Jennica's music program and Noah's pine wood Derby

WARNING: This post contains tons of pictures. :)

Last night was Jennica's kindergarten music concert. My parents got there early and saves us seats. I was so glad, because by the time we got there, 15 minutes BEFORE the concert was to start, it was already down to standing room only. The seats we had were on the first and second row.

Then the kids come in... Of course we're sitting on the wrong side of the room, and Jennica was about as far away from us as she could possibly get. On the very end of the row on the opposite side of the room. The room is a long rectangle, so we probably would have been closer to her if we were standing in the back row on the right side of the room, rather than being in the front row on the wrong side of the room. Oh well, what can you do?


Jennica is definately a little laid back. She was so distracted by all the parents that she forgot to sing for about the first half of the program. Plus, if she's not interested in something she just doesn't pay attention. I don't think she was all that interested in several songs because she really didn't know the words or hand motions. She looked great anyway.



She looked so cute! The concert was in the evening. When she got home from school, before the concert, I asked her if she was suppose to dress up, or wear anything special. She tells me, "All the girls are suppose to wear pink and all the boys are suppose to wear blue. We HAVE to."

Okay, if you know Jennica at all, you know she was making that up so I would be sure to dress her in pink. Cute girl. She LOVES pink.


Jennica's little puppy dog ears were so close together that she could hardly see. It was so cute. She kept lifting them up so she could see out from under them.

My Flower girl!

I don't remember what these songs were all about, I'll have to ask Jennica when she gets home.

Her favorite song was "Tootie Ta".. For anyone who knows it, it's all about looking silly. We didn't get any pictures from that song because they had the audience stand up and participate... Several over zealous moms who were trying to video tape the kinder teacher completely got in the way and we couldn't see Jennica at all. : ( I was so sad! It's the only song she had been practicing at home.

After the Music concert we went straight over to the church building for Noah's first pine wood derby race. He was so excited.

So here's his car. Andy showed him several designs online and let him choose one. Then Andy cut it out, and Noah painted it.

It sat that way for about 3 weeks, painted with no wheels or anything else till yesterday afternoon. While Noah was at school, I attached his wheels for him and added a steering wheel and G.I. Joe driver. I would have waited for Noah, but with Jennica's concert I didn't think we would have time. When Andy got home he and Noah put the car on the scale and added some extra weights.

Here we are waiting for the races to start. That's Noah, then my mom and dad and grandmother.


I think total there ended up being about 22 or 23 cars that raced. That's Noah's, third from the right.
Then the races started.

Noah won this race...
and Noah in the lead...

And Noah winning..

And Noah winning again..

And again..

And again..

And here's a picture of Andy watching Noah win...

Jennica proceeded to take extreme close ups of all of us watching the races.

Here's me.

And my mom..
And my dad... He can't allow a child to take his picture without making a face.

And great grandma.

And Aaron.

Here's Noah after the races. He had the biggfest smile on his face the entire time. Noah is pretty layed back. He's very non aggressive. Because of that, he likes to play games and compete, but he isn't alway a winner. This was so exciting for him!

In the end, there was one car that was undefeated, and one other car that beat Noah two or three times, but other than that Noah won every race he was in.

We are so proud of him!

Look, he already has groupies!

xoxoxo

I can't weight to loose it.

Alright. So what I'm about to do is WAY outside my comfort zone, but I'm doing it anyway. It just needs to be done.

This is a picture of me from last September in Washington DC. I remember when we first got home from this trip I saw this picture and thought I looked awefully hippy, and not in a woodstock kind of way... in a, "why are my hips so wide when I've been running all summer long?!!" I didn't care for it much at all.

After my first baby was born I was absolutely convinced I was going to be a big fatty for the rest of my life. I come from a family of reletively tall, high metabolism, weight conscience, skinny people. I've always been the short one who got all the fat jokes.

Anyway, about 9 months after the birth of my first child, when I think I may have weighed a bit more than I did when I was first post pardum, I suddenly realized one day, "wait a minute, hold the phone... I don't *have* to be fat if I don't want too! I might have to work a little harder at it, but there is no reason I have to carry extra weight." So I immediately stopped using the, "I'm already fat so it doesn't matter," excuse to stuff my face, and avoid excercise.

It didn't happen over night but I lost all the extra weight.

