Knightley is now 4 years old!  He has been talking about becoming four for months (ever since his cousin Wesley turned 4).  And now that he is four it is amazing the things he can to.  He says "I can ride my bike even faster because I am four" and "I can do it all by self  cause I'm four now."  He mentions it at least 5 times a day.  Poor Mason is feeling very 2 and keeps asking "How many minutes till my birthday?"  

But Knightley had a good birthday.  For his "party" which consisted of cake and presents Dave and Brianna came over and the cousins all played together.  Knightley wanted a castle cake so hopefully you could tell that's what the cake is decorated as.   Not my best cake but Knightley was happy so I call it a good job!

As our kids grow up it gets more fun celebrating holidays because they are starting to understand them.  Especially if the whole idea of a holiday is dressing up and getting candy...what more could a kid want!

King Arthur, Morgana, Black Cat, Roman Soldier, Dragon

This is one of the coolest ads I have seen in a long time!

Most people who know me have heard me talk about my brother Doug.  He is two years older than me and we have always been really close.  Well, last week he got engaged to a great girl named Cheryl.   I am so happy for him.   They are getting married in the Salt Lake Temple, which means, I am glad to say, we will be going to Utah for a week. I don't think I have ever been more excited for a wedding than I am for his!

Some people rarely use molasses but at my house it is a staple  My favorite kind of cookie is molasses and my boys love them too.  In fact, my boys love molasses more than I do, they eat it straight from the jar and beg for more. This week we made Molasses cookies and we used up one jar, so I let the kids finish it off. I thought these pictures were too funny not to share.

Molly Marie Jacobson got blessed last week by her wonderful father Jeffrey. She got blessed in the same outfit I was blessed in. Luckily, my parents made a last minute trip to Wisconsin so my Dad also got to be in the blessing circle.  

On July 20th I was scheduled to be induced.  Unfortunately that morning when we called the hospital they told us they did not have room for us.  Jeffrey and I were very disappointed.  But that afternoon my doctor stripped my membranes in the hope that I would start labor on my own.  To everyone's happiness, it worked!  I was so afraid that the hospital would send me home and having never gone into labor on my own before I stayed at home till the pain got pretty unbearable (my contractions were never consistent just painful).  

Jeff and I left for the hospital at about 6:05 p.m.  And on the way there Jeffrey actually got pulled over for speeding and just like a classic movie Jeff told the policeman we were on our way to the hospital to have baby.  Luckily the nice policeman let us go even though we didn't have any identification.  Once we got to the hospital the only thing I said to anyone was "I want my epidural." They first sent me to see if I was in the labor (by this time I knew I was) and when they checked me I was at a 7.  So they sent me to the delivery room and when I got there and my doctor checked me I was at a 9.  Then my doctor told me the bad news, "You don't have time for an epidural."  I was completely crushed.  But a few minutes later I started pushing.  

I had to push for about an hour before Molly came out.  I had no idea before how much work goes into have a baby.  I thought it would just be a matter of enduring the pain.  But about halfway through pushing I realized that Molly wouldn't come out unless I pushed her out and I proceeded to have the hardest work out of my life while enduring the worst pain of my life.   Needless to say I have a much higher respect and understanding of women who have babies naturally.  Molly Marie Jacobson was born at 7:55 p.m.  And weighed 9 lbs. 12 ounces.  All the doctors were shocked when she finally came out, no one thought she would be that big and somehow I didn't tear at all (most likely because I was pushing for so long to stretch everything).  

Looking back on labor it actually wasn't that bad, especially seeing my recovery has been awesome! Jeff thinks I should have the rest naturally, I am still on the fence.  But Molly is here and healthy and we are loving having a little girl!

No, I have not had my baby yet, sadly.  But I am getting induced on Friday!  I thought I would go into labor on my own this time, but so far, nope!  But before I do have the baby I thought I would post some pictures from Jeff and I's favorite summer vacation spot, my parent's cabin/trailer.  It is a little trailer park in the middle of no-where (about a hour from our house), only open in the summer with a built in 9-hole golf course, pond, and tiny playground.  My parents, who live in Florida, only us it a few weeks out of the summer and we are very glad that they let us go up there whenever they are not using it.  We love staying up their Friday nights.  We BBQ, have a camp fire, play golf (Jeff does anyway), play at the beach, swim in the pond, ride the golf cart, and just enjoy the country.  For us it is really rejuvenating! 

So since we have moved into our badly cared for foreclosure house we have made a lot of changes.  Today I finally decided to take some after pictures (about a year late) but sadly my camera ran out of batteries.  So I have a total of 3 after pictures, and they aren't the best pictures either, sorry.  Maybe more pictures will come but seeing these are a year late, I doubt it :).  

Knightley loves all boy things but his favorite are cars, fire trucks, and farms.  He likes superheros and guns and things too but they are definitively down on his favorite list.  I don't quite know what I have done to encourage this (maybe because I don't really now how to play superhero with him, or maybe because he had only girl friends to the age of 2) but I am very happy for it.  So one of his favorite things right now are Farms and Cows.  His favorite animal is definitely a cow, with a giraffe second.  And of course Mason loves what Knightley loves.  So when I saw an advertisement for a free "hay day" at a dairy farm I knew that Knightley and Mason would love it, which they did!

