Abundant Recompense Copy

I tend to be a bit of a raving lunatic these days. Sometimes I swear if one more kind and well-meaning person asks me "What? No baby yet?" I will kick them to the moon. Thanks for that, raging hormones. But today during quiet time I had just closed my wittle eyes for a snooze when somebody knocked at the door. DAH! I stormed out of bed cursing that salesman's name as I stomped down the stairs. I yanked open the door prepared to say "Go the heck away! Trying to sleep here! I don't want to buy 100 lbs of your steak! No the baby's not here yet, by the way!" But luckily I didn't say that when I realized that it was Larry, a sweet widower who lives down the street from us. He handed me a giant box of his homemade chocolates and a bag for the kids, asked how I was feeling, and said "don't worry, it'll come soon," gave me a hug, and that was that. I was left slack-jawed as he walked back to his car. We might just make it to the due date.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have been nesting like mad around here. We're finally about done, I think, because I'm way too pooped to do anything else except lay around and eat junk until the baby comes. But here are some pictures of some of the big projects we've gotten done. Project #1: Moving Bryn in with Addison We decided to put the two of them together for several reasons, and it has really worked out very well thus far. Bryn is loving her real-live big girl bed and transferred easily to it from her toddler bed.I think they really like sharing the loft, and it's nice that Addison doesn't have to be all the way up there by himself anymore. My main concern going into it was what to do about nap/quiet time. Bryn still naps almost every day and Addison has an hour of solo playtime during her nap. We had a few awkward weeks of poor Addison being stuck in the baby's room playing with plastic keys and squeaky toys because all the big boy toys were upstai...

Reese's eggs and egg salad sandwiches - 2 of the 3 best edibles of Easter. (not pictured: deviled eggs - I'm too lazy to make them)

We are the grateful recipients of a new (to us) swingset! A family in our ward with kids that have outgrown it offered it for free if we'd just move it. What a blessing. We borrowed a neighbor's pickup and brought it home and got it reassembled just in time for a big snowstorm the next morning This is Addison helping with his toy drill. My heart is melting over here.  The kids are in absolute heaven! And it's been a vehicle for Nate and I to get work done outside without quite as much "help" as usual.

This weekend has pretty much just been a party. We got together with Beck and Ben and Trevor, Meg and Sam, and Brianna (my sisters and co) and did some wedding dress shopping and surprise birthday partying and it has been so much fun! We are all awesome to hang out with, if I do say so myself. Here are a bunch of pictures. The star-crossed lovers and Trevor Cooking Bri's birthday supper unbeknownst to her. (Cream tuna? For real?) Hi. I am ridiculously cute. Yeah, me too. Thanks to Pinterest for the fabulous birthday cake idea. Megan and Bri, who is now officially an adult! These balloons survived a whole night and day in Beck and Ben's trunk. We are SO sneaky. After Bri's party we left the kids with a babysitter and went to see the Hunger Games. Ben totally forgot his church clothes (in stark contrast to Megan who didn't bring clothes for any day except  Sunday) and ended up borrowing a white shirt from our Elder's Quorum President to wear to church after we realize...

Happy Easter everybody! Ours was wonderful. We spent it with just the four of us, and we so enjoyed having some good family time doing extra special things with the kids. We dyed eggs on Saturday. It was so fun to watch the kids' amazement as the little pills of dye got all bubbly in the vinegar. They did a great job with the actual dyeing part, with zero major spills! Hands down their favorite part was the proud "dump all the cups of dye in the potty together and then flush it down" tradition we've brought along from my side of the family. We made small Easter baskets for Sunday morning and we're all suffering from jellybean overload.  Church was a bit hectic - Nate and I were asked to sing with the choir and also do a musical number, so the kids spent a good bit of time by themselves in the pew with one of my Young Women behind them making sure neither of them choked on a pretzel and died. They did great, but I missed them. Nate and I played Bach's Passion C...

1. Nate has been working on the Histories series of the Joseph Smith Papers for four years. He's been in charge of every aspect of the books, from making sure the documents are transcribed right, to making sure the footnotes get written on time, to rewriting them when they're wrong, to guiding the books through dozens of reviews, to copyediting and typesetting, and (what he's working on now) indexing. The first book, Joseph Smith Histories, 1832-1844 ,  came out two weeks ago, and the second book, Assigned Historical Writings, 1831-1847,  will be out in September. I must say, Nate is famous these days. He was part of a press conference for the book and he's been interviewed several times for news articles. He's most proud of the compliment the lead historian on the series, Karen Davidson, paid him at a Joseph Smith Papers banquet last week. She said, "Without a doubt, there is no finer production editor in the world than Nathan Waite." He is so fancy. 2...