Visitors from the North Pole

Ok, so we didn't have visitors from the North Pole. We had visitors from Minnesota which is pretty close to the North Pole. Just kidding. I'm only saying that because Craig cracked me up by telling us that it is SO warm here. Only the "frozen chosen" (or is it "chosen frozen"....whatever ha ha) are allowed to give each other a hard time about the cold. That IS an actual rule (or it should be anyway).

Craig and Jaclyn came to visit! YAY! We are glad that they got to come before they move back to Utah this summer. They even made it through in one piece. I imagine that being in a house with 5 kids can be pretty crazy for a couple without any kids. You guys were great sports! They even conformed to our family color code which is also now a new rule for visitors:




On Saturday we went to downtown Naperville to the river walk. It's so pretty!







When we first got there Garrison got down to the river first and I looked over at him and he had his feet half way off the ledge. Not knowing how deep the water was or how fast it was going I about had a heart attack. Later we saw a couple of these water snakes:

and Jaclyn said "well, that's definitely and incentive to walk further away from the edge!"

Along the river there was a bell tower. While we were there they were played The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, Yankee Doodle and My Country Tis of Thee.

I also saw two things that I am adding to "the list". This is the Naper Settlement which we didn't have time to go in to but from the outside it reminds me of Nauvoo. They have people there dressed up in period costume and you can look through the old houses.

Also, there was this super duper neato pool. Doesn't this look fun? First off, it is a HUGE pool and I mean HUGE. It also has a beach!

On Sunday (after church) we hung around the house. In the evening we enjoyed the beautiful sunset,

played some games and uh hem practiced some High School Musical numbers out on the back patio. Don't tell anyone though.

On Monday we headed out to Lincoln Park. It was pretty crowded but the kids were as happy as can be. I don't think Jackson complained once. He was too fascintated by the animals. This is pretty much what he looked like the whole time.
Here is a random Conal-eating-a-lion picture for your enjoyment and mine:
I wish I had more pictures at Lincoln Park but I neglected my picture taking duty. I know Craig and Jaclyn have some though.

After that we said Goodbye to Craig and Jaclyn in the rain. Thanks for coming guys! We hope you can make it out here again before you move.

By the way, if you are wondering why my picture taking skills have so greatly improved in a short amount of time...........they haven't. I used Craig and Jaclyn's pictures. =)

Look! I found a swide!

Some of our friends in the ward got a new clubhouse/swingset for their backyard so we got their old slide. We've always planned on buying a big playhouse, but since we don't know how long we will be here, we haven't wanted to put out the money just to leave it behind. We were glad to get something for the kids to play on outside.

Jackson and Alexia were both asleep when they brought it over yesterday and set it up. When Alexia woke up and went outside, she had a strange look on her face but didn't say one word. She just went over and started playing.

Jackson was hilarious. He went outside and started running the opposite direction until he saw the slide. Then he turned around and ran toward it, went down the slide several times and then came back in the house and said "Look! I found a swide!"

Since then the kids keep going down the slide and running back around to go down it again.

Sometimes they all try to do it at once.

I love hand-me-downs!........and I hope the excitement doesn't wear off too fast!

18 kids + wind = one crazy hour and a half

I admit it. I'm a sucker mom. I wanted to take the easy way out and have Hailey take a few friends to "Build a Bear" or "Boozle B's" for her birthday party. However, when we were planning her party she said she wanted to invite ALL of the girls in her class because she didn't want anyone to be sad because they weren't invited. Because I thought that was super sweet and as a mom I wouldn't want my child to be the one left out, we invited every girl in Hailey's class to a pizza party at the park. Every single girl we invited showed up which truthfully, I didn't expect.

It was SO windy.......but it's always windy here so I don't know what I was expecting. Here's a tip for a windy picnic; Tape the paper plates down to the table cloth. It worked really well!

On top of the wind making things a little crazy, 3 of Hailey's friends have serious food allergies. All 3 of them had to bring food of their own and I was a nervous wreck that one of them were some how going to eat something that they shouldn't.

It turned out to be a fun afternoon though. As usual, Conal can command a crowd and had all of the kids chasing after him and the pinata.

Macy was an angel and enjoyed the party from the stroller,

and Hailey got to invite all of her friends so no one was left out.

Goal

I have completed a goal! YAY! I've been off of sugar for a month. I've done this several times before and I LOVE it! If you've never done it before, try it. After about a week and half you don't crave sugar anymore and its a piece of cake.....er maybe a piece of fruit. ha ha.

I love the feeling of setting a goal and then following through.

Hailey

Hailey is 6 today and I can't believe it! Is there a way to slow down time?

Hailey was born at 7:41am and was by far the easiest for me. First of all, I was scheduled in the O R at 7:30 am and she was born 11 minutes later. No waiting and no stressing out about it all day. I didn't sit there waiting forever (like with Alexia) and I didn't get bumped twice (like with Macy). I wasn't in labor for 18 hours prior, just to have a emergency c-section (like with Garrison), and I didn't have a tumor which made it necessary to have 2 MRI's and 2 surgeries all with in 8 weeks of a c-section. I didn't have to wonder whether or not I had cancer for 6 weeks either. Hailey didn't have any trouble breathing (like Alexia, Jackson, and Macy) and there was no stay at the NICU(Macy). We didn't move when she was 4 weeks old (Alexia) nor did we find out we were moving across the country the day after we brought her home (Macy). I didn't get thrush (Alexia) nor did I have some weird skin infection from the steri-strips (Alexia). Plus, I only had one other child at home to take care of.

