Ethan Lange Fountain

Well he is finally here! He was born on August 7, 2008 at 12:40pm, he was 8 lbs 6 oz and 201/2 inches. Mommy survived having to deliver naturally, which is still amazing to me!, I definitely do not recommend it! Here are some pictures, I need to get on the ball and take more though! The first picture is when he had his first bath- he did not like it!

Meeting Newt

On James most recent trip to Las Vegas for a convention his college was chosen to introduce their lead speaker, Newt Gingrich, and he got to meet him. He was really excited, to say the least!

A cute story

This last week my sweet son did the cutest thing! I was not feeling good and was laying on the couch. All of a sudden I hear Tristen in the kitchen messing around with stuff. I seriously could not get the energy to get up, so I asked him what he was getting into, he said- "Don't worry mom- you take a nap I am just doing something, oh and what are we having for dinner?". I told him banana pancakes (our favortie dinner) and well before I knew it I had fallen asleep and was awakened by him. "I have a surprise for you, I know you are not feeling good so I did something for you to make you happy". At this point it had been 40 minutes, so I got up and went in to the kitchen to find it completely clean! He had reorganzied everything on the kitchen counters, and surprisingly I liked it much better than how I had had it. He also had completely set the table. I took some pictures of it because of what a perfect job he had done. To say the least, I gave him the biggest hug and thanked him. What a sweet blessing he is to me!!





I would say pretty good for a seven year old! We were impressed!
He had lit the candle (which I was not happy about, but I did not get mad- I just made sure to have a fire saftey lesson with him!) and went outside and picked flowers and put them in a jar for the "centerpiece" as he put it. (well technically they were weeds, since we have no blooming flowers right now- but still beautiful)
He even has the place settings nice and neat with all the things needed for pancakes!


Now this is just a pic from Sunday- I came out from my room after getting ready for church and found them all lined up sitting in a row very quietly and patiently, ready and waiting for mommy and daddy to get their act together so we could go to church! I had to take a picture.....

Update on the fort....

Here are some pics of Fort Fountain,








Keep up the good work, TT and Daddy!!

The 4th of July

Lauren looks a bit frieghtened!
OK- I want my daughters hair!

my sweeties =)

for some reason- maddie would not smile that night in any of the pictures!
never without our bear-bear!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We had a pretty mellow one, with pretty good weather! Which is really surprising for Oklahoma- it was not that hot for once! We went swimming, had a barbeque and went down to the river to watch fireworks. Then we came home and set some off ourselves. When we went to buy the fireworks I was really particular about the ones we bought- we have 4 cops that live in our neighborhood and technically it is illegal to set off fireworks (although everyone does it) but I really did not want to get a 250$ ticket, so I told James they had to be small quiet firecrackers. Well I picked a very small one out because I thought it looked fun-- wouldn't you know it was the loudest thing I have ever heard!!! Oh did I get some grief for that--all I could do was laugh. The only other eventful thing was me giving a 2 year old a sparkler, that was not the smartest thing! Maddie decided to hold it up high above her head and let all of the sparks fall on her face- barely missing her eye. She was ok though and wanted nothing to do with them after that! Above are some pics of the night......

I know what job I need to pursue...

Ok- We have to buy a new car seat and stroller for the baby because ours got molded and ruined while they were stored on my in-laws back porch. So obviously I am not to happy about having to come up with the money for these over priced items-- but to add more frustration- they are ALL UGLY!!!! Oh my gosh, who is designing these things! I literally can not find one stroller or car seat color or design that I like. They 're the ugliest colors and fabrics I have ever seen. So I think I am going to call up these companies and tell them they need new designers- and they need to hire me!

The garden.........

These are some of our watermelon and canteloupe vines
These are squash, lettuce and broccoli
Here are the tomatoes, potatoes and corn

our blackberry bushes
these are actually grapes, bluberries and raspberries (although the plants are so little you can not even see them)
green beans
more corn and tomatoes
our first little watermelon--isn't it cute!

Well this is our garden, we are having lots of fun with it and hope despite all of the flooding rains we have had, that it will continue to grow.

The building of the fort

Daddy and TT are in the process of building a very large fort. They have all of the walls up, so I thought I would start photographing their progress. My little engineer Tristen keeps getting grander and grander ideas about the houses and complexes that will be inside the walls......stay tuned!

Maddie's birthday party at chucky cheese

Why not!

