5 Minute Update.

It's getting more and more difficult to keep up with my blog since I've been working so much lately.  It's a good thing--the work, I mean--but I miss my littles as well as having a somewhat orderly house.  Mike is a great SAHD, but unfortunately, multi-tasking is not his strong suit. I try not to be too critical, but coming home to a crazy house is not good for my already crazy head.  On the upside, he's got an uncanny ability to make it to the pond above our house to go fishing 3-4 times per week.  If he didn't have 2-3 children in tow each time, we may have to have words.

Still no luck on his job search.  He consistently finds himself in the top three or four with a second interview, but invariably returns with, "We just had so many great candidates," or, "We went with someone else, but here's a $10/hr. job we could offer you."  I just don't get it.  I know, I know, "It will all work out." Unfortunately, "It will all work out" doesn't pay the bills.

On a lighter note, I was able to snap a few shots of the kiddos on Easter Sunday.  I'm going to play around on the computer and try to get them cropped/edited the way I want, then blow them up onto engineer prints @ Staples.  Can't believe how big these kiddos are getting!  Not much longer and Maggie will be in Young Women's, and Bridget is only a kindergartener for 5 more weeks!  Where has the time gone???

Home Sweet Home

Our humble abode. Forgive the mess in the pictures; we're still trying to move in! :)

 Our western view of Antelope Island and the Great Salt Lake from the kitchen/back deck.

 Our eastern view from the front room of the Wasatch Mountains.

 Dining area. We can actually fit our entire family around the table and there's no need to push it in & out!

 Our more-than-one-butt-kitchen!  :)  So happy with the bar and amazingly sturdy bar stools!

 Another view of the kitchen.

 Our huge backyard with peach, plum, cherry, apple and pear trees!

 Large back patio that runs the length of the house!

 Living room with brick fireplace.  That puppy kept us warm for 4 days while waiting for our gas to come on.

 Entryway.

 Master bath.  Yep.  ALL MINE. (Ok, Mike can share it with me....)

 Main upstairs bathroom.

Movin' on Up, to the East Side.....

Since there is no part of the cat that is actually still in the bag, thanks to my loose-lipped children and a few others, I guess I can finally share with you all that after nearly 11 years of giving half our lives to the mortuary, we are FINALLY leaving!!!!  I know, I know, it's hard to believe.  I was with all of you who thought we were destined to be here forever, but the stars have aligned, and there is a 6 bedroom, 3 bathroom home in the foothills of Layton, just waiting for the Stringhams to grace its doorway!  (Not to mention the 5 mature fruit trees and beautiful large garden area at the back of a huge backyard!)  Our official move-in date will be March 1, though we've been gradually moving things over for a couple of weeks now.

I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to be saving $300/month just in gas money! Being closer to the school is a huge bonus, but the best part, I think, is the fact that we will no longer be chained to our home every other weekend, or miss out on anything scheduled for Tuesday or Thursday nights.  What a relief!

So if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm busy working full-time (still subbing for a teacher on maternity leave), trying to pack my house up, move-in to the new house, patch up and clean the old house, and still find time to nurse my baby and do homework with my kids.  Phew!  Thank goodness Princess Gretchen is now consistently sleeping about 8 hours every night, or I might just go crazy! :)

The Right Stuff.

So I was pretty much a blogging slacker in 2011, but in my defense, I've been busily living mi vida loca! 

I don't know why the new year always brings such a sense of relief to me--it's not like anything has changed considering yesterday was just yesterday, ya know?  That being said, 2011 was a challenging year for me, and probably like a lot of others, I didn't accomplish a lot of the things I was so gung-ho about when the year first began.  However, I was not so subtly reminded in Sacrament Meeting yesterday that I am often way too hard on myself.  I'm generally the kind of person who jumps in feet-first to the new year with all sorts of thoughts and ideas about how to improve myself and the environment I am surrounded by, but I fail to look back at the things I did right.  And while I do have goals and things I want to work on improving for 2012, I'm trying to remember to be gentle with myself, after all this life is a training ground where we are able to learn from our mistakes rather than be condemned by them. (Bruce C. Hafen)  So before I make the jump ahead, I'm taking stock of what I did right so that I can recognize and repeat the patterns that got me there.

1.  I bought my very first parenting book called Parenting with Love and Logic, and read it in almost one day.  While I'm not an expert, I've been using their techniques, and it's making me feel like a parenting rock star! It has taught me that I don't have to be in control of everything (whoa!) and that my children are perfectly capable of making choices on their own and dealing with the consequences of those decisions.  Our home has been a much happier place since mama figured a few things out.  What I learned: It's okay to not have all the answers as long as you go and look for them.

2.  Despite my dread over another pregnancy, we followed the spirit and added Gretchen Caroline to our family.  Every time I look at her, hold her, feed her, think about her--I am reminded that it was absolutely the right decision to bring her here and that she was meant to be our caboose, even though we went into this thinking we were giving Dixon a brother.  All is as it should be.  What I learned:  Follow the Spirit. Period.

3.  The Great Purge of 2011 was so, so right!  Clearing out our clutter and reclaiming the space in our home did more for my peace of mind than anything else I did all year long.  It made me see that I could undertake a huge project (while pregnant, no less!) and succeed in accomplishing something so daunting.  Because of the great purge, I have begun to work on living within my means in other aspects of my life, and this will certainly carry on into the new year.  What I learned: Organization = Peace.  AND, I can do hard things.

