Happy Halloween!

Park City condo 2009

Todd's parents have a timeshare in Park City every Oct. and the family gets together and spends the weekend/week together. We all look forward to it every year.

Pumpkin carving:
Alex's:
Nathan's:

Katherine in the bath after eating a brownie sundae:

This year it snowed while we were there. It was very pretty:

The boys in the hot tub while it's snowing. I wish I could've gone in, too!

The pool there is heated (somewhat-- I thought it was still pretty cold) and half indoors half outdoors. Katie and Alex playing:

Alex and Nathan pretending to be asleep:

Grandpa is explaining football to Alex. Alex just went swimming that's why his face and eyes are red.

We all ate too much junk food:

Katie was so funny with these lais! She loved gathering them all and putting them on and running around with them on for a while:

The family in the pool:

This year was the first year someone was missing... Tawnya and family:(. She lives in Iowa now and is sick pregnant and didn't think she could make it on the plane with her toddler while being sick. We missed her but we'll all be there next year, with 2 additions!

Family Picture Oct 2009

Things I don't understand about pregnancy

First, I am grateful that I can be pregnant and bring children into the world. Nevertheless, I HATE being pregnant!! Here's some things I don't understand about pregnancy:

1. Why is it that when your gag reflex is in hyperdrive and you are constantly nauseaus, do they make prenantal vitamins as big as ostritch eggs?

2. Why is it that this time is a time when vitamins and nutrients are so important, does mother nature cause you to throw up everything and only be able to eat french fries for dinner because that's all that you could keep down?

3. Why is it that at this time when smells can make you throw up, is your sense of smell keener than a bloodhound? One night I was about to throw up because I could smell our headboard....

4. Why are humans the only ones who get nauseaus during pregnancy? I've never seen a dog or elephant going around throwing up when it is pregnant.

random stuff

Mom and Dad, does this picture remind you of....

this one of me?

This girl LOVES her dog!

When Nana put Katherine to sleep at church:
The kids spent about an hour today doing this:

*Nathan is always trying to find ways to get money. Today he told me he would give me "lego training" for 25 cents. He really never wants to spend his allowance-- but his only weakness is Build-A-Bear.

Boardwalk

Nathan, Alex and I just finished a Monopoly game that we've been playing the last few days, and I lost. I was even trying my best, and I lost. Funny thing is that Nathan won, by only buying Boardwalk and Parkplace (nothing else) and put hotels on them both. Alex and I both landed on Boardwalk (me first), and even if we mortgaged everything we couldn't get the $2000. Alex was pretty close to winning.
Funny boys! I don't think a career in business is in my future...

Nana

Nana just came, and we've been thoroughly spoiled! She arrived with a 7 foot tent she made for the kids which was a big hit with all 3 kids. She gave me a break from being a mom-- she played with the kids (Monopoly, Indians, etc.), changed all the poopy diapers, took the baby during church and magically put her to sleep, cleaned my house, did my laundry, made the kids peach crepes every morning, let me take naps, took us out to eat, pulled the weed jungle in the front yard, etc. etc. etc.! Katie instantly loved Nana and always wanted Nana to hold her, which she never does with anyone.
Thanks, Nana! You helped me out more than you'll ever know!!!! We love you!!!

Good news and Bad news

Bad news:
Looking for clothes for me at the mall.

Good news:
I got a really cute church outfit! I LOVE the skirt and got a cute black top for it:

Good news:
My mom came to visit! She made a huge 7 ft. tent for the kids which they love!

Bad news:
She has to leave on Wed.

Good news:
My nausea is getting better!

Bad news:
It's still here, though.

Good news:
I'm still pregnant at least.

Good news for me:

Todd and the boys (and now my mom) are taking care of everything for me. The boys are such good helpers and Todd cleaned the nasty bathrooms for me.

Good news:
Todd made homemade cinnamon rolls tonight and tomorrow he's making homemade lasagna.

Good news:
I have the cutest kids in the whole world!

1st picture of baby #4

(The round thing is a ball for him/her to play with if he/she gets bored)
Here's baby's first picture! Today I am 8 weeks and 2 days. He said my due date is May 19, which means I can get induced on May 12. Katherine was born on my sister Allison's boy's birthday, and she has another boy who has a birthday may 13- so we could have 2 babies with the same birthdays!

too much food network challenge

The boys are building lego buildings and saying "I need at least 31 indgredients!" And they are hurrying around because there's a time limit. Then when they are done, Nathan says in an announcer voice, "Alex Carlson, move your masterpiece." Then he took his tall lego masterpiece and slowly took it upstairs to the school table. Then he said, "Nathan Carlson, move your masterpiece." They both made it.

learning to count

On Fridays the boys go to PE at the public school. I drop them off and then pick them up, and they each have their own time. When I was driving Nathan home, he said the teacher was talking to him before the class came. She asked what his favorite subject was. He answered math. She asked him if he started learning how to count yet. He said that right now he's at 27,000.

