Welcome, Jake!

 Jake Mathias was born Wednesday! He has the same birthday as his Aunt Julie. He's really cute and sleeps a lot, for which we're grateful. He seems to be pretty mellow but it's hard to tell, newborns sleep so much anyways. His sisters love him, mostly. Penny is constantly begging to hold him but Ginger, on the other hand, tries to climb into my lap before I can get ready to feed Jake. Ginger gets this concerned look on her face whenever he cries and points excitedly at him. Penny likes to tell him to be brave while we're changing his diaper. It's very sweet.

We're all healthy and the delivery went fantastic, as far as deliveries go. I labored for a few hours at home in the early hours of the morning and then Grandpa came and got the girls at about 6:30 a.m. and we were to the hospital soon after 7 a.m. I had my epidural by 8:30 and then Jake was born at 10:23 a.m. July 28.

We can't believe he's here. It feels "all of a sudden," which probably sounds weird because we've had 9 months to get used to the idea. We've been so busy and distracted that the time has past incredibly quickly. Maybe it has more to do with this idea that the older we get, the faster time seems to pass.

Our first picture as a family of five! It's so crazy that I have three kids, am I really old enough?!

My cute mud girls

Penny and Ginger made mud cookies yesterday. It brought back some fun childhood memories. I look at these pictures and I can't believe how big Penny is looking. And, check out how long her hair is these days. We can finally do some legitimate pony tails and little braids.

Greetings...

You know how when you get so far behind in something that you start avoiding it because you don't know where to begin? Like laundry, or journal writing or scripture study? That's how I feel about this blog. Here's a list of what we've been up to during the last few months.

1. We bought a house! We bought a fixer-upper because that's all we could afford out here in California. It was two bedrooms and we made it three bedrooms and put new floors in. You'd think building one wall and taking down a few others would be easy enough. Ha! We would never have been able to accomplish as much as we have without the help of so many friends. It's unbelievable how much time our friends and family spent helping us. Seriously, the amount of help we got is straight from an Ensign article about charity and Christlike service. It's been a humbling experience to receive so much help.

The house is cute and we love it. I think we're both tired of working on the house and are anxious to be "done" at some point in the future. My definition of "done" included loads of things that I'm beginning to scratch off my list just to have some peace in our life. We'll post more pictures later.

2. I'm pregnant again. We're having a baby boy and I'm due August 4, which makes me 36 weeks. We don't have a name for him yet. We have a few names that we both like but nothing that we love. I think choosing a name for your child is an agonizing process, there's so much responsibility.

Penny loves to talk about the baby brother. One day, there was only one Oreo cookie left and I ate it instead of giving it to Penny or Ginger. I told Penny the baby needed it and she was suddenly okay with me not sharing, as long as it was for the baby. I know, I'm a mean mom.


3. Penny just finished taking a swim class and it was traumatic for her. Above you see Penny crying while her teacher looks away with a blank stare. The poor guy had no idea what to do with her. That's Ginger on the side, waving encouragement to Penny and longing to be in the water. The sad irony is that while Penny would scream from the pool, Ginger would cry from the pool side begging to get in. Too bad I couldn't swap Penny out and throw Ginger in the water in her place.

She's not as fearless and brave as her dad had hoped. Unfortunately it looks like she's on the same track as her mother—the fearful, worrisome type who thinks about things too much and then is afraid to try. Stephan hopes it's just a phase, but I'm 30 and still have similar mental issues. Although, for the record, I can swim and am not afraid of the water, just the open ocean.

The picture on the left is on the first day of class, before Penny realizes that they'll actually be getting in the water. She failed her class and will have to repeat the Seahorses level before continuing.

4. We moved the girls into bunk beds. I thought it'd be a much easier transition than it's been. Penny was of course elated to move to the top bunk. She kept saying over and over that she was growing up and that's why she could sleep "up high." Ginger also was excited to be in the bunk bed, but I think only because of the freedom it offered from her crib. It's been a real battle convincing her to stay in the bed at nap time. I think we're finally beginning to win the battle, although it's been a long few weeks.



5. Now that we have a house, we have a backyard and we love playing outside. The girls love swinging in the hammock with their dad.

