The Hornes

27 weeks and some days

2012-02-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

I'll be entering my 3rd trimester on Friday, and I'm SO excited!!! I just updated my wall calendar at work with the next 3 months and my DUE DATE is on the calendar now, so exciting!!!! I really hope she's on time and not 2 weeks late or something.
I have many braxton hicks through out the day. She is very active. It's just my FAVORITE feeling her grow and how strong she's getting in there. We set my phone on my belly last night and it was crazy watching it move! I love love love it!

We have a few things to get done before baby comes, but we're waiting for BK's bed to arrive. We are going to put the girls in the same room. So we are going to move them to our guest room since it's a bit bigger, then move the guest room to the room she is in now. So we'll need to repaint and set things up.

I was shopping at Good Will with Lauren and we found a dresser for $13!!!! You can't really beat that. I was looking for one that will fit in the closet, so small enough but big enough to hold clothes. This one is perfect! It has 3 drawers on each side, and once we paint it, it will look great. I was very excited about the find!!!

Spring is going to bring many exciting things! March is when Scott's company gives their raises and bonuses, so we're hoping with that bonus we'll pay off our durango, and, then hoping for a raise.
Then we have a baby shower for a friend who is due the same day i am, with her first baby! So that's fun!! Then a few of my friends are putting on a shower for me on April 1st. :-) Not expecting that, but they reminded me that Taylor needs to be celebrated also. :-D I'm just asking for contributions of diapers, or $ towards a double stroller.

Then baby is due at the end of that month. I can't believe it's already February today, but April still feels far away :-D

Brooklyn continues to warm our hearts every day. She's talking so much. Says pretty much any word you ask her to say. She's very tall! In all 2T and also 3T stuff - and she's 19 months. She's a good little slepper, goingi between 1 and 2 naps a day still. Most days it's 2 if we are home, but 1 if we are out and about. She loves loves loves music and dancing!

This week I begin choreographing for our Narnia theme dance recital for June. I'm excited, and hoping I can get my dances done before I leave for maternity leave. So I have a lot to plan and coordinate in the next few weeks.

26 weeks and 5 days

2012-01-25T16:09:00.000-08:00

Man oh man, sometimes it's crazy to think I'm almost 27 weeks, a week away from 3rd trimester. Then other times, I find myself saying, "I'm ONLY 27 weeks along?!?!?"
I really feel like carrying a child in the correct position as apposed to breech is very different. Her kicks are different, and punches are down low. I can feel her hiccups in different spots because I feel her back.
My low back is really really sore and I'm EXHAUSTED. I think that might just be from 2nd baby? I have no idea.
This pregnancy has been harder for sure. Just so tired, been sick, had neck problems, etc. I will definintely feel ready to not be pregnant again for a while after this baby. I'm SO blessed to carry a child, I realize that. But it doesn't mean everything is hunky dorey! :-D I love many things about being pregnant, but right now, the things I'm not fond of are standing out a bit more. My body hurts.
I am getting ready to teach 2 hrs of dance tonight, and I'm sure my body is going to feel it. I'm hoping to teach until mid-April, but we shall see what my body does.
I'll take a better picture tomorrow of my belly and post it. I look how I did at about 30 weeks with Brooklyn, I'm bigger with this pregnancy for sure. Heavier and bigger in general. :-(

13 weeks left. I know it will fly, but it still seems far away!

Snow, snow, snow!!

2012-01-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

Well, the "Winter Storm" hit this year. I honestly didn't think we'd have snow this year. Our daffodills were already starting to bloom. We have about 8 or so inches here. It's not as much as the year we got about 2 feet, in 2008. I have been sick since Dec 20th but have just been trying to continue life as normal, but it's been pretty hard, when I feel so terrible. Poor Scott. Being pregnant and sick for so long...I don't feel like I have been much fun.

Anyways, Sunday, I wanted to get out of the house, so we bundled up and found some snow (we didn't have much at our house at that point) so we drove to Lake Padden and brought Tubbs too. Brooklyn loves the snow. We walked (slowly) around the lake, and got some hot tea to keep us warm to drink along the way. Here are some pics of that walk.

Eating her first snow ball :-D

Gorgeous, huh?! God's creation is beautiful.

Lake Padden is a great place. It has places to BBQ in the summer, bathrooms, a 2.5 mile trail (and horse trails) and longers trails for more serious trail blazers, a dog park, baseball fields, and a play ground with a basketball court. It's a great place. BK loves to swing so we took her to the swings and let her swing. What a beauty. She looks like an angel in the snow.

AND of course the slide...she LOVES slides!!!

We have about 8 inches now, and some friends came over last night and sled in our back yard. Hallee and BK bundled up. Brooklyn loves sledding. It was her first time.

Here is Amber, Hallee and Brooklyn.

The girls, while the boys were sledding behind us. :-D Allison, Hallee, Me, Brooklyn and Amber.

We tried to get a group shot, but we were a bit unsuccessful, ha! This group of peeps meets every Tuesday night for our small group, doing bible study, having dinner, playing games, etc. They are great friends. We are now beginninng Financial Peace University (Dave Ramsey). Scott and I went through it right before Broolyn was born and since then have paid off over $30,000 in debt (School loans, Scott's credit card he had before our marriage, surgeries,taxes, and our car payment). We want to go through it again before Taylor is born to get back on track. We are ONE debt payment away from being debt free. Our goal is to pay off the Durango in March. :-D We will
be SO thrilled to be 100% debt free at our age. It's so rare. There are steps you follow, like after we pay off our debt, we will then save 3-6 mo of our expenses that way if anything happened to Scott's job, we know we have a few months of $ that we can pay things while he searches. Then saving for a home, etc.
We are excited to do FPU with this group, they will all benefit so much from it. We are blessed to have great friends here.

I took this picture this morning from our window. The streets are covered, since we are on a "county" road, they don't plow them, so there is TONS of snow on the road. The snow is SO peaceful. I love it. Hoping to bundle up and go out with B once she's awake so she can enjoy it. I guess a lot more is on its way...then gonna melt. I just wish I felt better to really go and enjoy it. But I guess B doesn't know better...ha.

Just a few things

2012-01-14T14:55:00.000-08:00

Just a few weeks ago, my brother and sister in law were going to sell their couches because they were getting new ones. Scott and I had some white leather ones from my parents, from when I was in Junior High. We were thankful to have them when we moved in to this house because there are 2 living room type areas, and we only had one big sectional couch. So they added extra seating and we were grateful for them for the past couple years. But when we heard my brother and sister in law were getting rid of theirs, we asked if we could buy them. They gave us a good deal since we are family :-D So, we put them in and they are so much warmer, nicer and give the room a bit of color since we can't paint. We love them.
Then, we also bought some spray paint and painted a few items of furniture in our house that were brown, we painted them to black to make them look a bit more modern. Again, coffee tables from my parents, and actually, these came with the house they bought almost 17 years ago! So we updated them a bit. We are very happy with the room!
Brooklyn and I visited daddy at work one day. We wanted to see his new office and come have lunch with him. BK isn't looking in this pic, she is too enthrawled with Scott's calculator. We had lunch at Jimmy John's, a sandwhich place, and then shared a Frosty later. It was fun to visit him. Scott's office looks great!

Scott turned 32 on January 9th this year. He wanted a low key birthday pary, so that's what we did. We went bowling with some other families we know and had a good time. On Sunday's it's 2 for 1 bowling, so it was really cheap, we got pizza and soda. Then we played in the arcade for a while after. It was really fun! A low key, family friendly birthday. Happy Birthday Scott!!

Ultrasound

2012-01-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

I had to go in this morning to have an abdomen ultrasound. Last week, I had really really bad sharp pains in my upper abdomen, under my rib. The doc thought it sounded like gallbladder...:-( I was so disapointed. Everyone was closing for New Years, so I had to wait until this morning until I could be seen at the imaging center.
Everything looked fine to the tech, and doctor will call in the next day or so. I think all is well. The tech was so nice, she peeked at Taylor for us. It was SO fun to see her, almost 4 weeks from when we last saw her. She's so big and things have really developed. She was swallowing, sticking her tongue out, kicking, stretching out, and opening her mouth really big! AND, the BEST news I got, is that she is HEAD DOWN!!! I know she still could move, but I think it's really good that she's head down right now. BK never was. I really hope I get to experience delivery this time around. I know this is all in God's hands, and he hasn't forgotten, but I am praying that this will happen this time for me. Especially because we want more kids, delivering vaginally will be so much better than 3 or 4 c-sections. So that's my prayer. I was so happy to hear she was head down and in a good position. I feel all of her kicks and punches down low, so I have no idea what I'm really feeling, maybe it's her arms punching? Or kicks, but they don't feel high where her feet are. Who knows, they do all kinds of crazy things in there! :-D
But good news so far. I'm so excited to meet her!!!!
This is a picture of the picture that she printed off for us. There is a bit of a glare but you can still see.

Welcome 2012

2012-01-05T10:28:00.001-08:00

Well, Scott and brang in the new year very low key, and actually were in bed, and asleep before 12. We kissed at 10pm wishing each other a happy new year! :-D
We were so tired, and I worked early Sunday morning, so I wasn't going to stay up. Also, when you have super young children, keeping them up until midnight would be a disaster. So we just laid low, and we were happy to do so.
I remember when the clock struck 12 last year, I was SO happy to welcome in another year. 2010 was the best of years and the worst of years for me, so I was happy to move on. But with moving on also meant that I was out of the year that I last saw my dad, talked with him, etc. It was a hard year to walk through all of the "this time last year I talked with dad, saw dad, got this news, etc."
2011 for us was pretty low key, nothing major happened, good or bad, so it was a good year for us...Stable is the word I'd use.
So we're excited to welcome in another year, and now we are in the year that our sweet baby T will be born. Crazy that BK was born in 2010, she will be 2 this year!! Unbelievalbe!

We are excited to see what 2012 brings. We didn't really make any resolutions this year, except being a little more disciplined in reading the Bible, and Scott wants to keep staying physically active and challenging himself. He's doing a great job.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Part 4 - Final

2012-01-03T19:54:00.001-08:00

This is kind of out of order, but this is my belly on Thursday, Dec 29th, about 23 weeks along. Just for fun!
Brooklyn was having so much frun with "Grumpa" while grandmama was sewing my jeans for me. She had a bag on her head, my scarf on, and socks on her hands and was giving everyone "lotion." It was very cute, he was entertaining her!
Scott got a new toaster! :-D Iowa State, LOL! So funny, he loves it!
Our crazy girl, LOVING my scarf, she wore it almost the whole time after I opened it. I didn't get to enjoy it until the following week.
Grandmama and Brooklyn opening her stocking and seeing ELMO!
Stylish! Her new purse, again, my scarf, walking with an attitude! :-D
This was the only time I got to wear my scarf - right after I opened it. Thanks mom!
Brooklyn opening her table
Helping Gmama open her Christmas gift - it was a fun day. We played games as a family when BK was napping and mom had prizes for all of us. Jake took first place, me second and Mandie 3rd. We played 31. It was fun! 2011 was a good year for all of us. Here's to 2012, we know it will be a great one too!!!

Christmas Part 3

2012-01-01T16:55:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning, Scott and I were both up early. I had been pretty sick, and not sleeping well, and Scott always wakes up early, so we waiting for Brooklyn to wake up. She woke around 7:30am. We were so excited to spend Christmas morning with her. I think one more year under her belt and she'll begin to LOVE it! :-D

She first got her bottle, and as she drank it, Scott read the Christmas story from the Bible in Luke. We opened gifts, had breakfast, and then began to pack up to head down to my moms for Christmas with her, my step dad and Brother and his wife. (That will be Christmas Part 4).
Sweet Brooklyn brought her "Grandpa" bear out and sat in her chair to have her bottle. She loved her new chair (And it folds out into a bed)

Daddy reading the story of Baby Jesus!

PRESENT TIME!

BK helping dad open gifts.

My "Spanx" tank top to hold me all in after baby #2. :-D

Christmas Part 2

2012-01-01T16:09:00.001-08:00

This year, Scott and I went to Christmas Eve services, made a great dinner at home - Perogies, aparagus, and farmers sausage. This is what Scott had every Christmas eve so we have kept that tradition from his family and brought to ours. It was a delicious dinner. We then each opened one gift that night too. Scott got a work out DVD that he had wanted, to gain strength and flexibility, and I got a blow dryer and a straightner, and Brooklyn got some gloves.

Here is me, Scott, Brooklyn, and our friends Mike, Hallee and Amber at Christmas Eve services.
Dinner is served! So delicious!

Brooklyn and daddy looking under the tree trying to figure out which gifts to open!

Santa had already come to visit! This is what he left for her. Everything else under tree was from Mommy and Daddy this year.

This was before brooklyn went to bed, we watched BK's Christmas Veggie Tales Movie "The Christmas Star." Then we said goodnight and off she went. This picture is really special because it represents 4 generations, and 3 generations of men. Brooklyn snuggling her daddy, my dad's bear (so her grandpa) and the blanket from MY grandpa, her GREAT Grandpa! I love this picture!

Christmas eve services were really nice, dinner was great. It was a nice evening.

Christmas Part 1

2012-01-01T15:58:00.001-08:00

This was from the Vancouver Christmas Festival. It's a german festival down town that Scott's sister Lindsay had heard about. It was so fun. We had these warm drinks keeping us warm outside, and at great German food and heard good music and saw lots of a cute gifts. It was a really fun night fun with memories.

