Alyssa LoriAnn

I knew I hadn't posted in a very long time, but I didn't think it had been just shy of a full year. Oops. :) A lot has happened in the past year, too, particularly in the past month. The biggest event is the arrival of our baby girl, Alyssa! She's only a couple of weeks old so we're still not getting much sleep, but we adore her anyway. I don't think I'm up to posting the entire birth story tonight, but for those of you who remember Tanner's birth and are wondering- no, she was not born in the car like he was. It was pretty quick once my labor really got going though. I had enough pre-labor to get to the hospital, but my phone log shows I was talking to my friend arranging for her to watch Braden and Tanner at 9:15 pm (this was when I had been admitted already and was walking the halls), and Alyssa was born at 9:52. I was hoping it would be short since I wanted to go natural. The doctor didn't make it there in time, but at least I was in a hospital bed with some nurses there taking care of everything.

Alyssa weighed 6 lb 9 oz. and came six days early, just like Tanner. Also like with Tanner, my water never broke. The nurses didn't want to break it since they didn't want to do anything to speed up the delivery, so they didn't break it until her head was out. So just like Tanner she was "born in the caul" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caul.

Anyway, that's her arrival in a nutshell. The hardest part was picking out a name, which took us a couple of days. Alyssa wasn't even on our list, I don't think. We always pick a family name for middle names, and LoriAnn is a combination of our mothers' names. Lori is Nate's mom, and Ann is my mom's middle name.

Our other exciting news is that we bought a condo so we're finally homeowners! We moved one week before Alyssa was born, so the timing wasn't the best, but it all worked out in the end. We are also now the owners of a minivan to accommodate the growing number of car seats in our family. :) I'll try to get around to posting updates on the boys and the new house and more about Alyssa, but I can't promise anything too soon since life with a newborn is so crazy, as many of you know. I'm actually supposed to be taking a shower right now, so hopefully she won't need to eat again too soon or I've blown my one shot at personal hygiene today.

Random Pictures

I have some pictures from the past few months that never made it into a post, so here are some random memories from this summer.

This is actually before we moved. While we were at Nate's family's cabin in Midway we drove to Provo falls up in the Uintas and climbed around on the rocks by the beautiful waterfalls. It's one of my favorite places to go.

Tanner decided he was done with his car seat and wanted to get behind the wheel of a big SUV, so watch out!

We love going to Carousel when we're in Warrenton visiting my family. Best ice cream ever! Here's Braden sizing up the challenge ahead of him to eat the entire cone.
He fearlessly dove in and if I'm remembering correctly he ate almost the whole cone by himself.

This was during a visit to my parents house. Tanner wanted to try delivering pizzas like his uncle. :)
He took the pizza orders using the gameboy, of course.

Here is Braden with one of his new friends, Gabriel. Unfortunately, Gabriel is moving to California in a few weeks, but at least they had a fun summer together.
Of course when a camera comes out they can't stay serious for very long.

Tanner tried to ship himself in a box one day. Sure beats the price of an airplane ticket!

And finally, here's an excerpt of a video of the boys having fun just spinning. I cut out a lot of the spinning since it got monotonous, but they were spinning for a LONG time. It made me dizzy just watching. I think Tanner was pretty dizzy too, but he loves to mimic anything Braden is doing (Scary- I know!)


Anyway, it's been a great summer. We're looking forward to having lots of fun this fall and winter, too, with the upcoming birthdays and holidays!

Palm Beach

Last week was Nate's auditor training in Palm Beach, and I joined him Friday morning when he finished. The timing of the training was perfect since Monday was a holiday. It was such an amazing vacation! Having been apart for five days made seeing Nate again that much sweeter. I was on cloud nine the whole weekend. A shirt that Nate bought pretty much summed up our weekend. Under the words Palm Beach it says "nothing to do and all day to do it".

The weather was great except for a rainstorm Saturday night that we got caught in while crossing the bridge to go to dinner. Luckily I had asked at the front desk if they had an umbrella we could borrow since it had been raining earlier that evening, so at least our heads stayed dry. Plus, it's not so bad getting soaked when you're with someone you love and you don't have anywhere to be or a schedule to keep. We took refuge under the bridge when we finally got across and watched an amazing lightning show. So even that couldn't put a damper on our spirits.

It was even better than our honeymoon in Ft. Lauderdale, in my opinion, because this time around we could really appreciate how nice it was to have it be just the two of us and have no parental responsibilities for a few days. It was indescribably nice to lay on the beach for as long as we wanted, and read books, and play games, and eat out, and sleep in, and take naps, and swim in the pool. . . aaaaaah I wish we were there again right now! We decided to make this a tradition and take a beach vacation with just the two of us every five years. 2013 can't come soon enough!

We honestly can't thank my family enough for watching Braden and Tanner for the weekend. The boys had a great time and didn't seem to miss us much at all :) Plus, they got the chocolate alligator as a souvenir that Braden's proudly displaying in the last picture in the slide show. That souvenir sure didn't last long!

