Waiting....

This seems to be the pregnancy that lasts FOREVER!  We're down to only 2 weeks until baby will be here for sure, but I can't help but hope that it happens sooner.  

I just can't wait to meet our newest little one and find out whether it is a boy or a girl!  Brynlee and Gracen are still so excited.  We went shopping for baby a few times last week trying to find a little outfit to bring him/her home in.  Once we finally found some clothes that I liked, I picked out a few and let the kids pick their favorite. One for a boy and one for a girl.  

It's been fun not knowing what we're having!  I though it would be a lot harder than it has.  Once we got through the ultrasound, and past the point of being able to find out what is!  I've got all of the boy and girl baby clothes washed and waiting, and we *may* have decided on a couple of names.  For some reason this one has been hard to find a name for.  Nate and I have very different taste in names and having to choose boy and girl names has been interesting!  I haven't found a name that really stands out.  It seems as though I just need to see this baby before I can decide.

This has been the pregnancy unlike any other.  I constantly find myself saying, "I've never had that before."  I know it's normal for them to be different, but this one has had a lot of weird uncomfortable annoyances.  And plenty of days where my energy level is at zero.  

Aside from just being huge and uncomfortable, my body has decided not to handle pregnancy very well this time.  Over the last while I have had a really hard time breathing.  Whether I'm sitting and have to get up and move because I can't breathe, or standing and feel like I am going to pass out, and have to sit or lay down for a while.  It makes for an interesting morning when I'm trying to get Brynlee ready for school and can hardly function, let alone walk her to the bus stop!

I've never had a hard time sleeping while pregnant.  This time I wake up at night, most nights, with my body in a panic because I'm not breathing very well.  At first I wondered if it was anxiety or something, but then realized it was that I just wasn't breathing well (trying to adjust to this dry weather has been difficult for us all!)  We went out and bought a whole house humidifier and that has helped a ton, but I still have problems once in a while.  

Over the last week or so, my feet and hands have been swelling more than they ever have.  My joints in my fingers ache, and my shoes don't fit.  Never happened before.  I swelled a little with Gracen, but my shoes still fit!  

I wake up at night with 3 out of 5 of my fingers tingling and my hands asleep.  It drives me crazy!  My hands fall asleep all the time now if I hold them at the wrong angle.  

Back when I was still volunteering in Brynlee's classroom, it was my last day to go in and I was there for about 3 hours.  When I left, I could barely walk.  With each pregnancy I've had problems with a pinched nerve or something on my right side.  My walking problem that day was something else.  Not sure what, but I was in a lot of pain.  After Nate got home, he did some OMM on me, and the pain hasn't come back nearly as bad.  

Okay...Enough complaining!  

There has been some good with this pregnancy as well.  This baby moves all the time!  I love being able to feel all that movement.  It makes me excited to find out what his or her little personality will be like.  My other kids moved, but this baby can sometimes be out of control in there!  

Brynlee and Gracen love to say hi to baby.  Gracen will get right over my belly and just talk to baby with the sweetest little voice.  He's always telling me how nice he's going to be to baby.  He's also decided he will like this baby even if it is not a boy!

Brynlee is going to be my little helper.  She has really been big on service lately and loves to do things for me. "Because your pregnant..."  she always says.  She is a sweet girl and is so, so excited for baby to be here!

Soon.  2 weeks is not that long.  I can make it!

Lastly,  here I am, 38 weeks.  Not a good picture, but most days look worse than this so I'll take it!  

BTW...I've gained the least amount with this pregnancy than any other.  Surprisingly.  Especially with my lack of energy.  And don't forget...Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  I thought for sure I'd gained at least 10 lbs between the 3 of them.  Total has been about 22lbs so far.  

Merry Christmas!!

We are having a wonderful Christmas!  Hope you are too!!

It Wibbled...It Wobbled...

It Jiggled...

It Joggled!!

That tooth of hers finally came out!

She had been working on it for quite some time.

It was last Thursday, December, 9.  I picked her up at the bus stop, we got in the car and were on our way to the church where I had to help set up for the Relief Society Christmas party.  

Not 1 minute down the road I hear, "My tooth came out!!"  

She was so excited and all smiles about it.  

Of course she put it under her pillow that night, and the tooth fairy came and left her a dollar.  

Now, she's hard at work trying to get that 2nd bottom tooth to come out...It won't be long!

A bit of November...

November came and went quickly for us.  We were FINALLY able to close on our house at the very end of October!!  So, that meant time to start making it our own!  We started with painting, which is still a work in progress, more of that when it is done!  

Crazy story...not a week after we had closed on our house, I was out in the garage and turned around to see 3 guys from the SWAT team walking up my driveway.  I had a moment of panic, that was quickly gone when one of them told me everything was okay.  They were looking for the guy who used to own this house.  They didn't tell me much of why, aside from the fact that he'd gone off the deep end.  Now that is comforting!  We never met the guy, he didn't come to closing, and had given power of attorney to his ex wife to get things done on the house.  

I decided I wanted to know what had happened, so I asked my neighbor later that day.  She told me about a standoff that had happened in our house back in April, and that he owned lots of guns, which is the reason for the SWAT team.  He had posted bail and run off.  

I was a bit concerned about this.  You really never know what crazy people are capable of.  They said I didn't need to worry about him coming back or anything, but still, you never know.  Turns out our house had been under surveillance for a couple months.  To end this long story, the guy turned up in another state and had shot a police man 2 times, they returned fire and killed him.  Kinda sad and unfortunate that things had to go that way for him.  But it was the end of my worries of him coming back here for any reason.

