PoRTeR PLaCe

2010-04-16T11:32:00.001-07:00

I knew that I wasn't going to be very good at this whole blog thing. I would take the time to update from when I last posted, but that would be too time consuming. The holidays were fun and actually relaxing. Hailey thought that the presents under the tree Christmas morning was the coolest thing ever. So cool, in fact, that she refused to leave the living room to wake up Sarah in fear that they would disappear before she got back. Easter was fun as well. We stayed in Vernal this year and just did our own thing. It was quite relaxing. The girls had a lot of fun. Hailey just turned 2 on Wednesday. The night before I wrapped her gift and set it on the table in the living room. She walked in completely occupied with something else until she noticed the present at which point she ran over to it and said, pointing to herself, "Mine?" Just like Christmas, she kept an eye on it for the remainder of the evening. The next morning she was more than happy to get out of bed to open her present. Tomorrow we will be having a small family party for her. I am sure she will be in heaven.

A few weeks ago, Sarah and Hailey decided to stand on the back of our armchair to look out the window. Needless to say, it didn't end well. Hailey fell off and landed right on her arm, breaking it just above the elbow. I rushed in to a crying toddler and my first thought was that she landed on her head. I held her and tried to calm her down, which usually doesn't take much time at all, but she was somewhat hysterical. That is when I noticed that her arm looked a bit swollen. I tried to move it, to which Hailey let out a agonizing scream. I knew something was wrong. I had Jake look at it and he insisted that she would probably be fine and that she just banged it a bit. He said that we should sleep on it and see how she felt in the morning. In the meantime, Hailey was still pretty upset and her arm continued to swell. It didn't take long before I insisted that we take her to the ER. While there, the doctor had her arm x-rayed and said that it wasn't obvious that it was broken, although it was quite obvious to me when I looked at the x-ray. He tried to trick her into using that arm, but she refused and insisted on using her right arm only. He said that he was pretty sure that it was fractured, but wanted a 2nd opinion from an orthopedist, who would be in the ER on Sunday morning (this was Friday night). He splinted it and 'scheduled' us to come back to see the other doc on Sunday. When we did, he took one look at the x-ray and put her arm in a cast. I kind of got the idea that he felt that it was a waste of time for us to be there because it should've been obvious to the doc on Friday to cast it. Hailey hasn't been bothered at all by the cast and is very adaptive to not using it as much. She is quite the little trooper.

Hailey also had her 2 year-old check-up today. She did great. Not one tear was shed...even when she was given a shot. We were in complete shock. A few months ago, when I took her in for an ear infection, she was hysterical. She is never okay with the doctors office...never has been okay. There must be something magical about the age of 2 though, because she was perfect. I was very impressed and very proud of her. I think Sarah was the same way though.

I had another ultrasound today because my last u/s at 21 weeks showed that I had placenta previa. Although I have c-sections anyway, my doc wanted it check again just in case I would somehow go into labor myself. Anyhow, the previa has corrected itself. Actually it is almost fundal, meaning it couldn't be farther away from the cervical opening. It must have not been that bad to start with. When measurements of our baby boy were taken, we found out that he is measuring about 12 days ahead of our due date. This is a different situation for us since both girls had been on the smaller side. From the pics, he also looks like he has big, chubby cheeks. I guess we'll see when he gets here, but it looks like we may get a chubby baby. That will be something new. My due date is June 18th. It can't get here soon enough.

