The New Arrival

He's finally here! After a lot of anticipation, our cute little boy was born on Tuesday, December 1st. I started having contractions that morning around 4 am. They were far enough apart that I could sleep in between them. But around 6 am they started getting a lot closer. So Nick got up and started getting things ready. We were pretty much ready to go, but just a few little things we needed to get together. I was really hoping that we wouldn't have to leave real soon, the girls were sleeping and I knew once we got them in the car they were awake for good. But around 7:00 am we packed them in and headed to Grandma & Grandpa Powell's house. Emma realized what was going on and was thrilled beyond belief. She was so cute, while we were on the way, I was having a bad contraction. She sits right behind the passenger side, so she reached up as far as she could and started rubbing my shoulders and reminding me to breathe. It was so sweet! So we got the girls dropped off and headed to the hospital, fortunately right next to the grandparents house! We got checked in and by 8 am they were getting my epidural in. How do people not want those??? After that I was feeling great! My dad and mom both went into work, but left early. Dad showed up around 9:30 and then mom showed up at 10:30. She just barely made it on time, they had me start pushing around 11:00 and our sweet little Lance got here at 11:07. He weighed in at 7 lbs 14 oz and 20 inches long. He's got big hands and big feet, I love it!
He's been such a good baby! We brought him home from the hospital on Thursday and since then my girls have been my shadow. They follow me everywhere I go, as long as I'm carrying Lance. They love holding him and watching him. They think this is pretty wonderful. They want to hold him all the time, I have to remind them that he's here for good, there's plenty of time to hold him. Nick and I are pretty excited to have our little boy! Nick has been awesome. He took the week off of work and has had the girls entertained and taken care of. I feel so lucky to have such a good support here at home with me. He's already been pee'd on and hasn't decided he's done changing diapers yet. It's much appreciated! Thanks Nick for everything, you're the best!

Pumpkin Patch/Parent teacher conference

Yesterday was Emma's parent teacher conference. I'm proud to report that she's doing excellent. She's always been a smart little fart, and her grades are showing it. She's jumped up to a 3rd grade level in reading and above grade level on everything else. The teacher says her only concern is her reading comprehension in the level she's at. I'm not terribly stressed about this as she's still above her grade level, but we have already started working on it. I know Emma loves school and enjoys doing her school work, I've been in the school a lot to help and have seen it first hand. My biggest concern was her respecting the teacher, but the teacher says she's never had disciplinary problems with Emma. I wish I could say the same for at home! But overall, both Nick and I are very proud of Emma and her willingness to work hard. So as a reward we took Emma & Maggie to the Pumpkin Patch. Our girls love going, and so do I. It's just a fun thing! It didn't take the girls very long to pick out the pumpkins they liked, so after we played in the corn maze and took pictures on the tractors.

Honesty

Yesterday after Nick got off of work, he went and got a hair cut. It was getting a little long and shabby, so it was about time. When he got home, it was the first thing Maggie noticed. Maggie says, "Hi dad! Did you get a hair cut?" Dad, "Yes I did." Then I pipe in and say, "It looks so good, doesn't it Maggie?" Her response...."No it doesn't!" I just love kids' honesty. Most days her honesty isn't so harsh. She usually tells Nick, "You're a good guy dad!" Luckily we know that she still loves him.

Maggie the Pumpkin Fairy

About a week ago my neighbor called me about having Maggie wear a costume from her website on Studio 5. She said she needed a little girl who wouldn't freak out when we needed them to stand in front of the camera for a minute or two. So we said sure. Maggie's not a shy little girl and we thought she'd do okay. So Sherry, my neighbor, made the cute little costume for Maggie. She got to be a pumpkin fairy. We get to the studio on friday around 10 am and they have us do a walk through so the kids know what they're doing. On our first walk through, Maggie freaked out. She didn't want to stand on the little X and did not want to stand with the other little boy, Traver. Every time we tried to talk to her about it she flipped out. The other little girl, Rachel, who's the same age as Maggie, had zero problems in the walk through. She was excited to do it, so we thought. Well, luckily, I brought Nick with me. It came time to have the kids go out, and Rachel wouldn't go out without her mom, and we had to carry Maggie out, but she was fine after about 5 seconds, thanks to Nick. He stood behind the camera and danced the whole time to get her to laugh and smile. All the people on the set were watching Nick and laughing. It was pretty funny. He was a life saver. So, check out the link to the video.
http://studio5.ksl.com/?nid=71&sid=8333818

