Beware: If You Are Pregnant Don’t Watch This…

On Saturday, in-between Conferences, we went down to the farm with a cake to wish Don’s brother, Kip, a happy birthday. He and his daughter, Kelly, have sheep down there that they raise and Kelly cares for and shows at livestock shows. They were busy feeding and caring for the sheep so we waited on the warm and blustery day under the shed until he could come in out of the wind for a bit to eat cake. As we waited we saw him hurry by and then walk back with an ewe to the stable. Kip explained quickly that this ewe was a first time mom and was about to give birth and he needed to supervise to make sure she and the lamb(s) didn’t struggle. Don saw a great learning opportunity, asked the girls if they wanted to see a lamb born (of course they did), thrust the camera at me, and went to help Kip!

I was impressed at how calm, attentive and efficient Kip was during the whole process. He explained when it’s a first time mom it was safer to help the process along to make sure,  the lamb(s) didn’t linger too long in the birth canal killing them and possibly the mother. I have given birth 3 times, but have only actually watched the process once…I don’t know if it’s because I’m pregnant and I will soon be in that ewe’s position or if I’m just squeamish…but, I had to turn away quite a bit and suppress the gag reflex…that being said, it was still an amazing process to watch! Straw was everywhere and as the lambs came out wet they got covered in the stuff, after a good shake to get them breathing Kip had the girls rub them to get them warm & their blood flowing - in the process, the girls fell in love with these twin brothers! Then it was time to get the mom to become familiar with the scent of her new baby so she would bond with and recognize them.

Don is really good about helping the girls process what they’ve experienced by asking them questions right after (it stays with them longer that way) so he got our take on the whole process and while Mommy Ewe was bonding with her lambs…

…we walked the few steps over to the shed and sang “Happy Birthday” and ate cake. I am VERY grateful I had the foresight to bring the baby wipes, otherwise Kip would have had no problem eating with lingering traces of afterbirth on his wrists – I would have lost the battle with the gag-reflex for sure.

And of course, their was the typical “jokes” played by Uncle Kip! The wiping of icing on the nose and then encouraging Liberty to rub it in is always fun……..

It was a very unique way to spend  a birthday, and the girls still talk about “their” lambs with motherly love:)

So Many Interesting Things…

General Conference was WONDERFUL! And each of my girls did a fantastic job for their respective ages paying attention. FHE on the topic paid off, I was very proud of them!! (Don and I too – we stayed awake for all 4 sessions!) As I listened to the various topics discussed pertaining to things I was worrying about I was grateful for a Father who is mindful of me. I was humbled by the many obstacles others face and realize how simple mine are in comparison, so when I came across this…

 

It was good food for thought, especially if you are battling a cold, pink eye, pregnancy acne and get lost in thinking you have it pretty bad. Anyway, I wanted to play catch-up and hit on some of our favorite happenings.

#1: Liberty Turns 2!!!!

On March 25th my baby turned two…I hadn’t realized how much she had grown until I took her to the doctor today for her immunization shots and saw how she could no longer fit on the baby scale and had to be weighed like a big girl… We had a lot of fun celebrating her birthday – it was an interesting mixture of Cinderella and Caillou, her favorite things but she loved it!

This next picture was slightly scary…she had just finished eating Caillou and was very messy and proud of herself. Don and I had contemplated making a pinata of Caillou’s head but (as wonderful as it would be to vent some of our grownup frustration of hearing Caillou so frequently in our house – felt the same way about Barney with Autumn and Einstein Babies with Bizzie) – it still seemed a little morbid to beat up a head…yet, we made a cake with him on it and ate it?! Hmmm…

#2: Autumn’s 4th Grade “Utah” Program

She did a great job! She had her part memorized and recited it with poise and confidence, “The largest salt lake in the Western Hemisphere, The Great Salt Lake, is what remains of the ancient Lake Bonneville.” I attended the day performances and Don attended the night time one with the camera. He came home proud of Autumn’s performing but chuckling, joking we should put all 11 videos up on the TV and do a chocolate milk drinking game for every time she  fidgeted with her costume! I watched them later and we would have drank A LOT of chocolate milk! She chose to represent her Indian heritage and wore an Indian costume ( a slightly ironic look on a blond, welsh looking girl…) but she had  a lot of fun being with her friends:

