Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

So I can't believe it has already been one month since my last entry. Time has been FLYING by this month. I also cannot believe that Christmas is just 3 days away! We have had a TON of snow in the last week, today being the biggest accumulation so far. In the last 6 hours we have gotten about a foot of snow at our house! It's pretty crazy & fun. The only bummer part, Both my son & I have a cold & cough so we are trying to stay indoors (as much as my 3 yr old will allow.) Here are some pictures to share!

We finally got my son a new "big boy bed" to get him out of his toddler day bed, which will transition back to a crib for the new baby. He didn't act all that excited about it, but hasn't had any problems sleeping in it. It's a twin size bed, just very low to the ground.

So my in-laws get their house Christmas lights done professionally every year. The lighting guys came just before Thanksgiving & did a great job. My son has loved looking out the windows @ night and seeing Christmas lights on the trees.

About a week ago we went to my parents house to help set up my dads Christmas train. My son watched it last year & it is the reason he refers to my parents as his "Choo-Choo Grandma & Grandpa." Well, at Thanksgiving my husband & dad told my son that he could help set it up this year. He did not forget this promise. Every time we would go to my parents he would ask if it was time to set it up yet. Once we got it set up he layed there & watched it go round & round. At one point he even stood up & started cheering for it! It was very cute!

Last week we got a little bit of snow, so we went out to play in it as a family. My husband took the lawn mower snow plow to the water retention basin behind our house & plowed up a pile of snow for my son to slide down. It looks like there is hardly any snow in this picture, that's because he had plowed everything off of the lawn.

A BIG "THANKS" to my sister for giving us her kids hand-me-down ski bibs, snow gloves & snow boots! They work FABULOUSLY! My son stayed nice & dry & warm! Here's a picture of the lawn mower with the snow plow attachment that my husband made certain Itake a picture of!

My son kept laying down on his tummy & licking the snow. GROSS!!! No matter how many times we told him that the snow was yicky, we couldn't stop him from eating it. (Things sure haven't changed from when I was a kid). What is so appealing about eating snow anyway? I think we are all guilty of it, at least once, probably more.

I made the attempt to post a little video as well. I hope it works!

Things are going well here. Still pregnant & holding her in. The doctors don't seem too worried about me delivering too early. They did an ultrasound last week (I was one of the new docs guinea pigs on the 3-d machine) & he measured my cervical length, which is still within normal, just a slight bit thinning. Hopefully I will stay pregnant until the last few days of January to the first few days of February. Just watch though, I am going to be one of those who go way past their due date. (I sure hope not!!!) I'll keep ya posted (as best as I can).

Update- 27 weeks

Things keep plugging along. I am doing much better & have stopped contracting as much. I have been able to return to work this week & just tried to take it a little bit easy. So far so good. Thanks for all of your prayers & concerns in our behalf. We will just keep praying that this over-active anxious little girl will stay inside & cook for another 10 weeks (which will take me to term).

Pregnancy update-26 weeks

Okay, so no pictures for this entry & it will have to be a quick one. I am now 26 weeks into my pregnancy, which would make one think "WOW, only 14 more weeks to go!" Right? Well that's what I was thinking about 2 days ago too, until yesterday. My retarded body is trying to decide that it wants this pregnancy to be done with sooner than later! I had cramps & contractions in the morning that pretty much went away in the afternoon. I went to work & they started back up about 3 hours into my shift. I had Braxton Hicks contractions with my son, and with this one thus far, but these were different. There was actually a little pain & discomfort involved. My OB just happened to be at the hospital & so he checked my cervix, which is fortunately still closed, but thinning out & softening already. NOT GOOD! So we went ahead & did a full triage evaluation & put me on the monitors. Contractions every 2 MIN! YIKES! I got a LOVELY medication called Terbutaline- it makes you feel like CRAP- and a steroid shot to my buttocks! The Terb (as we labor nurses call it) stopped the contractions almost entirely (1 an hour) but it makes your heart race & pound and you get all jittery! I could barely fill out paperwork. The steroid shot is to help her lungs develop quicker just in case she does really & truly come early. I get to go back to the hospital tonight for another one of those lovely bad burning boys! (seriously, the shot burns pretty darn good! & I HATE SHOTS!!!!!!) Anywho, this morning was pretty scary when I woke up cramping again, but now it seems to be only one an hour again. I will keep you posted on what develops with this lovely unwanted scenario. As a labor nurse I have seen all realms of the spectrum from moms who really do deliver early to moms who go past their due date despite having been treated for preterm labor. So we will see. Keep us in your prayers!

