Festival of Lights

For family night on the 15th, we drove to Spanish Fork for the Festival of Lights. This year I gave Amelia and Ashley the option of getting unbuckled and getting out of their car seats so that they could see the lights better. Amelia took advantage of this but Ashley wanted to stay in her seat. We had the windows rolled down for the first few minutes but it was snowing and windy so we rolled them back up. I wish that I would have taken the opportunity to drive the loop again, but I missed the turn (and it was already past bedtime). But for only $5, I figure that we can do it again before they turn the lights out for the year.

Gingerbread Houses

This year, we had planned to do gingerbread houses on December 7th with my extended family at Linda's house. Well, as I was at my Primary Presidency meeting that morning, Ashley threw up so we kept her home from church. Since she wasn't feeling well, I figured that we probably shouldn't infect the others at the gingerbread party either. Luckily, Tamara offered to come down and get Amelia so that she wouldn't miss out on all the fun that would be taking place. Amelia had a great time decorating a beautiful gingerbread house all by herself, well mostly by herself. Tamara said that her own house suffered a little bit since she was helping Amelia so much, which I really appreciate. That's what Auntie's are for, right? I forgot to take a picture of the house when Amelia first brought it home, so you have to imagine the fence going all the way around the house. The fence is the only thing that I have let them eat because I know that the pretzels are fresh, you take a huge risk eating the other candy. Amelia was determined to use every type of candy available and place some things in odd places, like a dog on the roof. But I love our gingerbread house for the personality and originality that it has. Way to go Amelia!

Disappointment

There is just one word that I can think of that discribes my appointment today...and that is disappointment. Even though this baby is due tomorrow, I have always thought that I would need to be induced since that was the way it was with both Amelia and Ashley. At my appointment today, I found out that the hospital is completely booked for inductions through the end of the year. I have been planning on being induced on the 29th, but apparently there are just a few other women who have that same plan. My only hope now is to either start labor naturally or have some indication from my Non-Stress Test (that I will be doing on Friday) that will bump me to the top of the induction list. Also, if I make it to 41 weeks, which would be New Year's Eve, I will automatically be bumped to the top of the list. I'm really hoping that I don't make it that long. I just wish that I would have thought to be put on this magical induction list last week when I talked about with my midwife.

The only thing this baby is doing is gaining weight and a 10 lb baby is the last thing I need. And if shoveling 6 inches of snow doesn't bring on labor, I don't know what will!

Happy Birthday Guy!

I am really behind on blogging and I am hoping to catch up soon. Guy's birthday was more than a week ago and I have been so crazy busy that I have neglected to post about it. His birthday was on the 9th and we celebrated with a yummy chocolate cake and opening presents. We went out for dinner with my family on the 13th. I figure that the best way to celebrate a birthday is to make it last for as long as possible. The girls and I gave him a new blue shirt to wear to work, gray dress pants, and a new green tie. When I met Guy, I think that he only owned one tie and it was extremely behind the times. His tie collection is looking much better now that we have been married for 6 years. So, Happy Birthday Guy...Even if it is a little bit late.

Guy didn't even get a chance to blow out the candles.

Place your bets!

The time with baby in my belly is coming to a close so I thought that I would follow my cousin Sara and do a litte bit of on-line betting of when the baby will come. Of course, this is all just for bragging rights, which I think would be pretty cool. Before you place your bet, here is a little bit of baby info (past and present) to help you out...or maybe just confuse you more.

Due dates
This baby...aka...Pickle...aka...French Fry...December 24
Ashley...June 18
Amelia...September 14

Actual birthday
French Fry...????
Ashley...June 23
Amelia...September 21

Labor
French Fry...???
Ashley...induced...4 hours
Amelia...induced...12 hours

Weight and Length
French Fry...???
Ashley...9 lbs 5 ozs, 20 inches
Amelia...9 lbs 6 ozs, 21 inches

And don't forget to take a guess on if it will be a boy or a girl.

Mmm...Delicious

Thanksgiving has come and gone and what a lot of fun we had! Festivities started on Wednesday when I went up to West Valley with the girls to make about 40 pies with my mom, my sister, Launi, Megan and Lindsay. I only needed 2 pies to take to dinner in Sterling, but getting together to make pies is a lot more fun than doing it all by yourself.

Thursday morning, we took our time getting ready and finally left the house around 11:30. When we pulled out of the garage and hit the button for the door to go down, it only went down half way and then it went right back up. I thought that something might be blocking the sensor but after a few minutes of struggling, Guy decided to disconnect everything and just pull it down manually. (After fiddling with it on Saturday, Guy thinks that the opener is shot and just needs to be replaced.) We got down to Sterling just before 1:00. Around 2:00, everyone was there and so we finally sat down to eat. For records sake, here is the quick list of everyone that was there...Gary, Gloria, Kevin, Emma, Fernando, Kacey, Natalie, Elena, David, Mindy, Michelle, Sharee, Valerie, Brent, Nathaniel, Rachel, Heather, Gideon, Rebecca, Michelle, Craig, Sarah, Jacob, Brenna, Isaac, Guy, Vicki, Amelia, Ashley, Julie and Jaylee. That's 31 people! What a crowd. After a yummy dinner, we brought out the yummy pies. After just about every bite of food, Ashley would say, "Mmm, delicious." I thought it was so cute. I brought a blueberry and a pineapple pie. And I was really happy to take home most of the pineapple pie because I have really started to love it these last few years. I make it for Guy because it is a low sugar pie, but I think I ate more of it than he did this year.

