Spring Happenings

Here's a few pics of things we did during the Spring. Not too much exciting to write about so I'll just let the pictures tell the story!

Free scrapbook generated with Smilebox

Maci's Baptism

We traveled to Utah for Maci's baptism! We left on a Thurs. night and drove to Omaha, saw some friends there for a couple hours, then drove on to North Platte. We stayed the night there, and traveled the rest of the way on Friday. Delaney was amazingly good in the car, I was pretty worried about her. We put a Veggie Tales video on the ipad and put it on the seat behind her so she could watch it and she really liked that!

We played with cousins and Grandma and Grandpa Ward for a couple days and then had Maci's baptism on the 15th. It was kind of a crazy day, making food and making sure everything was ready. Right before I left for the church I got a call that my nephew Brendon had been hurt running track at school, and Don and Amy happened to be in Hawaii visiting my parents! So they had our number as a contact (well, Mom's number and I just happened to answer). So I called Katie and she went to handle that, but that left me without a piano player! I wasn't sure she was going to make it, they had to take Brendon to the emergency room to have his hip looked at. So I was kind of panicked about that, and was just flustered and didn't get some of the pictures I was hoping to, with both Ward grandparents and Maci and Chris in their white clothes, and all the beautiful food! but hey, the important stuff got done, right?!

Anyway, even though it didn't go according to exact plan, it was still a beautiful ordinance and Maci looked so happy and peaceful. Eckersley's were even able to come, and Grandma Great. It was so fun to see all those who we love most. It was a little hard not to have my parents there, but we knew they were where they were supposed to be, serving the people of Hawaii! Anne gave a wonderful talk on Baptism. She had lots of different tools in an old tool box of my dad's, and had each one represent something that Baptism helps us with in the future. I should have written them all down, it was so good. Grandma Sharon gave a great talk on the Holy Ghost and was so sweet. She loves Maci so much! It was a beautiful day and Maci just glowed.

We had a great gathering afterwards with food and friends. We chatted for a while, and then started cleaning up. Then. . . the fire alarm went off! The bishop of the building had already left, so we weren't sure what to do. Sharon tried calling him but he didn't answer. Then the sirens came! full fire department response. It was kinda crazy! We tracked down the culprit, JT! He said he just wanted to see what it would do. Curiosity got the better of him! But after a short explanation all was solved. It was a good learning lesson for all the young kids, not to pull the fire alarm! Thank goodness the water alarm didn't go off and soak the church! It was a funny end to a great day.

We love Maci so much and are so glad we could travel to Utah for her baptism so that all our friends and family could be there. Here's a few photos that we managed to snap between the chaos!

This picture slideshow customized with Smilebox

February 2011

A little behind, but here's to catching up! Feb. was a fun month, filled with love, and somebody's 8th birthday!! Maci really wanted to go ice skating for her birthday. We've never been ice skating with the kids before, but Maci is an expert roller skater, so we thought this would be right up her alley. Her friend Lilly's birthday was a couple weeks before hers, and they had to postpone her friend party for a couple weeks, so we decided to team up and do the party together! Since they'd be inviting most of the same friends anyway, this worked out perfectly. We had pizza and drinks, and then cupcakes with some cute cake toppers I made for the special occasion. The kids had a great time, Gavin even rocked the ice and was cruising around the rink. It was a great day.

On Sunday we had Maci's favorite meal, Ravioli. Easy peasy for mommy! Here's a few things we love about Maci.

She is always willing (well almost always) to play with her little brother and sister. Gavin and Maci play pretend a lot out in the yard, puppies, dragons, etc. Gavin really loves his big sister.
She makes friends very easily with her fun and kind personality
She is an excellent student. She reads very well, at about a 4th grade level, and continues to excel in other areas as well.
She is growing in the gospel. She was so excited to get baptized, and never complains about going to church. She loves her teacher so much! and was pretty upset that our family was split into another ward, without Sister Jarvis! but I'm sure her new teacher will be equally inspiring.
She has a very unique creative sense of style. She is a girly girl through and through, but not in the usual way. She likes to put different things together and look funky and cute in her own way.
She loves doing her own hair (this is great for me as I usually forget to do it for her!)
She has been a huge help with Delaney. She's always willing to hold her or run get me something I need for her. Laney loves her big sister!
Maci is always in the mood to do something crafty. She is very creative and loves to make a crafty mess with me!
She enjoys playing spring soccer with the city league, and just started playing the piano this year!
She's kind of a perfectionist, which as most parents of perfectionists know, this is both a blessing and a curse! She's always trying to do her best, but sometimes when she doesn't think it's her best, or she doesn't get something the first time, she gets very upset!
She loves her cousins and grandparents in Utah so much, she says at least once a week how much she can't wait to move closer to Utah so she can see them more.

