First picture of our baby!

We had an ultrasound today and our baby is healthy and is measuring a week ahead of my due date.  All the fingers and toes are as they should be.

The kids begged us to find out if it was a boy or a girl and we're thrilled to say that we're having a BOY!!  The final kid count for our family will be 3 girls and 2 boys.  I'm very excited and Merril wants to name him after his Dad, Mark.  Julie has even started calling the baby Marky Mark.  :)

The craziest thing about this pregnancy has been the lack of heartburn!  With the previous 4 kids, I stashed Tums in every conceivable place in my house and car to keep them on hand.  Heartburn was a constant companion for me.  It's so weird but very pleasant!  

Juliet's 6th birthday...

Juliet turned 6 and was very excited about it!  She wanted balloons and a pinata to be included in the friend party and that was about it.  She was very excited about blowing out candles.

Very excited.

 Extremely excited!!

Bordering on madness!!!

It was good times!

Mikayla's walking!!

Mikayla has started walking!!  She looks like a baby orangutan with her arms in the air.  She's catching on quick too.  I'm sure she'll be running soon!

Also, Merril was working on a leaky compressed natural gas fitting and it popped off and the wrench flew into his face. 

It might have needed stitches but he really didn't like stitches the last time he got them and so we just let it heal on its own.  He got a nice black eye and some swelling as well!  ;)

A little trip to California...

We started of summer with a trip to California!  Merril went down for work and we tagged along.  We spent the first day at Knott's Berry Farm.  I've never been and I thought it was clean and fun.  I went on the carousel the whole day and that was it.  Being pregnant and amusement parks don't exactly go together.

This was the big ride that Merril took the kids on.  Jack and Julie were SUPER excited!

Mikayla was less excited and fell asleep instead.

Mikayla was pretty good all day and rode in her stroller nicely.

The other kids were good and we hardly had a meltdown all day.

We got there are 11 a.m. and stayed until the park closed.

The next day we went to the beach.  It was the warmest beach weather for months but I'm always amazed at how cool it is there.  At least I brought a jacket.

 Merril taught Maxine to surf a little.  She never stood up but practiced a lot.

It was a fun little vacation for us and I'm glad we went before I got too pregnant.  :)

The tile has begun!

Yeah, after days of grinding, Francisco started laying the tile!  Eeee!  I'm so excited for the work to roll along!  I feel  like it's taken years to get to this point of finally working on the basement again!

End of school madness...

Wow!  School is almost over and the kids have had a bunch of assemblies and things to attend.  Maxine won an award for the CRT test in Science, scoring 98%.  She rocked Math and Language Arts and got 100% on both CRT tests in those categories.  Why she didn't get medals for those, I'll never know.  I've tried to have teachers explain how the awards are figured and I can never seem to get a straight answer.  She did great and we're proud of her.

Jack competed in his class spelling bee and did so well that he advanced to the whole 1st grade spelling bee, along with 15 other kids.  He went round after round, 12 or 13 I think, but edged out everyone in the end.  He bagged 1st place and was given a trophy, 3 kid meal certificates, crayons, markers, and colored pencils and a cool garbage can.  Wow, he did a great job!

Juliet had fun during her Kindergarten graduation program.  They sang some cute songs and she smiled her cute smile.

She received her diploma and I think she'll do better in first grade.  She's often said that she's bored in Kindergarten but her reading has improved a lot this year.

I can't believe that school is about out!  We are looking forward to some summer fun!

A new baby=work on the basement...

Since Mikayla currently sleeps in my walk-in closet, we figured we better finish some rooms in the basement to shift around the kids before the new baby comes.  One room is finished downstairs and it serves as the office.  So Merril and I decided that another bedroom, bathroom, and family room should be finished.  We're also going to get the air conditioning going as well.  Then the office will move upstairs, making 2 bedrooms in the basement and Maxine and Jack will move downstairs.  Juliet will stay in her room and Mikayla will move in with her. 

Tile is the first step and that requires scrubbing and mopping!  The concrete still has a lot of overspray from the drywall.  Juliet and Mikayla have been "helping" as much as they could.  Mikayla mostly just played in the bucket water.  Now my job is finished and I can hear grinding on the floor because it's not totally level.  Tile should be going down next week!  Eeeee!

Mommy & Me Tea Party...

There was a Mommy and Me Tea Party for Juliet's class. I was informed that Mikayla was not allowed to attend.  I don't think that was a hard and fast rule but I could tell that Juliet really wanted it to just include the two of us.  On my arrival I was given a corsage that Juliet made and told to sit.  Juliet served us cookies and the teacher brought around juice.  It seems like Juliet and I run errands or watch tv when it's just the two of us so it was fun to do something special together.  She was seriously beaming when I walked in the door with a handful of other mothers.  We had a good time.  :)

Baby #5....yep....

I'm tired and haven't been able to hardly get anything done because we are going to have another baby.  Baby #5.  O-Mi-Good-Ness!!!!! I'm pregnant again and due November 2nd, 2013.  This was a shock, a HUGE shock!  We were done having kids and ready for permanent procedures but one sneaked in there.  I'm 14 weeks.  Merril has been amazing and my rock, I've been a crying mess.  I had some other plans for the year, being pregnant was not one of them.  Mikayla and baby #5, which we're hoping is a boy, will be about 20 months apart.  Heavenly Father has always looked out for me so I'm just going to trust that everything will be okay.  But man, it's 5 and that's a lot for me to wrap my head around.