We got home pretty late on Thursday night and the girls actually let us sleep in on Friday morning which was really nice...except that it was 10:00 by the time that we got up and I felt like half the day was already gone. Tamara came down and we made Christmas card together and then she helped me paint the baby's room. The room has a chair rail so we only put a coat of paint on the top half and then I did a coat on the bottom half on Sunday. I'll post some before and after pics once it is all done. I am really happy with the way it is turning out.

On Sunday night, Michelle and Craig and Issac came to stay the night with us. Their other kids decided to stay with their other cousins in Orem since they are all a little bit closer in age. It was really fun to visit with them since they live in Idaho and we don't get to see them very often. They left to go home this morning but it was fun for them to stay and for Amelia and Ashley to get a little bit of exposure to having a baby in the house. Amelia loved getting toys for Isaac and Ashley was a big helper to feed him a bottle.

Sibling Class

Last night we took the girls to the hospital for a sibling class that prepares kids to be a big sister or brother. When Polly (the nurse who taught the class) asked Amelia if she was having a brother or a sister, Amelia said that she is having a little brother named French Fry French Fry. I don't know where she came up with that, but she really seems to like it and she thinks that we are actually naming the baby that. Polly taught the girls simple little things like not to pull on the umbilical cord clamp or stump and never to pick up the baby. They got to practice holding a life size baby doll and we even went up to the nursery to see a baby. When Ashley was holding the baby doll, she did not want to let it go and was very gentle with it. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. When Ashley was just a few days old, Amelia came out of nowhere and hit her with a hair brush. Luckily the jealousy didn't last for too long between them.

Hospital Tour

Last night, we went to Orem Community Hospital for a tour to see what to expect when we check in to have this baby. (Baby Update: I am 34 weeks along, measuring 35 cm, gained a hefty 40 lbs so far, and baby is head down and will hopefully stay that way.) So far, I am liking what I see at OCH. There are only 23 rooms in the entire Women's Center, about 8 devoted to birthing and most of them are fairly large. You get to stay in the same room for labor, delivery, recovery, and your postpartum stay. Yee ha! At Utah Valley, they moved me to whole a new floor for my postpartum stay and I felt like it was more of a broom closet than a room. Orem also has a jetted tub in every room that you can use during labor (but no birthing) and during recovery. Amelia and Ashley came on the tour with us and they were really excited to see a little baby in the nursery. OCH also felt a lot less like a hospital even though there is still all the same equipment that you would find in a major hospital. And, you can enter the Women's Center without going through the maze of the hospital...another bonus. The one C-Section O.R. has a little window in it that looks out in to the hall so that after the procedure is done, your extended family can peek through to see the baby. Although I am nervous about giving birth again since every baby is different, our little tour set my mind at ease a little bit.

Veteran's Day

Since today is Veteran's Day, I thought that I would take a little moment to spotlight my Grandpa Collings who is a World War II vet. He is an absolutely amazing grandpa and I could probably go on forever about all his wonderful qualities. Instead, I'll just tell you about his most recent claim to fame. For many, many years now, he has been running marathons...over 20 of them from Boston to St. George. This year, my uncle Kerry signed him up to run in the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington D.C. where he would be the oldest runner...I think he's 86. I was able to sign up on their website to receive text messages when he crossed certain points during the race. Since the race was on a Sunday, I took my cell phone to church (something that I never do) so that I could stay up to date with how things were going. About 10 miles into the marathon, he fell and hit his head on the curb and had to be taken to the hospital for stitches. My sister sent me a text to let me know that he would be ok and that he would be released from the hospital in just a few hours. But then they discovered that he had been running on a fractured hip and that he would now need surgery. The race was on October 26th and he is finally coming home today. He had to stay in D.C. for rehab and physical therapy and all that jazz. My uncle Kevin has been staying out in D.C. this whole time so it will be great to have both of them back home, safe and sound. And hopefully Grandpa will be back on his feet in no time and back to his old, energetic self...and maybe running another marathon.

Grandpa, Lori, VaLene, Kevin, Linda, Kerry, Corinne

Pretty cool to have 5 out of 7 of his kids there, 2 daughters-in-law, and a couple of grandkids.