Yesterday Nathan told me, "If I get $70 a month, I'd have $840 in a year." He told me he did 70 times 10, and then added 140.

wrinkly feet

Nathan put his feet with shoes on in the water. In the car on the way home, he took off his shoes and his feet were wrinkly "like a 95 year old". The boys were guessing why water wrinkles your feet. Nathan said it was because the water presses against you and makes wrinkles. Alex said it was because water goes in your sweat holes and makes tiny bumps. What do you think?

P.S. It's come....the horrible horrible pregnancy flu. The baby is the size of a poppy seed, so how can something so small take over my whole body and make me feel so horrible and so tired?

Katherine's new trick

the motorcycle gang

The boys are in my bed pretending to ride motorcycles. The pillows are their helmets.

tons of pics and videos

Here is Katie in her words-can't-express-this-kind-of-cuteness Halloween dress and pigtails:

We went to Discovery Gateway in Salt Lake. All the kids had tons of fun- even and especially Katie.

Nathan's math: (all in his head)

140 divided by 5= 28 (I couldn't do that one in my head, I had to use a calculator. He did it fast in his head!)

8 times 8 = 64 (or 8 squared)

6 times 6 is 36 (or 6 squared)

52 times 2 is 104

104 times 2 is 208

28+36 is 64

cute girl with pigtails

the name

Today I was so bored that my eyeballs were falling out and my muscles were oozing onto the floor. Todd went to watch a football game at a friend's house and I was missing him. This was my first (of many) emotional day of pregnancy. It makes me wonder why we decided to get pregnant. I'll remember in May...

So, I decided to go to the store with the kids and get stuff to make rice crispies with Halloween M & M's. Junk food is always good when you're bored and/or emotional.


I also saw a pretty fall arrangment I got. They also had a gardenia with a flower in bloom and I took a good long whif and it made me instantly happy.
I then got on Craigslist and KSL and looked at antique dressers for Katie's room and that was fun, too. Then I played tickle chase with Katie and her little giggles were so adorable!

Todd and I picked out the names:
Abigail (Abbie) Mary
or
Nicholas Maxwell
or Nicholas Bradford

My parents hate the name Abigail, so I decided to let you know early so that you can get used to it:).

I'll find out the gender either right before Christmas or right after. Let's start making a list of guesses for the gender. Those who are right, get a little present from us. Those who are wrong get to buy us dinner (just kidding).

Just overheard

The boys are playing and I just heard them talking about when they get married. "I'm going to marry Avery," Nathan said, "but I don't know what she'll look like when she grows up." Alex responded, "Maybe even prettier, that's what I'm guessing."

********

We asked the boys if the baby will be a boy or a girl, and Nathan said, "let me look." So he looked in my bellybutton and said, "I see a little leg.....and a little footsie....and a little right finger (and he held up his finger).....that's all."

news

I took a pregnancy test last night.










It was negative.









I took another pregnancy test this morning.











It was positive.

read-a-thon, the many names of Bubs, more of Nathan's math

Read-a-thon
Today we decided to do a "read-a-thon". We got unhealthy snacks and the boys decided to do it on Sat. (today) so we could do it with Daddy. It went as well as you might think with a 5, 7 and 1 year old who was grumpy. The kids thought it was a junk-food-a-thon. We did do some reading though. We'll finish tonight because every night before they go to bed they just can't get enough of reading- they want me to read just another book before they have to go to sleep! We all stayed in our jammies, because that's part of a read-a-thon, too.

The many names of Bubs
We realized that Katie is not going to ever know what her real name is. When someone asks us what her name is, I say Katherine and Todd says Katie. At home, we call her Baby, Baby girl, cute baby, bubba, bubs, bubbers, bubber, babe, babes, bubba girl, katie cutie, katie bug, katie bub, bubster, bubberooni. I guess it's only fitting for the family, though, Alex thinks his name is Richard Alex Zander Carlson, and Nathan thinks his name is John Nathan Carlson. It's only one of the many things our children will go to counseling for because of us!