Make-Up Post 3: Beach Vacation

So here is the last make-up post (finally!). Every year my family goes to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and this year we had moved here just in time to go with them. We had so much fun! Braden was scared of the ocean last year, but this year he really loved it, and Tanner was old enough to really enjoy the pool and playing in the sand. I decided to make a picture collage since there are so many pictures. I think you can click on it to make the pictures larger. Probably the only ones that need explaining are the ones of my brother, Marcus, and the various forms of wildlife he befriended. He found the frog by the pool and Braden named it Wam-Wa (Braden still asks about him sometimes). After crawling all over Marcus's body he jumped away, but Braden kept spotting him throughout the week. The other animal picture is a dead jellyfish that Marcus found and sported as a yamaka. Most people probably wouldn't do that for money, but Marcus will do anything to make my sister, Nan, squeal in disgust :)

Make-Up Post 2: The Move

So after a couple of fun-filled months it was time to say good-bye to Provo. We were able to spend one last week with Nate's family at the cabin and then we loaded up the truck (huge thanks to everyone who helped pack, clean, and load!), and started the four day trek. Nate and I got to drive across the country together since his family was brave enough to watch the boys for a week and then fly out to Virginia with them. The drive was pretty uneventful, but lots of fun. We didn't have any major issues with the truck, weather, or any of the various things that could have gone wrong, so we were grateful for that. My one goal was to never pay more than $4 a gallon for gas, and we ALMOST did it, except for one time in Ohio :( Filling that beast of a truck up with gas multiple times a day made me grateful that Nate's company offered relocation money!
My confession is that in all those days of driving I never once got behind the wheel, but since Nate has a little-known passion for trucking we made a great team! I was in charge of navigation, which wasn't too difficult (keep going east, dear). All in all, it was a fun little trip, and nice to have plenty of time to talk and relax. We spent a night at my parents house when we finally made it to Virginia and then moved into out new home the next day! It was a little suspenseful moving into a place we had only seen in pictures, but we are very happy with our little townhouse. I still haven't ever taken pictures of our place, but maybe someday if it's ever clean enough I will :)
We really like having three bedrooms and a fenced-in backyard for the boys to play in, so we're really happy that everything worked out so well. We love our new ward and have met a lot of really nice people. It's made the transition so much easier.

Nate and I had a few days to get settled and unpack before Scott and Lori flew out with Braden and Tanner, which was really nice even though we were really missing the boys. Braden and Tanner had stopped missing us by then though since they were having so much fun at Grandma and Grandpa's house with Aunt Natalie and Aunt Jenessa. Here are some of the pictures that they took of their exciting week:

Thanks guys, for taking such great care of them- we know it's not always easy!! We really appreciate all you did to help make the move easier.

Well, Scott and Lori survived the plane ride with the boys (Braden and Tanner actually did really well!), and then stayed to spend us few days with us in our new place. Instead of going all over the DC area doing the tourist thing, we actually spent most of our time playing Rook (a Robertson family obsession) since we knew it would be awhile until we could play again. We did venture out of the house to go to the National zoo before they left, so here are some pictures:





I think Braden and Tanner wore Grandma and Grandpa out! Or maybe it was the humidity :)

Up next will be the last make-up post: the beach!

Make-up Post 1: Pre-Move

So this post is going way back, but we had so much fun between the time that Nate graduated until we moved because we actually had FREE TIME! Plus, now that we've moved so far away all of these events have a touch of nostalgia. :) So here are five of the things that we did in May/June before we moved.

1. Braden was on a tee ball team that met every Saturday to do drills (they were going to attempt an actual game the last week, but unfortunately it was rained out; it would have been hilarious!). Watching Braden and the other little 3-year-olds do warm-up exercises was about the cutest thing ever! I loved every minute of it!

2. We were able to visit the Robertson side of the family for Mother's Day, Nate's mom's birthday, and Memorial Day, but of all that we only got a few pictures of the boys at their aunt Jenessa's soccer game and some of the cousins at a Robertson extended family get together. It was great to spend some extra time in Ogden. We miss you guys a ton!


Go Nessa!!

Braden and Tanner with the other Robertson great-grandchildren.

3. A trip to Thanksgiving Point wih my cousin Melissa, her husband Casey, and her little girls, Grace and Claire.

4. My extended family on my mom's side all got together to celebrate my cousin Ryan getting home from his mission, as well as to celebrate my Grandpa's birthday. We were so busy having fun that I didn't realize until after that we had only gotten three pictures, but here they are.
A lively game of chase that lasted quite awhile.

My aunts and uncles enjoying all of the delicious food.

5. One night when the weather was nice we went on a family walk around BYU campus for the last time until who knows when. We ended up at the waterfall over by the bell tower, which apparently they built after I graduated because I had never seen it before. It's a really beautiful area. Braden loved climbing on the rocks, of course, and Tanner was content to stay at the bottom and throw little rocks around.

So only two more make-up posts to go. The next one will be all about the big move!