Marriage in Kindergarten

Oh boy! And so it begins.....my Lainee is already joined in marriage to one lucky little boy in her kindergarten class.

So yesterday, in the midst of all Hailey's viral shenanigans, I received a phone call from Lainee's teacher. Totally expected it was her calling to inform me that Lainee started throwing up at school and I would need to come get her.

Returned her call to find out that silly me, it was just that Lainee was "married" to a friend of hers in her class and that they were holding hands today. My response....I laughed and told her I would speak to her about it when she got home. I guess I should be happy she "got in trouble" for lovin' on somebody rather than being mean or hurtful right?! At the same time I realized we must have allowed our girls to watch one too many princess movies and that they probably think they are living a fairy tale :)

When Lainee came home we talked about it. Lighthearted conversation went like this:

Me: Lainee I got a call from Ms. Langer today.

L: What did she call you for?

Me: Did you marry somebody at school today?

L: Mommy....NOOOOO! "Liam (not the boy she was married to) was telling people that Grayson and I were married.

Me: Were you holding hands with him?

L: noooo...

Me: Lainee, don't lie to me. You will get in trouble if you lie.

L: We were holding hands cause we are best buddies not because we are married.

Me: Ok well can we high five instead of hold hands?

L: Ok Mom.

I am dreading how this conversation is going to evolve over the next 10 years!!!

The third time around....

As a parent, by your third child you start to think of yourself as a "seasoned" parent. This doesn't mean you think you have all the answers, because we all know that every child is different and requires different parenting techniques. And truthfully, we have not even come close to beginning the dreaded teen years. But you become pretty confident in your instincts and judgments regarding your own children. And then just when you are confident you are really in tune with your kids and their needs, your 11 month old comes down with some crazy virus that sends you back into the "new parent" mode, complete with feelings of inadequacy, constant questioning of your decision making capability, and anxiety.

I spent last night in the ER with Hailey following 24 hours of vomiting, diarrhea and then a sudden onset fever yesterday afternoon. After speaking with her doctor, we decided to take her to the ER to make sure she wasn't severely dehydrated and in need of IV fluids. She went from 8 a.m until 6 pm without a wet diaper :( The concerns were increased because she also had cold symptoms prior to starting with stomach symptoms. So simultaneously she has a million symptoms including: vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy (slept all day yesterday...literally) fever, runny nose, cough, etc. Hailey's doctor was concerned about dehydration and/or infection causing sudden onset of fever. As a parent, I had obviously questioned her hydration situation and was worried about how "run-down" she was. Anyone who knows Hailey, knows that she is constantly on the move and rarely is fussy.

So of course I was pretty much worrying about her all day and just needed the words from her doctor to send me in. So we went....and three hours later the diagnosis...."viral illness". This comes with two conflicting feelings. The big one....relief... that it is not all of the terrible things that my brain went to when a baby is ill and can't tell you what is wrong. The second though is embarrassment/annoyance....as a mother of three, shouldn't I know that I just need to be patient and let a virus run its course??? Why is it that when we don't have a concrete answer about something we tend to go to the worst possible scenario??? And the dreaded "v" word means no medicine that will have her on her way to healthy in the matter of hours :(

So....today we are treating the fever with ibuprofen and Tylenol (which I didn't do yesterday because I didn't know if her tummy could handle it) and "letting the virus run it's course". Which every parent knows ...is the worst! The vomiting has subsided and she is eating cheerios and drinking pedialyte. She has been sleeping most of the day again, hopefully that is just what she needs to get better.

I would like to use this experience to remind myself that even with the third child I am still just a parent....a parent who worries and wonders and questions and prays. More than anything, I needed a reminder that God is in control and loves my children even more than I do. He will take care of them as well.

A timely kick in the rear....exactly what I needed to get back on my blogging horse!

Our First Home - March 2006 - September 2011

Moving Day

Well, well, well....guess who didn't stick with her blog?!?! I received a kindly reminder from a couple of our new friends in our growth group of why NOT to start a blog, only write three times, and then quit....because someday, someone might just Google your name and read all about how, when, and why your husband got his vasectomy!
So, this is the re-beginning of our family blog :) I wonder how many people are just like me and start a blog with the best of intentions and lack the direction to reach the desired destination ;)

Since my last post, we did in fact sell our home in Beaver Dam and bought our new house in Sun Prairie. The selling and buying process was one of the most stressful situations we have endured. I have so much to write about, but for today I will just share one part of this process that also happened to be our big "neon sign" from God.

Nathan and I have been focusing on growing our faith over the last 4-5 years. Both of us grew up in families that went to church, but my personal faith and my personal relationship with God never existed until we began attending Harvest E-Free church in Beaver Dam and met some of the greatest friends and Christians we know. Through these relationships I learned how to accept the bible as God's word and the only Truth in life.

