Christmas #1

For Christmas this year, my parents are going to Germany, to visit my oldest sister and her family, so we celebrated Christmas with them a week early. It was a lot of fun. It was wet and rainy, so the kids couldn't play outside as much as they would've liked, but they still had a lot of fun playing with one another.

They had lots of fun making gingerbread houses and eating TONS of candy!

Opening gifts was another highlight for the kiddies, and for me! I finally have a Kitchen-Aid!! I was so excited I made 4 different kinds of cookies with it the very next day!!! I LOVE IT! Thanks mom and dad!

New Home

I've been promising pics of our new home for a while, so here are a few. We finally have unpacked almost everything. Mike still needs to finish the office. Don't get jealous of the brown shag carpet now! ;)

At least there is a big backyard for the kids to play in! The girls were not happy with us, when we took all the boxes to the dump. They had fun making forts out of them!

Thanksgiving 2009

For Thanksgiving we went to Priest River and visited both mine and Mike's family. It was fun to be with family. Mike and his dad played in the annual turkey bowl. We had a HUGE feast. Jeff, my brother-in-law and I had a mashed potato contest, the kids jumped on the trampoline - A LOT! And we even helped my parents decorate for Christmas.

Horrible Night

What's worse than a nauseous pregnant woman?

A nauseous kid!

Livia must have thrown up 20 times Tuesday night! It went on ALL NIGHT LONG! Good thing Mike was home. I made him do all the dirty work. And there was a LOT of it! Poor Livia is home sick again today. She's feeling better and the throwing up has stopped, so that's a plus.

But we still don't have our dryer hooked up since our move. So I had to take all our clothes, and Livia's blankets and pillows that she threw up on, and go to the laundry mat. I was there for 3 hours!!!!!!! It took forever! I DID have a TON of clothes, but it still took FOREVER and costs a LOT of quarters! Everything got washed and folded though, thanks to the "help" of Sydney.

I cannot wait until I can go one week without seeing any throw-up! 6 more months to go!!! :)

13 Weeks

I am currently 13 weeks along. My baby is now 3 3/4 inches long and weighs 1 1/4 ounces! I think the hardest part is just about ending. I am starting to feel a little better every day. I have my good days and my bad days still, but for the most part, I am feeling much better. I don't even throw up everyday anymore. :) I just wish my nose would settle down now. I am still very sensitive to smells. I was like this when I was pregnant with my 2 girls as well. Perfumes and lotions set me off the most, but today in 2nd hour of church, I swear I could smell the chalk really bad. It was making me sick! Weird, right?!

Anyway, all is well with the Dean's. We just moved so we are still unpacking and finding everything. I will try to post pics of our new place soon.

First Ultrasound!

I had my first ultrasound! I don't know why, I've never had one this early before, but the Dr. wanted one, so we did. Which I was glad we did, because after seeing my little "alien-blob" I'm not as bitter. There may be light at the end of the tunnel yet! :) If you click on the picture you can see the parts I pointed out. I am almost 12 weeks. So I am almost starting my 2nd trimester! THANK GOODNESS! Now, I will hopefully start to feel a little better!

I am still not able to wear make-up, perfume, lotion, and I HATE showering because of the shampoo smell. But not to worry everyone, I manage a little deodorant! And I even let Mike wear deodorant too. But that's it! One day, he "forgot" though and wore cologne! That was a bad day!

So far I have lost 7 pounds, but then I gained that back, plus 1!!! So 1 pound gain so far!!! With the first 2 girls, I gained 50 and 60 pounds! My goal this pregnancy, is to NOT let that happen again! I want to stay under 40 lbs this time! That's my goal!

Packing

Well, the house we were renting, and "hoping" to buy, SOLD! I guess it wasn't meant to be. So we will continue to pursue buying a home and hope for better luck in the next few months. In the meantime, we are moving into a duplex, in the same Court as my sister, Tara! Funny huh!? My parents, 2 sisters and their fam's came and packed my whole house up this weekend! So we are just about ready to move! We aren't actually moving until Saturday, so I will try to update my blog after we find everything and Mike can put my computer back together! Here's just a few pics! Thanks for your help everyone!

