Growin' Up

Here are some pictures of all the work we've done on our yard lately. We've done A LOT of work around here in the last few weeks. Brice's parents came out and we leveled the rest of the front yard (you would not believe how much work that is!) and put in sod and a tree! Brice and I love Weeping Willows, so that's what we decided to get. It's a tall, wispy thing, but they grow fast, so it will be big and beautiful in no time. And a big thank you to William and Angel for helping with the sod and leveling, too. It is SO nice to have grass! No more dirt or weeds or thorns. Yay!

And here are Raelin and Ryker practicing their baby wearing skills. I carried them in a sling carrier when they were babies, so they wanted a baby carrier for their dollies. Can you tell they are excited for a new baby in the family?

Ryker is our little helper around the house and the yard. He loves to help cook and unload the dishes and he likes to "wash" the dishes, but that mostly just means he likes to play in the water and make a really big mess. In the yard he loves to water things. Here he is watering our long row of sunflowers.

Look at this amazing girl riding a two-wheeler all by herself! For family night on Monday, we went to the park and helped Raelin and Ryker practice on their two wheelers. Raelin had been really close for a while and open space was all it took! Now she's riding like a pro and she loves it!

800 degrees outside and she still wants to be out riding her bike! I love it! Ryker also made some progress. With some practice, he'll be riding a two wheeler soon too!

Memories of Us

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I have had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember! 2. Next (if you choose to), re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Baby Wearing

My friend BreAn had this link on her website and I love babywearing stuff! With Raelin I used a sling carrier and she loved it! It was much better on my back than the Baby Bjorn type carrier. But this time around I'm going to try a SPOC. AKA a simple piece of cloth. You use a long strip of cloth to wrap your baby to in a bunch of different positions so you can find something that works for you and your baby. Here's the link to a contest to win several different baby carriers in case you are interested! Good luck!

Win the Essential Babywearing Stash from Along for the Ride (one Beco Butterfly, one Hotsling baby pouch, one BabyHawk Mei Tai, one Zolowear Ring Sling, and one Gypsy Mama Wrap)

And finally, the post we've all been waiting for!

So I'm finally getting around to posting our exciting news that many of you already know, but here's the formal blog announcement: We are going to have a new addition to our family! And no, it's not another dog. We are going to have a baby! The baby is due on January 19th. Raelin hopes it's a girl and Ryker is certain it's a boy (he wants to name it Sebastian). Someone's going to be mighty disappointed! But both kids are really excited (as are Brice and I)! This explains part of my blogging slacker-ness and why I haven't been feeling well and why Raelin has stepped up to be my helper (see previous posts). Our family is very much ready for a new baby and the joy it will bring! We are SO excited!!!!

And as you can see, I'm already showing! What is up with that!? I didn't show until five months with the other kids, but already, at three months, I'm at that awkward "Is she pregnant or just getting fat?" stage. So for any of you that have been wondering that, I'm pregnant (not fat... okay, well maybe a little) and I've actually lost five pounds!

And here are the cute and proud big brother- and big sister-to-be. I'm excited to see how they each interact with a new little baby since they are both old enough to understand what it means to have a new baby and to help take care of it and to understand what "gentle!" means!

And this final picture is just to show off one of our latest projects completed. We were inspired by Kollin's handiwork and the fact that our kids LOVED the sandbox he'd build for his daughter, Kourtney, when we visited last week, so we wanted to build a sandbox of our own. The kids absolutely love it! Brice even put in a water spigot for them so they can build sand castles, but I'm not so sure I like how much mess comes with it. So we'll see if the water spout stays... It's a cool feature, but is it really worth all the sand in the house and wet clothes and extra laundry? I just don't know.

Ryker's Birthday

So I asked Ryker what kind of birthday he wanted (I always make the kids a cake according to a theme that they choose--when they're old enough to choose, that is), and as he was thinking, Raelin, my incredible helper (tongue-in-cheek) said, "Ryker, do you want a kangaroo birthday?" Ryker got really excited and said, "Yeah!!!" "Okay, how in the world do you make a kangaroo cake!?!" I asked myself. Well, after much thinking and deliberation, I came up with this:

First I got on the internet and searched for cartoon pictures of kangaroos but couldn't find any I liked. So I used a photograph and tried my hand at drawing a somewhat cartoon-y kangaroo. Then, when I was satisfied, I put it on a cookie sheet and covered it with wax paper. Then I traced the outline with dark brown frosting and filled it in with lighter brown frosting. Then I put it in the freezer. When the cake was cooled, I piped the background onto the cake and then I took the frozen kangaroo and turned it over onto the cake and CAREFULLY peeled off the wax paper. Then I used chocolate syrup for the eyes, nose and mouth. Ta-da!!! Sometimes I amaze even myself! I thought this would be an impossible cake, but I was actually pretty happy with it. Though I will admit that the wax paper and freezing idea wasn't my own.

