Sigh. Seriously?

A question I get asked a lot by expectant mothers when they find out they are having a boy and discover I have 3 girls and 1 boy is “so are boys really that different from girls?”. My answer?

This is my adorable, sweet Eli.

He is ALWAYS on the move…

The last few days have been a bit hard for him, he found a bag of his dad’s chips and discovered sharp points are a bit more difficult to swallow than his regular baby food cuisine ( a lot of gagging and throw up involved before I could find, vacuum up and dispose of all the offending chips he had scattered throughout the house) – “where was I” you ask when the initial spreading of chips was happening? Downstairs. (For less than 5 minutes) putting a load of laundry in and out.

Then on Sunday he grabbed the cord to the flat iron and yanked it to the ground where he promptly tried to pick it up and burned the fingertips of both hands (resulting in blistering 2nd degree burns), these have since popped and we are in the process of keeping them clean (0n a little boy who likes to pick-up EVERYTHING) and healing them - “where was I” you ask? I was  2 feet away taking hot curls out of my hair for church. (The whole thing happened in the time it took me to try to reach for the flat iron as it fell to the ground and grab Eli to pick him up as he burnt his hands (10 seconds).

Which brings us to today…

I thought it would be such a neat treat to paint Liberty’s nails today – it’s been hard on her to have her older sisters back in school. Eli hovered nearby watching and wanting to hold all the things we were using to make her nails beautiful and I felt I was terribly successful in keeping all these things from him. When I was finished, I had Liberty stay still on the couch while her nails dried and I ran upstairs to use the bathroom (less than 5 minutes). As I go to head downstairs I get a whiff of this overpowering smell of nail polish and looked at my hands to see if I spilt any on me, then Eli began to whine…

Seriously?! The next hour involved trying to clean Eli with minimal success (why couldn’t I have used the blue nail polish like Liberty asked?!),

calling Eli’s doctor to see how I should get the nail polish out of his burns - which the good doctor, with an unsuccessful attempt not to laugh, said would act as a good barrier to infection and to leave it alone (why couldn’t I have used the blue nail polish like Liberty asked?!),

cleaning the floor with nail polish remover – before…

Halfway there…

When I had to take a break to call Crystal for another bottle of nail polish remover, clean up Eli (again) – because he had discovered if he held the Windex bottle up-side down cool blue stuff comes pouring out until he slipped in it and hit his head, and clean up Liberty’s “accident”, who had dutifully waited on the couch for her nails to dry and had been asking me for the last 15 minutes if she could get up ( not knowing the reason for her insistence was of a bathroom nature, I kept telling her to wait hoping to get most of the wet polish up before Eli walked through it again…) Sigh.

Are boys different than girls? A little bit.

Last night - Don, Autumn and I stayed up watching Mitt’s acceptance speech as the Republican’s Presidential Nominee and I loved watching Ann stand regally and ladylike as Mitt proudly pointed out “here is a woman who could’ve been successful at anything she wanted to do” and she chose the better part, to be a mom to her 5 boys. She looked serene, sane, and put together… What a beacon of hope on days like today she is, when I feel aged 20 years and positive everyone will be able to see the pink nail polish that won’t come out of the creases in my hands. That what I’m doing is important, that my serene-sane-put together days are coming and that I’ll miss this time of pink nail polish with all my heart.

Big Changes…Bigger Blessings

Wow. To say a lot has happened this summer would be the biggest understatement I have ever made! In the course of two weeks we welcomed Baby Eli, packed up our sweet little home of 6 years and moved around the block to our new home! It has taken until now for me to think beyond eating, sleeping, and unpacking – I’m now ready to branch out from the essentials!

Don has reserved the right to tell Elias’s story which is coming soon, but know our little Eli has nudged his way right into our hearts. He’s absolutely adored by all of us girls winning the nickname of “our little man” – and if you were to contest his cuteness you may find yourself in a scuff with his 3 protective, adoring sisters. “Is he a good sleeper” is the most common question I get and for all his sweetness, smiles (yep, he’s smiling already!), and engaging looks – the bags under my eyes, and few extra pounds I’ve gained (I tend to eat more when I’m super tired) since losing the baby weight should answer that sufficiently…

Coming home from the hospital is a mix of emotions for me: 1) I’m excited to be with ALL my children again and begin normal life 2) I’m terrified of trying to manage ALL my children and find normal life! The joy always wins out over the smatterings of baby blues and tiredness… Here is Eli home for the first time:

Here he is a few weeks later in his new home showing amazing head control: please ignore the slight chaos in the background and feel free to play “Finding Waldo” with the ever present, now “Caffeine-Free,” Diet Coke in the background:)

And finally, here is my baby boy today…I just want to eat him up!!! Oh, the sweetness.