4.  I became a substitute teacher.  At first, it was only to supplement our income during the holiday season while work is slow for Mike, but because of my experiences so far, I will soon be going back to school to get my teaching license in conjunction with my Master of Arts in Teaching degree.  It's quite ironic, since I remember vividly my time at BYU when I mocked all the "Molly's" who were majoring in Elementary Education. "Of course you're an El. Ed. major!" I would think to myself with an obvious eye-roll, as another sweeter-than-sweet co-ed would introduce themselves at the beginning of a semester.  What I learned:  I LOVE teaching. AND, not all teachers are sweeter-than-sweet. :)

I've had a lot of little victories on my journey through 2011, but these are the major ones that I need to remind myself of when in the coming year I start to feel like I'm doing more wrongs than rights. 

With that, my resolve for 2012 is to Remember the Right and Press Forward.  It's gonna be a great year!

Gretchen Caroline

Well, she made it, and so did her mother!  Gretchen Caroline Stringham was born at 10:38 on Saturday, November 5, 2011, weighing in at a whopping 8 lbs. 14 oz. and was 20.5 inches long.  I was already dilated to a six when Dr. Boheen came in to break my water at 7:30 that morning.  The anesthesiologist came in pretty much immediately and inserted my epidural, but I have to say I was totally disappointed in it.  I don't know if I just wasn't dosing myself enough or if he used a different kind of medication, but the whole point of the epidural is to have a painless delivery, and I'm pretty sure I felt the majority of my contractions.  Not exactly how I wanted it to go, but at least it was pretty quick so I didn't have to suffer for too long.

After she was born, Mike and I decided against naming her Zoey.  It just didn't seem to fit.  Gretchen is a name that we had on our previous girl name list, and our favorite out of the bunch.  Kinda funny, but when we looked up the meaning of her name, this is what we found:

Gretchen is a German pet form of Margaret(h)e created from 'Gret' plus the diminutive suffix '-chen'. The German Gretchen is thus roughly equivalent to the English Maggie, both meaning 'pearl.'

Isn't that amusing?  Maggie couldn't be more proud.  As for the name Caroline, it comes from Mike's great-grandma Caroline Watterson (Dorothy's mother), and another one of his great-grandmothers, Caroline Behan (Barb's grandmother on her father's side).  We found out after giving the news to Dorothy that Caroline's birthday was the 7th.  Would've been neat to have her on the 7th, but let's be honest....I would've poked myself in the eye having to be pregnant for 2 more days.

Barb spent a few days here helping out with the housework and the kids.  It was so nice not to have to worry about any of it, especially since I've been having a harder time recovering this go-round.  And, really, who wouldn't want to wake up to fresh baked bread and hot cocoa with marshmallows every morning?

Gretchen is a little beauty.  I'm pretty sure I fell in love with her right from the start.  I've had to resort to pumping milk for a few days while I recover from her ravaging me, though.  Boy does this girl have an appetite!  One I wish she could suppress in the wee hours of the night, but we're getting better. (fingers crossed)

Yep, this little girl definitely belongs in our family, and I'm so glad our caboose is finally here and that I never have to do it again.

Still Here.

Yep.  Dilated to a 4, 60% effaced and all I get are irregular, painful contractions that are clearly not doing their work.  Maybe I should fire them.
We actually thought we might be ready to go on Friday night.  We got back from Trunk-or-Treat and I started having contractions every 5 minutes for over an hour, so we decided not to chance it.  I called my angel friend, Jen, and she dropped her movie plans and came over to sit with the kids.  On the way to the hospital, we got pulled over in Riverdale, due to the passenger side headlight being out.  I rarely drive anywhere at night, so I hadn't bothered to get it replaced.  Ha!  When Mike explained that we were on our way to the hospital, the officer quickly handed back his license and registration and said, "Well, we won't keep you here--you best be on your way!"  We laughed as he followed us all the way to the hospital.
Once there, my contractions stopped. I think I only had two while actually hooked up to the machine.  Grrrr.  They monitored me for about an hour & a half, but nothing was changing so they sent us home.  Bummer.  On the way back, we got pulled over in Riverdale again, this time for a brake light that was out.  {I love my suburban.}  Needless to say, Mike spent part of Saturday changing out a headlight and a brakelight.  Now when those dumb contractions finally get their act together we can make it to and from the hospital without incident.
Had my final appointment with Dr. Boheen this morning, and I'm still at a 4.  If I make it until Saturday, we'll induce at 7 am.  It's a weird situation to be in because I've never been this far along without being hooked up to an i.v. with an epidural already in my back.  It's completely reasonable (and therefore completely terrifying) that I'll start labor and have a baby in 5 minutes. (I really hope to not emulate you, Ashlee!)  It's also reasonable that my body isn't quite sure how to do this since every other time, it's been helped along by pitocin.  I may need help getting past this 4 and that's why things aren't progressing at all.

It's a control freak's nightmare.

So I'll keep you posted as to when this little one arrives.  Until then, I'll keep trying to figure out what her name will be.  Another thing we've usually already figured out by now.