Oh Ya, I forgot...It's a...

What a slacker I have been!!!! We had our ultrasound the first week of October. Everything looks good with the baby, all parts appear to be present & functioning! :) You can kind of see the profile in this one, I thought the hand in the "SHHHH" position was quite cute. The baby wouldn't hold very still so it was hard to get a good snap shot of its profile, but from what we could see, it has a very similar profile to my son.
Here is a good side profile of its leg & bum. The doctor couldn't get a very good "photo copier" shot of its bottom, so he had to look for boy/girl parts from the side view by scanning in & out laterally to see if there were boy parts between the legs or not. It was quite difficult.

From what the doctor determined (& from what I had gathered from an earlier peek with an ultrasound machine @ work) there are no boy parts & it's a GIRL!

You have to use your imagination a bit here, but this picture is looking at the babies bottom and thighs. It looks like the baby doesn't have the lower part of her legs because of the way we had to zoom in & out (she had her feet crossed & knees together the entire time.) The picture looks like a heart turned on its side, right? Well If you look VERY closely to the right side of the heart right where you would draw the "v" shape of the heart, you can see her girl parts. Some people describe girl parts in ultrasounds as looking like a hamburger. So we are expecting a little girl in February. Pretty cool, eh?

October

This year for Halloween we decided to take a note from my parents book. In the past my Mom & Dad have gone all out & decorated their garage for the Halloween Trick-or-Treaters. This year they were gone to Hawaii (poor them) for a week just prior to Halloween & were still playing catch up at work so they didn't have the time to decorate their garage. So my Husband decided that we should decorate ours. We had spooky music, fog machines, glow sticks, black lights & cobwebs. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but my hubby had fun setting it up. We also found a steal on the bracelet kind of glow sticks and so we handed those out along with candy. Our stash (3 Costco sized bags) only lasted about an hour & a half, as apposed to our AZ house where that same stash would have lasted, oh, at least 10 months. :)

Here is a picture of my son & hubby. I had to get a picture with the cute red suspenders!

I dressed up as an 8 ball. You don't really get the idea of my belly size here, but you can tell it is growing. (I guess it is nice to have a picture that makes your belly look smaller than you perceive it actually is instead of the other way around!) My son LOVED his Fire Fighter costume that his Grandma got him. Plus it was reflective-perfect for a 3 yr old!

Another picture of him with his Fire Fighter costume. He picked out his Trick-or-Treat bucket himself. (He says it "Truck-r-Treat").

So these pictures are backwards in order. Oops. A few weeks before Halloween we had some cousins from AZ come and stay at our house & we went to the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point. My husband used his persuasive powers to get a ride on a helicopter. All 3 of us rode for the price of 1!

You can't tell in this picture, but my son really was having a BLAST! He still talks about the ride & the cool headphones he got to wear with the Microphone to talk to Mommy & Daddy!

Here are my boys on their way to get on the Helicopter. I wasn't planning on going, but one of the operators grabbed my hand and walked me up to the helicopter, for what I thought was a photo-op of my Hubby & son sitting in the cockpit. He then proceeded to all but shove me into the helicopter. This was my 2nd time in one & it was really fun.

Another picture of my little Fire Fighter.

We had really good success with my Father-in-laws garden. Perhaps our greatest success was the pumpkin patch. We ended up with 9 LARGE pumpkins! They are beautiful in their coloring. Each one a little different than the next. The largest one is the one behind my son to the right (in this picture) and up against the door. It is MASSIVE!

How can you resist a photo-op with such a cute kid and such huge beautiful pumpkins? I couldn't!

Crappy Blogger

I know, I know, I know. It has been FOREVER since I blogged last. I have been very busy this summer. If any of you have read the comments from my last post, you probably caught on that we are expecting child #2. I am due on February 19th. We will be finding out gender in about a week. I was pretty darn sick for the first 4 months, which accounts for not blogging in such a long time. It took everything I had in me just to function as a mom & human being on most days and so therefore I didn't get around to blogging. I have finally been feeling better & decided it was about time for me to get caught up. I'll start with the most recent grouping of pictures.
A week ago, we (my hubby & son & I) decided to take a drive around the Alpine Loop. This is a road that goes around my most favorite mountain! Believe it or not, but I had never driven the Alpine Loop until now. The fall colors are just starting to come into full swing and it was a beautiful day just after morning rain storm. Here are some pictures of the mountains, clouds & colors.

