The Abyss: A Summary of the Last Few Months

I have literally just wrapped up the hardest term ever!
Not that 17 credits is that bad, but it was my practicum. I was placed in a kindergarten classroom for 30 hours a week, on top of going to my own class two days a week...

Needless to say I have had no time for anything. We have gone through Halloween, Thanksgiving, and are preparing for Christmas...

Instead of trying to dig myself out of a blog hole and catch up with all of these events in great detail...I will simply download what little photos I have and summarize these events...then I will call it good! (I have the rafting blog sitting in draft form...never finished that one.)

September...
Started with August loosing both of his front teeth in a matter of weeks. It started with one. He decided to let Bray talk him into pulling it out with a string and the doorknob. He's such a brave and fearless child.

The next set of pictures...
One of our visits to Portland we spent time in Newberg with cousins. Playing, hiking, and eating!

August and his lovely toothless self

Elysia kicking rocks...

Nothing like a walk in your pajamas with your sword...

Bray and Ely singing and dancing while loading up the cars.

Watching the rain head toward us...

 A different weekend in Portland...more parks and hiking and cousin fun.

By the time we got to this park it started pouring...but, being the Oregonians that we are we stayed and had fun in the rain!

That night we went on another mini hike...there had been a weeding and lots of decorations were still up and all around the grounds.

The end of August and beginning September are kind of blur...
I started my internship/practicum/student teaching gig at the end of August...
So everything else just kind of happened around my school.
For instance, it was inevitable that the boys finally had their first days of school.
Mitchel started high school as a freshman!
Brayden started middle school as a sixth grader!
And August started Elementary school as a kindergartner!

First day of school PICTURES!!!

random pictures of Aug holding his huge front tooth

Stopped for ice cream in Newberg

Wrestling with Auntie and cousins

One of our night walks in Newberg

In early September we also confirmed we were pregnant with our fourth bundle of joy!

However, the doctors have you wait until 8weeks to come in and confirm pregnancy (which was different than my last three). So we waited and just kept taking tests for fun...

We decided to start trying to have a fourth child for a lot of reasons...
I thought it would take a little longer to conceive, but NOPE! First try...

After talking with my doctor and realizing all the risk that multiply with having kids in your thirties I knew if we wanted one last baby, it would have to be NOW! The timing is tricky, but it will work. I shouldn't start graduate school until Jan. 2017...so that will give me 6months totally dedicated to being old and having a new baby ;) Plus the graduate program for the MAT is a couple nights a week and two Saturdays a month...so not too strenuous.

And according to my OBGYN docs I am "old". There is actually a special term once you hit around 35, something like advance maternal age...blah blah. It sounds horrible and it is listed as a condition on my chart.

Now we are just trying to decide if we should have a home birth or trek the 17 miles to the hospital, because our sweet little town does not have labor and delivery OR any OB docs here. And I tend to have what they call precipitous labors (within 3 hours of first indicator of labor). Which for me is more like an hour...

That is my least favorite part of this so far...not knowing what is BEST for this delivery. I mean there is a good chance this kid will be 10lbs...

Oh, well. For now we are just OVER THE MOON excited.

I couldn't believe at 2 months how much I already POPPED out!

October
By this time I was already "bloated" out of most of my pants. It was crazy. All the clothes I had for my internship were apparently useless.

I had to quick find some maternity gear that allowed me to be comfortable. We were excited to be able and get an apt in and see the little blob.

We also celebrated August's sixth birthday. Per tradition he awoke to birthday donuts.

Grandma baked him a cake...with his help.

 He opened his presents and we all had a great night. I was so nauseous most of our plans went out the window.

PLUS that was the weekend that Brent's store officially opened in BEND!!! So Daddy was HOME. For real now. But that weekend he was pretty much living at his store and getting the operations all smoothed out.

In October my Dad and sister came to visit. We went to see the painted hills since they are so close to us. It was great and there were several little hikes.
Brent stayed with Bray and Mitch because they had soccer games. So it was just my Dad, Sister, August, Ely, and I.
It was a bit frustrating cause I  had to pee every half an hour. We would just start on a trail and we would have to turn around and drive back to the bathroom...

It was beautiful. We watched the snow and rain head toward us. We did all the hikes we wanted and the rain caught up with us on the way back home.

Tried to take a little group picture, but it was pretty windy.

Eating our picnic lunch by the bathroom at the front of the park.

Then it was Halloween. We headed to Portland and it was full of rain!!!
It was the wettest Halloween we have had in awhile.
I was hit with horrible fatigue and nausea so I was thrilled to be able to stay in and just celebrate Halloween with the family...

Jen took on a second job at the World Market for a little bit. She got us a lot of fun stuff for the holiday. She made us Rocky Road pancakes for breakfast.

Grandma decided to make some popcorn balls. The boys picked the color. Aug wanted purple.

Bray had his hands all buttered up to form the balls

I brought all of our pumpkin seeds and Jen roasted them for us!