Grandpa running with Tom

Kerry, Grandpa and Tom after the race

Halloween

I finally decided to take a minute and post a little about Halloween. Amelia picked out her costume well before Halloween and Ashley, on the other hand, was a little bit stubborn and would turn down every costume that I showed her. Two days before Halloween, I stopped at Shopko to see if their costumes had been marked down, hoping to find Ashley something cheap just in case she ended up not wearing it at all. Well, Halloween morning came along and I set out 4 different costumes for her to choose from and she turned her nose up and every single one of them. Then she walked over to her closet and said, "Want Belle dress." Ok fine. Who am I to argue with a 2-year-old? So, she ended up wearing a dress-up dress that she would wear every day of the week if I let her. Oh well.

I took the girls over to Guy's office for a little bit of mini Trick-or-Treating which was fun but not too many of his co-workers had candy so not too productive. Once we got home, the girls took off their costumes and we all went outside to carve pumpkins. My mom grew pumpkins in her garden for us which is so fun for the girls to watch them grow all summer long. Ashley got bored pretty quickly with the carving and so she ended up just playing in the dirt...which is where Amelia was too just a few minutes later. After we had dinner that night, Guy took them out around the neighborhood while I stayed home to hand out the candy. Usually, I am the one to take them out, but in order to cover a lot of ground, you end up carrying Ashley from house to house, so we decided that it would be easier for Guy to do that than for me. But I enjoyed seeing all the creative costumes that came to our door which I normally don't get to see.

Daylight Savings...Oops

Daylight savings time usually comes at just the right time when you are really craving an extra hour of sleep. And this was just the case for our family on Saturday night. We went up north to finally have a birthday dinner for my sister and I didn't get home until after 10:00. The girls were extra tired and I was not looking forward to waking them up early before my 8:00 meeting on Sunday so we could all be ready for church at 9:00. My alarm went off at 6:30 and I started getting ready. At about 7:30, I woke Guy up so that he could be in charge of the girls since I would be leaving soon. At 7:40, I got the girls out of bed so they could be eating breakfast while Guy was in the shower. The first thing that Amelia said to me was that it wasn't morning yet because it was still dark outside. I tried to convince her that it was dark because there were a lot of clouds in the sky so the sun was having a hard time peeking through. As I sat down for breakfast with the girls, I glanced up at our atomic clock and noticed that it was 6:45. WHAT! Then it hit me...it was daylight savings. Guy was (of course) still in bed when I went in to tell him the news. He told me to put the girls back to bed but I knew that there was no way that they would fall asleep again after being so awake. He (of course) rolled over and pulled the covers back up over his head for another hour. I decided that since I now had all kinds of extra time, I would give the girls a bath. While I was doing that, the primary president called me to say that she wasn't feeling well and so she was cancelling our meeting. Now I had even more time. Guy finally got out of bed around 8:00 and started getting ready. So why is it that even though I had been up for more than 3 1/2 hours, we still ended up walking into sacrament meeting with just seconds to spare?

The animals at the farm

On Monday, I met my college buddy Steph for a belated birthday lunch. Our birthday's are just a day (and a year) apart, so it is always fun to have a reason to get together. We had a wonderful lunch at Applebee's and then I figured that since I was so close to Thanksgiving Point, I would take the girls to The Farm to see all the animals. The Barnyard Boo didn't start until 4:00 and we got there at about 2:30. But I figured that if I didn't tell Amelia about the Barnyard Boo activities, she wouldn't know that she was missing anything. Right when we got there, Amelia spotted the ponies and wanted a ride. I was hoping that we could put that one activity in the middle of our visit, but she kept asking about it and so we went over for our ride. And I figured that since I had a ticket, Ashley may as well ride too. Luckily, there was a really little pony for her to ride but I was still really nervous that she was going to slip right off the horse. We had a great time walking around and seeing all the animals and then we went around again to feed them some corn. I tried to get Amelia to let the goats eat the corn right out of her hand but she preferred throwing it to them. I'm glad that the weather is staying warm for now so that we can enjoy a few more outside activities before the snow comes.

Amelia and her horse Nina

Ashley on a pony for the first time

Amelia feeding the turkeys

This goat was really hungry and kept following us around

It's over and I can breathe again

This past weekend was the big primary program. On Saturday afternoon, we had our practice and it went really well. The biggest hitch of the day was when our piano player didn't show up and so our music director called her mother to come and fill in for us. I was amazed at how many kids had their parts memorized and ready to go. Afterwards, we had ice cream to congratulate the kids on all their hard work.

Sunday morning, I got up extra early so that I could get to church and set up chairs for primary and then head to the chapel to make sure that everything was ready for our program. Since I had gone so early, Guy was in charge of getting the girls ready and then bringing them to church. As the chapel started to fill up and the meeting started, I knew that Guy was going to be late. I wasn't too worried though since there were so many people there that I knew that passing the sacrament was going to take a little longer and so he would have a little bit of extra time to get there. However, once the sacrament was over and the bishop announced that it was time for all the primary kids to come up and Guy still wasn't there, I was a little bit worried. All the kids got seated and we started the program and still no Guy. And then, when the first group of kids were doing their parts, in walked Guy with the girls. He later described the feeling as he walked into the chapel to the dream that you have where you show up at graduation without actually having completed all our course work. Amelia quickly came up to the stand and I had to scramble to find a place for her to sit since all the seats in front were taken. She had her part about 90% memorized and just needed a few little cues from me to get it all out. The biggest chuckle from the congregation came a few minutes later when this cute little Sunbeam stood up at the pulpit and scratched his ear for at least a minute and then said that he would do his part tomorrow. It was too cute. The program went really well and we were told later by the stake that we were the only ward that they had been to so far that sang all the verses to all the songs. Too cool! I'm glad that it is all over but I feel like there won't be much of a break since next year's outline requires you to choose two songs that fit with the theme. And since our music director is super organized, I wouldn't want to leave her hanging until the last minute.

Busy, busy, busy!

This past week, I have been getting ready for our primary program coming up on the 26th. We had our first run-through this last Sunday and it seemed to go pretty well. I will be so happy when it is all over and my life can get back to normal.

Guy and I also took the girls on a little camping trip this past weekend. One of Guy's co-workers, Courtney, family has a cabin up Fairview Canyon near Skyline drive. It was a ton of fun to spend time with and get to know some of the people that Guy works with and their families a little better. Amelia was the oldest, Shane is 3, Emma is 2 1/2, then Ashley at 2 1/4, Olivia is 7 months, and Max is 2 months. The kids all got along fairly well together. I took Amelia's art box with us that had finger paints, markers with coloring books, and Play-doh. Amber also brought an assortment of activities for the kids to do like bubbles and Fruit Loop necklaces. We didn't have any running water which made tasks like flushing the toilet and doing dishes a little bit difficult but we got by. Luckily, Amber also brought a portable DVD player so the kids were able to take a little break while we played a game called San Juan. It took Guy and I a little while to catch on to how to play the game but it was really a lot of fun. Courtney and Amber apparently play this game all the time and totally could have really whooped us, but they were kind to us and only beat us by 2 points. It was a really fun weekend, but I was really glad to get home and get a shower. Ashley was so exhausted that she fell asleep right after she was buckled to go home even though we didn't leave for about another half hour. Amelia fell asleep as soon as we started moving and they both slept through our trip to T-Cee's in Fairview for some piccidillies and a shake. Next year maybe we will have to go in the summer so all the water lines aren't frozen.

A New Job for Guy

About a month ago, Guy applied for a new engineering job within the same company. We finally found out yesterday that he is the newest Senior R&D Engineer for corporate engineering. Yeah! This switch will mean that he actually gets to do more designing which is something that he really loves to do. So, congrats Guy, on all your hard work!

Napping?

Since Ashley started sleeping in her big girl bed, naps have been a little bit interesting. I know that there are days that she climbs out of bed to get a different toy or book and then climbs back in. But yesterday when I went to wake her up from her nap, I looked in her bed and she wasn't there. Instead, she was on the floor, fast asleep, surrounded by books. It was so cute. By the time I got back with the camera, she had woken up but she was still lying among the books. And this picture doesn't even show half of the books that she had pulled down. Too cute!

Transitions

It has been almost a month since we moved Ashley into Amelia's room and into a big girl bed. I wanted there to be plenty of time for her to get used to sleeping in a bed and of course I didn't want her to feel kicked out of the crib when the new baby comes. So I figured that 3 months would be plenty of transition time for her.

To get ready for the girls to share a room, I washed all the walls and cleaned the carpets and we hung an additional closet rod so that the girl's clothes wouldn't be too smooshed. Half of the closet are shelves that I use mostly for linens so the extra closet rod was really needed. Ashley was so excited for her new bed that she started to climb up on it before we even finished putting it together. But then once we told her "good night", it was a whole new story. She climbed out of bed and then climbed in with Amelia. Amelia tried to tell her to go back to her bed and Ashley said, "No." The first few nights, it took us about 45 minutes of putting Ashley back in bed before she finally gave up and went to sleep. Now, she just babbles in bed for about the same amount of time and Amelia just sleeps right through it. Overall, I think that the transition has gone really smoothly. Hopefully once my life slows down a little bit, I will be able to wash the walls in the baby's room to get ready to paint. Then wash the carpet and maybe rearrange the furniture to give the room a new look.

And here is a baby update just in case you are curious. I am now 28 weeks along but I measure bigger than that because the baby is lying across my belly instead of up and down. I went to the hospital for my Rho-gam shot and glucose test a couple of days ago and everything is looking great there. Except for the gigantic bruise that I have on the inside of my arm from where they drew blood, but hopefully that will go away soon.

September Festivities

I'm obviously a little bit behind on blogging since I have been trying to write a primary program and canning a bushel of pears which yielded 26 beautiful jars. And then after canning was done, I have been working on de-stickifying my kitchen. So here is what has be going on with us.

September marks a busy month for us. My birthday was on the 14th which I celebrated one day early by driving to Strawberry Reservoir with the girls for the day while Guy was out and about. My mom and Steve were camping with all of Steve's kids and my sister Tamara. The weather was perfect and Amelia had a blast playing with her cousins for the day. Amelia and Ashley also loved doing a little bit of bike riding. I had bought Amelia a new helmet just the day before and she love wearing it. And then when Amelia was done with the helmet, Ashley took a turn and just loved wearing it even though she wasn't doing anything that actually required wearing a helmet. Since my birthday fell on a Sunday, Guy waited to take me out to dinner until Monday. Personally, I didn't mind extending my birthday a little bit.

Next came Amelia's birthday on the 21st. It just so happened to be my mom's weekend for her family's cabin and so we decided to celebrate down there. We had a really yummy dinner Saturday night and then opened presents and had cake and ice cream. Since I am in no way a creative cake decorator, I let her pick out a cake from Albertson's before we went down. She had really wanted a fishy cake, but the bakery didn't offer one and so she picked a dragon cake instead. When I first saw the picture, I knew that it was going to take a ton of frosting to make that cake and I was right. As we were cutting the cake, I would put a portion on a plate that looked like it was going to be a good size piece. But then as you started to fork through it and scrape away the frosting, there really wasn't much cake left. We really got a good laugh out of it. Amelia got some great clothes and presents including an AquaDoodle, a new backpack, My Little Ponies, play food and a cash register. We continued to celebrate on Sunday (her actual birthday) by having a yummy breakfast of waffles and bacon. What a fun weekend to celebrate my baby turning 4!

The last big even for us in September is our anniversary on the 25th. This marks 6 wonderful years for us. I drove the girls up to Grandma Corinne's house on the 26th for a sleep-over and then Guy and I went out to dinner that night. He took me to Los Hermanos (super yummy) and then back home for dessert. It was so bizarre to be away from the girls for a night and not be in "mommy mode" all the time. On the other hand, it was great not to have to worry about potty breaks and diaper changes for a day. The girls were lucky enough to go to the circus that night with Grandma Corinne and Auntie Tamara. And from what I heard, the girls really wore them out that night. Ashley fell asleep at the circus since she had missed her nap that day and Amelia loved seeing the clowns. They also got to ride TRAX which is a rare treat since we don't live in the Salt Lake Valley. After I picked them up the next day and we were just a few miles from home, Amelia told me that she wanted to go back to Grandma's house and didn't want to go home. Hopefully we will be able to make it up to see Grandma again soon.

Accident Prone

Apparently I am a little bit accident prone when it comes to the Durango. Don't worry...the Durango is fine. I'm not talking about accidents involving other vehicles, just the Durango and me. So far, I have shut two different fingers in the door and hit myself in the face while closing the hatch. It's a little embarrassing to admit all of this, but hopefully I will start paying more attention and not getting hurt so often.

The Simple Joys of Motherhood

After a very stressful morning in Primary (which was mostly due to me teaching an impromptu class because a teacher didn't show up and making some preparations for the program), I was very happy to sit down and relax a little and prepare for conducting closing exercises. When Amelia and her Sunbeam class walked in I flashed her a quick smile and then got back to my task at hand making sure that I had all the announcements ready. As the children were singing "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet", I took a quick break to glance up and join in the singing. And that was when I saw Amelia singing every word to the song! I was so proud of my little girl!! Just about an hour before that, our music director told me that in Junior Primary, Amelia is just about the only one singing besides the CTR 7 class. Wow! This is probably mostly due to the fact that the only music we listen to when we are driving is Primary music. Even Ashley has started to sing along to some of the songs. I'm sure that it won't last forever, but I am enjoying it while it does.

Our State Fair is a Great State Fair!

My wonderful friend Tamara called me up on Monday and invited me to go to the State Fair with her and Britta. They were nice enough to postpone our trip for a day since I had a ton of peaches calling to me. As I was driving up to Riverton on Wednesday to pick up Tamara (patting myself on the back for actually leaving my house on time) I realized that I forgot to put Ashley's shoes on. She was in her room reading books as I was getting everything ready to go and I completely forgot to put her shoes on her. While I was loading everything in the Durango, she came out to the garage and so I picked her up to get her loaded too. That is when I noticed that she didn't have shoes on and that she needed a diaper change. So, I changed her in the back of the Durango (a really great thing about an SUV), got her buckled and then went back in the house for one more load and to get the shoes. Oops, I forgot the shoes but I didn't realize it until I was driving through Provo. I made a quick call to Britta and she saved the day by letting me borrow a pair of Abby's shoes for the day.

When I got to Tamara's house, it started raining...and then pouring. I put Kylie's car seat between my two girls and then we were off to Britta's house. Our original plan was to go straight to the fair and find something to eat there. Due to the crazy weather though, we decided to stop at Kneader's for some sandwiches before heading out. After lunch, the clouds had started to clear and so we went to the fair.

