Soccer Season

(I downloaded a new feature on my photo editing program that allows me to make cool adjustments to photos. So that's what you see in this soccer photo - I did a "dramatic" adjustment to make it look more cool. haha)

Soccer season has started and we've had our first day of games for Brayden and Alex. They both did great! Brayden did AWESOME for his first year in soccer. He was really getting in there and playing, passing, trying to make goals. Unfortunately, I took several pictures at his game before realizing that I left my memory card at HOME! aaack. Oh well, there is always the next game. shoot!
But we had time to run home before Alex's game, so I grabbed my memory card and got a few good photos.
Alex did great also, he mostly played a center field defender (?) and did AWESOME at it. (his job was to stand near the half field mark and if the other team happened to get the ball and started coming towards him - he was to get the ball away from them and back to his team). About 90% of the game was played on our side of the field, so the field defenders were doing their job! We won 9 to 4. (Brayden's team also won...of course they dont keep score with the little guys, but the parents on the sidelines were!)

Here are the other pictures I took (didn't use my new feature with these photos)

Baby #5 is a.......

SURPRISE! Yeah fooled you...I know how much you all want to know, but only one person knows and that is Billy! I didn't even find out, nor do I have the temptation to find out. I didn't even peek when the ultrasound tech. told me to look away while she was in "that area" measuring legs.

However, on Christmas morning, when I open my nursery and find out -everyone else will find out too - I promise!

My bet though is boy though - because after four boys I don't think it's a 50/50 equal chance of boy or girl like the "experts" say...I think it's more like 90/10 that it's a boy! I think my husband and I just make boys.
So I'd be VERY surprised if the baby was a girl. VERY.

Otherwise, the ultrasound went well - the baby was very active and measuring just fine, everything looked good. Phew!

Until next time,

~Bethany

Labor Day Activities

Thankfully the church had something planned for Labor Day, because I can never get it together enough to plan anything!

Today we went to the church for a primary activity where the kids got to make homemade ice cream and the adults made a family home evening board, or whatever they wanted to use the board for.

I made a family home evening board - for the once a week family home evenings as recommended by the church, where you gather your family to have a lesson on a various topic, scriptures, etc. and then an accompanying activity with a treat and of course prayer.
You can have your family home evening whichever way you'd like, however the most common is to have each family member take turns being in charge of certain aspects of the evening - the prayer, the song, the lesson, the treat, the activity, and the closing prayer. (obviously little ones need help from the adults with some of those)

It was fun to make! I'm not a crafty person when it comes to non-computer crafts. lol I just can't get the letters to stick on right...as you can see my "Prayer, Song, Lesson, Treat, Activity, Prayer" is a bit squished. So I just played with them and tilted the "Activity, Prayer" to make it look like it was meant to be "fun" and off-kilter. haha

Then I made little wooden clothespin people for each member of our family (with our names on them since all the boys pretty much look the same) that hangs on the hooks to rotate between activities on the board.
You can't see from the big picture, but each little person has a face painted on them too....

The boys think it's pretty cool and now Brayden has begun painting a clothespin person for each member of our extended family too!

Well I can't type much more because everyone is requiring something of me right now! aaack! That's what I get for trying to post on my blog in the middle of the day I guess. ;)

Until next time....(tomorrow - my big ultrasound!)

~Bethany

Back to School

Finally! Oh boy was it a long summer!

The boys were very excited to get back to school, and in fact we didn't even need alarm clocks because Alex woke me up at 5am saying that he was going to take his shower and start getting ready. Brayden joined him soon after at 5:45am. I had to finally get up with them at 6:15am and we were all ready by 7am.
School doesn't start until 8:35am. SO there was quite a bit of waiting and "is it time yet?" going around.

AND of course my pregnancy hormones got the best of me, and I cried after I dropped them off at school. uggh

BUT they had a fun day and were excited to tell me all about it when they got home. Now Owen is wanting to go to school, but his preschool doesn't start until Sept. 8th so he has a couple weeks. :(

We celebrated with chocolate pudding. I didn't *intend* on giving baby Billy any pudding, BUT one of his "dear" brothers decided to share with him. Here is the result of what happens when you mix babies and pudding:

And then finally one last picture, not pudding this time but just as cute. Again, one of his brothers snuck him a piece of candy bar. I think his shirt says it all "I'm definitely up to something".

That's about all the updates I have right now though. Everyone is well, Billy hasn't started his classes yet until the end of September, the boys have started soccer practices but I don't have any pictures of that yet so it's not too exciting to post about as of right now, and my pregnancy is going well - next Tuesday the 2nd of Sept. I get to *not* find out what gender I'm having however I think we're going to change things up a bit and Billy WILL find out....it will just be kept a secret from everyone else, including me. :) I'm excited.

