day 2 thankful for...

I am thankful for photos, for memories, for the opportunity to reflect back on things that have happened. One thing looking back does for me is put today in perspective. If my kids are being hard to deal with, looking back at photos helps remind me how cute they really are and now is just a small moment and looking back I'm only really going to remember the good things.

Now that it is cold (and yesterday was snowy), I am grateful for pictures of summer to remind me of the warm days and beautiful green grass.

Charlie and Jeremy got to go to a BYU game and had seats on the second row. Charlie's favorite thing was the "cougar tail" (giant maple bar).

Blogging Again?

I don't know if I'm really going to get into blogging again, but I have a post for today anyway. I've missed being creative and doing things with photos - i.e.. scrapbooking. Last week I spent a marathon day getting over 400 photos into a photo book (printed through My Publisher). It was awesome to get it all done in one day and the kids love looking back at photos. But I still crave the creative side of embellishing and using fun papers.

Here is a fun page that I did - it is a photo of when I was a kid - from the year 1989 (or so). I was dressed as a punk rocker. It's fun to look back and see photos of when I was a kid. I spend so much time with current photos that I haven't taken much time to look back at photos from when I was growing up. I must be in a bit of a nostalgic mood today, because this morning as I sat to read my scriptures I saw my journal on the shelf next to me and picked it up and began reading. It was my college-age journal (18-21 years old). I read for about an hour.

This is the other page I created today. A picture of Jeremy with Henry and Matthew looking at books. The pages I'm currently working on are centered on "thankful for...". I'm thankful for books and that my children love books.

Going back to digital scrapbooking felt a bit awkward because I'm rusty and out of practice. I also realized how far behind I am in Photoshop Elements editions - I have version 6 and version 14 just came out. I bought version 6 in 2008. It's time to upgrade. I tried to today, but I failed. I purchased a download, but didn't pay attention and got the Windows version instead of the Mac version. I have to wait a few days for them to refund the Windows version and then I will buy the Mac version - so frustrating.

So, what's new with us since the last time I posted a year and a half ago? Nothing big. We are still homeschooling, kids are getting bigger and older. We still live in Idaho, we still travel to St. George regularly to visit family.

Winter is here already. Today was the first snow day of the year and my kids made the most of it. Even before they had breakfast they were digging out snow clothes and suiting up. Snow pants, socks, snow boots, scarfs, coats, hats, mittens - oh my so much required. My kids love it. I, however, prefer warmer weather and flip flops. It's a good thing they went out first thing in the day to enjoy the snow. By afternoon it was mostly melted and gone.

Family Outing

In April we went as a family to Orange Leaf Yogurt. The kids had earned coupons, an ounce for each A they got on their report cards. We had not gone to Orange Leaf before, so it was fun to try a new place. The kids were able to get 3 different flavors in their cup and add some toppings. I loved how fun and colorful the place was and I ended up taking many photos.

February week 2

*Stake Conference last Sunday, I sang in the choir, up on the stand for the whole 2 hours, and Jeremy bravely sat with all six kids. I enjoyed Stake Conference so much!

*I love Henry's red and white candy stripe jammies, too bad he has outgrown them. Henry is 5 1/2 months old. He has fuzzy hair and the cutest smile ever. Lydia described him as "a cute, fluffy puppy"

*I sit in my rocking chair that is in my room to feed Henry. Matthew comes in and sits on the footstool, and gets his finger prints all over the mirror.

*I love the cute crafts that the kids make at school.

*The girls went to play at a friends house and they came home with the most awesome face paint scenery that I have ever seen. Their friends will be greatly disappointed when they come to play at our house, I don't have great fun things that I do when friends come over - I just send everyone to the backyard and let them play.

*Becca had her 100 day at school. To celebrate they had to bring 100 small food items that could go in a class "trail mix". She brought Mike and Ike candies. Becca also decorated a tshirt to wear with 100 stickers. (Although the package said 100 stickers, I think there was only 98, I figured we were close enough and did not go back to the store to buy more.)

We had a multi ward Valentines Dance for the adults. Jeremy was in charge of the table decorations, which really meant that I was in charge of the decorations. Jeremy didn't know how much money he could spend, so I bought stuff at the dollar store to keep it thrifty. Thankfully the dollar store had some great stuff and I think we did a great job.

You can click the pictures if you need a bigger version to see the detail better.

January week 4 and February week 1

Some weeks it seems like not much has happened, but taking time to capture the little moments reminds me that life is in the details. Like the pictures of Henry and Becca reading together. The look on his face as he adores her is priceless. As is the picture of Tom and Matthew eating breakfast together. These photos really highlight the relationship between siblings and how much the little ones look up to the big ones.

The picture of Tom doing a handstand on his bed is random. He came to me and said, "Hey mom, come take a picture" and then he did his trick.