They got to climb into two huge tractors, which they thought was the coolest thing ever.  We also got to see a tractor bail hay, which is actually pretty cool.

 They pet a baby cow (can you believe this cafe is only two weeks old!)

They had the coolest tractor bikes.  Knightley loved this, Mason doesn't really know how to pedal yet but he had fun with us pushing him.  

But Mason did love feeding the goats.  They just had a bucket of food for them and Mason probably feed them 20 handfuls.  

This is what is happening in our house right now and luckily we do have Allstate :), though we haven't filed our claim yet.  About two weeks ago we started hearing noises from Knightley's room.  We thought it was just a bird outside, then we thought it was coming from the gutters.  When we continued to hear it and found nothing after cleaning out our gutters, we realized it must be coming from the attic.  Creepy!   So Jeff crawled up there to discover a clump of gray baby animals huddled together right over Knightley's room.  But unfortunately our attic is so short the animals were unreachable.  We still had no idea what kind of animal they were.  We threw a bunch of rat poison in the attic and in the sleeping "nest".  Our plan was to wait for them to die and then collect the bodies; but they haven't died and in fact their noises and scratching are becoming louder and more frequent.  We also now hear them throughout the entire upstairs, not just in Knightley's room.  Finally I realized I could discover what animal they were by identifying the noise they make, and low and below a baby raccoon is the perfect match to the noise I continually hear in the house. And unfortunately rat poison doesn't work on raccoons and it is illegal for us to capture a raccoon.  So I called a professional wildlife animal catcher (I think it is crazy that there are multiple businesses based on catching animals) and they are coming out this week.  They will also quote us on how much damage the raccoons have done to our attic, and then we will see how much Allstate does cover of it.  This whole experience has not been pleasant and the noise bothers me so much at times I need to move locations in the house so I can't hear it.  But I am so glad that Knightley and Mason have not yet feared the animals in our attic which they call the "chipmunks". And once Knightley pretended to be the "Chipmunk" and would scratch at the carpet and I would try to get him because "chipmunks should live outside, not in houses".

I know it is a little late, but we went to Texas for Easter and had a blast!  Sadly the pictures didn't turn out the best, but we got to do some really fun things when we were there.  Here are pictures of some of the fun things we did

Stop by the Dallas Temple.  

Go to the Dallas Aquarium.

Swim in Nana and Poppy's "pool" (it was actually the hot tube, the pool was still too cold)

Have Easter! 

Have a great time with Family!  Thanks Nana and Poppy!

Knightley saw a picture of a baseball cake on a dome cake box pan I have and decided that he wanted to make a cake just like it.  I asked him why he wanted to make the cake and he responded, “For Daddy, Daddy likes baseball.”  How could I say “no” to making a cake for daddy?  So I said we could in a little while.  Then he and Mason asked me three more times in the next 10 minutes to make a cake for Daddy.  I realized they were determined, so we stopped what we were doing and made a cake (from scratch, mind you).  It was lots of fun!  They often help me make things but this time they were extra good and extra happy.  And before Daddy came home we decided to clean the kitchen and make daddy a card so he would be extra happy about his baseball cake.  And both Knightley and Mason we so excited for Daddy to come home so they could surprise him with his cake and card!  Daddy loved it!!

We are expecting baby #3 and it is a little girl! We are so excited.  As soon as I found out I was pregnant this time, Jeff and I wanted this one to be a girl, Molly Marie.  But the last 3 weeks before our scheduled ultrasound date I tried to convince myself that I was having a boy so I wouldn't be disappointed.   So when I heard the news that I was actually having a girl I was a little shocked but after about 5 minutes I just became excited.  The next day we went to JCPenny’s and bought the cutest little outfit (it was hard to pick just one).  I still sometimes can’t believe we are having a girl!  Molly will grace us with her presence July 19th.  

We are very excited and surprised that the ultrasound machine had 3-D imaging on it.  I think the pictures are cool but the video in 3-D was cooler when you can see the baby move around and open and close their mouth, it just seem very real!  

Knightley says Molly is waving in this first picture: 

So I got the kiddos all ready for breakfast and then I decided I would get ready for the day myself.  I returned ten minutes later...

So it has been awhile since we posted.  And now Mason is 2 years old!  And surprisingly I am not shocked.  I feel he has acted like a two year old for the past 4 or 5 months.  He now talks in full sentences fits in 2-T clothes and still copies everything Knightley does.  He and I were very proud of his cake, a dinosaur.  He loved it and still sometimes mentions it. 

And Mason loved his presents, most of which were GeoTrax.  He played with is new toys for 3 days straight.  Knightley loved Mason's new presents too. His big present was an exploding toy story bridge set. 

The day after his birthday Jeff and I build a sweet track for Knightley and Mason using all their Geo Trax.  We had a blast building it and the boys loved it.  

They were so interested in their trains that we couldn't get them to look up for the picture.