Still here

I'm sorry that my posts are far and very few between. Honestly, I'm a little addicted to facebook. But I'm getting better. My last post was way too long ago. I won't try and play too much catch up, but I will tell you all the kiddies are doing great and getting bigger. Maggie's in preschool and couldn't be happier. She loves her teacher and her cute little class. I went to her Halloween program and it was so dang cute! My usually shy Maggie had zero problems being in the front singing and hamming it up. She was Belle for Halloween and only trick or treated to maybe 5 houses and was done. I'm totally okay with that! Emma is in 2nd grade and loves it. Her teacher is awesome. I've been in her class and helping and can see why Emma enjoys her so much. She's absolutely darling with her class and so good with the parents. I got to go help in Emma's class for her Halloween party and had a lot of fun getting to know the other kids in her class and teasing them. Lance is also getting bigger. My baby is almost One! It kinda makes me sad. He's growing up so fast and knowing that he's my last I want it to really slow down! He's such a happy baby and so much fun to have around. He loves to wave and give high 5's right now. He's not walking and seems to have little desire to do so, but that's okay. We're already to the "walking the halls" stage at church. He thinks that the quiet during class is meant for him to yell and talk. It doesn't help that church starts at one and his nap time is 2:30. It's a little rough, but that's okay. He's still a keeper. Only 7 months until nursery. Hee..hee!
Nick recently signed us up for the gym and has been good to push me out the door. We can't go together, so we just take turns at night. It seems to work well. I decided to sign up for a 5k on Nov. 20th to give me some incentive to start running at the gym. I've enlisted Nick and my family. Unfortunately for me, there's a BYU game that day and it'd be cutting it too close for most of my family to do both. I understand, BYU football comes first. But I have Nick and probably Zach doing it with me still. Now I just need a babysitter for 8 am :) I usually run a mile to warm up at the gym, do my routine and then walk for a little on the treadmill again for a warm down. So this morning I decided that it's time to see how far I can run and what I need to do to get myself running the whole 5k. Yes, I know that a 5k is only 3.2 miles, but I've really only been going to the gym for a month. Before that, nothing. Happily, I did run the whole 3.2 miles without passing out or falling over. It for sure made me a very happy girl! Now let's see if I can do it in the chilly morning weather. I'll make a post after and let you know how I did.
Overall, our little family is doing great. Nothing especially crazy or fantastic to report, but we're all very happy and healthy. What more can you ask for?? For the last month or so I've realized how truly happy I am. I have an amazing husband who is, no doubt, my best friend. We have so much fun together and I love that. He's a great dad and enjoys spending time with me and the kids. I have 2 beautiful and funny girls who keep me on my toes. And a very happy baby boy! I have a warm home that keeps me safe, I have food on the table, we can clothe our kids and keep them healthy and safe, and the Gospel. I can't think of anything else that I could possibly need to make me any happier than I am right now. Life is very good!

Caution: reading hazard....very long post!!!

I know I'm horrible at posting, life is just super crazy. I can barely keep my house clean and now that Lance is crawling, it's worse. But I have to say, I'm pretty happy. I have 3 wonderful kids and a wonderful husband. What more can I ask for??
Where do I start to catch up? I'm not sure I really can. So I'll just kinda give status updates on all of us. Emma, 7 going on 17, just finished 1st grade and is very happily moving on to 2nd. Our school is switching to a traditional schedule instead of year round. For the most part, I'm pretty happy about this. But I will admit, those little breaks between were sometimes nice and made vacation planning a lot easier. But with the change comes a change in the time. She will now start school at 8:05 and get out at 2:40. I'm not thrilled with that. The high school and middle school are right by her school and they will all three be out of school within 15 minutes of each other. As if I wasn't too crazy about the traffic before, add a bunch of teenage high schoolers on the road. I'm rethinking whether I want Emma to walk home or not. Let's be real, new drivers aren't all that careful. They'll be all over in the neighborhoods not paying attention and speeding through the school zones. We'll see how I feel about it after school starts. We had a friends birthday party for Emma, and had a lot of fun. It was a pajama theme and Mari had this cute idea for these candy sushi rolls. They turned out so cute!! Mari and Nick worked hard on them and the kids loved them. We made about 40 and there were only 4 left at the end of the party. Emma also did
soccer for the first time and really enjoyed it! She was a little timid at first, but she really got the hang of it and had a lot of fun.