In case you are interested, grab some chocolate milk and watch ONE of Autumn’s “costume fidgeting” clips. When we teased her about it she said that her top had got twisted around and she HAD to fix it! In her defense, I was pretty impressed how she was able to put equal focus into the song and costume fixing!:

And finally, #3: Creative Dancing

I grew up learning and loving the structure of ballet and was looking forward to sharing that with my girls. But I found that I was more than happy to give up that dream when I saw how happy they were creating more free-spirited moves (if you need a memory-jog on some of those moves look at these two posts: BYU Dancing and Breaking Loose at Disneyland – June Post). I was excited when I found a Community Class taught by modern dance instructors at BYU and enrolled the girls in it – they LOVED it! They were allowed to dance the way they wanted while learning body control at the same time. They had  a closing Spring Performance and were excited to show us what they learned.

Bizzie was a fairy in her dance and of course we had to take a picture of her in the proper setting, this smile always make me laugh, it’s her “I-feel-so-pretty” smile:

Autumn was a retro-dancer in her performance, hence the hip hand poses:

And Liberty just wanted to join in on the picture taking:

They did a fantastic job and where it was a community class there were only two performances and our children were in both of them which made for the fun-packed but short recitals we parents love.

Waiting to perform:

Finished and Proud:

That catches us up – kind of, we had one more interesting event that happened during General Conference that deserves a post all of its own…be watching for that one – I’ll dub it “The Miracle of Creation” or “The Facts of Life” or “Beware: If You Are Pregnant Don’t Watch This…”

Learning From Experience

Last Saturday we were down at the farm preparing Bizzie to show a lamb in the upcoming Benjamin Stock Show and when our work was done, Don took the girls for a drive on the 4-wheeler down to the lower pasture. I watched them drive off…

Then about 40 minutes later they came back…along with an inch layering of mud…particularly on Autumn.

She looked so forlorn and…muddy, I couldn’t help but burst into laughter! Between tears I’m looking at Don trying to get a read on what happened, I thought originally she had become the mud-flap of the 4-wheeler because she was hanging on to the back, but – as to be expected on an Olsen Excursion – there was a slight mishap:

Yep, stuck… I guess the weight of the fat dog and 4 people was enough to sink that little 4-wheeler in a lot of mud. So when Don told Autumn to hop off and lighten the load so he could have another go he thought she would stand to the side out of the way, instead she took 4 steps back directly behind the 4-wheeler and got the full blast of mud and spinning wheels…hmmm, I guess she won’t do that again….

Anyway, thankfully the 4-wheeler was equipped with a winch and once out of the first pit they still had one more obstacle to go:

Again, thanks to Don’s perseverance and supreme 4-wheeler skills they were out once again and finally ready to head back…

My reaction?

It wasn’t anything compared to the calm, but exasperated sigh from Poppa Olsen as he said, “I just cleaned that 4-wheeler….”

Remember that?

Don downloaded all his videos from his iphone on to my computer over the weekend and I’ve had a lot of fun perusing through past moments. One that I came across happened about a month ago when the girls and I decided to drop in on the YW/YM BYU bowling activity that Don was attending. We hadn’t seen Don all day and rather than interrupt the youth’s activity with our reunion we went upstairs to hang out with Don for a few minutes. While there we watched a BYU dance class…jamming… 

I could tell the music was starting to work its way into the girls when Bizzie suddenly vogues, Autumn tried moon walking, and Liberty’s little bum started twitching…so, knowing another Olsen jammin’ session was about to occur, out came the iphone! I can’t remember the last time I could bust out the moves in front of strangers with no inhibitions whatsoever…

Curve Ball Number 2…

Yesterday was a surreal day…much like our shock when we found out we were pregnant after announcing to the world that we were content and complete with our 3 girls… Heavenly Father threw us another curve ball when we looked at the very obvious anatomy of our little boy in the ultrasound! Don and I had enough awareness to high-five each other behind the back of the Ultrasound-ist (is that even a word?) at the accomplishment of a seemingly impossible feat for us, and then we remained in quiet awe as a very real little boy spirit was introduced to us. He’s healthy and active, proving it with his constant movement and kicking, he waved to us and proudly displayed he was indeed a boy many times…or maybe the doctor, sensing our shock, felt the need to remind us frequently…

The next surreal experience occurred when we started using words in our home we have never used before to tell the girls about who would be joining them soon - “brother” “son” “boy” “he”.