Jen got a ton of goodies for the kids

We made cauldrin cupcakes

November

August finally got into coloring enough to take his markers and books along in the car...
And that backfired pretty quick...

Like usual my uterus was measuring big and they did another litter ultrasound to confirm gestational age...

August's tooth started growing in...and it is HUGE!

Mitch and I got to hang out while August was at a birthday party at the bowling alley...

Mitch and I went on a mother son date after his Veteran's day concert. Mitch is in concert band and jazz band. He was amazing!

I was impressed with myself for wiping down all the desks in the classroom in record time!

Three months!

 Brent was on a baking roll after missing a lot of the Halloween shenanigans. He made cupcakes and caramel apples with the cousins...

Papa came to visit

Some of the Fall decoration we put up in the middle of October

Random pictures of August taking a motorcycle ride in October...

Soccer ending.

August building

Carleen's fancy tea bags...

The shirt my sister wants to get me!

Thanksgiving we didn't really take any photos. I forgot the memory card for my camera..oops. And again I didn't bring all my back ups. It ended up being kind of crazy coordinating leaving town. Brent and I were unable to drive together because he had to take his parents to town. I was kind of grumpy about this. My mom decided to drive them TO Portland, since Brent ended up having to work a weird shift. We ended up leaving an hour and half past the time we planned...my mom was kind of grumpy about that. So, from the start of the Thanksgiving trip I was having my doubts as to how well it would go.
Still, one of my brothers came up with my dad and we had some great visiting. We had a blast and ate great food on Thanksgiving.

there we are...I was so sick. Yay first trimester

There is Brandon! My baby brother. Wish my camera worked :(

Dance party

G-ma made this wonderful veggie tray...it disappeared very quickly

On the way home from town on Thanksgiving I was in an accident.
Brent was driving behind me (with his parents) and I was in the car with August.
I was at a red light.
It turned green and I started going.
When I was in the middle of the intersection a guy decided to take a turn on a red. Lucky me!
Brent called the police and they came to take a report.
They were all concerned for the baby and if the impact was too hard.
I actually felt fine. But the last time I got hit I felt fine for the first couple days.
Apparently the guy was pretty old (in his 80's) and remarked to the cop that he didn't see why he couldn't turn on red. He was cited and his license was revoked. Still...we are still dealing with getting it fixed. The officers taped it up for me so we could continue the long drive home...in the snow.
When I finally looked at it (we stopped on Mt. Hood) I couldn't believe how bad it was. The whole front side over that wheel had been ripped off! Crazy. I was saying many thanks to God that night!

December

August is such and excitable little thing. He is the first one of our children to actually get excited for ALL the holidays. He was INSISTENT that we decorated thoroughly for Halloween, so we did (didn't take any pics though :(  ) He wanted to decorate for Thanksgiving, and before we even left for Thanksgiving he was already to start getting ready for Christmas!

So as SOON as we got back we took him out to go find a REAL tree. He chose a huge tree.
We had to trim a bit off of the top to get it to fit.
We turned on the Christmas music and went to work.
I am proud to say I completely abandoned my controlling need to have the tree look nice.
I let the kids do it all. They were super into it too!
I think August gets everyone excited.

 Aug put a hat on me and took a picture...
He made sure we were all wearing Santa hats.

I usually only do white bulbs, but August picked out these colorful bulbs...

We TRIED to get some pictures of us with the boys in front of the tree! Hahaha...these kids love to make faces.

Brent brought home stuff to do gingerbread houses too.
He and I split one to decorate and the boys each got their own.
It was fun and we were decorating for over an hour.

My side of our house

Brent's side of our house

And in November the snow started...and it kept up into December too!
It has been fun to get 2-6" here and there.

When Brent and I returned from shopping August "helped" us unload the bags...

The snow stuck around for a while because the temperatures stayed pretty low...So most of the roads looked like this...

And the OSU campus parking lot didn't look much better...

We started stocking up on the baby gear!
Brent was on a mission to go through our list and start purchasing...

Aug drew a picture of our family, and he included his baby in my tummy...

Brent and I got to sneak away to a movie...we binged watched all the Hunger Games over our mini break, and then went to see the final one! 

We had the theater all to ourselves.

Our pile of baby gear...I'm thinking we are almost set! And our dresser is pretty full of clothes too!

I've gained about 6lbs so far, which is awesome for me...at four months...
We have our ultrasound scheduled for New Years Eve! We figure it is a great way to bring in the New Year...

For the sake of documenting I know there was a lot I did not include in the last few months...
It really has been a blur and I fell into the abyss of nausea, fatigue, and school. We've had a lot of soccer and basketball games, concerts, and fun outings.

August and I went on the field trip to the pumpkin patch. Mitch has been doing a ton of driving. We had a fun dinner/ musical night when The Wiz came on.

Hopefully I can stay on top of everything now! We'll see...