At the fair, Amelia loved looking at all the animals and she even got the bonus of riding a pony. A wee bit expensive ($4) in my opinion but she loved it and I think that she would have done it all day if she could have. During her ride, she kept telling "Rocky" to go faster and there were many "Yee-Haa's". My favorite things were the "Home Arts" exhibits with all the amazing things that people make. I loved looking at the quilts and needle point and the amazing things that people can sew and crochet. And of course, I had to admire the prize winning jar of peaches just to see what a blue ribbon jar of peaches looks like. And I must say, my peaches look just about as good and even better than the 3rd place winner of this year's fair. We also went by the "Market" building with the giant pumpkins and other things that were grown in people's gardens. And after seeing all that produce, you realize that even with preservatives sprayed all over, there are some foods that just shouldn't be left out for too long. We also took a little break for funnel cakes that Amelia wasn't too sure about at first but then couldn't stop eating them.

All in all, it was a really great day. And, I wasn't the only one to forget things that day. Britta and Tamara both forgot to bring a camera, Britta didn't have any cash, and Tamara forgot to bring a diaper into the fair. Luckily, we were all able to cover each other and nobody suffered for long. The last thing that I forgot was to get Amelia to take a potty break before we left the fair. It was soon after we got on the freeway to take Tamara home that she said she had to go potty. I hate having to get off the freeway just to get back on so I asked her to hold it (and she did) until we made it to our exit to take Tamara home. It was such a fun day and I was shocked when Amelia and Ashley stayed wide awake for the whole ride home. Once we got home, we had a quick dinner, followed by a fun game of "I Spy" and then it was off to bed. I was exhausted, but I was so glad that we went.

p.s. There is your first look at my pregnant belly (just 15 weeks to go) and the back of our Durango.

Peaches, peaches, peaches!

Last week I went out and bought 2 bushels of peaches. My mom was kind enough to come down and help me can them on Tuesday. What a day! The girls were extremely neglected but I think that they didn't mind too much since they got to watch three movies that day. Amelia still remembers last year when I canned tomatoes and brought the little tv up to the kitchen for her to watch movies on. So, we did that again this year and Grandma brought some fun movies for them to watch too. Ashley was anti-nap that day, probably because she thought she would be missing out on something fun. We started about 10:00 in the morning and we were processing the last batch by 8:00 that night. Of course, the pregnant lady had to take a few breaks for snacks and to just get off her feet for a minute. When it was all said and done, we got 53 jars of peaches done. My kitchen is still a disaster area, the floors are sticky, and the counters are completely covered in beautifully filled jars of peaches. Guy asked me today if we could take them downstairs now, which is another huge task to organize everything so we finish up last years peaches before we start on this years. Hopefully I will get all the jars cleaned up soon so that they can make their trek to the food storage room and ultimate organization and I can have my counter back...at least until I can pears.

Time to bite the bullet

One of my responsibilities as the first counselor in the primary presidency is to write the annual Primary Program for sacrament meeting. I have been putting this off for 8 1/2 months and now it is getting down to the wire. Our program is on October 27th which means that I need to get parts handed out to the children by September 28th so that everyone has time to practice. That is just 2 1/2 weeks away so I decided that it is time to bust a move. I had great intentions of working on it for just an hour each day this week, but other things have come up and so I haven't touched it at all. I practically could have majored in procrastination in college because that is when I would do my best work. So here goes nothing...It's off to work I go.

Imagination

I love Amelia's imagination! Here are two of my favorite things that she does right now.

At least once a day, she says something about her "hand babies". What are hand babies? Well, imagine that your hand was a little baby doll and you had it wrapped up in a blanket and you carried it around with your other hand...that is a hand baby. When she washes her hands, she says, "Hand babies sure do need a lot of washing." Her hand babies even cry and need to be fed. At least I don't need to worry about hand babies getting lost at the store.

The other thing that she does is to pretend that Ashley is a doggy...and Ashley happily plays along. We were out shopping one day and Amelia told Ashley to be a doggy and so Ashley got down on the floor of the store and crawled around like a doggy saying "Woof woof." My shopping trip took a lot longer that day and Ashely was filthy by the time we got out to the car, but it was still a lot of fun.

10 Years Flies By

Yesterday, we went to my 10 year high school reunion. Has it really been 10 years already?!! High school was really a blast for me and I'm sure that was because of all the great friends that I had. When I started my sophomore year at Granger, I pretty much just hung out with my sister and all of her friends since a lot of my friends from Valley Junior High had gone to Taylorsville so I was a little bit lonely. But when my junior year started, I quickly found out that I needed to start hanging out with my own friends since Tamara had graduated. Luckily, I had played basketball my sophomore year and had met Krystal who introduced me to all her friends. Many great memories were formed with that group...hanging out on the weekends, playing pool, going to dances, studying for AP tests and going to football games.

