A New Normal

Hi.

Meet John Brian Saugen.

fresh out.

milk drunk

Adorbs.

that's a big forehead.

vintage Zorn via daddy.

John's our newest, most precious, family addition.  2 months old as of December 7th!  I will have to post some newer photos (once downloaded off my phone) showing his sweet sweet smile that he shares generously these days.

And.
This is my dad, Brian.

He passed away on September 30th, exactly one week before John was born into our family.   Boy do I miss him...

Birth is amazing, and death sucks.  There's not really any other way to describe it.  Luckily, friends and family make life worthwhile in between.  I feel like there is so much I want to write about those two events, but I just don't have the energy to put proper emotion into it right now.  So...  I won't.  Though I am sure I'll touch on both as life carries on.

We are just settling into our new normal, whatever that is.

I go back to work full-time after the new year, and am working half-time this month, and so am enjoying the days that I am home with my family.  I can't say this was the most "restful" or "relaxing" of maternity leaves...  quite the contrary actually.  But I'm really enjoying the role of "stay-at-home-mom" for this abbreviated time period :)  Boy I can get a lot more done than usual!  Organizing!  Sorting!  Getting rid of stuff that has accumulated that we don't need!  And I've really enjoyed cooking, since I actually have time to do so during the week.  (Unfortunately for my waist-line though...)  The only real hard part of maternity leave is trying to see all the people I'd like to hang out with - the ones I said to "I can't wait to spend more time with you during maternity leave!"  And then I found I didn't have time, or I just haven't made time to do so...  oops.  Mostly because I love being in my home with my kids, and am really just treasuring not having to schedule every minute of every day.  So I am trying to not feel guilty for not seeing all the people and instead just focus on what is making me happy, which is just staying home and being boring.

I hope to keep updating this blog more.  I love that I have so much of Olaf's beginning stages recorded on the blog.  Sadly Forest (middle child...) doesn't have as much.   Hope to remedy that for all three of them in the next year!

I really do miss this space

I don't know why I have found it so hard to post these last few MONTHS!  I really have always enjoyed having this space to share updates and photos...  and then I keep forgetting to download photos.  And then I am pregnant and therefore exhausted.  And I sit in front of a computer at work all day so I don't really want to do that at home...  So anyway, I take un-intentional but needed breaks I guess.

Recently life has been full of busy busy times.  Olaf finished up kindergarten, yay!  Steve is working locally, yay!  I keep gaining weight and making a healthy baby boy, yay!  And Forest went an entire week without hitting someone at daycare, yay!  Little milestones for all :)  Really, there is so much to cover that I don't know that I even have the energy.  And clearly I haven't downloaded the photos yet, ha ha.

I am currently 26 weeks along with babytres and no, he does not have a name yet.  My mom's list of family name suggestions contained Valentino, so that's what we are calling him for now.  :)  Maybe one of these days we will actually find time to sit down and pick one... but like with Forest, it will probably be just in time for his delivery date.  I am finally starting to get excited about having a little babe join the house this fall.  Not that I wasn't before... well, actually that's true, I wasn't very excited for a long time, as I was so overwhelmed.  So it's a refreshing and welcomed feeling, to be glad there is a little one on the way!  The boys are pretty excited too, even Olaf, who adamantly wanted a sister at first.  Now he's happy about the little buddy and loves feeling him kick through my stomach.  I love my boys.

I'm up late and really should be in bed right now, oops.  But I am taking the rest of the week off to take the littles to Family Camp at TTR, woooohoooo!!! so I can sleep in until they wake up, 6:15am at least I hope!

Okay, random post is now over, back to your regularly scheduled blog reading.

marching along

Well life just keeps marching on and here we are in March.

In January we celebrated Sue's 60th birthday with a weekend in Leavenworth with the whole family.  As per usual, we loved spending concentrated time with everyone, especially since Josh and Mac were close to leaving for their grand adventure to Thailand/China/India soon!  We managed to squeeze in a family photo and watched a great Seahawks game together too :)

Bunch of nerds right here.

February was a banner month for snow, which was great, because Dec/Jan kind of sucked... but in the one month we tons of storm cycles, and the snow in the backyard got up to about thigh high before it all started melting last week.  Winter isn't over, oh no, but March is winter's transition month... The snow slowly melts between small storms and reminds us that it will be warm again...  we start riding bikes outside and I get all excited for the season to change.  I love winter, seriously, but I love spring too, and I am always excited to usher in a new season, whatever it is.

Olaf and Daddy go skiing!  (again.  That kid skis more that me!)

I escaped up the FS road with Charlotte, her momma, little River, Emma, and the dogs for a little ski/snowshoe time.  It was lovely!

Met up with Steve taking the boys for a little snow-bike ride :)

What else is new??  Well I got a new car!!  Woohoo!!  Not that I didn't love my WRX, but who doesn't love a brand new Subaru Impreza with better gas mileage and leather seats?

 I let Olaf make his own PBJ.  Why haven't I been doing this for years?  He was so proud.

Also something he was proud of -- putting reindeer antlers on Steve's head while he took a little evening nap :)  Pretty cute.

Recently we've had some nasty viruses in our house.  First Forest got caught for a full week, and now Olaf is in the midst of fever and swollen gland goodness.  Poor kiddos...  Never fun to watch your kids be so sad and sick.

Speaking of sad and sick, I've been pretty nauseous myself lately -- of course mine is for a much happier reason, as we'll be adding another kiddo to the Saugen clan in October this year!  I am slightly overwhelmed by the thought of our third kiddo at this moment, but I am going to blame first trimester exhaustion.  We are definitely excited to round out our family into a nice odd, kids outnumber the parents, five people.   No seriously.  We've been thinking about it for a while now and are so glad we decided to just go ahead and give it a try.  Life's an adventure, and from my perspective, the kids have made it a much richer adventure.  So here's to being crazy busy and loving life as a momma to 3!

tiny comedians

Kids are funny.  I was just scrolling through some of the "notepad" notes on my phone this morning and came across these two gems I had written down:


Olaf:  "I'm a mummy.  In agent Egypt."  (note -- *agent, not ancient)
Forest:  "Hi Egypt!"
Olaf:  "No, I'm not Egypt, I'm a mummy."
Forest:  "Oh, hi mommy!"


"Hey, Netflix is a sight word!"  -- Olaf 11/13/13

Just wanted to share.
Happy Seahawks Game Day!!!