Happy Day! We are proud to Introduce...

The Newest Little Tippets:

Eden McKinnon 

born March 26, 2013

at 0027

7 pounds 4 ounces

20.5 inches long

We are so happy to have another little girl.

And feel so blessed to add her to the family.

More details to come later...

Patience is a Virtue

Patience is a Virtue- that Mona Tippets doesn't have!!

I remember hearing a phrase from my mom, probably more than any other: 

"Be patient."

I'm telling myself that again tonight as my hips, sacrum, pubic bone and back are all crying out in pain. 

I move like I am 100 years old and it is not fun.

This baby and myself are running out of room. 

For the love, just come out! 

Every day this last week I thought I was going into labor... just to wake up the next morning still pregnant.

Uugghhh.

I'm a much happier woman holding a baby in my arms than in my womb. 

Ben keeps telling me that I'm not really even due yet, which is true.

But I see no reason why this baby shouldn't come out.

Even the only Pediatric Pulmonologist in the state of Idaho told me that by 37 weeks gestation there are plenty of alveoli developed for healthy lungs. 

See, no reason at all why this baby shouldn't come!

My doctor is now on vacation and won't be back until Easter. Ben was out of town for two days and when he got back I had a 12 hour window to deliver when both my doctor and husband could be there for delivery. Darn. I missed it. And I better have had this baby before Easter or else!

Ben took all of next week off, hoping this baby will come. If Mousse doesn't make an appearance, then Ben is building an entertainment center... so either way it's a win- win situation, right? 

He currently building drawers for our master closet... it's 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night. 

Manic Mode has already started and I may not get him out of the garage for a week...unless I actually have this baby.

So, what have I been doing while the waiting is torturing me?

Sewing... cleaning.... cooking... canning chicken...watching every neighbors' kids this week stocking up on kid trades for the future..... oh, and taking care of the three kiddos I all ready have. 

Lots of hot showers, a pedicure and so wishing that Downton Abbey's forth season were here or that I owned the third to watch it a few more times. 

I did have a baby shower this week. So fun.

I told them to keep it low-key, which they kind of did. 

 Holly insists that every baby be celebrated, which is true. 

I'm so grateful to have wonderful friends here. 

Here are the pictures:

 Popcorn with a sign, "ready to pop"

 Our cravings... Kristi's is licorice and mine is fruit smoothies

This is my friend and neighbor, Kristi who is 3 weeks and 100 pounds behind me. 

My friends Olivia and Holly, who hosted the shower. 

I am worried about Sissy when Mousse arrives. Her favorite positions remain as: 

1- Being held by me. 

2- Laying on me. 

She hasn't a clue what my big belly has to do with a baby. We have a bassinet set up in the office. She knocks it down, tries to climb in it, or uses it for her personal storage area.

Today I went in there and found her piece of pizza and sippy cup sitting on the mattress. 

Hmmm..... I don't know what she is going to do when there is a baby in there. 

Time will tell.

Hopefully sooner than later... :)

And, another item of not having patience...
After talking to several people about not finding out the gender of the baby at the 20 week ultrasound, I decided that it sounded fun and should do it. I have always had my mothery intuition and have known and been right with the last three what gender they were before we actually confirmed with ultrasound, so I didn't think it would be a big deal anyway. And, since we have both genders anyway, whatever  gender came would be just fine and it would be fun to be surprised.
WRONG.
It had been driving me crazy. I think the baby is a boy, Carter thinks that it is a girl. He says that since we have three boys in the family and only two girls, then we have to have a girl to even it out. It makes perfect sense in a four year old's mind.
I have been planning boy stuff, but didn't want to make baby boy projects only for them to be a waste. We also have the room situation of where to put the baby if it is a boy. If it is a girl, then she would share a room with Sissy. Anyway, more important than these two and other issues, I found myself feeling guilty at the excitement of the thought of "what if it really is a girl?" Afton has been so much fun to have and all the girly things that she does are so cute to me. I would get giddy thinking about it. Then I felt bad if this baby really is a boy, and worried that I wasn't as excited to have another boy and maybe wanted another girl. Blah, blah, blah back and forth. People keep asking me what I want it to be or what I am hoping for. And honestly, I want both. I would be totally happy and excited with either.
Anyway, as the pregnancy end is drawing closer, I couldn't handle the emotions or the details of preparing clothes etc. And, we gave in.
Luckily we know enough people with access to some type of ultrasound machine and we took a peek at 34 weeks. As I thought, the baby is big enough at 34 weeks that it is really hard to see anything in that area. Legs were tightly closed and remained that way, as there isn't any room for them to unfold much. But, we got a good guess at what we are having.
And, we are proud to announce that one of us in the family is right about the gender. :)
And, we are all so excited! Don't ask us to tell you, as we agreed it is a family secret.
We went to Krispy Kreme to celebrate. Gross. But the kids had fun.

Snowy fun in Donnelly

 Ben gets invited to a Winter Medical Clinic Conference in McCall, Id each winter. We tagged along last year and did the same this year and invited our friends, The Perry's, to come along too. We rented a cabin in Donnelly and spent two wonderful days playing in the snow. 

So unlike Ben, he only went to three hours total of the conference and spent the rest of the time playing with us. The snow was too good to pass up by sitting in a boring meeting. We didn't object to him playing hooky and Oh, what fun we had. 