My first dance...Harvest Ball

Playing basketball...I'm #11...blocking the shot

Graduation Day

After graduation...posing by the grizzly at the E-Center

The reunion was a ton of fun and it was great to see people that I haven't seen in a few years and reconnect with them. Hopefully we don't let time pass us by like that again without a few hello's here and there.

Funny Kids

When I got Ashley up from her nap, here is what she looked like.

Apparently, she thought this was a lot more fun than sleeping. Amelia said that she looked like a Lamanite.

Of course, I have to post a cute picture of Amelia too just to be fair.

Guy bought new knee pads the other day and Amelia couldn't wait to try them on. She pretty much wore them until she got to her room and then took them off. They were really falling off before she even got there so it wasn't too hard to finish the job.

New Plumbing...New Tub

Our wonderful plumber came over last week to install new drains and water lines for our tub, toilet and sink in our future bathroom. He also capped off the old shower and toilet drains and water lines to the shower and sink in the old bathroom. And then we figured that as long as he was there, we had him replace a section of pipe that lead out to the faucet outside that looked twisted and pinched and made it so when the water was on outside, it was really annoyingly loud in the basement. The first time that we had the sprinklers on after that, I was shocked to hear nothingness! Guy could do a much better job than I could explaining what was happening as the water was being forced from a large section of pipe to a smaller section...so I won't even try. All I know is that it was really noisy and annoying.

Cute things kids say

This morning as I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and Amelia and Ashley were in the kitchen finishing up their breakfasts. Ashley was just babbling (or at least that is all that I thought she was doing) when I heard Amelia say, "Ashley, stop that. Those are the only eyes we get!" Obviously, Amelia has heard Guy and I say that exact same thing to her a few times. It's nice to know that big sisters care enough about little sisters to tell them not to poke their eyes out.

Last day of nothingness

It's official. Our plumber is coming out tomorrow to start adding pipes, drains and even a tub to our basement bathroom. This has been quite the project and it has often been put on the back burner, especially during the summer since vacations are a lot more fun than remodeling. But I told Guy that there is a deadline on this project and we need to get it done. Last week, our plumber came over to make sure that our holes were dug deep enough so that he could tie onto the existing pipes. After getting that ok, we scheduled him to come on Tuesday and Guy got a little bit more demo done (like pulling down the ceiling sheet rock and moving a 2x6 that was in the way of the new shower pipes and valve). I am so excited that the project is starting to move forward again. And hopefully, little by little, we will be done (or at least mostly done) by Christmas.

Home alone and other happenings

I shouldn't let this much time go by between posts because then I forget about all the things that have been going on in our lives. So here is a quick recap of a few things.

August 1st was my dad's birthday and he would have been 59 years old. Oh my! Time sure does fly. To celebrate, I made mint brownies and Amelia said that they were Grandpa Bill's birthday cake. Sure, why not. Actually, the brownies were for a little BBQ that Guy and I were going to that night but I didn't see any harm in letting her think that they were for Grandpa Bill. That day, I also drove up to West Valley with Amelia and Ashley and for my mom's birthday lunch with her sisters and dad. Yummy lunch at Sizzler where kids 3 and under get a free salad bar. After lunch, I headed back to Springville minus two little girls who would be having a sleep over at Grandma Corinne's house. Like I said, Guy and I were going to a BBQ and I jumped at the chance to be without the girls for a night. Our BBQ was with the new bishopric and their spouses. It was really fun to get to know every one a little bit better.

The next morning, Guy got up early to head down to his parent's house to finish a few projects and get our truck ready for an inspection so that it could be registered. After he left, I did what any other mother without her children would do...I cleaned the bathroom! Then I had to get ready to go to the ward's baptisms. That was a little bit crazy since the first baptism in the morning had extended family members stuck in traffic that we waited as long as we could for but then we had to get moving since there would be another baptism coming up in about 10 minutes. Once I was done with the baptisms, I headed back up to West Valley to get the girls and help my mom study for her math final. The girls got to go swimming and run through the sprinklers while we did math which was a ton of fun for everyone.

Tuesday started off with all kinds of excitement. It was my ultrasound day! Guy and I have decided not to find out what we are having but I was still really excited to see the baby and make sure that everything was looking good. When it got to the point in the ultrasound to "look around down there", I looked up at the ceiling and I just hope that Guy was looking away too! Overall, baby looks great and is measuring big. Yea for me. It looks like we could be having another 9 pound baby. But really, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love the look of chubby babies!

Rain gutters and light switches

It's funny how the little things in life can make me happy. Yesterday, we finally got rain gutters back up on the house. We took them down last summer when we were redoing the roof and soffit and fascia. The old ones were attached in such a weird way that they could not be put back up. The only thing keeping me from getting new ones up was a couple of phone calls for bids and I put it off for a year. Winter was the worst when the snow would melt off the roof and drip down onto the front porch and then freeze the steps like an ice skating rink. We went through a lot of ice melt this past winter. And we would have a nice water fall coming off the roof right in front of the front door every time it rained. Now, I can hardly wait for it to rain so I can check out the gutters!

