Thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving this year was spent in Wyoming with McKay's dad and Step mom, Liz.

We drove to their house Thanksgiving morning.  Jensen had thrown up in the middle of the night that morning and we weren't sure if he was sick or just ate something that didn't sit well with him.  We were nervous to put him in the car in case he threw up again, yet we also didn't want to miss Thanksgiving dinner...  In the end we decided to risk it and head to Wyoming.  We brought lots of towels and plastic bags in case we had a few accidents on the way there.  Luckily he only threw up a tiny bit more AFTER we arrived at grandma's house so it must have just been something that he ate.

The Thanksgiving crowd was smaller this year at their house with only a total of 16 people including our three kids.  In fact our kids were the only kids there so they got some extra attention from all the grandparents, uncles, and aunties.  Both sets of  our kids great grandparents were there which was pretty special and I wish that I had grabbed a picture with them.

Here were are enjoying the feast-

This year I made the green bean casserole and a few pies.  Everyone LOVED the green bean casserole.  I didn't do anything special, but it did taste pretty good :)

Jensen didn't eat anything during the meal, so he spent the time "dressing up".  Should I be worried?!

Declin spent his first Thanksgiving watching everyone else eat.  But I am happy to report that Adalyn DID eat something during Thanksgiving dinner.  She has actually improved a lot in the past few weeks and eats a lot bigger variety of food then she has in the past.  This is a HUGE change for her, since last Thanksgiving dinner she wouldn't eat one bite!

After dinner the kids headed out on the farm with Uncle Jace and McKay while mommy and Declin took a nap.  

After my nap I found them in the shop climbing around on the huge piles of hay!  

Then they went and helped Grandpa Pace feed the cows and beefalo.

That evening Daddy went to the church to play basketball with his brothers while the kids and I stayed back at the house with Grandma and Grandpa.  McKay had SO much fun hanging out with his brothers they stayed up until 2 am.  crazy!  Honestly don't know if I could do that these days, this mama needs her sleep. 

Yet apparently I don't need my sleep that bad because Friday morning Liz, Declin, and I woke up at 5:30 and headed out shopping at the Outlet malls in Park City.  I have been wanting to go to the outlets for a while and had been planning this trip for months.  Liz was very kind to tag along and we had SO much fun shopping together.  Sadly though neither of us are a good influence on the other and we both bought a lot of stuff!  haha Honestly though, it was SO fun!  I got all of my clothes Christmas shopping done, and then some.  The malls were not crowded at all (we were one of the first ones there) and they stayed calm until we left around 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  The sales were ok, but not spectacular.  But Declin was SUCH a good baby the whole time and we got stopped lots about his cute hair.  lol  He is a cutie!

After shopping McKay met us in Park City and we headed to Salt Lake to start our Thanksgiving 2014 #2 with McKay's mom.  But first we stayed the night at my parent's house.  We love family time and were happy to see my family along the way.  

We even broke out the Christmas jammies.  

Saturday we spent the day in Provo with McKay's mom eating another Thanksgiving dinner with her, Jesse's family, and Preston.  

 Family picture at Grandma Pace's house

The daddy's also helped build their mom a new deck while we were there.  Some guys in her ward were generously building her a new deck and it just worked out that McKay, Jesse, and Preston were able to help them build it while we were there.  Sadly while they were building it one of the guys 6 month old daughter choked on something at her house across the street.  She stopped breathing and they had to call an ambulance.  It was so sad and scary!  Definitely a parent's worst nightmare!  The guys were able to give her a blessing while they waited for the ambulance, and luckily the baby was fine in the end although last I heard they were still trying to figure out what she choked on.  After that experience there was definitely a different mood to our day.  

Thankful for these little munchkins that were able to distract us and keep us on our toes as they explored outside and tried out the new deck.  Saturday was such nice weather and is was so great to be out in it a little bit.  

love Jensen's "smile" in that one.  :)  

Sunday afternoon we headed home.  Already excited about the week and a half that we get to spend with family at Christmas time!  

   

  

    

    

  

     

2 Months Old- Declin

Month 2 with Declin just flew by.  Not in a negative "oh where did my little baby go?" it just felt like the month went really fast.  Declin is still pretty little so he still feels a lot like a newborn, yet he is definitely getting more alert each day.

At his 2 month appointment he weighed 11 lbs which is in the 30th percentile.  He still wears 3 month clothes and size 1 diapers.