I have always been one of those people that has to see to believe. And I was starting to understand that if you let God know what is going on, He will give you direction. For so long, Nate and I were unsure of the direction we were supposed to go in our life. By direction, I literally mean the physical direction we should move or not move with our family. We had had our house listed two other times in the five years we lived there. It was always our intention to move back to the madison area, we just were not sure how we could do that with the housing market in its current condition. So after having it listed two other times with not even one offer, Nate did a little work to our kitchen and we relisted it for sale Memorial day weekend 2011. Knowing that Lainee was going to be starting kindergarten and our house being too small for our new family of five we were praying it would sell quickly so we could move on. Growing frustrated quickly after a couple of weeks with little activity we started exploring other options such as refinancing so we could rent the house so we could still move closer to Nate's job and my family.

I was attending a women's weekly bible study at our church and one week I asked for prayers for guidance and direction from God with our moving/house selling process. Do we take the house off the market to refinance and rent it out OR do we exercise patience and wait for it to sell??? After a lot of tears and hugs from many great women I was assured if anything, God would hear our prayers!

Four days later we called our Realtor to tell her to take our house off the market because we were pretty sure it wasn't going to sell and we would refinance and rent it. She asked if we would give her one day to put together some numbers about what has and hasn't been selling in our area/price range. We were sure this was her last ditch effort to retain us as clients.

She called us the next day, but to our surprise, not with numbers but to tell us she had a couple that would like to see our house. Our thoughts...."WHATEVER" ....we want to remove the listing and all of a sudden she has someone that wants to see it??? We of course obliged, the people came the following evening and we had our first offer, a fair offer, the day after that! WE accepted the offer and all of a sudden we were under contract to sell our house! There were so many emotions involved in those days, but mostly I KNEW it was a huge neon sign from God telling us it was time for us to sell our first house and move on. The praying did not stop there, we had a lot of hard decisions to make about where exactly to move too, which house to buy, where to start Lainee in school because we wouldn't close before the beginning of the school year, etc....but one thing was for sure....God DOES in fact answer prayer and He will give you direction if you ask Him to....you just have to be silent and open enough to see it!

One and a half months later, we had already found our new home and had our finances all set when our first buyer's financing on our old house fell through. We were devastated....for about two hours....until our second buyers offer came!!! At this point we didn't quite know what to feel, all we knew was we were riding a roller coaster of emotions! This happened mid-August, two weeks before we were supposed to close. We closed in mid-September and it was wonderful! A close to one awesome chapter and the beginning of the next. It was extremely hard to leave our friends and church family in Beaver Dam but we were confident we were close enough to maintain those connections and thus far we have. We have also gotten plugged in at a new church in Sun Prairie, where we have met several fantastic people.

We are so excited for what God has planned for us! If I have learned one thing in the last couple years of my faith journey, it is that I am not in control. I am so very thankful that I have gotten to the point in my relationship with God that I trust Him to take control and guide me through this crazy world.

So here I am, wrapping up my fourth post. Hopefully it will not be another 6 months before I post again :)

First Family Ski Trip!

A couple of weeks ago, we got the opportunity to take Lainee and Sophie skiing for the very first time!! Prior to having kiddos, Nate and I enjoyed snowboarding together. I actually took snowboarding for a college credit when I was in school.....best class yet!! I started skiing when I was in high school I think. Now don't get me wrong, I am not claiming to be a great skier/snowboarder, but I enjoy doing it for recreation.

So....when we received a note from Lainee's school one day about taking a family ski day on the upcoming Friday they had off from school at a hugely discounted rate for pass and rental you bet we were super pumped!!! I honestly think Nate and I were more excited for the kids than the kids were excited for the kids :) My super fantastic Mom was able to watch Hailey so we could enjoy the day with the big girls. Had a fleeting moment of picturing myself skiing down the bunny hill with Lainee or Sophie between my own skis and Hailey in a backpack carrier. It wouldn't be that hard right?? Lol! Then I came back to reality and remembered just how blessed I am to have my Mom near to help with the girls :) So I filled out the information sheet and wrote a check and sent it in. Check, check....we were going skiing with our 3 and 5 year olds....Nate and I, who hadn't skied ourselves in close to 10 years....this was going to be....MEMORABLE in the very least!

So Friday rolls around and we are all very excited! As a parent I have learned to try to keep my own personal excitement about trying new things with the girls a little bit in check just in case....so if they are not wild about it like I am, my heart will not break :) We packed our lunches, because Nate and I were in the midst of Phase One of the South Beach Diet ( a story for another day), got all bundled up and got ready for the day.

We arrived shortly before the slopes opened and got our rentals and made our way to the bunny hills. I have to admit, I was pretty confident with my own skiing ability but I had not a clue how to teach a 3 or 5 year old how to do it! So we made our way to the conveyor belt and threw the kids on it and followed them up! Side note: relishing in the last couple months of my 20's, I DID feel quite old when we showed up and realized that tow ropes are no longer and have been replaced by conveyor belts for the bunny hills....when did this happen? I mean seriously, I was so happy they were because I have no idea how the girls would have made it up a tow rope, but still.... Anyways, there we were at the top of the hill. I had noticed there was a ski school going on right next to us and was watching and listening to the instructor as I was riding the conveyor belt in search of some knowledge of how to teach the girls.....

OF COURSE in our society we would teach young children how to ski using junk food analogies! The "snowplow" I remembered learning is now called "pizza" and when you want them to turn their skis parallel they need to do "french fries". Sad that this is the case but jumped on the bandwagon and used this vocabulary anyways.

