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So I have been living in a heavy fog lately simply because my mind isn't working all the great these days. Plus when I'm sick I tend to just deal with the present, taking it a day at a time. I realized that I have got to get my act together because my life is about to take off going really fast and if I am not ready it will be a disaster. So I know this is stimulating reading for you all but I have got to write this down where I can find it in a day or two! :O)

In four days I have to have our affairs in order for us to leave town for two weeks to which we will then return for one week only to have to hurry and buy a car and then leave for an entire month. AHHHHHH! Ok, deep breath. I am thinking I may just send the hubby off for a month, I am not sure, we'll see if we can get a van or not. If we have one car I will be definitely coming with him. August is the worst month to be gone for us....its when we moved here so everything that needs to be renewed comes in the mail and when we are gone it is a nightmare! Business license, insurances, .... so I hope I can stick around for an extra week to make sure all our bills get paid on time and then meet up with Stew. We'll see.

Ok so here is the to-do list for the next FOUR days:

CHECK SORT OF - call insurance and switch my providers - keep getting busy signal :(
CHECK SORT OF - deep clean the house - I clean one room only to have it destroyed in a day. These kids! :)
CHECK - clean out Stew's car and wash it - its been over a year! :(
CHECK - LAUNDRY
CHECK - go to the temple
CHECK - figure out how much we can pack in our tiny car, I think we'll be wearing the same clothes everyday! I better make sure to pack laundry detergent.
CHECK - buy snacks for the long drives
CHECK - get gas in the car
- get my labs done
CHECK - go to bank
CHECK - drop movie off at Library
- get fabric for my mom to sew me something to wear to the wedding this August, oh my stupid veins make it such a trail to find clothes that work!
- get someone to water plants and pick up our mail
CHECK - Get pictures scrapbooked and get ready for Gma's
CHECK - do our finances for July
- clean back yard and take pics for blog
CHECK- cut the boy's hair
- take return to Michale's
CHECK - finish the book of Mormon I have like 10 more pages! WOO hOO!
CHECK - Start the D&C
CHECK - go to post office to send package to sister
CHECK - Finish processing my orders- Ahhhhh! I am so behind on these!
- Make sure the kids get to play with some friends before they leave for the summer
CHECK - Do some more car searching - hate this.

Now will this all get done? Absolutely not. But maybe I can get some of it done and that would be nice. Oh, I will be happy to feel like me again but for now we'll just enjoy the oddness of now and the adventure of traveling all over in a tiny car and no cash. We'll have to pretend we're a super hip hippie family or something! :)

Family Pictures

My sweet friend kindly offered to take some pics of our little family for free! So we took her up on her offer. We did them in some of our favorite places by our house. They were taken in the ultra ugly early stages of being pregnant so I look slightly terrible but what are you going to do? My talented friend tried and we tried but between the wind and the wiggly kids we didn't get a really great family picture, but with three littles four and under the odds were against us! Sometimes I wonder why we even try to take them at all! :O) Anyways, here are some of the great pictures we have thanks to my really nice friend. Thanks Jessica, it means so much to me that you did this for us!

My Bethy Came to Town

So my sister Bethany came to Reno to visit me and my family. She was only going to be able to stay for a few days but I was so much fun ;) she just couldn't leave so she sent her work bound hubby on a plane back home and stayed for another 9 nine days. We had such a good time. I was sick 80% of the time and her family came down with strep so we were all a little pathetic for awhile but it was really fun besides. Fitting that many people and luggage in our house really wasn't that bad and the kids were in heaven having their cousins stay for so long. We made some really good memories. We loved having them here and we miss them already. Bethany, thanks for coming and staying so long. I love you and your beautiful family to death!

This was their "everyone smile and look at me" picture

This is their silly picture

This was supposed to be their "everybody hug each other" picture that turned to a tackle shot

And isn't this sweet?