Dana, Brooklyn, Me, and Scott watching the Merry Go Round. BK had to be 2 to ride...so we'll have to go back next year.

Sweet Auntie Dana and BK watching the pretty lights!

SIBLINGS! Lindsay, Scott and Dana! I love them.

Pictures to come

2012-01-01T08:45:00.001-08:00

I need to post some pictures of our family Christmas and festivities. I'll hopefully hop on after work today and get some stuff up. It's the new year, but I'll probably print it still in our 2011 book!

Happy New Year!

Our Christmas Letter

2011-12-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

We ran out of ink this year and just didn't get a round to buying anymore. So not everyone got our Christmas letter with our card. And just for when I print our blog, I wanted to include it in here. We might have made a few changes after this, but this was the gist.

Merry Christmas Family and Friends! Once again another year is behind us and one is upon us! 2011 brought many good things, seems like a better year than 2010 for the most part. Lots of steadiness in the Horne Household this year. We have lived in the same home for over 2 years now!! Scott is still work at Dawson Construction. I'm still working at Christ The King Church and the dance studio. Tubbs is still a large happy mellow dog. And life is good! Brooklyn is now almost a year and a half. She celebrated her first birthday in July and began walking shortly after. She is such a blessing to us! She laughs, talks, enjoys food and music, and of course dancing. Brooklyn has made many new friends this year, met many members of our family, and even took her first vacation to Palm Desert in April. She loved it, and was a great little traveler.

In August, we found out that Brooklyn was going to have a sibling! We are so excited to welcome our SECOND girl to the family in April of 2012! Brooklyn will have a little sister named Taylor Joy. We can't wait to welcome this bundle. We are extremely blessed. Thanksgiving weekend we had a little bit of a scare with Scott's dad. He suffered a heart attack, and went through a quadruple bypass surgery, but has been healing very well and is walking the road to recovery quite nicely. We are praying for a great recovery and many more years ahead of him.

The more we are experiencing life, we are realizing how much happiness in one moment, and how much pain in another life can bring. We are so thankful to walk though life knowing Christ and trusting Him. I'm not sure how we could get through this life with out Him. We have been blessed with great family and we have amazing community here in Bellingham. We have walked through some pretty hard stuff over the years, and have seen some frieds and family go through some really hard times in life as well. But time and time again, God proves His faithfulness in our lives and also in theirs. We're thankful to have a season to celebrate the birth of Christ our Savior. The Christmas Story sure does seem to mean a lot more now that we have a child of our own.

We hope 2011 was a great year for everyone, and that 2012 will bring upon many more days of this exciting journey we are on! As always, keep up on our day to day life through our blog: www.hshorne.blogspot.com
With love, The Horne's

Cuteness

2011-12-23T12:15:00.001-08:00

And a few more just because she's so cute!

We were watching Polar Express - she had my headphones around her neck, her legwarmers on and drinkin her water! Such a doll.

This is an adorable picture of Hallee and Brooklyn. They get to hang out every Monday together. They are just 6 weeks apart, and they have a lot of fun together. This is them at Amber's house, pointing to each others body parts in front of the tree! :-D So cute!

2011-12-23T11:02:00.000-08:00

This is a picture right out our front window. December has been so beautiful this year. The dryest one on record. I love where we live, that we can look out and seel and and trees and sky and not a million houses. Gods creation is so beautiful.

This is how I decided to hang our Christmas cards this year. I have always taped them, or just put them in piles, so this year I bought ribbon from the dollar store and tied a bow at the top and then strung the ribbon down. Next year I'll do the same thing but I think I want to hang it horizontal rather than vertial, easier to hang. But I liked having everyone's cards displayed.

On Wednesday (Dec 21st) Scott met us on his lunch break to go take apicture with Santa! Mom bought this dress for Brookly and she just looks ADORABLE in it! I can't even handle it! She was such a doll. She got stopped by many along the way to santa to tell her how pretty she looked. I'm not sure we'll do a santa picture every year with kids, but we did it last year so we decided to do it this year too, but we knew this year might be a bit questionable as BK is at the age that she could have been terrified.

This is our little gem on the way to see Santa, look at that smile! :-D

And here is the photo. Scott and I had to join in. She was TERRIFIED as soon as he looked at her and it was her turn to sit on his lap. She wouldn't let go of daddy. So we joined in on the picture. Look at her sweet face, poor thing. We got a picture at least, we'll see about next year.

Wanted another picture of our tree. I love our tree this year. It's so beautiful! All the presents are wrapped underneath. Santa will bring one present this year for Brooklyn. We aren't sure how exactly we want to do Santa. We have talked about one BIG gift from Santa for each child and the rest from us, or maybe 3 gifts from Santa, just how the wiseman brought 3 gifts for Jesus. So we're still thinking about that. But this year Santa has one gift for Brooklyn :-D

Last night, in our advent calendar, our activity was to go drive and look at Christmas lights. We had just heard about a place pretty close to us, and does great lights. And they sure did!! James Estates. Brooklyn kept saying "Preeeeee" for Pretty! She loved looking at the lights. She fell asleep on the last part of out outing. :-D But she enjoyed it and it is a good tradition starting.I have been sick this week so yesterday, Brooklyn and I just had a relaxed day and boy was she cute. Sometimes I just want to be consumed by her! She is so sweet, so beautiful, so innocent, so precious. I just seriously adore her. I cannot wait to have 2 children, 2 girls to snuggle, kiss, hug, stare at, etc. I am so blessed, and so fortunate. I have no idea what life with 2 kids will look like but I'm sure a lot more busy but also a lot more full. People relate having one child to having a pet, but 2 is where the hard work comes in. I'm sure that's true. BK has been so easy for us, such a natural transition. But I just want more kids, I want a big family so I feel like I'm ready for all of the changes and challenges it will bring.

21 weeks and 4 days

2011-12-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

I took this this morning, but I wasn't feeling very well so sorry about my face. But here is the bump. I feel like I'm growing much faster now. But I feel pretty good!

Catch up

2011-12-18T16:06:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas!! I need to play a bit of catch up! And for some reason this post already posted, so I need to edit it and get it up. This is our family Christmas picture this year. This was taken the night we had the gender reveal! Great looking family :-D

A few weeks before we went and got our Christmas tree. These are out of order, but I'm going to leave them this way. Look how cute BK is, she wanted to do exactly what daddy was doing. She was copying everything he was doing.

This was at Manthey's Farm. We have found a beautiful tree there every year. This is the group we went with this year, because my family couldn't make it. Mom had surgery and her foot was really sore and Jake and Mandie were busy. So we went with some friends, and Scott's sister was in town so she got to join us. Left to Right - Allison, Cody, Mike, Hallee, Amber, me, Scott and Brooklyn. Here is Scott cutting down our tree. Macho man!

And here is our family pic in front of our tree. All of us!

This was at Stoney Ridge - they have a live camel there for their nativty scene. Scott was very excited to see the camel. Can you tell by his smile? And again at Stoney Ridge, Scott's sister, Dana, and us posing for a little family pic. A few nights ago, we made gingerbread houses. They started off kind of weak because we started big, ha, but everyone redeemed their houses. Scott really worked on ours!! The first one on the left is Allisons, and then ours is in the middle, and Ambers on the right, the closest to us. They turned out great!

And then another night we made a bunch of cookies, so here is the tray of the assorments we made. They all turned out great!

The Reveal Video

2011-12-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

This was SUCH a fun night! I have posted this on FB, but here is the reveal again for our records! I had more recorded, of everyone's predictions, but it won't all fit. So this will have to work! :-D My mom was CONVINCED it was a BOY!! This was so fun!!!

Another GIRL!!!

2011-12-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

Scott and I had our 20 week appt yesterday morning. We were so excited. I have felt like this was a girl from the very beginning, but a 10 week ultrasound reveal that we thought "something" was growing in between the legs. So for the last 10 weeks, we really believe it was a boy. Even though I really felt like it was a girl. :-) We reminded the tech of our findings at the 10 week and we went right in to see what the gender was. She, and WE, we shocked when she clearly pointed out that there was nothing growing in between the legs anymore. It's a GIRL!! We were so surprised! But so happy. I had really convinced myself that it was a boy and all the good that will bring, but it's easy to flip back to how convenient another girl is! Also, I really just wanted to see a healthy baby. I was a bit nervous after having walked through Liz's story just days before. But I know God always has a plan and baby would be whatever he planned. But all looks really healthy, she was kicking and moving a lot.
Our name for her is Taylor Joy! If it was a boy, we would have named him Tyler James. The part we are going to watch, is that, currently, she is breech. It's not a big deal as I'm only 20 weeks along so she has time to squiggle and move around to get head down. I'd LOVE to be able to deliver her and not have a C-section because we'd love to have more kids and obviously natrual birth is better for me and baby than c-section. But I have no control over what happens, so we'll wait and see.

Here are some of the pictures from the appointment.

Definitely a girl!!!

Sweet little arm above face. She had them there the whole time!

Profile, looking alot like her big sister!

And here is her moving a bit - kicking her legs way up! Love it!!

20 weeks! What are you little baby?!?!

2011-12-08T17:52:00.001-08:00

Alright, here is my 20 week picture. I don't look like I have much. Some days I have a bit more, others, it's just about this :-D I feel really great for the most part, except I'm REALLY hungry, and being pregnant, I don't turn much down. My sweet tooth has kicked in, that's for sure. :-D
We go in tomorrow morning at 7:20, I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad I don't have to wait long. Last time with Brooklyn, our appt wasn't until 3pm or 4pm and it was torture!! So I was smart to book it early in the morning, plus BK is waking up then, and Scott won't have to miss much of work. It's perfect all around.

I am SO torn on what this baby is. Most days I really feel like it's another girl, but I'm pretty certain that it's a boy! :-D How's that for confusing. Ha! I'm just sure they will tell me it's a boy, even though I really feel like it's a girl. My pregnancy hasn't been much different from Brooklyn. My sickness was about this same, I'd say I might have been a tiny sicker with this one. And I have dry scalp and had a weird aftertaste for the first few months after I'd eat ANYTHING! I hated it!!! So I'm just so on the fence!!! I think I'm 100% expecting them to say boy tomorrow when I go in. I'll be shocked if I'm having another girl. I am happy either way, a girl would be very convenient because we have everything already, and BK could have a sister. But then a boy, is new, we've never had one, and BK could help raise a brother :-D Some people say it's nice to have some space between sisters :-D So we're happy either way, we just want a healthy baby! I know that is so cliche, but espeically after the past couple days, it's so easy to take health for granted. Children are such a gift.

Alright baby Horne, you need to participate tomorrow, and be awake and moving so we can count your fingers, toes, and see what "parts" you have :-D

I'll post once we know!
YAY!

Jonathan Lucas

2011-12-08T17:49:00.000-08:00

I do not have a ton of details, but what I do know is that mama did a great job birthing him today. Her labor went very quick, and Jonathan was born, with a HEART beat, breathing and God even blessed them with hearing his cry!
Jonathan was here on earth for about 4 hours before the Lord took him home. This little man must be too precious to waste his hours here on earth, he is NEEDED in Heaven.
Welcome little angel!

Heavy heart today

2011-12-07T11:37:00.000-08:00

I am taking a few moments out of my day today because I have a heavy heart for a family and friend of mine. A few months ago I got a call from my friend Liz telling me she was pregnant. We met a few years ago at church, she was singing on the worship team. Ever since we met there was a connection. While we don't talk every day or even every week, whenever we would get together for coffee, or a walk, good always came from it. She had been going through a lot in her life and needed someone to process with.
Last November, of 2010 Liz got married. She met a great man from our church, with a great story, and the story of how God brought them together is pretty amazing. They met, dated and married pretty much in the span of about 6 months. But it was right. :-D
In August, they were heading in for their 20 week appt to find out the gender of their baby. They could hardly wait. I remember talking with her on the phone about how fun that appointment is!!
A few days later I recieved a call from her, that something was wrong with the baby. We shed tears, and prayed. Prayed that there was a mistake and that he was going to be healthy. HE! They are having a son!
But as tests came back, it kept proving that their baby boy had some serious health concerns. He has been diagnosed with Trismoy 13. This is a really rare chromosomal, non-genetic health condition. Just random. The children diagnosed with this, either do not make it to full term, or have a very short life after they are born, ranging from a few seconds, a few hours, a few days, and if you are lukcy, a few months. This news was so hard to hear, espeically for Liz and the family.
We believe in a BIG God and a God who CAN heal! So we have all been praying for a miracle. They named their son Jonathan Lucas - Precious gift of Light! It's perfect. The work that the Lord has already done in Liz and Andy's life through Jonathan is truly incredible!!! The only way they are waking up and walking and functioning every day is because of their faith. God really does carry us when we don't think we can go any farther. I am SO proud of them. Jonathan has already changed many lives and we haven't even met him yet.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we had a gathering to honor Liz as a mom. We spent a lot of time in prayer over her and Jonathan, and we also created a little book with letters to Liz and Andy and Jonathan.
Jonathan is due on Christmas Eve, but through much prayer and discussion with the doctors, they all feel that inducing Liz 2 weeks early will greatly increase their chance to hold their son alive. THAT is their biggest prayer through all of this. They aren't consumed with "who's eyes will he have, oh I hope he's cute, what if he's a hard baby, etc" they just want to hold him while his heart is still beating. We take so much for granted when we know our children are "healthy." But there is no guarentee that the moment our babies are born, after having lived soley off of us as the mother for 9 months, that everything will snap into gear and work. However, we should also not live in fear. We need to be thankful for every moment we get!
So...today is the day Liz and Andy have chosen to meet with Dr's to begin the process of having Jonathan. She is at Swedish, and our pastor from our church is going to be there with them the whole step of the way. He has been so great through all of this, and unfortunately has walked thish road with many other couples losing a child.
My heart is heavy today wondering how she's feeling, what she's thinking, and the anticipation before her. I am praying that the Holy Spirit is SO present there with her and her family guiding them along through this. But I just can't imagine. I begin to cry when I think about their story. But I also rejoice knowing, that the moment God decides to take their son home, he will be PERFECTLY healed!!! And that is what gives me hope.
My mom bought a white rose today to think of Jonathan - a boy who she has never met, and she has never even met Liz, yet, she is still touched by him and his short life. He is Heaven bound!

