Back to the Blogging World

After a 2+ year hiatus from blogging, I decided that I really need to start this up again, and do a better job at posting regularly.  Whether or not anyone besides me looks at it doesn't really matter.  I am doing this for my family...so that we have some documentation of the things going on.

As a quick catch-up, here are the major high lights of the last 2 years:

• Grammy (Justin's mom) moved in with us in Feb. 2011.  She was diagnosed with leukemia, and our house is usually the best bet for her to avoid exposure to illnesses now.
• James moved in with us August 2011, while he  is going to school.
• Austin went to the BEST preschool ever, and is now in Kindergarten.  We are on year-round school here.  (It isn't as bad as I thought it would be!)

We have been staying busy with Justin's work, Austin's school, trying different extracurricular activities, and just getting through day to day life.  Our year has started out less than exciting.  We have all taken our turn being sick.  Austin was first, with strep a few days before Christmas.  The rest of have just had colds, but it has made the rounds.

Since pictures of sickies aren't much fun, we will start off with some pictures of the kids from our most recent family pictures (taken in October).

 

Aren't they cute?

 

Halloween 2010

We had a fun Halloween this year (celebrated mostly on Saturday)! Justin and Austin started out the day building a pirate ship! Since we went to Disneyland, Austin has been obsessed with pirates. He sings "Yo ho, Yo ho!" all day long, and frequently tells us, "I LOOOOVE pirates!" So, when Justin saw a pirate ship at Lowe's, he couldn't pass it up!


That afternoon, Grammy came over, and we carved pumpkins. Austin pretty much got to choose what to do with 2 of them, Grammy did one, and the 4th got to be a Mr. Potato head pirate! And Justin carved one of our left over zucchini from the garden.

If you can't guess, Austin chose to have Mickey Mouse and a pirate, plus his potato head pumpkin! The zucchini has a fish carved into it. Grammy carved leaves and a spider into her pumpkin. They all looked really cool! We even got compliments from trick-or-treaters about how neat our pumpkins were.
Katie finally has enough hair for pig tails! SOOOO cute. You can hardly see the hair under the bows, but I promise it is there!

Then it was time to go trick-or-treating. Austin was a dinosaur again this year (Hey-the costume still fit!), and Katie was Tinkerbell. Of course, neither of them would cooperate so that we could get a decent picture. So, these are the best we got! Just trust me, they looked cute!


Austin absolutely loved Halloween this year. He was a trooper, and was so excited to go trick-or-treating, even though it was cold and rainy. We took Katie out for a few houses, but decided it was too cold to have our little Tink out.

We had a great holiday. I am so glad that Austin enjoyed it this year!

October Fun

It has been a pretty laid back month (I better find some wood to knock on...). It has been really warm lately. Warm weather means more yard work! Katie was so excited to watch Justin mowing the lawn, and Austin thought for sure she needed a buddy.


(That's right...he is pant less. But hey, he is in underwear! That is a big deal! Sometimes you just have to pick your battles!)

We also got to celebrate the wedding of our beautiful niece, Jessica! It was an amazing, fun weekend, and we are so happy for her and Jake.

We went to the pumpkin patch. It was a little disappointing this year. I think the warm weather made for a not so great pumpkin crop. We were able to find a few good ones though.

Katie thought she was so cool holding a pumpkin. It was pretty cute to see her smile! And, the pumpkin was actually pretty light...if you were wondering why I was smashing my child.


I do try to get cute pictures of my kids, but this is what a lot of them turn out like. It is a work in progress! Thankfully, Katie is very good at tolerating Austin...most of the time.

3 Months Old

Katie is three months old today!! I can hardly believe it! She is a sweet little girly girl that we just love to pieces!

Who can resist a sleeping baby?

Notice the fuzz on her head. Looking a little blonde...who would have ever guessed that?!?

At three months, Katie is:

• Finally starting to be a happy girl. She still fusses in the evening, but is good for the majority of the day!
• Sleeping from between 9 and 10 PM to around 5 AM
• Smiling lots
• Giggled a few times
• Making lots of little noises
• Grabbing at and holding onto toys
• Liking her bouncy seat, with the toys above her
• Loving her big brother...smiling at him and watching him all the time (She is gonna be one tough girl...cause Austin really loves her, and doesn't quite understand being gentle with her!)
• Trying to sit up
• Letting Daddy hold her sometimes now
• Finally getting some hair on the top of her head
• Getting cuter every day (is that possible?)
• Wrapping us tighter around her little fingers
  
  
  

Our week of Emergencies

What's the perfect way to start a week? How about a trip to Primary Children's Emergency Room? Sunday night we had gone to Grammy's house for dinner. Austin went upstairs to play with Kennadie. All of a sudden we hear something fall, and Austin starts screaming. Justin ran upstairs to find Austin with a big gash in his forehead, blood all over his face, and a pen in his hand. Thankfully, he had the smarts to check the wound and make sure none of the pen had broken off inside.

