Aquarium

We went the Aquarium last Friday. It was our first time going. I went when I was little, but I didn't remember it. We got a good deal from goupon and so we went. It was pretty small, but still fun. We all enjoyed seeing the octopus (have I mentioned Kenzie can say that word? It's really cute when she does), the different kinds of otters, penguin type birds, walruses, and seals. We were able to see the otters during feeding time and they were doing some tricks. Jackson said that was his favorite part. Jordan said his favorite part was the Nemo fish.

Jack, Jordan, Doug in front of a big tank of fish.

The boys and Doug looking in the touching pond. They didn't want to touch any of the creatures.

Octopus Jackson

Jackson and Jordan holding octopus legs. (not real ones...)

Jordan looking at the fish.

After we finished walking around the Aquarium we walked around a little but because it was a nice day. Jackson and Doug on went on this Merry-Go-Round. Jordan and Kenzie are too afraid to go on it. I think Jordan would have been fine sitting on the sleigh though. I didn't know that's where they were going to sit until they chose it. Jordan didn't mind watching though. Kenzie did come with us too. She stayed in the stroller the whole time and the only picture I have of her was really blurry.

Jack's Artwork

Jackson loves to draw and color. He also loves making pictures for other people, especially Doug and me. Here's some examples of his drawings:

Jack said this is a picture of us watching a Christmas movie while it was rewinding so we couldn't see the picture.

Jack said this is a picture of Thomas and Friends on the TV. It was for him.

This is Dora and Boots on the TV. It's for Jordan because he loves Dora. Jordan carried this picture around for awhile the day Jack made it.

I think this one is cute how he drew the stems for the flower stickers.

He usually writes "I:love:you:mom (or daddy)" on the pictures. He came up with the idea to put colons between the words to separate them.

Another Update

Here's some random information about us lately. Enjoy...

-Kenzie is saying a lot of words lately. Some of the words she can say are (even if most of them don't actually sound like what I type, I know what she means): thank you, happy, jump, waffle, water (which actually sounds the same as waffle, so you have to figure it out from context), ball, book, yeah (but it actually means that she needs some help, usually when wanting a door open or the page of a book turned), and bath.
-Kenzie loves doing animal sounds. She knows cat, dog, fish, crab (one of my favorites, and hers too), cow, sheep, monkey, bird, duck, rooster, frog, bunny, and possibly more. Oh, and I'm trying to teach her how to puff her cheeks like a puffer fish, and she's so cute when she does it. She really just makes a kissy face. And I love it.
-Jordan has been sick for a couple weeks. He keeps starting to get better at the beginning of the week, but then by Thursday and Friday he seems to get worse. Yesterday and Friday he was coughing a ton. Kenzie and Jack have been a little sick too. But are better now. Jordan being sick is throwing off my plans for Jackson not having school tomorrow and Tuesday. I wanted to go thrift store shopping tomorrow plus I need to run errands, and then I wanted to go the Children's Museum on Tuesday. But we'll probably just stay home both days so he can get better.
-We let Jack play the wii all day yesterday. He was so happy. But then he was really grumpy after dinner when he was done playing for the day and I decided it really wasn't such a good idea.
-We got a new Britax carseat from Doug's work and I installed it in the car today and I must say that I really do love it. It seems really safe and it was really easy to install and it seems really easy to use too.
-We just found out today that our insurance no longer will cover the hospital I'm supposed to be having a baby at in 4 months... They said it's possible that we can get coverage if the hospital agrees so hopefully that will happen otherwise I'll have to find a new doctor too... That would make 4 different doctors in 4 children. It's a good thing I'm not too picky about my doctor. Although I do like this one because he'll let me have medication as soon as I want it and he's ok with inducing. Good reasons to choose a doctor right? But hopefully it won't come to that with this baby.
-Doug's going to be in a new office for work from now on starting tomorrow. He had to work from home on Thursday and took Friday off since they had to move all the stuff to the new building.
-We went to the Aquarium on Friday since Doug didn't work. I'll post more about that later.
-Doug's family reunion this year is going to be in Southern California at Disneyland and the beach and so we decided to make it a week and half long since we're going to drive there and it takes 2 days to do that. We're going to go to Sea World as well as Disneyland. We're excited. We've booked all 3 hotels were going to be staying in. And 2 of them are 2 bedroom suites with bunk beds. I didn't know they had rooms like that before I was looking for good deals for us. I found some really good deals. None for the rooms (except 1 night actually) will be above 100/night which is what we'd figure we'd be spending for a single room. But now we can actually get a goodnight sleep hopefully. And one of the hotels has a small water park at it. I showed Jackson pictures of it and he's really excited about it. He loved the fact that there's bunk beds. And I got us a really good deal for it too... It was $75 off the normal price for 3 out of the 4 nights and the other night is 15% off I think. So now we just need to get some good deals for Sea World and Disneyland... Oh, and I'm a member of several sites where you can earn points that you can use to get gift cards so we're planning to get those to help pay for eating out and such. It's fun planning a vacation. But we'll see how excited we are to have a long vacation with a new baby... and 3 other kids that are 5 and under. I think we may be crazy :)
-Yesterday I ran some errands in the afternoon and after I got home Jordan said "I'm so happy you came home."
-Today Jackson told Doug on the way home from church "It's too bad we can't play the wii on Sundays. In Hawaii we played the wii on Sunday."
-Jackson wants to move to Hawaii. And he wants our family to move there too.
-Jackson asks why all the time about everything.
-Today Jackson cleaned up the living room without anyone asking him too and he said it made him feel good inside. Awhile ago he told me he wanted to be like Jesus. He's a cute boy.
- I feel the baby move kind of a lot. More than I think the others moved. Especially more than Jack. He very rarely moved. I was always worried. But now I just wonder if it means my baby will be bigger or just more active or both.

