The past month has been full of changes and new developments in our lives. Our best friends moved away, which was hard. I watched Amielee and Sadie while their parents packed to move to Texas. The kids had fun playing together one last time. Amielee really enjoyed using the buckets from the sandbox to "feed" the chickens. She would put water in one and various concoctions of dirt, sand, and chicken feed in another and lure them over to the sandbox. All the kids were fascinated by her attempts and ultimate success.
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| Playing in the sandbox |
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| Playing with the chickens |
A couple of days before the 4th of July, the girls and I made these cute star people. At first Reagan was very resistant to the idea of doing an art project with a set pattern, which was fine with me because it's kind of hard to do it with both of them at the same time. While I worked with Kirsten, Reagan made her own art project. She was so pleased with it, and I wish I had taken a picture of her with her "Blazer Car." She folded and taped a piece of paper and put googly eyes on it to be the headlights. Later in the month she gave it to a friend. So, now I'll just have to remember it. After she finished her "Blazer Car," she was interested in making a star person though. So, I got to do that with her, too.
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| Kirsten with her star person |
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| Reagan with her star person |
On the 4th of July we had my parents, my niece and nephew, and a couple of friends over for dinner. Steven and Lisa have been our friends since we got married, and I suppose they were Matt's friends even before we got married. For dinner we had burgers. The adults sat at the table, and the kids had an indoor picnic in the living room. When I told them we were going to lay a sheet on the floor for them to eat on, they all danced around the room in delight. It was so cute.
After dinner we went outside and did some fireworks in our driveway. Steven and Lisa had brought tons of flowers, sparklers, and poppers to share. They also brought some ear protection for the kids, which was such a good idea. Reagan is terrified of loud sounds, and Kirsten isn't crazy about them. So, the ear protection made the evening a lot more fun for everyone. Kirsten was so brave though. She really liked holding the sparklers.
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| Reagan with my parents |
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| Kirsten looking very serious with a sparkler. |
When it got dark, we went down the street to our neighbors' firework shindig. They had tables of food, a sound system to play music, and the largest neighborhood firework display I've ever seen. Aerial fireworks are legal in our part of Springville, and believe me, they made good use of them. The kids went to bed nice and late that night.
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| Watching the fireworks |
We've also had other random play moments that I'm not going to document in great detail.
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| Reagan playing dress up |
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| Playing in Hobble Creek |
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| Crossing Hobble Creek |
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| Filthy after playing in Hobble Creek |
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| We went to Deny's last night because kids eat free, and we got a picture with Pancake. |
Reagan got pretty sick last week. She had a fever above 102 for a day or so. Then she needed a few more days to get better. I always have a hard time when my kids are sick. Aside from the fact that I feel bad about the way they feel, I usually miss out on sleep because they need me at night. For two nights, I spent most of the night in Reagan's room. So, I was obviously tired. It's also hard for me to cancel outings. I just really don't like spending the whole day at home. Neither do my kids, which I think they learned from me. So, by the end of the week we were pretty rotten. I did have a moment of simple insight though when I realized that I can't control whether or not my kids are sick. Stressing out about how much I don't like it doesn't get them better any quicker. I just have to let that go and enjoy what we can do. So, we played with play-do, colored, read, played with My Little Ponies and Barbies, slept when we could, and watched plenty of TV when Reagan felt too tired for anything else. She did finally get better. Phew!
However, even after Reagan was sleeping through the night again, I couldn't sleep. Then I started feeling sick to my stomach. So, I figured I must be getting sick. I told Matt one night that I was getting sick and needed to go straight to bed. Of course then I couldn't sleep. It was kind of lame. One evening I was over at parents', and after dinner I laid on the floor feeling like I was going to throw up while the kids were outside playing with their cousins and my parents. Then it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't had my period. It didn't seem likely that I could be pregnant since I have an IUD, but the next morning I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. So, yes, I'm pregnant!
I called the doctor right away, and he wanted me to come in that day to have the IUD removed. At my appointment, he told me that there was a 50% chance of miscarriage after removing the IUD, which didn't sound appealing to me, but he obviously had to remove the IUD or that would be worse for me and the baby. The next day he had me go to the lab to test my HCG levels and then again two days later. Things looked pretty normal, but when a woman gets pregnant with an IUD, she has a greater chance of having an ectopic pregnancy. So, he scheduled me for an ultrasound. Yesterday we had the ultrasound, and the baby is in my uterus and has a heart beat. What a relief!
I'm excited to be pregnant. It's obviously a surprise, and the timing is somewhat stressful since Matt is looking at a possible career change. However, yesterday I had a clear impression that everything is in God's hands. I don't need to try to control the minutia of Matt's application, and I obviously couldn't control the timing of getting pregnant. God has a plan. His timing is better than mine. It will all work out. I choose to trust.