We are pretty confident about the family name we have picked out for him and are already referring to him as Elias and Eli. The girls constantly talk to him and he seems to be MUCH on their minds! Anyway, that’s our news – we’re excited, shocked, and eager to meet our new addition in August…

Best Days…

I love the blog I found this picture on…

I wanted to get this “Best Day” posted before it drifted too far from my memory. With the crocus and daffodils blooming it seems surreal that not so long ago we were doing this snow trip! But just a few weeks ago I had my best friend by my side and our girls surrounding us, squinting into an icy blue sky…

After hearing a lot of good things about this Utah man’s ice sculptures we decided a trip up to Midway and Heber Valley was a great destination for President’s Day. We got up early to be in Midway by 10am when it opened, signed an agreement not to touch or break anything (a little nerve wreaking with a 23 month old), and walked into an icy fairyland…the girls kept calling them Diamond Castles and loved imagining living in them.

This was the only picture of Don. I could tell he was in heaven by the 49 pictures he took of various ice formations. He is a wonderful photographer! Here are a few of my favorites…

Well after successfully not breaking anything, and avoiding the crowds that came just minutes after we left, we drifted over to “The Barn” which had a large assortment of reasonably priced home decor AND a bathroom! An owl (Bizzie), a horse (Guess), a rabbit figurine (Liberty), an Uncle Sam Iron piggy bank just like the one I grew up with (Rachel), and a slightly lighter wallet later (Guess), we left for the Homestead Crater. I had been here once and thought it was REALLY cool but things are always cooler when you see it through your kids eyes (they didn’t say much which is always a sign of high brain activity… and possibly fear of a volcano coming back too life…)

The water was so warm, it was a little scary letting the girls get close to the edge of the dock because explorers have never been able to find the bottom (probably due to the high temperature as you go further down). Families were swimming around, and a scuba diving class was taking place behind us – all with 2 feet of snow outside!

Sorry for all the videos…some of our trips we forget to take still pictures, this last video of the Crater is kind of neat in how it shows how they burrowed into the side of the Crater to get to the water and the primitive dressing rooms they have set up for the swimmers…

“Oh, lover of frogs…” Grandma, this is for you…

We were famished and headed to our favorite burger joint in Heber Valley – Dairy Keen, it is a fun place for kids who love trains, and parents who want to eat while their kids are distracted by the trains…

And as a parting farewell to the valley we stopped and watched skiers topple over in Solider Hollow and took a picture of the wonderful old engines they have in the Heber Creeper Train Yard. It was a beautiful, bright, best day…

Another Typical Olsen Adventure

I LOVE our adventures! Don likes to try to find the most direct way from Point  A to Point B but 8 out of 10 times it proves to be the opposite. This usually finds me bringing up the end because I want to video the attempts, which slows me down more because I’m laughing so hard I’m worried I’ll pee my pants! So far we’ve always made it back to the car, albeit a bit more muddy or wet than when we started…

This was another perfect example of that. We had Don home with us on a sunny day so we packed into the car and went up Diamond Fork Canyon to explore. When we found a good spot we got out and donned out trusty rubber boots (they have been SUCH a good investment!) and headed in a general upward direction. Off to our left was a perfectly good trail, but Don veered to our right and years of experience has taught me that if I give him free reign in direction decisions 1) he’s happier and 2) I will most likely be “laughing so hard I’m worried I’ll pee my pants!” – it’s a good compromise:)  Shortly after that veer to the right the videos began:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Taking a Break”

(Liberty would use Don’s hair as a safety grip, he had a pretty nifty hair style going by the time Liberty was feeling safe enough to let go!)

“Our Wet Reward! Again, love the rubber boots – snow one minute, waders the next…”

“All the Pretty Ladies”

“…And Molly…”

Well, after taking the long way about, on the way back to the car we found a very simple trail going from Point A to Point B … but where’s the fun in that?! The last adventure occurred 5 feet from the car – Don and I had taken great care in keeping Liberty safe and dry but, following in her Daddy’s footsteps, she felt that the most direct way from Point A to Point B was through the knee deep puddle rather than around…hmmm…