'Twas March, once...

Once upon a time it was March and we had lots of adventures that were photographed and never blogged... until now. (Those two words should have been read aloud in your head in kind of a movie trailer voice.  Go ahead, try again.  I'll wait.)

*  The first weekend in March, the little boys and I spent Saturday afternoon with Grandma Pam in Boise.  It was pretty nice out so we went for a loooong walk.

Grandma Pam and Clyde held steady at a nice, even pace so their walk was not quite as looong as . . .

 THIS little boy's walk (and by extension, Jack's and my walk).   

But finally we reached our destination and descended (unannounced!) upon the DeLange home so that Jack could be introduced to Janna, who is one of my favorite people in the world, and not just because we have the same name :).  Janna was my 'second mom' for most of my growing up years and I have such great memories associated with their family - especially birthday outings every year with Chris and our moms.  And of course, the little boys loved jumping on the trampoline while the rest of us chatted inside! 

* A couple of weeks later in the month, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day by sporting our 'lucky' shirts

 

and consuming loads of green food coloring by way of milk and pancakes.

*  I was recruited to help our ward celebrate the 170th anniversary of the organization of the Relief Society in a re-creation of the first meeting.

 I played the small (but vital) role of Desdemona Fulmer, one of the twenty founding members. Nicole was Emma Smith and Holly was Sophia . . . something.  We had a really fun time... probably too fun of a time :).

 * I started running again!  Well, technically I started in February with Nicole but we didn't hit our stride (pun absolutely intended) until March when we added a couple other gals from our ward, Tami and Holly, into the mix - and since then Kirsten has joined us too!  Now we run four nights a week, covering about three miles each night.  We started out doing about half and half running and walking, but we've been increasing the running pretty well.

 This particular night I thought we all looked cute so I made us stop two miles in when we passed my house so Chuck could take a picture of us :).

* Baby Jack got a haircut!!  I had given Chuck my blessing, but he still [wisely] waited until I was off at a meeting to bust out the clippers.

Luckily Jack is still as darling as ever and apparently was completely unfazed by the haircut.

* I was remarkably unfazed later that day when I walked into Jack's room and met this sight:

Such attentive big brothers!

So of course I gave in and lifted Will in as well.  That 'multi-brother' hug is now a favorite; Clyde is an expert at balancing his weight (and Will's!) on either side of Jack.

* And finally, we took advantage of a beautiful afternoon at the end of March and went for a walk along the path.

Cute boys.

Cute baby.

This melted me - the end of the path goes uphill where it meets the road and is usually where we turn around.  Clyde was determined that Will make it all the way up the incline.

And Will was happy to sit back and let his brother do the heavy pushing :).

Aaaand that wraps up our March!

Weekends with Grandma Pam

Our family been pretty spoiled the last few years to have Grandma Pam readily accessible for all of our baby-sitting and bonding time needs, so having her teach in Hansen this year (and thus be unavailable during the week) has been quite an adjustment.  Luckily she's home on the weekends and doesn't seem to mind spending a great deal of that time with US!

 

                          

 Here are some of the adventures the boys have had at Grandma Pam's house - lots of reading books and playing with toys and some long walks and playing games.

 Baby Jack is especially happy when Grandma is around to hold him and snuggle him and make him laugh!

Once every couple of weeks or so, the boys talk their way into having a sleepover at Grandma's house, which includes such benefits as pancake breakfasts, access to the complete library of Sandra Boynton books, roughhousing with the missionaries, and snuggling up together in one bed!  (Thanks for always obliging me with picture text messages of my babies Mama!!)

Grandma Pam proves invaluable to me every other weekend when Chuck is at work - she comes over on Saturday to help wrangle the little ones while I coach Clyde's soccer team (more on that hilarity in a future post) and then comes back the next day to attend church with me so that I don't have a nervous breakdown trying to survive sacrament meeting alone with the three boys.  I really appreciate this act of service.

So, since she's so nice and helpful and generous with her time and love, I guess I won't complain too much that Jack bestowed some of his first genuine giggling on Grandma Pam.  We love you lots, Mama!  See you in a few days!!

Projects... part two

The next couple of projects we attempted were outside.

Luckily we have two wee helpers - Clyde shoveled, Will pushed Jack around in the stroller, Clyde pushed Will as he pushed the stroller, and Will swept.

So, our front yard has a couple different flower garden areas. In the four years we've lived here, only the best and brightest flowers have survived my attentive care - a beautiful rosebush, some day lilies, and a yellow flower type plant whose name I know not. So I decided to reward them by uprooting each and every one and forcing them to co-habitate in one flower garden area. The big task was moving the rosebush - seen here in its bushy glory last fall.