If you read this, please pray for their entire family, as this would probably be one of the hardest things to go through. My heart is just so heavy for them today. Yet I know, God will be there helping them every step of the way.

This was in the middle of November. I'm so proud of Liz. She has carried him full term, and I believe he is so healthy with a strong heart beat because of how she has cared for him while he has been inside of her. They talk to him, read him God's Word, pray over him, and they LOVE LOVE LOVE HIM!!!
I can't wait to meet him one day in Heaven! He has some pretty special parents, that will be excited to meet him.
Jonathan Lucas, we love you, we don't understand why your time here will be shorter than most. It doesn't seem fair, but we believe in a big God who knows and see's the bigger picture. We'll know one day. Your mommy and daddy can't wait to hold you today or tomorrow when ever you come. They have been waiting for a while. We love you.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a whirlwind we've been on.

We drove down on Thursday to have Thanksgiving with my family. We had a great dinner, some good laughs, espeically at BK, then we went to bed early because we were going to have a long day of travel, going to Leavenworth for the weekend to make great memories, shop, take pics, etc. We had a hotel reserved, etc.

This was B playing in the kitchen and of course saying "Cheese" for the photo! Here is our family getting ready to eat dinner...

And Mom had gotten B a Christmas dress for some pictures in Leavenworth that we were gonna do, so this is Friday morning, before we got ready to head out over the mountains. What a cutie!
We were JUST getting ready to go, when we recieved a phone call that Lyle, Scott's dad, had a heart attack on Wednesday and was scheduled to go in for open heart surgery in the next few days.

Scott and I immediately decided we needed to go be with his dad and step mom before the surgery to support them and love on them. So we drove from Seattle, up to Canada, took a 2 hr ferry to Vancouver Island, and then drove down to Victoria, it was a longer day of travel that we had originally planned.
On the ferry

We got to see Lyle that night and visit with him, Brooklyn brought so much joy of course.
Lyle definintely didn't look well before his surgery. We got a call in the morning that he was going to go in that morning around 10:30am, so we fininshed breakfast, and went to the hospital and got to be with him until the moment they took him for surgery. He was very scared, but we were all praying.

About 5.5hrs later, we got a call that the surgery was done, and they had done a quadruple bypass. Things went as well as they could for the condition he was in. Scott, Brookly, me and Kathy headed to the hospital when he was moved to his recovery room and got to see him. That was very encouraging to see him. While it was sad to see all the tubes etc hooked up, he looked much better than before and we got to talk with a nurse who gave us some peace of mind.

There is a long road of recovery ahead of him, healthwise, but we're hopeful he has been given years to his life. His heart was in very bad condition.

17 weeks and 4 days

2011-11-22T15:47:00.001-08:00

I think this is kind of a blurry pic, but this was me today at 17.5 weeks just about. I might feel baby kick on ocassion but not big enough to really know. I didn't feel Brooklyn until after my 20 weeks appt. I am VERY anxious to know what I'm having. All of my dreams have been that it's a girl and it was the same way with Brooklyn, but I think it will be a boy. Ha! I don't know, we go back and forth all the time. With Brooklyn, I was already in materntiy clothes, and felt bigger all over. This one I am not in maternity pants yet and don't feel huge all over...yet. I have gained about 10lbs so far. Not too bad, but I'm hoping to keep this one under 30 lbs....we'll see. All that matters is a healthy baby anyways.
We go in December 9th! So make sure to vote!!

Finished!

2011-11-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

So it took a few weeks mostly because we had to spray a few coats of paint, and wait for the letters and numbers to come, but now it's finished!!!!
Here is the final product of the advent calendar!

It's not hanging up yet, I'll take a final pic once we have the scriptures and activites and candies in them! :-D I am really happy with how it turned out. I made it my own a bit, changed just a few things from the one that was online. I got the buckets at the dollar store (3 for $1 in the wedding section) and the flowers are dollar store too. Then Scott had the wood from work, so it was free. And the paint I bought at Michaels. HERE is where I found the idea. The "Merry Christmas" and the #'s came from HERE . I'm really happy with how it turned out and think it looks great. :-D We will also have a little tree advent calendar that my brother and I had as kids that will hang on BK's door too.

We just need to figure out how to hang it - it's pretty heavy so will need some heavy duty nails or screws to hang.
Anyways, enjoy!!

Pay It Forward

2011-11-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

This week at church, our pastor gave us all an assignment. That is, to buy someone else's coffee, or food, or anything behind us. It could be in a grocery store, coffee shop, fast food line, etc. But to just pay for someone and bless them.
So, I usually don't buy coffee since it's so expensive - espeically while pregnant, but I get decaf, or half-calf. You CAN have caffeine while pregnant they just suggest not in crazy amounts. Which I don't do. I like coffee on occasion, not every day.
So, I pulled up through the drive through and no one was behind me. I was sad. But finally as I was going to pick up my drink someone pulled up behind me. I told the cashier I'd like to pay for the order from the person behind me also. She asked if I knew them. I told her no. :-D She said, WOW that's really nice of you, do you want me to tell her who you are? I said no, just tell her to pay it forward to someone else. I have had someone do this for me and it's just a mood lifter. You never know what kind of morning that person has been having, and just to bless them by paying for their drink is such a blessing in itself.
It was a fun assignment to partake in. I know members of our church have been doing it all over the place. How fun. Just a simple way to show the world Jesus!!

Advent Calendar

2011-11-10T10:50:00.001-08:00

So, Scott and I have had many discussions about what we'd like Christmas to be in our home. It's very easy to get carried away about Santa and gifts during the Holiday Season, especially as a kid! Now, we do want our kids to experience the magic of Christmas, I have SO many good memories with my family through Christmas!!!

But we also want our kids to know the meaning behind Christmas, and to look forward to something Christ-centered during the season too. So we want to create some type of an advent calendar that's filled with a different activity for each day. Some will be simple: Decorate Chrsitmas tree, find ornament for tree, bake Christmas cookies, go see Christmas lights, etc. But each day will have a scripture we read about the Christmas story from the Bible, and then some days will be things like, write a letter to a missionary (or family) or military troops, then reading a Christmas Story about Jesus, watch a Christmas movie, and then Christmas Eve, I think we will open a present FROM Jesus and then as a family, give him a gift also - this might be forgiving someone we need to forgive, or do something nice for someone, something like that, that only we know what gift we are "giving" Jesus during this time. Doing something that we know would please Jesus.
Anyways, we have crafted out some fun family acitivites that we'd love to do together every year to create memories.

So, there are 2 advent calendars I'm debating on. I think we will probably do the bucket one, although the shoe holder one would hold a bit more - we might do a peice of candy, the scripture for the day then the activity, but I could make it work for the bucket one too. Here's a pic of each:
I know these shoe hangers are available at Bed Bath and Beyond, and this could be deocated pretty easy. Print the paper and numbers on computer paper, and then you could fill it -maybe we'll do this once we have more kids.

I think we are going to do this one! I am hoping to find the buckets in the wedding section of the dollar store, and then the numbers at Michaels and the magnet. Then Scott can get a scrap peice of wood from work. So we'll see which one we do, then I'll post pics of how it turned out!

Dance Bellingham Dance

2011-11-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

So this past weekend I got to participate in a pretty great event here in Bellingham. This summer, Young Life had a great idea to have a Young Life fundraiser, that would be kind of like "Dancing with the stars" but with "celebrities" of Bellingham.

So, they partnered with Dancing For Joy - the Christian dance studio I work at, to be the choreographers for 5 differnet couples. Each couple drew their style and I got my PASTOR and his daughter. Everyone else danced with their spouse, but Grant's (my pastors) wife has an eye disease and she is going blind, so dancing would have been difficult. So he danced with his 15 year old daughter.

I met with them a few times from Sept - November and choreographed a dance for them. There were 5 couples:
Grant and McKenna - Pastor of Christ The King - church of 5,000 here in Bham.
Lynette Morgan and husband - Christian Radio personality
Kirsten and husband - owners of popular coffee shop - Lettered streets cafe
The Bunnels - the Pastor of a different church here in Bellingham
Greg and Julie Clark - he was the principal of Bellingham High
And then there were 5 different dance styles:
Hip Hop
Waltz
Disco
Broadway Jazz
Modern
Grant and Mckenna drew ME - so I taught them hip hop.
It was SUCH a fun night. We raised money for Young Life which reaches out to kids in the community to teach them about Jesus. And we all had dinner, and Scott and I got to enjoy a great night out.
Here are some photos from the night. There were over 400 people that attended. It sold out - this was the first time they've ever done this. It was amazing!!

With Grant and Mckenna after the show! :-D I am in 3inch heels so I look huge!!
Oh and Grant and McKenna got 2nd place that night. There was a HUGE trophy for the winner - Broadway Jazz were they winners, they did great!!
AWESOME!!!!

DISCO

Broadway Jazz

Pregnancy cold?

2011-11-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

So I was sick in the middle of October, then just recently felt like I was sick again, but kind of a weird sickness. Just stuffed up in my nose all of a sudden, etc. Until I got THIS in my inbox this weekend once I hit 15 weeks of pregnancy...maybe this explains it. Read below:
You've probably gained about 5 pounds by now (a little more or less is fine, too) and are well into the swing of your pregnancy, but you may still be surprised by an unexpected symptom now and then. If your nose is stuffed up, for instance, you can probably chalk it up to the combined effect of hormonal changes and increased blood flow to your mucous membranes. This condition is so common, there's even a name for it: "rhinitis of pregnancy." Some pregnant women also suffer nosebleeds as a result of increased blood volume and blood vessel expansion in the nose.

Isn't that interesting?!?! Anyways, we'll see. I didn't have this with BK. I hope it goes away if it's pregnancy related. And if it's not, and it's a cold, I hope it goes away soon too.

Jesus Loves Me

2011-11-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

We sang this to Brooklyn a few weeks ago ever since then she has LOVED it. And she'll sing it sometimes too. I knew I had to get video of her singing because it's the sweetest thing. She loves music, but this is the song she sings all the time. I know you can't understand what she's saying and we can't either, BUT she says the same thing every time, so we know it's this song. This just melts my heart, and I know this is why we're told to have faith like a child. This is why Jesus loves his children. How could you not. It's just so precious. I'm sure this is what I sound like when I talk to God too and I love it. We are all His children. We melt his heart when we sing to Him, talk about Him, pray to Him, talk to Him, and include Him in our every day life. I know my kids are going to teach me so much about God.

Halloween Festivities

2011-11-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

A recent family photo at Stoney Ridge Farm. We love this place!

Fall!

Chris and Tanya visited again. They usually come up in the fall to play games, make great food, and go to some fun festive things! They are fun to have over. We made sugar cookies, pumpkin scones, carved pumpkins, made seeds, had stead fajitas, etc. We visited Stoney Ridge and enjoyed some cider donuts there, took the girls around and got some great photos. Natalie turned 2 this weekend. And her and BK are almost the same size. B is a tall girl, no doubt about it.

Great family photo!

Here are the pumpkins we carved this year. From left to right - Tanya carved a Cyclopes - used the stem as a nose, just hard to see in dark. Scott carved the face with flame type things on the face. I carved a silhouette of a woman, with a baby in the womb (can you tell? it's the one in the middle), then I carved a little #2 for baby, and then Chris carved the big pumpkin with the face, and then Scott carved one for BK, which is the bright shiny face...go figures! :-D Her personality even shines in a pumpkin!

Here is our trunk for this year. ALL of the decorations were some we already had at the church - except a few lei's, so I didn't have to spend money! Scott and I bananas, BK a monkey, so we did a tropical them. Every year our church does Trunk or Treat. It's our biggest outreach event. We have about 6,000 people who visit and walk through the trunks. We give them an invite to our church and we serve free hot cocoa, cider, pop corn, and we have games, photo booths, and $2 pizza and soda available too. For some people, it's some of the only food they get. There are all kinds of people that show up. Sometimes it's sad. Sad to see what parents allow their kids to dress as, sad to see grown adults asking for candy, and sad to see some of the family interaction. BUT there are also so many positives too. Great family event, we love on people, we play Christian music in the parking lot, and it's family friendly and kids can have a safe place to collect candy, and walk around. All of our church congregants donate candy towards this event. We have THOUSANDS of pounds of candy we give away. The pile of candy was literally probably about 5ft high and about 6ft wide. It's pretty crazy. But amazing to see everyone come together. It takes a lot of people to pull this night off for the community.