This picture was taken at the Timpanogos Trail head.
Pretty, EH?!
Here are some photos from the last couple of months. This picture was taken at our neighborhood 4th of July block party. It was in our front yard and everyone brought some fireworks to shoot off (the show could have lasted for at least 3-4 hrs, but we stopped it after about 2 1/2.) My hubby was a hit with his blow torch so he could light more fireworks at once.

My Little Bro got married in August. My son wanted so badly to cut the cake after watching my brother and his bride cut a piece and feed it to each other. They were kind enough to let him cut a piece of his own (with a little help from the bride).

Here he is feeding himself the HUGE piece he cut. Why use silverware, it just gets in the way!
He had such a huge mouthful and was trying to talk, it was quite funny.
My Father-in-law has 4 peach trees in the backyard that we had the privilege of harvesting. I am about peached out! I did however have to make the famous family peach desert! It is SOOOOO yummy & rich. My Aunt Molly used to make it & bring it to my Dads office when I worked there. My Grandmother also used to make it with all the peaches from Grandpas orchard when I was a kid. My son & hubby agreed that it is an AWESOME way to eat peaches!So there you have it. Not a ton of pictures, but I am finding that the further away from an event I get, the less blogg-able the pictures become. I need to stay updated on my page! Hope you enjoyed and I will try to do better with my blogging.

Been a Long Time

So I was talking with one of my AZ friends this afternoon and she reminded me of what a terrible blogger I have been the last several months. So I thought I would get all of you few readers that I do have updated on pics and things in the life of me, my hubby & my son. So here are several pics and little blurbs so you are updated & informed.

Last month my son was being very quiet while I was doing some laundry, so I went to find him. This is what I found.

What is that tube in his hand you ask? None other the water resistant, almost impossible to wash out, Desitin. He must have thought it was toothpaste because it appears that he placed some on his toothbrush and moved on from there. There were little white hand prints all over the wet-wipe boxes as well. Proof that he was trying to clean himself up before being caught, but only made himself even more messy.

It took a lot of soap and awfully long bath to get him cleaned up. At least we were able to see the humor in it. :)

Thomas the Tank Engine was up in Heber over Memorial day weekend so we decided last minute to take my son to see him because he is OBSESSED with all things trains!

We went on the train ride and he was very enthralled with the whole thing, especially the sound of the tracks clickety-clacking as we rode along.

Both my Hubby and my son were REALLY intrigued by this old coal engine. The Heber Valley Railroad has a whole bunch of old engines, trailers and such that you can just look at and touch. It was really cool.

That same weekend we went to a gathering at my grandparents home. They have a fabulous backyard and a group of my dads cousins were all there and we had a picnic out on the patio and lawn. It was a little chilly, but a beautiful day. This is my niece giving my grandma a big hug. I thought it was a great picture of my Grandmother!

In their back yard they have this HUGE old willow tree that had some wood rot a couple of years ago, so they had to trim it WAY back. There are still several of the old stumps sitting around the base of the tree. My nephew and son had the best time hitting and breaking up one of these stumps looking for bugs and worms. They didn't find any, but it kept them busy, occupied and in one spot for well over an hour!

I know, a random picture of radishes! Well, this is my first harvest from the vegetable garden we planted earlier in May. I was so excited to have fresh veggies I just had to take a picture! I ended up putting them into a really yummy tuna fish sandwich! DELICIOUS!

This picture was taken tonight. We went out to dinner with one of my husbands high school buddies and his wife and kids. They ended up coming over to our house to hang out after dinner. They have two boys and all three of the boys played well together. At one point, my son was very mischievous and got up on the kitchen table to make a mess!!! Can you guess what the white stuff is? An ENTIRE bag of powdered sugar!!!! What a mess! It was so funny though. He was licking his little fingers as fast as he could when we were approaching him and while we were trying to clean him up. What a little stinker!

Little Steve

This afternoon my son woke up from his nap with quite the hairstyle. I thought to myself, "Gee, that hairstyle looks awfully familiar."

Then I realized it looked so familiar because I have seen the hairstyle on my Father-in-Law when he was younger! You be the judge...

The Temple According to a 2 Year Old.