Here it is more recently, all pruned and semi-dug out. I stretched the 'digging out' process over a couple of days, mostly so that the last day of work coincided with my dear mum coming over to help me. We took turns digging the rosebush out and digging the new hole and (with some help from Chuck) we got it moved into its new home.

Over here! I wish my mom had given me the memo to wear cute clothes for gardening, not a baggy t-shirt and athletic shorts.

Here are some fairly poor quality shots of the progression of the front garden area: see that ugly big bush in the top left picture? Yeah, that's gone and now the rosebush is there. And the day lilies used to be in one big circular grouping, but Nicole and my mom split them up and stretched them out a bit. And we moved the yellow flower plant from next to the ugly bush over to the left.

So, now that my flowers were concentrated to just one rectangular area that would need weeding, the question became what to do with this funny little quadrant - and my answer came in the news that Chuck's parents were coming up to visit for a couple days at the beginning of April: tile it for a front patio!!

So I sweetly asked Chuck and Pops to recreate their magic from the backyard a year and a half ago, and they even more sweetly agreed.

And once again Clyde was there to help shovel :).

Chuck and Pops worked really hard and got it done that same day.

And now we have a beautiful patio, just waiting for an outdoor swing or glider so that I can sit in luxury as I watch the boys ride bikes in front of the house!

And finally, for some reason I decided that even though I find it fairly difficult to keep flower-y plants alive, I should still try my hand at vegetable-y plants.

So Chuck and his dad built me a couple of awesome garden boxes in the backyard and filled them with a compost/top soil mixture.

My plan is to attempt tomatoes, lettuce, and peppers this year. Pretty much if I end up with at least one edible bit of growth, I'll be thrilled.

And that concludes the random slew of projects that have been recently tackled around the Izatt home. We've spent the last month recovering from that burst of productivity with lots of lounging around :). Thanks Nicole and Grandma Pam and Pops for all your help!!

Projects... part one

Since I was really happy with how baby Jack's nursery turned out, I decided in February to direct my cooped up 'it's-winter-and-everyone's-sick-and-I-just-had-a-baby-and-we'll-never-be-able-to-leave-this-damn-house-again' energy towards some other projects, starting with the little boys' room.

Clyde and Will have shared this room for about three years, and some of the animal decor was from baby Clyde's nursery five years ago . . . so I was kind of over it. I wanted their room to be a little brighter and a little more reflective of them instead of the generic (albeit very cute!) feel it seemed to have.

So naturally we had to incorporate some Star Wars. I painted four 8x10 canvases and then ordered white vinyl decals through Amazon.

And here they are - the Jedi symbol on green, a clone trooper helmet on blue, the Millennium Falcon on yellow, and C-3PO and R2-D2 on orange.

One my favorite songs to sing to the boys is 'You are my sunshine' and Will especially loves it so I thought it'd be fun to put that in their room. I bought a 16x20 inch canvas and used the same process as the 'I am a child of God' from Jack's room; it was much easier this time around.

For over their bookcase, I found a couple free printables - they're hard to read but one says 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' and the other says 'I am a child of God'. And I've completely given up keeping that bookcase organized.

I had an old collage picture frame in the closet, so I pulled it out and painted the frame blue and then added the 'We are a happy family' personalization on the mat.

This finishing touch in their room was just added last week and Will immediately embraced it. No more arguing about reading books before scriptures, yaaaay!

I also ordered a bunch of pictures of my babies for this frame that I've had sitting around (empty) for like a year and put it up in the hallway outside the boys' room.

Be prepared: I make everyone who comes into my house come take the 'quiz' and try to identify each baby.

The other big inside project I undertook was the silly plant shelf that runs along my living room. We've been in our house just shy of four years, and it's taken me that long to get the motivation to figure out what to do with the dang thing. I'm not a fan of fake plants, I'm not a fan of watering real plants and I'm not a fan of just sticking things up there that I don't love just so it's filled. Hence the delay.

Here's the progression - started out completely empty, the wrought iron piece went up immediately, the two tiles went up December of 2008 and that's as far as we had gotten until the last two months.

Inspiration struck when I found the tall vase and the tree picture at Family Dollar (I love that place, even if it's not actually a 'dollar' store) in February. I decided to keep it all black/brown/tan up there, and everything else came together. I already had the trunk and the small chest from my Rite Aid days . . .

The candle lantern was a Savers find, as was the glass container for the yarn balls (which were courtesy of myself, some glue, and a few late nights). The candle (and the sticks for the vase) were stolen from Nicole. I ordered the dove/hands print from Costco (they have hundreds of amazing art prints online for awesome prices - this 12x12 print was $3) and the frame was one I'd had (empty) forever.

