December 2015

I wanted to do some fun things to celebrate the Christmas season. Adrian was working every day and we're away from family so I wanted to plan some fun things to do with the boys. We did a few things, but not as much as I wanted. 

One thing we did as a Family Home Evening treat was make rice crispy christmas trees. We dyed the trees green and had frosting and sprinkles to decorate. Levi had a blast decorating his, the rest of us preferred to eat ours without frosting and sprinkles. 

Malachi liked to eat the sprinkles plain.

Other activities we did were seeing a couple light displays. We have a tradition of walking around seeing lights while eating chocolate chip cookies. We went to the community center where they had a dancing light display with music. The boys loved running around while seeing the lights and hearing the music.

We went to Palm Beach Gardens specifically for a light display. We got there early and went to the mall and walked around first. Later, we drove through the light display not knowing we could get out and walk. I wish we would have gotten out and walked. Driving through took us maybe 5 minutes and it seemed almost not worth the drive all the way down to Palm Beach Gardens.

The city had a light parade at the beginning of the month at the Civic Center. It had been raining off and on all day. It was not cold, just a bit wet. As the parade started, so did the rain. It poured on us. We had our umbrellas and had to each share with a kid. We sat on the curb all huddled under umbrellas and watched the parade. We were all completely soaked by the end. Which, as the parade ended, so did the rain. Aw, the memories :)

Fort Pierce had a Christmas Boat parade and they boasted that it was going to be magnificent since it was the 25th anniversary of the parade. We had plans to go park by the water and BBQ some hot dogs for the boys there while waiting. Well, we arrived by the water just before it was time to start. We had taken a wrong turn. Had to wait for a long train to cross the road. And couldn't find parking anywhere near the water due to it being so crowded with people. When we did find a parking spot we ran to the water without our food or chairs. We found a nice place to sit, but the boys missed dinner and were hungry and were therefore grumpy. The boats were far from shore. Too far to entertain little kids. There were about 3 really awesome boats that kept their attention, but we ended up leaving early. There was a restaurant next to us releasing lit floating lanterns and the boys seemed to enjoy that more than the lit up boats. We ended up going home and roasting our hotdogs. I believe I've had my fill of boat parades, they just don't live up to my expectations.

Anther tradition we have is we have a scout elf from the North Pole come and watch the boys during the month of December. Our elf's name is Benji and he's been coming since the Christmas that Levi was 1 year old. He moves around every night and the boys loved to wake up in the mornings and find him and see what he was up to in the night.

Benji  had a snowball fight with Mr Potato Head and Jake.

Another tradition we have is our fancy Christmas dinner is Mexican dish. Adrian planed and prepared this dish. This year we had carne asada tacos.  The meat was very good and the tacos were delicious. We made a tres leches cake to go with it. I wanted to start the tradition of having a birthday cake for Jesus and singing happy birthday to him as we cut the cake. But, I cut the cake and we ate our pieces before I remembered I wanted to sing and put and candle in it. Oh, well. We left a piece of cake out for Santa too.

Our new ward had a Christmas Pancake Breakfast Party we attended. The food was delicious and we got to mingle and meet our new ward members. They had the children sing a few Christmas songs for us. Levi is in the very front and was very happy to ring his bell during the Christmas Bells song.

At the end Santa came for a visit. When Santa walked through the door Malachi was so excited. We have never taken the boys to see Santa and sit on his lap before. Levi did pick up on the fact this year that there is a Santa at the mall and other ones in other places. We finally told him these are Santa's helpers and the real Santa is at the North Pole getting ready for Christmas. Levi sat on Santa's lap. Malachi would not, he ran away. 

We put Levi in soccer lessons. Once a week for 6 weeks. It was good for Levi to be with other kids and learn to interact with them. But, they were all 4 years old and there was a lot of goofing off and playing around. Levi seemed to get tired at the end of every lesson. The last 15 minutes of every lesson he would always just sit by me. After our ward Christmas party was his last practice. He got a trophy for participating and was really happy about that.

Here's Levi ready for church Christmas Sunday.

