Valentines Day and Car Trouble

Sean has continued to work away his days, poor guy! I think he feels like all he does is work! He is back to days and gets home about 6:30, so we have been so grateful to spend the evenings together! Only 5 more shifts at the Children’s hospital, then on to some nice outpatient stuff with weekends off! My belly continues to grow bigger and bigger. I went to the doctor today and I am measuring right at 34 cm which is perfects since I will be 34 weeks on Thursday. My weight has remained the same for the last 6 weeks which he says is fine since babies make really good parasites and will take what they need no matter what. I have just had upset stomachs a lot this pregnancy, I guess my intestines just don’t love all the extra pressure this time around. Baby’s head is down and her heartbeat is great! I can’t believe we only have 6 more weeks! Brett is still loving preschool with all his heart! He is getting so good at doing more detailed coloring (staying in the lines and using more colors). He is also mastering tons of pre-reading skills like following the words one to one with his finger while reciting memorized texts. He and Alana have been loving playing together with stuffed animals, star wars figures, princess castles, and blankets (which substitute as jedi or super hero capes). Alana is loving to call herself a big girl. She has opinions about her clothes and her hair. She loves to tell me she’s hungry ALL DAY LONG! She loves bath time lately and has actually been enjoying getting her hair done more. She loves to sing and I hear her singing the ABC song and I am a Child of God all the time. She also loves to sing a long to the children’s cd we have in the car and of course to Frozen music. We tried some potty training last week. She did pretty good when I set the alarm and told her when to go, but she didn’t seem to get that she needed to get to the potty before she went without the timer. She loves the idea of panties and of course the prize (a build a bear!), but I don’t think she’s quite ready. I am also lazy and don’t want to fight it, i’d rather wait a few more months and have it click a little quicker. We went to Boise over Valentines weekend to visit my sister and her family. Sean was working and needed to stay home, but my parents went with us and it was a great trip. We left after Brett’s school and my mom’s doctors appointment on Friday and arrived a little after dinner time. The kids had already eaten lots of snacks in the car and were so excited to see Kaity. Us adults enjoyed some yummy tacos and conversation. The kids did great on the ride down and both enjoyed some extra shut-eye!
 
Kaity has a new game for her Wii called Just Dance. Brett loved dancing with her and it was so cute to watch the two of them dancing and dancing! Alana found Kaity’s dress ups and was thrilled to be Elsa. I think we might need to invest in some princess dress-ups soon.
 
The kids slept great on Friday night which is always a relief when in a different place. On Saturday we got up and played then went to a local Mexican restaurant for lunch. I love eating Mexican food in Utah and Idaho! It doesn’t burn my mouth off like those crazy chili-loving New Mexicans =) We went to the mall after and let the kids play at the indoor play place then we went to Kaity’s favorite ice cream place U-Swirl.
 
One of the only fights the kids had was because Brett was offended that Kaity didn’t have “boy toys”, he was quite thrilled with Ken =) Alana and Kaity couldn’t stop snuggling each other the whole weekend and Alana had no problem with the toy selection.
 
We exchanged some Valentine gifts on Saturday night and Alana got this pretty new dress from Grandma and Grandpa. She was running so much, I couldn’t get her not blurry.

The kids all got some candy and necklaces and fun little coloring books too. Alana was putting her necklace on Lizzie.
 
We attended church with the Browns on Sunday at 1:30 (yuck!) I actually really like the 11:00 time right now, but 1:30 was rough to wait for and even rougher for the kids to behave for. It didn’t help that there were 2 baby blessings and 5 confirmations so we were in the very back of the gym. It was all worth it though to see Alana sleep on Sam through Sunday School and to hear Sam teach a wonderful lesson in Relief Society. Brett loved going to Kaity’s class with her, and was exceptionally brave. Kaity lost a tooth doing primary too, which was so fun! We had some delicious gyros for dinner from the best bites cook book. We left about 9 on Monday morning to return home, and the kids and I were giddy to see our daddy! Sean and I have often had some pretty funny Valentines Days, starting with our first where Sean had his tonsils removed. So it wasn’t too weird to celebrate the day after. Sean got me a beautiful rose plant (just like he did on our first Valentines Day). I am determined to keep it alive! I gave Sean some fun coupons including a dinner to Costa Vida, which we enjoyed that night! We got the kids some new paw patrol toys which they loved!
 
We have done lots of fun crafts lately too, like making these cool shields, making new play dough, and coloring masks from paper plates.
 
We missed Sean like crazy on Sunday, but Alana still got this cute hair style. She is getting so much more hair!
 
The other drama that has been happening this week is with our Mazda Protege which we lovingly refer to as Captn’ Jack. Captn’ jack was purchased for Sean’s oldest brother Eric in probably 2005. Its a 2002 and has been Sean’s car since he got home from his mission. We have had it for our entire marriage. I remember it being decorated after we got married and driving it everyday to work at Saratoga Shore Elementary. I remember driving it to Albuquerque and bringing Baby Brett home from the hospital in it. Anyway, we kinda love Captn’ Jack! Its been acting pretty weird lately and losing power. We took it to the shop last week and gave it a tune up (new spark plugs and some fuel injections), but it has continue to have the same problem of losing power. We were also told we needed to replace all the motor mounts which costs about $1000! We looked into some new (used) cars, but felt like we should take it into the shop one more time. After messing with it for an hour, the mechanic was ready to give up and send it home, then when he went to drive it out to the parking lot, it lost power! They determined it was the fuel pump so we decided to go ahead and fix that as well as all the mounts. It still lost power 2xs this morning but then it drove great for Sean all the way up to Primarys. Lets hope that was a fluke! No matter what, we are so grateful for lots of tender mercies in this situation. One morning when Sean was on his way to work at 5, the car lost power right before it left the neighborhood instead of on the freeway. My parents have been here to help every step of the way with 2 extra cars. My dad has helped me to understand the car shop stuff and has dealt with all of that since Sean doesn’t usually get 45 seconds to spare at work. The car lost power at the shop so they knew what we were talking about. Lastly we just got our tax return and had enough to pay for the repairs! Oh the joys of adulthood! Bills are not my favorite thing and with my new cap (which wasn’t covered by our dental insurance) at $700, the car repairs at $1300, and a new baby coming with an estimated bill of $4500, I think 2016 is determined to teach me what it means to spend ridiculous amounts of money on things I don’t want to (well minus the baby, I don’t mind paying for her, I’m just not used to it since we never even saw a bill for Brett or Alana).

***I guess it wasn't a fluke =(  Sean couldn't start the car tonight when he was trying to come home from work, so he got a security man to come jump him.  The jump didn't work, so he called a tow truck but the tow truck couldn't get into the parking structure so my parents went up there to help him push the car down to the main level and now they are there waiting for the tow truck!  Luckily, the repair shop set us up with a tow on the house if anything were to go wrong with the car after the fix yesterday.  Who knows where we'll go from here.  I gotta just keep looking for those tender mercies.