These girls were inseparable. They are only a few months apart in age and they were such good little friends. Doing each others hair, playing house, sharing everything, and talking about such important things as what a wonder it is that they are both three was what they did all day long. I think they had one argument in the entire 9 sleep deprived days they spent together. That is really saying something when you are three! Angeli kept telling me that Eden was her best friend. I think she really is. They are so sweet together.

Good Bye Third Year!

Its official. Stewart has completed his third year of medical school! WOO HOO! This was the year I have been dreading since we started med school because it was the year that had him gone for four months and now we've made it through! I am so proud of him.

He has had so much on his plate this year and he has balanced everything so well. He's been super successful in his school while also being an A+ husband and a dedicated father. It seems to me that this year he has really started to become a doctor. He sees patients in the most varied situations and is so professional and competent whether it is a transvestite at the AIDS clinic or speaking with a four year old with brain tumors. He knows so much and talks like a doctor and everything. :) To me he is one smart dude.

We've been in school for seven years now and I am getting a little antsy to be moving on to another phase of life. So I am happy we have just one more year to go. :) Fourth year is traditionally supposed to be a little more relaxed but I am not sure ours will be. With all we have on our plates I think it will be just another crazy year. I'm sure it will be exciting though with all his fun away rotations, applying to residencies, match day, having a baby, and actually graduating. I hope it is more exciting then stressful. :) Anyways, yay for getting another year done and jumping into our last one!

Congrats Stewart! We are so proud of you!

Father's Day

This Father's Day was so.....interesting. :) Oh, our lives have been flipped upside down in so many ways and lets just say we are hanging on by the skin of our teeth.

So, Saturday night I was sitting there thinking about how I wished someone from church would invite us over for dinner for Sunday night because I was afraid we'd be starving to death when I realized that no one would because it was Father's Day. I had forgot all about father's day. Oh, I was so depressed. I love Father's Day. Well, I love any holiday and I love planning it all out and making it special but not this year. I had no food in the house and no will to cook anything either. So my sister who was going to be leaving the next day changed her plans. She stayed. :) She took me to the store and we bought some food to make a fabulous dinner and she cooked the entire meal and saved our Father's Day from starvation.

Oh, and I had planned earlier in the week to buy him some gifts that I knew he really needed but for the life of me I could not remember what they were and with our only one car situation and losing our camera and so on and so forth I thought he'd be happier without me spending money on something I couldn't even remember to buy. So pregnant me killed that one too.

Basically it was rather lame for him. But thankfully I married that most easy going chill guy in the world and he just smiled and told me all he wanted was to cut his wood. So he did. He took all the boys, which is like five boys, to the garage and they made rubber band guns together. They loved it.

Later that night I told Stewart that the real gift for him for Father's Day was my growing him another baby. He said thanks but I am not sure if he really meant it or not! ;)

Stewart, you are my hero. You have made my life so full of happiness by being the greatest husband for me and the perfect father for our children. I love you to pieces and I know the kids do too! I hope next year will go a little bit better. :)

Pictures

I have a bunch of happy things I want to share BUT I lost me camera. I have no idea where it is. Its been a week now. I hope I can find it today because my sister is coming to town and I want pics of the kids together. hmmmm.

After All my Whining

After all my whining yesterday I had a mini miracle. Despite all my going and coming I was able to have a couple hours at night where I felt really good!

In the afternoon I got a call from a client and although I felt awful I said they could come out that very day because we need the money. It got me up and I cleaned the house and put on some much needed mascara. Then after surviving making some money I had to run to the store for the second time in the day to get envelopes for another client who bought gift certificates and I had run out of my envelopes. I totally made it through my shopping with out wanting to die! Then I came home and with eating lemon sprinkled with salt and Rolos on and off (I know its weird but it was magic) the rest of the evening I felt better then I had felt in days!