More of Nathan's Math
Allison said I should write down the specific math problems Nathan does. He does many all day. Yesterday Nathan said, "7 take away 9 is negative 2." Then Alex asked, "What's 100 take away 1,000?" He said "Negative 900." I asked him where he learned negatives (who teaches a 5 year old negatives?) and he said he heard me say it a couple times. I remembered when he was first adding and subtracting he would occasionally say the bigger number minus the smaller number and I would say it was negative whatever. I guess he caught on to the pattern.
Yesterday he also told me 8 squared is 64. Great Grandpa Carlson taught him squares and square roots. He literally thinks about numbers all day long. On the way home from our drive to Arkansas, he was counting for 3-4 hours straight. He continued counting from where he left off, a little more each day when he is trying to go to sleep or bored or in the car, etc. Right now he's at 22,000 and says he wants to get to 30,000. He's a little OCD about numbers. His favorite kind of math is figuring out seconds, minutes and hours; big huge numbers; and money math, but any kind of math he loves. If we give him a hard problem and he thinks about it for a while and we try and help him by giving him a hint, he yells, "Let me do it! Let me do it!" He never wants any help. And on his math workbook, he can't have any markings except the answer, and if he has to do some marking, he erases it. We learned carrying in math and he won't write the carried number on top of the next column. He says he wants everyone to think he does it all in his head. He won't do any counting on his fingers, either. Today he said sometime we should do a math-a-thon where we do math all day.

Fall

According to Kristie, Alex, Nathan and Katie, Sept. 1 means you can start celebrating fall and Halloween!
The boys made cute paper chain Halloween countdowns. (no pic)
Here are the fall leaves we put on our schoolroom tree (up high away from Baby Katie)



Sept. 1 we got donuts and apple cider and watched Disney's Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon. We got our donuts but we had to wait for Todd to come home. Nathan told me, "My mind has been on those donuts since we got them! So if there is a brain stuck't on to one of them, it's mine."

One of Nathan's recent math genius: "90 minutes is five thousand four hundred seconds." I asked how he figured that out and he said, "One hour is 3,600 seconds and half an hour is 1,800 seconds, so I just added them together."

cute boys

I think the best thing is to watch and listen to Alex and Nathan play together when they don't think I'm listening. Today Nathan was trying to get Alex to buy his pretend house and Alex said, "I don't want to buy your house! It's rotten!"

At dinner today Nathan spilled his water and when he got a bunch of napkins to put on it to clean it up. He said to the napkins, "please take a seat."

Why do we have Columbus Day??

I have been learning a lot doing school with the boys. We are learning American history this year. I study it first so I'm not in the dark when I teach them. I've been reading about Christopher Columbus today. I am baffled as to why we have a national holiday celebrating this man??

He sailed to a new land, not knowing where in the world he was, made slaves out of the natives and sent some back to sell as slaves, and his crew that he left ransaked the villages. Since he didn't know where in the heck he was, he made his crew sign an oath to lie and say that they had made it to China, and if they said anything different their tongues would be cut out. He was a know-it-all, and when he died, he still swore he found China, even though "by this time others had accepted the fact that there was indeed a new continent, Columbus never budged from his fixed ideas of geography. He had been to China, he insisted, and if he'd had more time, he would have reached Japan." And he wasn't even the first to "discover" America. The viking Leif (Eric the Red's son) sailed to America long before Columbus. And he only "discovered" America from a European's standpoint.

Because of Columbus, "the whole world was changed forever. Europeans considered this New World their own to explore, to exploit, to settle, to do with as they pleased. And the native peoples of this New World gradually lost their land, their peace, their freedom, and all too often their lives." (Quotes from Around the world in a Hundred Years by Jean Fritz) Why are we celebrating a closed-minded, dishonest, slave-trading man who didn't even know that he had discovered America??

I think I'll write to the politicians.

PS From looking online for a short bit, I've learned that the Italian people here started celebrating Columbus Day because he was Italian, and then President Nixon decided to make it a national holiday.

PSS I'm finding out that other people in history who are "honored" were not so great. Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of Independence, a president of our country, owned slaves and started the idea of kicking the native americans out of "our" country--the very man who wrote about freedom and owning land etc. being self-evident truths. There are so many events in our country's history that are not noble. I told the boys when we started history last week, that our country has made many mistakes, that it's not perfect, but even still, it's the "land of opportunity" where we have so many blessings that we should be grateful for.

5 years ago

5 years ago Nathan was 18 months and Alex had just turned 3. They loved going to the Planetarium. This is when they could name the planets in order by themselves. Look how cute they are!

If you're interested in the nitty gritty of our homeschool, check out my homeschooling blog. I wrote about our first week of school-- it went really well! This second year is going to be a lot easier and funner than the first!