March 22-29: Grammie's house!

Since Meggin was coming into town for the week, I decided to go spend the week at my mom's too! On Sunday, DJ took us down to Salt Lake and my mom met us there to take the girls and me to her house (we're still a one-car family).  The girls loved seeing the Christus statue on Temple Square, as usual!

It was so fun to be at my mom's and spend time with family!   Lex and Mia love getting to spend time with cousins, and it was especially awesome to be with some they hardly ever see!  Lex and Annie are only 4 months apart, and it was fun to have them together for the week!

Lex and Annie helping lick the batter:

On Tuesday I took the girls to Spanish Fork to visit Melin's family, and also Grandpa and Grandma Savage and Debbie were there!  Jill brought Kate and Hailey down as well, so the girls got to see some more cousins for a little bit.  It was so nice to talk to everyone and spend some time together.  Later that day we went to the Bean Museum with Meg and her kids.  That evening I went out to dinner at Red Robin with a bunch of DJ's family members, and it was awesome!  I left my girls with my mom, and it was SO NICE to get out and just be with adults for a while!

Lex at the Bean Museum:

Mia LOVES elephants!

Since we weren't in Lovell for Christmas this year, Mammie and Papi sent Christmas presents home with Keesha when she went to see Savanna at State Basketball, and Wednesday morning was like Christmas all over again for my girls!  They were so excited to have new toys, and Mama Sav made DJ and me a really cozy blanket.

 Lex and Mia played bubbles with Grandma Kaiser:

We were going to "the pizza store" (Pizza Hut) and Lex was super excited!

On Thursday morning was the annual warehouse sale for Little Adventures Dress Up, which is where I get my girls' costumes.  They are really high quality (MUCH better quality than the Disney dresses you get at Toys R Us or on Amazon) and during the warehouse sale they're only $10 a piece!  Meg and I took Annie and Lex and they each got a couple new dresses.  It's so hard for me not to go crazy at the sales, cause they're just such good prices and my girls wear dress ups pretty much all day long.  It's definitely worth the money for us!  Since Easter Sunday is during General Conference this year, I had my girls wear their actual Easter dresses the Sunday before and I'm giving them each a new dress up dress on Easter morning!

Lex belting out "First Time in Forever" while wearing her new Anna dress:

Annie and Lex wearing their new matching dresses:

My girlies in their Cinderella dresses:

I shared a room with Lex while we were at my mom's, and she turned out to be quite the bed hog.  I actually kind of love sharing with her, she's snuggly and it's fun!

 On Friday, DJ came into town!  That evening we had a BBQ at Jordan and Jill's.  Lex was happy to be able to play with Kate again!  It was fun to be able to spend time with family again.

DJ helping Mia play basketball:

Lex and Mia sharing a creamsicle:

Saturday was super awesome, because Josh and Kristin were in town and Kristin went through the temple to receive her endowment!  It was great to be in the temple with my family.  We got to take family names through from the Family History I've been doing, and that was great as well!

On Sunday my girlies wore their new Easter dresses to church.  Lexsi chose them out about a month ago, and they were so excited to match!  We dropped Mia off at Nursery for the first time with Lex (even though technically she isn't 18 months til the second week of April).  It was SO NICE to be able to go to meetings with DJ and not have kids with us!

Annie, Lex and Mia

The boys on "Easter":

My little fam:

The most beautiful girls in the world!

We came home Sunday evening and it's good to be back.  Only a few days and we'll be back in Provo to spend Conference weekend with family again, and we're really looking forward to it!

A couple of gems from my girls yesterday:

Lex walked into her bedroom and a saw a Barbie skirt on the floor.  She picked it up and exclaimed, "This is Tiana's!  She must be nudey booty.,.  She gots to be modest!!!"

Mia said her first unassisted prayer last night:  "Deah Fawdduh,  Gank ee day.  Gank ee church, temple, church, temple.  AAAAAAAY- MEN!" Best ever!

March 9-21

On the evening of March 8th, DJ took the girls out to the trampoline while I stayed in for some rest after being sick all day.  They came in not too long later, with Lex crying her eyes out.  She had hurt her leg while jumping (she just landed weirdly, she wasn't doing anything wrong or crazy), and didn't want to walk on it.  On Monday the 9th, she continued to be in pain, and wouldn't put weight on it.  I made her a doctor appointment for that evening when DJ was home-- first, because we only have one car, and second because if she needed an x-ray I knew I wouldn't be able to stay in the room with her since I'm pregnant, so I wanted her to have her daddy there.  The doctor examined her and said it was most likely a tibia break, but referred her to an orthopedic doctor for the next day.  DJ took the day off of work because we didn't know when the appointment would be, and again he needed to be the one to take her.  She got in that afternoon and sure enough, she has a fractured tibia.  She chose a bright pink cast and she's so proud of it!  Every morning the first thing she says to me is, "Look, Mom!  I have a cast!"  It's a walking cast, which is nice.  It goes over her knee so she can't bend her left leg, but she seems to be doing just fine in it.  We haven't really talked much about how she broke her leg, because like I mentioned before, she wasn't doing anything wrong when she broke it, just jumping on the tramp as usual.  We don't want to freak her out and have her be afraid of jumping on the trampoline since it's one of her favorite things to do!