Everytime I get pregnant I put on a lot of weight. I get so sick the first 18 weeks or so, and all I can do to lessen the nausau is eat. as long as there is food in my stomache the sickness is bearable. So I eat, and eat and eat... I usually gain about 65 lbs during the length of my pregnancies. I do have 10 lb babies, but still, that is a lot of extra weight. It usually takes me about 9 months to get close to my prepregnancy weight.

With Vincents pregnancy, I had him at about 24 weeks. My total pregnancy gain was about 32 lbs. I lost about 10 lbs in the first couple weeks after delivery. So now I'm still about 22 lbs heavier than I was prepregnancy.

I never like the way I look postpardum with all the extra weight, but it's usually tolerable because I have this beautiful new baby, and I know the extra weight was just a sacrifice I needed to make to get it here.

Now, however, I am very frustrated with my body. Not just the weight gain, but how out of shape I am. Last week I went on a hike with the youth from church. It was a pretty short hike, but almost completely straight uphill. It felt like climbing 2 miles of stairs. I had such a hard time. I have never before been the one at the back of the line, struggling to keep up, until this time. It was horribly depressing.

Everytime I am reminded of how out of shape I am I feel frustrated with everything I put my body through, and then the baby didn't make it. It seems like it was all for not. I know it wasn't because we still have this beautiful baby sealed to our family, and if I had the choice to go back, I do it all again. But I'm still frustrated.

So here I am. I can barely jog a 1/2 mile before my lungs and calves give out on me. I'm ready to get back into shape. I'm actually, gulp, going to post my 'before' pictures now... before I have 'after' pictures to prove the outcome was good. Yikes.

I do have a FANTASTIC support group. Several of my good friends at PFOP are interested in loosing weight so we're working together to motivate each other.

Hopefully in a month or two... maybe longer... I will have really fabulous 'after' pictures to post.

Wish me luck!

Memorial day and the garden

We started out memorial day wanting to get corn planted in our garden.

Okay, so maybe WE is an overstatement. I wanted to get corn planted in my garden, and Andy and the kids were willing to help.

Right after breakfast I said to Noah, "Who will help me plant the corn?"
His reply was, "not I"

Then I said, "Who will help me EAT the corn?"
His reply, "I will!"

"But you did not help me plant the corn, or weed the corn or water the corn!"

Shortly after we all headed outside to plant the corn.

So this is what the backyard looked like about 2 months ago when we first started. Our intention is to lay a brick patio where the trampoline is now, from the retaining wall back to the house.. But we haven't gotten around to forking out the $500+ it's going to take to buy all the bricks.

Look at all those lovely weeds! The back yard was driving me crazy. WE completely let it get out of hand all of last year, so we have big deep roots and lots of them..

Here are the pictures I took this morning. Andy took the trampoline net off because the stitching around the edges was starting to come undone and we had big gaping holes where the net was not attached to the springs. It wasn't safe for the kids. My corn seeds are planted in the area under the trampoline. We also have about 8 tomato plants, a couple bell pepper, basil, rosemary, watermelon, cucumbers, and a zucchini, I think... maybe pumpkin? I'm not completely sure.

I planted a bunch of seeds about a month and a half ago, but it was still too cold. Non of the seeds came up, so I started to replant... then all of a sudden a bunch of the seeds I first planted started to pop up. Problem is I had forgotten what I planted where, so I'm not entirely sure what I have growing. I planted green beans too, but those seeds haven't come up yet. I hope they do, I LOVE fresh green beans.

This lovely pile of rocks are all the rocks we pulled out of the soil when we tilled the ground. Isn't that crazy? You can see the pile in the above picture behind the trampoline.

This is the brick patio Andy and I layed a few weeks ago. I hadn't posted pictures of it so I thought I'd add them in here, even though they are completely irrelevant to the garden or memorial day.

We had decided we were going to do something fun with the kids in the afternoon. We thought about going up in the mountains and doing some hiking and cooking hot dogs over a fire or something. I also wanted to visit Vincents grave. Finally we decided on a really great park near the cemetery. It's right on the edge of the foothills so we could still do some hiking on the trails there. We opted to just pack a picnic, instead of trying to make a fire and cook.

The cemetery and park are close to Eagle were my parents live. It's about a 45 minute drive from our house. When we first started out it was so sunny and warm. Beautiful weather for a picnic. Andy commented that it looked like there were clouds over Eagle and he hoped it didn't start raining. I was very doubtful we would get rain, and even if we did, I figured it would be a quick little rain fall and then the sun would be out again. So we kept driving. Here's the view about 10 minutes later... I took lots of pictures for my friend Ali so she would know I didn't just wimp out on the hiking. :)

And here's the view about 10 more minutes later...