My favorite moment from this week is Jeremy putting in the new furnace. We finally got all the step done, gas line in, gas line turned on, new furnace installed. Making fires in the fireplace was nice, but it didn't really heat the whole house. It is so nice to just set the thermostat and not worry about it and the house is warm. This process of putting in a new furnace has sure made me more grateful for things of convenience such as our furnace and everyday I am so grateful for it.

Jeremy took Charlie and Becca and they went to St. George for a quick weekend trip. Jeremy and Char went skiing at Brianhead with Jeremy's brothers. Becca stayed in St George and played with some cousins. This was Charlie's first time snowboarding.

February is here and it brought snow with it. I was starting to wonder if we were going to get anymore snow this winter. It came all day long on Friday, gently falling, softly, quietly. I love watching the snow fall. I even took a video of it. It's so calming and soothing. The kids had a great time playing in it on Saturday and luckily they took advantage of it,  because by Saturday afternoon it had melted off and instead of a gorgeous white backyard, we had a lake of water.

I loved watching the Winter Olympic opening ceremony. I served a mission in St. Petersburg Russia, so I feel a bit of a kinship towards Russia. I got my kids to watch part of the ceremony, but I was the only one to watch the whole thing. Watching the Olympics is a nostalgic thing for me because I remember watching them when I was a kid. It was a big deal because they didn't come on very often and when the Olympics came on there wasn't much else to watch, with only 3 stations to choose from. Even now, I would spend more time watching the events, but it doesn't seem like they put much of it on network tv, so disappointing. Ice skating is my favorite to watch.

January Week 3

It's been a little bit more like winter around here. Just when I was getting used to the 40 degree weather it turned cold and despite the weather forecast saying it was supposed to warm up into at least the 30's during the day, the past two weeks have been much colder. Last week we had fog every day that left the trees frosted white. It was lovely. 

This week the wind has been blowing and making it feel very chilly. Although this is our second winter in Idaho I still prefer the warmer winter days to the cold snowy ones.

We have been working on getting our furnace replaced, Jeremy has been doing it. Two weeks ago the gas company came and dug to put the gas line to our house. They had to dig up the bushes along the fence line, which we were very happy about because we didn't like those bushes and since they had a backhoe it was quick and easy for them to do.

It's awesome to have a new furnace that works so well. The air pressure with our last furnace was poor and the upstairs bedrooms didn't warm up because the air barely trickled out the vent. It now blows out nicely through all the vents.

Saturday the 25 was a busy Saturday. Charlie had robotic competition at the college all day long. His team did awesome and they got 2nd place, out of the 47 teams that competed.

Tom had Pinewood Derby. He designed his car himself and did much of the work himself. He won first place in two of the rounds, but overall got 4th place.

It's a new year

Welcome to the new year! Life continues on at our house, even if I'm not taking time to share much here. After 3 and half months of quiet I am hoping to come back to semi regular posting.

January has been a pleasant month. It started cold, and then a little snow came-that melted the next day, and then the weather turned rather warm, well winter-warm - in the 40's. It was warm enough that the kids started dressing in shorts and I had to remind them to take a jacket with them.

At the beginning of the month we went to Sun Valley and went ice skating. The kids were awesome skaters, even though that was their first time on ice.
Tom and Charlie have been reading like crazy in the Harry Potter series. Long ago I bought the first five books of the series, but a couple weeks ago had to buy the last 2 books so my little book worms would have them to read. It's amazing to watch them read through such large books - 700 +pages. At school they earn points for reading books and they both have read double the amount of the other kids in their classes.

Henry is so cute. I don't know that any other word can sum it up - CUTE! He is a smiler and smiles all the time. He loves being held, and if he is put down he prefers his bouncer that he is upright in.

Matthew had a birthday and is now 2 years old. He loved blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.

I got a little behind in my project life scrapbook pages, so I haven't printed last years book yet. I'm trying to hurry and finish because I'm excited to look through it and relive last year and read and remember all the little things that elude my memory.

I'm wanting to not get behind in this years project life documentation, so I do "this week's pages" and then do ones from last year that I am missing as I can. That is one reason it is taking me so long to finish last year. It's definitely better to stay current, and, or, keep better notes. November and December's pages aren't going to have as much detail because I didn't keep notes and I don't remember much of the little details.`

September Week 3

So I'm still loving keeping up with my weekly project life pages. It's fun to reflect back on the week and remember what we've done and I love figuring out how I want to design and display the photos. 

The thing that this project does for me is give structure and definition to getting our life documented regularly. It's so exciting to me that I have this whole year in photos and words documented. I've scrapbooked for years, yet have not much to show for it. I've even had a blog for years and at times have kept up regularly with it, but mostly have been sporadic.

