Missionaries and Sock Puppets!

Today was Elder Jensen's birthday so we threw him a party with cake, ice-cream, and of course....sock puppets!!!! We had so much fun! Thanks to the elders for letting us borrow their cameras for some much-needed new photos!


From left to right: Elder Jensen, Elder Robite, and Elder Thomas with Shelly in front. Each of them is proudly displaying the sock puppet they made for the birthday party/family home evening activity.

Grrr, baby! Shelly poses for the camera while Elder Thomas' face gets blacked out by Brian's poor camera skills (in all fairness, he was trying to hold Megan, too!)

Elder Thomas' rendition of Hulk Hogan, the sock puppet wrestling champion.

Elder Robite's puppet has a lazy eye.

Elder Jensen's sock puppet is full of tricks.

No, he isn't at all excited to have a home-baked chocholate birthday cake on his mission.

The elders pose with Brian holding Megan and Benjamin at bottom left. Note their cute sock puppets too.


Elder Jensen and his magician sock puppet are two of a kind.

Still no pictures.

Okay, so we have no idea where our camera is, it just upped and disappeared one day. We keep thinking everytime we do a deep clean/organization of our house that we'll find it, but no such luck and it's been months. Brian has a few blurry pictures on his blackberry of the kids, but he hasn't uploaded them yet. So what has been new with us?

Well, Ben started pre-school again after a much too long summer break. He's had some trouble waking up in the morning and has decided that he has the "option" to say no to everything we ask him to do. Just putting him in time out wasn't working anymore because he either wouldn't stay in it, or he'd prefer to stay in time out instead of doing what he was asked to do. Now we put Thomas the train in time out if he does something wrong, so far it's working pretty well. :) He can get him back if he does something good like going pee pee in the potty or picking up his toys.

Jeffrey has decided that he no longer needs a diaper. Seriously. He won't keep one on, he can take off any pair of pants we put over his diaper. He was doing things like taking off his diaper and then peeing on the floor, this kid does not like messy pants! As a result he has insisted on us putting big boy undies on him and has started going pee pee in the potty all by himself! Yay! Two (almost) down and one to go! My grocery budget is rapidly increasing without having to buy diapers for all 3 kids! He's talking quite a bit more and has been sitting through church without throwing his usual "screaming so loudly that everyone can hear him even when we take him out in the hall" tantrums. We're very proud of his progress! He seems to being growing out of his terrible two's a little, much to the relief of the nursery workers at church I'm sure!

Megan is our little mobile girl! She crawls everywhere and can nearly make herself stand on her own. Her favorite thing to do right now is wait until the boys are asleep and then wake up for some one on one daddy time before she goes back to bed. Everytime Brian walks through the door she immediately reaches her arms up and screams until he picks her up (which he ALWAYS does). I don't think I've ever seen a bond as close as theirs! She loves playing with her daddy's beard. This morning I told her to give Ben kisses and sure enough she gave him the most slobbery kiss I've seen on his forhead. She's such a quick learner and loves her brothers so much! So far she's mostly become attatched to Jeffrey and follows about 2 feet behind him at all times. She loves Ben, but he's not so nice when it comes to sharing his trains.

Brian is a week or so into his second rotation for school. His first one was for 6 weeks where he focused on internal medicine. Right now he is doing Family medicine and has about another month of that. I believe his 3rd year rotations go in this order: Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, OB, Psychiatry, Surgery, then Pediatrics next summer. They're all about 6 weeks long. He's doing great and is loving this part of medical school. He also bought a gun for his birthday and has been working to obtain his concealed weapons permit, with any luck he'll have met all of the requirements by this weekend, yay! You'll have to e-mail him if you want details about what type of gun etc... that he got.

As for me, I decided that this semester was not a great time to start school again, I think I will try again in the spring after Megan is a year old. Right now I'm enjoying seeing the kids learn and grow and have become quite the chef/baker! We've been hosting the missionaries now for the last week and a half and I have loved experimenting on them! I'm making things I've never made before and can't believe that I haven't tried making these things before! I think I'm going to start taking pictures of my creations, or at least listing them and the recipes I used. My specialty this last week has been cabbage soup. I followed a simiple Sweet Russian Cabbage Soup recipe for one of the days and just created my on concoction a few days later. We had a lot of cabbage given to us so I've been trying to use it all up before it goes bad. As for baking I've made pumpkin bread, peanut butter cookies and snicker doodles for the first time, as well as two killer banana cream pies. Let's just say the missionaries haven't been complaining!

