Poor, poor, Park

Yeah, yeah, it's been another month. Can you tell that I'm scrounging for something to post? The last few days have been rough on Park. Sunday night on the way out of the house to grandma Chamberlain's, Park fell down the garage steps and blackened his eye a little, not too badly, you can hardly tell anymore. Monday he tripped in the living room and landed face first on a toy and bruised his cheek really good. You can see it on his right cheek in this picture. Then tonight he was playing in the windows behind one of the couches and got himself stung by a wasp. Poor, poor, Park.He was really good about keeping his hand on the ice bag.
It stung him on his left index finger. Can you tell how swollen it is?
I chose this picture because Annicka looks a little drunk in it.
And to end on a good note, these are the potatoes I dug up from our garden last week. We got about 20 lbs. out of just one row of plants. I was pretty proud of myself!

Preschool

Annicka started preschool last week. We're doing it joy school style where each of the mom's in the group take turns every week teaching the class. Annie has been really excited about it, especially since she gets to do it with her cousins Matthew and Carter. Today they even made banana bread! Yummy! She had it for lunch today.Here she is at Aunt Lori's house on her first day!

20 week ultrasound

Well, today we had our 20 week ultrasound. Everything went well, and the doctor said that the baby is looking very healthy. No visible defects. This is a profile view. Very cute, don't you think?And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...drum roll please...it's a BOY! I know this makes Rachel happy...you better get cracking, girl!
He definitely made himself known, even the doctor said three or four times about how easy he was to find. I think he really needed to make sure that we knew he was a boy, mostly because Annicka has been saying that this one will be a girl baby and the next one will be a boy baby. And, also because over the last few weeks I've thought maybe it was a girl. I've even been having dreams that it was a girl. Maybe this just means that Heavenly Father wants me to know that there's another girl waiting for us. Anyway, we are very excited! His name will be Indie Glenn Chamberlain. Indie, because we just like it, and Glenn after my Grandpa Minson, who was, let's face it, really awesome.

I know, I know...FINALLY!

So, I've taken a few weeks off from blogging. It seems about every year at this time that I have a few weeks where I don't have anything to post about, or I just need a break. Part of it is that I've gotten really busy since we came home from Stinky Falls. I started babysitting a little girl in our ward who is Park's age, Monday-Wednesday. I also started my advanced writing course online. Many of you have already heard my complaints about this English class and my professor. It also doesn't help that the one class I've always struggled with is English. I don't do horribly, but I have to work harder in English than in any other subject I've ever taken. I guess I'm just a mediocre writer, what can I say? And then to make it an advanced writing course, that is required, where I have to write a million critical essays...well lets put it this way, a lot of my time, free or not, goes into this one class. I swear it should be a six credit class as opposed to a three credit class. I guess I'm just all written out by the time it comes to blogging. So, enough of my complaints...here are some pictures of the the kiddos from the last few weeks.We went up the canyon to make s'mores with some of Scott's family one night while Scott was out of town.
Annicka with uncle Ned.
When Scott is gone, Park tends to attach himself to any male that is available. This is his cousin, William. Most of the time it's uncle Ned, or uncle Ross, if he's in town.
Our next door neighbors were kind enough to share icecream cones with us one night, and as you can tell, Park LOVED it! Our own little Santa Claus in August.

Time for the toddler bed.

Well, a few nights ago Park broke his crib. If you've read Scott's sister Lori's blog, you'll see what I mean. We have the same crib. Park was shaking his crib like CRAZY one night (I wouldn't doubt it if Annicka was helping a little) and Annicka came into our room and said, "Park broke his crib." We went in and sure enough the spokes on one end had come completly apart. So the next day I went to our neighbor's house and took one of her extra toddler beds.
Ever since then Park has decided that he is also too big for his high chair. He insists on sitting at the table like the rest of us, he won't even sit on a little booster chair we have. He even throws a tantrum every time we try to put him on either the booster or in the high chair. What a funny kid!
And, of course, we had to throw in a picture of Annie.

Our trip to Stinky Falls!

We know that you have all been wondering why scott's email is stinkyfalls and why he talks so much about this place. Well here are the pictures. We had an AMAZING vacation! We rented a house on the Guadalupe river that had a rope swing out back that went into the river. All of Scott's siblings were there minus one, with most of their spouses, and NO children! Scott's younger brother and only unmarried sibling proposed to his girlfriend while we were all down there. Congratulations! It was a great place...we'll probably all go back again. We got to go to Schlitterbahn (the largest waterpark in the world), which is just a block away from Stinky falls. We didn't get any pictures there because it was raining all day from Hurricane Dolly...but that was fine with us, it kept the lines down. We got more done in four or five hours than we would have all day if it had been sunny and crowded. The next two days were spent at this place called Stinky Falls. It's actually called Prince Solms tube chute, but the Chamberlains have always called it Stinky Falls. It's a tube chute on the Comal River about 30 minutes outside of San Antonio. And every trip down is death defying. The life guards have to jump in to save someone at least once an hour...usually way more often than that. Most people just float down on their tubes and with their beer on the way down the river, but not us Chamberlains. Scott and his four brothers all go down without a tube or life jacket and the rest of us put on a life jacket, brothers-in-law included. Then we go and go and go all day long! The pictures never seem to do it justice, you just can't get how the undertow pulls and pushes you until you are there and go down. But here ya'll go!



Scott jumping in at the bottom.
The actual tube chute with a bunch of Scott's siblings and spouses.
Me jumping in at the bottom.

Hike to Timpanogos Cave

Since we will be off to San Antonio for a little Chamberlain family reunion at a wonderful place called Stinky Falls tomorrow, Scott decided to take yesterday and today off as well. He had the wonderful idea of taking a hike up to Timpanogos cave yesterday. I'd never been before and it had been 20 years for Scott and he said that it was an easy 1.5 mile hike, that was paved. While paved it was, it was anything but a nice walk. We couldn't take a stroller up and so we had to carry Park most of the way, which he was okay with....at first. He started into his squealing about half way up.These first few pictures are right at the beginning. Scott said, "why don't you just wait until our way back down?" I said, "I want them to be happy in at least a few of the pictures." So, happy they are.
This is Park pointing at everything. We would walk about three steps and then stop to point.

Here we are in the cave! It was really neat and very cool (temp wise) in the cave. Notice the expression on Park's face in the pic below, he was just starting into one of his squeals because I was trying to put him down.

Here we all are on the way back down...This pictures just shows how tired and upset Park was. Although Annicka was tired, she was such a trooper! She walked most of the way up. We did, however, have to carry her all the way down. Despite all of the screaming and whining, Scott and I got a great workout. We did decide though, that we wouldn't do this hike again until our youngest child is about five.