Scott and I were bananas, we borrowed the costumes from the dance studio. And BK was a monkey. :-D I want everyone to notice the green arrow on the ground. I was part of the Parking Lot Committee. I called all of the people to get the lights donated in the parking lot, we had a train for kids to ride around on, a fire truck and ambulence in the parking lot handing out candy - always a hit, and bounce houses for kids too. It's SO fun. BUT back to the arrows....last year there were SO many people and there was no real direction for anyone to "flow" through the trunks so it was a bit chaotic. So this year, I thought of putting arrows on the ground to help direct the flow of traffic. It took a while to cut them all out and then duct tape them, then I spent some of the afternoon on monday (Thankfully it didn't rain) so we taped them down. I was very surprised they lasted through the whole night, and most importantly, THEY WORKED!!! It was a great! They were very helpful. It was fun to see what I had been working on since Aug/Sept come together in October. Thanks for listening!

Here is our sweetest little monkey....

Brooklyn and Hallee rode the train! :-D They are the two tiny ones sitting together. Brooklyn really loved it and Hallee wasn't too sure.

First pic...

2011-10-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

Here I am at 13 weeks and 4 days....

13 Weeks

2011-10-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here's what's happening this week:
Fingerprints have formed on your baby's tiny fingertips, her veins and organs are clearly visible through her still-thin skin, and her body is starting to catch up with her head — which makes up just a third of her body size now. If you're having a girl, she now has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 inches long, the size of a medium shrimp, and weighs nearly an ounce.

It's crazy when I google 13 weeks pregnant, how many people are already showing!!! I might be a bit thicker in belly, but definintely not showing, everything fits pretty much the same. I'm up 4 lbs which I'm pretty happy about, as my weight gain with Brooklyn was much more rapid. I didn't really start showing until about 3rd trimester. Everyone says you should faster with baby #2...so we will see. I'm wondering how different this pregnancy will be if this baby doesn't get stuck breech. BK was breech from about 26 weeks on, so I think it limited her movement (even though I could feel her moving lots) she didn't really roll around, or flip etc. Her legs were tucked nice and high and her head stuck in my ribs! :-D

I think I'm past the hardest part of pregnancy and onto the fun part now!!

It is such a miracle how babies are formed, and how life begins inside of us. I'm amazed everytime. And thankful.

I'll be posting a gender poll, and a baby count down ticker. :-D

Bellewoods Apple Farm

2011-10-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, Oct 15th, Scott and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary. We celebrated part of the day with Brooklyn, by going to Bellewoods Apple Farms. It's right up the street from us and we have never been. They have over 25,000 apple trees. It was amazing. And it was SUCH a beautiful day. Here are a few pics from the day:

Lookin into a big bin of apples.

Family pic, oh how we love her! She brings so much joy to our lives. We can't wait for another one to join us in April!

Our smiley girl ready for her first ever train ride around the apple farm.

My loves.

"SWEETS!?!?!"

Happy 6th Anniversary

2011-10-15T10:57:00.001-07:00

These pictures are from Scott's cousin's wedding we attended in Sept. I thought they were funny and capture us. :-) Today we celebrate 6 years of marriage. I LOVE having an anniversary in the fall. It's such a beautiful time of year in WA. There are always fun festivites to do, yet it's cold and we can snuggle up and appreciate each other.

Today I think we are going to go on a walk, visit a pumpkin patch and let Brooklyn run around. Then later, our good friends are watching Brooklyn for free, and Scott and I are going to go to an Italian resturaunt here in town that we like. We have only been there 2 other times. We don't eat out a lot. But we really wanted to enjoy a dinner together. Then we are going to see Courageous. The movie about fathers. It's a Christian movie, so we want to support the movie and see it in theaters.

I can't believe it's been 6 years since Scott and I got married. It feels like it wasn't that long ago, but then it feels like forever ago. It was such a great day. I wish I could relive every year. :-D

A lot of life has happened in 6 years that's for sure.

I can't believe we have Brooklyn, and have a 2nd one on the way. We are so blessed. So blessed.

This is what I woke up to in the morning...and a sore throat. :-( It's going around, I hope it doesn't last long. I made scrambled eggs, sausage, toasts and some strawberries for breakfast.

Happy Anniverary Honey!

Brooklyn

2011-10-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not expecting many to read this post, but I wanted to write out some of the things she does. I feel like she is learning so much every day.

Words she says:

She pretty much says anything you say, she'll try to repeat it. But she says

Aubrey - Aw-bee

Hallee - Haaaa

Bee - Bee bee bee bee

Bellybutton - Bee-button (then she proceeds to lift her shirt and show everyone, or finds yours!)
Kitty - Meow!

Rock - Raaah

Bubbles - Bubba

Bubba (tubbs) - Bubba

Bottle - Baaa

Water - Wa wa

She signs Milk, More, Food, Please and All Done.

Please - peeese

Milk - mak

Food - fooooo

All done - aaa done

Boots - Booooooo Boooooooo

Shoes - Shooooos

Apple - Ap-pa

I am sure there are many more.

She is understanding so many things we say now. If we ask her to put something away, or go find something, she understands really well!

Yesterday she had some milk in her sippy cup and it spilled on the floor. She said UH OH and went and grabbed a little rag and went and wiped it up. What a sweetie. She is SUCH a helper. And such a good listener.

I can't even describe how much I love her. I try to soak in all of the moments I have with her. Because I know one day they will change and look different. It will be really inappropriate for me to kiss her all over her face, and blow on her belly. :-D Do parents of adults still wish they could squeeze the heck out of their children???? When does that go away? Maybe during the teen years. Maybe they still want to squeeze them, but for different reasons LOL!!

She's a doll. I adore her.

Thank you AT&T

2011-10-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the other day, I got my reminder that our AT&T bill was due. So I popped on, expecting to see our usual $140 or so amount due. It's a bit high, we might lower our minutes, but we have an unlimited texting plan and we also have a North American plan becuase we call Canada lots with Scott's family living there. We used to have Vonage for that, but AT&T had a better rate. So that's included in our plan now.
So, I got our bill and MUCH to my surprise, I saw a total of $334.00 due. WHAT?!?!?! This must be a mistake. So I got on the phone to call them. We didn't go over our minutes, we have unlimited texting, etc.
So I called AT&T and asked what had happened. Well...Scott and I traveled up to Canada on Labor Day weekend for 4 days. While we were there, I was thinking "of course we're covered to call and text in Canada because we have our North American Plan." Well...I can make as many calls as I want, with no charges....BUT, international texting is not included.
Well if you know me at all, I text, and I text A LOT. That weekend I texted my friend Lauren, and my mom a bunch. We texted pictures, and just had conversastions, etc. I was actually trying to text more, because I wasn't 100% sure if phone calls would be free, or charged, so I was trying to be careful.
SO.....each text was $.50 and each PICTURE text (which I sent quite a few) was $1.20!!! Oh man...I incurred $175 worth of charges JUST through my texting during those 4 days. I felt TERRIBLE. Trying to explain to Scott why we owe so much. We don't have that much extra money around for me to make a mistake like that.
I kindly asked, if there is anything they could do to help me out since I did this out of complete ingnorance. The woman was SO nice, and said they would extend a one time grace credit. She cut my bill in MORE than half.
She brought the total from $334 down to $175!!!!! I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thankful!!! I told her that I would thank AT&T and keep speaking highly of them, so here is my promise.
I have been very happy with my service with AT&T and even more so now!
Phew....I would have had to pick up a 3rd job just to pay for that phone bill. Gulp!

THANKS AT&T!!!

911 Dilema

2011-10-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

So we know we have a few years before we really need to worry about this, but Scott and I often find ourselves wondering if we should get a land line, or a pay as you go cell phone for emergency phone calls only.
When we were growing up, we all knew where the phone in the house was, and we knew how to dial 911. No tricky things to do, just pick up the phone, and dial.
Now with cell phones, if there was an emergency, one might not even know where their cell phone is, you might have a password that can't be figured out by a young child, it could be on a counter that they can't reach, etc.
I would hate to have an emergency happen with Scott or myself and my kids cannot find my cell phone or don't know how to use it. For this reason, we want a phone in the house that is easy to use, and always in the same place.
Do any of you have a phone in your house like this for emergencies?
Have you thought about this?
What is your plan?

It's happening already

2011-10-09T13:02:00.001-07:00

Brooklyn already gets guessed at ages a lot older than she really is. When you are an adult or even an older kid, being guessed as a year older isn't a huge deal. Sometimes we'd prefer to look a little older. But growing up as a tall girl, I was always thought to be older than I really was. And because I looked older, I was expected to act older.
This is already happening to BK. People ask me if she's 2 all the time. She's 1 year and 3 months....so 15 months...much closer to 1 than she is to 2. But she's wearing almost all 2T clothes and she's very interactive for her age. Although...what tends to happen, is since people think she's older, they think she's really behind. Why isn't she talking? Why is she still in diapers? Why doesn't she do more things. But in reality, she says a LOT of words for a 1 year old, she's STILL in diapers because she's only ONE!!!
I feel bad for her, but i know she'll learn to cope. But it's hard becuase people expect you to act a different way when they assume you are older. Anyways, I'm already running into this with strangers when we are out and about.
But on the flipside, she gets many comments about how cute she is, so that will help! :-D

Aftertaste...

2011-10-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

One of the only differences this pregnancy compared to Brooklyns was that staring around week 6 or so, I had this TERRIBLE aftertaste in my mouth. It went away for a while, but seems to have re-appeared. I HATE it!!!! It makes me want to eat all day long so I don't experience it. NOTHING makes it better, not eating, not drinking, not brushing my teeth, nothing. It's so annoying. I have a few friends that experienced that. But not many. Anyways, anyone have experience with that? So weird.

Big News!!!!

2011-10-07T09:48:00.001-07:00

That's right you guys!! Brooklyn will be a BIG SISTER!!!! It's really hard to blog when first pregnant because it's all I wanted to blog about, being tired, not feeling well, first finding out, etc. But I couldn't yet. I'm about 11 weeks along, and just had ultrasound and baby is looking great. So I wanted to post. It's harder to keep a secret the 2nd time it seems.
We found out Aug 20th. We had taken a test that KIND OF looked positive, but it was still early so we weren't sure. Took another one, it was negative, then waited a few days...but period never came which is unusual. So took another test on the 20th and it was positive.
I felt good up until about week 6. Weeks 6-8 were pretty terrible...weeks 5-7 were my bad ones with Brooklyn. But with this baby I have kind of had all day sickness. :-( It was hard...Brooklyn is SUCH a patient caring baby. There were days I felt so bad, she'd brush my hair and kiss me on the head. She's amazing. She's going to be SUCH a good big sister.
We had just been down at my parents, and I had tested before because I wanted to tell them a fun way that day if we were pregant...but I took the negative test....so we didn't say anything. So the night I took a positive test, I texted the pic to mom, and said "#2 Gmama!!!" She was very surprised and happy!!
For my brother and his wife, we were going down to visit them to have dinner. Scott and I quickly made a video before we went down there. I am going to post it below and hopefully it works.

Anyways, we are so excited to keep expanding our family. Becoming parents has been one of the BEST blessings we have ever experienced. God was right when he says children are a gift!!! I believe it!!

I'll post more through the weeks to come, but wanted to get this news out there!

Dad's belongings

2011-09-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

I need to do another post with some photos, but Scott and I just got back from California. We traveled (drove) down to Eureka to visit family down there, and go through a few of my dads belongings. It is a 12 hr drive and we were a bit nervous to take BK on that long of a trip, we stopped for potty breaks, and gas, and let her run around. She did AMAZING!!!!! She didn't even cry. Seriously, she'd read, play, eat and sleep. Ah, just incredible.

We had a good time visiting Paulette, and family. We had pizza dinner with them Friday night. My uncle Corb and Aung Marlyce were in town for her 50th year reunion!!! So we had breakfast with them Saturday morning. Then Saturday afternoon we went out to the Redwood Creek. This was where my dad spent his summers, and weekends, it was his "summer home" he called it. Everyone has trailers, and a little camp site, they decorate them usually with themes. Dad's friend the Nash's have "Nashville" or their other friends who do funerals, have named their site "Pushin up Daisy's" they are all very creative. Dad and Paulette's was the "Hoity Toity" bc dad had worked at this ritzy mansion in Eureka called the Ingomar Club, so they all thought he was too fancy to camp. :-D My dad has camped his entire life!! Anyways, we went up there to help Paulette close up for the winter. Tarp things up, sweep off leaves, and the roof, etc. It was good to be there. We feel close to dad there, he loved it there. Everyone loves it when Jake and I visit because they say it's like dad is there. It was neat to hear. And they hadn't seen Brooklyn since we were down there for dad's memorial. She was 8 weeks old. So they loved seeing her. She was quite the star, dancing and singing to the music. etc.

Sunday was a hard day. We went through a few of dads things. His clothes, to pick out anything we'd like to save, paperwork, old letters, etc. Dad had a file for us that he kept a bunch of things for us. Old letters he had written us, letters we had written him, a journal, and some other things. It was really speical, but also really really hard to read some of the stuff we read. We also found all of dad's magic tricks he used to do for us and friends. It was fun to go through that. Jake and I figured out a few of them, but still can't figure out the others. Dad was so good at them. He loved entertaining people. Paulette had to leave the house while we went through dad's things. It was too painful for her. Just another step of letting go. She knows it needs to happen, but it was still really painful for her. And us. There moments we just felt like dad would show up. It's so strange being there with out him. There are reminders of him everywhere. It's never easy going back. We also found a tape he had made with Jake and I before he moved to California. I was 9 and Jake was 12. It was really funny to hear our voices back then. Dad was talking about what we want to be when we grow up and asking us questions, and then talked about how one day he'll be gone, and we'll listen to this tape and remember dad, etc. Oh man....that was hard to hear....he was always thinking about that, making memories with us, and doing things that he knew would matter when he was gone. And they do now.