Some of the highlights of his month were sleeping through the night twice.  It is definitely not a normal thing for him, but those two full nights of sleep were SO awesome!  He is starting to give me longer and longer stretches of sleep at night in general so I hope it doesn't take him 11 months like it took Jensen to figure out the whole sleeping threw the night thing.  Napping during the day is going ok.  Mornings are usually full of very short spurts of sleeping and then he usually gives me a good 2-4 hour nap in the afternoon when the other 2 kids are napping also.  So yes some days I get an hour break from all 3 kids.  That is a definite perk to having your kids close together in age.

A day or two before he turned 2 months old he rolled from his stomach to his back all on his own.  I thought it was just a fluke, but he keeps on doing it and even performed his trick for Dr. Anderson during his 2 month appointment.  He is my youngest roller yet!

Oh and we can't forget his smiles!  What a treat it is to have him smile at you.  He doesn't hand his smiles out quite as frequently as his siblings did at this age, he really makes you work for them, but they are just as sweet as ever!

One thing I am super grateful for is that Declin has not been sick yet.  This time of year is terrible for colds and flu and I have been just waiting for the day that he wakes up sick.  Jensen got sick at 2 months old and it was such a sad thing.  Especially because the sickness seemed to last FOREVER!  Hopefully we can make it through another month without catching anything.  But with that being said we aren't staying home and doing nothing either just to protect him from getting sick.  We have now gone back to church and I still take all the kids to stores with me a few times a week.  Life goes on and we just try and wash our hands often.

The one concern that I had for Declin this past month was that he seemed to be constipated.  He would go many days (a couple times it was at least 6 days) between bowel movements and then he would be pretty fussy right before he would have a bowel movement.  His poop was still normal it just didn't come out very often.  lol  I wasn't really sure what to do so I tried eliminating dairy and chocolate from my diet, and maybe noticed a small change.  But the change was not enough to stay with that diet for too long. (love my cheese and chocolate).  I almost took him to a chiropractor to have him adjusted, but then he started pooping more regularly so I never ended up taking him.  He now seems to be back to normal and doing just fine so I think he has gotten things figured out.  :)

His older brother and sister are doing so well with him and don't even try to bug him these days.  The only thing we still have to watch for though is that they don't accidentally step on him when he is laying on the floor.  Other then that they love him and enjoy saying "hi" to him frequently throughout the day.

Declin definitely has his own look and his hair is usually ALL over the place.  It is getting so long and is still as dark as ever.  I love this little blue eyed brown hair boy!

  



  

Should We stay or Should we Go

So recently we made a big decision in our life and I wanted to document our experience and feelings that we had through this experience and our reason for why we chose the choice we did.

When we brought Declin home from the hospital we did not have a bed set up for him, and only a few clothes were brought out of storage for him.  Now granted we owned all of the necessities that he needed they were just all still packed away in boxes in the basement.  So for the first few days he was home we spent time thinking through our living situation and rearranging rooms.  We have 3 bedrooms in our house, 2 "kid" bedrooms.  Adalyn slept in one and Jensen in the other.  One bedroom was decorated girly and the other one was all boy.  I really liked the idea of a boys room and a girls room,  so while I was pregnant we decided that if the baby was a boy he would move in with Jensen and if it was a girl, she would move in with Adalyn.  Problem solved right?  Well when we got Declin home reality hit and we quickly realized there was no way we were going to put our newborn baby in the same room as our 20 month old if we could help it (nobody would be sleeping well in that situation).  So plans changed and instead we moved Jensen in with Adalyn since they are already on the same bedtime/nap schedule (don't know why we didn't do that from the beginning).  I am now currently in the process of making her room more "gender neutral" bedroom for the two of them even though I miss having a girly room.  Declin now has his own room, in Jensen's old nursery.

This process of shuffling children around got us thinking/wishing for a little bit more space to spread out with since we would eventually like to have a larger family.  Neither of us were actively looking for a bigger home at that point, just internally wishing that we had more space.  But then we had dinner with some friends that recently moved to Idaho Falls.  They live in a town home and are now looking for a home to buy.  Their excitement about the prospects of buying a home got us really thinking about a new home too.  Trust me the excitement is contagious, sometimes you can't help looking into the "what ifs" and possibilities.

So we made a list of things that we wanted in a new home for our family.  These things are things that we have thought A LOT about.  After living in our current home and looking at all of the pros and cons we really think that if we found these things on our list that we would have a REALLY good situation for our growing family.