We love our 8 yr old! I can't believe how big she's getting and how grown up she's getting. I wish I could freeze time and just keep all my kids exactly the age they are right now, we're all having so much fun! But we're excited for things to come. Gavin will be in Kindergarten next year! and Delaney is growing like a weed. She's such a sweet addition to our little family.

We also had a BIG snowstorm here in Feb., well big for Missouri standards. School was out for 3-4 days, can't remember exactly. We got about 8 inches in one day, which is unheard of here. Then the temperatures dropped to below 0, and that always keeps school out as well. We had a fun week of sledding (dropped 20$ for literally the only sled left in town, I called about 5 places to find it!), building snowmen, drinking hot chocolate (thanks Sharon!) and playing the wii. It was a fun week.

Check March's post for details on Maci's baptism!

Make your own free scrapbook

This free digital scrapbook personalized with Smilebox

January 2011

So my new goal is to write once a month, a recap of sorts of the month. I think I can keep up with that! So, starting the year off right, here's what we were up to in January!!

We had Todd and Grandpa Ward visit at the beginning of the year. We had a great time, visiting Branson, eating good food, celebrating Don's Birthday and New Years Eve, making Thai food, etc. etc. We were so glad they could come and Grandpa could meet Delaney!

Maci had a fun month at school as always. They did a 2nd grade music festival called Winter Jam, it was a great show! Maci had a few speaking parts and did a great job. Their music teacher at school, Mrs. Sorenson, is great with the kids. Maci was the only one who didn't get sick this month, but her streak came to a halt this week when she was diagnosed with bronchitis/close to pneumonia. So she's on an antibiotic now and hopefully it'll be gone in the next couple days! Last year she had a horrible bought of pneumonia that lasted about a month on and off, so hopefully that won't happen again this year! Maci also started piano lessons from our friend Karmen. She's doing a great job and loving practicing and learning how to play.

Gavin is my little buddy as always. I'm really starting to realize how much I'm going to miss him next year when he goes to Kindergarten! He is ALWAYS willing to help me with Delaney if I'm doing something and she starts crying, he's there in an instance trying to make her smile or putting her binki in for me. Gavin is still doing great in preschool, and loves to go with his little buddy Jason. It's been a great help to me that Jason's Mom, Mishelle, swaps driving with me on and off, the school is a ways away and it's nice to only make 2-3 trips a week instead of 6! Gavin is always making me laugh with funny dances he does or funny things he says. He and Maci had a great time tackling and wrestling Uncle Todd. Gavin had a bad bought of Sinus/Strep, we're still not sure what it was. He had a strep test but it was negative, but 5 days later he still had a fever and was pretty sick for too long, so brought him in again and she finally gave us an antibiotic. It's no fun to have sick kids and see them suffer! But he's doing better now and back to his usual self.

Delaney is growing like a weed! She weighs approx. 14lbs now at around her 4 mo mark. Her official checkup is in a couple weeks. She's smiling all the time and kind of chuckles but we can't seem to be funny enough to get her to laugh full on. Believe me, we're trying all our best jokes here! But I'm sure she'll get around to it when she's ready! She coos and googles lots though and will talk back to you when you make sounds to her. She loves baths and loves to be naked! If she's really upset if we undo her buttons and rub her bare legs she usually calms down. She's still not sleeping great, and had a double viral ear infection as well as a bacterial ear infection, so she was on antibiotics as well. She's finally feeling better, but we still can't get her to sleep through the night, or even more than 3-4 hrs. We'll get there someday hopefully! Overall though she's a happy healthy baby and we love her to pieces. My favorite time with her is right after I feed her and she's happy and awake and will talk to me for as long as I'm willing to listen.

Chris officially finished all his writing on his thesis! Now he still has a few revisions, etc, but the bulk of it is done. His schedule is opening up a little and we're seeing a little more of him, but he's still really busy at the clinic, which is good because he's getting all his hours he needs to graduate and get an amazing internship site! It's crazy to think that a year from now Chris will be interviewing at internship sites and we'll be on our way to our new adventure! We know that time will fly and are trying to make the most of our time left here.