Turns out Kennadie had been coloring with her special Disneyland pen (a big, fat ballpoint pen). When she set it down, Austin grabbed it and took off running. He tripped on a rug, and fell right onto the tip of the pen. Thankfully, it didn't hit his eye. We still ended up in the emergency room. They took us back as soon as we got there. They had to sedate him to clean the wound out, and put 9 stitches in (2 deep, and 7 surface).

He was pretty funny with the medicine. He was laughing while they cleaned it out. His face was draped, and when I talked to him, he said, "Mom? Is that you?" Then he sang the Chipmunk song for everyone. He did really well, until the last few stitches, when the medicine started wearing off. They gave him more, but it didn't kick in until they were mostly done. Then we had to hang out at the hospital until he was more coherent. He was not happy coming out of the medicine. Then in an instant, he perked up and said "My jammies!"

Before stitches (1/4 in deep and 3/4 in long)
(2/21/10)

Six days later (2/27/10). Looking so much better

He about broke my heart when he was all worried to go to a neighbors house a few days later. He said "But everyone will look at my owie!" I told him it was okay, and to just tell them what happened. So, now he tells EVERYONE what happened ("The pen cut me at Grammy's house. I had to go to the hopsital (not a spelling mistake, just how he says it!) and the doctor fixed it.)

Then...

Friday night, Justin's mom came over to watch the kids so that we could go out. Katie has decided not to take a bottle, so she got to come with us. We went to Macaroni Grill (about 25 minutes away from home). We had to wait a while, finally got seated, and as soon as our food came, Justin's phone rang. It was his mom saying that our fire alarms were going off. There was no smoke, she didn't smell anything, and couldn't make them stop. So, Justin told her how to reset them. No good. We said we would come right home. She and Austin were going to go sit in her car.

Of course it took a little bit to get our waitress and pay. The whole time I am feeling sick, thinking how our smoke alarms are also carbon monoxide detectors. We get in the car and I convince Justin to call the fire department to go check it out. My reasoning: if it is a fire our house will be burnt down before we get there, and if it is carbon monoxide we need to get the problem fixed. So, he called in a non-emergency call. As we got to Jordan Landing, his mom called to say the fire truck was pulling up. A few minutes later she called back to say they had found the problem.

THE BABY MONITOR

Austin had turned the volume up, and it had microphone interference causing a high pitched squeal. When we pulled up, the fire men were just about to leave. One neighbor was walking by to make sure everything was okay. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was my visiting teacher, the relief society president (who lives on the other side of the neighborhood), saying someone called her because there was a fire truck at our house.

Such excitement!!!

My Little Valentines

So Cute!!!

What more can I say?

I love these kids!!!

It's overwhelming...

Yes-having two kids. It is overwhelming sometimes. But, that is not what I am referring to here.

I am so behind on my blog. It kind of took the back burner for most of the last year...with the pregnancy and now two kids to wrangle. But, because I want to have everything documented and recorded, and this seems like a pretty easy way for me to do it, I have come up with a plan. I want/plan to put up a new post everyday until I am caught up. It is a big task now, but hopefully it won't be too bad. So, stay tuned, and look back every now and then because I will be backdating posts too!

Ladies and gentlemen...

Presenting,

Katie Anne

December 12, 2009

10:05 PM

7 lbs 10 oz

22 inches

Katie's Story

Due Date: December 18, 2009


I had an induction scheduled for Monday, December 14. At my Dr's appointment on Friday, December 11, I started talking to my doctor about how I hoped she would just come over the weekend. His response to that was that he was on call on Sunday, and had to be at the hospital anyway, so if I happened to have some contractions and come in, he knew that I wouldn't be sent home. I jokingly said lets just move the induction to Sunday. He said that was great with him. Then, he checked me and I was dilated to 4. My blood pressure was high (140/90), so he sent me over to the hospital to be evaluated to make sure it wasn't PIH. Everything turned out fine, and they sent me home.


I then went into panic mode. Life as we knew it, as our little family of 3, Austin getting all the attention, was almost over. I decided that Justin was going to take the weekend off of working in the basement, and we were going to just spend time together. That night, we went down to see the Christmas lights and reindeer at Thanksgiving Point.


I didn't sleep well that night. I woke up around 2 feeling really nauseous. We were going to go to Park City on Saturday to see the Thomas the Tank Engine ginger bread display at one of the resorts. We left the house around noon, and I started feeling a little unsure about going out for the day. I still wasn't feeling good, and then not far from our house, I had a contraction that felt different from all the other contractions I had had. We got some lunch, ran a few little errands, and came home.