 Bridger and Sissy in the tube

 She hates to wear mittens, but couldn't get them off as they come up to her elbows.

 She did like to sled.

 Bridger sledding and playing in the snow. This kid loves, loves, loves to be outside, especially in the winter. He got to drive snowmobiles, run the snow plow and tried snowboarding down a hill by standing on his sled. It worked for a few feet until he slipped off. He misses winters with lots and lots of snow. His mother does not, and loves that we can drive up to deep snow and play in it for a few days and then be done. 

Bridger and Carson

 Maeley and Carter in the tube. Carter wanted to bring his own goggles, they worked okay for a while. Maeley loved to drive the snowmobiles as well.

Carson with the "enchanted forest" behind him. 

Attempted family picture.. without Bridger

Dad and Sis on the snowmobile

A good overnight snowfall

 Snowplowing is so much fun when you only have to do it once a year!

The Girls- Maeley, Ashlyn and Afton

Holly and Ashlyn

 Bridger sitting on the piled snow outside the window of the cabin.

We also played lots of games, wanted to go ice skating but it was closed due to hockey tournaments, which was a huge bummer to the kids. We also went to the Pancake House for some good eats.

February 2013

Here are some random pictures from February. 

Sissy loves to cook and this is her cooking in one of my favorite outfits that she has. I love that she can wear these cowboy boots that Bridger got when he was a baby.  The boots have been too narrow for either of the boys to wear- Sissy loves to be in boots, especially these. 

Here she is helping me make White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake for Valentines day. She loves, LOVES sour cream, as you can see by her licking the lid. She loves all sorts of dips and dressings (something her brothers don't like at all) and eats them plain. 

The cheesecake was super good, by the way. We had it after a fantastic dinner of grilled honey-lime salmon with lemon basil orzo and salad. Some times my cooking even amazes myself, and this was one of those terrific days for the palate. 

For Valentines day, we did a scavenger hunt for the kids in the morning before Ben went to work. It started with a huge heart shaped paper with a clue hanging from the ceiling fan in the boys' room.  And then continued all around the house and garage. They had such a fun time doing it, and we had fun putting it together. They got heart shaped lollipops, Phineus and Ferb journals, licorice ropes and pens through out the hunt. We had a breakfast of raspberry, heart shaped pancakes. Oh what fun holidays are!

Sissy loves sugar and I couldn't bear her to eat this whole thing, so luckily after a few days the kids lost track of the lollipops and I tossed them before they were mostly gone! 

Sissy cooking peas and doesn't want to be disturbed for a picture. 

And, like her mother, she enjoys reading recipe books. 

I mentioned before that Bridger has taken on a personal assignment of always having a family night lesson. He has surprised us at how much he knows, what he can throw together at a moments notice or what detail he comes up with when we give him enough time. Here is a lesson he put together in less than 5 minutes. He got the poster with Wyoming map we got at Ben's work party and changed the title and message of the poster:

It says, "maps ar like the camts" (or maps are like the commandments)

On the back he wrote: a map is like the commandments. Commandments are important to us because God wants us to do some. 

He then had a great lesson about how in life we are given commandments as guides of what to do that show us the way where the Lord wants us to go, just like a map. Sometimes we break a commandment and we lose our way, but we can always go back to the map and see what direction we should be going. Good analogy, Bridger!

Now, here is project that Ben worked on for a lot longer than he anticipated.

He almost finished our master closet, and was using a paint sprayer to paint the shelves. While we had the paint sprayer, he decided to spray the doors that we never did in our room and bathroom. 

He went to Lowes and had the paint color matched, or really color mismatched, and sprayed all six of them. I could tell immediately that the color was way off. After Ben painted all of them and rehung them, I knew the color would bother me every single day of my life. So what does any good husband do when he knows his wife isn't happy about something? He fixed it, immediately! He took all the doors right back down and repainted all of them with a new color, the real matching color from the original paint store. 

And, then decided that since he still had the sprayer and the "door painting contraption" he continued to paint all the doors in the house that we didn't paint... a total of 24 doors. It took about a week of getting up at 5 and putting on a coat before work and doing one again at night before bed, and taking them all down and rehanging them... whew!! Thanks, babe!

He made this frame  to be able to paint six doors at the same time. Each door has a small screw at the top and bottom so it can swivel so you can paint the front and back at the same time, and they are still hanging to dry, cutting down on the time that it takes to paint each one. When he was done,  a neighbor came over with his doors and used it too. :) Like I've said before, I married a pretty ingenious guy! 

My projects for the month... well, the ones I finished are:

The Love board... so cute and fun to make. The rosettes, that make the heart, took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I got it done. 

Burlap wreath for the front door. 

Ice Skating

One of the Christmas present that the boys recieved was ice skating lessons. Ever since we lived in Wisconsin, they have been huge hockey fans and have wanted to skate and play. They were very excited  to learn and have done really well. This has been their favorite activity that we have put them in. Bridger is ready for Hockey 101 and Carter is close behind. 

We are taking a break for the spring and hopefully will start back up in the fall.

Just wearing hockey gear was so much fun for them.

Kids prior to starting lessons

 Bridger on the ice

Carter on the ice. 

After week three, Carter came home and said,

 "Mom- I'm a professional ice skater!"

Not quite, but you'll get there soon enough.


Here are some videos if you are interested:
Carter

Bridger: