Announcing!

Announcing what 90% of our friends and family know already, but I haven't written it in the blog yet. . . . .

We're expecting Baby #3!

I am currently about 9 weeks along, feeling pretty icky, but very excited that our somewhat long journey through the scary world of "infertility" is finally at a close, at least for this go round. I had an ultrasound at 6 weeks, because on fertility drugs there can be an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy and to put my mind at rest that there really was something in there doing well. Everything looked good, implanted in the right place, only one baby, phew :-D I am going to have another ultrasound on Monday to ensure everything is still progressing as it should.

We are very excited and overwhelmed that it's actually happening! You'd think that when you try so hard to get something, that when it comes you'd be relieved, and I AM!! but I'm also nervous about the future, about how we'll handle the added stress of a new baby, if I'll be able to still work part time doing craft stuff, if the kid will know Chris when he's gone so much! just kidding ;-D but I know all that stuff will work itself out, and that we're so blessed to finally get another little spirit into our home. It seems like everyone in the world is pregnant or just had a baby around me, so I'm so excited to get to hold MY little bundle of joy. The kids are so excited, of course Maci wants a girl and Gavin wants a boy. We'll find out around June I think what it is and who will win that battle. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers as we've traveled this road and can finally see the end!

If God wanted holes in your ears. . .

Oh well, we did it anyway! We let Maci get her ears pierce a couple weeks ago. She really wanted to do it for her 7th birthday, but we decided to wait a couple weeks to make sure she REALLY wanted to do it. I initially thought we'd wait for a momentous birthday like 8th or 12th or something, but she wanted to do it and I thought she's old enough to make that decision, and I really don't have a passionate stance one way or the other, so I said she could go for it.

We made it a girl's day out and went to lunch at Chili's before heading over to the Mall. We had a great chat at lunch and ate delicious Chicken Crispers, yumm. Then we scoped out Claire's at the mall, it was crazy busy, so we just walked around and looked for future earrings to wear, and Maci wanted to see one girl get it done before she did it herself. Big mistake! It was a younger girl, probably 4ish, and she screamed for a good 10 minutes after she'd had it done. So. . . that freaked Maci out. We decided to go down to a little kiosk in the mall that didn't have quite as long a line and where we were guaranteed to have 2 people to punch the holes at the same time. So she picked out her studs, and then proceeded to freak out and cry for about 5 minutes, all the while I kept saying she didn't HAVE to do this so the workers knew I wasn't forcing her!! Then she finally settled down enough to get in the chair, crying all the while, and they just went for it. She said it hurt a lot!! and continued to cry for another 10 minutes, while I was blowing on her ears, etc. All the moms passing by gave me pitiful glances and one even came up to Maci and said "Oh your ears look so great!" which made me smile, thank you kind mom :-D She finally quieted down and we went and picked out some more regular earrings for her to wear when she's done with the studs. After she said over and over how GLAD she was she did it even though it hurt. I was proud of her for facing her fears and being brave!

I think I drilled it into her enough that we only get one set of earrings, although mommy had her rebellious days when she had, gasp, 5 holes in her ears! Hopefully Maci will see the error in my ways and won't make the same choices I made, even though I loved how those earrings looked in my younger, cooler days.

They Say It's Your Birthday

Maci had a Birthday! on Feb. 12th, she turned 7 years old. How I got old enough to have a 7 year old. . . . uggg. But she is 7 nonetheless. We started the day off with pancakes, her request. She didn't have school that day, but we couldn't do her bigger friend party that day, so we let her choose whatever she wanted to do that day just her, me and Gav. She chose to go swimming at the indoor pool here. We did end up taking a few friends with us too. It was a fun change of pace. That night we had chicken noodle soup, her favorite! with biscuits, and ice cream for dessert. We ate by candlelight and had fancy glasses with Sprite and marashino?? cherries, a Grandma Sharon tradition. It was a great night and we had a lot of fun. She opened her presents and was happy with all her goodies.

DS game and Candy Jewelry making thing a ma bob

ZuZu pets balls and tunnel thingies.



Littlest Pet Shop from Gav.New Spring Dress

Saturday was party day. Maci has become quite a good little roller skater! so she wanted to take a few friends roller skating. We met there in the afternoon. The other girls did their best, one of them it was her first time ever on skates! We shuffled around the rink a bunch, while Maci cruised by all of us ;-D But I think all the girls had a good time. The rink was so crowded with other birthday parties, Roller Skating is definitely cool again! We stayed about an hour, then went and got the Roller Skate Cake from home and went to Braum's for cake and ice cream. Maci helped me decorate the cupcake cake, it turned out cute! All the girls had a great time and I think Maci had a fabulous birthday.

Emily E., Lily P, Maci and Sydney J.

Maci has a very tender heart. She takes things very seriously, and knows how to show compassion and kindness to others. She loves school, is reading like crazy, and loves art. She loves her brother, even though they sometimes fight, but most often she's helping him with something, playing "puppies" with him, or using the couch as a jungle gym with him, much to Daddy's dismay! Recently they've been into building obstacle courses, and love to challenge themselves with weird jumps and tricks. Maci loves doing her hair and always has a flower or bow in her hair. She's getting too grown up! She loves going to church and I'm always amazed at what she can remember about stories when we talk about them at FHE. She's reading through the Book of Mormon Reader with us and can read most of the words. She has such a sweet spirit and we love having her in our home! We Love You Maci!

Craft Blogs a GaGa

So I've come across a few craft blogs of late, and I think I'm officially addicted. Although reading these blogs may induce a feeling of inadeqaucy when in comes to how crafty you are and all the great ideas you thought you had, they still give you a ton of fun new things to try out and make your home look cute, so you take the good with the bad I guess! My favorite one for learning how to refinish furniture, which I'm dying to try, is www.allthingsthrifty.com I really love the way they use glaze and make the pieces look old and antiqued. I think I'll tackle our beat up coffee table, whenever I find a spare weekend, which could easily be never, so we'll see. But I've tried their techniques on some candlesticks I got at Goodwill, and they turned out really cool, so I'm excited to try a bigger piece.

I also found this great tutorial, although I think the one I looked at originally was not this site, this is the same idea and she gives a good tutorial, so check it out! Tutorial HERE.
I did mine turqoise, a color I'm thinking of adding to our living room decor due to influence from the All Things Thrifty girls, she has orange and turquoise together, so it must be ok, right? I'm still undecided on it, but it really does lighten up the space. This is actually hanging in my hall, so it's kind of removed from the orange room, but I need to tie it in somewhere or it just looks like a turquoise frame that is totally out of place. Anyway, it was really easy to make and took me maybe an hour total? with drying times in between, etc. So if you have an old frame lying around, try this one out! I got all my little frames at the 1$ store, clips at Walmart.

I also tried out this adorable Heart Burlap wreath, because I had leftover burlap from the frame and I wanted a cute wreath for Valentines Day. I found this PERFECT tutorial over at Diary of a Craftaholic. Click HERE for the tutorial. This was a really fun and easy project, Maci helped me out with it during the Super Bowl and it was done in 20 min. or so. I wish I'd used heavier wire, so if you can use the big fat wire from Home Depot or something like that, I would definitely do that, it would help your heart shape to be more defined.

Hope you get lost in the world of craft and DIY blogs, there's so much great info out there and fun projects to do. Enjoy!!

Snow Day

Seems as though I'm about 2 weeks behind on all my posts! Oh well, such is life. We got a dump of snow about a week ago, way more than we saw last year during the entire winter. Maci got out of school one day, so we took advantage of the rare build up of snow and went sledding! We actually left all our sleds in Utah, one less thing to pack at the time, so we had to scrounge around the city and find some. Walmart was out, but Ace saved the day :-D We had a really great time, day one was pretty cold, it was still snowing and very windy. But we woke up the next morning, Saturday, and it had snowed another 3-4 inches and was a beautiful sunny day! so we headed for round 2. It was really fun, the kids had a blast, and I got a great workout climbing up and down the hill. It's not Utah snow, but we took what we could get!!

Day 1, snowy and COLD!!



Day 2, much warmer!! we'd all shed our coats by the end.

Gavy likes the on the knees and backwards approach.

We built a killer "jump", until Chris tried it and totally obliterated it :-D

Chris started seeing clients at the clinic, which he's very excited about. He came home his first day of seeing someone and just had a fire in him! he was so pumped about it. So PHEW that he likes it!! and will be great at it as well. Maci's been reading up a storm and doing great in school. She's in a book club her teacher started where they read things and then make collages, watercolors, and other art things to go with the stories for comprehension, which I think is fabulous!! she's really enjoying that. We can't believe our little girl is turning 7 this week!! We have a slew of plans for the weekend, they actually don't have school on Friday because of a Parent Teacher Conf. make up day, so we'll get to party all day!! and Sat. too probably. We'll post pictures. Gavin is all boy still, loves to play the wii, and we've been trying to squeeze in a little learning every day with letter flashcards and coloring, etc. We may opt for a "real" preschool next year, he's very NOT ready for kindergarten, but I'm sure he'll be ready by the time it comes.

I've been busy busy with wood stuff, I've tried to cut back and have done better, but I think I still need to cut back more!! So we're working on that. I am officially off the board of the PTA though, so that's a step in the right direction, right? I still had one toe in all these months, but officially resigned last week, Phew :-D I still plan on volunteering for the parties, etc, just not in charge of them, which is great. I really commend people who can do PTA 100%, but I am not one of those people right now, maybe when my kids get older.

No bun in the oven yet. . . that's all I'll say about that :-D

And that's our last month in review!

Reflecting

Maci won 1st place in her age category, K-3, for a picture she drew for the Reflections Contest at school. The theme was Beauty Is. . . she drew a picture of a butterfly. They had a little ceremony at a school for all the winners in the district and she got a medal which she loves. We're proud of you Maci!

Christmas 2009 Edition

Boy was it a different Christmas Season for us this year! No family caroling, no driving around to see the luminaries on Christmas Eve, no Alpine 10th Ward Christmas Eve Pageant, no homemade family gift exchange. We had a very low key Christmas, which was very enjoyable in some ways, and very quiet and strange in others! Chris and I were talking yesterday about it, and how it was a very nice Christmas, it just didn't feel like Christmas because it was so different from what we're used to! But lovely still the same. So here's how we passed the time away.

I got strep throat on Wed, the 23rd. Lucky me!! Chris was fabulous and took care of the kids completely on Wed, I was out for the count. Luckily my meds started to kick in by Thurs. morning, so we ventured out and went to breakfast at IHOP. We wanted to go somewhere more authentic and had planned to go to a place downtown, but I was feeling so icky that I couldn't really taste the food, could barely swallow the food! so we opted for the more low key IHOP. It was fun, the kids liked it, I tried to tell them why my parents started going out on Christmas Eve for breakfast in the first place, kind of the same situation we're in with no family around when they lived in Idaho, and to make a new, fun tradition. Not sure all that sunk it, but I saw the parallel at least.

The rest of Christmas Eve was pretty low key, we played some games, made rolls and cookies for Santa, let the kids open their jammies and one other toy present. We watched the Nativity on dvd and tried to go over the True meaning of Christmas one more time before the mayhem the next day. I think they liked the show and we felt the Spirit as a family.

Christmas morning came pretty late at our house! The kids snuck out around 7:45 and took a peek at the presents, then came and woke us up! stinkers. But I was just glad they slept in a little. I was feeling pretty good at this point, thank goodness for antibiotics when you really need them! The kids loved all their goodies from Santa, Maci really wanted a Mermaid Barbie, a pink one this time, since she got a purple one last year but she really wanted the PINK one. Well, Santa obliged. She also got a Furreal puppy that rolls over, barks, etc. Gavin got his Maxus Draganoid, which he has been talking about non stop for about 4 months now! He was so excited, and as soon as it was out of the box had it put together in a flash. He's studied the YouTube videos of kids putting it together over and over. He also got a tin to put all his Bakugan in. He made a killing in the Bakugan department this year.

Love the Snuggies!!

We Skyped Chris's mom while the kids opened their presents so she could watch them, that was fun. They got lots of fun things and thoroughly enjoyed all the mayhem. We were very unorganized and just threw all the paper in the corner, figured we could clean it up later. It was pretty messy by the end!! We all got spoiled by the grandparents on all sides, THANK YOU!! for all you sent, the kids loved it all.

We piddled around in the morning, got ready and went to Princess and the Frog which the kids thoroughly enjoyed, then we came home and roasted a turkey, made all the trimmings, and had a great family dinner. The kids played with their toys, we listened to Christmas music, drank out of fancy glasses, and just enjoyed each others company. There is something to be said for doing your own thing on Christmas, it was totally relaxing and enjoyable, we just tried hard not to notice the sometimes quiet lulls when we are thinking about what we're used to back home. But I'm glad we've gotten to experience both types.

Feasting on Asphalt DVD's, love 'em! All my goodies, Santa did me proud!

During the break we've played lots of games, Toss Up and Pictureka are our new favorites, played lots of Wii and DS, watched too many movies, played outside when it's not too cold, and just enjoyed each other, for the most part :-D On New Year's Eve we went to a friend's from church with a couple other families and played Scum for about 3 hours straight, and counted down to the ball drop. It was really fun. New Year's Day we ventured south to Hollister to the Keeter Center which is on a local college campus. We were looking for a Homestead kind of vibe, and definitely found it there. The ambiance was great, the food was awesome and reasonably priced, and it was a really fun place to go. Maci thought it was a very fancy place and can't wait to go back. This may be a new tradition for our family. We did a little shopping in Branson, and then headed home to meet up with the Dunakey's who are in town from Omaha!! We've had Emma sleep over 2 nights now and Maci is in heaven, she really misses her friend! and I've caught up with Angelita over making hair bows and eating chinese food. We miss you guys!!



The break is almost over, we're ready for a fresh start and all the exciting things that 2010 will bring to our family. Happy Holidays everybody!