Ok, I have recently graduated with my BA (finally) and have found my self with little to do. Yes I have three kids with another on the way but I feel kind of bored- so I have two friends, Amanda (a.k.a Motor frog) and Taryn who have gotten into the whole blogging scene. Honestly I have really enjoyed looking at their blogs each week, it makes me feel like in some small way I am still apart of their lives. So I decided, Why not- I will try this thing and see how it goes, since I have enough time on my hands right now. My sister Jennifer will be very happy because she will now have a great avenue of keeping up with the kids. But I will have to work on taking more pictures- unfortunately I am not the greatest at remebering to take pictures! But I will work on it. Now what I will actually write about- well that could be interesting. I do not have very much going on right now, but we all know that can change very quickly.

Our summer so far...

Well I thought I would start out with our summer so far. It basically started on Memorial day weekend when I had the wonderful experience of getting a kidney stone while I am pregnant. I really should not have been surprised since this pregnancy has had one issue after another, but On Friday morning when it started I couldn't help but think to myself- I can not believe this is happening!! This was my fourth one and it was hell! But I should be grateful that it only lasted from Fri. morning to Sat. morning (most of the time they will hurt off and on for a couple of days), and I survived it! That next day we had planned to go on our one and only 'trip' of the summer, a day trip down to SE Oklahoma to a place called Robbers Cave State Park. With the baby coming we did not plan an vacation for this summer but I did want the kids to get to go somewhere. Well- it was fun I guess. Madison was pretty much unhappy the whole time. She did not want to be in her car seat so she was a force to contend with. So while Daddy took Lauren and Tristen hiking up into the cave--I drove miss Maddie around to get her to go to sleeep. Not the best experience and yet again I did not get any pictures.
But the diva in my daughter Lauren did shine through. When I came back to pick them up from the cave. Lauren got in the car huffing and puffing. "Oh Mom, it was so hot, this was just not my thing Mom- it was just not my thing". I just started laughing, James said all through the cave she was complaining about the heat and how she could not bear it. Well what can I say, like mother like daughter!
Since then we have had trips to the splash pad, one to the pool (ending with a brawl to get Maddie back to the car) and trips to the library (ending with Maddie screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of the library).
So far a very interesting summer with my two year old I would say!
One thing that has been fun for all of us is our garden. Back in April we planted a garden, which we had to replant in the beginning of May due to all the rain that had flooded the first. But the second time stuck and we are slowly beginning to see the fruits of our labors. And what is really neat is so are the kids! They get out there and help us weed and ask questions about plants and get excited to see things growing. We have corn (a good thing with half the midwest and the nations corn and soybeans currently under water), squash, potatoes, broccoli, lettuce, canteloupe, watermelon, green beans, tomatoes (another thank goodness with the whole salmonella outbreak) and blackberries. We also planted grapes, raspberries and bluberries but are not sure if they will make it--and the strawberries did not make it =( I was really sad about that. I will take some pictures of it and post them this week.
Lastly, we have been stocking up our food storage for the last month. James has been pushing me to focus on it. I have always had a testimony of it, I knew it needed to be done, but he wanted to have 6 months worth for the entire family and well that is ALOT of money. We have always had about a months worth but he wanted to feel more secure. With everything going on with gas, the economy, the wheat and rice shortage and now all of these floods which again will up the prices at the grocery store they are saying (as if they have not gone up enough), and then a good lesson at church- I finally said ok lets just do it. So we took our tax rebate and bought 6 months worth of food shortage (we are still short on some items but they will have to come later). The whole time we were ordering things I was truly freaking out. This was a lot of money and we have a lot of bills- was all I could think. But my husband looked at me and said Lindsey if something happens and your kids are staring at you scared and starving, are you really going to think "Well at least we got those bills paid" and he reminded me about the lesson we had at church where they reminded us first that the prophets have told us over and over again for 100 years now to have food storage that bad things would happen. They went on to say- it is great if you have money in IRA's or CDs or if you just bought a new bedroom set. But when something happens and you have no food storage, and your family is starving- what will those things do for you then? Most all of our food storage has arrived and is taking up a wall in my bedroom- no it is not pretty- but there is no where else for it right now- but I look at it and feel really good about what we have done. Yesterday I thought about it in this way- just like we tell our kids things like do not touch the curling iron -over and over- that it is hot they will get burnt and then they do it, Heavenly father has told us over and over and for quite a long time to, to plan for disasters and emergencies because they will happen- so you can take care of your family- well they will eventually happen and as frustrated as I am about my kids never listening to me- I am sure Heavenly Father feels the same way.
So that is my food storage pep talk for the year!
Well this is our summer so far.............

TT and Lauren at Tristens school musical performance
Daddy and his girls =)
Graduation day! This will be one of the very few pics I ever post of me! until I loose like 100 pounds!

TT's and Laurens combined Birthday party

Madison and her cousin at the zoo
The kids having fun with the birds at the zoo- (and TT with his crazy hair-he is always in need of a hair cut- his hair grows so fast!)