I had more contractions, totally irregular though. I fell asleep on the couch for a while. Around 5:30, I was contracting every 10-15 minutes, but they weren't getting any stronger. I had Justin call the hospital to see when they wanted us to come in since I was already 4 cm. They said not to come in until they were 5 minutes apart for 1 hour. So, I decided that we would go to our ward Christmas party so that we could get out of the house. At the party my contractions were about 10 minutes apart, but not painful.


We left the party at 7:30 to head to the airport to get my mom. The contractions were 6-8 minutes apart then, so I told Justin that we would take mom and Austin home, then head to the hospital. When we got home, I got out of the car to go inside and get my bag of bathroom stuff. As soon as I stood up, the contractions went to 1-2minutes apart.


We got in Justin's car, and made it from our house to the U in 25 minutes. We were getting on the elevator to head to up to labor and delivery at 9:35 PM (me in a wheelchair). They put me in the triage room, and asked me to get up on the table so that they could check me. I remember thinking "How on earth do they expect me to get out of this wheelchair and up onto that table?" I did get up and remember someone coming and putting pressure on my lower back and asking if it helped...which it didn't. I then have no idea how I got on the table. The midwife came in to check me. I heard her say, "There's the head, and the bag of water, and I don't feel any cervix." Then it was chaos. I heard people yelling, "She's complete," and the bed started moving.


They moved me to a delivery room, where there were tons of people...at least 4 nurses, 2 residents, and the on call doctor. The on call doctor, looked at me and said, "They called Dr. Sharp. He is on his way, but I really doubt he will get here in time." Then they asked if I wanted the anesthesiologist to try to get an epidural in since my water hadn't broken. I wasn't thinking very clearly, so Justin made the decision for me to have him try. He tried to place a low dose spinal block, but it didn't work! The resident kept telling me that I could push if wanted to. I kept telling her "No" because I knew it was going to hurt!


At 9:59 my water broke. Shortly after, my doctor walked in the room. Katie was born at 10:05 PM on Saturday, December 12th. Everything went very well considering...lots of screaming on my part, which I was highly embarrassed about. My doctor did tell me how impressed he was that I hadn't sworn though! It was definitely a different experience, and a darn good thing she is cute!! She definitely had her own little agenda!!


Here are our first pictures. I look absolutely awful, but it had been a rough hour!

Halloween

We had a pretty fun Halloween this year, all things considered. We started the day out just leaving the house and running a few errands. When we got home, we carved our pumpkins (a little late this year...we left them out a few days after Halloween to get a little more out of them!) I was very surprised at how much Austin enjoyed "carving" his pumpkin. He wasn't hesitant at all to dig right in. He especially loved taking their "hats" off and putting them back on.

Our afternoon/evening went a little something like this:

The boys both took late naps. So the rest of our festivities began later than I had planned. I made some homemade root beer to go with our pumpkin shaped pizza. Austin wouldn't even taste the root beer, but he loved watching it bubble and smoke.




Grammy made Austin's costume this year. I wanted him to be a dinosaur, and he decided that it needed to be red. (Not my first choice of a color for a dinosaur, but how do you resist a cute little boy saying he wants to be a red dinosaur?!? It turned out really cute too) The only problem was that this kid isn't a big fan of costumes. Last year, it took us several weeks of practicing to get him to wear his costume. So, we tried putting it on him a few days before Halloween, and he actually did pretty well with it (once I told him he had to practice "trick or treats" and gave him some marshmallows.)

The full costume

Cute little dino

Trying to get the costume on him on Halloween night. He wasn't very happy about it. He wouldn't wear the whole costume, but we managed to get (and keep) the main part of it on.

We finally made it out of the house (I just ignored the tears, hoping they would stop once he realized what was going on.) Thankfully, he did enjoy getting "trick or treats".





He didn't waste any time getting back into the house once we made it home though!

October

So, here goes the October rundown via pictures.

Thank goodness for Sarah being close enough to come play with and entertain my boy!

Working in the basement. The hope was to have the basement completed before the baby arrived...probably not going to happen, but we have at least started now! Austin loves to take his play tools down there and "help" Justin.

We had to make our annual trip to the pumpkin patch. Austin loved looking at all the pumpkins. He especially loved the little ones. His favorite was the pie pumpkins. I couldn't resist, so we let him get it. He seriously carried the pumpkin with him everywhere, and even took his "Little Fella'" to bed with him the first night.
Austin with his Little fella.

He tripped and fell right into a rotten pumpkin!

We had to take another trip to Wheeler Farm before it got too cold!

I love this picture of him! Such a handsome little guy, and beautiful fall colors!

Austin was just playing in the living room with his goggles. He uses them when he "works" in the basement, and also calls them his "helmet" when he is playing football!

Such a boy!!!

Just a little laying around, snuggling Underdog and Polly.

In hopes of getting him excited about Halloween, I had him try on his dinosaur costume and let him play in his Buzz Lightyear costume. Too bad it didn't make Halloween any easier!