I think I'll be done rambling for now. I have a book I want to read. But I'll update more with pictures of our trip to the aquarium, maybe some samples of Jackson's artwork, and a picture of what Jackson thought would be a cool Halloween costume for next year.

Baby Girl

Kenzie's cute painted toes. I love her little feet.

I also painted her fingernails. I haven't done it before because I didn't want her to end up eating it, but she doesn't really suck on her hands now so I figured it would be find. She did really good during the whole painting process and was kind of excited by it. She did get bored by the end of each food and hand thoug and kept trying to get up.

I see this many times a day most days. Kenzie is very dramatic. The smallest things make her react like the world is ending. She's crying here because she wanted to see herself on the camera. She's become hard to take pictures of because whenever she sees the camera she runs over to look at herself, but doesn't give me time to actually take a picture.

Isn't she so cute?

Kenzie is fun to dress up. This was her Valentine's Day dress. And I love her after-braid crimpy hair.

And today she had her first pony tail. Her hair is getting long, but I was still surprised that it stayed in as well as it did. I've been liking doing her hair and trying different things the last few days because she's being much more cooperative when I'm doing it.

Jack in the Box

Exciting Day

This morning a half hour before the boys are supposed to get out of bed Jackson came in my room at woke me up. He told me he couldn't sleep because he was so excited for today. He'd been awake at least a half hour because that's when he had come in my room before. You'd think that being that excited we would have had some really fun kid activity planned for the day. But no. It was mostly a normal day. The one thing that was out of the ordinary (other than Doug working from home) was that today was the day of my ultrasound and we were going to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. And Jackson was very excited to see whether he was going to have a new sister or brother. Before I get to the big news I'll let you know what each of us thought the baby would be:

Jordan: brother
Jackson: sister
Doug: girl
me: boy

The two people that were right are Jordan and me. We're having another boy! We're very excited for another boy (although when I told Jack he just said "oh" and had a little bit of a disappointed face:)). We have no idea what we're going to name this little guy, which is weird for us. I usually have several names I really like. This time I don't really have any yet. So if you have any suggestions let me know...

We also found out from the ultrasound that the baby is doing well. He's growing normally and was moving around a lot during the ultrasound. We're so happy and thankful that everything is going well. And we're very excited for our new little baby to come to the family!

January

Here's some things we've been up to in the last month...

Kenzie figured out how to climb up the ladder and go down the slide. She loved it!

Kenzie is still cute.

Fireman and Batman enjoy dressing up sometimes. Jackson seems to enjoy it more, which surprised me actually. I thought Jordan liked it more, but he doesn't do it as much.

The boys also got hair cuts. Jackson doesn't look that much different, but Jordan's is much shorter. I don't have a before picture because Doug cut it and he forgot. But it was long. You can tell from the previous posts if you really want to know what it looked like.

We bought new shelves from Ikea. Doug worked hard and put them all together perfectly. It looks a lot better now.

We got new shelves for our dining area too. I really love these. It's nice to put so much in it and have it look much more organized.

Cute Batman again.

Remember how Kenzie can climb up the slide now? Well one day last week she was playing on it and only Jordan was around and he apparently climbed up the slide while she was sitting at the top and pushed her off backwards. She cried harder than normal and didn't want us to put her down. And then we noticed she wouldn't move her arm and would cry if we moved it at all. So we took her to the doctor who sent us to the urgent care place where they could x-ray her elbow. They they determined that she had sprained her arm. We were really happy that it wasn't broken. She was pretty miserable that day, but was much happier once we got some medicine in her. I was pretty worried about how she would sleep at night, but she did pretty good. The first few nights she had a hard time falling asleep and didn't want us to leave her alone, but slept pretty good once she was asleep. Well, she did wake up several times, but she went back to sleep easily. The next few days we kept her on the medication and as long as she had it in her she wasn't too sad. Each day she would move it more and more and by Friday she didn't need medicine anymore and was using her arm pretty normally and it only seemed to hurt if it was moved in certain ways. But now it seems completely better. I'm so glad she's not hurting anymore. The next few picture are of her last week.

She didn't want to pick up the water bottle so she tried to drink it like this.

Still super cute even when she's hurt :)

This is what she looked like a lot the first day and the other days when the medicine would start to wear off.

We had to hold her like this to protect her arm. And she wanted daddy to hold her a lot of the time. He worked from home a couple days (and was home the day she hurt it) after she hurt it to help me out.

Now on to the rest of the month...

I really love this outfit. It's still a little big on her but I had her wear on Sunday. And I thought it still looked so cute. Of course, everything looks cute on her.

More cute Mackenzie.

And another cute one.

Jordan loves puzzles. He does them pretty much everyday. He likes to leave them on the table (or the floor) after he finishes them while he does more.

Kenzie likes to wear glasses. And whenever she does she runs over to me and looks at me waiting for me to say "cool dude." Then she'll run over to anyone else in the room and wait for them to comment on her glasses too. She likes to be complimented.