Until next time,

~Bethany

My hobby

When people ask me if I have a hobby, the answer is usually "not really".

I wish I could scrapbook, but the time and expense it takes is not really do-able for me.

I also would LOVE to learn to knit or sew, however again that time factor comes into play. I did take sewing in Home Ec in high school. However a cow shaped pillow, an apron, and a pair of shorts was the extent of my sewing experience.

I have a nice camera, and could have a hobby of amateur photography - BUT it's one of those "someday" type of hobbies. Someday I'd like to learn how to use my camera, maybe take some classes, buy some new fancy lens, and take some artsy fartsy photos...someday. Not today though.

So I guess the only "hobby" I can claim, the thing I do most in my freetime, is a form of graphic design I suppose - making "signatures" for people's email, or for posting on message boards. I also spend my freetime going on other mom message boards to share stories, get advice, and just talk to another mom which seems to be a rare thing during the weekdays typically for me.
And on these message boards, you can have these fancy little pictures graphics to sign your name with.
I started learning to make these a couple years ago and with time I got better. Eventually I bought a better, more advanced, graphics program and I think I'm proud of my little hobby that's not really a hobby. haha
For a sampling of the types of "signatures" I make...go here:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bethanbabes/sig_pix/
(if it asks for a guest password, it's byington)

As you can see, I've been playing with animation and can animate my signatures now to do fun little things like bouncing flowers, or sparkly glitter. I've also been dabbling a bit with a semi-new fad "digital scrapbooking".

I have a whole folder on my computer full of digital scrapbooking elements, like papers, embellishments, etc.

That is another item on my "someday" list...to start making some digital scrapbooking pages. Not as cool as the real thing, but I can print them out and put them in a photo album. I seem to have more time for computer-related things oddly. ;)

So that's my hobby! I hope to "someday" post my first digital scrapbooking page and turn that into another new hobby.

Surprise Ultrasound

My OB office usually only does an ultrasound at the 8 week appointment and 20 week appointment, however at my last appointment - 11.5 weeks - we were supposed to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time on a special machine called a "doppler" that picks up early heartbeat tones from babies, usually the earliest is around 10 weeks?
However, my Dr. couldn't find the baby's heartbeat and so to ease my mind, and hers too - she did a quick ultrasound.

I was very nervous and praying for strength in case it was bad news, I had never had trouble with hearing my other babies' heartbeats at this point in pregnancy before.

Thankfully though the ultrasound showed a healthy, and very active baby - thus why she couldn't pick up a heartbeat. He/she was moving all over like crazy! My Dr. said that was a good sign of a healthy baby. yay!

I even got to see fingers and toes as you can see on the labels...for size comparison, the baby is only about 2" in length (curled up..."crown to rump") right now.

Technology is amazing!

Fourth of July Camping

(Can you tell that I'm trying to get caught up on all of my photos this past few weeks? So don't forget to scroll down for any other new posts you might have missed!)

For the 4th of July this year we decided to go camping up near where my parents have a little piece of property. It was nice, but HOT. I'm not used to going camping when it's HOT! Usually it's too cold. Billy had taken his vacation this week as well so we left on Wednesday and camped until Saturday.

We took Lady with us for the first time as well, and she enjoyed it I think although she had to be on the chain the whole time. The night I took the boys into town to look at the little town's fireworks (they don't have a show, but just everyone sets their own fireworks off over the lake so you can watch everyone else's fireworks at the same time) - when we came back Billy said that there had been coyotes and "tough" Lady jumped in his lap and was shivering! She was scared of those coyotes. haha

On day two of our camping trip, there was a horrible downpour. I got a picture of everyone sitting under the canopy my mom had bought at a yardsale for $0.50 the year before and we never had used it. Thankfully Billy had the insight to put it up! Lady biting and jumping at the rain drops!
One funny story to share...the boys brought their bikes and one particular day my dad and I were watching Brayden ride his bike through the brush and trees and I was telling Brayden to slow down and not ride in that area, only on the "road" in front of our campsite...right at that same time Brayden was getting awfully close to the edge of this little "cliff" and I yelled at him to stop but suddenly you couldn't see him anymore. We went running over to check on him, and he had ridden his bike all the way down this steep embankment to the very bottom, thick with brush and plants. He was okay, not even a scrape but a little shaken up I think! My little Evil Knievel. Uggh! It was funny later when we were all telling the story.

The boys enjoyed playing in the creek near our campsite, and Lady enjoyed the water just as much I think!

We went on a "nature" hike and took some pretty pictures of the flowers (and I managed to capture one butterfly) all around us.

The end! Owen was so worn out he fell asleep at the campfire.