Maggie will be starting preschool this fall. She is so excited. She's been asking me for the last couple months when she gets to go to school. She's just turned 4. We've had to do some major convincing that she isn't 5 and in 1st grade. Poor girl :) She's for sure my child, short and a little clumsy. While Emma is tall and coordinated like Nick. Please let Lance get Nick's genes too! Maggie got her first friends birthday party this year. We did a princess scavenger hunt, which was a lot of fun. But it was all supposed to be outside, thanks to the crazy winds, it didn't happen that way. But the girls didn't know any different. Maggie had a blast and enjoyed spending it with her friends. She's a cute little stinker. We also had our family birthday party the sunday before. We usually just have both sides of the family over at the same time. Luckily they don't mind and get along really well. Maggie was so excited, but a little confused. We had to remind her that sunday wasn't her birthday, just the birthday party. So every day after that, "Is it my birthday yet??" Soon enough her birthday came and as a family we went to see "The Last Airbender". We all really enjoyed it. Maggie was thrilled. She had a good birthday and that's what was most important.


Our little Lance is growing up so fast. He's already 7 months. It's gone by so fast. He's now crawling all over and loves to be chased. He just giggles the whole time. It's so cute! Everyone asks how it is having a little boy after having 2 girls. I think it's still too early to tell. He's such a good baby. He's a great sleeper and a really content kid. We've noticed that he doesn't really like to be touched our bugged while he's on the floor playing. He just likes to be left alone with his toys. Nobody believes me at first. But it doesn't take long to see it. It's hard for my girls sometimes. They just want to love and play with him, but he gets really grumpy when they try. He's by far my biggest baby, we've already had to get a new car seat. He's grown out of the carrier and is in the kind that you can face backwards and then turn around when they get older. Good thing he's such a cute little stinker! He's about 19 lbs and I can't remember how long. But the Dr says he's in the 95% for boys his age. He's already saying dada, but doesn't know what it means of course. But he talks all the time and wants to be into everything. I'm preparing myself for the craziness now. I'm sure it will only get worse :)


Nick and I are doing really good. I have no complaints. This is the life I've always wanted! Nick is still working hard as ever at All Seasons and is enjoying the golf season. If he didn't love it so much, I wouldn't let him go so much. But it's a great get away for him. He'll pay me back someday....I'm keeping track :) Really though, things are going good. We love our life, we love where we're at and enjoy all of the fun things our kids are up to. Hope all of you are doing well too. And I'll try to be better about my posts, but I make no promises (Jerrica!). ;)

Slacker

I know I'm a slacker. But really, I think I have a good excuse :) Adjusting to having baby # 3 has been a little harder than I thought it would be. Lance is a really good baby, but he wants to eat every hour and is not the best at napping. We did solve his colic problem, I had to stop eating chocolate. I'm not terribly thrilled about that, but he's a much happier baby now. I'm so glad Emma's in school all day long, but I still miss her tons. She's a really good helper. There are a lot of times when Lance will start crying and I'm in the middle of doing something, so Emma will go and pick him up to help out. She will usually sing to him or try and burp him. She's such a good girl. Maggie doesn't care much for his crying, she just covers her ears and tries her best to ignore him. It's pretty funny. But she's a good help too, she wants so much to carry him around like Emma does, but he's almost as big as her. That's kind of a problem for me. We love having Lance here. He's such a sweet baby! He grunts all the time, especially while he's eating. It makes me laugh. He's growing so fast. He's 12.6 lbs and I'm not sure how long right now. He's grown out of most of his 0-3 month onesies and some outfits and now is on to 3-6 months. It makes me a little sad, he shouldn't be growing this fast! He's most likely my last baby and I want him to stay that way for a while.We've been trying to be careful about taking him out. I'm a little paranoid about RSV, I won't lie. I'm not sure I would be so much, but I had a friend who lost their baby boy to RSV last April, he would have been a year old just this last December. That has put some serious fear in me. I'm not sure I could survive that. So those of you who haven't seen us for a while, you probably won't for a while more. I went to church once with Lance, and then he got sick, so that won't be happening again for a couple months. We'll see how it goes. I know that I can't stay cooped up here for too much longer, it is killing me. But in the end, it's all worth it right? Overall, we've been doing pretty good. Nick is an amazing husband. He's been so good to do my grocery shopping and help me wherever he can. Lance has a lot of late nights, so Nick has been the one to get up and get Emma ready for school in the morning. That's not always an easy task. But he still does it. I'm not sure I could survive this without his help. Thanks Nick, you really are the best, and I appreciate what you've been doing for our family! Love you!!

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