Our must haves for a new home:
1. 4 bedrooms upstairs (nursery, master, girls room, boys room/ upstairs so the baby can sleep while older kids are awake and playing)
2. at least a 3rd of an acre. (room for a garden and kids to run)
3. Close to schools (so the kids could walk and save mom from driving SO much.  right now we are FAR away from any schools)
4. Neighborhood with sidewalks (we love having neighbors and I love my daily walks.)
5. Large dining room that would fit a large table
6. Finished basement (we have an unfinished basement now, so if we were going to go to all of the work of moving we wanted that basement to be finished already)  

So one night I got online and started looking at homes.


Then I found one that seemed like a good fit for our family.
We went and drove past it... still liked it.
Then we got a Realtor to show it to us.
Didn't love it, but saw its potential and it really fit the needs of our growing family.

Decided to put our house up for sale to see what would happen.

Boom, in one week we were selling our house!  Crazy!  We still weren't 100% sure if we wanted to move, but figured we would try and sell our house while we prayed and thought about it.

One week later  after our house went up for sale we found "the" house.
The first house was good for a lot of reasons, but the 2nd house that we found was just begging for a growing family to move into it.  :)

Our budget is not huge, so their aren't a lot of larger homes in our price range, but this house was a short sale so it ended up being in our price range.  It was large, 4 bedrooms upstairs plus bonus room over the garage, huge master closet, large upstairs laundry room, grand staircase, main floor office, large dining room and kitchen, huge pantry, bedrooms downstairs, large family room downstairs, downstairs playroom, and TONS of storage space. The yard was mature, with fruit trees, a garden space and a deck off of the dining room.  The house really would have been so nice for our family and I have no doubt we would have loved living there.  The neighborhood was quiet and it was close to an elementary school.  For fun if you want to see pictures here is a link to the house that we really wanted to buy (p.s. we realize it isn't that exciting to look at, but we loved it for what it could have become also for its functionality)  We were ready to buy that house if we got our answer that it was the right thing for us to do.  But the answer never came...

The answer to our prays that did come was to be financially smart.  The house would have worked for us and we honestly think we could have afforded it, but things would have been tighter.  The increase in mortgage payment had both of us a little nervous.  Especially since the house did need some upgrades from the get go like new paint, new counter tops, and carpet.  What if hidden costs came up and we couldn't afford them?  Did we want to deal with that?  We are very comfortable with our current house payment.

Then each time someone came to look at our home I would get really sad.  Maybe it is just because this is our first home and we have created some sweet memories here, but each time someone came to look at our house I hated it.  I love our home.  It is solidly built and we love our neighbors and friends.  We have tons of neighbors our age and in our same stage of life.  It is so fun!  How could we leave?

As time went on the idea of selling our house, moving into an apartment, and then hopefully buying that house all started to sound like a REALLY long process that might not all work out in our favor  (some short sales can take years to get finalized).  I didn't want to sell my house just to loose the other house, then where would we move?  All this with a new baby...

So we backed out and took our house off the market.  We decided to just stay in our current house and appreciate what we already have.  We have a beautiful home that has a large basement that we will finish in a few years that will give us lots more room to spread out.  Our yard isn't huge, but big enough and I am happy that the kids have a place to play outside in a safe neighborhood.  A smaller

When we took our house off the market we told ourselves that we have to be done.  No more looking at houses, and no more what ifs for now.  We were driving ourselves crazy with all of the possibilities!  lol  So for now we are settled in our lovely home and are happy to be so blessed with such a comfortable life.              

           

Declin's Name and Blessing 11*2*14

November 2nd was Declin's blessing in church.  McKay performed the blessing and many of our family members were able to come up to Idaho for the special occasion.

McKay spent a lot of time prepping for Declin's blessing and pondering what he needed to bless Declin with.  In the end he did a wonderful job and it will be a great experience to watch as Declin learns and grows.  And Declin was an angel throughout the whole day

Declin was blessed with hope to be able to overcome future trials, a sense of peace and calm, emotional and mental health, and a strong intellect
.  

