Family Pictures!

All the cousins!

Here's my side of the family! We've been together all week in Utah! My sister, Lorel, just had a beautiful baby girl and we all decided to come out and enjoy a white Christmas! We've been staying at my sister, Cora's, house in Alpine and have LOVED every minute of it! Here are a few of our family photos that were taken today by a family friend, Ingrid.

Lils' Letter to Santa

Here is Lils' letter to Santa Claus! She wrote the whole thing, I just told her how to spell it all. It says:

Dear Santa,

I've been a good girl. I want: chapstick and a camera! I love Santa!

Lil

There's also a picture of Santa, a candy cane, chapstick and two cameras (a big one for her and a small one for Ebay!) I was very glad she said camera because Clark and I got her that Fisher-Price one from Costco. She is always using Clark's camera phone, so we think she'll love it!

Announcement!

Well, Clark and I are going to have another baby! We are so excited! It has been a crazy few months (as I am now entering my second trimester). We found out I was pregnant and then Clark had his shoulder surgery! So that whole month I was SO tired and SO sick, but I still had to practically take care of everyone... even sponge bathe Dave.... which was fun, don't get me wrong!! :) But I tell you, I have never loved or appreciated Dave more than I have these past few months. Even though he was incapacitated and struggling, we was always so sweet to me and caring and wished that he could help more. He's the kinda guy that makes it a joy to serve them... except for that one time when I was trying to keep from throwing up as I was making some dinner, the kids were screaming and grabbing on my legs and Dave was watching some SUPER lame thing on TV (some "funny caught on tape" show or "when animals attack" something) and laughing in that lame, drugged up, stupid way that only guys can, not a care in the world! Yeh, that was a pretty rough moment :)! But it's been REALLY great to have him back again! I feel SO sick with this pregnancy! Which is normal for me so now it's my turn to be the invalid... too bad finals are in two weeks! Dang!

So this is the exciting predicament we find ourselves in. Dave graduates from UNC MBA School May 11th, I will have the baby in the last week of May and then we are moving out west (Dave accepted a great offer in finance)! Dave's new job starts July 9th! It was pretty funny because it took us 5 or 6 months to get pregnant with our other two babies, so we thought we had time... well, this one took 2 weeks- obviously this baby was very anxious to come to our crazy family! My due date is June 1st. We are trying to decide if we should not find out the sex and keep that a mystery! That would be pretty exciting, but I don't know if I could handle it! This ultrasound is of the baby at 9 weeks, so the baby still had a tail!

Ebay vs. the Dresser by Clark

In our house, carnage is commonplace. Usually it is minor calamity (E taking a plastic golf club to Lils' head, E throwing quarters at Lils' head, Ebay throwing food at Lils' head...) but every so often our children produce true catastrophy greatness. Thursday was one of those days.

E and Lils were deep into a dancefest - running around with true smiles of enjoyment and with careless endangerment. Ebay was especially giddy - living life to the fullest. However, one of the legs of the bed had darker intentions. During E's third cirle of what looked like the Roger Rabbit (obviously taught by Cakes) he caught his foot - or the bed caught him - and he went hurtiling through the air. Fortunately I caught the scene from the corner of my eye. I wish I could say seeing E parallel to the ground would cause concern but he spends more time airborn than Super Man. However he did not choose his landing wisely. His over-sized head smacked directly into one of the nobs of the dresser and he earned his first "crow's foot" before his second birthday. We headed off to the hospital eager to earn the 7th punch of the month on our frequent visitors card. Hopefully this meant a free sucker for me.

We spent 4 hours total waiting for ONE STITCH. We bounced from doctor to doctor and room to room (one room I didn't want to leave because there was an older "gentleman" with 6 inch eyebrows that could have given butterfly kisses from across the room, he made me feel happy) and finally we landed at the spot of the procedure.

Ebay quickly learned who not to trust. When he saw the color white he started throwing fore-arm shivers and did everything possible to escape. It finally took a pleasant little "restraining device" to wrap him up like a Gordita to perform the procedure. At this point I must state that this was one of the worst experiences of my life. He was EXTREMELY unhappy and very upset. He kept on saying "All done, all done, all done!" hoping the end was near. He was sweating and screaming and after four attempts by the doctor he received a single stitch. Truly so much effort has never amounted to so little. :) That is the Golden stitch baby! Again, carnage is commonplace. E came home and slipped right back into his comfort zone. Cakes and I were happy that he was calm and smiling. Lily was happy too...until something struck her in the head. All is well!

Happy Halloween!

