Happy Birthday Daddy!

For Coop's 30th, the girls and I gave him a necklace containing 30 baggies filled with 30 different kind of 30 goodies each. Not sure that made sense, but that's what we gave him regardless ... and made him wear it to work. Hey, if we spent all that hard labor counting to 30 30+ times (tricky when one of us can only count to about 12 and when that same person was caught eating the gifts many a times), he better proudly display it! Happy Birthday Daddy! We love you!

December 16th, 2010

To the first grader in my Primary,

and to the 2nd grader who had a crush on my friend Laura and thus was a part of our giggly conversations when she came over to play,

and to the 3rd grader in Ms Vess' class with me whom I wrote a letter to when he moved that he kept,

and to the 8-chocolate-bar-doughnut eater (all in one sitting mind you) in Julie Cottle's seminary class (holy disgusting),

and to the freshman boy who became my best friend while dating my friend,

and to the only young man in our ward that I never managed to beat at basketball,

and to the person that I broke my mom's no-calling-a-boy-on-the-phone rule over,

and to the guy making faces at me behind his book during our performances of The Music Man, and to the junior in high school that stayed my best friend while switching to date another of my friends,

and to the teenager that t-peed my house when I turned 16,

and to the friend that left bags of licorice on my porch when I had bad days in high school,

and to the best friend that made me cry when he moved away for a few years,

and to the 19 year-old who grew up a (very) little and left on his mission to Brazil still as just-a-friend after I told him to hold that thought for a few years,

and to the missionary that I thought of lots but didn't write to as often as he'd have liked,

and to the guy I compared everyone I dated to (they never fared well by comparison) until I woke up and realized one day that I should really just date him instead ... but he was on a mission,

and to the unselfish young man that supported me whole-heartedly when I told him I was going on a mission ... and leaving a month before he'd get back from his,

and to the fish who I was sure would get away while I was gone and almost did as among others he dated another one of my friends (we don't talk about that time much),

and to the faithful friend who came to see me the day after I got home,

and to the eager beaver that went and held my hand 2 days later claiming I'd given him some sign for him to do so when really I was sweating just sitting that close to a boy,

and to the guy who finally kissed me (he was SO nervous and this time I'll admit to giving him a sign or two) and thus finally was my boyfriend even though the idea of that was so serious it scared me a bit,

and to the boyfriend who very very shortly later told me he knew he wanted to marry me and would wait however long it took until I got there too,

and to the one whom I was told to marry in answer to prayers (before I was ready for the answer - be careful not just what you pray for but when you do too),

and to the guy who laughed out loud with delight when I told him I'd got my answer,

and to my fiancee who was so cute when he proposed and tried to keep it secret but couldn't tell a convincing lie to me,

and to the handsome man in a tux that I met at the temple on August 20th 2004 to be sealed to for forever if we could just make it through all those pictures and well-wishers,

and to my husband who I kept calling husband because I could hardly believe that's what he was,

and to the brand-new daddy holding our first baby girl and crying over my shoulder,

and to the man with whom I now share a wonderful life with our three children where we pretend to be grown-up and mostly get away with it I think even though we feel like we so often have no idea what we're doing,

and to the love-of-my life who turned 30 today ... HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I love you. So much. Forever. (And no worries, you still only look about 20.)

Here Comes Santa Claus

Even taking into account the cheesy grins, this is hands down the best picture we've ever got with Santa Claus - nobody's crying! Well, except for Isaac in the background, but that didn't even have anything to do with the man in red. And, by the way, we are back in our house with dry carpets and walls. The carpets have yet to be tacked back down and the floor boards need to be nailed back in, oh and our new washer needs to get here before Isaac spits/pees on every article of clothing he owns, but other than that, we're back to normal (normal for us that is, if that even fits the definition of the word). I just think I must be one of those people that these things seem to happen to. You know on Finding Nemo when Marlin tries to get rid of Dorie? What does he call her, like a distraction fish or something? I can't remember the exact words. But I think I'm just one of those kind of fish. Just as long as Cooper doesn't try to get rid of me for it, we're good! We can go back to enjoying our crazy kids in our own home, and listen to them saying things like when Meri told me this morning that she hurt her foot's hip bone, aka ankle. And we'll sit in not-so-eager anticipation of the next "distraction" to come our way!