Anyways, I'll upload some pics in the next few days. I gotta get going on my day and Brooklyn is awake.

Labor Day Weekend

2011-09-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

We had not been out to visit Scott's parents on Vancouver Island since Sept/Oct of last year so we decided to go over for our Labor Day Weekend. We hadn't made reservations for the ferry and it was a long weekend for both Canada and the US, so we had to leave the house at 4am to travel up and make it for the 5:15am ferry. I wasn't happy, but knew we had to get there early other wise we'd spend all day in lines. Eek.....we had a beautiful sunrise though.

These are a bit out of order, but I'll just comment on them. This particular weekend it was so warm! We put BK in a little outfit that Nana got her for her birthday, it's 18 months, but she is in most all 2T clothes. This was BK's trip to the canadian ocean and she played around a bit, but mostly just walked and explored. What a cute...

We drove about 20 min to a lake called "Spider Lake" I guess because it's shaped like a spider, not because there are spiders there, which I was thankful for :-D But this is a really shallow, sandy lake so it was pretty warm. We stayed here for most of the afternoon, it was a great time. Here's a pic of Nana and Papa at the lake with Brooklyn.

Here's BK showing her sweet belly!

She ate some good grub at Nana and Papa's, her favorite was Papa's spaghetti! She isn't clean with it that's for sure!

Papa, Scott, BK and Nana. Kathy just had to have a bit of skin cancer removed from her face, so she had some stitches and a rather large scar. But she got the stitches removed that day and her scar looks great! It will heal very nicely.

Here is B at a water park we took her to. She wasn't so sure about this, and isn't crazy about cold water, but she loved watching the kids run around.

Scott and Butts (long story how he got his name, but basically, when he was little everyone called him "Buttons" and then it just got shortened to Butts. He NEVER goes by his first name, which is Richard, funny huh?) Anyways, we visited his church, so this pic was snapped after church. Butts is in charge of reading the kids Bible story to the kids before they go downstairs for their time with sunday school teachers and snack time. We peaked in on B and she was having so much fun with all the kids. :-D She is so independent and so social.

And just another cute pic of B at the beach.

Coming soon

2011-09-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a little Labor Day vacation on Vancouver Island. So I'll be posting pics and a blog soon.

"The Dessert"

2011-08-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

I went to a friends house one time for dinner, and they were cooking dessert for us. It smelled delicious so when I asked what it was, they simply said "Oh!! It's THE DESSERT!!!" After having it that night, it has become my staple dessert to cook if we need something quick, easy, and delicious to bring somewhere or have for guests.

I made it today for our church staff picnic and decided to take pictures of the process and post here on my blog incase any of you find yourself needing a quick idea. It's not the healthiest but I definintely don't think it's SOOO terrible. It's probably right in the middle.

So here's what you need:

A 9x13 pan

1-2 bags of frozen fruit

(I usually always use mixed berries - blueberries, blackberries and respberries) but I know others who have used peaches, or strawberries, or just blueberries, etc. I would imagine just about anything works.

1 box of yellow cake mix
1 stick of butter

-Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

-Place the frozen fruit in the pan

-Dump the cake mix powder over the fruit

-Cut the stick of butter in slices and distribute evenly over the mix

- Put in the oven for about 30 min, or until brown on top and the fruit is bubbling and you're DONE!

- Good by itself, but BETTER served with Vanilla Ice Cream!

Brooklyn's Words

2011-08-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

I just have to write these down before I forget. We have learned some of Brooklyn's language and it's so fun to hear her saying words, or rather, her version of words.

Here they are:

Mama

Da Da

Doggie = douggiie

Amen = A-muh

Night Night = ny ny

Uh oh = Uh (pause) Oh (with a very "O" shaped mouth

Cheese - Chzzz

JJ (the son of the family who watches her) = day day

Bottle = Ba or sometimes Ba Ba

Baby = BB and she folds her hands and swings them like she is rocking a baby

The funniest one is Tubbs - she says Tuuuuuu, and then it's usually followed by waving her pointer finger and saying no-no-no-no-no probably because I am always saying no to him. He is always trying to eat her food, or we come home and he's eaten something in the house (he ususally doesn't do this, but on occassion he will!) Like the other day Scott went to the little local farmers market and got some carrots, lemons and onions. We came home and EVERY single carrot was eaten (these were full sized carrots) and there were punctures in the onions and lemons. Anyways, it's just hilarious because she will tell almost each dog she sees "no no no no no" LOL! It's pretty funny!

She is a chatterbox and learning how to make different sounds, it's so fun!

Bye bye drumset

2011-08-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Many people don't know, unless you went to high school with me, that I played the drums. I began playing in the 5th grade. I almost quit when I got to high school because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be in band anymore, and also playing basketball and taking piano lessons etc. But 2 older guys from high school knocked on my door one day and told me I couldn't quit. :-D And I didn't, and I'm so thankful.

High school band were some of my best memories and I made some great friends. We even played in Carnegie Hall in NY.

Anyways, for my 16th birthday my Mom and Mark bought me a drumset! I was SOOOOOO excited!!! I think they will have the pictures! So I played that for the next few years while in High school. Once I moved away to college, it didn't get used anymore. Then wherever Scott and I lived, we couldn't have a set. Now we have storage in our house, but the set just sat in our shop. We've been wanting to see it for a while, I just wanted someone to use it and appreciate it like I used to. I knew I wouldn't be playing it anytime soon.

So thanks to FACEBOOK, I saw that my friend from church was looking for some drum set parts...and I mentioned that I have an entire drumset - and a pretty good one.

Anyways, long story short, we have sold it. And Chris is so happy, and so am I! Right after he bought it, he had a gig at the Lynden Fair, and he told me to come out to see it. We were there the day he was playing so I snapped a few shots of my set in action. It looked and sounded great. I'm so glad that it's getting used and Chris is blessed by it. Hopefully my kids will believe me one day when I tell them that I played the drums ;-) I have pictures to prove it!

Lynden Fair and Woodland Park Zoo

2011-08-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

We had a great weekend and week last week. Our friends from Lake Chelan were in town! They have never been up this way (while we have lived here at least) so it was exciting to see them in our area. I went to school with Damian and then lived with Jamie and then they got married! :-D They have a son that is just 2 weeks younger than Brooklyn. His name is Judah, it was so fun to see them together!
Here is a picture of Judah and Brooklyn looking at the baby chicks at the fair and Damian holding Judah. We didn't get any pics all together...so frustrating...we were just too busy. :-( But we had a great time.

We were pushing the nap schedule a little bit. BK is usually such a good sleeper in her stroller, she usually just kicks back and goes to sleep. But I think there was so much to look at that she just couldn't fall asleep. So we had finally arrived to the petting farms and animals (we had waiting all year to take BK there) and she was NOT a happy camper!! LOL!!! She was almost over excited, that she was just crying. She eventually calmed down and looked at the animals...and then eventually fell asleep. We really enjoyed the fair this year though. And it was fun to have some out of town guests also.

We listened to our friend Mike sing at the fair, and a few of our kids enjoyed a snack together. All of these babies are weeks apart. Sam, the boy farthest from camera is 3 days younger than Brooklyn, and Hallee, as mentioned before is 6 weeks younger than B. They all get a long well and shared their snacks very well. It's so fun to see her interacting with other kids. She also danced along to the music which was fun to see.

Then last weekend, we drove down to Seattle to celebrate my good friend Chris's 29th Birthday. We decided to go to the Woodland Park Zoo for the afternoon. It was fun, many animals were out. There were, however, lots of people there. I really try not to judge people, but I feel like, now that I'm a parent, I'm more aware that it appears that there are many parents out there who should not be having kids. It's very sad. There were parents swearing at their kids, and kids that just looks so sad and like they come from hard homes. :-( Or parents dressed really inappropriately (espeically for a zoo) and you can just tell that family life is hard at home. It broke my heart. I do know that we are pretty sheltered up here in Bellingham, we are fortunate that we are surround by great friends, and great families. Although, sometimes it just makes me really unaware of the pain and hardship families and children face. I am very blessed to have been raised in the family I was with the parents I had...and to also have friends in my life who are doing a great job raising their families.

Here is a pic of all of us - minus Scott - he was taking the pic. Again, Chris and I have been friends now for over 20 years. We have daughters that are 9 months apart. It's very fun. Tanya his wife is great, and they also brought along their neice Lyla.

Here's a picture of Brooklyn looking at the penguins! She had a great time. We also finished the night by going to a "child-free" dinner!!! Thanks Mom and Mark for watching Miss B while we got to have adult conversation and not worried about what our children just threw on the ground or put in their mouth! It works out well, my parents love Miss B and enjoy spending time with her and we got to enjoy a great evening out. It was a great day!

21 Century

2011-08-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Hi there, I am writing, in my bed, from our NEW laptop!! I remember being pregnant last year thinking "I really wish we could afford a laptop!" I wanted to write from the comfort of my couch, outside, our bed, or anywhere I choose. We have had a desktop since we've been married, with a desk I got from Best Buy when I worked there, and we sit on our hard dining room chair when we'd type. It's not a nice large desk, it would be one a college student would maybe have (well most college students now probably have laptops! :-D)
So Scott and I were going to ask for money towards a laptop for Christmas because we knew we'd really want one eventually.
I got a Costco coupon pack in the mail and they seemed to have some good deals. And also, I taught a 6 week Hip Hop Class for a gym in town and earned $300. I also sold my drum set (I'll do a seperate post on that) so we brought in another $400 of income. That was enough for us to purchase our laptop. It was $699...but costco had a deal that they are $130 off so it was only $549 after all was said and done. We felt GREAT about that. It's very nice, and will be perfect for what we use our computer for.
It's a Toshiba.
I'll try to find the model and post a pic. We're really happy and I feel like I'll be able to keep up on my blogging a little bit better. I'm SO excited!!!!
And now, we can also take our desk out and our desk top and make that more of a formal dining room area...it has been kind of a mix-match area. We're very excited!

Oh my goodness, it's been a long time!

2011-08-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Oh man, I feel like we have been so busy. How the inside of our house looks is always a good gage for me. If it's a disaster, it means we haven't been home much. Anyways, here is a littel bit of catch up for the rest of July that I have missed.

We had planned to do a bonfire with some friends for a while, and it just so happened that they day we did it, it was POURING. But we wanted to be together anyways. Here are our fire pics in JULY!! It was terrible. I was in my winter coat. :-( But we still had a great time BBQ-ing burgers, and making dough-boys and s'mores!

We just returned from camping in Winthrop and we had a great time. We went with our friends Allison and Cody Linbloom, and Mike and Amber Hohnholz, with their ALMOST 1 year old, Hallee. We have never been to Lake Pearrygin before and we loved it!

Sweet Hallee Jo who is 6 weeks younger than Brooklyn, but was walking before Brooklyn! It's fun to watch these 2 so close in age play, figure stuff out together, and hit different milestones!

YUM Spaghetti!!!!

Our view from our campsite - the park and lake!

Cody and Allison

All of us stopped on the road for construction! We played some good rounds of Catchphrase while we waited. It was gorgeous!!

A bit stir crazy waiting...

All in all we had a great time, good fellowship with friends, and great weather. Scott's been working every Saturday since Feb, so it was nice to share a weekend with him. He met us over there after work on Friday.

1 year update

2011-07-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn is 1 now, and went in for her 12 month check up! She is right on track (or even advanced) for everything. She even took her first few steps last night at our friends house. She was at my moms, and my mom had a fishy cracker and a pretzel and Brooklyn took a few little baby scooch steps. But last night, our friend Steve had a little cat toy and Brookly got up and walked right too him! She even kind of fell and got herself back to standing position and kept walking, I didn't even know she knew how to do that!! We were in SHOCK so we didn't think to take pictures or video! So we're hoping to get some in the next few days.

Here are here stats for her 1 year check up:
Height - 32 3/4 in - so almost 33 inches tall - over 95th %
Weight - 25lbs - 95th %
Head - I think was 48 cm - over the 95th %

She is a big growing girl.
We get to try peanut butter, and honey and fish and whole milk now. New things to introduce to her diet. :-)
She is completely done nursing, she went right about to a year then lost interest in her final feeding that I was doing. So she's really turning into her own girl. She is so sweet!

4th of July

2011-07-14T10:08:00.001-07:00

The 4th was a gorgeous weekend. Usually it doesn't get nice until after the 4th. Although last year while we were in the hospital with Brooklyn, the weather was beautiful too. But we had a great day. Last year we had just had Brooklyn so we were still in the hospital, the year before we left to head down to my dad's for 5 days, and the following years, we went to Firwood to watch fireworks.

This year we went to some friends house on Lake Whatcom. We had a really great low key time. We weren't sure if we would stay for fireworks if BK got too tired, or scared with the sound, but true to her character, she was a champ!

In her red, white and blue!

Daddy and daughter out on the lake!

Kayaking! She was too cute in this life jacket! She didn't put up a fuss though.

This girl LOVES LOVES LOVES watermelon!!! She got it everywhere, but enjoyed it!

The group - Brooklyn, Scott, me, Mike and Amber with Hallee (B and Hallee are 6 weeks apart), Chelsea, Allison and Cody!

I love this lake. This is the lake we'd spend a week or 2 every summer on at Camp Firwood. So gorgeous.

