The Maughans: Oak

What's up? I've been negligent in my blogging and I apologize. Let's get caught up a bit....

First of all, C is growing and developing well and her mom (MY baby) is doing a great job at being a mom. It shouldn't surprise me because she does well with everything she does (and obviously she makes gorgeous babies) but still, she's MY baby. And now SHE has a baby.

I'm a proud Nanny!

This picture below is when Cali was here and A decided she didn't like how much attention C was getting so she climbed up on Cali's lap and made sure Cali didn't forget she was still there.

This video is when C was only 4 days old. Yup! She's a genius like all my other babies!

The weather here has been typical Utah spring; 3 foot long icicles one day...

...then outside swinging with no jacket on a few days later!

Grace is loving being a part of our family and we love her! She is so careful around the kids and loves to snuggle. Below she is holding HER baby. If you ask her to get her baby, she walks calmly over and picks up one of her stuffed animals then brings it to you with a huge grin on her face like she's so proud!

This was in December, and it's only a 'before' picture but Al got his braces off! Woot -woot!

We went up to Idaho for a quick trip to see one of Mike's favorite people; his Uncle Darwin (whose son got married so we went to his reception). I say a quick trip because we went up Friday morning and were home by Saturday evening. But in that short period of time Al created a great memory for us...

In this pic is a bunch of the Maughan men at the hotel pool. All the baldies are brothers and all the good looking ones are their kids! (l-r Derek, Mike holding M, E in Colin's arms and then Alex)

I guess I packed Alex an old swimming suit. As we were walking down to the pool, Mike and I were behind Alex and his butt end was almost busting out. We didn't think anything about it, other than, "He has a great J-Lo!" (which is becoming more of a "Kardashian" as he gets older) until he had to go to the bathroom.

Remember how hard it is to pull up wet swimming suits? Well, it's hard to pull off a wet swimming suit, too, when it's already 2 sizes too small! After he was in the restroom for 10 minutes I went to check on him and he was pulling all kinds of contortions to try to get the suit back up. I worked on it for another 5 minutes before I had to escort him - via towel held over him - to the hot tub so Mike could shimmy Al's behind back into the suit with help from the warm water. Thank goodness we were the only ones at the pool!!

When Alex got out of the hot tub to get in the pool, we realized Mike had pulled Alex's suit too high in the front! So what did I do about it? I took a picture!!! (After the reception we went to Walmart and bought him a new swim suit.)

Just a little side note here. Alex is a total fish!!! He LOVES to swim! He doesn't do much swimming on top of the water but he dives under and swims under the water. One impressive move he does is he will walk backwards in the pool while making backstroke movements with his hands. I must admit, it looks like a real smooth backstroke when you see it. He would have been in the pool the whole time if we had let him. And the water in the pool was cold, but he didn't care!

While we were in Idaho, Oak (L) and Mo (R) went to Disney on Ice and saw the Disney princesses. I'm sure the Disney princesses were put to shame with the beauty of these two!

And I'm getting my home re-decorated - for FREE!!!

OK. Maybe re-decorated is a little misleading. But I have an almost 2 year old (N) and an almost 1 year old (A) who have taken it upon themselves to...

...organize the CD's...

...clean (kiss) the mirrors....

...taking inventory of the baby wipes....

...and of the kitchen towel drawer. They do a very thorough at their job!

Then one day, A found a box of tampons stuffed in the back of my bathroom cupboards....

...took a taste, and when she realized they weren't delicious...

...she showed them to N .....

...who tried to read the instructions. (No! She can't read silly! She's not even 2 yet!)

Then A tried to dig deeper into the cupboard to find more fun.

And what was I doing while they were trashing the place? I was following them and taking pictures! I'm a cool Nanny. So cool that I even FORCE the kids to make messes.

Here's a good example...

...here is abanana cream pie that Al dropped while bringing it in from the fridge in the garage. What do I do with it?...

I put some on the high chair tray for N and let her go to town! At first she looked at me like, "What am I supposed to do with this?" But quickly....

...she realized it was a ton of fun!

This past week N was put in the hospital with pneumonia. She is a very sick little girl. In the picture below you can see the concern on mom's face. This was when she was still in the ER still, but they very quickly took her up to the ICU....

...where she has been for the last 5 days. The picture above was from today when I got to see her this afternoon, and even though she had no idea I was there (they are keeping her pretty sedated) it was good to touch her, talk to her and even smack her. (That's what we do at our house when someone is in trouble. But we don't hit them, we kiss them. Get it? A smack?) Oh! She got smacked alright!!!

Get better N. I miss you! And I am so worried!

This past Thursday, October 25 was Quincy's due date. Cali was worried about how her feelings would react to that day, so we kept her busy! First we went to Scheels - a new sports store here in Sandy - and rode the ferris wheel!!

Mo, Oak and Lou before the ride.

Oak and Lou first on the ride.

N and Ash were too small to ride the ferris wheel so GG stayed on the ground with them.

This pic is to show how freakin' high this thing is! That window is above the 3rd floor of the building and if you look out the window, we are as tall as the mountains!! Whenever we would get to this point on the ride I started giggling like a crazy person, just so I wouldn't scream! I was riding with Mo and I didn't want to scare her, especially since she was loving it. Loving it so much she wouldn't sit still!! She rocked our car constantly! But I survived.

Lou and Oak sticking their tongues out at us.

GG, N and Ashlyn on the ground.

Mo and me.

We were so close to heaven that when we were at the top we waved at Mac and Quincy and said our hellos.

We had to take a pic by the bear! I love bears!!! If you would have taken a picture 2 minutes before this it would have looked like I was feeling the bear up. I had to see how soft his fur was!

Yes! They really are driving!

It's just not a real jeep. I put Oak in front of the tire so you could see the size of this vehicle!

After Scheels we went to lunch. TJ met us there in between school and work.

Ash loves lemonade!

And N loves Chick- Fil -A's sauce!

Then we went to Zurcher's and got balloons - did you know there is a helium shortage? We almost didn't get any balloons. But luckily, they had enough for us!