What a great Halloween! First of all, Eactually wore his Buzz Lightyear costume! Yay! (Thanks, Heather!) We stuffed him full of Skittles as we dressed him so he didn't know what hit him! He's the kind of kid that hates jackets and pants, so it was a major accomplishment.

Well this year we had a "Trunk-or-Treat" at church on Saturday night! Clark dressed up as Clark (from David and Goliath... get it, with a"sling"?! ha ha!) I dressed up as a bear, I couldn't really do much else since I had to dress both kids AND my husband! :) Lily had SO much fun! She was a little Mermaid and was so pretty! She loved all the little carnival games and playing with her friends. She was so fun to watch! Ebay, on the other hand, played the fishing pole game and came up with a spider ring that freaked him OUT!!! So, he held on to me the rest of the night. Though he did enjoy getting candy at the cars as we walked along the parking lot!

Halloween night was great! Clark's mom is in town and so she spent Halloween with us! We went up to Clark's school for a MBA Family Halloween Party. They had pizza, pinatas, and a magician! So the kids had a lot of fun! Lils even got called up to help out with a cool magic trick! She LOVED it! Then we went around our apartment complex with some friends, met up with some more friends and had a pretty big group of trick-or-treaters by the end of the night!

Clark's Bionic Arm!

Well, Clark went in on Thursday to have his major shoulder surgery! He had a 210 degree tear on his left shoulder labrum (cartilage) that was repaired. It has been a tough recovery so far! I guess this is a sign that Clark can no longer be "softball guy"! No, that'll never happen! Clark will be laying out for crazy catches when he's 91 years old, baby! His shoulder has been pretty bad for about a year now, steadily getting worse, because he just kept on playing...golf, softball, soccer goalie, you name it! So now it's tough for him to lay around and take it easy! He's a picture of him a few days after surgery, he's a little drugged up, but doing well!

8 Goals!

Well, it seems Lil's gotten the hang of this whole soccer thing! She had a tuesday game tonight and scored... 8 times! It was pretty hilarious and awesome! Watch the clip and listen to what she says to me- it's SO cute!



"There's another one coming!"

Lil's First Soccer Goal!

Oh man! You can hear the excitement in our voices as Lil scored her first goal! Oh, it was INCREDIBLE! :) It was her second game and after a few weeks of soccer practices she finally got the hang of it! (We also bribed her with $1 every time she kicked it in!) Once she scored the first time, she scored again as soon as they got the ball again. So, we were in $2! From then on, whenever anyone else would score, she would get upset because it wasn't her! Oh well!

You'll see her run in the back of the pack and then with a turn around, get the ball and take it down to the goal... yeh, it's pretty amazing! :)

Back in North Carolina!

Well we're back home! It feels so good to be back at our place with our stuff! I didn't realize how much I'd miss our pictures, appliances and bed! But we sure did have the best summer ever. Now it's back to reality, I guess. Dave started school last week and Lil had her first day of school yesterday! She's in preschool this year at University United Methodist. It's a great place. She loves it. I have some pictures of that as well as a bunch of pictures from our last week in Cali!

The pictures are of our "summer apartment" in Cali, playing in Oroville, our trip up to Va to see Lorel and Craig, and Jamestown!

Discovery Kingdom

We spent the week before last in Oroville with Clark's sisters Liz and Laura and their kids! Nine kids age 6 and under running around the house! Papa made wooden boats for the kids that they all decorated and raced in the pool. The kids also loved jumping from the stairs while I took a picture and seeing themsleves jumping in mid-air! I also celebrated my 26th birthday! It was great!

Cora and Brian drove out from Utah on Wednesday and spent the weekend with us! It was so great! We were pretty packed in our 2 Bed 2 Bath apartment- but it was very fun! The kids played at different parks in our area and we met up with Cora's friend that she hadn't seen for 10 years! On friday we all went to Discovery Kingdom- which is a Six Flags plus Marine World Africa USA. As soon as we walked in there was an elephant out for people to touch! So cool! We saw their killer whale "Shooka" show, a dolpin show, and a tiger show! And Cora and I even met Batman! (too bad it wasn't really Christian Bale though... oh well!) All of us went on a white water canyon raft ride that was my favorite! It was great! We got SOAKED! Ebay was even tall enough to ride. The kids went from ride to ride and a handful of cotton candy in between... Needless to say the were exhausted and out of sorts by the end of the day! It was great!

Saturday morning my cousin Mark Mailhot and his wife, Rachel came to visit! I haven't seen Mark in over 6 years, so it was great! We had a nice relaxing day at the park with the kids and later went to the pool at our apartment complex. What a fun weekend!i