We gave a smock that we have Lex wear when she eats so she doesn't get food on her cast!

On March 12-14 we headed down to Saint George for a golf tournament with DJ.  He was driving a van with some girls from his team, and I took our girls in the car and came down separately.  I was worried about the long trip by myself with them, but they did such a good job!  They're the best little road trippers.  Unfortunately since Lex had just broken her leg, we weren't able to go swimming or play in the water at all while we were down in the beautiful weather.  I did my best to keep two toddlers busy and happy in a place I was unfamiliar with while I was flying solo (DJ was at tournaments every day), and I think I did a decent job.  We went to a children's museum one evening with my brother and his kids, and my girls loved that!  All in all it was an okay trip-- I'd love to go when I can take the girls to play in the water and have DJ with me so it feels more like a vacation!

The girlies at the golf course:

At the Temple Visitors' Center:

Saint George Temple:

At the children's museum:

Lex and Bekah at the museum:

Kaydee and Mia at the museum:

Mia was having a rough morning so I stripped her down and fed her leftover pizza... ha!

At the park:

Headed home:

March 15-- I sat down at the computer in the afternoon for my weekly date finding my family through Family Search and I found 63 new people to help complete temple work for!  I told my mom recently that I feel like my role in Family History right now is to be a "Finder."  I have found hundreds of people to help.  I've had to enlist help of lots of other people to get their temple work completed, because I simply can't keep up!  I'm so grateful I'm able to find so many people and help them receive saving ordinances!

Later that evening when I was preparing dinner, I turned on the oven to preheat and a few minutes later I noticed smoke coming out from under a burner on my stove.  So that was weird... I opened the oven door and realized there was a big white blob of something burning in there.  It suddenly occurred to me that the previous evening while I was unloading the car after getting home from Saint George, Lex had come up to me holding a serving tray from the cupboard and told me she was going to make cupcakes in my oven.  I absentmindedly told her that was fine and forgot all about it.  So naturally she left the tray in the cold oven, and when I turned it on the next night I melted the tray all over the place.  It was actually on fire, so I had to pour baking soda over it too.  I was so worried about how to clean it, but it was actually really easy.  I waited til the oven had cooled down some and the plastic was hardened but still pliable and it scraped right off the bottom of the oven.  DJ took the baking racks out to our fire pit and burned the plastic off them.  So all in all, not the worst thing that could have happened, but it made for an adventure to be sure!

March 17-- When DJ and I had been married about a year, our Bishop told us that we needed to decide when we wanted to serve a mission together and then write the date down and leave it a visible place.  That way we'd always see it and have the reminder of what we were working toward.  He also said it was important for our kids to see it so that they always knew that Mom and Dad were going to serve a mission, and when the time came they would be expecting it.  We talked about it and decided we want to serve in the summer of 2050.  We put that date on a little block which sat on our shelf for a while.  Once Lex was born I realized I really wanted to include her in the mission goal.  When we moved to Spanish Fork, I had a plan to make a "Missionary Wall"  with our names and dates of when we were able to serve missions, along with DJ's missionary plaque (which I still needed to have made) and a quote from Elder Holland's talk, "We Are All Enlisted."  I never got around to getting the wall decorated in Spanish Fork-- that tends to happen when you sell your house 7 months after building it.  Fast forward a few years, and I finally got the wall done today!  I love it SO MUCH!  I really want my girls to have a constant reminder in a prominent place of what they can do and who they can be.  If they grow up knowing exactly when they're able to serve a mission, that's a great goal for them to be working toward.  Lex is already SO determined to serve a mission, which is incredible to me!  I would love if all my girls served missions, but even if they choose not to that's completely okay with me (hi, I didn't serve a mission-- I understand it's not for everyone!).   As long as they're living their lives in a way that if they choose to go, they're ready and worthy to do so, I'll be a happy Mama!

We've been going to the park every day, and it's been awesome!  We usually go around lunch time and have a picnic lunch and the girls run around for over an hour.  It's perfect, cause then they're all tired out for a nice long nap in the afternoon!