The other thing that has made me happy lately is a light switch. It is a really small thing to get excited about but this light switch has a story behind it. In our house, we have a great storage room that we have been using for books, movies, cd's, and many other odds and ends. There is a light switch in that room that isn't connected to any lights so I figured that it would be connected to an outlet but none of the visible outlets worked with the switch. Recently, we decided to move a few things around in that room and we found another outlet. Naturally, the first thing I did was to try the lamp in that outlet and then flip the switch and sure enough, it worked. So now, it is just taking a little getting used to to flip the switch instead of turning on the lamp, but it is a wonderful thing.

One more tiny thing that just makes me smile. Amelia discovered a movie last night that she didn't know we had. She found Aladdin! But this is no ordinary Aladdin. I bought it when I went to Mexico more than 10 years ago and it is in Spanish. This was obviously before the days of DVDs and being able to pick the language that you wanted to watch a movie in. Of course, she doesn't care that it was in Spanish and that she wouldn't be able to understand a word that was being said and she watched it anyway. In fact, it is on right now and she just asked if I knew what Jasmine and Aladdin were saying. Um, no. I guess I need to add an English copy of Aladdin to our collection.

Splash park with Kamber

Kamber and I met our first year at USU and became friends really fast. Our first year of school, she lived in the apartment above me and then for the next two years, she was right across the street. We have had so much fun together over the last few years, but now she is moving out of state and so I went to visit her one last time and to take all our kids to the splash park in Riverton. Amelia had a ton of fun playing in the water as long as she wasn't getting too wet. Ashley, on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with playing. For the first 20 minutes or so, she just stood on the sidewalk trying to decide if it would be worth the effort to go and play. Then, she decided to just hang out on my lap for the rest of the time that we were there. It was right in the middle of her nap so I can totally understand. Once we were done playing and started to drive home, both girls were completely zonked out before we even hit the freeway. What a fun day! And now, of course, Amelia is asking when we will be able to go to the splash park again but I don't know of anything like it down here so it could be a while before we go again.

Camping at the Cabin

Why stay in a trailer when there is a cabin? Well, mostly because the cabin retains a lot of heat in the summer which makes sleeping really uncomfortable. Sleeping out in a tent trailer on the other hand is quite nice. It was my mom's birthday on the 22nd so we celebrated her birthday on Saturday with all of Steve's kids and us. Amelia desperately wanted to go swimming on Saturday and right after we got her and Ashley in their suits and slathered in sunscreen, we found out that the pool was closing because of a storm that was rolling in. So, we headed back to the cabin and gave Keno a bath and then ran through the sprinklers. It doesn't really compare to the pool, but at least we got a little wet.

Fireworks on the 24th

We finally decided to take the girls to see some fireworks on the 24th. We gave them a bath, put them in pajamas and then drove over to Spanish Fork. After staking out a good spot on the grass, we started waiting for the fireworks to start. We were hoping that they would start soon after dark, but we had to wait for the rodeo to end and then they finally started at about 10:30 or so. Amelia and Ashley had a great time dancing and running all over the park while we were waiting for the show and once things started, Ashley didn't even want to sit down. Amelia was getting really tired right before it started and said that she wanted to go home, but once she saw the fireworks, she was really excited. After the show, it took us an hour to get home but it was definitely worth it!

Camping at Granite Flat

This past weekend, we went camping at Granite Flat up American Fork Canyon and had a blast. The weather was great and we even had a moose and her calf visit our camp site a few times. On Friday, I had this crazy idea that it would be really fun to hike up to Timpanogos Cave. Tamara said that I was insane for wanting to try this with a 3 1/2 year old that always wants to be carried, a 2 year old that never wants to leave my side and me being pregnant but I still thought that it would be really fun. Well, she was right. The hike was steep, we had to take a lot of breaks, Amelia got shoulder rides almost the entire way up, Ashley screamed "mama" every time I was out of sight, and we all had a good work out. Guy was a trooper and carried Ashley in the backpack carrier the whole way up. My mom, Tamara, and I each took turns giving Amelia shoulder rides until Guy told me that I shouldn't do it anymore because I was getting a little flushed. But for the record, I never felt like I was over exerting myself, my cheeks were just getting a little rosy. On Saturday, we pretty much just hung out at camp for most of the day and then went down to Tibble Fork Reservoir so that Amelia could do a little fishing with Grandpa Steve. She got bored with fishing pretty quickly so she mostly just played in the mud and rocks until it was time to go. We all had a great time and we were definitely ready to pack up and come home on Sunday. Amelia was lucky enough to sleep in Auntie Tamara's trailer while Guy and I slept with Ashley in the tent. My mom and Steve offered for us to sleep in their trailer, but it was kind of nice to have our own space. We are all looking forward to doing more camping next year. Except Guy and I are already stuffed in the Durango so we will have to find a few more creative ways to pack our gear.