So tonight I found myself driving home with my son from our friends house. My son was getting no where near tired enough for a night time drive (and it was past his bedtime) so I decided to take him for a little bit of a longer drive. I asked him if he wanted to go see the temple. He excitedly replied "YES! I see bemple!" So we drove the 1.5 miles over the LDS Mount Timpanogos Temple. Each time we have driven past this particular temple I have told him that it is the Timpanogos Temple and tried to get him to say its name to no avail. Tonight, without prompting, he came out and said "MOMMY, Look! Tekahogus! It pretty! Too high. It white!" So there you have it, the Timpanogos temple according to a 2 1/2 year old.

A few quick pics

My Hubby finally got fed up with not having wireless internet upstairs and so he decided to get a hard line upstairs. He threaded it through the airduct! At least no drilling was involved! I can now post pictures! It snowed this morning, melted and then snowed again tonight. My son & I went & made a snowman while my Hubby studied. It was fun. My son ate the carrot nose off shortly after I had put it on the snowman. He also gave the snowman hugs & kisses. I really want to post the pictures from our move and a few others, but I don't have them downloaded and reduced on my hubbys laptop, & I am unfamiliar with Windows Vista so I will have to have him show me soon. In the meantime, here are current photos.








We are doing well & enjoying Utah!

Computer Problems

So.... My brother-in-law who is a computer programer came over the other day to help get the internet up & running on my computer. Not much luck. He says he is going to need to rebuild my computer. So now I have to find the time to download everything important to my external hard drive so he can work on my computer. FUN! I also can't find my camera this morning so that I can post pictures from my Hubbys computer. What a boring blog page!!!
I am now off orientation at work and am on my own now. I started to work night shift last week & we had 2 very slow nights! It was quite nice actually. We shall see what this week holds!
My Hubby is working at the Lehi fire Department a few days a week and is enjoying it. He has also started doing garage floors. He did his friends floor last week and hopes to start doing his brothers garage soon.
My son continues to get into everything! He must be getting more of his molars because he has been chewing on EVERYTHING! Last night he practically ate one of his pacifiers!
We miss all of our Arizona friends, but are enjoying walking out onto the patio and seeing the goreous mountains of the Wasatch front every single day!
I will HOPEFULLY find my camera and get some pictures posted at the end of the week.

Still no internet!!!

The frustration continues...
We are still having difficulty getting my computer to read the internet at the house.  My husbands laptop reads it if he plugs it into the hardline.  Maybe I will have to try using his computer so that I can post pictures.
 
So, Thursday my son got into a bottle of calamine (sp) lotion and finger painted with it as well as drank a little of it. It made a big mess in his bathroom, but we got it cleaned up. Every once in a while I can see a chalky pink foot print when the sun hits the wood floor just right. Thank goodness for the steam mopper!

Work is still just work. I will be starting to work the night shift the end of this week. It will be interesting to see if it is any different on nights than it is on days. I will keep updating whenever I can find the time.

Work Begins

So, I still do not have my computer hooked up to the Internet & have to use other peoples computers for my blog entries. That is why I have yet to post pictures. We will work on getting the Internet connection figured out this weekend.

I started my first official day as an employee at Timpanogos Hospital today. It was comprised of filling out paper after paper after paper, followed by giving away my blood and receiving a few shots, followed by a few hours of computer training and testing. FUN! Tomorrow I go in for more computer training and a staff meeting to meet the nurses I will be working with in Labor & Delivery. I am still unsure of when my first day on the unit will be, maybe Friday, maybe not until next week. Anyway... Things continue to move forward with rapid pace.

My Hubby has been to a few nights of training and new hire orientation with the Fire Department and seems to be loving every minute of it. Never doubted that he would.

Though I deeply miss all of my AZ friends, it has been great to get together with friends here in UT. I have gone out with one of my long time friends twice already this week. She has two girls, one is 6 months older than my son and the other is 1 year younger. They all usually have a good time together, except when they are tired. :)

It is a strange feeling being here permanently. I keep feeling like "okay, vacation is about over, lets pack up and head back to AZ." And then I have to remind myself, that no, this is home now. It's a great feeling, and yet a little sad too. My son seems to be adjusting to it with no problem at all! (Thank goodness he is such a resilient and easy going kid. Not like his mother, definitely gets that from his Dad!)

