Glenn's having ALL the fun!

As I suggested in the title, I'm basically jealous of Glenn.  In one week he got to do 2 totally fun activities.  On Monday April 25, the twins' school had a field trip to the OKC zoo.  Glenn took the day off work to spend it at the zoo "chaperoning". He ended up spending all day with just Caden and Conner, visiting the sights. They even stayed longer, past the time that all their classmates had to return home on the bus. It was a bit chilly and overcast most of the day, so Glenn had to spend $40 on these ugly jackets from the zoo store.  None-the-less, they had an awesome time. It isn't very often that Glenn gets to spend time with just one or two of the kids at a time (me neither for that matter), so the quality time is well spent.  Now for the captions:

Apparently Caden and Conner were both climbing on this rope and fell off. Conner went down 1st, with Caden landing on top of him.  It hurt, but Glenn insisted they take a picture right then and there!

More pics of Caden and Conner at the zoo.  There is this neat bird enclosure that allows you to purchase nectar and feed the birds from your hand.  The boys loved this activity so much that they returned later in the day to do it again.

Daddy even treated them to some swan paddle boats for 1/2 hour.  That was a new and exciting adventure as well.

FATHER AND SON CAMPOUT

Here's some pictures of all three of the boys while at the father & son campout sponsered by the church. For the second time last week, Glenn took off with the boys and had a fabulous time.  The camp was 2.5 hours away and our family was the only ones to attend from Ada, Oklahoma. Glenn reported that is well worth it, and though it rained for a little bit Sat. morning, the boys waited it out and stayed hours longer than everyone else.  They did lots of hiking, some fishing and visited a very nice nature museum. The campsite was located in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Reserve.  There were free-roaming buffalo, texas longhorns and lots of prairie dogs.

 Glenn took tons of pics, but there's no way I'm going post them all.

I HAD to post this picture of Glenn since it cracks me up when he gets all "out-doorsy".  I tease him about all the accessories that begin to appear on his belt.

Cutest kids EVER...no really!

 I decided I like blogging. Honestly most of my days feel like the regular hum-drum of housework and tons of managing; better known as mothering. One of my sisters pointed out that sometimes it's hard for her to blog because she doesn't always have something "flowery" to say like apparently most blogs do. She got me to thinking about the reasons I blog.  It reminds me of the annual christmas letters that go out sometimes, highlighting or at least "spicing up" the negatives that happened in review of the year. I admit blogs do seem to encompass "happily-ever-after" posts exclusively.  Mine does too.  But I just wanted to clarify, why this is, at least for me. Statement #1: My life is full of upsets and arguments and loudness and choas sometimes.  We do get sick and sad and even tired of eachother often enough too. There's never enough $, and time and energy seems to slip away so easily. Life IS NOT perfect, no matter how I try to present it, or how it appears. Statement#2: Actual pictures and posts usually only occur for me when I am upbeat, energized and totally excited about a recent event, or I was fortunate to spot a glimpse of the innocense and simplicity of childhood behavoir. Statement #3:  I personally try to blog, if I have pictures to go along with it. Fortunately, no one is around snapping pics when the kids are arguing, I've lost my mind for the zillionth time, or dinner has been burned.  Besides, what kind of read would that be for all 5 of you out there who read my blog?  With all that said, I'm restating my 1st statement.  I like blogging. It is a break for me so that I will focus on my family and the blessed life we do have. I experience the regularities of life like everyone else, so what I report here are my oasis (es? How do you make that word plural?!) of happiness.  I'd miss them or forget about them if  didn't document them.  I'm not blogging to show off.  It's for me to relax, and remind myself of all the good that surrounds me.

Here's Ben all dressed up as wolverine.  Ben has always been my best make-believer.

McKenna loves playing out in the sand in the backyard.  I still don't know why she tastes the sand everyday, and then walks around with that gritty texture in her mouth for a little while.

McKenna helping mommy bake a cake. She repeated over and over, "I wanna tase it. tase it pweeze." 

O.k.  This one's a real jewel.  McKenna had been freely coming in and out of the house all afternoon, playing just fine, until I realized it had been a few minutes since I've seen or heard from her last.  Here's what I found; she had slipped on my tennis shoes that were by the back door, pulled down this pot of soil off the patio rail and began taking handfuls of dirt and placing it down in the shoes as best as she could.