Ryker got a car-track rug for his birthday along with lots of other great presents. Mimi was there and so was Grammie and Uncle Jordan, Auntie Angel and Liam. Papa was in Illinois, Uncle William was working, and Granddad was sick--party poopers!

One of Ryker presents bit him! He got a little toy that shoots little helicopter things out of a funnel and mister curious wanted to watch how it worked. Right when the thing was launching, Ryker looked into the funnel and got whacked in the mouth with the flier. In the picture below he's showing me the blood from his lip. Poor birthday boy!

All in all it was a wonderful birthday for Ryker. In the afternoon, some neighbor friends came over to play water balloons (thanks, Mimi, for filling 200 water balloons that were gone in just minutes!) and have cupcakes. The kids had lots of fun and we even got them to play a few water balloon games. For dinner, Ryker had chosen baked potato bar (what 3 year old wants baked potatoes for his birthday dinner!? Okay, well his first choice was cereal, but he had that for breakfast) and it was delicious. Auntie Angel made a watermelon basket and Grammie brought corn on the cob and a BIG bag of M&M's. Then we opened presents and had cake and ice cream. Ryker loved all of it! It was a busy and fun-filled day.

Raelin's Special Day

I haven't been feeling well lately (I'll tell you about that in a minute) and Raelin has been my big helper. Usually if I ask Raelin to do something, she doesn't want to or she complains or I have to coerce her or something, but lately she says "sure!" when I ask her to do something. It's been SO nice! SO I wanted to do something nice for her. I asked her what a fun Mommy/Daughter date would be and she wanted to go on a hike up the canyon (that's my girl!). So we did and we had a lot of fun.

There were lots of cows and the views were awesome! Cows are kind of scary. They are so big and so dumb and I just never know what they are going to do. One charged my car the other day! So they kind of creep me out; though, that doesn't change the fact that one day I will have a milk cow (or two--you guys know how I love milk). We also collected a lot of rocks and brought them home and washed them off. Some of them now grace our walking path out front. We also looked for snakes, but we only found one dead one on the road.

Pretty girls!
(That's Raelin's pink monkey hanging around her neck)

Mowing the lawn--Always an adventure in the Somers family

So our lawn received its first mowing on Saturday. Prior to being able to mow the lawn, though, Brice had to get his brother's lawn mower going. He finally decided it must be too low on gas. He and Ryker went to the car to try to siphon some out of the tank. I had just taken the car to get gas, so it was well topped off. Brice put the hose in and blew a little to try to find the level of the gas. Unfortunately, when he blew into the tank, some gas erupted from the tank and doused Ryker's poor little face! Brice stripped off his drenched shirt and ran him onto the house as he yelled for me. I was in the back yard and called back, "Yeah?" to which Brice just yelled my name again. Then I heard Ryker's blood-curdling scream-cry. I dropped the hoe and ran into the house to find Ryker naked in the sink and Brice holding his head under the faucet. Brice told me that he'd gotten gasoline sprayed in his face, so I grabbed my phone and the phone book and called poison control while Brice continued to drown the poor boy's stinging face and eyes under the faucet. Poison control said swallowing a little gas isn't a big deal (so if you're ever dying of thirst...), but inhaling it can cause really bad pneumonia. So she said to watch for a cough and to flush his eyes for 15 minutes. So that's what we did. The poor kid also had gas drench his shorts which irritated his boy parts (those poor things have been through the ringer the last month or so! First he got them smashed by the toilet seat when he was going pee, then he got a minor chemical irritation/burn when he managed to undo the childproof top to some cleaning solvent and spilled it all over his drawers, and now the gasoline incident! Now don't go calling CPS on us or anything! I promise we take good care of our kids; they're just Somers'. These things happen in this family. You get used to it. Unfortunately.)

So Ryker's eyes (and his boy parts) are just fine now, but in the picture above you can kind of see that they are a little sleepy looking. He felt fine by this time though, and he was out having a grass fight with his sister with all the grass clippings.

Raelin played so hard and so long in the fresh cut grass that her feet and hands were completely green! Since green is her favorite color, it made her day to have green body parts!

Cherry-Picking fun!

The other day we went to our friends' house to pick cherries. They have three huge cherry trees in their side yard and all of them were super encumbered with berries. The birds had started eating them, so Noelle wanted to get some before the birds got them all. The kids had a great time picking and eating all the cherries they could handle. They both climbed up in the trees (true to form, Ryker almost fell) and monkeyed around trying to get the riper cherries at the top. Then they had a cherry fight with the dads while the moms were looking up jam recipes. We made jam and fruit leathers that night and they both turned out GREAT!

Raelin will run through sprinklers anytime she can. She's a fish! We went to a really cool water park in Provo a few weeks ago (can't beat $3/person, and Ryker's free for another year!) and she cried and cried when it was time to go. Proof that she's got some Lawler in her somewhere.