if I was this tired with any of the others, but I must say that I have been managing quite well considering I have 7 other children to take care of, not to mention the house, the husband and other activities as we chose. I think that the thing I was most amazed about with this ultrasound, is the growth of the baby. I guess I just forget how quickly they do grow. This time when I saw the image of the baby, I thought, "yes, this is a baby!" It looks just like any baby would, just in mini. I did have one favorite picture that I will share:

This is a great profile of the baby with his/her hands right up by their face. So now, I am half way there!

Wyatt's birthday

11 years!!!! I can't believe that it has been that long. Wyatt celebrated his 11th birthday on Saturday (although it wasn't until Sunday the 24th). He had a few friends over and they had fun. He decided that he wanted a water theme for his party. He wanted water balloons, but after the last one, I had to say no way (they didn't pick up the balloon pieces and I ended up doing it). But we did turn the sprinklers on and put our trampoline over them and we had a slip and slide too. I think that he had a great day.....but the icing on the cake was our present to him. Here is his face as he sees it for the first time:

This is what he got:

Since we had a water theme he wanted an aquarium for his cake....so I did my best. This is what I came up with:

I used nerds for the rocks and then found some swedish fish for the rest. I lucked out and also spied some gummy octupus and put a few of those on too. Not to bad for a beginner?

Traditions

One of the traditions that seems to have been built at our house, only becuase I was trying to follow a similar one from my mom, is putting things in the hot cereal to get the kids to eat them. I remember my mom putting a piece of cake into our oatmeal in the mornings to help us eat it. I don't usually have cake around all the time so I tried something similar and this is what I came up with:

We put chocolate chips into the malt-o-meal and I make a smiley face. I have tried peanut butter chips, but those aren't such a favorite. I have to make sure now that I have a stash of chocolate chips in the house because if I try and have malt-o-meal and don't have the smiley face.....I get in serious trouble!

Summer fun

What would summer be without a run through the sprinklers or a water ballon fight? We had both and the kids had fun. Here is Bethany trying to fill up some balloons.

James was having problems with his suit.....I think that the elastic in the waistband is shot in these and it is time to get him a new suit....what do you think?

Latest Creations

I seem to have times were I feel more creative than others and this last few weeks have been like that. I have been trying to catch up on my mending and in order to do that I also had to create as well. Part of that creative process led me to make this:

I only made the green dress, the cream apron we are borrowing from my mother.

 This is for the pioneer trek that Amanda gets to go on this year. Our stake has a trek for the youth once every 4 years, for those who are 14 and up at the time. This is the year and since Amanda is old enough, we are fortunate that we get to make the preperations for her to go. One of these is making her a dress so that she can experience the handcart trek like a pioneer women would have. This dress was a stretch (a HUGE stretch) for me to sew. The YW leaders asked that we bring the fabric and they had a night where the mothers came and helped make them. There was no pattern----I HATE sewing without a pattern. They laid Amanda on the floor and measured her and cut it out and then told me how to sew it together. That is not the way I like to make dresses, let me tell you. But we got it done. 

Because of that creation it lead me to make these: 

I had enough fabric left over from Amanda's trek dress that I could make her another full skirt and these other skirts for my other girls. Besides that I made a scripture bag for Mariah too......and I still have fabric left over! These jean skirts for the younger girls were so easy to make. I followed a "pattern" that my friend Jenna had posted on her blog.(Skirt pattern) I modified it a little as I wanted my girls' skirts to be a little longer. But since I had the general idea of what needed to happen it wasn't so hard.

Trying to get my mending pile done also led me to those skirts as I had a bunch of jeans that had huge holes in the knees and I couldn't patch them to make them usable that way anymore, but I could use them for skirts. I still have a ton that I am going to cut off for shorts. But I found this pair of pants that I could fix and did for Bethany:

There was just a small hole, but I didn't think that she would want anyone to know that I mended it, so I put a star on them. I thought that they turned out cute, and seeing as they are putting these sorts of things all over pants now days.....heck why not.