Uh-oh Mama, this is NOT good!

What is this picture of you ask? Well, that's me jumping in our hallway ... and that's water splashing all over the place every time I land. Let me rewind a bit, say a couple of hours. I was actually being productive, which doesn't happen a lot these days. I had the girls cleaning their room, and I scooted down the hall and started the third load of laundry of the day. Then I went back because if there is no supervision, the whole cleaning thing doesn't so much happen real well. It's more like rearranging of messiness. So I was there for a good amount of time making sure things actually were put where they were supposed to go. When they were finishing up the last few things, I walked down the hall to the family room to put in the movie I'd promised them (Muppet's Christmas Carol - my favorite!!). I stepped in a wet spot, but since that's hardly the first time I've had that misfortune I kept right on walking grumbling to myself about who must've spilled a cup of water that they got without asking. Seconds later the girls came running down and stopped in their tracks. "Oh man Mom! I just stepped in something wet ... I think it's a giant pile of spit-up or something. Ewwww." I didn't even turn to look, and replied, "Well then why don't you wipe it up?" She started to I think and then, "Oh man oh man oh man. Mom! I think it's coming from the washing machine!" That did get my attention and as I walked closer every step I took left a wet footprint in the carpet. Not good. I opened the washer and lo and behold it had got stuck on filling with water. There was a good half inch at least underneath it. Sweet! Needless to say, after soaking every towel I own, I finally admitted that it wasn't making a dent in the damage. Noticing that the washer was still dripping I spent the next nearly hour trying to empty it by filling up bowls of water and dumping them in the sink. Meanwhile, Coop was racing home and the girls were reveling in the chaos. Meri was jumping up and down the hallway, trying to make as big of splashes as she could. Jenelle was pacing back and forth wringing her hands, carrying on with a nonstop flow of dramatic, rather obvious and considerably unhelpful exclamations like, "Oh no! This is a big, big problem. I can't believe all the water. Can you Mama? I have never seen a problem like this before. What are we going to do? We can't live like this. Are we going to have to move? The washing machine should NOT have done that. Why is there water everywhere? Oh no, oh no. There is still water everywhere. Mom, it is not getting any better. We need to find a new house that doesn't have water everywhere. Are you going to tell Daddy? I cannot believe this. This is not good." And on and on and on. And now our house looks like this, and will for "best case scenario, the next three days":I think I counted 12 machines total running at once. I might have missed a couple though. We are grateful at least that we're just renters and so aren't footing the bill to fix it! The only useable rooms are our bedroom and the girls', so we're hanging out back there doing things like this:Oh and I forgot to add the part of the story where last night after a few hours standing in ice cold water trying to fix it, I had to get the kids out of the house to get some dinner so we went to McDonalds so they could play in this huge play area and maybe salvage the night and end on a good night. But disaster followed us. Right as we got our food they closed the play area for "sanitary reasons." If the gaggle of 7-year old boys were to be believed it was because someone had pooped on the red slide. Awesome. Had to feel for the scrawny, zit-faced teenage boy that got sent up there to clean it up (He kept dropping the cleaner down the slide, coming down to get it and climbing back up again much to the kids' amusement). He's so not paid enough for that. But if anything could make this whole thing any better it would be this:
He's three months old today!!! Can you believe it? And as long as he's fed on time, he doesn't give a rip about wet carpets, bath tubs fell of wet towels, a broken washing machine, the never-ending noise and humidity (it's like 85 degrees in here, no joke) and the general chaotic state of the house. Well, that makes one of us.

Isaac's Baby Blessing

When we went home for Thanksgiving we had Isaac's baby blessing. In our church, we don't consider this blessing to be a saving ordinance; meaning it, unlike baptism isn't necessary for salvation. We don't believe babies need to be baptized yet because they can't sin nor could they decide for themselves that they want to be baptized. But they get to have a special blessing that officially puts their names in the records of the church and sometimes gives us insight into their little personalities as the priesthood holder giving the blessing (in this case, Isaac's daddy) follows the inspiration of the Spirit in what to say and bless our little baby with. So it's a very special time especially for parents and it just makes me excited to see what an amazing little man our handsome baby will become! Here's the only picture we got of him in his outfit, and a couple of decent family pics from later in the day:

We're so glad that Isaac is part of our family!!!