Root Beer Floats

On Tuesday afternoon, I was looking through the weekly ads and saw ice cream on sale. I was telling Nick that I'd been craving a root beer float for weeks. The only reason I hadn't gone to get the ice cream and root beer is because I knew it wouldn't make just one and I didn't want to get addicted to having one every night. After that explanation I got a strange look from Nick and was told I'm weird. Thanks, I knew that. So we go through our day and I headed off to my YW activity around 6:30. I got home around 8:30, and this is exactly what I saw when I walked inside....
There it is....just what I'd been craving. Ice Cream, my favorite mug and a can of root beer (with a lot more in the fridge). What a good husband I have!!! My girls have been more than willing to help me work through the extras in my fridge, but I won't lie....I have had one every day. It was one of those aahhhh... moments. You know, when I look at Nick and say, aahhh..... What a good husband I have!!! Thank you Nick, and I love you lots!

Back in business

Good news, we finally have a new computer and now I can get my blogging up to date! I don't have any pictures on this computer yet, so stay tuned. There will be a large post, or couple of posts coming your way soon!

Long time, no blog

So I'm sorry for the delays in the blogging. Our computer is officially dead. It's been out of commission for a while and so here I am at Nick's parents updating. I'm sorry, there are no pictures here, and this won't be a long post. I'll figure something out soon. But just an update, the family is all doing good. My little Emma is ready to start 1st grade and Maggie is growing a lot, but she's still short. Also, for those of you who don't know, we are expecting baby #3, and it's a BOY! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I'm not due until November 30th. So we still have a ways to go. I'll do my best to get some posts going and get some of our summer pictures up for everyone to see.

Champions

I know people think it's weird, but Yes, I am in a bowling league. And it's a blast! I love the ladies that I bowl with on my team and I look forward to every Wednesday when we bowl. I can take my kids, and the bowling lanes provide someone to watch them for me. Awesome right? My team mates, Megan, Tina & Shanette, are really laid back and we really just love to go to have fun and have some grown up girl time. Our season is split into two halves and somehow, my team won the first half. So we had to bowl the winners of the second half to see who gets to be the league champions. Any guesses who won? There are a lot of good bowlers in our league, one in particular who is out for the kill every week. Of course that's who's team we bowled yesterday. She's not a very nice person to bowl against and everyone in our league was hoping we'd beat her. We bowl 3 games, and the total score of all 3 games is considered the 4th game. So here's how it went down. The first game, I did horrible, and we lost by 21 pins, it really was my fault we lost. The nasty lady was gloating and being so obnoxious. Maybe that gave me and my team a little more incentive to kick it up a notch. Second game, we won by 11 pins. So we really only need to win by 11 pins for the 3rd game to win overall. So did we do it?? Of course! We didn't win by only 11 pins, we won by 98 pins! The best part was, the rest of the league had finished their games and now are watching ours, cheering for us. Megan had an incredible game, I think 7 strikes in a row. She bowled a 236. We thank Megan for sealing the deal and making it a total blow out! I'm not sure what it is about Megan bowling pregnant, it just morph's her game to a new level :) It was sweet. Really, I know it shouldn't matter that much, but this one lady (I'm trying to be nice and not say her name), she is crazy! She is a very good bowler, but she is rude and nasty and just not a nice person to be around. I don't think we'd have enjoyed the victory as much if we'd played anyone else. Unfortunately that was the last week until we start up again in September. Until we start back up, I'll just have to live on my memories of victory and bowling lane french fries. Thanks Ladies!

Let's try this again....

Okay, so my computer seems to be in working order and so I'm going to try and get some pictures posted. I did this a couple of days ago and nothing saved....sorry. But I'm hopeful today :)

This is New Year's in St. George. We usually go down for a week and we love it. We love spending time with the Powell family and letting our kids play! Don't I have the cutest girls??

Super Bowl....Go Steelers! We went to Nick's brother's house for the Super Bowl. They always have a great party, and we had a lot of fun. Especially since Nick's team won!! Nick painted his, mine and Emma's faces with the Steelers logo, but Emma wanted to do Maggie's, so she did a football. It was very cute!

Emma lost her first tooth and was visited by the tooth fairy, a very exciting thing for her. But the tooth fairy had a hard time finding the tooth as Emma kept moving it to keep it from getting "lost". But luckily on her second trip, the tooth fairy found the tooth and left a dollar.

