strange cravings

I have heard of women having strange cravings when pregnant, but have never experienced it till this pregnancy.

My strange craving isn't so much a food item that I want to eat, but things that I can't get enough of smelling wise.

I am finding that I want to smell bleach, dish washer soap, Windex, hand sanitizer, pine sol floor cleaner, and other cleaning supplies. I am starting to get a bit worried at how much I want to smell them. Hand sanitizer (while its still wet and full of rubbing alcohol smell) and the Windex especially. I have to avoid using them so that I don't get tempted.

This reminds me of the commercial from a few years ago about a woman who craved the smell of Gain laundry soap. I am sure if I had any of that around I would be craving smelling that too :)

R is starting to joke around about having to hide these items from me. Although sometimes I wonder if its more serious than joking around... Just to be clear, I am NOT opening up bottles of cleaning supplies and sniffing them all day, so don't worry about that.

I'm just glad its not something crazy that I want to eat, I have heard some really CRAZY things that pregnant women are craving... Stucco walls, wet dog food, and a few others. To those I just say YUCK!!! But I am starting to see how something that sounds so silly or crazy really can become such a big craving.

Thankfully this pregnancy is getting closer to being over, and I wont be tempted by all those wonderful smells anymore, hopefully.

grateful for a testimony

I recently found out that yet another person I know has decided to leave the Church. This person was someone who had gone through alot in their life, more than I can ever imagine going through, and was still really strong. This person moved away from our area a while ago and I haven't seen them since but I had kept up with them a bit on facebook and their blog. A few months ago this person decided to get off of facebook and stop blogging, I kept thinking about them and wondering how they were doing. I am sad to say that I never acted upon those feelings of wanting to contact them. I wonder if I had I could have helped in some part to stop them from leaving the Church.

I found out the week before General Conference that this person had left the Church and it really shook me up. To think that someone I thought had such a strong testimony could leave... Could that happen to me? It was weighing on my mind alot, I didn't want this to happen to me. I would rather believe something blindly than to turn my back on something that means so much to me, even if it wasn't true.

So I went into watching General Conference with lots of prayer, not only for me but for this person and their children. As soon as I saw the Prophet, President Thomas S. Monson walk into the conference center, I had this overwhelming burning in my heart telling me that he truly is the prophet of the Lord. Not that I really had any doubt, but I am so grateful that the spirit could testify to me so strongly something that I needed at the moment. It seemed like all the talks during conference were just what I needed to hear, and they brought such peace to my heart.

I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the Lord's church restored in its fullness here upon the Earth today. I know that we have a living Prophet upon this earth that he receives direction from Heavenly Father as to the things we need to know for our day and time. I am so thankful that I can pray to my Father in Heaven and he will answer my prayers, in just the way I need those answers. I am thankful to have a testimony, and I pray that I never let it go. I am thankful that I can pray and find out for myself if the Church is true or not, and I can do the same thing with things that our leaders say or do.

I can't imagine my life without the Church, nor do I want to.

Baby #3 updates

I had an appointment yesterday with the OB and also had an appointment for an ultrasound. I love that my Dr. office does a "complimentary" 3D ultrasound. I say "complimentary" because we don't pay for it, but I am sure that the insurance does :) Thank Heavens for the wonderful insurance that we have!

R and the kids came with so that they could see baby C. When I told A that we were going to go see C on the tv again she wasn't too excited, but later decided that it would be fun to see the baby in Mommy's tummy after all.

Apparently C is going to be a chunky baby. We are just barely at 33 weeks and he is already measuring 5 lbs 8 oz. and is in the 90 percentile for most babies at this stage. I have a feeling that we will most definitely be delivering early.

While the lady was trying to get us some good pictures of C he kept putting his arms in front of his face and punching at the area where she had the wand thing that they use to look at the baby (I have no idea what that thing is called). I remember that A and G both were a little camera shy, but nothing like this. We were able to get 1 good picture that only shows one eye and part of this nose and the other eye.

C is more active than I remember A or G being too. He is constantly on the move, as of late his favorite time to move is right when I am trying to fall asleep at night. I am glad that he moves around so much though. I remember being scared a few times with the other pregnancies that there might have been something wrong with the baby since they moved so seldomly.

We are now on the countdown, I am guessing we have about 5 more weeks until we deliver if C keeps up the growth, and knowing my Dr. I would be delivering that early even if he weren't that big.

I am so grateful that this pregnancy is treating me so well, I usually only get swollen feet on Sundays from wearing my church shoes, and its only my feet, not my ankles. There is hardly any back pain and what I get I am sure is related to stress (since its mainly in my shoulders). I have only gained about 12 lbs so far, and hearing that almost 1/2 of that is baby makes me glad that its not a ton of ......... ummmmm "fluff", like with the other pregnancies. I am carrying in the front this time instead of all around this time too, so I hardly look pregnant unless you look at me from the side, and even then I am not that big.