Art website

Coop made me a new-and-improved website for my artwork. It's so wonderfully nice how he does these things for me because I'm totally hopeless when it comes to computers, as some of you probably know. Basically it's a miracle I can blog on my own. My most embarrassing moment was in 8th grade when idiot that I am I thought I looked around for a button/switch to turn on my computer in a computer lab and pressed the first one I saw and turned off half the computers in the room. You don't make a lot of friends that way! Anyway, check it out when you get a sec and let me know what you think. It's www.alishabwhitman.com. Thanks!

Thanksgiving is a time for ...

taking a nap with a full tummy:

playing with cousins:

LOTS of desserts:

And it's a time for being thankful for the tremendous blessings we enjoy each day. To name a few, I'm super grateful for so much incredibly wonderful family in the form of parents, in-laws, grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. that shower my kids with attention and me with support, and I'm grateful that we only live three hours away (although it took 7 hours to get there the day before Thanksgiving. Don't ever ask me to tell that story). I'm grateful for a quick recovery from having a baby, for a beautiful healthy baby boy, and for the best two big sisters ever. I'm grateful for the most helpful, caring husband a girl could find and I'm thankful he has a paying job. I'm grateful we found a nice area to live in and for the little things like popcorn that make my kids so happy. I'm grateful for a loving Father in Heaven that blessed me with it all!!

Faces I love

His oh-so-cute, talking-to-me faces:

His I-need-a-little-mama-cause-I'm-so-tired face:

His havin-fun-with-Mama face:

His monkey face or maybe it's a check-out-these-crazy-girls-that-just-can't-keep-their-hands-off-me face:

Can't get enough of his face!

And it kept right on snowing

Surprise surprise!! This was more than just the typical snow dusting. Much to the delight of little ones all over town, it actually added up, and suddenly a 4-day Thanksgiving weekend became a whole week off of school. Wow. And daddy even got sent home from work early so he could make it up the hill to us up the plateau. FUN TIMES!!And before we went to sleep, we peeked out the door and nearly an inch and a half more had accumulated on the chairs they'd left out. And it was 25 degrees and dropping. Brrrrr.

"I didn't know it could snow BEFORE Christmas!"

That quote is courtesy of Jenelle. Along with, "It's snowing in the Fall time. That's CRAZY!" And "Meri, you know what mommy taught me? When it gets really really cold like it does in August, then it snows." In my defense, let the record show that I never said anything about snow in August.

So the fun began as we were getting our shoes on to go out the door to church. I happened to look out the only window not covered in blinds to see it totally snowing! Surprise! The girls quickly demanded all sorts of snow gear, and we rushed out to still get there on time. By the time we got out there it was just the teeny tiny little flakes, that you can just barely see to the left of Meri in the grill of the car. See, it really was snowing :)

Ok, so you can't see the snow at all in this pic but they just looked too cute.

All throughout church and part of the day we watched beautiful flakes fall, but nothing stuck to more than the trees. This morning, the magic was back:

"I so much want to go out and touch a little little snow (Meri)." So knowing that these things don't usually last, I helped them bundle up and run outside for a few minutes of bliss. Yes, that is their nightgowns poking out of their jackets. There was no time to change. You just can't risk missing it by being practical.

And yes, we are the neighbors that still have moldy pumpkins on their porch. It's just that it's our back porch and we so rarely go out there to see them and be reminded. And now it's snowing on our Halloween pumpkins. I can't say I've seen that before.

I think I just found my excuse to not go to aerobics today. Wouldn't want to get caught out in the blizzard :) It's still going. Soon we might even be able to make a pint-sized snowball. Such a lot of excitement over a few flakes!

Isaac at 2 Months

This was taken 2 weeks ago, we just had some difficulty getting it up on the blog. So here it is, a preview of fun times to come over Thanksgiving (for those of you who we get to see)!



In the last 2 weeks he's even become smilier and talks so much more! Not to mention the ever-expanding rolls.

