March was a fun month. Yea, real fun. All the way up until I woke up one morning to a waterfall in my ceiling and water shooting out of the door jambs. But I'm getting ahead of myself. All that comes later.
At the beginning of the month, Brady filled another potty training sticker chart and earned a trip to Coldstone for ice cream. He was nice and let us come along and get ice cream as well. I guess Coldstone is kind of a potty training tradition now in our family. I remember when Ryan filled in his ice cream sticker chart when he was potty training. He had been doing so well. No accidents for days. Then we had the grand idea to walk over to University Mall to get ice cream at Coldstone- Ryan peed his pants on the walk there. Oh the irony!
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| Do you think he could use a haircut much?! |
My mom sent the boys an awesome St. Patrick's Day package (as always). Ryan has had a special place in his heart for St. Patrick's Day ever since he decided his favorite color was green. My mom always includes green shirts for the boys and they always LOVE them. They would wear them for days on end if I let them!
Ryan really started taking off with reading. One evening he read Hop on Pop (a deceptively long book- what's up with that Dr. Suess!?) Brady was enthralled and it was just about the most satisfying event to take place in my short career as a parent so far.
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| Brothers reading to brothers- it doesn't get better than that! |
(Even Camden, who was tired and teething and having an awful night... yeah, that was the last time we'll pick Zach up from a business trip for a long time. Grouchy babies aren't worth it.)
Ryan and Brady continue to be obsessed with all things Super Hero. We have lots of little boys their ages who all have fun super hero costumes. Some days they all wear their costumes and play super heroes in the backyard. Those are some of my favorite days.
One day Brady went into the bathroom and didn't come back for a long time. I went in to check on him and he was combing Zach's swimming trophy's hair. It was the strangest/cutest thing ever, so I had to document it.
We took a family trip to Cabela's one night. They have lots of little photo stations around the store. On this particular night we decided to get a picture with the skunks. It was one of the most awesome pictures I have of Ryan to date. I feel like I could submit it to Ellen's "Really Bad Paid for Photos" and win. Even though the photo was free. Ryan's pose is just so perfect!
Like I mentioned earlier, March was a teething month for Camden. He's not terrible when he's teething, but if he is in the house with nothing to do he will cry and cry and scream and cry. I learned quickly that if I could get him outside or distract him in some other way, he did much better. Lucky for us we had a few nice days in March. One Saturday afternoon we packed a picnic and some toys and headed to our neighborhood park. It was a fun family outing and Camden enjoyed being outside. I enjoyed a break from grouchy, whiny, clingy, crying Camden. Instead, I got to enjoy smiling, photogenic, happy Camden. He was a big fan of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Camden got really into pulling books off the shelves this month. He had his morning routine- Eat breakfast, pull all the books off the bookshelf and crawl away. This actually turns the book corner into a mine field because sometimes he would walk back and if he stepped on a book he would slip and fall every time. Thankfully, his fascination with pulling all the books out has subsided with time.
We were lucky enough to have Zach's dad aka Pops spend some time with us in March. He was even here for Camden's birthday (separate post to come). One morning I caught Pops on the couch reading to all the boys. It was a picture perfect moment. I love that my boys get to know Zach's dad so well. He is so good at making time to spend with his grandsons. They adore him!
The Easter packages from my mom came the day I put all my St. Patrick's Day things away. How's that for timing!? Camden enjoyed getting pushed around on his birthday in a cardboard box. Now every time there is a cardboard box on the ground he climbs right in. He was pretty fascinated with the Easter stickers my mom sent. I was in the kitchen getting lunch together when I turned around to find him like this:
Before we moved from Orem, I packed up all the trains and train tracks and put them aways up in the closet. They weren't being played with consistently and I was tired of always having to pick them up. With the basement finally finished, I decided to pull the trains out again- the first time in about a year that we had them out. The boys went crazy for them! We had a couple neighborhood boys over and they literally played for hours with the train tracks and train table. I should start rotating toys out more often!
March was an awesome month. We got visits from both grandpas! Pops earlier in the month and then my dad came into town for business at the end of the month. He got to stay in our new guest room in the basement and I was so happy to have him there- even if it was just for a few days.
By the end of the month Spring was starting to give us a little sneak peak. Camden got this cute little whale sweatshirt jacket from Zach's Aunt Suzy. (Aunt Suzy is so sweet. She's never met any of my kids- or me for that matter! But she always sends them the most thoughtful birthday and Christmas presents each year. Even though they've never met her, she's made a name for herself with my kids. They get so excited when they have a package from Aunt Suzy! It makes me excited for the day when they can finally meet her in person!) Aaaaaanway.... the weather was nice so we started playing out on the trampoline more in the evenings while we waited for Zach to get home from work. I pulled out this sun hat for Camden and it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen!
As if we weren't lucky enough with visitors in March, my sister in law, Rachel and her sweet little boys were visiting her parents in Alpine and made time to see us in March as well! My mom sent her boys the same St. Patrick's Day shirts as my boys so Rachel had the great idea to get a picture of all the boys in their green shirts for my mom. Easier said than done...