22 Weeks

Update time!  Since the ultrasound where we found out we're having another girl, I've had 3 additional ultrasounds-- at my regular appointments at 18 weeks and 22 weeks and my in-depth one at 20 weeks-- and every time it's been confirmed that we're really having a girl!  I'm getting so excited to have a tiny snuggly baby again.  I love that she's going to be so close in age to my other girls... we're in for a lot of fun!  I keep imagining them in school together and all the fun they're going to have.  It's going to be awesome!

This pregnancy has been a lot more like when I was pregnant with Lexsi than when I was pregnant with Mia.  Mia was pretty much the dream pregnancy... I was never sick, I slept amazingly well and I pretty much didn't feel pregnant til I was like 36 weeks along!  With Pyper, I've been pretty sick, but I think (hopefully) that I'm starting to get past that.  I don't sleep well-- a few times a week I wake up in the night and stay awake for several hours.  The biggest thing about this pregnancy is that my body feels old.  I'm only 27, but I'm definitely feeling it a lot more this time.  I'm sure it's due in part to the fact that I've gotten pregnant 3 times in less than 3.5 years, and that I now have 2 toddlers to take care of as well as dealing with pregnancy issues.  I'm mostly fine, but my body gets much more achey, and when I go out for walks I definitely feel it that night and the next day.  It's weird, because I know I'm not in amazing shape, but I've NEVER felt sore or tired after walking a couple miles.  I'm not in that bad of shape... my body is just doing weird things.  My muscles are super loose (which is annoying, since I'm having a c-section so I don't even NEED them to be loose!) so yeah... it's been interesting.  I also have gotten pretty bad acne, which has never happened before.  SUPER lame.  

Pyper has been moving a lot more lately, especially in the evenings.  I don't feel her much when I'm doing stuff with the girls (probably cause I'm distracted, plus I'm moving around so she's likely to be sleeping), but lots of times if I sit down while they're napping she starts going crazy.  Last night I had DJ feel her kicking and he mentioned that he doesn't think he's felt either of the other girls move that much!  She's kind of a wild one.  This is my very favorite part of pregnancy, feeling the baby kick and roll around.  It's such a crazy feeling, and it's really amazing.  At my appointment this past Monday, the doctor did a 3D ultrasound and let us watch Pyper close up on her face, and she kept opening and closing her cute little mouth, then yawned really big and we could even see her tongue!  It was adorable, and made me even more excited to have her here!

I gained a lot of weight in the last 7 weeks (10.5 pounds), which freaked me out for a second when I realized it.  Then I remembered that I barely gained any weight in the beginning (4.5 pounds in the first 15 weeks) and eventually I was going to need to put on some pounds.  I still fit into my pre-pregnancy capris (regular ones, not leggings) and I know my weight gain is healthy.  I'm still only averaging about .7 pounds a week, which is fine by me!  I honestly don't really worry too much about weight gain when I'm pregnant.  I'm in a pretty great place body-image wise.  I'm proud of my body for what it's accomplished-- 3 babies in less than 3.5 years is going to take its toll on any body, and I wouldn't trade my 3 girls for my pre-baby skinny self!!!

Here are a picture of my baby bump this week:

And since I always post belly pictures of myself, here's a peek at what it looks like behind the scenes...  Mia wants to be held almost constantly.  This is what being a mom of 2 toddlers and being pregnant actually looks like!  Haha

Cravings:  Fruit, hamburgers

Weight Gain:  15 pounds

I'm getting SO EXCITED to meet this baby girl!!!

February 23-March 8

So, I didn't meet my goal of blogging last week but I don't even feel bad about it cause my time was consumed with other important things-- which I'll get to!  My weekly (or bi-weekly) posts are going to have lots of pictures, cause that's just how I roll!


February 23:  Mia had a rough day.  She was crying about the silliest little things, all while Lexsi kept saying in the background, "Mia is SO dramatic!"  Haha!  At one point in the day she saw suckers in the cupboard and I wouldn't give her one so she plopped herself on the floor and cried, "SUCKAAAA!"  Her life is hard.

Later that day I found Lex jumping off her bed on to a pile of pillows.  Pretty awesome!

February 25:  It was free day at the zoo, so I took the girls down.  Unfortunately it was a little windy and the wind was cold, so we didn't stay as long as I had planned.  The girls both really liked the elephants!

This seal swam right up to the glass, and it freaked Lex out so bad!  Mia just kept waving and saying, "Hi!"

