Zoos, cousins and photo shoots, oh my! (Days 4-9)

On Tuesday we went to the zoo. (Kathryn was pouting a few feet away during this photo.) It was super hot outside and the zoo was overflowing with people. I couldn't believe how packed it was for a non-holiday, beginning of the week kind of day. The zoo also seemed rather small compared to Nashville...then I heard that Nashville is one of the largest zoos in the country and I realized I had been spoiled there.

From Tuesday until Friday, we stayed at Ashley's house. Her new baby Scarlett was such a doll. I was hoping she would still seem like a tiny newbown. She is around 7 weeks old here but you probably wouldn't guess it. Scarlett was a 9 pound newborn too (like Rachel) and she already seemed so "grown up". =)

Rachel loved her right away. She grabbed her hand and just kept looking at her and smiling, like she was greeting an old friend.

Joseph slept in Benjamin's room and they woke up early each morning to play together.

They both love reading.

My mom and I spent a lot of time shopping for coordinating outfits for our extended family photo shoot on Saturday. David was kind enough to watch most of the kids while we were out. I had my hair cut the night before the shoot--a risky move, I know--but I was happy with the way it turned out and I'm now the proud owner of bangs...again.

All the kids...these are just candids from my cell phone. We were just waiting for everyone else to get there.

More candids. Kathryn didn't hardly crack a smile the whole time. Davey would only sit in that red chair.

Sam was cracking jokes in Spanish, so only a few of us were in on them. Here's (almost) the whole crew getting all set up for the big group shot. Little Davey was being a stinker, not wanting to sit where the photographer put him.

In the end, the photos turned out pretty nice, considering we had 10 adults and 7 very young children.

Names

Choosing names for our children has been more difficult than I thought it would be.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane. 

Remember when Joseph was born and we named him Christopher David? He still has a quilted blanket from my aunt with that name embroidered on it. We liked the name, but it wasn't the right one for him. So when he was 8 weeks old, we changed it to Joseph Ephraim, and that name has fit him very well. [There's more to the story, but that will suffice for today].

When Kathryn was born, we took our time naming her, to make sure we got it right the first time. Five days was all it took to settle on Kathryn Grace.

We knew David's first name before he was born, before I even knew I was pregnant. So, he was easy...except for his middle name. We still debate that one. His birth certificate says Jesse, but when he was blessed, David (his daddy) didn't include a middle name.

Sarah was the easiest to name. We knew that we wanted her to share her middle name with her birth mom, and we also consulted with her birth mom to make a list of acceptable first names. We had it down to two choices when she was born, but after meeting her it was easy to decide on Sarah Elizabeth.

Fast forward to January 24, 2012 when we welcomed this little lady into our family -

We tried to have a short list of names to choose from when she was born, but by Christmastime all the kids had started calling her Anna. I thought it was a nice name -- one that honored both of her grandmothers (LouAnn and Marian). But I wasn't convinced that it was her name. Before she was born I spent hours on baby naming websites, skimmed through three different baby name books, and even polled my friends. 

After she was born the kids continued to call her Anna, and without another name possibility, we just decided to "go with it". The days passed and I tried to figure out what her middle name should be. My midwife was getting impatient for us to fill out all the legal forms.

Then I started to think that maybe Anna wasn't her first name after all. It just wasn't working. Maybe it could be her middle name? So we thought of numerous possibilities and name combos. But nothing seemed quite right.

One Saturday evening as I was dressing her for bed and thinking how she didn't really look like an "Anna" to me, the thought came to my mind: She looks like a R__________(I'll tell you the name at the end). She sure did, but it wasn't one of my favorite names, so I didn't think too much about it, until the next day...

That Sunday at church my friend Kim asked me if we had decided on her name. (Hmmm...I didn't realize that anyone knew we were undecided at this point). I answered that the kids called her Anna, but that I wasn't sold on it. That's when Kim told me that she thought my baby looked like a R_____________. (The exact name that I had thought of the night before).

That night I told David about both experiences and he responded with, "That's what I said the day she was born!" Ooops, I guessed I missed that comment. So, we tried pairing this new name with Anna, either as first or middle name, but they didn't fit well together. David said she needed an "E" name to go with her other name.

A couple of week ago David woke up in the middle of night with the thought: Her name is R_____ E___. He woke me up to tell me. We decided that we would take the hint, so we've officially changed this sweet baby's name to...