The kids were playing in the backyard after our less than successful photo shoot on the front porch. My neighbor was outside and we mentioned the fiasco that was the photo shoot and she offered to take some pictures for us with her fancy camera. She had much better luck than we did and we got a winner!
Ryan's end of the year project was to make an ABC book of his favorite things. He decided that his favorite thing that started with the letter R was himself. I love it.
Ryan started being really interested in reading in March. One Saturday we pulled out Zach's work computer and let Ryan do Raz Kids (a computer program through his school to help him read) while the little boys napped. I was downstairs for something and came upstairs to find Ryan rummaging around in the kitchen. When I asked what he was doing and why he wasn't reading on the computer he told me he was looking for a snack. When I glanced at the computer screen, this is what I saw. Ah, the power of suggestion.
My little nephew, Sam was born just a few weeks after Camden. Since Rachel was in town, she decided to throw an early birthday party for Sam and she invited us! It was so much fun!
One morning while Rachel was in town she let me watch her boys while she went to the temple with her mom and sister. It was a fun morning! We did really well, but 5 boys is definitely more than 3 boys! It was fun to see the cousins play so well together. It was a full table for lunch and an even fuller van for carpool!
While the Bailey boys were here we decided to make a fort to read in. When Rachel and her mom came to the door to pick up the boys Roxy was getting a little too excited while greeting them. I said, "crate!" and she turned around and walked into the fort we had made and laid down. Haha. Good dog.
There was one day at the end of March that was warm enough for a water fight! The boys loved breaking in their new swimming suits from Grammy Pam. It was crazy to be in swimming suits when just weeks earlier we were in parkas and snow hats! Utah has the craziest weather sometimes!
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| This is their super hero pose in case you were wondering. |
BYU hosts a Spring scrimmage every year. It's free to the public and they just play a game against each other. Ryan had been so excited to go to an actual BYU football game and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. It was on a Saturday morning and since it was free it was fine that we left before the game was over. I think the boys really enjoyed it and they remember it even to this day.
We spent one Friday afternoon that Zach took off early from work checking out the Farm at Thanksgiving Point. It was a lot of fun and Ryan even got to milk the cow! Brady was disgusted at the thought of milking the cow and refused. It was funny. When Ryan was finished he held his hands out and immediately said, "I need to wash my hands." Haha.
We continued to enjoy the theater by sneaking in as many family movie nights as we could. This picture was taken the night before the infamous flood. Little did we know what we would be waking up to the next morning...
The next morning I woke up at about 6am to go exercise. When I first woke up I heard a sort of whirring sound that was odd, but I didn't think much of it. When I went into our bathroom, however, it sounded like water was pouring out echoing through the walls. It seriously sounded like a bathtub was filling up. NOT a sound you want to wake up to. I mentioned it to Zach and he said they sound was probably the AC (what the?!) I investigated further, looking in the kids bathroom and then making my way downstairs and into the kitchen. Thats when I saw water flowing out of the bathroom off the kitchen. Flowing. Like a river. I thought at first that maybe the toilet had overflowed, but when I looked into the bathroom the toilet was fine and the sink was dry. That's when I noticed the water spewing out of the door jambs of the bathroom. We had a problem. A very big problem. I yelled for Zach.
Zach shut off the water and then we started looking at the damage. The water had completely filled our spare room by the bathroom. You cold literally splash in that room the carpet was so drenched. That's when I noticed the heat registers On. The. Floor. The water had flowed down the heat registers into the basement. Our newly finished, beautiful basement! I wanted to throw up.
Downstairs in the unfinished storage room water was raining down out of the HVAC system. Everything was soaked. It was flowing out into our downstairs guest bedroom and was clearly in the ceiling of the guest room. I tried to move everything out of that room as quickly as I could since I didn't want the ceiling to give way onto the mattress and my brand new comforter set I had just barely bought a week before.
We called our insurance and they put us in contact with a restoration team who came out that same morning. Luckily, Zach was home all that day to help me sort it all out. We called a plumber next to come and figure out where the water was coming from and what had happened. He came and found the broken pipe very quickly. There was a fitting that was installed incorrectly by the builder. There was a brace that was supposed to be on the fitting- keeping it on the pipe- but whoever did the original plumbing in this house had clamped the brace onto the pipe instead of onto the fitting. It's amazing it held as long as it did!
The carpets were all pulled up and holes were cut into the drywall. The restoration team left lots of fans in every room that were to stay running 24/7 until they had determined the area was completely dry. The sound of fans buzzing will ring in my head forever. It was a very long four days. Meanwhile, the rest of my house became a disaster zone:
Even though the flood was a horrible setback and was downright depressing to think about, we felt very blessed to have home owner's insurance. It's one of those things that you don't ever need, until you do. After everything was dried up and they took the fans out of our house, we wanted to wait to start the drywall and carpet repairs until our insurance check came through. It took a couple weeks, but it did finally come. Followed by a letter from our insurance company telling us they are dropping our policy effective July 1st. Rude! (Zach is amazing and got us on with another insurance company in no time, so it wasn't that big of a deal, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little offended!)
*Written on June 22, 2014