2009-11-22T15:11:00.000-08:00

The other day the girls and I headed up to Great-Grandma Porter's house to plan a Thanksgiving menu. Well, she wasn't there and I needed to use the bathroom so I found the spare key. I asked Sarah if she need to go potty. She said no and I told her that I would just be a minute and to keep the car door locked while I ran in and left Hailey and Sarah in the car. (Gma lives clear at the north end of Maeser and has maybe 10 neighbors.) A second later, as I was about to walk into the bathroom, Sarah comes in behind me. She decided that she needed to go potty afterall. I said that was okay and I was about to go outside with Hailey while Sarah went first, but then Sarah said to me proudly, 'But don't worry mommy, I locked the car door." Needless to say, I had no way in the car and Hailey was securely buckled into her seat and did I metion that the car was running. Sarah felt so bad and I assured her that I wasn't mad, but that we just needed to figure out how to get in. We tried to persuade Hailey to try to get out of her carseat, but she just laughed at us and eventually fell asleep. Jake was in Colorado and even if he was in Vernal, there was no spare because I lost my keys months ago and the quotes we got on replacing my car key was more than we had to spend on a little key, plus we would have to go to SLC to get one. Jake walked me through 'breaking' into my car with a metal hanger. I was unsuccessful. He called a co-worker of his that knew how to do it, but he tried and tried for quite a while to no avail. I finally succumbed to the fact that a locksmith was my only hope. I called one, thinking that it was going to break the bank (I had never used on before) when actually it was quite reasonable. In the end, it took her all of 30 seconds to roll down my car window and unlock the car. She even knocked $10 off the price because Hailey was in the car. Yeah for Basin Lockout!!! It was quite the experience. Sarah was so proud of herself for listening and doing just as I told her and it ended up costing us $25. We laugh at it now, but at that moment, it wasn't funny. Gotta love the mind of a 4-year-old. She's a great kid. I ended up driving out to SL on Friday and had a few spare keys cut and programmed. We had actually been grossly misquoted and I was pleasantly surprised at how much less I spent than what I was expecting to. I love my kids. They make life adventerous.

2009-08-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

So, we have had a huge mouse problem. It has actually been driving me absolutely bonkers because, I have to admit that the mice have bewildered me. About 1-2 weeks ago we got some sticky traps that were great. We put 4 down and caught 4 mice. Okay, we only 'caught' 3 because one morning there was no trap and no mouse. The mouse must have gotten stuck, but was still able to scurry away, trap included. Anyhow, we bought some more sticky traps, but different from what we previously had. They haven't worked at all. The only one that was of any use was the one that I literally placed on top of a mouse when it was hiding behind our shoe thing by the back door. The other day, seeing that there were probably still mice (I did mention that it is turning out to be a HUGE problem...) I went to the store to get some more of the successful sticky traps. They were out on the shelf, so I decided to go with snap traps. I didn't want to get these because of Hailey and the fact that I heard that they could be messy, but decided to get them anyhow due to what else was available. Even though the packaging said that bait was not needed, I was not about to trust that, as mad as these mice have been making me. I carefully place 2 goldfish crackers on each trap, one on the fake cheese thing and one under the wire thing that snaps. I placed 4 traps in the pantry. Jake had to go to work at 4 a.m. the next morning so when I got up to help him with his lunch I checked the traps. One of the goldfish was missing. I thought maybe I just didn't place 2 goldfish on one of the traps and didn't think much more of it. When I awoke the next morning, I went to check the traps. There were NO GOLDFISH. I have no idea how the mice were able to get the crackers without triggering the trap. The plus side was that one of the traps also had a mouse attached to it. I still can't believe that the mice were able to get the crackers without getting caught, but I am getting the last laugh. I ended up hot gluing the crackers to the traps. Since then we have caught 3 more mice. Everytime I think that we got the last one, another one gets snapped. Its really grossing me out. I think some mouse had babies in our crawl space. The first mouse we saw was big, the rest have been somewhat small. How many babies can a tiny mouse have at once? I hope that I ddin't gross too many of you out...

The worst part of this is that today I left the pantry door open for 2 seconds while packing Jake a lunch. Apparently that was more than enough time for Hailey to scoot in there and grab a trap. She screamed, but calmed down a lot faster than expected. Poor baby!

