Blessings

This has been a month of blessings, and I am definitely grateful for them!
The most important thing I am grateful for is my new little boy! Klarence Edward (Eddie) was born on November 20th.
There are a lot of little blessings that added to making this one easier. One is that I had plenty of people willing to watch my older boys when I went to the hospital, because I had the extras it ended up being ok that 3 of them weren't able to (due to sickness and leaking water heaters). My parents watched them. This was good for more than one reason. My parents know the way I do things better than the others who would have watched them. My parents are good at working with their picky diets, and can understand their talking reasonably well. Also, my parents are leaving for a mission soon, and this gave my boys more of a chance to spend time with them.
The second blessing was the labor itself. I kindof went into labor on my own, which hasn't happened before. I was able to deal with pain and discomfort really well, and the labor wasn't really very long. There were no complications with the delivery at all. The closest we got to a complication was that the baby monitor wouldn't pick up the baby's heartrate when I was sitting up, so I had to lay down most of the time. My nurses were wonderful! My doctor was great! Everything went really smoothly. And my baby is healthy!
The third blessing has been my recovery. I was amazed after my second baby how quickly I recovered. It only took me a few weeks to feel good again. This time it only took a few days. While I did have some postpardum depression, it has been very limited and is improving every day. I am also happy that my weight is improving very quickly as well.
The Fourth blessing (and the last one I'll mention) has been my sweet husband. He has been amazing over the last few weeks. He has supported me when I needed it, and when I didn't realize I needed it. He took days off work whenever I needed him to, and gave me flowers while I was in labor. He even went to Papa Johns to get me pizza when the hospital food wasn't good.
These are a just a few of my many blessings that I am grateful for.

Hiding

Von has learned something new: how to hide. This is something that he is very good at, and is getting better at all the time. Usually he hides when he wants to play with something he isn't supposed to play with, like his piggy bank. He quietly goes into my room, takes it off the shelf, goes into the closet and hides behind the door, where he takes the plug out of the tummy and dumps all the coins out. He has done this so many times that I automatically check there first.
Another place he hides is under his bed. I knew he liked playing under beds, and so I left a space big enough to play when I was putting boxes under his bed. The nice thing about this hiding place is that I know to look there.
The next most likely hiding place is in the sewing room. Currently the sewing room isn't very organized, so he crawls under the clothes drying rack, under the quilting frame and puts together puzzles. He loves it under there. I wonder what he'll do when I get the room organized?
A few nights ago I went to check on the boys before I went to bed, and Von wasn't in his bed. So I checked under his bed, and under Kaleb's bed. No Von. I quickly started freaking out and yelled for Karl to come help me. We turned on all the lights and looked everywhere we could think of. Somewhere during the search I realized that the front door was unlocked (which meant someone could have come in and taken him, at least that was possible in my frame of mind at the time). After a good minute or two of searching, and freaking out, and praying, I moved the door to the boy's bedroom, and there was Von, sleeping soundly on the floor behind the door. I almost started crying, I was so thrilled that he was ok.
So now I have a new hiding place to look at when searching for Von...

Small Changes

I've been a little frustrated lately that some of the changes Karl and I are trying to make don't seem to make any difference. On Saturday I got a boost when I realized that they ARE making a difference, I just wasn't recognizing the change.
The big thing we're working on is eating out less. This seems to be one of the biggest struggles we have, we just enjoy eating out. One of our favorite places to get burgers is Red Robin. 6 or 8 months ago this is what we would get when we ate there: a burger for each of us, endless steak fries, sodas or strawberry lemonade to drink, and a shake or piece of pie to share. This would end up costing around $35 when we added the tip, and we would both end up stuffed!
On Saturday we went trick or treating at the mall and one of the last places we went was Red Robin. Instead of candy they were handing out coupons for a free kids meal, so we decided to be done trick or treating and eat dinner. Karl and I each ordered our favorite burger and fries, but we didn't ask for more fries when the ones we had were gone, we drank water instead of soda and we didn't even talk about getting a dessert. With our tip we spent $23, and left feeling satisfied instead of stuffed.
I felt pretty good about the changes we've made, even though they're small, they are significant.
And Karl is loosing weight too.