Christmas morning the boys woke up at their usual time. Malachi woke up 10 minutes before Levi and came in our room as usual and laid on our floor and asked for his milk. All the norm stuff he does every day totally oblivious that it was Christmas and there were new presents for him under the tree. Adrian and I chuckled at the fact that he had no clue it was Christmas. Once Levi got up he immediately went to the tree and hollered for Malachi to come. Levi knows how to spell his name and he picked out his gifts and eagerly opened them. Levi also gave Malachi his gifts because he knows Malachi's name starts with an "M". 

A tradition we have is letting the boys buy gifts for each other. They are still young and don't quite get the concept of picking something out for someone else. It seems every year we go to the store and they pick something out they want for themselves. This year was no different. They both picked out 3 new train cars. We took them home and wrapped them and put them under the tree. It was a really hard week for the boys not to open them, in fact Malachi did open his once and we had the rewrap them. On Christmas morning those trains were the first gift they both opened, probably because they knew what it was and had been waiting so long to open them.

They each got a motorized engine for their trains, along with some new train tracks. 

Here you can see the new tracks, new train engines and cars, new monster trucks, new grabber claws and Levi's new swim shirt. 

They also got a marble track which provides lots of fun each day.

The boys loved all their gifts. They fought quite a bit all day. I'm not sure if was the sugar in the candy or that they couldn't share anything, but there was quite a bit of tantrums all day.

After they opened their gifts and played with them, Adrian and I surprised them by telling them we got them a trampoline.  The box for it sat in the living room for a week so we had to tell them it was from us and not Santa. They had asked Santa for a trampoline. When Levi got up Christmas morning he looked out the front door and asked where his trampoline was. Adrian and I were not ambitious enough to put it together the night before in the dark being feasted on by mosquitoes, so we put it together Christmas morning. They love it!!!

Sept/Oct/Nov 2015

Fall in Florida was not like any other Fall I've ever had. I kept expecting a cool down in weather since September. Well, It's the end of December and that major cool down has still not happened. It does get cooler at night, which makes the mornings bearable to get out of the house, but it's still mid 80's here. Not as bad as the summer, but we still sweat when we go out.

We play outside in the sprinkler. The kids love playing in the water. Here Malachi's helping wash the truck floor mats. Malachi usually helps with the washing and Levi uses the shop vac to vacuum the inside the truck. They both do a pretty good job.

My little Malachi is getting so big. He talks a lot and is such a joy to be around. He'll look at me and just give me a big cheesey smile. I love it. Today, he gave me a purple flower he picked in the yard. As he handed it to me he said " for you mom, it's pretty." I set the flower down as I opened the truck door and helped to boys get in. As a sat in my seat Malachi asked where the flower was that he gave me. He saw I did not have it and wondered where it went. It melted my heart and I got back out of the truck and picked it back up.

We went on a bike ride as a family. We rode by a pond and stopped for a second to play.

Our big family news is that a new member will be joining us in March. We announced to our family by sending them each the picture below. 

A few weeks later we announced gender by sending them another picture (the one below). We are excited to have a girl join our crew.

As far as the pregnancy has gone it's been quite different than with the boys. I did get morning sickness which I never had with the boys. Adrian was able to get me some OTC medication for the morning sickness so I really did not suffer from it too bad. I did have food aversions more than I did with the boys. Overall it's not been too tough. I can tell I'm starting to feel puffy now. I had edema with Levi, but not so much with Malachi. It's probably because I'm not very active. Darn Florida heat has really cramped my style.  We had a hard time choosing a doc and the one we did choose we really dislike the office. Oh, well. We were very limited in choices due to insurance.

Here's a picture of me this past Sunday 12-27-2015 at 29 weeks or so.

We had Levi in basketball lessons for a couple weeks at the YMCA. The location ended up being too far away for us and we stopped lessons. Here he is with the dark blue shirt and black shoes.

Since it cools down a bit more at night (around 70) it is cooler in the mornings to go for a walk or head to the park. We try to get out every morning to burn off some pent up energy. Levi still prefers to ride his bike without pedals. We're in no rush to get him to pedal.

Malachi does really well on his balance bike. He is able to balance and glide along easily.

 Levi  has a toy frog he takes everywhere with him. Aunt Cari gave it to him a couple years ago. He takes it along to the beach, on hikes and sleeps with it with his blankies. 