2009-07-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

2009-07-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

2009-07-10T10:37:00.001-07:00

2009-04-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

We are so excited for the warm weather. We are getting our backyard in order this year and hopefully it will actually look like a backyard. We are also planting a garden this year. I am very excited about that as dorky as that seems. Hailey will be 1 on April 14th. I can hardly believe that it has been a year already. She has grown and learned so much. Sarah has also grown so much. She is so smart and learns something new every day. I can't believe she will be 4 this year. Hailey just cut her 7th tooth. She loves to use the ones that she has. She loves to make noise and I swear she said 'mom' the other day. Usually I think that I can hear her say 'mommy' when she is crying from her crib, but the other day I was just sitting on the couch folding laundry and I swear she said 'mom'. I looked at her and asked her if she said mom and she just got a huge smile and went back to what she was doing. It was just like she wanted to know if I was paying attention to her. I am so excited for Easter. We bought the girls the cutest dresses. I will be sure to post some of those pics. I guess that is what this blog is missing...more pics. In time...

2009-03-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Today in primary Sarah learned about a mothers role in the family. Her teachers gave each child a thank you card to decorate for their moms. After she gave it to me she kept admiring it. At one point she even said to me, "Mommy, I am going to hold onto this for you until you get married....", she then quickly realized what she had said and continued, "...oh, I mean, you're already married." and she proceeded to give it to me. It was very cute how she was going to keep it safe for me. She is so funny about getting married. Every time we drive pass the temple, which is only about 2 minutes from our home, she says that it is where she is going to get married. A few weeks ago she even said that she was going to marry her daddy there. We had to explain to her how that isn't possible. She got a little upset because she said that she loves her daddy so much that she wants to marry him. I thought it was kinda cute. Sarah and Hailey love their daddy so much. The mind of a 3 year old...

2009-03-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

Sarah momentarily freaked out tonight when I pulled her hair up after a bath. I used a PINK hair elastic and she did not want to wear a pink elastic when her PJ's are RED. Her exact words, in a panicky tone, were..."I can't wear the pink one. My jammies are red." I then assured her that she was just going to bed and that nobody was going to see her. She was a little better after that. I am still not sure that she was completely okay with it though. She is quite the 3 year old...

2009-03-05T16:09:00.001-08:00

Wow!!! I knew that I was not going to be good at thing.

Sarah has expressed a desire to learn to read this last week. We have slowly worked on numbers and letters in the past, but it sure makes a difference when they want to learn it. She has learned so much in the last week. She knows all but maybe 2 or 3 letters by look and sound and can write her name. She recognizes a lot of words, like Hailey's name and other small words. I am very proud of her. She doesn't even tire from sitting down and going over letters and sounds and writing things down.

Hailey learned how to pucker up and kiss today. She has been doing the open mouth kiss thing for a few months now, but Sarah and I taught her how to pucker up today and she has caught right on. She now has 6 teeth, 2 on bottom and 4 on top. She loves to use them. She is only a petite 16 pounds, but you wouldn't know it from how much she loves food. She doesn't let her size slow her down though. She keeps up with her sister quite well. She will be turning 1 on April 14th. I have not figured out yet what to do for a party.

Sarah keeps bugging me to help her with something. She got a book from the library about the stars and where they go during the day. It also talks about the Big Dipper. She thinks constellations are pretty cool and so we printed her off some coloring pages of a bunch of the constellations. She wants me to color with her so I should probably do that.

More pics to come in time...

2009-02-19T15:00:00.000-08:00

We are new at this blogging thing, but since it seems that everyone is communicating this way these days, we thought we would give it a try.

A little background on us, Jake and I met in April 2003 through his Grandma Marie who asked me to be his 'friend' and introduce him to people in the area. We remained 'just friends' for about 6 months. After an unexpected, but very nice kiss, we quickly knew that we could not live without eachother. We were 'engaged' 2 weeks later and married on February 6, 2004. Exactly 19 months later, on September 6, 2005, we welcomed our first child, Sarah Marian. At that time we still lived in Midvale, Utah. In December 2006, we purchased a condo in Taylorsville, where we lived for the next 11 months. In the meantime, Jake began working in Vernal every other week. We eventually sold our condo, and in November of 2007, packed up and moved our little family to Vernal where I could stay home with Sarah and Jake could work while still attending college. We lived with his brother for a couple of months while we found a home to buy, and that is where we have been for the last year. On April 14, 2008, we welcomed our second daughter, Hailey Elizabeth. It has been a crazy 5 years, but well worth it. My family is my life and I would not have it any other way.