Well there you have it, that is our update. Hopefully we'll figure out the whole camera situation soon. One last thing, we took a mini vacation a couple of weeks ago to Gatlinburg to see Ripley's Aquarium and it was AMAZING, they had the coolest shark tank and we couldn't hardly drag Ben out of there! Brian took a couple of pictures of it with his blackberry and will hopefully be posting them soon.

Love,

Shelly

Rub-a-dub-dub, three kids in a.....box???

Just another example of how the box is always much more fun than the toy inside.

Ben and his "Mini-Me"

Seriously, these two are identical twins 3 years apart (and with different genders). Brian and I were up late the other night and got to looking through some old photos of when Ben was a baby. Of course, Ben not being one to miss out on ANYTHING came out of his room to join us. We pointed to pictures of him asa baby and asked him who it was, and of course he goes "It's Megan!" Too cute! He can't even tell the difference!

Our kids fall asleep in the strangest places.....

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I think this is the first year in 2 or 3 years that we haven't been traveling across the country on Brian's birthday. We made sure he did all the traveling before the actual day this year. :)

The Prodigal Blankie Has Returned!

I found it!!!! I went back to the store after the kids were asleep and left my neighbor to watch the house and I searched EVERYWHERE. Couldn't find it, I asked where all the trash cans were (as Jeffrey's blankie could easily be confused with trash) and couldn't find it in there. Then as I was checking the outside trashes a guy was on his smoke break and asked if I was looking for something and I told him my sob story and he said "I know where it is" and it was hanging off a display of cider! It was really easy to miss and he'd just BARELY seen it right before his break. I tell you what, the Lord answers prayers! Many tears were shed and I hugged a guy I didn't know that reeked of smoke because I was so happy!

It's GONE..........

This is the only picture I could find of it on this computer, but Jeffrey's blankie is gone for good I'm afraid....some of you that have seen this "thing" may say good riddance, but he loves that blankie more than anything in the world. When his brother took his toys.... it was there, when he was tired... it was there, when he was hungry....unfortunately it was there, when he woke up in the middle of the night...it was there, when he needed to floss....yes, it was there for that too towards the end. Its final resting place is somewhere in the Kroger on State of Franklin, most likely in a trash can as it could so easily be mistaken for trash. Jeffrey dropped it somewhere during our shopping trip this afternoon while I wasn't paying attention (I was pushing/pulling 2 carts for Pete's sake!). I didn't realize it was gone until I went to put him to bed tonight. We will always remember today as the day of 3's.....first Ferrah....then Michael.....now Jeffrey's blankie.....

Family Photo Time

A Nyberg Family Blogger Update

I decided that I should write an update of how things are going in the Nyberg household here in case anyone was interested. We've successfully survived Brian's first two years of medical school and are very much excited for the next two years because he will be doing rotations in the hospitals and clinics instead of spending all day in class and studying. It will be nice to have a change. Okay, so here are our personal updates, going from youngest to oldest.

Megan:
Megan is now 7 1/2 months old and looks nothing like her mommy. She is now on solid foods and cannot get enough! Unfortunately solid foods have their drawbacks in the diaper area. If she were to write a book right now it would be called "Confessions of a poop-a-holic!" She's not sitting up and is nowhere near crawling, much like my other two babies, but she loves her saucer and her high chair and holds herself up very well in both. Her brother Jeffrey taught her how to spit, we all thought that was very kind of him and it seems like she's allergic to anything runny in her mouth because I swear she sneezes every time she gets something that will spray mommy when she does. She has two teeth on the bottom and is just full of grins, giggles and drool. We love our baby girl. :)

Jeffrey:
Where to begin? Jeffrey is Mr. Personality. One minute he's giving you the puppy dog eyes and the next he's popping blood vessels in his face screaming because a toy didn't do what he wanted it to do. He is definately 2. We've only survived one month of him being 2 and we are wondering if we'll survive it. :) His nursery teachers at church have had to take him out of class the last two Sundays in a row, I can hear him throwing a tantrum clear on the other side of the building. His new favorite thing to do is to climb in our bed and pull the covers up and go "tuck tuck." It's very cute. He loves his baby sister and gives her kisses all the time and as noted above, has taught her many useful skills already, such as spitting out her food at mommy. He and Ben have many disagreements, but he's always good about saying "thank you" when Ben shares a toy (or gives back the one he took from him). He loves to sing and dance. Right now, his favorite thing to do after dinner is to strip naked and put on Ben's Thomas the Train backpack and dance around in the living room, it's quite the site!