Here's a soaked biker who got stuck in the rain. It was really coming down. Everyone all at once now...

"Awwwww, poor guy!"

Next we have pictures of all of us it the truck. we're still on our way to the park. They have well covered picnic tables, and I figured we'd eat and wait for the rain to pass and then the kids could still play.

I can't stand my profile, I look like an old women and my fat makes me look fat, but I'm posting anyway..

Andy...
Noah.. sorry buddy, it's a bad picture, but I only took one, and I can't leave him out.

Aaron..
Jennica.
We got to the park and it was still coming down. It had let up a bit, but there was quite a bit of lightning. We got out and unloaded the picnic, sat down and decided it was too cold. The temperature had probably dropped into the low 60's. So we all loaded up in the truck and decided to drive to my parents house and have our picnic in their kitchen.

When we got there mom and dad had just left to pick up a video. Al was there. He's standing behind Andy playing with Aaron. Can you see Aaron's little legs hanging in the air?

I can't believe I forget to take pictures of our lovely kitchen table picnic.

After we finished eating we sat around talking to my parents and brother for a while. Then Andy and Al went off to look for more motorcycles. Andy wants a motorcycle so bad. Gas is getting so expensive and Andy drives a full size pick up. We figured he'll be able to save about $1500 in gas (at current gas prices) over the summer by getting a bike. We've been looking for the right deal, but haven't found it quite yet.

Here's Andy sitting on Al's bike.

Aaron climbed up on the back and, as you can see, he can't wait for dad to get a bike either.
When we got ready to leave I took this picture of my parents driveway. It was still raining pretty good. The rain was so distracting I didn't realize till we got home that we forgot to stop by Vincent's grave. I feel so bad. It's memorial day, and we didn't visit the baby.

I need to head back out there soon.

Noah and Jennica and Aaron

I love these picture of the kids. They are from Easter.

Yesterday, Jennica came to me with her stuffed bunny and said:

"Mommy, when the baby comes, will it be this big?"

Me: "What baby?"

Jennica: "You know, the baby, what's his name again??"

me: "Vincent?"

Jennica: "yeah Vincent. When he comes will he be this big?"

me, feeling slightly annoyed and being a little short tempered: "Jennica, Vincent died."

(I'm not sure why it made me so annoyed that she was asking... I'm still trying to figure that one out.)

Jennica:"I know, but will he be this big when he comes."

me, still feeling annoyed: "Jennica, Vincent is dead, he's not going to be coming, he died."

me, seeing Jennica was confused: "Vincent is dead honey, but he will be with us one day, but it won't be for a very long time, probably not until you're at least a grown up, and probably much longer than that."

By now Jennica was upset, and I began to realize that this whole time we had been telling the children Vincent will be able to be with us and be our baby someday, just not right now. She was equating someday with the near future. Like when she asks, "Mom, can we someday go to the ocean," or "Can we go to Mcdonalds?" and I say, "Someday, but not today." She thought we were going to get our baby back in a matter of weeks or months, not decades, or even centuries.

We had a long talk after that till she was feeling better, and understood a little more.

Aaron, bless his heart, has really become obsessive about death. He's just 3 so he really doesn't understand death so much. I heard him the other day, when he was arguing with the neighbors 5 yr old boy, telling him, "Oh yeah, well your parents are dead!" Of course the parents are not dead, but what a horrible thing for Aaron to be saying. He doesn't understand, he just knows when someone dies it makes people cry, so he's trying to use death to win a fight.

Noah seems to understand pretty well. He's 8 1/2 yrs old now. He will ask me questions about Vincent and he is always serious and a little visibly upset. When we first told the kids about loosing the baby, he started to cry right away. He was very upset. Soon Jennica was crying too. Aaron was upset and calm, but didn't quite understand. Since he's the youngest he hasn't experienced mommy being pregnant and having a new baby like Jennica and Noah have. Without any younger siblings he doesn't quite know what loosing the baby means in terms of what he's going to miss. Jennica and Noah do.

I've ordered some scrapbooking supplies and I'm getting ready to start making an album for all of Vincent's memorabilia. I am so worried I won't be able to get it right. I'm sure I will post pictures once I get started. If anyone has pictures of albums they have done for a stillborn or miscarriage, and you don't mind sharing, please let me know. I'd love to see them.