One Month Already: Part 1

Wow...how time is flying by here in our house. Audrey is already one month old! We are getting ready to move in a month and so it's a little crazy around here, but we still manage to find time to coo over our little girl. Here are some pics of her from this last month.April 4: Audrey was not harmed during the placement of toys...
the boys were very nice and careful about 'giving' her their toys.

April 4th: Enjoying the beautiful Easter morning outside with Dad

Notice the little thumb sticking out of her sleeve...so cute!

First Bath!!! She liked it, for about 30 seconds.

Mother and Daughter

This picture taken of me at 3 days old earned me the nickname "Yoda" by my uncles.


These pictures taken of Audrey at 2 days old I think are just plain adorable.

Quarterly Clarkisms

Reader Discretion is Advised:

12/19/09
Clark: (after going poop, standing proudly holding the bottom of his shirt above his belly) “Mama, Dada, do you just love my poop!?”
Cherylyn/Tanner: “We just love your poop!”
Clark: “We CAN’T eat it because its DIGSGUSTING [sic]!!”

Andrew: (shriek with fear)
Cherylyn: Clark, stop scaring Andrew!
Clark: But I want to cuz its SO funny.

12/27/09
Clark: (while eating chunks out of a large snowball) This is my favorite dinner!

12/29/09
Clark: (after dinner) Mom my tummy hurts cuz it has lots of food in it.

01/23/10
Clark: Andrew poops his pants … I’m going to call him poopy pants.
Tanner: No, we don’t call people poopy pants.
Tanner: Did you wet the bed last night?
Clark: Yep.
Tanner: Do you want me to call you peepy pants?
Clark: But that is SO grwumpy [sic].

01/26/10
Clark: Mama, I can’t go poopoo because my bottom is too strange.

01/31/10
Clark: Mama, I’m hungry … I hear the stomach sound.

02/08/10
Clark: Mama, come look at my poops!
Cherylyn: Wow, that’s a big one!
Clark: Yep! There’s a mama poop, and a dada poop, and a Clarkie poop!
Cherylyn: Yeah
Clark: But there’s no baby Audrey poop.

02/28/10
Clark: (while staring at the wall, after being disciplined several times for asking to play Mario Brothers, and after receiving strict instructions that he is forbidden from asking to play the game again). I hear some kids like to play Mario Brothers.
Tanner: Don’t do that. Don’t ask to play Mario Brothers in a round about way.
Clark: But I didn’t (quickly leaves the room).

Tanner: (while driving on 495 past the D.C. Temple) Clark, do you see the temple?
Clark: Yep, its cool.
Clark: I can’t go in there until I meet a goirl [sic] to get married when I a big boy.

03/09/10
Clark: Mom, are you feeling sick yet?
Cherylyn: Yeah.
Clark: Then you better go poop.

Clark: (talking about Audrey) Mama, does your tummy have a bed inside it?
Clark: Oh, I know what it is, it’s a crib.
Cherylyn: Its called a uterus.
Clark: (chuckle) I didn’t know that!

03/12/10
Clark: Dad, where did the sun go to?
Tanner: He went to sleep.
Clark: Did he went to sleep in my bed?
Tanner: Nope.
Clark: Where did he went to sleep at?
Tanner: He went to sleep in outer space.
Clark: Outer space!?
(pause)
Clark: Did he go to sleep with his mommy?
Tanner: Yep.
Clark: And his daddy?
Tanner: Yep.
Clark: Alright.

03/28/10
Tanner: Boys, what song do you want to sing before bed?
Clark: I want to sing Choose the Wrong because I made bad choices.

03/30/10
Clark: (after entering a grocery store aisle that had wood flooring instead of the regular linoleum flooring) Dada, this floor is perfect for us!

04/02/10
Clark: What is wrong with Baby Audrey?
Tanner: I don’t know, she looks upset about something.
Clark: Is she upset because she doesn’t have a peepee?

Big Brothers

The family arrived home yesterday with a good bill of health, except for the remnants of Cherylyn's pounding headache. Knowing that upon our return home, Audrey would now be surrounded by the boys 24/7, we wondered how they would respond to this new bundle of delicacy. While we are not naive enough to believe this will be the undeviating case, so far we are thrilled with the results:

Welcome Baby Audrey!!