After working on Stewart's personal statement for applying for residency (that had happened to get erased a couple days ago) I was laying on my bed debating if I was actually going to get ready for bed or not and I found myself thinking about how excited I will be when I can feel the baby move and how wonderful it will be to hold a little tiny baby again. I was caught off guard that I was so positive and excited for a baby. I realized I had felt good for three hours and it had made a big difference!

So, I've decided if I can feel a million times more upbeat with only three hours of not wanting to throw up then I am good. Things are good. And guess what? I bought some new flowers to plant and the kids and I are going to weed our flower bed and spruce it up for my sister's arrival this week. We may starve to death while she is here but we can do it while starring at my pretty flower garden. :)

Sweet to Sour

Last night I awoke to the strong need to vomit. That's how sick I am. I am not even free from my morning sickness in the middle of the night. I have the feeling that as I hit what I think will be week nine it will be accelerating even more. I am already not really keeping it together all that well. Oh, the days are soooooo long. Anyways, I am really sick. I am miserable every second of the day.

Okay, so that makes a person grumpy to be feeling awful constantly and then you toss in the messed up hormones and I am one emotional chick.

So with all that as a preface bare with my ranting. I am really disappointed. All of my excitements for this summer have been turned into mini trails. The sweet is now sour and that makes me sad. I know I should just be stronger but I am hormonal and in lots of pain so I am having a hard time with it.

Today I am so sad because our car's AC died again. All our trips this summer where I was already driving as a single mom with terrible morning sickness just got intolerably hot too. I honestly am thinking of just going out and buying a new car even though that would be absolute financial suicide for us. Or just not going to anything which would be tragic in its own right.

Then my sister is coming to town! I have been dying for a visitor for years. Not just a visitor to take care of me after having a baby or someone to crash while they are on their way to their real vacation but someone to come just to play with us - while we do appreciate those visits we've had I wanted to finally not be sick pregnant, not have the stomach flu and barely moved in, and not have just had a baby when someone came to visit. I have been seriously yearning for someone who actually wanted to just be with us and was here long enough to do some great things with us. So when my sister and best friend in the world said she was coming just because she wanted to play with me and see my little world I was so thrilled. I sent a major itinerary for her family to chose what meals sounded the best, if they wanted to go to Tahoe or this or that and it was going to be so fabulous!

BUT now she is coming and I will need her to take care of me. That camping trip we were going on together - they are going without us because Stew is working and I cant handle it on my own. Then the rest of their trip I will be so lame. I cant even feed myself let alone 11 other people. My house is a disaster. All my flowers are dyeing because I keep forgetting to water them. Oh, everything I dreamed is dying.

But in my defense I am trying to be filled with joy that we will have the gift of another child even though I am experienced enough to know what a fourth baby means. This morning I tried by listening to conference talks and what talk do I happen to pick? The one that talks about three different women dyeing in child birth. Awesome. :O) Oh, well. The irony did actually make me laugh a bit. Sigh. I better go try and feed my kids lunch. They are currently eating cereal out of boxes and drinking water that they all got by themselves. Ha.

Thoughts: my husband, soccer, my house, and my kids are beautiful.

I am sick and I hate it. I have been "mothering up" as my mother calls it and doing my duty to keep my business running, food in the house, the kids fed, doing my calling, and doing the laundry, as I must, but as soon as Stewart gets home I am a useless mass laying on the couch or bed or what have you. he has been so sweet. I seriously cant tell you how great he has been. So good to me. Telling me how beautiful I am, never once saying a thing about how messy the house is, and he cleans up after dinner (often cooking it himself) and then plays with the kids and puts them to bed all by himself and then tucks me into bed promptly at 8:30. He's my hero. Today he said he'd hurry home as soon as possible to be a help to me. Love him.

The kids started this soccer camp yesterday and it is about the cutest thing I have ever seen. I have fun studying the parents reactions to their kids. There are the parents who are upset by the fact that their kid couldn't care less about soccer, the parents that are taking fifty million pictures and obviously so proud they can hardly contain themselves, and so forth. I am just having fun. I love seeing Bridger and Angeli's personalities come through in the way they approach the sport. Its just really fun. Someday I will be very excited to enroll Angie in ballet. She'd love it.