 Another 80+temp day so we let the kids take turns spraying eachother with the hose while on the trampoline.

Easter and such...

At the end of March my in-laws came to visit from Chico, California.  This was their first visit to our home in Oklahoma.  We had a relaxing, but fun time together.  I must say, all my kids loved seeing their grandparents, but McKenna was really smitten by Nana and Papa.  Could it be all the attention they give her? Hmmmmm....

Here's picture of Nana holding McKenna and being silly together.

There is an awesome children's museum in Seminole, Ok (about 45 minutes away). We have a season pass and decided to play there one afternoon while Nana was visiting.  In this picture, the kids are acting in front of a green screen, like they do for weather forecasters.  All children like seeing themselves "on tv".

There is a pretend car repair shop at the musuem too.  Ben is changing the tire, while Caden and Conner do various other mechanic jobs.

This picture of Conner is blurry since he was standing inside a giant bubble that he created around himself simply by pulling on the rope.

The Easter bunny made a visit to a local park where there was a huge easter egg hunt.  Of course Glenn always corrects me and calls them easter egg rushes since it's over in less than a minute, and there's no hunting involved at all. I was sad to see that the twins are no longer enthralled by the easter bunny anymore.  What?! They're too old (7yrs.).  **sniffles**  Sadness.

Here's papa (a.k.a Larry; Glenn's stepdad), hanging with 3 out 4 of the grandkids. 

This is Glenn's family who came to visit.  There's (left to right) Elaina, Sarah, Glenn and his mom and dad. The only one missing is Glenn's other sister, Melissa.  I should of told Glenn to put on some sunglasses in order to fit in!

Last, but not least, even though there are a dozen more pictures beyond what I've posted, Nana orchestrated the dying of eggs.  Sometimes I'm a party-pooper when it comes to potentially messy projects so I was happy when Nana and Sarah dyed the easter eggs with the kids.  

Catch Up

Why does it always seem like I'm playing catch-up on here?  Because I am! So let me launch into the updates.  I've been struggling a lot lately. 4 weeks ago I had an impacted wisdom tooth.  It was too infected to get removed immediately, so I had to wait another week until I could get it removed.  Finally I got it removed, was moderately ok, until 3 days later when I developed dry-socket.  Long story short, I am one of the lucky ones who takes a lot longer to heal, (typically it takes 1-2 weeks for dry-socket).  I am still seeing the oral surgeon a month later to have the hole in my mouth packed with this nasty clove-tasting pain reliever. It's worth it though since the pain is so severe without it, and being pregnant I have only been able to take tylenol. I could go on-and-on about it, because it's posed a lot of problems and sleepless nights...but on to the happy things that makes everything so worth it...
 I did have another ultrasound and it showed that I'm still expecting a GIRL! I am getting more and more excited as I'm now half-way through the pregnancy. Picking out a name is tough though.  Almost every name I like belongs to someone else close to us.  Glenn's no help this time except at shooting down every idea of mine. At least Benjamin has been trying to help me. Dear child. He's five so he's beginning to spell words, or at least try.  That's where all these weird, creative baby names come up like "Mog. Cuz that rhymes with dog, mom".
Now the captions to all the pictures:

Between the picture above and the one below, which two, look the most alike?

This is a picture of the kids riding on a 4 wheeler for the 1st time ever at my brother Chad's house. They live only 1.5 hours away from us now, so we love visiting.  Everyone had a blast playing outside all day.

Glenn took the 3 boys to a neat park called Turner Falls and had fun exploring all day.  It's apparently a real neat tourist attraction in southern Oklahoma with lots of camping and swimming near the waterfalls. I didn't go because my wisdom tooth hurt so bad that day. I missed out it looks like:(

 

Obviously McKenna had a blast eating her cup of pudding!

Whew!  One of our first 80 degree days of the year!  VERY popsicle worthy!

More to come soon! Stay tuned!

Two-in-one

Pregnancy Update:  I have sooo been meaning to blog about my pregnancy.  In a way time has just flown by.  It's probably because I'm already so busy with 4 kids that makes this pregnancy less eventful.  Even so, Glenn and I are very excited to be expecting again.  If you've noticed there is a gadget on the side of my blog that keeps track of how far along I am.  C'mon it's attempt to let everyone (and myself) keep track of when I'm due and such.  As far as pregnancy goes, I think I was the most nasueous during the first trimester with this pregnancy, as compared to the other 3.  Fortunately it was textbook, and at 14 weeks I immediately felt better.  I'm not showing much (as I'm already pretty stretched out...**yeah. that's what we'll call this extra weight**).  Even at 17 weeks, I look like I always have.  Last week I had my first ultrasound, since I've recently switched obstetricians.  It's still early, but the ultrasound technichian stated that her guess is that it's a girl.  That's pretty exciting.   I was 60% voting for a girl.  We'll see if that's what is. Other than that, I believe I began feeling the baby move or flutter this week.  Yeah!  Let the baby kung-fu inside me begin.

Valentines Day   Ok so it's been a while since I've posted, so I'll try and get as many pics with text up here as quickly as I can so all my followers (that's fun to say) can see what the Berrys have been up to.  My sweetheart Glenn actually sent me flowers this valentines day!   Glenn gets me flowers occassionally throughout the year, but not usually through delivery.  The sad thing is, I was literrally loading the van for our trip to Missouri, when the florist found my house.  Timidly they asked,  "Casey Berry residence?"  I said yes, and they proceeded to hand me the flowers.  My brother Colby says it would have made a better story if I had ranted and yelled something like "Just like that loser-of-a-husband trying to win me over with flowers! It ain't gonna work!  Can't you see I'm packing the car and leaving him??!!"   Yup, if I hadn't have been so distracted by all the choas of preparing to leave, that would have made for a funnier story.

FYI there is a second set of roses from the Primary President at church, whom I serve with.  She dropped some flowers by because my birthday is the following day after Valentines day.

Needless to say, my birthday was wonderful this year.  I got to go to Misssouri and visit with family and friends, and I recieved pajamas, a new digital camera and a love note from Glenn.

My 7 year old twins!

January 29th, Caden and Conner turned 7. In some ways I can't believe I have 7 year olds. I remember when they were born and the first 5-6 months thereafter. I probably was suffering from postpartum depression, but I was feeling so "trapped". I kept thinking of all the things I couldn't get done or wouldn't be able to do so easily alone anymore. Everything revolved around the children, even the careful planning to take a break and get away from them! Probably every mother experiences this, but I held on to that feeling much longer than I care to admit. One day, I remember very poignantly, I was expressing how resentful I was to a friend for my loss of freedom and sense of my self. The friend very simply said, "instead of looking at everything you're missing out on, you ought to think about everything you will get to do". I gradually changed my perspective and begin taking delight in all the experiences I was having because I had children. Seeing my kids experience the world for their first time is amazing. Every trip we take, every question they ask, every explanation they need is rewarding to me. I'm doing "kid things" again because my kids are just kids and they're excited about life. Why else would I have reason to go the zoo, circus, museums, programs, sporting events, etc. so many times in the last 7 years? Who else would I build tents, racetracks, and snowmen with? When would I ever make-believe I was an alien, dragon, princess, bad guy, or monster? How often would I sit and explain something I take for granted about the gospel, or be able to help dispel the fear after a thunderstorm or nightmare? My kids, beginning with Caden and Conner, give me lots of reasons to do things. I'm not so stuck anymore. I'm blessed.
So here's a picture of Caden and Conner on their 7th birthday:
The weather was terrible here in Oklahoma (ice and power outages) so the cake almost didn't finish baking. We had to have a small birthday party, but new toys always help out when school has been cancelled.

Aunt Bebo (my sister Cheryl) came and visited 4 days later and brought presents for everyone.

Caden is a wizard at word games, and since he already had played Apples to Apples at Christmas time with all the adults, Bebo got him the same game, only it's the junior version.

More presents from aunt Bebo.

Kiddos

Ice Cream is the Best! Nothing like brotherly love and ice cream sandwiches. You gotta spare yourself the extra mess and stains on shirts by removing shirts beforehand; that way if they drip it will perhaps land on their bare chest and shock them into reality and help them realize they need to be a little more careful! Naaaaa. They're boys. Need I say more?

McKenna is dressed and ready for church. I had to get a picture cuz my sister Cheryl made this darling dress for McKenna. It's a froggy print with even a stuffed frog attached (in the pocket right now). I love it.

I could not get the boys attention while they were watching the movie "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs".