Ben:

Ben is coming along very well in his speech therapy and his special ed pre-school program at Northside Elementary. As of his last assessment a month ago he is still behind in speech and language as well as his fine motor skills. Right now we are working on using sissors (Scary!), holding a crayon the correct way (not fisting it) and drawing a circle. He is doing very well with initiating conversation, his echolalia is starting to go away (that's where he just repeats back what you say instead of answering your question). We are so proud of the progress he's made. I think he must have a girlfriend at school because he always talks about "Anna." Then again she's always on the bus with him on his way home from school. Right now he's in the summer school program and will have about a month off before starting again in August. His trantrums have completely changed, they're not the violent two year old tantrums, now they're just whinny 3 year old tantrums (which I'll take over the violent ones anyday!). We are in the process of getting him in to see Dr. Mary Michael to have him evaluated for any other possible issues such as autism or sensory problems, etc... We have high hopes for him that he will do just fine, but we need to have him checked out for our peace of mind. Overall he is excelling at an incredible rate and it's so nice to finally see results!

Shelly:

I am doing very well and enjoying knowing that I will not have a pregnancy this year to keep me tired. I'm finally able to play with my kids the way I want to and it is sooo refreshing! Life seems so much more managable when you're not pregnant or recovering from a c-section. I've been busy trying to keep the kids occupied so that Brian can study in the basement with few interruptions. I am very much enjoying having some more estrogen in the house! It is so much fun dressing my little girl up for church and getting cute pictures of her. I guess life must be too easy right now because I'm considering going back to school in the fall. I'm going to go see an advisor next week. I'm looking forward to getting back to my education and enjoying the social aspects of it, but am terrified of trying to do homework with 3 little kids. This should be interesting. So far my plan is to take 10 credits, we'll see how that goes and then re-evaluate for the next semester. That's about it for me.

Brian:

Brian, as mentioned above has completed his first two years of medical school and starts his first rotation the day before his birthday (June 29th). He will be doing an internal medicine rotation first, which is good because it's a specialty he's really interested in right now. He has been studying for his first set of boards (Step 1) for the last 4 weeks. He takes his big test on June 17th and then he's officially off for the summer! Yay! He only has a week and a half of nothing, but hey, a break is a break right? This next year will be pretty influential in his decision of what to specialize in. When he figures out what he wants to go into, then we can start talking about where we could possibly end up for residency (hopefully closer to family!)

Well that about sums it up for us, we print our blog out at the end of every year and I wanted to post something about what we were up to. Love to all! -Shelly-

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

A stirring performance by the Nyberg trio:

New Blog

Hey everyone, I've started a little personal blog for myself for anyone that gets REALLY bored and cares to read about my latest obsessions. I'll pay a little more attention to the comments on this one, but it won't have as many cute pictures of my family as this one. To see it, go to http://www.mysimplycrazylife.blogspot.com

Toddlers + Trampoline + Basketball = THIS!

All My Children

We rarely are able to get all 3 kids to hold still in one spot together for very long, but when we do it's usually them climbing in our bed when they don't want to go to theirs after bathtime. They sure do love their sippies!

Megan loves her saucer and her daddy....I wonder which she loves more at this point?

Our favorite time of the day is spent around the table...or on the table if you're Jeffrey, so here are just a few pictures of our fun.

I believe this is what's known as the bitter pear face. :)

Ohhhhh Jeffrey....he's definately my most...interesting...child. :)

Fun In The Sun!

Holy Cow! Check out the size of that nasty ant on my leg! :)

It's a beautiful day in Johnson City. Things are starting to look up at our house. The boys and I are finally getting over being sick, except poor Shelly!

My first remote blog entry.
Now I can post little updates now and then from my Blackberry. This should be fun. I am currently immersed in finals week.