 This project has helped me be successful for the first time ever in doing something regularly and have it in a format that my kids have access to look at it - ie. in a book that is on the shelf.

Details from this week:

• We went to to the South Hills and roasted hot dogs and smores
• I love taking pictures of sweet baby Henry. He still sleeps most of the time. He is the sleepiest baby.
• Last week I did really good eating lots of fruits and vegetables and lost 5 pounds (this week I have not done well and have not lost a pound).
• Cousin Carter was in town for a job his company is doing. He lives in St George so we don't get to see him much. Jeremy picked him up from the hotel he's staying at and he had dinner with us. It was particularly great to get to spend time with him because he leaves for his mission in a few weeks and we won't get to see him before he leaves.
• Becca had her first spelling test and got 100%
• I love the photo of Matthew in the clown wig, the girls dressed him up

September Week 2

Jeremy had the week off and was able to help out with the kids and around the house as I continued to rest and recover from having a baby and from taking care of a new baby.

Jeremy took the boys camping to the South Hills and they had a great time bike riding and 4 wheeling in the hills (wish we could say mountains, but hills are the best that we have around here).

Henry had to be on a bili rubin blanket for a few days to get his jaundice to go away. Because of the cover on the light pad it made him glow green.

First Week of School

Here in Idaho school doesn't start until after Labor Day. Lydia has afternoon kindergarten and Jeremy was able to take Lydia for her first day of school. They line up outside the building by the door that goes into their classroom. She only wanted us to wait with her the first few days of school and now she is fine to go by herself.


I've been loving the "clean design" look lately and kept it minimalist with mostly white, words and pictures. It doesn't take any less time for me to do this style, it seems like it should be less time consuming, but somehow it still takes just as long as when I use different papers and embellishments.

No Time for Computer

I've had no time for the computer lately - I'm too busy holding my sweet new baby. He's already 2 weeks old and growing so big - he's gained a pound and half since birth and is almost 9 pounds now.
He's not sleeping so well at night - he's sleeps great all day long, just not at night, so therefore I'm not sleeping much either.

Here is the page from when Henry was born.

And from the rest of that week. Two days before Henry was born was Lyida's 5th birthday. Lydia and Henry are the only ones in our family to share a birthday month. The other 6 of us (parents included) each have our own birth month. If Henry would have held out for a few more days his due date was in September, but he was too eager to get here and came early. 

Sweet Baby

Nothing is more precious than holding a sleeping newborn. 

Henry- baby number 6 birth story

It's 7 am on Wednesday August 28, 2013. I am at st Luke's hospital with iv in and monitors on. Getting the iv in and blood drawn are one of the worst parts of delivery for me. I get very lightheaded and hot and feel miserable for a few minutes. 

We came in bright and early at 5 am. They got the iv in and started antibiotics a bit after 6 am. Now I'm just sitting around waiting for it to be 8 am when we will get things going with pitocin and epidural. I'm already 4 cm dilated and having minor contractions. 

 

Jeremy came with me and a few minutes ago he got called down to do a case. He should be back by 8, I guess we will see. 

I slept very badly last night. Because I also slept badly the night before I was hoping to go to bed early last night and sleep well until 4:30 when I had to get up. No such luck. Until the past two nights I have slept really well. Last night I was exhausted, but after 3 hours in bed I still hadn't fallen asleep. Finally I fell asleep for 3 hours, then woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep. I got up at 3:30 and ate a bowl of cereal because I was hungry and hoped I could then fall to sleep for an hour. No such luck. So I opened a book on my iPhone and read for 30 min until it was time to get up and go. 

Jeremy's parents got in late last night so they are there with the kids this morning. I am very thankful for that. Definitely one advantage to being induced is knowing when everything is going to take place, rather than spur of the moment trying to figure out what to do with the kids and trying to get to the hospital on time. 

I am very much looking forward to an epidural. Out of 5 previous deliveries I've only had an epidural one other time. I wanted natural births with no medical interventions but the last two were so intense and painful that I really didn't want to go through that again.

Epidural in at 8 am, Jeremy was still in the case. Mike did the epidural and was awesome. I got light headed and didnt love it, but overall it went well. He warned me i might get itchy, but was surprised at how extremely itchy i became, all over my torso and face. Its been an hour and its almost subsided. 

Doc came in at 8:30, I was at a 4. He broke my water, but not much fluid came out. By 9 it started leaking and then really gushing.

Started pitocin at a 1 sometime after 9:30 and 2nd round of antibiotics at 10 am.

Somewhere around 11 pitocin was upped to a 2. Just before 1 pm I was dilated to 9 and shortly after a 10. I wasn't ready to push yet, I was nervous to do the whole pushing bit because I don't like that part. The doctor came back after about 10 minutes and said it was time to push. 7 minutes later, at 1:23 pm Henry William was born. 