Penny the ballerina

Penny's been in a pre-ballet class at the community center for the last eight weeks. I think the word "pre" should be emphasized in the class's description. Yesterday was the class presentation and it was hilarious. As silly as the performance was, I felt so emotional watching Penny all grown up and in a little ballet class kicking her legs with her classmates. It was so cute!

California Winter Love

I know this post will sound like bragging to many of our family in far away freezing places. I'll apologize in advance.

Here's what last weekend looked like for us.

We started the day out by driving past the freshly harvested sod fields. Notice the snow on the mountains in the background? After all, it is wintertime.

We arrived at the beach where Penny collected sea shells and dug in the sand with her friends. Ginger ate sand-covered Cheerios and tried to crawl face first into large puddles of water. Stephan taught Penny to jump rope with a long piece of sea weed. She never quite got the hang of it.





Then, we drove past the ripening strawberry fields to visit Stephan's parents.


Penny and Stephan picked limes and tangerines in grandma and grandpa's backyard. Penny and Ginger had a refreshing citrus snack after the harvest. Penny loves teaching me how to peel a tangerine. She's so proud of herself. I can't believe how many of those things she can eat in one sitting. Maybe 10? She loves the fresh oranges and tangerines.

Never leave your child unattended.

It seems like most baby contraptions have this warning message somewhere on the packaging. I always wonder what sort of situation happened that required the manufacturers to put that message on their products. Like what sort of idiot parent left their child in a bumbo on a counter top unattended.

I don't consider myself a negligent mother but there are certainly times when I put Ginger in the high chair with some food on her tray and walk away to do something else. This time I totally forgot I'd left her in the high chair while I did something with Penny and this is what I found when I walked back into the kitchen. I guess I'm one of those idiot parents. She was being so quiet so I didn't notice that she'd finished her snack. Quiet children can never mean anything good.

Don't you love her huge gut, by the way?

November in photos

It seems like November was a busy month. Here's a bunch of random photos to illustrate the month for us. This is a long post so be forewarned.

Ginger and her Grandpa Lovstedt.

Ginger loves copying Penny in everything she does. It always makes me a little nervous.

A cute photo of the girls after Church. Ginger's tights are all nasty from crawling around on the dirty Church floors.

I went to my Grandpa Allsop's funeral in Washington. He was a great man. At least he's in good company up in heaven. I'm sure my mom was happy to have her dad around again.

Apparently my grandpa thought it'd be fun to have each of the grandchildren throw some dirt on his coffin at the cemetery as they were burying him. Here's my brother, Scott, posing with the shovel before the ceremonial dirt-throwing.
My mother's headstone. Her and my grandpa are buried in the same family plot at the Toppenish cemetery. It's always weird to think about my mom being dead. Especially looking at her headstone. It makes me think about the finality of death. But, on a hopeful note, it also makes me grateful for the Atonement in ways I never would have understood before her death.
My family at the funeral service. Me, Kristin, Ashley (Scott's wife), Scott, Amanda, Jake, Becca, her husband Jon, Juliann, Dad, Judy.

I turned 30. I feel like a real grown-up now.

As usual, the day after Thanksgiving, we went camping in the desert and Stephan rode his dirt bike with some buddies. It was freezing and it rained. Camping seems harder with a crawler. Ginger's 14 months and still not walking so she drove me crazy in the dirt and all the stickers. I think she looks like such a big girl sitting here with her real shoes on.

Despite hiding out in our friend's van during the rain storm, Ginger managed to give me some cute pictures. She gets more adorable all the time. I love her huge smile.

Sometimes Ginger's smile looks a bit goofy, like here, but she's still so freaking cute! How can you resist her chubby little cheeks?

Penny has turned out to be quite the little princess-wanna-be. She loves dressing up in her hand-me-down princess outfits and dancing to this one album, "Princess Tea Party." (Thanks, Julie!) Sometimes she'll lay down on the ground and pretend to be asleep and then tell me to be the prince and I have to come and wake her up with a kiss. It's hilarious. I don't know where she's even seen Sleeping Beauty. And, honestly, I never wanted a princess-y girl. She's turned into this all by herself.