But the upcoming baby has jump started some basement work.  We're currently prepping for tile and have looked at some carpet swatches.  My hope is to finish another bedroom (making 2 downstairs), a bathroom, HV/AC and the large family room before summer is over so we can rearrange the kids' bedroom situations.  It's going to be a lot of work but I'm still excited.

Oh and one last thing: I was pregnant when I bungee jumped in Boise.  Woops.  I was unaware at the time.  We found out the week after we came home.  But what's done is done and it hasn't seemed to make the baby want to jump ship so I guess it's a keeper.

Mikayla Moo...

Mikayla is standing in the middle of the room by herself and has taken a few steps.  She stills crawls a lot but I'm sure in a few more weeks, she'll be running around everywhere!

And she loves the sand at the beach.  LoVeS iT!!!

Maxine's 4th Grade Science Fair...

Maxine loves the science fair.  Since she's in 4th grade, I figured she could pretty much complete the whole project on her own.  She came up with the idea by herself, completed the science testing, and typed and assembled the whole board herself, including downloading and coloring the fonts (something she learned in school.)  She won 3rd place in her division, which she was super excited about.  I was pleased because it wasn't a project completed mostly by a parent.  She did it and she won.

Congratulations Maxine, I'm proud of you!

TurkEaster...

One year after Easter, we had a "Thanksgiving dinner" with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, etc.  It was so good, we decided TurkEaster needs to become an annual event.

Turkey dinner is too good to only have once a year!

Time to dye eggs...

We decided to dye eggs on Friday because Saturday was going to be packed with Easter Egg hunts.  

Saturday included the hunt up at Grandma C.'s ward.  It was Mikayla's first Easter Egg hunt!

She picked up 4 eggs.  If I hadn't pointed to the eggs and the bucket, I don't think she would've picked up a single one.

Grandma C.'s ward always does a great job and has lots of giveaways.

They are ready to hunt eggs at our house.  (Sunday morning.)

We hit purples and greens for our Sunday Easter outfits.  Wahoo!

Mikayla's poor little face...

I really wanted to have a child make it through infancy and toddlerhood without falling out of a vehicle.  Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

I was taking something to a neighbor and the back seat was pulled out of the Tahoe.  Julie wanted to ride back there and hold Mikayla.  Since it was just around the corner, I agreed.  I walked out, put Mikayla in the back of the Tahoe and closed the door.  I ran back into the house to grab something and when I walked back out, Mikayla and Juliet were both screaming.  Mikayla was face down of the pavement and was bleeding from her mouth and nose.  Julie said she was opening the door to get in and Mikayla fell out.  We were parked on the street so her nose received a lot of road rash.  Eeek.  She also had a huge goose egg and bruise on her forehead above her right eye.  Oh, poor baby!!  I just held and rocked and apologized in her little ear.

 Here she is the next day, already improving!

Unfortunately, she had a runny nose at the time and it was really hard to keep petroleum jelly under her nose.  It was hardest hit and didn't heal as well.  She has a little red mark under her nostril that will fade with time, I'm sure.  This is a week later.  It's a good thing babies heal!

Fun on a Saturday...

We went to Fiesta Fun for mini golf and bumper boats because we had some free passes we needed to use up.  The bumper boats were, by far, the most exciting.

At one point Juliet got stuck in a corner of the pool and the kind employee went over to get her out.  He pushed the boat right when Juliet gunned it; he lost his balance and fell in.  I felt bad for him because he was just trying to help out my little girl.  Too bad he got wet from the waist down.  Anyway, it was a fun Saturday.

Bungee in Boise!

For Christmas, Merril gave me a trip to Boise to go bungee jumping.  Bungee jumping is something that I've always wanted to do but just never have yet.  The kids have also been dying to go on an airplane.  We found roundtrip tickets for the whole family for $450!  So we flew out of Vegas.  The kids were so excited!

Mikayla was getting a cold so she was all over the place but she didn't cry.  She just wouldn't sit still.  We crashed at Merril's Aunt Laurie's house and her two daughters, Jessie and Andrea, watched our kids the next day while we bungee jumped.  We're waiting in the car for the bungee guy to arrive.

This bridge on Highway 21 outside of Boise, was 120 feet high.

Merril gets ready to jump!

Merril said he wasn't scared but look closely, that's the face of fear.

And then the cops showed up right after Merril jumped.  I really thought he was going to shut us down but it's not illegal and he just wanted us to be safe on the side of the road.

Then it was my turn.  At this point I thought, "This is a bad idea."

But everyone counted down and I jumped.  Then I thought, "This is a really bad idea!  Someone save me!"  It's a good thing you can't see my face or else you'd really see sheer terror.

But at the bottom it was fun!

Afterwards we picked up the kids and headed to a friend's house.  Jill and I knew each other way back in Las Vegas.  She's still stylish and amazing and I was reminded why we became friends in the first place.  She has an amazing family of 5 little kids and we really enjoyed staying with them.

 Hmmm...one of my kids and one of hers are missing in this picture.  Oh well, we got them all home safe eventually.

The last day there, we went to the Boise Discovery Museum and had a great time playing with the experiments.  And then we flew home.

When we flew home, we flew right over our house and the kids thought it was super fun to see Sand Hollow and Wal-Mart.  And now it's time to recoop after all that playing.  I'm still a little tired.  *yawn*