For being two weeks early he was bigger than I thought he would be-- 8 lbs 4 oz and 22 inches long. 

I am so happy that everything with labor and delivery went so well. I am so thankful I had an epidural and didn't haven to feel the contractions. Jeremy was loving it too- no wife in pain, no screaming. It was a quiet peaceful 4 hours of labor. 

I didn't love that my legs were so numb, couldn't even lift my left leg or sit up without help. Also didn't like how drowsy I felt, but absolutely loved not feeling the contractions and the pushing part was not bad at all. 

As soon as Henry was born they laid
him on my chest, all purple and white. Jeremy cut the cord and the placenta was delivered easily. No tearing, so healing should go really well. 

After we got him a little wiped off I put him to nursing and he latched right on and nursed for an hour and a half. After an hour they took him for a few minutes to weigh and measure him, but then he came right back to nurse more. 

An hour and a half after delivery I was still so numb I couldn't walk, so they wheelchaired me to our room. Henry still wants to nurse, so he is happily sucking away while I'm updating this. He is so stinking cute, and little and floppy. 

Now that it is all over I can't believe how nervous and worried I've been about the delivery. I think because Matthews delivery was so traumatic I was having a hard time getting my mind past that. I am so happy it worked out for me to be induced. They started the epidural before they even broke my water.

It's now 7 pm. The epidural has finally worn off all the way. My left leg took a long time. Henry is eating like a champ. Around 6 pm they took him and bathed up. After delivery they just wiped him off a little, So this was his first real cleanup. 

So far, even with the epidural worn off I have no after pains, which is awesome, because with Matthew and Lydia in particular I had horrible after pains. Also bleeding has been very minimal. Here's to hoping that both those things stay that way. 

I have been super hungry and thankfully they have been feeding me well and often. I ate a Philly sandwich around 2, meatloaf and fruit around 5, eggs and hash browns at 6:30 and have a turkey sandwich set aside to eat. I have also been drinking a lot of fluids and its a good thing my legs are back to working so I can get myself to the bathroom. 

Welcome baby Henry, so glad you are here. 

New baby

Henry William Taysom was born today, August 28, 2013, Wednesday, at 1:23 pm, 4 hours after induced labor. Labor and delivery went really well and Henry is healthy and an awesome eater already. 

The kids came for a short visit and are looking forward to spending time with their new baby brother. 

August week 2

I didn't realize I never posted last weeks layouts. I think partly I overlooked it because it took me until Tuesday to finish, usually I'm done by Sunday or sooner. It's funny that some weeks I've hardly taken a photo at all and think that I'll do just one page for the week, but by the weekend I have so many photos that I'm cramming them in.

Over all it really was a slow week and we didn't do anything until Saturday when I took the kids shopping for school clothes. Other than that it was just around the house, goofing off type of photos and memories, which are the easy kind to overlook and forget about. That is what I love about doing this project is remembering to pay attention to the small stuff.

Going back

Well, since I've been so efficient in getting this year all caught up and printed a photo book for last year I now have to go back further in time to find things to scrapbook about. Because my 2012 photo book through My Publisher turned out so well I am going to make more photo books for previous years, but I still love making scrapbook pages so I'm just going to pick random stuff here and there, not do a whole years worth.

Today I went to the 2009 photo bin to find some pictures to do and picked photos from the day we went to Marco Island. It was a great outing with tons of pictures, but I just picked a few highlights.

I miss going for family bike rides. Right now I am way too pregnant to even think about getting on a bike. But also there aren't great places here to bike ride. I wish they had a trail system like St. George has. There are some in Sun Valley, but that is almost 2 hours away.

Also, we are really missing the beach. Jeremy still thinks that someday he would like to move back by a  beach.

I love how this layout turned out. It started completely different than this with a different color scheme and I just wasn't loving it. So I picked out different papers and started over. So glad I did that. I love when I get done and am just in love with how the finished page looks. This is why I do scrapbooking - I love to see what I come up with and how the finished project looks. It really fills my creative cup. This is the only day this week I've sat at my computer and I've really missed it.

August first 10 days

I'm still in love with this new way of memory keeping.  

I printed and already received back the 12x12 pages I made for the first half of this year. I printed them with Persnickety Prints and am so pleased with how well they printed and with the cost and speed of that company. Their 12x12 prints are $2, Costco and most other places are $3 and more. I had 30 pages to print out so I was looking for the best deal. I uploaded them last Friday and by 2 hours later received and email saying they were done and ready to ship. I received them Monday in the mail. They are now in the photo book and the kids are enjoying looking at it.

As well as the family 12x12 scrapbook every once in awhile I make 8x10 that are for the kids' books.