We were able to go to the beach in September and October. Not so much in November. We were busy and the weather was a bit stormy. The boys love playing in the sand and water. 

Beautiful warm day for the beach.

Adrian's been off interviewing again for residency positions. He's done Dermatology, Anesthesiology,  and Internal Medicine interviews. It's tough repeating what he did last year, but it's the path that's been laid before us. Here he is at Niagara Falls while doing an interview in Buffalo, NY.

There's no real pumpkin patches in Port St. Lucie we could find. But, we did some "fake" pumpkin patches at a few local churches. We did get the kids a pumpkin and paid a pretty penny doing it.

These boys are always pretending they are monsters and growling.

We've got about 6 parks within a few miles of home that we usually hit up. If there are other kids there Levi always like to initiate play with them by spreading his arms out wide and growling like a monster and chasing them. The other boy kids think it's fun. The girls, not so much. Malachi always tags along until he gets bored and then plays by himself.

They had a Halloween boat parade on the river by our house. I had never heard of or seen a boat parade so I was pretty excited to go see it. The parade was the first ever Halloween parade and it was pretty much a flop. There was only a total of 6 boats that went by in a matter of 2 minutes. Here's Levi waiting for the boats. 

Levi was a black bear for Halloween. I made him a simple costume of a mask, claw gloves, claw feet, a tail and a belly. He thought it was awesome. Malachi wanted to be a dinosaur for Halloween. That was simple for me because Levi was that a couple years ago and I still had a dino tail and jacket. I did make Malachi some claw feet like Levi's and tried to make him claws too, but he did not want claws and would not wear the feet. In fact, he would not wear his costume at all. He wore it to one house the entire Halloween season. He would not even wear it to the library or church Halloween parties. He was a bit sick though. He had a cough on Halloween day and did not feel well. 

We carved the kid's pumpkins. Adrian missed the last two years we carved pumpkins so I made him help the kids. Malachi's sad here because Adrian is sitting by Levi helping him and Malachi did not want my help. The boys always prefer Adrian when he's around.

Levi was able to almost completely carve his pumpkin by himself. Adrian drew the face on the pumpkin and Levi was able to saw out the pieces.

Halloween evening there was a carnival at the Civic Center. Levi had a blast riding the rides. He loved the farris wheel and dragon roller coaster the best. Malachi did not want to ride many rides, again, he felt kind of sick. He did ride some smaller rides and seemed to enjoy those.  Here's Adrian and Malachi waiting while Levi rides a ride.

We did take the boys trick-or-treating. Malachi rode in the stroller the whole time and held up his bucket at every door. Levi was great at walking along to houses around the neighborhood. Levi caught a frog while we were walking along and toted it along to every house showing all the people in the houses his frog. They both got quite the haul of candy.

Here we were at the park by river. It was a sunny day and a bunch of tortoises were out basking in the sun. The boys chased them all back into their burrows. 

Here we're hiking at a preserve near our house. We do try to get out, it's just so hot here the boys and I get miserable quick if it's uncomfortable.

Malachi had found a walking stick and Levi was determined to find one bigger than Malachi's. At last, Levi finally succeeded and found a stick at least 6 feet tall he drug around everywhere. Levi's at an age he now notices and compares everything and wants the biggest of everything.

Levi often will ask me to take a picture of him and send it to Papa to look at. So I do.

Levi wanted to show Adrian how strong he was by lifting up the tool bench.

I've been trying to teach Levi letters and numbers and penmanship. Here Levi freehandedly wrote his name for the first time. 

Here's more pictures at the park. 

Levi is able to catch lizards and likes to hold them while he plays. Often times the lizards get handled so much that they die. 

Going for a bike ride on the boardwalk.

I was in charge of Activity days while we were in the Fort Pierce ward. I always made a treat for the girls and the boys liked to help me in the kitchen.

They split our ward about a month ago and we got put into the brand new Port St. Lucie ward. We're used to change, but we felt like we were just getting to know people again and now we've got to start over. This makes the 8th ward we've been in in the 7 years we've been married. It gets tiring to always be the new people and start over, but we do what we've got to do. So far no callings for either of us in the new ward. The bishop told us since we were leaving in 6 months it might be hard to give a calling.