We are pleased to announce the arrival of Audrey Day Nielson, who was born at 0759 on April 1 2010, three weeks before her due date (following in Andrew's footsteps) (and no, this is not an April Fool's joke).

Audrey weighed in at a bruising 5 pounds 4 ounces and 19 inches in length. She also measured 100% in cuteness, as determined by the most stringent peer-reviewed scientific methods known to man. She is the spitting image of her older brothers and future tormentors Clark and Andrew, but we are confident she is a girl because the nurses plunked a pink beanie on her minuscule head. And don't be deceived by her small size. She suffered pricks and shots and all manner of abuse at the nurses' hands with more grit and discipline than her male counterparts in the nursery.

Audrey has blond hair (yeah, what a surprise), an eye color of some sort that is not yet ascertainable (no doubt they will lighten in the coming days) and she is right-handed, her favorite color is blue, and her favorite hobby is watching movies with her daddy (okay, I admit it, those last couple of items were complete fabrications).

Cherylyn suffered ... err ... experienced contractions throughout the night, and at the glorious hour of 4am, we (and when I say we, I mean Cherylyn, since Tanner had just been woken up and was still in a "what! what is it! what time is it!" kind of mode) decided it was probably time to head to the hospital.

Upon arriving, Cherylyn got all souped up on her bed, epidural put firmly in place, and sweet sweet medication coursing through her lower half. After about an hour and a half, Cherylyn complained of pressure. A nurse came in, checked her, and quickened her pace around the room and went to page the doctor. Cherylyn, concerned with the level of sensation still present in her legs, asked if the dosage could be upped a smidgen, to which the nurse responded, "honey, one push and this baby is coming out."

At this announcement Tanner dashed gallantly to Cherylyn's side and promptly removed his wristwatch (even now it is not fully known why Tanner felt his wristwatch needed to be removed, but there was no time for contemplation and he acted on pure primal instinct). After everyone took their positions, Cherylyn pushed ferociously, and was then asked to rein in her ferocity a tad, as the doctor appeared slightly disquieted at the rate Audrey approached. After retooling the pace, Audrey gracefully entered the world.

Cherylyn is recovering nicely, and as these things go, this was one of the easier labors she has undergone. So easy in fact, that she is chomping at the bit to get pregnant with baby number four (okay, another fabrication). The boys came to visit Audrey this afternoon and Andrew couldn't refrain from showering her with slobbery kisses and Clark couldn't refrain from asking Cherylyn if he could have some of her food.

Needless to say, we are incredibly happy to have Audrey as the newest addition to our towheaded clan. She is a beautiful little girl and we are excited about the opportunity we will have to share our lives together.

A natural sun-bather

\

A happy mother with her new baby girl

Another Seahawk fan in the making

Our baby burrito

Kisses from Clark

Slobbers from Andrew

A typically docile interaction between the boys. And yet, look at Audrey's sheer stoicism and impressive ability to concentrate

We are moving to......

Drum roll please.....


(what, don't you automatically recognize what country that flag belongs to?)

JAKARTA, INDONESIA

We are VERY VERY excited! The ceremony was awesome and full of nervous energy (including from our boys -- though that was mostly just energy), and felt a lot like receiving a mission call, aside from the Mardi Gras beads everyone wore and the game of Bingo played throughout the ceremony. When Tanner got his flag and later handed it to Clark, Clark said "That's not OUR flag, OUR flag has stars." (get used to it buddy!) We are slated to move at the end of June...so the upcoming months will definitely be busy in our household. We hope as many of you as possible will be able to come and visit. I will post more details about Indonesia soon, but only those details that show the country in a positive light, so that you will actually want to visit us!

I Love Canada!

I love the Olympics, but I really loved that I learned so much about the place this time around. Canada sounds and looks like a wonderful place...at least within 100 miles of our border anyway...then it just gets way too cold. Luckily, we taped the afternoon coverage everyday and we TIVO'd through the 6 hours in about 1 hour just to see if there was anything interesting to watch. If you watched or TIVO'd Saturday afternoon's coverage, there was a 45 minute story with Tom Brokaw about Gander, Newfoundland. I was SO excited when we started watching because I was shocked that prior to Tom Brokaw's initial story about Canada on one of the first days of the Olympics, I had NEVER heard about the people of Canada helping the U.S. out so much on 9/11. I was sad at the time that he didn't expound on the story.