So every child is different, right? It's true, but I didn't expect McKenna to be my little climber. She is such a daredevil sometimes. In this picture McKenna scooted over a stool, climbed up on the counter and got into the medicine cabinet (I think she was aiming for the candy cabinet next to it).

This is a picture of McKenna after she climbed on the top bunk bed. I have since taped a large book to one of the rungs to prevent further climbing.

As many of you know, Mckenna made two trips to the E.R. within the last 30 days. The first time was when she pulled a bench over on herself while climbing up to the table. We thought she broke her nose. She was fine. More recently McKenna visited the E.R. after she had apparently stuffed a banana bread up her nose (which contained walnuts). They extracted a couple of tiny pieces before finally pulling out the "mother" one. It was the size of my thumbnail. I know you all wanted those details. Needless to say, McKenna (and mom and dad) are sick of the E.R.

Christmas Journey

I thought I'd walk you through some of the joys of Christmas with our family.
Obviously, we just bought our REAL Christmas tree (Glenn insists) from Home Depot. Yea. You read it. Home Depot. I'm completely satisfied with driving only 5 miles from home to pick out "the tree" among 100's. That's about as close to the woods or tree farm as I get. Needless to say, the kids were fascinated with the prospect of carrying a tree home on top of our car! In the course of tying down the tree to the rooftop of the car, a Home Depot employee climbed up on the car too. Having never experienced any of this, Caden shouts excitedly, "Are we taking him home too?!!" As if the Home Depot man comes with the tree! I love my Caden.

Daddy and McKenna putting the tree stand on.

Let the decorating begin.

Our tree Christmas morning. Notice that most of the ornaments are "up north"? It's due to a toddler's (umm ummm...McKenna) nonverbal communication methods that lets us know where the ornaments should be placed.

Caden and Conner both recieved Max's Draganoids (bakugans) for Christmas. It's something I never heard about prior to 2 months ago, but it was the number one thing on their Christmas lists.

Grandma Carey visited. It was nice to have most of my family gather for Christmas at our house in Oklahoma. It was a bit crazy with the blizzard-like weather that hit. Roadtrips for relatives took quite a bit longer than normal. Hopefully, family time made it all worth it.

My brother Colby and his wife Sarah plus kids visited too. Pretty good smiles for early morning.

This is my brother Chad and his wife Kenda. They stayed a couple of nights too.

Conner checks his stocking out.

Ben with his stocking.

Busy December

Christmas Program Our family enjoyed watching Caden and Conner perform in their Christmas Program at school on Monday. They sang 5 adorable songs, all about bears and Christmas. Each class 1st thru 2nd represented a different kind of bear. There were brown, polar, teddy, and panda bears. I don't know how to sew, so the hot glue gun is my best friend.
I can appreciate the holidays around here because it's not so PC (politically correct), and people still say "Merry Christmas" to eachother and the "Christmas" word is still used in the children's school. In fact, the children's spelling words for this week included "Mary" and "Jesus".




Benjamin turns 5!!! I wish you all could be here to celebrate Ben's birthday. He has been looking forward to it for a long time. Unfortunately, Ben misunderstood and thought that he would be in kindergarten, like right away. He was all ready to switch from his preschool to kindergarten class. Since December 14 is a day to celebrate Ben, I just want to share with you what a really special kid Ben is. For all of you who know Ben, he is the most mild and even-tempered child in our family. Considering we have some strong personalities in our family...umm...umm, Ben is refreshing to be with. His biggest offense of his whole life is aggravating McKenna and even that has improved. Ben is independent, friendly to everyone, affectionate, yet creative, and outgoing. He has been a blessing to our family and balances everything by being the kid "in the middle" between the twins and McKenna. Anyway, I just thought I'd dote on him for a minute. He had a few friends over for cake and ice cream on his birthday. It was easy and fun for everyone.

Uh Oh McKenna!!! Here's a couple of pictures of McKenna. On Tuesday, McKenna tried to climb on the bench that goes to our kitchen table and instead she pulled it down on herself and it pinned her head. Her nose bled for about 1 minute and then immediately swelled. She looked worse than this. We took her to the ER just in case she broke it. 5 1/2 hours later, we learned everything should be fine. As a mom, it is super scary and traumatizing watching all this unfold, especially to your baby.

Just including a cute picture of McKenna. She likes to have her hair fixed and actually lets me style it, only to rip it out later! None-the-less, her hair is growing!!!