After church we had everyone over to our house for lunch.  For lunch we had Italian with three different kinds of pasta dishes (lasagna, red and white pasta casserole, and Spaghetti), garlic french bread, tossed salad with Olive Garden salad dressing, and desserts.  It was a wonderful afternoon of chatting and enjoying each others company.  Thank you so much to mine and McKay's family for coming to support Declin, we loved having everyone. :)

Jensen playing with Bailey

Declin, Stu, and Corinne

Sister in Laws, Natalie, me, and Michelle

My mom and I 

Jesse, Laron, and baby Tydon

Aunt Michelle, Bailey, and Grandpa Pace

 Cousin Jaxon

Grandma Liz tickling Kimberly 

 
Before I finish up here I wanted to take a moment and explain how we picked Declin's name.  The overall story is fairly boring.  It is not a family name like Jensen's.  We saw it on facebook actually (go figure).  I really liked it and told McKay about it when I was about 8 months pregnant with him.  Up to that point Mckay would not even discuss boy names with me because he was sure it was a girl and we already had our girl name all picked out.  But after a little bit of pouting on my part he finally agreed to discuss boy names.  We started with family names.  I wrote down ALL of the family names that I even somewhat liked.  He then proceeded to cross out all of the names (seriously)  but then a few days later he changed his mind on a few of them and said that they had grown on him (thank heavens).  So we had a list of about four family names that we both sort of liked. Then I saw Declan on facebook and fell in love with it.  I told McKay about it and he actually liked it too (score!).  So Declan went on the list with the four other family names.  We took that list to the hospital with us where we planned on having a girl. :)  Then a boy came out, who we fell head over heals in love with.  So after we were all cleaned up we pulled out our boy list and started talking.  McKay's favorite family name was Anders and I still liked Declan.  Our baby boy did not look like an Anders to me... Also Adalyn and Anders did not sound very good together.  But I liked the way that Declan Dwayne sounded.  So Declan it was.  :)

After a few hours and a few people struggling to pronounce his name we decided to switch the spelling to Declin instead of Declan hoping that would help people be able to pronounce it.  It has seemed to help (although I kind of wish it was still Declan), But oh well the name still sounds the same so I am happy.  :)

Here is our handsome boy in his blessing outfit (same one that Jensen wore)

He is such a serious calm fella

   

    

Halloween Week 2014

Happy Halloween from our cute Disney Characters... Sully from Monsters Inc. and Belle from Beauty and the Beast!

No group theme this year.  I bought Jensen's costume last year on clearance and planned to do a monsters inc theme this year.  But after having Declin I didn't have much creativity in me so just decided to take Adalyn on a Mommy daughter date and after 3 different stores we ended up at Walmart and she choose this Belle costume.  She was happy and I have always loved Belle so I was happy too.  :) 

For festivities Adalyn had a Halloween party at Joy school but she ended up being sick that day so she didn't get to go.  Thank heavens she is too young to really get "school parties" so she wasn't upset at all that she missed it.  Then the Tuesday before Halloween we had our ward Halloween Party.  Which turned out to be a huge success, or so I heard.  I ended up staying home that night with Declin since him and crowds still weren't on speaking terms yet.  :)  McKay said the kids had fun, and lots of ward members were very helpful with the kids.  McKay said that besides at dinner he hardly saw the kids much since others in the ward helped take them around to all of the activities.  Thank you thank you!  So happy to have such supportive friends!  

Oh and getting good pictures this year was just exhausting.  They were both ALL over the place during all THREE (yes three) photo shoots that we attempted!  So these photos are as good a they get.

Looks like they had lots of fun!

On Halloween we took our first trip as a family of five to Salt Lake and visited family.  During the day on Halloween we went to Provo and visited with McKay's mom.

Then that evening we went to my parents house and had the traditional soup and bread bowls with Halloween sugar cookies.  mmmm....

The kids loved all of the attention from Mykelti's roomates and friends who came from BYU.  Mykelti even helped the kids "practice" trick or treating at grandmas house (not that they needed it after trick or treating at the ward party)

After dinner McKay and I headed out to take the kids around the neighborhood.  Grandma was nice and watched Declin so that we could go together.  

Oh and can you believe the weather on Halloween!?  It was SO nice.  McKay was out in shorts and short sleeves while we were trick or treating.  

The highlight of trick or treating for our kids was pushing their own strollers from house to house.  haha!  Glad we had strollers to hold their candy bags

And if you were wondering what Declin was doing all night on his first Halloween here is your answer... 

The guy loves sleeping on his stomach, and although we don't let him do it at night he takes lots of naps this way.  

Happy Halloween Declin boy!