We had to get a pic of the girls, 'cuz they were totally geekin' out about being able to just sleep on their mattresses! It was funny! Such simple pleasures! :)

Big News!!

I know, I am a HUGE slacker!!! But I promise, this time I REALLY DO have a good excuse! I have been very sick the last month! Don't worry, it's not the flu or even the swine flu ! Instead it's the "mommy bug"! some days, it's a miracle if I muster enough energy to even check my email, let alone, blog! So, I apologize for taking a month off!

The Pity Party:
In case you haven't caught on yet...... YES! I AM PREGNANT!!! I am only 10 weeks along. But it's the first trimester that is the absolute WORST in my opinion! The Dr. finally gave me some medicine for nausea, and that seems to help, which is amazing, considering NOTHING else I have tried has helped so far! If anyone has any tips or advice that has helped them, I am all for it! I am ready to try anything! (If I haven't tried it already!)

The Story:
Anyway, yes, we are expecting again, after getting rid of EVERYTHING and thinking that we were done, with our youngest now 6 years old!!! Weird timing I know. It all started with Livia having a dream that she had a little brother. Then she kept begging us for a baby brother, and she had 2 other dreams with the same thing! I kept telling her that it was just a dream, but she was persistent enough to make me pray about it! Plus , Mike all of a sudden decided to side up with Livia and said he DID want to try to have another baby after all! Information that WOULD have been helpful BEFORE I just turned 30!!! Nonetheless, we prayed and both felt like we needed to have another baby, so 2 months later, the "fun" started!

The Kids:
The girls are still excited about having a baby! But they are already tired of me being pregnant! Poor kids have no idea.... They are learning how to be little mommy's themselves! They are doing dishes now. They do laundry sometimes. They are helping with dinner! They are even making ME dinner and snacks, and constantly getting things for me! At least they are old enough to be able to help me out! That would be AWFUL if they were toddlers still right now!

Overall:
We are all excited to have another baby in the house again. I think I will be MUCH happier about our decision once the baby is out of my body and I am feeling normal again though! I am pretty lucky to have gotten pregnant right away and with no problems though. Hopefully I start to feel better in the next few weeks as I start my 2nd trimester! But for now, I will try to stay positive and hope for a happy, healthy baby! I will keep you informed!

Here is Livia and Sydney doing the dishes! Isn't my kitchen such a mess! You can tell how excited Livia is! :)

October in a "Nutshell"

I am going to sum up our last month with a few pics, since I am a big slacker and am way behind!

Mike had a birthday, so I surprised him with a big birthday party! We had 25 people show up! Kids and all. It was very loud and chaotic, but also very fun!

We went to an apple orchard (again) in Spokane, and picked tons of apples! We wanted to get our pumpkins too, like we usually do, but we were only able to find 2 that weren't already ruined from the early frost we had!

Of course, we carved our pumpkins the very next Monday for F.H.E.

Livia was very particular with her carving. She drew it on paper first, then used pencil so she would know where to cut, then wanted additional help with the hard areas to ensure perfection!

Sydney on the other hand, grabbed a carving tool as quick as she could and went to town. I asked her if she needed help with a design or if she wanted to use a store bought face, but she said no, and wanted no help at all. It's fun to see the difference in the girls!

Mike had to break out the jig-saw AND the dremel tool for his!! He thought he was pretty cool stuff (although he was incredibly fast!)

We stayed in Moscow for Halloween, and celebrated it with my 2 sisters, and their families, and my mom and dad came as well. We got some pumpkin Papa Murphy's pizza, then went trick-or-treating! We usually go to the Mall and do their whole thing, but the kids were all having a blast trick-or-treating, and they were getting a TON of candy, so they didn't want to do anything else!

As you can see, Livia is a boxer, Sydney is a parrot, and my niece, Tamara is Minnie Mouse!

The weather turned out really nice! Usually it's freezing, but it was in the 50's and sweatshirts were enough! It was nice.

We took the seats out of our van and left the back door up, so the kids could just jump in and jump out real quick. They thought it was the coolest thing! They were all geekin out about it.

While my parents followed along in their car! Good Times!