UEA Mini Vacay

We couldn't have planned it better. Laura had told us she wanted to go on a little vacation up our way over the UEA break. It worked perfectly because they were able to get into town just in time for our Gender Reveal Party and then stay over through the weekend.

On Saturday, we went up to Logan with them to visit Bryan and Celeste and take a little tour of the city. First stop was the temple.

The belly has officially emerged full force.

The kids couldn't refrain from rolling down the hill on the back of the temple.

Then we went to the Pepperidge Farms factory. Biggest disappointment of my life. All I wanted was a bag of vanilla cupcake goldfish and the only thing left by the time we got there was pizza flavor blasted goldfish. Rumor has it you have to go first thing in the morning if you want any of the good stuff.

The boys (I love that I don't have to change this phrasing when referring to my kids come baby three.) quickly became impatient in the factory, so we made our way outside in a pretty little nook that had a ton of fallen leaves all over the sidewalk.

The boys loved throwing leaves into the air with Kaelynn while we waited.

We figured we should pick up some pumpkins while we were at Utah's agricultural capital.

I loved Laura's rule that the kids could have any pumpkin they could carry.

We love when cousins come to visit!

Gender Reveal Party!

So remember how I'm taking a picture of my belly every week to prove to baby number three that it is loved just as much as the first two? Well I missed a week. Read into that however you want, third child. But take into consideration that I was sick and puking my guts out and it would have been really confusing to see me lose my belly on week 18 and then have it reappear week 19. So I spared the confusion and skipped a week. 

We made it halfway!

The morning I hit 20 weeks, I got this friendly reminder on my phone:

Not that I needed to be reminded of the big news happening this week. I already had a party in the works!

I was doing pretty good about not focusing a lot of my attention on debating whether or not this baby would be a boy or a girl. In fact, I was kind of relishing in not knowing, because it was kind of fun to be able to daydream about the possibility of having a girl without officially knowing it wasn't a girl.

But the week of our ultrasound, I went full crazy. I was completely consumed in thinking about what we would have, and imagining life with either another little boy or a little girl. I was just ready to know and dying to have to spend the week waiting.

I deep cleaned my house. Organized all the toys. Hand scrubbed the floors. Vacuumed the dust off the fans. Cleaned out every closet in the house. Washed our window seat covers. Washed all our curtains. And that was all before 12:00 in the afternoon on my first day of dealing with my overwhelming nervous energy.

The next day I spent the day going way overboard on party planning. I made flags. I made a party logo. I made a backdrop. I made food. I was running around the house with an inextinguishable energy that would only be dissolved once I knew what we were having.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much the night before our appointment. My sister asked me just before the appointment how I was feeling and my response was, "I fear I've set myself up for a public emotional breakdown."

I was so nervous because I had no idea how I would really feel if it came down to finding out we were having another boy. As I kept spewing texts off to my sister, I also said, "It's mostly just comical now if it's another boy." I tried to keep that mentality going into the appointment.

The baby was healthy and adorable and it was so fun to see little fingers and toes, and we had the information we needed to carry on with the evening's plans!

I made a little photo booth area for people to cast their votes on whether they thought we were having a boy or a girl. Eli and Carson were firm in their guesses. Eli was sure it was a boy and Carson was persistent it was a girl.

My mom voted boy.

My friend Ashlee was rooting for pink.

Bryan was a boy vote, Celeste a pink.

I think Joe and Kenz felt they would be betraying me if they didn't vote girl.

The Golden family was split.

And the Cox family knows just how desperately we need more girl cousins on the Excell side.

Becky took a moment to show off her perfectly colored pink and blue pumpkin dessert.

The Thomas cousins have been quite liberal lately with their impromptu, mostly cooperative group shots.

My dad has been traveling for work and had told me he would barely not be able to make it to the party. Well you can imagine how surprised I was to see him make a grand entrance! It was such a fun, completely unexpected surprise!

When we were nearing time for the reveal, we Facetimed Abe and gave him the opportunity to officially make his prediction.

We also let Jacob be a virtual guest.

With everyone tuned in and anxious to know the fate of our family, we prepared for the reveal.

Excuse my blurry pictures. I still love the excitement you can sense in all these shots despite the poor quality. We revealed by letting everyone pick either a pink or a blue balloon. On the count of three we had everyone try to blow up their balloon...

The wrong color had little holes poked in the balloons, so they didn't stay blown up.

Because not many people chose the blue balloons, everyone looked to my dad to confirm the blue balloons were staying blown up.

It became very clear the pinks were deflating and the blue...was definitely not.

A THIRD BOY! Is anyone surprised? :) You'd think Eli would have been more excited his prediction was right.

We have just started weening him off his naps and this means he has a strict 7:00 bedtime. This was at about 7:20, and Eli was in full meltdown mode. Poor kid was so tired. It had nothing to do with you, little bro!

You want to know the weird thing? I have been completely, totally, 100% fine, happy and excited about another boy. What? This was totally unexpected. When we found out at the doctor that it was a boy, I just laughed and found the whole thing funny. And then as I saw his little heart pumping, and his little legs kicking, I didn't even care whether it was a boy or girl, I just had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that he was healthy and I already felt so much love for him.

I went on a walk right after we got back from our appointment and I was smiling the entire way. Then as I was getting ready for the party, I was still totally thrilled to be telling everyone we were having another boy. 

I had visions of our three boys being the best of buds and playing sports together and having funny little inside jokes with each other. I imagined them all being into the same things and loving to have other brothers to always do things with. I imagined them in high school, trying to figure out girls with each other. I imagined sending them off on missions. Everything I saw for our future was fun and exciting, and I think our boys are going to be really close and have so much fun together. 

I can honestly say I am not at all disappointed. Which is weird because I was disappointed with Carson, so I thought it would be even worse this time, but I think I've already mourned the potential possibility of never having a girl and I'm just ready to raise my herd of boys now. Bring 'em on!

General Conference Weekend and a Temple Walk

I can't decide if I'm getting worse at taking pictures or if the subjects I frequently find myself trying to snap pictures of are getting worse at staying put long enough for me to get a good shot. Either way, my blog worthy pictures have been limited lately. 

I guess my lack of pictures can be blamed on me, because here's subject #1, perfectly still, and this is the best picture I got of him. I can blame this bad picture on the fact that I had spent the entire morning puking my guts up though, so perhaps my arms were a little unsteady from my dehydration.

Can I just tell you that miracles do happen? I woke up so sick on this day. Jeff felt sorry for me and stayed home in the morning until 10:00 when Eli had a playdate. He dropped Eli off, and then I woozily went to get Eli at 12. We came home and I fed the boys whatever I could fish out of the cupboard with the least aroma between bouts of nausea. As I was slumped on the couch, I realized it had been a while since I heard Eli. I went upstairs to find that he had put himself down for a nap! Hence the picture to document this glorious moment that allowed me to continue to rest amid my day of sickness.

This little bugger has been nothing but trouble lately. When this kid is bored, he lets everyone know it. Play-dough has been our lifesaver to keep those little hands busy and out of mischief!

Between potty training and switching him over to a bunk bed, we're back to many wakeful nights and bedtime battles with Carson Boy. Any time his routine gets changed, it takes months to retrain him and get him on a somewhat normal sleep schedule again. We'll probably get his sleep back to normal just in time for daylight savings to hit...

We went to my parents' house for General Conference Weekend. Spencer and Eli have become pretty good friends. Especially because they both find it hilarious to exclude Carson from their games because "he's a baby." Never mind that Carson is quite possibly taller than Spencer, and never mind that Eli has no problem playing with "Baby Carson" when he's not trying to impress certain cousins or friends.

Don't worry Carson, you won't be the baby for too much longer.

The second miracle of the last two weeks happened when we got six cousins all in one place at one time, almost all looking at the camera and somewhat smiling.

The kids had their own mini theater going on in the basement while the adults watched conference upstairs. I went down to peek on them once and found Brooke and Eli "roasting marshmallows" by sticking marshmallows on the end of a pretzel stick and holding them up to the fire. I never did stick around long enough to see if they bronzed up.

I've mentioned before that Carson habitually requests pancakes every. Single. Morning. For a while I was out of pancake mix and was too lazy to make some more, but one morning when we didn't have too much to do, I finally decided to make a batch of pancake mix so Carson could once again have his favorite breakfast.

I decided to cook double what I usually do so that I could have a bag full of already made pancakes in the fridge to quickly whip out at Carson's every early morning pancake request. I laid them out on the counter to cool while I ran upstairs to finish my makeup.

As I was unsuspectingly applying my mascara, I heard giggling in the kitchen area, but it didn't sound like mischievous giggling. And it wasn't eerily quiet. I kept applying my makeup, glad the boys had found something to keep themselves busy.

Then Eli came upstairs with a grin on his face. It was the kind of grin that said, "someone's in trouble, and I'm glad it's not me." Eli gave me a moment to brace myself before saying, "I don't want you to see the kitchen. Carson made a big mess."

Sure that he was dramatizing the situation, I made my way downstairs to find pancake remnants scattered all about the kitchen. There was half a crumpled pancake on the oven, sprinkles of crumbs dusting the floor, chunks of pancake stuck to the walls, chocolate chips smeared on the floor, parts of the pancakes mashed into the carpet. It was not dramatized.

"CARSON! WHY did you DO THIS???" I immediately questioned.
Without any thought, he replied, "I was trying to feed the spiders."

I looked on the wall to a big pancake smear and saw a teeny, tiny spider right next to it. After taking a moment to appreciate the humor in the situation, I banished the boys to the backyard for the next 30 minutes so I could do a complete kitchen scrub down. Luckily they sensed their lives would be in jeopardy if they interfered with the cleaning process and stayed happily and quietly outside until a certain spider was killed and order was restored to our kitchen.

Just yesterday we had a big activity with the Young Women. We walked 12 miles to the Ogden Temple! I was put in charge of the activity and put together this invitation for the girls:

I had been so worried about the logistics of the walk that it wasn't until the Thursday before we were to start our journey that I started getting nervous about the reality of walking 12 miles. 

The biggest mistake we made was putting me in charge of the directions. I knew all the general areas of where we were supposed to turn, but I am admittedly the worst navigator of the entire group so every time a turn was approaching, I could sense the group get nervous about my lack of confidence in exactly where to go. There were at least a couple times we feared we had missed a turn and would have to add extra mileage to our trip by backtracking and renavigating, but I'm happy to say we made it to the temple without a single wrong turn!

Okay, there was that one time on that one trail when we walked 10 steps past the right turn, but other than that we were pretty spot on. It was a neat experience and the most beautiful day for that kind of activity!