Baby on the Brain

    

With the upcoming birth of our sweet little girl, I have had baby on the brain a lot. It was fun to look back at these pictures and to see what Micali and Eli looked like as newborns. It makes me wonder what this girl will bring into the mix. So far we have two with blue eyes, a red-head and a blondie. It will be interesting to see.  I am getting so excited (and a little scared too)! On Monday Dr. said everything sounds good. I am dilated to a 2.5 but have dilated early with the others too so am not getting my hopes up for an early birth. I did think about packing a bag for the hospital when I heard the Dr. say that but still haven’t gotten around to it. We only live a mile and a half from the hospital so it won’t be hard for Luke to get us anything we need if I am not totally prepared.

We still aren’t totally settled on a name. There is only one name that has stayed on the list the entire time but we still have a list and decided we would just wait and decide when we see her.

I am hoping this weather cooperates so that our Dr. who lives 30 minutes away (on clear roads) will be able to make it for the delivery. If I time it right he will be at the “clinic” which is in the same building as the hospital and just a down the hall from the labor and delivery rooms.

We will be keeping you updated!

Snow Days

taking care of baby

neighbor’s house who lives in florida in the winter-- Smart people Clearing 3 feet of snow from the walk that was clear the night before

drifts on the garage

Eli checking out daddy’s progress

That’s a lot of snow. We moved from Alaska to the desert---doesn’t look like much changed!

Eli’s Birthday

-potty training fun

-homemade party hats

-football cake

-chocolate frosting

-baseball bat and ball and train set

Happy Birthday Elijah

Today our little man turns 2. He is learning so much and talking a ton too. Everyday we are surprised with the words that come out of his mouth. He absolutely loves signing time and knows way more signs than even his mom and dad. We love you little man!

Just relaxing and watching a little signing time!

The Final Countdown

I am surprised at how fast time is flying by. Every day I look at my  due date counter on the blog for this baby. I think it says 28 days now! Wow! We are really excited to meet this sweet little girl but, at the same time I am a little nervous. I don’t know how many times I have been asked the question. How are you going to handle 3 kids??? Well, I guess the same way everyone else who has 3 or more kids handled it.  We brought in all the baby stuff out of the garage yesterday.  Micali has just been in heaven. She loves everything baby right now and I am sure she will be a big help when mommy’s baby actually comes. She likes to tell me all about how she will take good care of it and hold her. Hopefully she remembers that! I still don’t know how much she understands about her baby sister but she does definitely talk about her all the time.

Here are two pictures from today:

I guess I do really look like I am nearing the end! Yippee.

A spontaneous outing

Yesterday we woke up to Eli at around 6:45. That is actually really sleeping in for him. We decided instead of hanging around the house all day we would check out the Hot Air Balloon festival that was in Bluff(about 45 miles away). We had read about the festival in the newspaper and it said the balloons would take off at sunrise. We were afraid we might miss it since we were leaving at 7:00 and watching the sun come up as we started the journey. However we arrived with time to spare as many of the balloons were just being unpacked from the trailers.

We were pleasantly surprised with what we saw as we really didn’t know what to expect. We had never been close to hot air balloons and hadn’t talked to anyone who had been to this particular festival in a VERY VERY small town. As we were driving into town and didn’t see any balloons in the air I joked that the LONE balloon rider hadn’t showed up.

Enjoy these pictures from our little outing:

These are powered simply by two 40 gallon propane tanks that sit in the basket. Amazing! And kind of scary.

This is what the balloons look like packed in their case.

Micali and Eli really enjoyed themselves and were very entertained watching all of these balloons get ready for take-off. This might just become a yearly tradition while we live here.

Family

Here are a couple more pictures that were taken when everyone was home at Thanksgiving time. For those who haven’t seen them on facebook and for me I wanted to include them on my blog. I am so glad that everything worked out so we could all be together and make these pictures possible.

Thumbsucking update

Not going so well. She is definitely doing it less but still it is very much a comfort for her. Micali had a great week before Christmas and then with being bored in the car for so long and traveling all over she just went right back to it. Sometimes if I ask her about it she will pull it out but other times she just ignores me and keeps on sucking. I haven’t tried getting they yucky tasting stuff to put on there yet but am thinking about it. I wonder if it is too close to the new baby coming that I should let her wait and hopefully choose to stop by herself in the near future.

Grandma and Grandpa

We were also lucky enough to have Luke’s parents come share a week with us following Christmas. Micali and Eli were totally spoiled and so happy to have all the extra attention. Micali made us all way to many blueberries in the Kitchen her and Eli got from them. We played lots of games, laughed a lot, spent some time outside, and traveled to the Canyonlands National park that isn’t to far from home. Unfortunately looking back I did use my camera enough to capture all the fun but I have a few that will have to do.

 

Eli and Micali did a great job riding in the car through the Canyonlands. We didn’t get out of the car much. We let Daddy and Grandpa do that. Micali and Eli liked seeing the cows that were all over and IN the road because it is an open range.

Daddy made the kids a nice indoor play place by stripping the cushions off the couches and throwing the kids into the pillows and jumping around with them. Eli is pretty sure this should be an everyday occurrence now.

The only pictures of Grandma and Grandpa were taken as they were walking out the door but I am glad they were patient enough for me to grab the camera!

Micali is old enough now to realize she doesn’t want them to leave. She asked them 20 questions about why they were leaving before she let them get out the door. Now she watches for jets flying over head and asks if that is her Grandma and Grandpa.