Our sweet little house is empty and up for sale. It housed and sheltered us until we were busting at the seams, so awhile back Don and I began the process of praying for some direction on where to move our growing family, we considered all sorts of places throughout Utah County and seriously considered a few homes… but, as is the case when you let the Lord be apart of your decisions, He knew where we needed to be and we weren’t looking in the right place so we kept getting the red light on “our" choices. When a house became available in our ward we “knew” this is where we were suppose to be, but knowing and getting don’t always go easily hand in hand – perseverance, faith and many prayers later we closed on the house! I will always remember when Don told us it was ours…we had gotten into the habit of going for evening walks pass the house with the girls to look and dream. On one particular evening we went by the house, and Don looked at me and said, “It’s ours.” I looked at him hard and realized he meant it was actually ours, and I,being pregnant, cried. Packing up our house pregnant, then moving our belongings with a brand new baby would have been absolutely impossible, but with the help of our dear friend, Clint, and many numerous members of our ward it was done blessedly quick! I now enjoy a dishwasher and the knowledge that our children have the freedom to spread out and have privacy to ponder and play (we actually lost Liberty the first day in the house, we could hear her responding to our calls but couldn't locate her – she finally emerged from her hiding place in her sister’s closet where she colored herself like a tiger and christened the closet walls with similar markings….).

Here is our new home:

Landscaping is one of Don and my favorite hobbies, and this house came with a lot of landscaping potential! So weeds quickly gave way to bulldozing, leveling and with that came lots and lots of … dirt. The carefree days of my youth of not caring how high things were, how steep they were and how dirty they are allude me now – my kids? Not so much…   These next few pictures are the common results of shooing my kids out the door and telling them to go play, especially if Don gives them permission to include a hose…

Yep… life is back to normal.

Horse Crazy

It’s time to go back… life has been crazy with 5oth Anniversary, family visiting, remodeling, 4th of July (the biggest celebrated Olsen Holiday), and being in the special “summer swelling-gut kicking-exhausting being 35 and pregnant” condition, but I MUST go back to May and revisit our oldest, Autumn, turning 10 years old!!! As her birthday loomed closer we gave her a choice of having a friend party or going on a search for wild Mustangs and after a very short deliberation she gave up her months of “Bella Sara 10 year old mega friend horse party” planning to respond with a definite tone – “Mustangs.” Don had researched where the local Utah herd was most likely to be located and we loaded up our truck and headed to Benjamin to get Grandma and Poppa Olsen who followed in their truck. Then we headed out pass Eureka and Northwest to Vernon where we made a quick gasoline stop,

and with our family it is never too soon to have adventurous injuries which Bizzie demonstrated when she fell out of the truck trying to get in all by herself…

With that adventure under our belt we headed west once again.  It was one of the first nice, warm days of the year and we were anxious but hopeful that we would find the mysterious herd out near Fish Springs. Well, the Mustangs were slow in showing themselves and as we searched in every canyon, waterhole, and mountaintop for them we encountered just about everything else…

Cows…

Antelope…

Plants…

Cute Kids…

Uncooperative Kites…

And finally, after a lot of false leads (mostly sheep herder’s horses standing alone, pretending to be mustangs – so deceptive) Poppa spotted what looked like a herd against the base of the mountain! Ever hopeful we hoped out of the truck, binoculars in hand to see if this was it!

And there they were, a huge herd grazing along the mountain base! Near a dirt road nonetheless!

Trusting they wouldn’t gallop off in an hour, and starving after a morning-to-late afternoon hunt for the elusive herd we stopped for a quick, late lunch and to celebrate Autumn’s birthday before we continued the up-close and personal portion of the Mustang Adventure.

 

Here’s Animal reporting LIVE (at the time) at Simpson Springs:

And, because I love watching how real my kids think Animal is here are two more videos of Animal getting interviews with Bizzie and Kathleen, and then Liberty. I think they are worth watching and funny, but totally get it if one Animal video is enough.