I've been busy with kids, wood orders, etc. I'm cutting back on the orders, but it's really hard to slow down even though I know I need to. I'm only leaving the shop up 1-2 days a week and and still getting plenty of orders, which I'm really grateful for. It is nice to have less to do in that regard though, these babies won't be little forever and that's more important! We'd planned a trip to Omaha to see our friends the Dunakey's, but that weekend I got strep and Gavin was sick, and the Dunakey's had a stomach flu, so we had to cancel the trip. We rescheduled for 2 weeks later but Angelita's baby, due the 12th, thought she might go into labor, since she was having pretty regular contractions and dialated to a 4 already! So, we opted not to go and went to St. Louis instead. Of course she didn't have the baby! but we hope to visit them soon and get to meet baby Eva. We had a great time in St. Louis and spent lots of quality time in. Delaney did pretty well in the car and slept pretty well in the hotel. We did the Zoo, Art Museum, Magic House, drove by the Arch, and even went to Crown Candy Kitchen, of Man vs Food fame. We had a great time and enjoyed being "away".

We ended out the month with a major winter storm, blizzard even! We've gotten about 8" today, and that is A LOT of snow for Missouri. We had about 1/4" of ice before that, so the roads are pretty bad. We haven't ventured out yet, everything was canceled today and tomorrow, so we probably will just stay in all day tomorrow too. Luckily we haven't lost power or anything, and were prepared with plenty of bread, milk, and Mt. Dew! I wouldn't be surprised if we had school canceled for the rest of the week, that would be 4 days of missed school this week. We cleaned out our closet today, I've been on a major de-cluttering kick since reading a book by Peter Walsh of Clean House. We've gotten rid of a lot of stuff! and it feels good to rid ourselves of STUFF we don't NEED!!!

Well, I wrote more than I planned, but this is my journal! Just skip to the pictures in the Smilebox if you want to cut to the chase :-D
Happy February to all! see ya next month.

Free digital scrapbooking design personalized with Smilebox

Christmas 2010

We had a fabulous month of December. We decorated the tree even before Thanksgiving! We were all anxious to get into the Christmas Spirit. We did lots of fun things this month including making gingerbread houses, decorating the tree, going to our Stake Nativity two times, driving around to look at lights, lots of outings to the mall and such, my birthday on the 19th, and of course the crowning glory of Christmas morning! We did our own little Nativity on Christmas Eve which was really fun. We also watched Luke 2 and I think the kids really did understand what Christmas is really about. We talked about it a lot all month, but emphasized it before all the present sharing started.

We tried to keep the presents to a minimum, and did a pretty good job but as always we could have done better! Somehow it never looks like enough, which is Satan I'm sure trying to worm his way into Christ's holiday! But the kids were ecstatic with what they got and Chris and I were pretty blessed as well. The favorites were Pillow Pets, Legos, new Robes to snuggle in, and plenty of gum!! Chris got me a really cute coat, that I may or may not have picked out on a shopping trip prior, and lots of cute accesories, a new hat to wear on bad hair days, and a new cd. I got him a cool pair of dress shoes, cds, a new dress sweater and shirt (he dresses up pretty much every day for the clinic), and some shirts with his Motorcycle Trip decal transferred onto them with T-shirt vinyl I cut with my machine. That was my "surprise" gift to him, everything else was pretty main stream and boring! He was really happy with that gift and I felt best about it because it was the most thoughtful. Isn't that what Christmas gifts are all about?!

We chatted with family on all sides during the day, ate a wonderful Turkey dinner, and then went and saw the new Tron. It was a good flick, can't beat a movie on Christmas day! We got home plenty tuckered out and all crashed. Chris is home for a whole week with no clinic!! but will be working on his thesis here and there, but I'm so glad to have him home in the evenings for a week. Chris's dad and brother are coming to visit on Thurs. night for a couple days so that will be something to look forward to as well. I'm feeling the "After Christmas Blues" and hope the next couple months of cold will go quickly.

We do feel so blessed as a family for everything we have and all our wonderful friends and family. Heavenly Father has poured out his spirit on us this year with too many blessings to count, and we hope we can always remember him and give thanks throughout the year, not just at Christmastime. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

A scrapbooking design by Smilebox

November 2010

November was kind of a blur to be honest! Getting in a routine with Delaney has been harder than with the other kids, just too many other schedules to deal with. She's not sleeping through the night at all, still wakes up every 3-4 hours, and has lots of gas we can't seem to remedy. But generally she's still a very happy baby and we love her to pieces!

Chris's mom and Todd came for a visit! They brought all the kids' Christmas presents and we had an early Christmas celebration. We went and stayed in a condo down in Branson for a couple of days. It was really fun! We went to Ripley's Believe it or Not, and walked around Branson seeing the sites. It was great having them and for them to meet Delaney.

We blessed Delaney the Sunday Chris's family was here. It happened to be our stake conference so we did the blessing at our home. Chris's friends from school, Mike, Tessa, Kylie, and Kylie's husband Robbie were able to come as well. We were so grateful for their support! It was a special night for us and our little sweetheart. Chris gave a beautiful blessing, one she'll be blessed with her entire life. I'm so thankful for the priesthood Chris holds in our home worthily!

We stayed home for Thanksgiving this year and just did our own dinner. Chris baked the turkey and it was delicious!! He's a chef deep down. We went and saw Tangled afterwards, it was a great and fun movie. We missed all our family in UT and abroad, but it's always kind of nice to have a low key holiday as well. Here's some pics from our month.

Personalize a free scrapbook

Ward Family Halloween 2010

This free photo slideshow customized with Smilebox We had a wonderful Halloween this year with lots of fun activities. Thanks to the Chapmans for inviting us over for Halloween Eve, as Halloween was on Sunday this year. We had a great time at their wonderful party! We didn't go trick or treating so we could focus on the Sabbath that day, but did have a great Trunk or Treat at church the Thursday before. Our little genie and Raphael TMNT had a great time, and we had a lot less candy to deal with! Happy Halloween!

Gavin turns 5!

So I'm WAAAY behind in the blogging biz, but since this is a journal for me I feel I need to catch up, for posterity's sake of course. So here goes. Before all the baby craziness, Gavin had a monumentous 5th birthday! We had a big friend party last year so we kept it low key this year. We told him we could go do something fun and he could invite one friend. He decided he wanted to go Mini Golfing, and invited his best bud Jason Martin. Branson has a lot of cool Mini Golfing places. He chose the Dinosaur themed one, and we went on the Fri. before his Bday. It was lots of fun, and we only lost a couple balls :-D

Gavin had just started preschool the week before, and his birthday landed on a preschool day. He got to take cupcakes to school that day for their snack. He requested ham potato skillet for dinner and a Batman cake. We had a great family dinner and loved devouring the Batman sign.

Gavin just makes me smile. He has the funnest, goofiest at times, personality. He LOVES to dance and shake his booty, every time he hears any kind of song with a beat he is up out of his chair or off the floor and just starts to boogie! He does a MEAN robot. It's so cute and awesome, he can hardly contain himself. He loves to rhyme, and sometimes will just start saying words with a string of rhymes after a word, even if they aren't actual words. He LOVES his baby sister. He kisses her every chance he gets and will continue to kiss her soft cheeks until mom calls it quits on him! He has a very sweet and loving personality and loves to snuggle in the evenings. He loves playing with Maci and they come up with crazy and interesting games to play together, until it all falls apart as it often does with siblings. But for the most part they get along really well. We recently moved them into separate rooms and they've really missed being together in the same room! Gav loves to play the Wii and especially the Playstation with Daddy when he's home and able to relax, which believe me, is kind of a rare occasion! He loves to ride his bike, and to play with his buddies Jason and Hunter. He loves all thing Super Hero and has recently gotten into Star Wars. Overall, Gavin is just a joy to be around and I love him so much! I'm really going to miss him next year when he goes off to all day Kindergarten!

Happy Birthday Big Man! We Love You!

Baby Delaney

More Pics! Kiddies came by today and showed some love to baby sister. They love her!

She's here!!

Baby Delaney Elizabeth, or Elizabeth Delaney, we can't make up our mind, made her early arrival on Sept. 24th at 12:21 pm. She weighed 6 lbs 2 oz and was 19 in. long. Here's how it all went down. {this is lengthy and detailed for my benefit so be prepared!}

I went in for my weekly checkup on Monday the 20th. My BP was pretty high, but baby still looked good on my 30 minute monitoring so they said to keep an eye on it and if I felt any symptoms, bad headache, nausea, disorientation, etc to give them a call ASAP. The Dr. had talked about taking me to the hospital that day to induce possibly, but I was NOT keen on that idea, 35 weeks sounded awfully early even though he thought it would be fine. And frankly I just wasn't ready to have this baby yet! So home I went on semi-bed rest, trying to take it as easy as possible.

Well, for me that was very hard! I had a lot to do to try and get DONE with all my work so I could take time off, I finally turned my Etsy shop off but had a few things I had to finish up. I actually cancelled quite a few sales due to the bed rest, people were so nice and friendly about it, saying to take care of myself and they'd keep me in their prayers. Etsy is an awesome community! Anyway, I probably wasn't as good as I should have been about taking it easy. On Wed. I borrowed a friend's BP cuff so I could take my pressure at home, and it was NOT GOOD, varying from 160/90s up to as high as 190/117. And even if I laid down for hours it still was high, too high. I probably should have gone in that night, but being the stubborn person I am I thought I could wait it out and didn't want to get admitted into the ER in the middle of the night. Anyway, we waited till morning and called my OB ASAP. The nurse said to go straight to the OB Triage center at the hospital, to have Chris drive, that I should not do ANYTHING strenuous. I should have known better, I really could have had a stroke or seizure with how high my numbers were.

So we sat and waited for about an hour before getting into the Triage center, then was put on a monitor for about 3 hrs. It was of course crazy busy that day in the Labor and Delivery so I think we probably stayed longer than we needed to, but oh well. Numbers were still high and blood work showed higher liver enzymes which is a sign of pre-eclampsia. So. . . they said we'd be doing a 24 hr urine watch in the hospital over night. Moved to Labor and Delivery, sat, waited, waited some more. . . started the urine watch. Chris went to go pick up the kids from their various locations and while he was gone, my lovely nurse, Diane, who I adored, said she thought they'd probably just induce me later that night when my Dr. arrived. He happened to be the Dr. on call that night, which worked great! She'd talked with the other dr. on call at the time and thought that was probably what they'd do. SO, call Chris, tell him to get the kids situated again! they were already on their way to see me so we chatted for a little while and then he was off again. Thank you to the Martin's for keeping them over night and getting the kids to their schools! It's so great to have such wonderful friends that you can count on when no family is close. Our ward is our family here! They are all terrific.

Dr. Smith-O'brien arrived around 7pm and confirmed that they would be inducing me that night. He thought there was little chance that my BP would go down in coming weeks and that the baby was far enough along that she should do fine if induced early. He also said that babies who have been under BP stress, tend to develop a little earlier due to the stress of it, and she's a girl {girls develop about a week faster than boys, even in the womb they're ahead of the curve!}. So, feeling good about it, we went ahead with the induction. We moved rooms, waited, waited a little more, and finally got the pitocin going around 9pm.

Contractions started and got pretty regular, but not very strong. I was about a 2 coming into Labor, and didn't progress much beyond that until morning. I finally got to a 3-4 around 5:30 in the morning. It was a very long night, my BP was better on my side but the contractions weren't as strong while on my side, keeping the baby monitor going the whole night, finding her if she moved around, not being able to move around much due to the IV and monitors. . . long night!! and poor Chris was on a reclining rocker that looked as comfortable as a pile of rocks! But we knew the end was in sight.

They broke my water at 5:30am and I'd hoped that that would get things moving. It did, and I was soon having pretty hard contractions. I still hadn't had an epidural yet, I was pretty grumpy by the time they got there at 8:15ish. But I'd made some progress, was about a 4-5 by the time the epidural went in. The relief is instant with those things, and my BP instantly improved because I was in less pain. I also continued to progress more quickly. By 11:30 I was at an 8 and moving quickly, by 12 my OB had arrived and started making all the preparations for delivery. My legs were pretty numb and I was worried it would take me longer to push her out because I couldn't feel much. I'd had my epidural a lot longer with Gavin and I think it was beginning to wear off by the time I delivered so I felt quite a bit of his delivery, and he came out very easily.

They had a NICU team in the delivery room in case she needed it, there were 2 student or new nurses in there, as well as my OB and regular nurse, I think all together there were about 10 people in the room! Definitely the most I've ever had in a delivery room. Kinda weird, but it was fine. My nurse was AWESOME, funny and calming and on top of everything. I'll be writing Stephanie a very nice note. My OB was great too. Preparations were done and I was ready, pushed twice and out she came! No tearing or cutting neccesary thank goodness. She came out pretty purple, but cried on her own and Dr. said she was really strong and kicking and moving on her own. Guesses were made on her weight before delivery, and my nurse had guessed right on, 6lbs 2 oz! A great size for a 4 wk preemie.

Chris got to cut the cord and then they took her over to the incubator to make sure she was ok, so I didn't get to hold her right off the bat. They did all the finish up stuff on me and then let me hold her. There's nothing like holding your baby for the first time, the feeling of heaven in the room. She was beautiful and perfect, and we'd worked so hard to get her here. It just felt so good to finally hold her in my arms. I think I would have totally bawled like a baby if there hadn't been 10 people in the room, but I tried to hold it together and only a few tears of joy were shed.

She ate well right away, totally knew what to do! I'm always amazed at baby's instincts. I had to stay in the Labor ward for about 5 hrs so they could monitor my BP which still wasn't going down. They started me on a BP medicine, not magnesium thanks goodness, which they had threatened. They finally decided I wasn't in any danger of stroking or seizuring, so they moved me to my lovely room in Mother Baby. These rooms are HUGE! very nice. The evening went well, the kids and Chris came and saw the baby, the kids were so sweet with her and so excited that she's finally here. Gavin is excited to not be the youngest any more, and Maci is going to be such a great big sister and mommy's helper. We did great over night, tried to get as much sleep as I could between feedings and BP monitorings and whatnot. She's still eating great and really hasn't cried much at all! We'll see how long that lasts ;-)

We feel so blessed to have this baby in our family. We've known so many people who have struggled with infertility or having very difficult pregnancies and are grateful that after our short trial of patience and faith, our wishes for another baby have finally happened. I still want to have one more, and hopefully now what we know what works it won't take as long next time. We'll see where we're at in a couple years :-)

Thanks to all our family and friends who have sent us support from around the country. We miss you all! but know that our friends here are taking good care of us. Pics to come when I get them off of our camera!
Love you all
Ali

Random Happenings

Been too long again since my last post. Here's what we've been up to.

Daddy had a fabulous 31st birthday. We went out to dinner and a movie I think?? This is why I should write about it the day it happens :-) We also made him his favorite dinner on his birthday which was a Sunday, Eggrolls and Sweet and Sour Chicken, yummm. Glad we've made it through another year babe!


We also went to visit the Dunakey clan in Omaha in July. We had a great time, just me and the kids while Chris stayed home and did school. We went to the Omaha Zoo and to a fun waterpark, and just generally hung out and talked, ate good food, and had fun! Thanks for letting us stay guys, can't wait to do it again!

August brought lots of HEAT!! way worse than last summer here. But we've survived. We also got to go to Utah again for Joel's wedding! Chris and I ventured on our own since buying 2 tickets is much cheaper than buying 4. The kids stayed with our great friends the Kirkham's, thanks to Amy for being such a trooper, her 5 kids and my 2 with no husband because he was in India that week! They had a great time, and so did we! It was so fun to see Joel and Alicia so happy and ready to start their new life together. Great trip.
The old clan, we've known some of these people for 15 yrs!!, Chris has known them even longer.


Last but not least Chris took his Comprehensive Exams on the 21st. HUGE test, 6 hrs straight on 5 different subjects. He studied for a week straight after we got home from Utah. Stressed beyond comprehension!! But it went pretty well, he hopes to have passed 4 out of the 5 tests, he gets the results next week. The ones he doesn't pass he gets to retake orally on the 12th of Sept. So hopefully by the 13th we'll be DONE with Comps and not have to worry about it anymore!! His schedule has slowed down a bit from the summer which has been very nice. I believe this last summer has been our toughest section of school and that now we'll be on a downhill run, especially with not trying to juggle work and school. For now he's not going to work, and I think we'll be ok with that, it's been a huge blessing to us all for him not to have to worry about that. The Lord will provide!

The kids both started school, Maci's in 2nd grade and Gavin started preschool 3 days a week! They're both loving it and doing well so far. I'm enjoying 9 hrs a week of "free" time, which I get to fill up with work uninterrupted :-) until baby makes her arrival.

One other big announcement that came out recently is that my parents are going on their 3rd mission! To Hawaii no less! They will be teaching institute at the University of Hawaii, they leave on Sept. 7th and will hopefully be back next August. They are excited for the sudden change of plans, they were planning on leaving sometime in January to Southern Virginia University, but the Lord had other plans for them and they took this great opportunity to go serve in the islands again. We wish them well but they will be missed! Maybe somehow we'll be lucky enough to be able to visit.

I think that catches us up somewhat! 8 weeks to go before the baby comes, so much to do!!! Super Saturday season cannot get over fast enough.

I'm so glad when Daddy comes home

So Father's Day has come and gone, but I wanted to take a moment and write down my thoughts on my fabulous husband and daddy to my kids. They are SO glad when he gets home every day, running to the door and meeting him with hugs and smiles. He's always so willing to listen to their day, even when he's exhausted and starving and just wants to sit down. They love him so much, and want to spend every minute they can with him. He loves to play with them, their newest "thing" is playing tag in the yard with them. Gavin loves playing the Wii with him, and Maci loves snuggling with him watching a movie or playing in the yard with him.

Chris has been such a trooper through the last couple years. What he is doing is HARD, and he's been working part time as well, which only a fraction of the other students are doing. He's worked so hard at doing well in school so that he can further his career and provide for his family, while he's doing something he loves. I'm so proud of his accomplishments so far and know he's going to help a lot of people in his life.

Chris has been my best friend for a LONG time, long before we got married. I'm so glad that I get to go through my trials and hardships with him, as well as our happy times and joyous occasions. He makes my life so much better, and I'm so grateful that he's mine for eternity!

So, Happy LaTe Father's Day babe, I Love You!

And we're back. . .

Since being home, we've kept busy doing fun things for the summer. We've been to the Nixa pool several times, Table Rock Lake several times, playing in the hose A LOT!! and having friends over. Our good friends the Eckersley's moved last week :-( They will be missed! but we wish them well with their new endevours, wherever they may be. We hope to see them still as they're living with their parents in Branson for the next couple of months. Nixa won't be the same without them!!

With the Eckersley's moving, came the loss of Chris's job. EHN, their company, closed down. So, Chris is now jobless, but in a way this is a blessing. He's so busy with school, it was becoming increasingly clear that the work load at school, client load, and working part time was just too much. The last week Chris worked I literally could see his brains oozing out of his head. So, for now, he's not going to work. With his current school and client schedule, we're not sure what he could find in way of a job anyway. So we're praying hard and cutting back and hoping that somehow we'll make it through without that extra income. The last couple of weeks have been much better, although still stressful for Chris, but I think it's the right decision for now, at least until his thesis is done in Dec., that he focus on school. That job was such a blessing for the past 2 years though, we're so grateful for it!!

The pregnancy is still going great. I've felt terrific the last couple months, and am just now starting to feel like I'm getting bigger, maybe swelling a little bit?! which isn't fun, but could be worse! The baby is moving a lot and the kids love to feel her kick. I can't believe she'll be here in a little over 3 months! it's gonna be a huge adjustment, but we're excited and ready, kinda ;-)

We celebrated July 4th with some of Chris's friends from school, who were nice enough to invite us over. Thanks Mike, Katie, Kylie and Robbie! We had a great time, did some fun fireworks that actually shoot in the air, and saw a great show right out back of Mike's apartment in an adjacent golf course. It was a great show! Monday after the 4th, Chris had school and clinic off! So we headed down south to Eureka Springs, AR. It's a beautiful little artsy city, reminded me a lot of Park City. We explored the shops, got some fudge which I promptly ate pretty much by myself, saw the Crescent Hotel, and ate at a little Italian place, which we will NOT be frequenting, if you get my drift. But overall, it was a fun day of driving and discovering new places.


So far, it's been a spectacular summer, and we're going to enjoy the next month before school starts again for the kids!

Utah Trip 2010

We had such a great time in Utah this summer. We started out the drive at 6pm in the evening, and arrived in UT around 3 the next afternoon, driving straight through. The kids did great and Chris drove most of the way. We drove the trailer with his motorcycle on it for his big Moto Trip 2010 with Josh and Joel! I should make Chris do a whole post on that part of his journey. Needless to say they had a fantastic time!!

Highlights of our trip were as follows
*Mikayla's graduation, am I really old enough to have a niece graduated?! At least she's not MY daughter :-)
* Allysa's baptism
* Lots of outings, Boondocks w/Grandpa W., Pirate Island w/Grandma W, SLC Temple and lunch at the Church Office building w/Grandma and Grandpa B, Legacy Center, Thanskgiving Pt, and more I'm probably forgetting!
* TONS of cousin time. Anne's family was living at my mom and dad's while they found a house to buy, so we got to see them A LOT. The kids had such a ball, mostly playing out in the water, if it wasn't snowing that day ;-)
* Snow!! yes, about 3" of snow fell on May 24th, not completely unusual for UT weather, but definitely more snow than we'd seen in a while! This happened to be the day Chris was supposed to leave for his motorcycle trip. They waited out the storm a couple hours till after lunch, it cleared up and melted away, and they were off for their great adventure!
* Several outings with Mary, Maria, etc + kids, it's so good to catch up with old friends!
* IKEA need I say more.
* Relaxing evenings with both sides of the family, chatting and just hanging out.
* Boren Carnival, where we had a new event, an egg drop off the roof! Funnest event of the day, and both Maci and Ali's eggs survived the drop!
* Highland City Splash Park
* Lucky enough to meet Baby Elijah, Anne's newest addition, one day before we left!
* Having enough time to start and finish a rag quilt for new baby!

We had such a great time, and it was hard to leave. Katie drove back with me since Chris had to come back shortly after his motorcycle trip. She was a great help and kept the kids fed and entertained while I drove (she drove a little too :-) She got to stay a few days after we arrived back home so we could show her around the Ozarks. We had a great time at the Discovery Center, down in Branson, at Table Rock Lake, and of course had to take her to Andy's! Thanks Kate for making sure we got home safely!!

Catching up

So it's been months since I've posted, and a lot has happened! So I'll do my best to catch up. May flew by with the end of school and gearing up for our trip to Utah at the end of May. Maci had a fabulous last couple of weeks. She won 1st grade first place for her art piece of purple iris's that she made with the side of her hand, they're so cool! She also won 8-9 ribbons, various places, for a bunch of Language Arts pieces she had in the LAD fair for the District. Her teacher was very proud of her and her pieces are very thoughtful and interestingly written.

Chris finished off his Spring semester with straight A's again, and in some very challenging classes. He's doing fabulously in school and if we can get through this summer, with some more very tough classes, thesis work, and Comps at the end of the Summer, I think we'll have made it through the most difficult part of our time here.

I've been working lots and trying to sell as much as I can to keep things afloat here. It's slowed down a bit in May/June but is picking up again hopefully for the Fall season. It was so nice to take a break for about a month though when we went to UT. It was much needed!

Our biggest news in May came on the 17th. I went to a specialist at 17 wks since I've had High Blood Pressure with my past pregnancies. I haven't had any problems yet but they wanted a baseline to see where I was at "normally" so if it goes up they'll know how much, etc. So, I didn't know this appt. included a full ultrasound! I asked the nurse if they'd be able to tell the sex of the baby yet, and she said they probably would be able to. I hadn't arranged for Chris to be with me because I thought it would be a pretty routine exam, so I wasn't sure if I should find out on my own or not?! I called Chris and he said I could find out, but I really didn't want to without him there, so I asked the nurse if she could write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. She said that'd be fine, so did the whole ultrasound thing, met with the Dr. who said everything looked great with the baby and he wasn't too concerned about the BP thing, as long as it didn't turn into pre eclampsia, which hasn't happened with me in the past. I'm headed home where I know Chris is there, but he has to leave soon to get to class. This envelope is burning a hole in my hand!! Gavin was at a friends being babysat, but Chris picked up Maci from school for me because I was running late. Anyway, I had to go home to get Maci so Chris could get to class, before I went and got Gavin! Chris said he didn't feel good about opening it without Gavin there, and after a little pouting from me, I agreed. So I had to wait the agonizing 3 hrs. more till Chris got back from his class so we could all open it together.

I tried not to tackle him when he got in the door, but shortly thereafter we opened the envelope. There on a big piece of paper was written "It's a Girl!!" We were so excited. I had a feeling it was a girl, but staring at the ultrasound pictures from that day I had thought it was a boy. I obviously can't read ultrasounds very well :-) We're all very excited that we're having another little girl. Gavin's even excited because he'll be moving into his own room, which I was kind of suprised about. I thought he might have reservations about being on his own, but he seems excited about it, as long as we can put some cool posters up that he chooses. I'm cool with that.

So we're working on getting the rooms rearranged, haven't done much yet but the plans are in the works. We'll talk names at a later date.

I think I'll leave this post on that happy note! Here's a few pics from our happenings, I'll try and catch up on the UT trip next post.