I started out with Lainee between my skis showing her the "pizza" and how to make her way down the hill making controlled turns instead of just bombing the hill. Nate was working with Sophie who was having a bit harder time figuring this skiing stuff out.

Lainee was skiing with pretty good control in just a matter of hours. It is AMAZING how fast kids learn things....and with no fear at that! We got to the point where Lainee was asking me to let her go down on her own....this was UNBELIEVABLY hard for me to do. I never imagined it would be that hard to just "let go" of her. Of course my motherly mind started thinking about how many more times I will have to "let go" of her in the future and that this time will probably be one of the easiest. But I finally did let her go and she did great! She was really figuring it out and more importantly loving every minute of it!!

Eventually we grew tired of the bunny hill so we took the chairlift up that had a green slope. I grew anxious as we got closer to our turn on the lift because I was with Sophie and literally had to pull or carry her as she is 3 and wasn't quite getting the hang of things as quickly. We made it on and rode it up without incident and had a great time heading down. Let me tell ya....skiing with Sophie between my legs in a squat snowplow position is hard work!

Overall, it was a fantastic day! We ran into quite a few friends from Lainee's school and really spent some quality family time outdoors learning something fun! Can't wait for many more of these fun family day trips in the years to come. As long as the girls never ask to go down any dangerous slopes or to go off with some snowboarder they just met on the chairlift ;) Seriously...I am going to have to figure out how to be a mother of three girls sometime in the near future!

Sophie all tuckered out from a long day of "skiing"

This is Lainee skiing all by herself!

Lainee and I on the chairlift

Silly Lainee at lunch

Nate and Sophie riding the chairlift

Me and my girls :)

Nate and Sophie

Sophie riding up the conveyor belt...I was pretty impressed she could do that by herself!

Daddy and his girls

Sophie, age 3 and Lainee, age 5 skiing for the first time.

On the way to Devil's Head

Devil's Lake State Park

Let me just start by saying I LOVE THIS PARK!! Funny we have been in the Madison area since 1998 and did not discover this small Wisconsin gem until last year!! Unfortunately we were unable to get there often this summer. Having a newborn and our moving saga are mostly to blame.
But we finally made it there this weekend and had a blast. Lainee, Sophie and Nate played in the sand and water most of the time. Burying Nate in the sand has become a yearly tradition. They have a blast and get many interesting looks from other kids when Nate's head is sticking out of the sand :) My mom, dad and I took turns entertaining Hailey, who overall was pretty good for the day trip. I love watching Nate and the girls play...he really is a wonderful Dad.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day and surprisingly was not super crowded. My parents met us out there and enjoyed the beautiful hidden WI gem with us. We highly recommend this state park!!

The big "V"

Yes my friends, the time has come for Nate to go in and get the big V. In case you are not following, that is a Vasectomy. After having three girls we decided our life 10 years from now was going to be drama central and that we are not going to "try just one more time for that boy". Although we laugh and joke about Nate building himself a man-cave, I think it will become a reality in the future just for his survival :)

The procedure itself is not so bad. It is performed at our family practice clinic and start to finish only took about an hour and a half. And although I was there to drop him off and take him home, I was actually with Lainee in the clinic for her 5 year check-up. He is a little loopy from the pain meds and a little sore, but other than that seems fine.

Some people think we are crazy for permanently giving up our ability to have more kids at the ripe old age of 30...We think we are crazy for being 29 and 30 and already having 3 kids!! So yes we are still "young" but we have been blessed with three beautiful, healthy kiddos who we love very much.

I also wanted to thank my brave husband for "taking one for the team"! It takes an awesome guy to have surgery on his "man-parts" so I don't have to spend the rest of my life pregnant or on birth control.

Now for the frozen peas.... :)

Welcome!

Welcome to the Diers Family Blog.

I was inspired to start a family blog by a good friend of mine, Bethany Nill, who has an awesome blog that I read regularly. Life is flying by and I feel as though I am not doing a great job of recording all of our wonderful memories both by pictures or writing. I am hoping that doing this blog will better allow me to record and share our memories. I used to really like to write so I am hoping to regain that joy as well.

Today is August 15th, 2011 and I am a 29 year old Stay-at-home mother/wife. My husband, Nathan, and I have three beautiful girls: Lainee(5), Sophie(3) and Hailey(4 months). We currently live in a home we purchased in 2006 and renovated almost entirely. It was the perfect starter home but we are in the process of selling this home and buying a new home in Sun Prairie. For a long time we have hoped to be closer to Madison, as Nate works on the West side and commutes an hour or more each way to work and my family lives in the Madison area. So Sun Prairie seemed like a happy medium as we still want to maintain our friendships in Beaver Dam. We hope to be closing on both houses the first or second week in September.

We have been blessed, yes I said blessed, with three girls!! They are all very different and awesome in their own ways. It is so funny because everyone reacts the same way when I tell them I have three girls....Oohhhh your poor husband. Haha. It is what it is right?!

Well that is enough for now...hopefully I will get this blog thing figured out and my posts will become more interesting with time :)