I love that Lexsi expresses her emotions to me-- we were by the gorilla cage and the gorilla was sleeping right up next to the glass.  Mia went right to the glass and looked at it, but Lex hung back and then told me quietly, "Mom, I feel a little nervous!"  So I held her and told her it was okay to feel nervous and it's always a good thing to express your feelings!

After the zoo we headed to the Disney store, where the girls chose new stuffed animals.  Mia got Figaro (Minnie's cat) and it's hilarious to hear her sing, "Figa-wo, Figa-wo, Fig---a---wo!"  Lexsi chose Anna and Elsa stuffed dolls and they've become her sleeping companions.

One day I straightened Mia's hair for the first time.  It was cute, but I still love her natural curls best!

March 1:  I hadn't been on Family Search for a while, and had been feeling over the past week or so that I really needed to.  On Sunday after church while everyone else napped, I hopped on to see what I could find.  Nearly 4 hours later, I had found 73 people in my family line who needed temple work done!  I love Family History.  I really believe that anyone can find someone in their family who needs their help to get their temple ordinances completed.  I often pray that I can be led to the people who need help, and I've had so much success in finding them!  Because I've found such an incredible amount of people, I've been trying to get all the help I can to get their temple work completed.  I am only one person and it would take me SO LONG to accomplish all this work, if I ever really could get to it all!  I'm so grateful to my mom and sister, who not only immediately offered their help, but have already taken names to the temple and started completing work for our family!  It's such a great experience to be able to share with my family.  I love it so much!

March 3:  I ordered these shoes from a girl here in town who custom makes them, and I got to go pick them up!  I am pretty much obsessed with them.  Pyper is going to look SO good in them, I just know it!

Also on March 3rd we got the most snow we've seen in a while!  Golf season is underway for DJ, but since it snowed so much he didn't have practice, so he came home early and played outside with the girls.  Mia loved it and immediately started walking all over the yard.  Lex was uncertain for a while, but then ended up staying outside for a really long time with DJ!  We don't have a good snow coat or pants for Mia, so we stuffed her into a 6-9 month snow suit.  It fit surprisingly well, it was just a little too short and the arms were short.  It kept her plenty warm, until she fell forward and face planted because the tightness of the snow suit made it so she couldn't catch herself!  She was pretty much done after that, so I took her in.

March 4:  I went into crazy person mode and basically rearranged my whole house.  Maybe it was nesting, but mostly I was just needing to change some things.  Mia had been sleeping in the downstairs bedroom since Christmas time, when we attempted to take Lexsi's binky away (which we tried for 3 WHOLE WEEKS and she wasn't sleeping.  Not at night or in the day.  It was awful for all of us, and in the end after lots of praying and weighing our options we decided it was much more important to her health to get the sleep she needs than to not have a binky.  I'm definitely taking Mia's binky sooner though).  After that it was just easier to keep them separate but with a trip to St. George coming this week I really wanted to get them adjusted to sleeping in the same room again so we're not all miserable in the hotel.  Also, they had toys in Lexsi's room upstairs, the upstairs living room AND the downstairs living room, and I was just going crazy with it all.  So I moved Mia back upstairs, moved their dollhouse into their bedroom along with some books, and move all the other toys downstairs.  Our third bedroom (which is really my craft room) is now converted into a toy room.  It makes my life so much better to have a designated room for their toys.  It's SO NICE!  Since I took the shelf out of the upstairs living room that had books and toys in it, I rearranged the furniture and it looks way better now.  It's so so awesome to not have toys in the living rooms!  I took a big piece of carpet we had from our house in Spanish Fork and cut it down to a good size for the living room, and it's nice to have that in there.  Now I need to get some decorations on the wall and a coffee table and I'll be in business!

The girls' room now (we also swapped out the pack and play for a crib, and Mia is doing fine in it for the first time ever):

The toy room (my crafting supplies are all covered and on the other side of the room):

Upstairs living room:

March 6:  My mom was in town, and I went to dinner with her and my aunts.  It was nice to get out of the house and have some time with other adults!

March 7:  Lex had some snuggle time with Daddy, then let her little cosmetologist skills shine by working on her dollies and me.

The girls got sent to the back yard to play together on the trampoline, and it was awesome for all of us!

I found these insanely big and delicious strawberries on a good sale at Kent's, and since I've been on a huge strawberry kick since I've been pregnant this time, I bought a lot.  (12 pounds!)  Last night I made some homemade strawberry jam with some of them, and we're looking forward to having that deliciousness for a long time!

Some time during this past week, Lexsi has stopped calling me, "Mommy," or, "Mama," and switched to just calling me, "Mom."  It's kinda funny to hear her call me that, it makes her seem so old!