I love when people tell me my kids are beautiful and I know they really mean it. It makes me feel like they approve of my life choices to have these crazy little kids and when I am in this state that is really comforting.

My house has never been this messy for this long of time. I have to remind myself that slowly I will care again and have enough energy again to do something about it. Someday I'll remember that girl that was a natural work horse but for now I have to force myself to do anything at all.

More Video

This is a selection of random but cute videos of the kiddos and their daddy. In the last segment I was sitting on the couch feeling sick and depressed when I then started watching the kids play with their daddy and realized I was the luckiest girl I knew. Its just pure happiness for me. Enjoy the cutness.

Bridger's Preschool Graduation

Bridger graduated from preschool this last week. He is sad it is over but we sort of had a miracle that made up for it. On the last day of school his teacher announced that they found funding to continue the preschool next year!!! They wont have enough spots for Angeli unless they can get more funding but at least Bridger will be able to go back to preschool next year. That is a major miracle! We have been praying really hard that they would find money and so I count it as a answer to Bridger's faithful prayers. Now I am praying that Angeli can go too but we'll see. We are waiting to hear if local businesses will be donating money to help expand it to fit the needs of the entire community. Right now they cant even fit all the kids going into kindergarten the following year so they want to double it by having an afternoon session and a morning session and if they do that Angeli should get in too. We'll see.

I meant to get a bunch of cute pictures with Bridger and his class and with his teacher but the camera battery died right when I got it out to use it. And then I forgot to bring my camera to the last day of school family BBQ so that was another bummer but just know they would have been cute. :) But we do have some very classic school auditorium home video. I know only close family will care to watch it in length but I wanted Grandparents to see grown up Benjie. Its been since December when they saw him last and he has grown up so much so watch the whole thing if you want to see him being all grown up :O)

Surprise!

The other day we had a big surprise. That "blue bug" I caught turned out to be a little bit more then a bug it was a baby. Yup, Rasmussen number four is in the oven! We are thrilled to be blessed with another sweet spirit to love and add to our crazy little brewed. I feel so lucky and blessed to have another baby. What a gift!?!?! However, it was a big surprise. We aren't really sure how far along I am and I was going to wait until I saw a doctor to share this so publicly but as I am already so sick I am way over the waiting thing. So there you have it, SURPRISE!

If our guesstimates are correct I am barley preggo and this little sweet baby is due at the worst time ever. I know that sounds so evil but honest to goodness it is going to be a really hard year. We'll adjust our plans, everything will work out how it is supposed to and life will be fine but I am having to mourn a little for the loss of the dreams we had made for this next year. Stewart will be doing interviews for residency when I am due, he could very possibly miss our baby's birth - how blah. We will probably be canceling Thailand. I will be sick and having to do the single traveling mother thing all this summer while Stewart does his away rotations. The half marathon I started to train for is postponed indefinitely. I will not be fitting into that supper cute outfit I just bought for my sister's wedding. I will not be able to do Bridger's pre-school and I am not sure how we can pay for him to go to one. My etsy business and my local business will not be thriving while I am as sick and as tired as a dog. They just wont. They will suffer when we really need them to be doing their very best. Money and space are going to get extremely tight and that is very stressful. Not only am I having to say good bye to the happy things I was planning on but I have to except the hard things that pregnancy brings in and of itself: the sickness, the constant need to eat when eating is so painful to do, how my veins are so swollen and ache constantly so even sitting is painful,...

I am grateful, I am just overwhelmed by the unforeseen weight I now have to carry. I hope by expressing the loss of my old dreams and the hardships I am now facing I can better embrace new dreams and new realities.

But I better go eat something or I will be getting to know my toilet really well. For today my hope is that I get through the next few months with some grace, sanity, and joy. It will take some mighty prayer - feel free to add your prayers to the mix. :O)