Crazy Busy

So I’m sure that I’m not the only one who’s month of July is absolutely INSANE.

So far this month we have. . . (sorry very limited on pictures) 

(Ryan and his brother Miles)

1. spent a week in Bear Lake with Ryan’s family. 

I know what you are thinking, a week in one cabin with all of my in-laws.  Ooooh the insanity, but is one of my favorite things we do all year.  I’ll have to get them from Ryan’s sister, but I have the best pictures of Carson riding the tube behind the boat.  That kid has become such a dare devil.  So not what we expected from him, but it has been a ton of fun.

Little Buddies, Owen and Brayden

2. Gone to Lagoon. . .TWICE

3. Taken two weeks of swim lessons

4. Celebrated the 4th watching fireworks at the Riverton Park

5.  Enjoyed Mile’s and Jessica’s beautiful blessing day for baby Isaac

6.  Spent time with our good friends Cathie and Dan Packer who visited  from Texas

7.  Ryan has gone to girls camp, cub scout camp and scout camp.

8.  Worked incredibly hard on some fun new projects for Simply Creative (more to come on that later!)

And still to come. . . My Cornea Transplant!  Some of you will remember last year that I posted about needing a transplant, but instead we decided to have a baby.  Well I’ve put it off long enough and it’s time.  Surgery is scheduled for this Fri.  If I think too much about it I start to become a wreck, but than I think hey, what’s the worst thing that could happen?  They could ruin my vision right?  Than I remember, oh that’s right I can’t see out of my right eye any way.

So, if you think about it I could use all of your good thoughts and prayers.  I can’t wait to have my depth perception back!

Oh, and I also get to have a root canal this week!  Yeah!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Both boys love to play soccer and let me tell you game days are insane. Yesterday I was getting all three kids ready and out the door for Brayden’s game (by myself). I threw Brayden his soccer uniform, told him to put it on and rushed off to get myself ready, than hurried and came back to put on his shin guards and shoes, and than out the door. We were standing in the door way when I turned to tell Brayden to hurry and realized we had forgotten something

NO PANTS

If you know my sister April and my family you will find this next picture hilarious. If not you will probably just think I am cruel with a sick sense of humor. My brother took this picture in Disney Land.

The two side of April. The princess and the gorilla.

Baby Blessing

Last Sun we blessed Ellie. It was such a wonderful day. My Aunt Lenore made her dress, based on a picture I gave her. What an amazing talent. I love the dress. I wish these picture showed better detail.

This isn’t the best picture, but it shows the detail in the dress a little better.

If you are blessing a baby soon here are my top ten tips

1. Leave room in your fridge and time in your schedule for all of the last minute people that will drop by with food.

2. Let family and friends know in advance that you need to leave fifteen minutes early. (can you tell all the people showing up at the last minute to put food in my overstuff fridge made me late.)

3. Cook for the crowd. I played around with a couple of different menus and food items, and finally realized that the Archuleta’s are kind of a picky bunch and at the last minute decided to go with some family tried and true favorites. I think it went over pretty well.

4. The night before make sure you know were your car keys are (After all those people that made me late left, I realized I had no idea were my car keys were, luckily my brother showed up and drove me and the kids to the church. I didn’t find my keys until yesterday.)

5. Have a cute dress for baby to change into when you get home. Blessing dresses are kind of awkward for nursing and sleeping in.

6. One of the best things Ryan and I did is the couple of days before we talked a lot to the boys about their blessing days and things that happened. I think this helped ward of some jealousy and made them excited for the day.

7. Ask some one (like a sister or sister-in-law) ahead of time to write down the blessing for you as it is given (maybe some one with out kids, or older children so they can actually hear the blessing.)

8. Make sure all of your priesthood holders know they are invited. Than there’s none of the last minute awkward searching for everyone and trying to make eye contact to know they are suppose to up there.

9. Make sure every one has directions for the church.

10. Say a sincere heart felt prayer that morning as soon as you wake up that things will go smoothly and you will be able to relax and enjoy the day. (:

Whew blessings are a lot of work!

The Nursery

In preparation for the baby blessing I finally finished up some of the projects in Ellie’s room.

I decided to go with a green chair instead of a pink.  Pink walls and  a pink chair would have been a bit much.

I changed my mind on the bedding too.  It’s hard to see the detail in these pictures.

My friends Julie Williams in my ward took these beautiful pictures of Ellie. 

There wasn’t room for the rocking chair and the changing table in the room so we took the doors off of the closest and put the changing table in there.

Love this chandelier.

I’d still love to put up bead board and add some other little details, but for the most part the room is done.

This week and last in a nutshell

Ellie turned 3 months

She is such a different baby.  Her colic is gone and she is nothing but a smiley happy baby.     

She coos and talks to us all the time.  I’ve been surprised and love how expressive she is.

Brayden graduated from Joy school 

What a funny kid.  He loved Joy school and is sad it’s over.  Thanks to all the Mom’s and kids in our little Joy school class.  Both Brayden and I loved it

A funny story about Brayden, today he walked up to me and said, “Is it my birthday?”  I told him no, and he turned and skipped away saying, “Just checking’”.

You really have to wonder what is going through the little minds.

 

Who Says We Have to be Responsible Adults

So this is the car I drive (the Blue Moose). . .

 

And this is the car Ryan drives (scout) . . .

If we were responsible adults we would have taken our tax return and bought new cars, but instead. . .

 

WE WENT TO DISNEY LAND!!!

We fully took advantage of Disney’s 5 nights and 5 days for the price of three and spent all of last week playing!  My mom, my little brother Isaac and my sister April came with us.  It was a ton of fun, and boy do I have some good April stories. (Kacie I know you enjoy the April stories.)

Really the plan with the car is to drive the Ford Taurus into the ground.  Which we pretty much expect to happen any day and we fixed our Honda so Ryan now usually drives it now.

One of my favorite moments at Disney Land was riding the Tower of Terror with my Mom.  She thought it was a haunted house and how NO idea it dropped.  It was hysterical.

Every one thought Ellie was Isaac’s baby .  Really they do look a lot alike.  Man he’s handsome kid!

Isaac and Ryan were my hero’s they pushed my Mom and April around in wheelchairs every where we went for five days!

Yard Work

Ryan and I have been spending every moment we can working in the yard.  Here are some before and after pictures of what we have done so far.  We have along way go to get it were we want it, but I think we have at least made some progress.

Here’s What we started with.

Here’s were we are now  

 

Spring Flowers

. . .10 weeks later

Here's a quick update of what we have been doing for the last 10 weeks.

1st me going insane. . .
Turns out Ellie has reflux and is pretty colicky. Thank goodness for medicines. They have helped immensely! She is pure girl though, she is moody, emotional and high maintenance, but she also the BEST sleeper at night.

Here she is having her hair done.

Her brothers love her to DEATH! Carson especially is CONSTANTLY kissing her, and hugging her and always wants to hold her.
All day I am constantly saying. . .please give her some space, you guys let her breath, she can't see you when you are that close to her face.She gets a little tired of the constant attention.


Ellie gave us a scare when she was catapulted from her car seat. Brayden accidentally knocked her over while we were shopping and of course she wasn't buckled in. I turned just in time to see her fly into the air and land face first on to the tile of the Kohl's floor. I was horrified. She had a huge bump on her head and her eye swelled up and turned black and blue. We ended up spending 6 hours at Primary Children's while they observed her and did a CAT scan. In the end though she was fine. I was literally shaking for almost three days afterwards.

Carson turned 6. Isn't he a hadnsome kid.
My nephew Carter REALLY liked the cake.


I did some decorating. I LOVE spring decorations.
Brayden went to this birthday party several weeks ago that was all about batman. They made these masks and every one got a batman cap. Ever since than he has been running around the house with his mask on and referring to Carson as Robin. . .Come on Robin, let's get those bad guys, is a common phrase. Carson's not so hip about being Robin all the time.

and Ellie learned to smile.

Eleanor (Ellie) Marie Archuleta

Feb. 23rd 2009. (The same birthday as my sister Heidi and my good friend Becky!). She was born at 7:11, weighs 6 lbs. 1 oz. and is 18 in. long. She looks A TON like Brayden did as a baby. We came home yesterday. We are both doing well. She's a good baby, and is so sweet.

We named her after Ryan and I's Grandma's. Two of the most loving wonderful women I know. I was named after my Great Aunt Holly (my Mom's Aunt). I always loved being named after some one.

Baby Girl!

I called my OB today to see if I could come in and get checked. I've been having a ton of back labor pains and contractions about every 20-30 min for 2 days now. His nurse (whom I love) called back and said she had a better idea, how about we just do the c-section today. Evidently my OB was a little surprised that I had made it through the weekend and had asked her to call me this morning to see how I was doing and so when she told him I had already called they decided to bump things up two days. We will be going in at 5:00 to have the c-section!

Here's me at 37 weeks 5 days. A new family record (I even beat my sister who only made it to 37 weeks 4 days) Today I am 38 weeks exactly.Of course the boys had to be in a picture too.

Nesting

I have been cleaning and organizing every aspect of my life for the past three weeks. One of my projects has been organizing and creating back ups of all of our pictures since 2003. I've found some cute pictures I wanted to share. Really it's an update of all the holidays I missed the past couple of months.

The boys after a Halloween Carnival Grandma and Grandpa Archuleta took us to. Brayden wouldn't look at himself in the mirror until I scrubbed off the spider. It scared the crap out of him. Oh and they were cowboys for Halloween.

Brayden was the Joseph in his joyschool play. He was not a very willing participant. He hated the scarf/hat.

This is was the first Christmas in 4 years that no one was sick. It was A LOT of fun. The boys are at such great ages. Carson surprised me by being so grateful for everything. He even wrote Santa Clause a thank you card. After we'd opened presents Brayden kept asking Ryan and I were his socks were. We had no idea what he was talking about. He started to get pretty mad and frustrated with us before we finally realized by "socks" he meant his stocking.

Pictures of the boys after the snow storm that hit right after Christmas. The boys played for hours out in the snow. Than my cute neighbor Lilet took them on a ride on her alligator four wheeler thingy (I have no idea what it is really called). They LOVED it.