And here's the best shot I could get of the whole shelf. I am SOOO happy with how it turned out and that it's done!

The next installment of 'Projects' will feature my front garden area and how my future now holds less weeding/guilt for not weeding. I know you're excited.

A very blessed Jack (re-posted)

*Blogger is apparently having some issues and only part of this post was showing up earlier - so I'm re-posting in hopes that it will ALL show up now. (Maybe I should take the hint that I post too many pictures...)

Baby Jack was blessed at the end of March, yay!Quick picture after sacrament meeting. Things to note: I had black socks and shoes laid out for Clyde to wear, I promise, but in the rush to get out the door he apparently ended up sporting bright blue crocs. At least they matched. Also, we had a very tricky time getting Will into the van and on board with the notion of going to church. We thought we were home free but as we pulled into the parking lot he randomly announced, "I need a tie!" Luckily Clyde's yellow tie from two Sundays ago was still in the car so we stuck it on his polo shirt and he marched in, happy as a clam.

Here is the sweet baby in his blessing outfit, the same romper that Clyde, Will, and Uncle Quinn wore for each of their baby blessings and the crocheted blanket that my mom made for Clyde when he was blessed that each of the subsequent boys has used as well. Chuck gave Jack a really beautiful blessing and I'm so grateful to Eden and Emily for taking some notes of it so that I can remember what was said, since I was a (very elegant, I'm sure) mess of tears throughout.

Just for Jayna, a close up of Jack's socks :).

The whole weekend was very fun and family filled, starting with...Aunt Eden and Uncle Quinn coming to town, hooray! They hadn't seen Jack since the day he was born and it was a very happy reunion.

Grandpa Braden came over that evening as well and we enjoyed some delicious pizza and a fashion show as I modeled some shirts my dad brought over for me - including a Hawaiian one so that we could match :).

And this is probably one of my favorite pictures of all time - Quinn and Eden juggling three nephews without breaking a sweat. They're champs.

Later that night Grandma and Grandpa Izatt arrived, so the next morning was spent playing.

I love how Will's pose mimics Chuck's so much.

That afternoon it was time to divide and conquer - Chuck and the two big boys met up with all of his extended family for a bowling adventure while Jack and I met up with my mom for Eden's baby shower.

I thus have no pictures from bowling (although it was reported that a great time was had by all) but here are a couple of Jack at the shower. He was a doll as he was passed around - here with Summer (Eden's little sister), Stephanie (my cousin-in-law), Amanda (my cousin), and Kylie (Eden's niece). The baby shower was really fun and (if possible) it made me even more excited for Quinn and Eden's baby to come!

That evening we went out to dinner with Chuck's family and my mom, and that night Amanda and Steve and baby Anna arrived.

Anna is five months older than Jack and the closest cousin on the Izatt side. Also, I believe in keeping babies as undressed as possible the mornings of their blessings so there's less opportunity for them to spit up on their clothes.

Here are some more pictures of our family (thanks to Quinn for being our photographer). I'd like to point out how little Chuck and I change from shot to shot.

After church it was time for some lunch - and thankfully the weather was b-e-a-utiful so we could utilize the backyard and our newly acquired picnic tables. We had a great time eating and catching up with everyone there: Grandma and Grandpa Izatt, Melissa, Kevin, Mallory, Courtney, George, and Lily, Lee, Aleesha, Bri, and Eli, Amanda, Steve and Anna, Stephanie, Nathan, Kara, and Rachel, Amanda and Cecily, Leslie, Matt, Keyan, and Jazlyn, and Quinn and Eden.

More of the shindig attendants; I apologize for Quinn's face.

Izatt men!

Pretty sure Clyde was in heaven as he played Star Wars with cousin George and second cousins Kara, Rachel, and Cecily.

We commemorated the whole Izatt family being in attendance with a couple quick pictures.

Unfortunately we all congregated right during Anna's naptime and common sense dictates that you let sleeping babies lie, so we excused her from the picture. Hopefully we'll have a chance this summer to get a shot of all twenty of us!

Jack slept through a lot of the afternoon - here he is snuggling with Daddy and Grandma.

Quinn was a rockstar representative of my immediate family. My dad was at the blessing, of course, but neither of my other brothers were able to be there (Sam and his family were in California, where baby Hazel was blessed the day before!) and my mom was taken very ill that morning so she was unable to come as well. It meant SO much to me that Quinn and Eden were there.

To thank Eden for coming, we found her [35 1/2 weeks pregnant self] the best seat in the house. She's such a good sport.

We are very grateful that Jack is already so loved and supported by extended family and friends - both those who were able to attend his blessing and those who were not. We love knowing that everyone else is as smitten with him as we are!!