Christmas & 3rd B-day

I have been needing to post these pics for over a week! We had a good Christmas this year. My son actually got the whole Santa Clause thing! Well, not entirely. We neglected to tell him that Santa comes in the middle of the night & then leaves before you ever see him. When my son woke up Christmas morning he PROMPTLY went into the living room to the tree & started looking for Santa. It was so sweet! He looked like he was about to cry when he couldn't find him, until we pointed out that he left presents under the tree. My son soon forgot all about looking for Santa Clause.

My sons birthday is just a few days after Christmas and we had a party for him. It turned into a WAY bigger deal than I had intended it to be, but it was fun. My hubby wanted to have a pinata, gift bags for the kids who came, cake & ice cream & some games for the kids. So that is what we did. My son probably won't remember much of it, but he sure did have fun with all of his cousins & friends!

I ended up finding this guitar (really a Christmas present from X-mas '07) in my trunk & my son hadn't played with it in over 8 mths, so I re-gifted. Cheap, I know, but he loves it anyway (& does NOT remember that he ever had it before, I might add)!
The Sunday before his actual birthday we went to my parents house & my mom had bought him this cute cake! You gotta love Costco!

I didn't really get a great picture of the pinata before it got smashed, but it was a cute fire engine. The kids had a good time taking a couple of whacks at it!

We stocked the pinata with 2 HUGE bags of candy, which were rapidly gathered & gobbled up by the crowd & swarm of children! :)

My husband found this sparkler candle that was in the shape of a 3! It was really cool. My son LOVED it. He also loved the toy airplane that was on his cupcake.

He also got spoiled with presents from all of his cousins & friends. (If you look close, you can REALLY see my lovely baby bump, well, it's not so much a bump anymore).

This was his favorite gift! It is a metal jet that he had borrowed from his cousins earlier this year & when it came time to return it, he was heart broken. He did return the plane to his cousins without a tear, until they had left the driveway. Well, they gave it back to him for his birthday & he takes it with him EVERYWHERE again.

We had cupcakes for all the kids, but they had to eat them in the kitchen. So my hubby & his friend lined them up on the floor.

Here is cute video of my son playing his guitar. He was carrying it around making up songs. (We played rock band at my moms house on Christmas day and I believe he learned his technique from that).

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.