Sweetness

We've been looking for a preschool for Meri, and after having heard me on the phone earlier in the day, Meri randomly said in the afternoon, "Mom, are you SURE you want me to go to preschool?" I replied, "Well, sweetie, we thought you could learn lots and have fun. Why?" Little Ms. Sweetness answered, "Because if I go, you will be left all lonely." I had to jump up and give her a kiss and hug right away and assure her that I would indeed miss her but she would come back and I would be okay. It's even sweeter because when I asked her if she wanted to go to preschool she nodded emphatically and assured me that she really, really did. How adorable that she would consider giving up something she wants to do so that I wouldn't be lonely!

Happy Veteran's Day!

Check out our festive Camo-baby that is, catch this, 2 months old!!! Between dealing with that and watching Toy Story 3 for the first time with our kids (they'd seen it before and informed us what would happen, scene by scene, before it happened. Fun times), I need time to stop now! Or at least slow down a little. Please? (I tried to get the girls to agree to not grow up by using the whole you'll have to give your toys away when you're grown up. Jell shrugged and said, "I'll say goodbye to them though. No biggie mom." Great.) Anyway, with 4 babies younger than him in our ward alone, Sir Isaac has become the big kid on the block. And I do mean big kid. Check out his stats from his 2 month: 13 lbs (82%) 24 in (87%) head 16 1/2 (94%). When I laid him on the scale the nurse gave him a double look and then asked, you're here for his 2 month? Wow. Big boy. Big boy indeed! And when she asked if I had any concerns and I said, just nursing. It's like a wrestling match every time and it's driving me crazy. She replied, well, he's clearly not wasting away, so I wouldn't lose sleep worrying about it. And she's right. Check out these rolls!! We win!

Missing Halloween

Halloween is such a fun holiday with kids! I miss it already and am sad that we didn't do more for it. The whole new baby and move thing threw us off our game a bit and we didn't get to do the farm hopping we usually enjoy. While we were down in Portland for a super short visit, we did make it to one pumpkin patch with my mom. Here's the fun (although sadly I didn't take many pictures because I was holding a very sleepy Mr. Man the whole time):

Static head:

Jell was SO SO excited for the huge slide and SO uncharacteristically brave. She went half a million times because my mom had purchased a bunch of tickets and due to some seriously bad luck this was one of the only activities that was up and running. Meri wasn't so sure and had to go down with me a few times before getting up the gumbo to go by herself:

But then she squealed her little blonde head off the whole way down, jumped up and went again. And again. And again. This made up for her disappointment that there were no Meri-size pumpkins for her to get that she could hold by herself. And the puppies we got to see at the end made up for the fact that we missed the last doughnuts of the day by about 30 seconds. Breathing in their tempting goodness isn't quite the same as enjoying their calories. Oh well. We sure love sunny autumn days at pumpkin patches!

Surprise face ... and hair

This one's for daddy!

Halloweenies

Up until about 3 weeks ago, the girls wanted to be Cinderella and Snow White for Halloween. Then all of the sudden, they had to be witches, with green faces like Elphaba. Yes, we listed to the Wicked soundtrack around here, and the girls pretend to be Elphaba, Glenda, and Nessa all the time. So here they are (at the ward trunk-or-treat party) in all their wicked glory, along with the little man:

And the classic handless-eating-of-a-doughnut-on-a-string game. Jell kept spinning in circles trying to get a bite, and was laughing her head off.

Meri was incredibly excited to get a turn next but when she couldn't get a satisfactory bite got more and more upset. They timed the game and when the time was up she instantly started to cry, "I didn't even get a bite!" Daddy quickly pulled it off the string and said "you get to eat the whole thing now," to which she continued crying, "but did I win a prize???" Laughing, daddy responded something along the lines of "your prize is the doughnut!" to which she stopped crying, and happily began to eat. Crisis averted.

These three girls are in Jell's kindergarten class at school AND her Primary class. I hear all about them ALL the time! So glad she makes friends so easily.

But before I end this already too-long post, here's the little man. Apparently Jell doesn't know who Superman is though because she kept saying, "he's A superhero" or "he's dressed as A super man." Don't look too closely though. I cut out the felt and my mother-in-law stitched it on in a total of about 15 minutes as we raced to get out the door between feedings and all. Regardless of the shoddy workmanship, he looks adorable!

And I just had to add these. Look at these legs! I love 'em! The poor little boy. I spend half the time smelling his head (which smells like heaven, by the way, when he's been bathed recently), and the other half pinching his delicious thigh rolls. And I love how he claps his feet!

And stretches!

Happy Halloween!