Before we left Simpson Springs we got some very splintery, but cute pictures, here’s my favorite:

This is the restored Pony Express station at Simpson Springs.

Now, it was time to go visit the herd!!! After figuring out which dirt road would take us the closest we were finally getting close to our goal! As we approached the horses on the outer edge of the herd we realized we were going to have to go in on foot as we startled them and watched them majestically gallop toward their herd. (I was expecting mangy, dirty horses but these were…beautiful. Don carefully got Autumn and Bizzie within 20 yards of the mustangs and they took pictures and stared for over an hour.

A gazillion pictures were taken of the mustangs and I just picked a couple that showed them the best…

A satisfied Autumn.

What a day! After a sober but satisfied farewell we headed home. On the way we stopped to let Poppa top off the experience by giving the girls and a pregnant woman the opportunity to fire off a rifle and pistol.

 

Nice . . .

You would think that would be enough for one day wouldn’t you?! And it would have been, the fun end to a perfect day…but we Olsen’s like to go out with more flare and drama than that…

More to come about that later . . . 

Bizzie and Minnie!

Here’s the amazing duo…

Forgive me, I’ve got to ramble here for a second – one of the things I LOVE about being married to Don is how different we are (funny how it can be the most challenging thing too – but for the most part it is incredibly positive). One of our differences is our family backgrounds, where I grew up with an appreciation for the outdoors and the animals in it I did not have the experience of a daily hands-on that Don had growing up on the farm. I see the confidence that Don has from the experiences he received young - mastering fears of animals larger than himself (I’ll figure out how to post a picture of him showing steer several times larger than himself later), time alone to ponder-work-and figure things out on his own…Anyway, I’ve loved giving the girls a taste of a similar experience by showing lambs in the Mini-4H portion of the Benjamin Stock Show. They get to work closely with an animal, face the scariness of controlling a scared animal in front of a judge, and receive a trophy for their hard work!

Don and I are also grateful for Uncle Kip for providing Minnie to work with in the first place, he was her “coach” and was so kind and patient with her. We gathered at the Brown’s Barn in Payson on a Saturday morning and patiently waited for the pigs, steer and cakes (see previous post) to have their turns and with us was a lot of family support!

The Raymers… (my family)

The Olsens… (Heidi – Don’s sister and his mom, Kathleen)

(Blair and Kathleen again, Don’s parents)

(And of course, the sisterly support – I could tell Autumn was having a case of green envy, but she did an amazing job of being happy for and helping Bizzie)

  

(Liberty was just having fun…)

We had a bit of time before Bizzie needed to take Minnie in before the judge so Don worked with her a bit more to make sure she felt comfortable. He was pretending to be the judge while she had to make sure the lamb was always between the judge and herself, with her leg square in front of her neck so she couldn’t jump forward – she had it nailed!

The time came for her to lead Minnie into the arena - it was a madhouse! There were 20 little kids pulling around jumpy lambs of various ages and there were so many adult helpers that the kids had a hard time figuring out who the judge was! How did Bizzie do? AMAZING! And I’m not just saying that because I’m her mom! She led her lamb in, and in the chaos Minnie got skittish and jumped forward, flattening Bizzie on the ground! She promptly got up, grabbed Minnie’s rope, got control of her and kept pulling her in the direction the judge was directing her!!! No tears, no break in concentration – WOW.  She got to the spot she was directed to and with more chaos and loose lambs around her, she and Minnie did what they had trained to do – check out this perfect stance -

And here is the video of her receiving a trophy for her hardwork – while holding Minnie still – I’m telling you – amazing.

It can be hard to read Bizzie, she keeps her emotions fairly close. But I think she was pretty happy with herself…

It’s a bit fuzzy, but I love that Kip took the time to give Bizzie a “well done” pep-talk afterward too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bizzie’s part was done but her cousins’ turn was still coming. Kelly and Ashlynn have been doing this for a couple of years now and are pros! To help Ashlynn control her sheep she has the willing and gentle help from her friends and family (her sheep is being shown by a friend next to her and her dad, while Kelly watches protectively on…)

And here is Pro Kelly! Here are her skills in action, winning her the Senior Showmanship Award.

 

And finally, the day came to a satisfying end when Kelly’s sheep received the “Grand Champion Award” and Ashlynn’s sheep received the “Reserve Champion Award”!!!!

 

I know I’ve used the word a lot – but, what an AMAZING day!