We have arrived

Just a quick little entry & update.  The final stages of packing and loading were an adventure.  Thanks to everyone who helped us get on our way.  It was very difficult to leave the comfort and safety of our little neighborhood!  (We miss you Clarks, Tupas and Amundsens!)  I had to choke back the tears the entire way through Phoenix.  My little Brother (who flew down to help us drive the vehicles) probably thought I was pretty pathetic.  We left AZ on Saturday evening & stayed with our cousins at their family cabin in Flagstaff.  (Thank you Rhoners for letting us crash in on you last minute!).  The drive up to Utah was basically uneventful.  My little Bro drove the pickup truck towing the U-haul trailer (we had to pick the U-haul up last minute because we have so much crap) and my Hubby drove the Penske truck that was towing my Maxima.  My little Bro was creative enough to place a Nerf dart to the back window of my car before leaving our house in Gilbert, AZ... and it made it the whole way to Utah!!!  I have a few pictures of it along the way I'll publish soon.  We arrived around 8 pm Sunday night and had some members of the Elders quorum of our new ward come help unload the Penske early Monday morning in the freezing cold.  

My Hubby had his interview with the Fire Chief yesterday afternoon and got the position as part time fire fighter with the Lehi Fire Department.  Last night he went to the new hire orientation and brought home his very own fire fighter gear.  Pants, jacket, boots and hat!!!  He was pretty excited about that!  

I went for my final appointment and interview with Timpanogos hospital and signed paperwork with them this morning.  I just have to wait a week for my background check and drug screening and I will officially be employed!  So as you can see, things are going well. 

We still have a TON of unpacking and organizing to do!!!  But that too will come.  

We miss all of our friends in Arizona!  You are all welcome to come up and visit anytime!  I'll keep posting updates if anything new arrises!

Moving along

Just a quick little entry... We have spent the weekend packing and still have a TON of work to do. The bathrooms are about the only thing that are squared away. So many people have been helping taking Caiden to give us some child free time to pack. We hope to be completely packed by Friday mid afternoon.

Jeffs interview with Lehi Fire Department went well. He spoke with the Chief and will have a final interview next Tuesday after we arrive in Utah. It sounds like he might just get the job.

I have been in contact with Timpanogos hospital and they said they would like to have me on their staff, they just needed to contact a few of my references. I'll keep you posted when I hear more.

Only a few troubles have been encountered, such as no internet unless we go around the block to feed off of our neighbors (who have given us permission to do so! Thanks Tupas!!!!). Jeff unloaded the storage unit into the garage yesterday as well! Thanks Owens for the trailer to help with that! I'll keep posting when I get the chance.


That's about all I have time to write, LOTS of work to do.

My son has developed a silly & unexplainable love for dental floss! Ever since his Grandpa shared some flavored floss on one of our trips to Utah, he has been seeking out our floss whenever we aren't looking. The funny thing is I don't buy the flavored kind. It has no flavor whatsoever! So, the other day I was working on the computer when I realized there had been a few minutes of quiet. When it is quiet in my house & my son is not sleeping, you know he is up to NO good. I immediately went to look for him in our room, he also loves pulling clothes out of my drawers. I could hear some noise & giggling coming from my closet, so I figured he was just playing hide & seek behind his Dad's shirts again. This is what I found...

If you can't tell in the those two pictures, there was a reason he was giggling. He was sharing the dental floss with our dog Roxie. She too was sucking and sampling the floss, from the other end. It was our own version of Lady & the Tramp. I grabbed the floss (after taking pictures of course) so that Roxie wouldn't actually swallow it. Yesterday we went to the Phoenix Zoo. Probably for the last time. This saddens me. My Son had a GREAT time. He was more independent and out of the stroller this time than ever before. (He will actually come back to you when you ask him to, most of the time). He even climbed up this staircase to the Giraffe lookout all by himself. You could tell how proud he was when he got to the top! (We don't have stairs in our house, so he is not used to climbing them).
At the Zoo they have a cute farm called Harmony Farm where they have real & play tractors and farm equipment for the kids to climb & play on. My son liked this tractor the best.
We also went to the goat petting zoo again. He loves petting & following all the goats around.

My husband is, again, in Utah for the final portion of his Firefighter job application process. He was one of 11 to pass the written exam and 1 of 9 to make it through the physical testing to the interview. So tonight he will be going to an interview for a part time position with Lehi Fire. We are still going to be moving next weekend. Man do I have a lot of work to do. I will keep posting with progress as it comes along.