Rachel Eve

 David and I haven't had too much trouble switching to calling her Rachel. Joseph has it down too. Sarah and Kathryn are working on it. But baby David is adamantly against it. He calls her Anna still and gets mad when we correct him. He says "NO, NOT!"

On a side note: we noticed a few weeks ago that miss Rachel was born on the same date that her great Grandma Wiseman passed away, one year later. (See this post).

Fall Photos

We tried to take some pictures of the kids after church today because they all looked fairly nice, clean, and well groomed. It was hard to get everyone happy in one big group picture. It was also difficult to get the girls to either smile, or not act too silly. I was hoping we'd get something for a Christmas card, but we might have to try again for a group shot. See the progression below:

Random Photos and Activities from September

 I've been really lazy about updating the blog and taking pictures. We've been so busy here. Toward the end of September I went to a seminar in the Tri-cities area (in eastern Washington, just 2.5 hours from our house). The speaker was Robyn Openshaw - aka Green Smoothie Girl. I've read stuff on her blog before and tried to implement some of her ideas. Well, going to seminars like that get me all excited about eating healthy again. So, here's baby David drinking his smoothie. It's mostly fruit, but has some spinach in it too. He loves it!

At the seminar, I won some cool stuff -- including Robyn's 12-step program, cookbooks, and other goodies. That was Friday night. I got to stay the night with a friend (David stayed home with the kids) and the next day I went to the temple there. It was a great little getaway for me.

Sarah and Joseph are playing kindergarten soccer. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Joseph is at the front of the line and Sarah is at the back. They have a ton of fun and get lots of exercise.

And, they get a snack after the game. I think that is secretly why Joseph goes. One funny thing is that the teams are all sort of randomly assigned according to where kids live or go to school. On our kids' team there are 5 LDS kids and one who is not (the coach's son). 

Davey was trying to use a fork to eat his PB&J and we wanted a picture of it, but he stopped once the camera came out. He is getting so big!

He likes to climb up on the chairs and eat the leftovers off the table. Sometimes he sits on the table too if he can't reach what he wants. He also likes to pull chairs up to the kitchen sink and make messes with the water. His all-time favorite activity though is unrolling ALL of the toilet paper--directly into the toilet--then trying to flush it. We've had more than one clogged toilet this week. In fact, he also put the cardboard roll down my toilet and got it very stuck. We're not sure how to prevent this TP obsession since the other kids need to have easy access to the bathroom, toilet, and toilet paper and I can't guard the bathrooms 24/7.

Here's Kathryn on her first day of preschool (sort of--she went in May a few times, but now she's full-time).

Here she's putting on her slippers. 

We have about 50 different house projects that we'd like to do. They're all in different stages of being completed: everywhere from "dreaming about it" (aka the kitchen) to "I just need to do a little touch-up painting and it will be finished". Above is a picture of the master bathroom and the lovely roll-in shower. It seemed like more water rolled out onto the floor than actually went down the drain, so we never used this shower. Instead we trekked down the hall to share the kids' blue bathtub. I really wanted a deep soaking tub because that's what I love when I'm pregnant, and because it would be nice to shower in our own bathroom with a little more privacy. So, I searched for the perfect tub (it took several months), had it shipped to us, and got bids from different contractors/plumbers. At the beginning of September the demolition began.

After a day of work--by a professional (not us!) we had this big hole. Sarah gladly modeled in the picture.

After another day the tub was in it's spot and the concrete board was going up.

After many more days and numerous trips to different stores to look at tile samples, we finally have this beautiful tub/shower. I'm very pleased with the end result and sure enjoy it. Now, I need to finish painting (notice the wall on the left is a lighter beige color while the wall on the right is a darker brownish color--we'll be painting it beige...but I am dreading doing that side because of the toilet, vanity, mirror, light fixture, etc. that are in the way). So, one more project {almost} done!

And, we're already working on the next project. This is a room out in the shop that was nearly finished when we bought the house. All the walls had sheetrock and were taped, but no texture, paint or flooring aside from the plywood. We've been patching holes (hence the pink spackle spots), spraying texture, and laying some of the left over wood floor from our family room. We'll be painting it this week and installing baseboard and window trim. Then, David gets to use the room as his home office.