So yeah there are the updates.... I can't wait to hold this little one in my arms. I know life is going to be changing Big time with adding a 3rd child into the mix, but I am super excited for our future.

Garden 2011

After helping to plan the Relief Society meeting night, all about Gardening, and then reading an article in the April 2011 Ensign about gardening; I felt impressed that we needed to try our hand at gardening again.

We tried making a garden shortly after moving in the house but it pretty much died the day we planted it. We didn't realize just how horrible the soil is out here and that we needed to mix a bunch of stuff in it to be able to have a chance of a garden growing.

So needless to say, we did alot of research, and planned much more than last time.

We decided to try an above ground approach (although I have already realized there was more we needed to do to avoid weeds and such). We bought soil from a local nursery that gives you a GREAT deal for as much as you get. We also decided to plant it in a place that doesn't get a bunch of direct sunlight so that it wont burn.

We planted summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a green bell pepper plant. We also planted from seed some peas, carrots, and romaine lettuce.

Yesterday when R went out to water, he saw some promising signs in the Garden.
<- this is a picture of one of the pea plants, the seeds sprouted! So far 2 of the 3 are out of the ground. I took some pictures of the carrot and lettuce sprouts, but they are still too small to show up well on the pictures. So I guess you will just have to take my word for it that we have some of those coming up too.

We still need to get something to shade the garden, although it gets about 3 hours of direct sunlight, the plants get really wilty and sad looking during that time. With the weather getting hotter and going to be getting even worse, shade is a necessity. I also want to get a trellis or something of the sort to let the squash, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, and pea plants grow up on instead of through the rest of the garden.

I am supper excited that this is working so far, the real test will be keeping it alive through the summer and after having the baby. I really want to keep it growing and hope to test out a new way of gardening we learned about at the Relief Society meeting night later this fall.

New adventures in life

I realized that I have failed to post about the fact A was accepted into the local charter school. Not quite in the ways we were hoping for, but we have our foot in the door.

A will be in a 1/2 day kinder class at the new campus that they are opening next year. It is going to be much farther away for us to drive her every day. Instead of right down the road we have to travel about 15-20 min away. But once again our foot is in the door.

They are going to keep her in the lottery for any places that may open up at the campus down the road, so there is a slim possibility we will get her into that one some time this year.

St. Patty's day 2011

I'm not that crafty or good at coming up with ideas for fun stuff to do for holidays, but I did decide to do something fun for our Dinner for St. Patty's day this year. I have to admit, I have never tried corned beef and cabbage for a meal, but something about it just sounds a bit nasty to me (especially with being pregnant right now). So instead we had a yummy dinner of ...

Cabbage soup

Green Rolls

And (not pictured) pistachio pudding.

As usual the kids refused to eat the soup, but they loved the rolls. A was with me while I was making the rolls and she was amazed that they were green. She started talking about the green eggs and milk that I did last year... I should mention that I didn't to them this year because she burst into tears when she saw that the milk and eggs were not the normal colors when I made them last year, and then flat out refused to eat them.

So that was pretty much the extent of our holiday, besides painting toe nails green (for A and I) and wearing green on our clothes, not that the kids really understood that part.

Who knows, maybe next year with A in school it will be a bit more exciting and we can get into it a bit more.

Learning to read

While R's mom was here to visit last year I told her that I wanted to start teaching A to read before she went to kindergarten. She told me about a book that she used to teach most of her kids how to read.

This is the book:
Since we are hoping to get A into Kindergarten this coming school year (Scary to think she is that old!) I started using this book to teach her in January.

We don't do school time every day, usually 4-5 times a week. We are now on Lesson 33... I think. She has learned so much already, it is amazing. She is writing quite a few letters and reading wonderful for a 4 year old that just started reading a little over a month ago. She is also learning how to write her name (not recommended by the book, but I wanted to teach her how).

I highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a way to teach their child how to read. It is really simple, the book says the lessons are supposed to be 15-20 min. long, A likes to goof off a bit so it takes up to 30 min some days, but still. They start out with a few letter sounds and every other lesson they learn another to add into it. A few days in, the child is learning how to read simple words. They later start reading a sentence, then a story that is a few sentences long, and it just keeps building. We are now on 4 sentence stories with where we are in the book.

A is having so much fun and loves it (most days) when we do school. I am excited to see how she will do once she gets in to real school. We should be finding out next week if she made it into the local charter school or not. Since her birthday is right on the border line, if she didn't get in we will be waiting until next year and try to get her in again, and have a back up school for just in case.