We also made a short day trip up to Oakley to do some sledding and playing in the snow. We went with Josh and his dog, Sierra, Bob & Chantal with their two kids. We had fun sledding and just hanging out. There's a river right by the cabin and we were teasing Sydney about throwing her into the river. So Emma pipes up and says, "Yeah, let's throw her in." And Sydney's response was the cutest, she says "Hey Emma, you're supposed to be my best friend!" It was pretty funny. The first picture is Emma and Sydney taking a break.

My computer is the problem!

Okay, so I'm at my mom's to blog. The reason for this is to see if it would let me upload pictures, sure enough! The option is right here!! But my pictures are all at my house...so what am I to do?? I don't know. Maybe I'll start campaigning for a new computer? Just to show you all....here's a random picture...This was in my mom's photo's. This is my Maggie Moo at Aly's birthday party in 2007. I love this picture :)

?????

I can't figure out what the freak is going on with my computer. This whole week I haven't been able to view my blog, and now that I can, it won't let me post any pictures!! I'm gettng very frustrated...so stay tuned. There will be posts and pictures coming soon. At least it'd better be soon.

She's Potty Trained!

Maggie is potty trained and I love it! I swear, diapers are the biggest money pit. But not anymore :) We'd tried potty training a few months earlier, but decided that she wasn't quite ready yet. Then 2 weeks ago, we started trying again, and she's had very few accidents. I'm so glad. And can't you tell by the picture that she's proud too??

The Holidays

So here it is, the fun stuff from the Holidays. We had a jam packed holiday season, as I'm sure everyone else did too. I had so many fun things I wanted to post, but I didn't get the time. So you'll have to settle for Christmas, St. George & the Utah game. Christmas Eve we went to Cory & Kelly's for the traditional spaghetti dinner. We had the Baldwins, all of the Powell's, and all of Kelly's family too. It was a packed house, but it was so much fun. The kids went sledding in the back yard, Emma crashed and got a nice raspberry on her cheek from the snow. We got home around 9:30 and told the girls that if they weren't asleep by 10:00 Santa would pass us by. Emma was so excited and worried, she couldn't go to sleep. Somehow, she eventually did go to sleep. She woke us up at 8:30, not so bad, and freaked out about all of the presents under the tree. We don't put any presents under the tree until Christmas eve for 2 reasons, 1) then the girls can't "accidentally" open any presents & 2) it makes the anticipation that much more fun. So we pulled Maggie out of bed and got started on presents. The girls loved everything they got and we headed off to my parents for the rest of the day. I love being with family, especially on the holidays. It was all so much fun. We got a surprise visit from my Uncle Mark and cousin MarDee, and Lizz and Grant came a day early without anyone knowing. It was all so much fun, I was sad for the day to end. But we did get together again the next day for some more games and to trade family gifts. Chris and Trish couldn't be with us on Christmas, so we decided to do it all the day after Christmas. We played games and had hot chocolate at my parent's church. We've realized we just don't fit in my parents house anymore, there's too many of us.

On Saturday, we headed down to St. George for the week. Nick was so excited to go, we ended up leaving 3 hours earlier than planned. We made it safely and I can't tell you how nice it was to be away from the snow!! We had such a good time. KP & Sherry were down there already and Kelly, Garrett and Averie showed up on Monday. Nick got to golf twice, we went swimming, hot tubbing, to the movies, a nice dinner and played lots of fun games including Farkle (the dice game). Emma got to test out her new Easy Bake Oven from Grandpa & Grandma Powell. She absolutely loved it, no doubt. She felt so grown up and was so proud of her yellow cake with chocolate frosting, made by just her.

We had a lot of fun spending time with the Powell's and we were very sad to leave and come back to the snow on Friday. We went to Mat & Candyce's house for the Utah game and we were not disappointed on any level. It was a great party and the best part for my sweetheart is his team's big win against Alabama and their undefeated record. He was so stoked, he couldn't sleep until 3 a.m. It was a great game and even though I'm not a Ute fan, I did enjoy the game. So in a very big nut shell, there it all is! Our action packed week. I'm a little sad to be back to normal life, but a little relieved too. Not looking forward to all the daily chores again, but I'm glad to be back in my own bed and own house, and back on schedule. Back to the grind :)