If I would have known then what I know now I would have enjoyed myself a lot more. All of that makes recovering from a c-section and the anxiety that I have for 9 months before seem easy. ha ha.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Hailey:

and last but not least, Hailey at 7:41 am on May 14, 2009.

Happy Birthday Hailey!

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Mothers' Day! I hope you all had a great one. My was nice because neither Conal nor I had anything we had to do after church today. We got to spend the whole day as a family. YAY!

Plus I got these SWEET running shoes that my awesome hubby picked out for me:

Not pictured: pretty flowers and lots of cute cards from my kids. Oh yeah, and I got a new eliptical machine, but that is going back to the store tomorrow since we realized that it is the same brand as my treadmill.........the one that blew up this week. No joke. We are exchanging it for another brand tomorrow.

My new hobby

I started making bracelets for Hailey when she was a baby. Then I made some for myself. Soon after, I progressed to making necklaces. So fun! The YW wanted to learn how to make jewelry so one of our ward members taught the girls how to make earrings. I love making earrings because it is so easy and much quicker than bracelets and Necklaces. This is what I have made so far.

I am also learning to make pendants that you can put on a chain. I'll post a picture when I get around to making a few.

Fathers and Sons Outing

Garrison, Jackson and Conal went to the Fathers and Sons campout this weekend. Garrison looks forward to this all year long. I think Garrison had the best day ever on Friday. He had a field trip to the Brookfield Zoo during school and then after school he got to go to the campout. He was so excited that he tried to talk me into taking him to school and hour early, even though I told him no one would be there.

This was a great Fathers and Sons outing for Conal for a couple of reasons. 1. He didn't have to make all of the preparations by himself. This was also a HUGE relief for me as the last 3 years I have done a lot of the work to take some of the pressure off of Conal. 2. It was only 35 minutes away. I couldn't believe there was a place to go that was that close. 3. This is where they camped:

And this is the view from "Mt. Trashmore". That is what one of the boys nicknamed it a few years ago because this actually used to be a garbage dump that they built a forest preserve on top of. Prettiest "dump" I've ever seen!

What? Camping on grass? They don't even HAVE grass in El Paso. ha ha.

Here is a picture with Garrison and one of his buddies:

Some things never change though. Conal thought he was going to get away from the wind this year. The wind caused a lot of trouble at Fathers and Sons in El Paso. Unfortunately the wind blew all night here as well!

Also, Conal felt right at home when he got to the campout. One of his co-workers that is also a member of our ward helped him set up the tent. This reminded him of how Vaughn (another co-worker/ward member in El Paso) and Carter used to help him set up his tent in El Paso. I guess those FBI guys stick together!

Good times, Good friends!

The Girlz

The girls just had their pictures taken. I really don't understand how Macy, who is such a smiley baby, wouldn't crack even one smile during the whole photo shoot! Of course the minute we got to the car she was all smiles. Oh well, I still like her picture.

Yep, you can tell she is my child in this picture.

I think this is the first time Alexia actually LIKED getting her picture taken. Usually she is somewhat freaked out. This time she wanted to be in all the pictures. ha ha!

Hailey was a really good sport........but alas, we had a hard time getting her to not do the old 5-year-old-forced-smile thing.

We did get a good one though:

Hailey and Alexia loved this picture because they thought it was so cute that they were holding Macy's hands.

Getting pictures sure can be stressful! At least all of them were good and there was no crying. That's definitely a plus!

Back at it

We had to take the last two Saturdays off because I had YW things that I had to do. This week however, we continued our quest to complete our continuously growing list of things(Check out "The List" here: http://whettenwild.blogspot.com/2009/03/list.html) that we want to do here in the Chicago area. This week we went to the Joliet Historical Museum. They have a special "Lincoln Bicentennial" exhibit there that will be gone in a month so we thought we better see it while we had the chance.

The Joliet Museum is located on the the famous Route 66.

This highway was completed in 1933 and goes from Chicago to LA. It goes right through the middle of Plainfield as well. I don't know if it still goes all the way through or not, but if it does, it would be an awesome road trip. We could follow it all the way out to L.A. to visit the Chongs and visit the McPhersons on the way since it also goes through Gallup. It would be quite the drive!

Here the kids are "cruising" route 66.

The Museum is a fun little museum. They have a little "history hunt" for the kids. Garrison and Hailey really enjoyed looking for the items on the hunt inside the museum.

This spot in the museum represents a canal that was dug to join Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. The reason that it is such a big deal is that it was dug by hand. It's hard to imagine men digging out an area that big with shovels and wheel barrows yet that is exactly how it was done.

This picture is for my dad. Dad, I thought you would get a kick out of this prison that was built by the prisoners for which it would house. I know you are a tough-on-crime kind of guy.

The Lincoln exhibit was kind of small compared to all of the things that we saw last month in Springfield.

A couple of things that I enjoyed seeing was an original newspaper reporting the assassination of President Lincoln,

and an original reward poster for finding his killer.

On the top floor there was an activity and craft room for the kids. They thought this was great.

Garrison was cracking me up because he was incredulous that they would let us use the craft room by ourselves. He kept saying that he thought that for sure there would be some sort of an instructor up in the craft room.

Fun Day! Where are we going next????