Fireworks on the dock

We like to say that Brooklyn is saying "I'm ONE!!!" in this picture!! Family pic before we left for the evening. Brooklyn got in about a 30 min snooze, then woke up to some fireworks, but loved watching them. We had to work the next morning so we needed to get headed home.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 1st Birthday Brooklyn

2011-07-08T09:28:00.001-07:00

Here is the Birthday Girl!!!

We could not have asked for a more perfect day for BK's 1st Birthday!! The day was fabulous!! We scheduled the party for 3pm so she could get her last afternoon nap in. But she must have known it was a special day because she didn't take her 2nd afternoon nap that day. She was happy though which is great.

Here were the cake balls in the freezer. I did a new born pic of her on one side and a more recent picture of her on the other side. They turned out great.

Green and yellow!

It was so easy to be creative with these colors!

Here is her cake! It turned out well. I didn't like my ribbon but it's all I had...it just wasn't that pretty. But it was fine.

Limeaid that Mandie my sister in law made, it was delicious and so pretty!

Green and yellow! I didn't get a pic of the fruit and veggies on these trays, but we had cucumer, celery, broccoli, and yellow and green pepper. Then pineapple, green grapes, green apples, and bananas!

The cake balls went under this cute cover - FROM THE DOLLAR STORE! :-D It kept them covered and looked cute. I also pulled some of the hay and yellow flowers from our field for the table as well.

Here is the set up - with Tubbs, Brooklyn and Scott enjoying the sun in the backyard. It was GORGEOUS!!

We all sang Happy Birthday - we are so proud!

She didn't totally dig into her cake, she is a very cautious little girl. But she did manage to get a little dirty. :-D

Her new ride from Uncle Jake and Auntie Mandie...she LOOOOVES this car!

Here is the pool my mom got for BK. It's so great! You plug the hose it and it inflates the border, and then water sprinkles out. I feel like it's safer, it's not deep water. If you turn the hose off and let it sit there for a while, the water kind of "pools" and it gets warm. It's so cute and she enjoyed playing in it.

Check out her green and yellow outfit...and she's diggin this ride!

Somebody is 1 soon!

2011-06-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I really really can't believe my daughter is almost 1!! Where has this year gone? I ask that question and sometimes it's painfully obvious where the year went, LOTS has happened, but other times, it feels like it's only been weeks. I cannot imagine my life with out Brooklyn. Where we'd be, what life would look like. It's SO much more full with her. :-D

Her birthday is July 2nd, and I'm planning her 1st birthday. We won't do huge parties for all of our kids every year...we have many years to do that, but their first birthday is more for the parents, grandparents and friends. It's fun to do something fun.
So I'm doing a green and yellow theme! Should feel summery - after I had picked those colors, I realized SO MUCH is green and yellow. EVEN our back yard is all green and our fields have yellow buttercups! It's perfect. But I got the idea from the blog - hostess with the mostess, man that makes me want to plan a ton of parties ;-) But she had an all yellow theme, and I thought that'd be fun, but I wanted another color so I added green.
There are tons of decorations at our dollar store, green and yellow, so we will do most stuff from there, cheaply. I have a few green and yellow things around the house, vases, jars, flowers, etc. And then we'll do all foods that are green and yellow...
Corn on cob
Popcorn
Corn bread
Celery
Cucumber
Broccoli
Green Peppers
Yellow Peppers
Curry Chicken skewers
Lemons
Limes
Bananas
Apples
Chips
Guacamole
Grapes
Cheese
Green candy
Yellow candy
Lemonade
Limeade

The list can go on and on what you could have there!!!! We probably wont' have all of that, but you get the idea.
I am also going to make cake balls (green and yellow) for everyone to eat. They are GREAT portion size and super easy to make.
Then for BK's cake, I'm doing something cute. :-D I'll be sure to post pictures afterward. I've done something like it before, but this will be a little bit different. It should be great.

I'm just so excited!!! The weather is looking like it's going to be sunny and about 70 which is great, I just hope it stays that way. We have had so many parties IN our house, but we have such a great deck and back yard that I really want to use it, and have everyone outside. So praying the weather sticks and stays nice.

I will be posting pics when the party is done. I can't believe my little girl is 1!!
Here is a newborn pic and a recent pic!
Look how tiny she was to fit inside her Boppy. I remember this day so well. She was full of smiles, 8 days old. It was SO hot. She spent many days just in a diaper! What a sweetie...

And here she is at 11.5 months...almost a year. Cuter than ever, I kid you not, the HAPPIEST baby I have ever met. Really, not even exaggerating. She is SO content, SO happy! I love her!!
Happy almost 1st Birthday BK!

Day trip to Seattle

2011-06-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

I took Tuesday off work to go to Seattle (haven't been down since April) to visit with my bestie Lauren!! Her dad just underwent bypass surgery and it's been a bit of a journey since then. Obviously there is a place deep in my heart for this. So I wanted to go down, hang out with her and see her Daddy. I practically grew up with him too.
Lauren and I have been best friends since 3rd grade!! That's 20 years!!!! We used to always say that when we grew up we'd marry boys that were BEST friends too, and we'd live in a "condom"....y'know...a condominium!! And we'd have babies together....well, we have done all of that, except for the living in the comdom part ;-)
Our babies are 4 months apart, and we always joke about their arranged marriage.
We text every day, and we always remind each other how BLESSED we are by our babies!!

Here are some pics from my trip down!

Us with our babies!! :-D It was super bright so the kids faces are funny! So sweet!

We stepped into the shade for this pic. Samson was reaching for BK.

At the park on our walk

Samson was passed out and BK was watching some kids play soccer.

It was so beautiful this day on our walk! Lake Washington, great great walk!

I will come down for a day and spend it with Lauren and no matter how long it is, it is NEVER enough time, we always have so much we want to talk about and then we just never get a chance, because the day is up before we know it. We always leave wanting more time. We talk all day long, but there is always so much more! :-D I guess that's why we are best friends. I had such a great day.

Summer's coming...WEATHER or not...

2011-06-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

I say weather or not, because we have NOT had very sunny weather, I think we have had 2 or 3 days that have been 70 degrees and that's it. :-( YUCK! Hoping for a GREAT JULY and AUGUST at least!

But the one nice day we have had so far (UGH) me and B soaked up the rays. She loves the sun and just sitting outside. I put a TON of sunscreen on her, so not to worry!
This particular day she was sporting the 2 piece Gmama got her! SO cute, and 2 pieces for babies is so much easier for diaper changes!
She LOVES reading and her FAVORITE book is "I like School." It's a Sesame Street one. She picks it out every time, and loves "reading" it. One day she opened it up and pointed to Bert and said "da da" so now every time you ask her where Daddy is, she points at any picture of Bert! It's pretty hilarious! I have a video!!! I'll post it! And I don't point right at it, I do a sweep of the page....
Ok, well the video is not working right now, I'll have to try later.

Anyways here are some pictures from that day:

My little studious reader!
Here are some pics of a few nice nights hanging out with friends, making a bonfire, and eatin dough boys!

Brian and Wendy's back yard! The kids playing, dogs playing and a fun game of backyard baseball had just finished!

Hallee and Brooklyn (6 weeks apart) co-swinging - they loved it!

Brooklyn LOVES swinging!!

So excited to see her friends and the fire! She was such a big girl sitting in this chair...

And....this is what happens when Mommy leaves BK alone with daddy - CRAZY hair!!!

Fathers Day

2011-06-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Today is Fathers Day. It hasn't hit me yet that I don't have mine to celebrate. But thankful I get to honor Scott today as his first Fathers Day. We woke up and made a big breakfast - eggs, sausage, toast, coffee and juice. Our little girl loved on him and melted our hearts of course, like she does every day.
Scott had a dad and a step dad still a part of his life, and I have my step dad to celebrate today. We are all going out to an early dinner today before the dance recital.

I got through my dad's anniversary pretty well. It was the days leading up to it that were extremely hard and painful. I talked to a friend who has experienced a loss of a different kind, but she said she resounded with the fact that the pain is in those days before. Walking through the Sunday, that a year before was normal, I probably texted dad, and chatted with him. Then the Monday, the day before we got that phone call, it was just painful to remember that a year ago to that date, we still *knew* he was going to make it out of all of this. Then that Tuesday June 14th, the year date of getting that call, it was so painful to walk through that day. :-( I had a lot of support from friends which was great.
I think I cried so much that it released something and I got sick. I have been sick for almost a week now, pretty bad too. I think the anxiety of this week with my dad's passing, fathers day and 2 big shows for the studio caught up to me.

Anyways, Scott and I are so thankful to be parents and thankful for our little blessing and the joy she brings to us every day...it never gets old. Ever.

I will post some pics too, I need to do a picture update.

Happy Fathers day to my dad, and step dad, and to Scott - a great, selfless, compassionate, sensitive, caring, father!!! Brooklyn adores you!

Waiting in the middle...

2011-06-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the day we got the phone call from my stepbrother that my dad had decided to go off of his meds. I remember the time, where I was on the couch, and the shock my body felt. Yesterday marked the last day I spoke with my dad. You can read more about that phone call here if you wish.
And today is the day I sat on my couch all day long....waiting. My brother was driving down to be with my dad, I of course couldn't because I was 2 weeks away from having Brooklyn, it was too dangerous. I remember getting updates from my brother along the way, and contacting Paulette through the day as to how dad was doing. He had stopped speaking, and was just smiling all day. My brother arrived that evening, and dad passed the next day.
Today is the weird middle day. The day after we got the unexpected phone call and knew life would change.
Then I just waited.
And tomorrow is the year anniversary of his passing. A year. A year??
I haven't spoken to my dad in over a year now. I haven't see him, heard him, texted him, called him, etc. It's just a surreal feeling. I'm still learning to process it all.
Then fathers day is 3 short days later this year. I still do not understands God's timing in any of this, any of it. But I just keep following, and believing and claiming His promises. I'm learning a lot. His death has changed me, for the better I think. But it doesn't make it easier.
Most people my age still have their parents, they haven't faced that loss yet. So I feel like it's the silent pain and loss that I carry around daily. But the reality is, that we all carry around silent pain and loss of some kinds. Everyone's just looks different.
This is why we are in such need of a Savior! This life is TOO hard to get through on our own, which is why we were never meant to do it alone. We need fellowship, friendship and community to help carry us when we can't carry ourselves anymore.

We started a small group last night with a group of friends we have here in town. We are reading 1 John together, so we read Ch 1 together and just talked about what it means to us, etc. We are relatively new friends, so we thought it'd be a great idea to go around our group and share our stories, our testimonies, what we've been through and how we have seen God's hand in our lives. It was so special and powerful listening to what everyone has come through. God is SO good and SO big!! We're excited for this group!

I have a sore throat and pounding head today. I'm almost certain it's because I cried so much yesterday. I am not a huge crier, but when I do, I feel like something gets released and I get sick. :-(

There are times that I am thankful for the time of my dads passing as it's a very BUSY time for me with school ending, the recital, and then in 2 weeks, celebrating Brooklyn's 1st birthday.
However, on the flip side of that, there is no great time to lose a parent, and it's most painful that it's always around fathers day, and Brooklyn's birthday. I miss him, I'm thinking about him, and I always will..

Songs

2011-06-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

Again, I'm always touched by music, and I have found a few good ones lately. This one spoke to Scott, and I listened to it. It's such a great, and true song.
Enjoy!
It's called "My Daughter's Father"
Well, I can't imbed it right now, but here is the link for you tube.
CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO
I'll post the lyrics.

I GUESS IT’S HUMAN NATURE
TUGGIN’ AT MY SLEEVE
THAT GETS ME THINKING TOO MUCH
‘BOUT WHAT I’M ‘SPOSED TO BE
I KEEP AIMING HIGHER
LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE
FORGETTING WHAT I NEED TO BE
IS JUST TO BE MYSELF

CHORUS:
IT’S NOT LIKE EVERYBODY’S WAITING
TO SEE IF I’LL GO FAR
IT’S NOT LIKE EVERYBODY’S WATCHING
THOUGH SOMETIMES I THINK THEY ARE
I DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD
I DON’T HAVE TO WALK ON WATER
ALL I HAVE TO BE
IS MY DAUGHTER’S FATHER

SHE’S JUST LIKE HER MAMA
WHEN IT COMES TO ME
COULDN’T FOOL HER IF I TRIED TO
TO HER I’LL ALWAYS BE
NOTHING MORE THAN DADDY
AND WHEN SHE SAYS THAT WORD
IT A WONDERFUL REMINDER
OF WHY I’M ON THIS EARTH

IT’S NOT LIKE EVERYBODY’S WAITING
TO SEE IF I’LL GO FAR
IT’S NOT LIKE EVERYBODY’S WATCHING
THOUGH SOMETIMES I THINK THEY ARE
I DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD
I DON’T HAVE TO WALK ON WATER
ALL I HAVE TO BE
IS MY DAUGHTER’S FATHER

A MAN IS OFTEN MEASURED
BY WHAT HE DOES IN LIFE
IT MADE MINE WORTH LIVING
WHEN I REALIZED

IT’S NOT LIKE EVERYBODY’S WAITING
TO SEE IF I’LL GO FAR
IT’S NOT LIKE EVERYBODY’S WATCHING
THOUGH SOMETIMES I THINK THEY ARE
I DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD
I DON’T HAVE TO WALK ON WATER
ALL I HAVE TO BE
IS MY DAUGHTER’S FATHER

YEAH ALL I HAVE TO BE
IS MY DAUGHTER’S FATHER

Peek A Boo

2011-06-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Wanted to upload another video of BK. This is her playing Peek a Boo. She loves it. If she has a book or a blanket, and you say "where's Brooklyn?" she'll hold it up and hide behind it. :-D

Birthday party, Brooklyn, recipe and a bird

2011-05-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

We had my birthday party here this weekend. There were about 20 of us. I wanted to have a BBQ and play Bunco! The weather was terrible, but Scott still managed to grill some good burgers, we had great food, and we played Bunco. I love Bunco, and the longer you play the louder and crazier it gets. We had a great time. We forgot to pick up our camera, so we don't have a ton of pictures, but here are a few.