Funny story with this picture. Levi likes to play Super Mario World on the Wii. He's not able to do much, but his favorite thing is get all the mushroom houses. He had been begging all day for me to let him play Mario and finally when Malachi went down for a nap I let him play. After 15 minutes or so I noticed he had fallen sleep :) Silly kid.

We really tried to get creative for activities to do in the house when it was too hot to go out. Most activities end up in a big mess. But, oh well, that's life.

More park time. Here Levi's got a small frog. The frogs seem to survive the boys playing with them more than the lizards do.

Riding our bikes to the park around the corner.

We never really played much in the yard this summer because there are ants everywhere and unless you are running quickly through the grass you are likely to get bit by one. The ants are also all over the walkway and driveway. At the the last few houses we lived in we always sat on the driveway and played. Well, come October I finally braved the ants and we pulled the sprinkler out for the boys on the driveway. We don't have a kiddy pool this year so we've just used the toy totes and they boys have fun in them. We did finally stake a tarp down on the lawn by the walkway and put the sprinkler on it. The boys still love to do this, even in the end of December because it's still hot.

Malachi hardly gets one on one time with Adrian. I took Levi with me to Activity Days and Malachi and Adrian had a Father-son date and got some ice cream cones.

I feel like Malachi does not get as much one on one attention as Levi. Levi gets it when Malachi naps, but Malachi hardly ever gets someone's full attention.

Here we are at the Lagoon in Stuart at the Indian River Park. The water was a bit chilly to the initial touch, but the boys did not seem to mind.

For Thanksgiving we celebrated a day early. Adrian had to work Thanksgiving evening so I cooked up a fancy meal and we ate just the 4 of us. It was a whole day of work for me in the kitchen and the meal lasted about 10 minutes. Malachi would not touch any of the food because he's such a picky eater. Levi ate some turkey and stuffing was all.

The day after Thanksgiving we took the boys up to Melbourne, about an hour away, to the zoo. As we were all getting into Adrian's Mini Cooper Adrian got bit by a couple red ants. The boys and I have gotten bit by ants quite a bit so I did not think much of it. As Adrian was driving he kept saying that it hurt really bad. I still did not think much of it because Adrian's a bit more dramatic than I am with things like this. After 10 minutes or so ,Adrian starts to itch all over. I still thought he was being a bit dramatic. Then he started to break out in a rash and that's when I started to think he might actually be suffering. He pulled off the highway and went into a Walgreens to get some benedryl. After about 10 minutes he calls me and tells me to come in because he's laying down on the floor and can't get up. So, I went in, got him some benedryl and helped him take it. 10 minutes later the itching got better and we headed on our way to the zoo. Now we know Adrian is allergic to ants and I'm a bit paranoid about him getting bit again and having a worse reaction.

It was a nice day at the zoo. Come midday we were seeking shade, but overall it was not sweltering hot. There was an art exhibit where they made animals from garbage that had washed up on the beach.They were interesting to see.

They had a sandpit where the boys were literally rolling around in.

They each made "sand angels". The closest thing they'll get to a snow angel this winter.

Our favorite animals to see were the otters and alligators. The otters were really playful. The alligators were huge and up close. They did not move, but were fun to look at. Surprisingly, we have not seen any alligators in Florida. People tell us they are there in the rivers and canals, but we must scare them away when we get close. 

They had a petting zoo. Malachi and I petted the snake. Levi was intrigued by it, but did not want to touch it.

Levi did pet the giant tortoise.

And Malachi petted every other possible animal there because he seems to love all animals.

They had a kiddy pool to play in. We still laugh about the fact that it was the end of November and the boys were cooling off in a pool.

On the way home Adrian was driving and noticed a driver right behind us swerving. Adrian sped up a bit  because he thought the truck was going to hit us. Well, the truck, as it was right behind us, swerved and hit the median barrier. It was kind of crazy to see. If Adrian had not sped up we probable would have been hit by the truck as it was swerving back and forth. We realize we are really blessed to have been spared  from being hit. That truck was a lot bigger than Adrian's Mini Cooper and we probably would have crashed hard.