Since then, we've had 2 incidences of people coming by the house and taking pictures of it-that I know of!  Once the guy got out and Gracen was looking out the window and told me there was a guy taking pictures of our house.  The next time, which was just over a week or so ago, I was standing in the window painting and saw a black truck pull up on our street, not long after he was driving past my house with the passenger window down and his hand sticking up holding a camera, taking pictures as he drove by.  Creepy!  I don't like the thought of unknown people coming here and taking pictures.  

We also had some fun in November!  We had a couple of different visitors, which was so fun!  We love having people come out and see us!  And being close to Utah has allowed us much more than we've had before!  

Nate's brother Kelly and his family came out for a weekend.  They have 4 girls and my kids we just so excited to have them here!  They played and had a fun little sleepover in Brynlee's room. 

Unfortunately, the weather was cold so we weren't able to do much outside with them.  We were able to sneak out for a little bit... 

  Garden of The Gods.  Gracen wasn't in the picture because he fell and hit his mouth on the cement.  He was not a happy camper at that moment.

 Gracen LOVED having Kelly here!  He wouldn't leave him alone!  He wanted him to read him his bedtime stories, had fun shooting with him, and if he couldn't find Kelly, he would get quite worried.

All of the kids!  Kelly and Tausha's girls are all so fun!  They are so helpful and great examples to my kids.  We were really sad to see them leave.  Brynlee and Gracen were in tears.  They love spending time with their cousins!

Thanks for coming to see us!!  (And to Tausha for the pictures!)

Fall came with full force!  We loved all of the colors, but didn't really love having all of the leaves in our yard to clean up!  Nate and I raked and raked and raked!  We still don't have all of the leaves cleaned up.  Brynlee was a sweet girl and would help me try to clean up leaves after school.  They both loved playing in them!  Their first real experience with lots and lots of leaves...

I had raked up two sections of our backyard into 2 separate piles and left the monkeys to play in them while I made dinner.  I looked out the window to check on them and one of my piles was completely gone!  I went out and asked where they put them, and they told me they moved them over to the other pile.  That pile was so mushed that it didn't look as big as it did before they had combined the 2.  I couldn't believe they had smashed them all that well.  Makes for an easier time cleaning them up!  

For Turkey day we had my sister, her boyfriend and her daughter all come out.  It was fun having them here for a couple of days!  We had a yummy dinner on Thanksgiving.  Then my sister and I braved the very cold temps and headed out to Toys R Us for some BF shopping.  To say it was insane would be an understatement!  The line to get in practically wrapped around the building twice.  We stood in line for a minute, got told by someone who worked there that about 750 people were in front of us, and decided to head to walmart to try to price match what we could instead.  Walmart was surprisingly not bad.  I was able to get some of the things I wanted from Toys R Us and I didn't have to fight much of a crowd.  I was very surprised that it wasn't busier!  We got home at about 2 a.m. not bad.  I didn't really like the way all the stores were opening all throughout the night.  I might have gone other places, but didn't want to be up all night. 

I was happy to have my sister here!  It was fun to spend Thanksgiving with them and to have someone to go shopping with!  

 That pretty well sums up the month of November for us!  We had some fun and crazy all mixed together with lots of painting!

Halloween 2010

Very sad, yes, that I am still on Halloween and we have only 11 more days until Christmas!  Oh well, at least it is getting done.

We enjoyed Halloween this year!  It was fun trying to pick out costumes and let the monkeys decide what they wanted to be.  Brynlee chose to be a 50's girl, and we tried to convince Gracen to be Elvis, but he just wouldn't go for it!  He wanted to be Optimus Prime.

Here are some pictures from getting all dressed up for a trunk or treat at our church....

I love how much Brynlee was posing!  She was so excited to have a poodle skirt.  I made the skirt for her, it was so easy, then we just matched it up with one of her cardigans.  I love it!

Gracen was quite the Optimus Prime.  Actions and all!

At school Brynlee dressed up and had a Halloween party in her class.  Gracen and I went in and helped for a couple of hours.  One of the things they did that day was decorate a pumpkin they got on a field trip to a local pumpkin patch.  Here she is with this prized pumpkin...

That pretty much sums up our Halloween fun this year!

Gracen's 3rd Birthday

  October 23, this handsome little man turned 3!  Can't believe he's already 3!  

He had a day filled with fun, we started out by giving him his gifts...

 A remote control car and tinker toys.

Then we headed out to get lunch at a place of his choice, which ended up being Burger King.  After lunch we went to a local pumpkin patch...

 The slide and animals were a favorite.  

It was terribly cold and windy that day, so we didn't last too long!

Then we had the big green dump truck birthday cake he requested.  He was so excited when he saw it!  I was less than thrilled with the way it turned out.  I don't think it looks much like a dump truck, but it was not an easy request to fulfill.  

GRACEN AT 3:

He has now hit the terrible 3's.  At times I'm not sure what to do with him!  The 2's were a breeze compared to this!  

His favorite color is green.

He loves transformers, particularly Optimus Prime.

He loves to help his daddy, especially when it involves using the drill.

He wants to go to Kindergarten like Brynlee.

VERY competitive!  He tells random strangers that he is bigger than their kid, can run faster, etc.  

He loves to tell people that he is 3 and on his next birthday he'll be 4.

He has a great memory, and has memorized a lot of Brynlee's little books from school, and at least 10 nursery rhymes. 

He is very loving, gives hugs and kisses all the time.  This includes people he doesn't know too well, the 2nd counselor in the bishopric, his nursery teacher, and our realtor to name a few.

Here are a few videos of Gracen:

This first video is just before church.  The week before he learned about the temple and here is what he was telling me about it...

This video is what he calls a dinosuar kiss.  He really likes dinosaurs and came up with this one on his own...

This is of him saying 2 of the nursery rhymes he knows.  

And this is another nursery rhyme one, but it's much longer.

We sure do love this little man!