Brooklyn is a BIG kisser! She loves giving kisses and thinks she's quite funny when she does! :-D Here is BK kissing her grandmama!

Me and Lauren! Besties since 3rd grade, now married with our babies. Samson and Brooklyn are exactly 4 months apart. Samson March 1st and Brooklyn July 2nd. :-)

Auntie Michelle with Brooklyn!

People and food!

Bunco! Scott decorated our shop and put the tables out, balloons, streamers, food, etc. He did a great job!

The kiddos!

It's fun to have kids at parties now! As more and more of my friends are having babies. However, it does make the dynamic of birthdays different. :-D When we were playing bunco we had a few of my dance students watch the kids inside...well one starts crying, one misses their mom, etc. So kids definitely add a different dynamic! But it's fun to see everyone's kids together.

Here are just a few shots of Brooklyn - with pizza face!

And this one is just cute! I love this girl so much! She just fills up my life!!!

Ok and then I wanted to post this recipe. It's from my cooking light cookbook. I made it yesterday because we had the ingredients! It is SO delicious!!

So the recipe calls for couscous, which would be delicious, but I used quinoa.

FRESH MOZZARELLA, TOMATO, AND BASIL COUSCOUS (or quinoa) SALAD

2 cups diced tomatoes (you can do as much as you want)
3/4 cup (3 oz) diced fresh mozzarella cheese
3 tablespoons minced shallots (I used 2 green onions)
2 tbls olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 garlic clove crushed
1 1/4 cup water
1 cup uncooked couscous
(or follow quinoa measurements for 1 cup uncooked)
1/4 cup chopped basil (or to taste)

Combine tomatoes, cheese, shallots, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic (and I added the basil) in a large bowl and let sit in fridge for 30 min.
Follow regular cooking directions for couscous or quinoa. Fluff with a fork, cool. Add couscous to mixture in bowl, toss gently. Serve.
It's full of good grains, proteins, and veggies. And is filling. Yum!

And the last picture is of this bird that landed on a bush in our front yard this morning. It's rare (I think) to find or see a bird this colorful. It was so beautiful and reminded me of a tropical bird. I just wanted to appreciate it, so here's the pic!

My 28th Birthday

2011-05-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my 28th birthday....28...it's crazy to think 10 years ago I was 18 and in high school. Time flies, but it also seems like a LONG time ago.
We are having a birthday party at the house here this weekend with some friends, BBQ, and playing BUNCO! I have never played at any of my parties, but I LOVE this game, I'm excited to play!
So yesterday was pretty low key. Scott got me some sessions with a personal trainer for my birthday/mothers day gift. He knows I'm trying really hard to get back in shape, and this is hopefully the kick I needed. It's been so great. I meet with her 2x a week. So I got my butt kicked for my birthday yesterday :-D
Then came home, cleaned the house up a little bit, and relaxed.
Scott came home, and he had 2 bouquets of flowers for me, and the fixings for us to make homemade pizza for dinner. I LOVE pizza, but this is a healthier option. So he made a meat pizza and I made margarita (tomatoes, motzarella, and basil).
But he also handed me a CD that said "CD from Dad" on it.
A few months back my brother gave me a tape cassette of dad that my dad had made many years ago. The idea was that we'd send this tape back and forth and record stories, tell him who our friends were, what we're up to etc. So dad started it, and he read an article about happiness, sang a bunch of songs, played the keyboard, the guitar, and the harmonica. He told us how much he loves us and even though we are seperated by distance (he lived in California....but it seems fitting now that we are STILL so very far apart) that he loves us and we always see the same moon so to look up at it and know how much he loves us, etc.
Anyways, Scott took that tape into a professional and got it cleaned up a bit (the tape is probably 15 years old so it has a lot of weird noises) so they cleaned it up and put it to CD. SO thoughtful and SO special for me to have.
Yesterday was a great day, and I'm so thankful for all of the phone calls I got and texts I got. My mom calls me at 1:54pm, the time I was born, and I got lots of FB messages etc. But I felt like I was waiting for one more phone call the whole day.
I felt a huge void, waiting for my dad to call and wish me a happy birthday. He'd always pretend to not know my age, and make up a funny age.

I vividly remember talking to him last year on my birthday. I was about 7 months pregnant, and just wanted a low key birthday, so we went and got sandwhiches, and went on a walk, and then went to the lake and had a picnic. Dad called me while we were out there. Here is a picture from that day...
I just had no idea a month from that evening he'd be gone. Just still walking through a lot of these one year anniversaries is hard. I was a bit emotional yesterday. I guess knowing that I don't have a dad that calls me on my bday anymore (NOT discounting my inlaws, or stepdad, but it's just not the same) and then got carried away thinking about when I lose my mom, how empty things will feel with no parent to call me and wish me a happy birthday. Maybe it's selfish, but it's just what I was thinking about. I do hope and know that when that time comes, hoping it's MANY years away, that I will hopefully have more children and they will fill my life, and they will be the joy that gets me through days like today. Along with Jesus. He has really walked me through some hard things and has been so faithful.

Anyways, I really had a great birthday. I'm so thankful for everyone in my life, and my loving husband who did his best to make the day special. And it was.
Here are a few pics from our dinner...there aren't any pics of me...I guess we forgot. :-D Maybe I'll take one today and pretend it was from yesterday!

The beginning of my pizza....

Ready to cook!

YUM!!!!

Flowers #1

The CD....

Flowers #2

When I see BK hold her own water bottle, I think it's SO cute....but it makes me a little sad because she looks so old doing it. My sweet little girl is growing up...I love her so much!

Scaling everything!!! :-D Standing, scooching, crawling, etc! Walking is not far off I don't think.

Pics update

2011-05-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from my mothers day.

Seriously, who's mom, or grandma is this pretty!?!
Brooklyn is one lucky girl to have a glamorous Gmama like this!

We drove down to Marysville and had dinner with at my brother and sister-in-laws house. Mom and Mark drove down, and we had Lasagna, salad, and bread and delicious angel food cake for dessert. We had a fun time, talking about growing up and stories from growing up! I shared with my mom probably the "worst" thing I ever did while living at home. I vividly remember asking to go to this swing/big ban dance at my high school, and I had been really sick with mono previously so she wanted me to take things slowly...but I begged to go to this dance. But what I really did was meet up with the guy I was dating and hung out with him! :-) But I can honestly say that was probably my worst lie and one of the only times I said I was doing one thing, and went and did another. I told her, if that's the worst I've done, that's pretty good!!! Anyways, it was fun to share stories, my bro told a few about speeding tickets, and some of the trouble he got into. :-) But all in all, mom has some pretty great kids.
We opened gifts, had a great dinner, and then headed back home.
Here are the rest of the pictures:

Here is the chef for the evening preparing the salad!

Brooklyn helping me with my gift

New work out capri's!!

3 Generations! Celebrating mothers day!

Brooklyn LOVES her Uncle Dooder! (Uncle Jake!) She thinks he's the funniest guy she knows!

Snuggles with Auntie Mandie!

Mothers Day

2011-05-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

As I'm approaching my first mothers day, I have been doing a lot of reflecting. This is my first mothers day, yet my dad was not able to ever see me be a mother. I'll celebrate my 1st birthday with out a phone call from him, and I'll walk through Fathers day with out having my actual father to call.
This makes me approach mothers day very differently than I have in the past. I have a few people in my life that lost their mothers young, or who have a different outlook on Mothers day all around. My mom lost her mom at 32 years old, for the past several years she has always said the day has felt a bit empty with out having a mom to WISH a happy mothers day too, or even anyone to cal mom for that matter - even though she herself is a mom. Now that I'm a mom (with out a dad) I am now beginning to understand that vacancy a bit.
My friend Ali lost her mom about a year and a half ago, she is 27, and just experienced arguably the hardest day to walk through with out a mom, her wedding day. I know Mothers day holds all kinds of emotions for her.
My friend Maluhia lost her mom at the age of 22 just months after her first baby was born. It's been almost 9 years I believe, that she's been with out her mom, yet I know the vacancy is still there. She and I share a bit of our stories because her mom died on May 9th which is always around Mothers day. No day is a good day to lose your mother, but to have it that close to mothers day is extra hard. Just as, my dad passing days before fathers day, and 2 weeks before Brooklyn was born, I feel like I'll walk through extreme lows and highs in a 2 weeks span. Brooklyn's age will always be a reminder of how long my dad has been gone. The grief and mourning on June 16th of his passing....walking through Fathers day....and then celebrating the birth of my child. It's life, but it's hard.
Then I have a friend Beka who shares her story and view of mothers day here. But here is a little bit of what she wrote:

"For me the complexities of Mother’s Day often just make me feel numb. As many of my blog readers already know, I am a birth mother. My son is now eight years old and has an amazing adoptive family. When I gave him up at seventeen there is no way that I could have foreseen that I would one day be in a marriage where I could not have a baby. Talk about ironic."

There ARE the forgotten mothers out there. Mothers day for Beka holds a whole different view. She is a mother, but most don't know, and this day is a hard one for her to walk through as well.
So with all of these people in my life, my heart is softened for them and broken for them in ways also, as I walk a similar road. And it makes me think of how many other stories are out there...people who will never know their mom, kids who lost their mom way to young, adults that lost their moms that got to spend 50+ years with them. It always hurts to lose a parent. Sometimes I just look at B knowing that one day (God willing) I'll die before her, and knowing the pain that will cause her. To be completely honest, it used to make me consider not having kids. But I have to think - would I trade ALL of my memories with my mom and dad just to not feel the pain of losing them? Of course not. But sometimes, in the deep of it, it becomes somethings I've considered.

Having said all of that - I DO have a mom to celebrate this year. To call, to wish a happy mothers day, and to thank for being there for me for all of the years. My mom is beautiful and healthy and I'm so thankful for that.

Mom, when I look back to my childhood I have SO many memories of you and the things you would do. Your true compassion and person showed when one of us were sick. You were so caring, so compassionate and sometimes it made me just want to feel a "little sick" so I could stay home with you and have you take care of me ;-)
I also remember sometimes when you'd wash my sheets, you'd let me take a bit of your Ralph Lauren powder and dab it onto my sheets to make them smell SOOOOO good and clean.
I loved singing with you in the car and talking with you while sun bathing!

Thanks for all you've done. We're in a fun chapter now of me watching you be a Grandmama to Brooklyn, and you watching your daughter do her best at being a mother. It's a fun stage. I know it's hard knowing that your mom won't know Brooklyn in this life, I know that pain and share it with you now. But I'm thankful Brooklyn will have many years with her Gmama hopefully like I have had with my Grandpa. What an honor.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO YOU!!!

Christmas in Hawaii 2005

The beach where mom spent many summers - Nov 2010

Brooklyn loves Grandmama - Nov 2010

My Grandpa, my mom, and my daughter - 4 generations with all of us together! 2010

My wedding shower - September 2005

Love you Mom!

Busy

2011-05-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

Ah, I feel like I haven't had much time with my hubby lately. Him working 6 days a week, and us not having a day off together is really hard. Our evenings are precious, but last week was pretty busy, I was gone many evenings. I need to be better about keeping our evenings just for us. We just love hanging out with people, but then we feel like we haven't had any time together. Especially with a little one, once she goes down to sleep, sometimes it's easy for one of us to go run errands, or something, then we're still not together.
Here are a few pics from April.
This is my friend Christina, we went to school together from elementary through high school. We have many good memories together, and now she's expecting her first baby! This was at her shower! Baby girl, Lillybeth!

Mom holding B during the shower!

Brooklyn and Tubbs, he is becoming much more tolerant of her, it's nice to see. They are so cute together, she LOVES her doggie.

Here is Miss B in the onesie my dad got her last Christmas. I was only about 3 months along, so we didn't know what we were having yet, but he picked this out for "baby jelly bean." She's big enough to wear it now. Very special.

Sweet cakes.

Mom bought BK a few "summer items" so we had to show them off. She got her this cute little bathing suit (along with a matching bathing suit that we didn't get pictures of). She'll love this just in time for summer...if we ever get one here...the weather has been terrible this year.

And this is a 24month top, so probably by the summer, July/Aug she'll be able to wear it. It's so cute!!! Gmama loves spoiling BK and I have to get her to leave the little girl section...it's easy to get lost in there. :-D

Palm Desert!!

2011-04-24T20:09:00.002-07:00

We had never been to Palm Springs before. We flew from Bellingham to Seattle, to Palm Springs. Then drove about 20 min to Palm Desert, where the house we stayed at was. We had a great time. It's a quick 2.5 hr flight over, and we flew cheap and stayed cheap. It was so great. Palm Desert, yes, is definitely a retired area, but we have young kids who are in bed by 7 or 8, so there isn't much we could go do anyways. We just wanted to relax and relax we did. We felt SO safe in the city, and it was SO clean, we were just really impressed. We would definitely go back.