Just watching how they diverted all those flights to Canada was amazing. For all the failures that occurred on that day, it AMAZES that within 2 hours there was not a plane in the sky over the U.S. and that there were no crashes on runways in the process of grounding all the flights.
I cried multiple times throughout the story...it was very well done if you don't count the tacky breaks for commercials at emotionally critical moments. I was hoping it would be on youtube this morning so I could just post the link, but so far it hasn't shown up and NBC hasn't said if they will re-air it. Hopefully everyone will get the chance to see it...and if you do, have tissues handy...lots of tissues.

We watched the gold medal hockey game after watching the story about Gander, and while I am USA through and through, the disappointment at our loss was not nearly as acute as it otherwise could have been, because if we are going to lose, it's best to lose to a country you like and respect. We are truly blessed to have our good neighbors to the north.

Haven't We Done This Before??

Yes, almost 2 years ago to be more exact. Apparently in the Nielson household the following formula always exists:

Pregnancy + Disc Herniations in Tanner's Back = New Job + Moving!

The details are different, but I am finding the similarities between 2008 and 2010 to be pretty humorous.

So, SURPRISE! Tanner has been in process of applying as a Foreign Service Officer for the State Department for over a year. He has now successfully completed the application process and just began the State Dept. A-100 FSO training course! We are all very excited to begin this new chapter in our lives and expect it to be filled with even more adventure than we have experienced thus far. He will continue in training, we will rank our preferences from a country bid list we have received, and we will find out where in the world we will move and when by the end of March. Our baby is due the end of April, and it is a very real possibility that we could end up moving overseas any time beginning as early as this summer. These are exciting and stressful times, and it is all becoming more clear to me why we went through all the craziness that we did two years ago ... we were being prepared for this! The great part is that the State Department is fairly organized when it comes to preparing families for international moves, so it will be a bonus not having to do this alone.

In the meantime, it seems we are playing the waiting game in almost every aspect of our life. Our life will change quite dramatically over the next 2 months, but I have felt a lot of excitement, peace, and comfort in how our lives up to this point have prepared us for our family's future. There was a reason why I chose to major and graduate in International Studies at BYU, although I was not aware of what my life would entail 8 years later. There was a reason Tanner took a job in the D.C. area two years ago that took us away from a good job in Florida. It is times like these when you can look at a lot of the big decisions you have made in your life and realize it was all preparing you for something bigger, although you weren't fully aware of what was coming down the pipe when making those decisions. It is times like these that I am grateful for a wonderful husband, a loving and supportive family, and a testimony that we can be led by a loving Father in Heaven as to our own individual and family purposes in this life. I am sure the coming months will be stressful and busy, but exciting nonetheless. Stay tuned!!!

I'll Give You A Winter Prediction:

"It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life. There is no way this winter is ever going to end." ~ Phil Conners, Groundhog Day.

This quote keeps running over and over through my mind. We watched the movie last week in honor of Groundhog Day, and it is hands down one of my favorite comedies of all time.

Then "one of these big BLUE things" hit us, and we got 3 feet of snow on Friday night, and life has been somewhat miserable ever since. Luckily we only lost power for an hour...HUGE blessing. But digging ourselves out is another story. Remember, Tanner has 2 disc herniations in his back and I am 6 1/2 months pregnant. Good times! Today I finished digging us out, only to come in and check the forecast, and we are supposed to get 10 more inches tomorrow! Which reminds me of another quote:

"What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today."

The days are all running into each other. We haven't had church since January 24th. The kids have massive cabin fever and probably don't understand why mom and dad are just a little bit ornery. We tried to take the boys sledding, but the snow is so deep and not compact that we mostly just sunk into it. Tanner did get a relatively decent path going, but by the time it was starting to get good, the boys had had it, and were crying wrecks. But having said all of that, the snow is beautiful, it tastes really good (Clark said it's his "favorite dinner"), and we have shelter, food, and family. So, life is good.

"Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on his smiling face a dream of spring."

I am dreaming of Spring.

Once There Was A Snowman

Back when we had a weak sauce 4 inches of snow on the ground, we took the boys outside to make a snowman. The snow was PERFECT for it, and we all loved it, even Clark who really does NOT like the cold.
Clark named him "Popcorn Popping", which is kind of funny given that it is a Spring song....he must be dreaming of spring just like I am. Andrew on the other hand is fine with just about anything and really loved his snowman.