Fishermen's Bend

 We've been so busy having an adventurous summer that I've gotten behind on updating our blog, (and housework, and a bunch of other things...) But our non stop adventures started a month ago with camping at Fishermen's Bend for the Wilcox family reunion. We love this camping trip, we still fee somewhat civilized with access to running water, electricity, and bathrooms. We still slept in a tent so we were still definitely camping. We left on a Thursday afternoon, we recently just got a bike rack for Max's car so we were pretty excited that we could actually bring our bikes. All of the cousins brought bikes to so we had a huge assortment to play with, and a huge area to play in. (and if you know our house, we have NOWHERE to ride bikes, so this is a big deal) It was the first thing the boys set off to do, after we made them help us set up our tent. Miles had his first try at skateboarding.

Charlie thought Kaden's bike was so much better than his slightly bigger bike, so he rode that most of the time.

Miles liked trying it out too!

 And he was doing tricks in no time.

We had a delicious dinner of stew and salad, followed by homemade, dutch oven apple cobbler, made with fresh apples that were just picked that morning. 

 The camera was put away but the evening was filled with a short post dinner bike ride and throwing some rocks in the river, and s'mores. The night wasn't too cold so the boys slept great and I slept decently!

In the morning we had yummy waffles and sausage. Shortly after Max sent me back to the tent to nap, (since I had a lack of sleep the night before) while he played at the park with the boys. We then switched when it was Miles nap time and I went kite flying with Charlie and Kaden. We didn't have much wind so there was a lot of running!

 

Then I made a sidewalk chalk bike town. Complete with a bike wash, school, gas station, grocery store, fire station, park, and houses. I was pretty proud of it, my boys were mildly interested. Chloe and Lexi and Kim were bigger fans.

 

And really, camping is great because you don't have to wear a shirt or shoes and you get to be outside all day.

 He always says "take a picture to me mommy!"

We did another family bike ride through the forest and to the river to throw more rocks.

  and we stopped at a drinking fountain where I had taken a photo of my boys a year earlier that I loved, So I took way too many picture of them again.

After a fun time playing in a drinking fountain, we continued on our bike ride.

We ended up at the river again for some rock climbing and rock throwing. some of my boys' favorite things .

He thought it was absolutely hilarious that his belly button disappeared.

Then he "found" it!

Kissing owies!

Charlie was explaining how big his splashes were when he threw a big rock.

And this water was really cold, but the boys likes splashing in it.

When we got back, Kaden wanted a ride but my legs were done! So he and Chloe rode around with Stephanie.

Then we had a nice dinner, I can't remember what it was but I'm sure it was great.

It was then s'more time.

Then we out our exhausted kids to bed and Max and I came out to play games with the other adults.

The next morning started with personalized pancakes and sausage. And shortly thereafter the boys were riding bikes. Max helped Charlie ride with no training wheels They didn't really get that far with it.

But Max is pretty good with no training wheels.

We celebrated Kaden's birthday with water balloons and a pinata.

 

We then packed some lunches and made our way to Detroit Lake!

Max took them out in the little raft in preparation for the upcoming rafting trip. They both loved it, Miles did great and would probably be ready for our rafting trips since he was so content in the boat. It's too bad I make them wait until they are 3!

Zach and Austin would go swim underwater and creep up on people to splash them.

Some drying off time in the sun with Daddy,

Exhausted!

Both boys fell asleep on our drive back to our campsite. We left them in the car while we worked on packing up our camping gear. They woke up shortly after though and started playing with bikes and kites. We made tin foil dinners and then packed up everything else and drove home.

It was an excellent camping trip. We would have loved to stay longer but we needed to get back in time for Max to leave for a week long camping trip with the older scouts in the ward.

It's a baby!

So, as my two blog readers know, we are having another baby. In the beginning, I decided I wanted to keep this one secret for awhile. It could just be mine and Max's own thing for awhile. I figured that would make the pregnancy go faster and also, I just didn't want to draw attention to myself. I ended up telling 2 close friends early on, but that was it! As many (still 2 readers?) of you know, I have had 2 miscarriages, so this is my 5th pregnancy. The positive to this is that I get early ultrasounds. I had one at 8 weeks and 12 weeks. The first ultrasound we saw a little jelly bean with a heart beat.  After our second ultrasound at 12 weeks, and seeing a healthy heartbeat and a wiggly baby, we decided it was time to tell family and friends. (I still debated if it was going to go on social media but in a moment I just decided to go with it.)

Here is a video we made to send to our parents. We ask the boys these same questions all the time and their answers always vary. They got extra distracted this time since we were outside.

Our ultrasound appointment went pretty great. The boys really seem so excited about this baby. They loved hearing the heart beat and they seemed to like seeing the baby wiggle around. The ultrasound tech kept complimenting how good our boys were being which is always nice to hear (we actually don't hear that very often, haha) At the end, the tech said she had a guess about the gender, but she wanted to talk to the doctor about it first. She left and shortly thereafter the doctor returned and said everything looked great and healthy. When we asked about the gender, she said she wouldn't say anything because they had been wrong a lot. We were kind of bummed. We knew it is early but we were just curious on what they thought. Oh well, we'll figure it out eventually. I'm totally happy with another boy or our first little girl.

 

But I did love the the tech printed out an individual photo for each boy, they were excited to have their own picture of our baby!

Max ended up taking these on my phone. 

 

 And here are a couple more images from the scan.

So there you have it, we will be a family of 5, which still scares me. I think there is a moment each day where I realize I'm struggling with the 2 kids I already have. But then I remember how much love we had for each of our boys as they entered our family and how quickly it felt like our family would be incomplete without them. And for those of you dying to know, I've been sick, pretty nauseous. I'm pretty sure it's been worse this time. I don't throw up, and usually eating something helps but most foods sound gross (especially healthy ones) and sometime foods don't help beat the nausea. Also, in all my pregnancies, I've had 2nd trimester headaches, which started much earlier this time, so that's fun. Hopefully the nausea will pass soon, and I get more energy. Anyway, the point is, we are pretty excited!

Oh yeah, and here is a belly picture we took at 11 weeks. (I'm nearing 14 now, but haven't taken a new one yet)