October

I feel like this month has kind of kicked me down. Of course, the majority of that is all of our health issues. The boys both got some sort of flu bug a few weeks before Dane's big sickness, and at the same time Dane was in the hospital Graham had an ear infection and pinkeye and then Tommy got both of those too! What in the world? Our normally pretty healthy family has been overrun lately. It has been rough. And before all of this, I hadn't really been myself for a few months with the morning sickness so it's been a long time since we have really been on top of our game around here. But we still had a few cute/good moments this month in between all of the mess.

I was Pinteresting hard core getting ready for General Conference. I felt really strongly that we needed to prepare SOMETHING or else Dane was going to spend the entire eight hours of Conference moaning about how "someone needs to play with me" like he did last time around. I made these Conference bags with little activities for him for each speaker. It worked for about 2 of the speakers, haha. I bet in a few Conferences it will be worth the energy.

What worked better was bringing all of the train tracks into the family room and building trains with him while watching. Both boys were entertained by this.

We got to have Grandma and Grandpa come visit us in between all of our sicknesses! They were actually here for Kurt's white coat ceremony for med school at UTSW but we got to have them staying at our house and spending time with us. Dane and Graham loved it. We kept it super low-key and hung around the house (except for the med school stuff).

Grandma and Grandpa are always so happy to play with the boys and read to them. It's all they want.

Graham couldn't have been happier.

While they were visiting, it was Graham's first Sunday of nursery. HALLELUJAH WE ARE THRILLED THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF OUR LIVES THANK YOU NURSERY LEADERS.

He could not have cared less about Tommy leaving him. He was like, what? There's a room full of toys here and you've been making me wander the halls for months??

My birthday was a few weeks ago. The big 2-8! It was actually an awesome, very laid-back day. I got a nice breakfast (complete with Lucky Charms) and Tommy got me all three High School Musical DVDs so that I could still get my fix even though I won't be seeing them at my family's house any more. I took the boys for a nice walk in the morning. We had a friend (my friend, who has boys my boys' ages) come over and play/chat in the morning, and then I went to the gym in the afternoon. Dane got sick that day, and Tommy was so nice and came home early so I could still go work out and leave him home. It was a lovely day. I truly had no expectations and felt totally satisfied with the little bit of celebration that we did. 

A few days after my birthday I took the boys to this little shop to buy a wall hanging I had seen that I wanted to buy with my birthday money. They loved this little bench outside the shop and sat here for a while.

Graham. So proud of himself that he can now crawl up onto the couch. So dangerous in every way.

He's always putting on my shoes. He has an uncanny ability to distinguish between my clothes and Tommy's. He will point at our shirts in our closet and say, "Mommy! Daddy!" I have no idea how he is that observant when he still can't even say words like "hungry" or "drink."

We love Danish chocolate toast. Danes are GENIUSES. (The Danish kind and our Dane kind.)

We finally re-filled our sandbox with more sand and the boys have loved it.

And yet they still want me to take them to the park near our house with a sand volleyball court so they can play there too.

I took them there in the bike. I wish we could use this more often. I LOVE biking places but almost nowhere is close enough that Graham will last without screaming his head off.

 Graham playing peek-a-boo with the tablecloth, haha.

I am so bad at giving haircuts. But it has to be done. Although I kind of wanted to leave Graham's hair like this.

Family pizza movie night--and both boys just wanted to lean on me the whole time. I love having them snuggle me.

And look--this was yesterday. I'm starting to look pregnant! I should probably make a general announcement so people know they can ask me about it and not just wonder. I am 19 weeks along now and starting to feel like it's hard to bend over. I haven't really had the chance to think much about this baby yet though... I would love to start thinking about names but it is going to be hard. I guess I haven't mentioned it here, but while Dane was in the hospital I had an OB appt and we found out the baby is a GIRL! I am nervous because I feel like we've figured out the whole boy thing--and now we're starting from scratch again. But we still will love you baby girl, even though we hadn't had much of a chance to bond with you just yet. I guess that goes with the territory when you're baby #3. We're all going to have to get used to going with the flow soon.