Here are Wendy, Brian and Aubrey Lynch! We had a great vacation with them. This was the first time we had really spent time like this together and it was great. Sometimes other people's ideas of vacation are different. We had talked a few times about vacation and it sounded like we had the same ideas. And we did, we were great travel buddies. We found this house through Brian's dentist. He owns this home and rents it out and we got a GREAT deal! We were so blessed to have a little cheap get away. It was great to have a house with our little ones that still nap. We could still be out in the pool and have some adult swim time while they were napping. It worked out so great. We took Brooklyn's video monitor which was just so great! We really had a great time.
Here is the back yard on the first day we arrived, it was a bit overcast that day, but still beautiful. There was a huge bbq, fans, chairs, pool toys and floaty's. We had such a great time at this house!

This is the pool in the evening. I love lit pools at night, so inviting!!

Scott and I have been running, so this was a pic after our run. Unfortunately, I got a really bad blister after this run, so it was my only one while there. Scott did a few more. Waking up to 70+ degree weather is really motivating.

She was so funny in this float we bought her. She would lean forward and just let everything hang in the water and completely lay on the front of this. It would lean to one side so we really had to be careful. Funny girl. Loves her loungin'.

We went to the Living Desert Zoo - it was really great. This was the LIVE Giraffe feeding. Aubrey LOVES giraffe's so this was really fun for her. This is me feeding it. How cool!!

Mother and Daughter catching rays! We really wished my mom was there so we could have a 3-generation tanning picture! My mom and I REALLY love the sunshine, I hope Brooklyn will too. I rememeber some of our best conversations while we would lay out.

Father and daughter catching rays!

POOL PARTY!!

Brooklyn loved the pool! Don't fret from this picture, we were right by her, we just moved quickly for the photo! She was just loungin on my floaty. She loved the water.

This picture cracks me up too because her little legs are crossed!! I think it's SO cute! She really knew how to relax there! She's off to a gooooood start. It's a hard life being a baby that's for sure.

This is a pic of the entrance to the Marriott Hotel, we were staying right across the street from it. It's GORGEOUS! And I'm sure really expensive, but it was really fun to visit and actually you can pay $15 to use their pool for the day, we didn't do it this time, but maybe sometime we will. It's hard with Brooklyn napping in the middle of the day which is why it was perfect to rent a house!
We thought we'd take a few pics with this sign we made on the inside of a cereal box! :-D We all stood in the pool and held it. We really enjoyed ourselves and hope they let us return to rent their house in the future.
Ah, this outfit I THINK is from Auntie Lindsay and I remember getting it last July being SO excited to see her in it this year, and here she is!! What a little butter-nut! (That's what I call her, I have NO idea why! LOL) But she's just a gem!!

Me, Scott, Brooklyn, and camera shy - Aubrey!

A few for fun, and Easter

2011-04-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

These are just a few photos for fun, cause she was making cute faces! This one looks like a thumbs up!

This is Brooklyn on Easter. This was later this evening, she had just woken up from a nap, but she still looked pretty cute. This dress was an old dress my mom saved of mine...so it was fun to see her in it. She looked darling. We didn't take a picture of us all together, whoops. We're still getting used to this "first holiday" stuff. :-D We had a great Easter Resurrection Sunday though. I worked all 3 mornings services at the church, saw lives changed, people accepeting Christ, especially a family that I have been praying for all year. So amazing to see God still working in the lives of people and tugging on their hearts.
After church we drove to Mt Vernon to meet my mom, Mark, and Jake and Mandie for lunch at a great little cafe. It was too short, but we enjoyed our time anyways.
We gave Brooklyn a bath tonight and she could barely even WAIT to get in the tub, she was so excited!! Oh and, if you can't tell by the pic, she is standing by herself now!! She'll crawl up to something and she pulls herself up! :-D I think walking is in the pretty close future....oh boy! ;-) It's so fun though, every stage has just been so enjoyable!

And once again, pure joy from this little girl!!!! I LOVE HER!!!!

Happy Birthday to Mom

2011-04-21T09:50:00.001-07:00

Ok, I have tried to do this post a few times and for some reason the photos in the particular album aren't working or something....let's try again. Ok, nope it's not working. I can't upload anything from our vacation, or her birthday on here....I'll keep trying. Here's the post that I started anyways... OH ok, I had to put them on my desktop and not it worked! YAY!

I hadn't had a chance to post this yet, because we left shortly after the celebration for vacation. We drove down to spend a weekend with mom for her yet again, 29th birthday! :-) She just never ages! ;-)
We had a good time. Mom got Bk a little Giraffe (we call Raffi) and she LOVED it!! She was giggling so much. Brooklyn has done most of her BEST giggles at G-mama's house!
The next day we watched a movie, played, and made delicious taco salads. Scott brought mom flowers, and I painted her toe nails and fingernails. A little pampering. We had a great time. Here are a few photos of our fun together:

Here is Bk with "Grumpa" - the story behind the namei s that for some reason we call my grandpa "Bumpa" and Mark though it'd be funny if we called him Grumpa - y'know like a grumpy bumpa! :-D He came up with it, so it wasn't us being disrespectful! ;-) She was enjoying everything he was showing her.

Holding things up in the air!

Feeding BK - she was very entertaining!

Here is the little giraffe mom bought BK - she would grab it and giggle!! It was SO cute!!

Morning snuggles with Gmama!! She loves watching all the faces that Grand-mama makes! So fun!

Crawlin around!

Gettin ready to open gifts!

Beautiful mama so excited to see what's inside!

Uncle Dooder with Bk. She LOVES her Uncle Jake.

My Honeymoon

2011-04-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

I realized a few days ago that I was not blogging when Scott and I first got married. We had QUITE the honeymoon experience!! I know that I need to write this all down so that I don't forget it. I'm sure over the span of 5 eventful years there are a few things I have forgotten, but I remember the gist of what happened. And we have pictures to prove it.

We were so excited to be on our honeymoon!!! Scott and I had a 2 year long distance relationship so our honeymoon was the longest amount of consecutive days we have seen each other. We had never been to Mexico, we got an all-inclusive resort, and the hot-tub suite on the top! Scott went all out, how often do you honeymoon again, and it was just a very special time for us. Here we are our first night, ready to go to dinner and spend the next 8 days together. :-D Carefree, blissful newlyweds!! Oh, we were in Playa Del Carmen. About 30 min south of Cancun. We were so excited to experience the Caribbean side of the ocean.
BUT, let me start with the VERY first day....we arrived at the airport and found the "Apple vacation" van to get in that would take us to our hotel. Already in the van was a 6 month pregnant woman who was hot and VERY ready to go. I think they had been waiting on us for a while. She was nice, but mentioned they had been waiting a long time. Her fiance Marcus joined us in the van shortly and off we went. We made small talk with this couple while we were driving to our hotel...mostly to distract me from the terrible driving and scary roads we were experiencing. I was a big freaked out.
Scott and I were still pretty tired from our wedding day, so the next day we were napping in our room. I woke to a strange sound, but just peeked through my eyes (because I was still really tired), and through the slits of my eyes I saw someone standing at the end of our bed....just standing there....I tried to not show that I had woken up and continued to lay there wondering if we were fully covered.....(this WAS our honeymoon, so we were napping unclothed....) The guy left shortly, and I QUICKLY woke Scott up and told him that someone was just in our room!!!!!! He got up, we talked about who it could have been etc. The person was in a white top and black pants, like a hotel worker. Scott went over and latched the door locked from the inside...as we were talking, we saw the door open again!!! But this time, since it was latched, they couldn't come in. We froze a bit trying to figure out why someone would be trying to enter our room - especially with out knocking!!! Housekeeping will always knock. From then on, we agreed that I'd never be alone in the room by myself with out Scott, and we went down and told the front desk what had happened. VERY strange, and I still wonder if they would have robbed us, or something - we were staying in the most expensive suite, so maybe they thought we had money? I know God's protection surrounded us that day....well the whole honeymoon actually.

Soooo moving on. Scott and I took a few pics around the hotel, it was so beautiful we had never experienced something like this.

Here is the pool at night.

This is right outside our door looking into the center of the hotel! They had just experienced a hurricane in July - this was October now, so they had a few months to recover, but the palm trees weren't as full as normal I'm sure. But still beautiful.

We got married on a Saturday, and arrived in Mexico on Monday (we spend all day Sunday together in our hotel room in Seattle...wanted a day to relax before traveling, that was a good idea we were glad we had the time together.)

Tuesday, we started hearing word of a hurricane headed towards us. They had already experienced Hurricane Emily in July. Emily made landfall at 8AM on 20 July around San Fernando, Mexico. By the same time the next day, Emily had weakened to a tropical depression well inland over the mountainous terrain of northern Mexico. So it didn't last long, but it was still a pretty decent hurricane. By October, most of the hurricanes are hitting the US and are more up towards the Carolina's....they are well out of the Caribbean usually. BUT, not this time apparently.
The storm was first stated as a tropical storm on Monday. In mexico they were preparing for heavy rains - being from Seattle we weren't too concerned, I was just bummed I wasn't going to be able to lay out on the beach and get a tan. :-)

Overnight the storm escalated into a CATEGORY 5 Hurricane headed RIGHT towards us!!! I have never experienced a hurricane and this was just a few months after Hurricane Katrina, so I was a bit nervous that we might die...I didn't know.
Buildings began boarding up doors and windows and so did the hotel. We saw all of this around...

This was the sign that stated what would happend, how long we should expect to have to stay in our room etc. It said it may be as long as 24 hours. That didn't sound too bad. It was a bit surreal, in the lobby, they had signs in every language so everyone knew what to expect and what was going to happen. Some people were really scared, and others kind of brushed it off.

Here were doors and windows boarded up in town and around our hotel

We came back into our room to find all of our windows like this. They tape them like this in case the glass shatters, it will break better and not blow shards of glass if it's like this....eek.

Rememer this picture - there will be an amazing after shot later. These are all of the beach chairs WAY up on shore. The beach was roped off and everything roped down and moved very far off shore.

A tied down shack, or maybe bathroom, I'm not sure.

They weren't sure how far up the water would surge, but they did evacuate everyone on the bottom floor into other rooms. We had read that it might be about 24 hrs before they blow the whistle that everything is clear and we can come out of our rooms....Scott and I had a large room, and we felt that we should open it up to those that needed to evacuate. Remember that couple we met in the van on the way to the hotel?? :-D We invited them into our room for the duration of the storm. We figured we could sacrifice a day so that others were safe from the hurricane. Little did we know this would be the SLOWEST moving hurricane, and we were actually locked in our rooms for 4 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is where Marcus and Kristin slept....

Yep, they had to bring their own mattress up, and they literally slept right next to Scott and I. ON OUR HONEYMOON!!! I can laugh about this now. And they were really nice, and great. But still.....neither of us thought we'd be sharing the next 4 days together...I'm sure they felt worse than we did...I know if I joined a honeymooning couple, I'd feel terrible!! We were all troopers though.
We had no power, we couldn't track the storm on the news, and our poor parents were TERRIFIED and we had no way to get in touch with them until afterwards. My mom NEVER let me go to Mexico because she was scared of hurricanes, and OF COURSE the one and only time I go, they are hit with the biggest hurricane to date.
We used empty beer bottles for candle holders (the hotel provided us with a few candles) and we tried to stock our fridge on the last night before the storm with water, and some chips. We were delivered a sandwhich a day, that's it. I'm so thankful that we had thought ahead to stock our fridge.
This was in our closet, we made a little refuge place in case our windows shattered and we were being blasted by wind. We wanted a safe room. We thankfully never had to use it.

Playing cards by candlelight.

Water was POURING through our fan the whole time, we had to set up garbage cans below to catch it all. I'm sure that's a terrible thing for the electrical wiring.

Here is our fridge. Some of the stuff was already stocked in there...alcohol is a standard in every room there...but we grabbed fruit, chips, and LOTS of water.

I thought this was a pretty cool picture. This was Tuesday...would have been October 18th, 2005 the night the storm was coming...literally the sky was BLACK over the ocean...and blue skies above...this pic kind of captures the split sky...it was eerie.

There were constant winds for the 4 days....sounded like a train all day long is the best way to describe it. If you want to read more about the hurricane you can click *HERE* and there were a few nights that Scott basically sleeping between a 6 month pregnant woman and me, just a paranoid bride we freaked him out. I woke him up one night telling him our roof was caving in!!! I was so scared, I heard a really really loud noise, and believed our cieling was caving in - Scott had to light a match and hold it up to the ceiling to check....but it was fine. I was dreaming. BUT, what I did hear was the tiles of the roof blowing off!!! So that's what startled me.

So 4 days later, we heard the sound of 3 whistles blowing, and we walked around to see the damage done...it was unbelievable and heart-breaking in many ways. SO much devistation. We were in a 5star hotel. There were others who weren't so lucky, and many families were torn apart, missing people, or business buildings destroyed.

Gods protection was so evident. Many people had to evacuate their hotel because they were not strong enough to sustain the 175mph CONSTANT winds...they evacuated into schools and gyms around Playa Del Carmen. In the middle of the storm, the roof blew off the gym and they had to pile in a bus and find different shelter. 2 people died trying to come to our hotel, they were swept up in this drain type system that leads directly out into the ocean. :-(
We heard stories of people being robbed, and there was TONS of looting going on. Many people sleeping ON their babies to protect them, and keep them safe, etc. Very sad stories. We felt so blessed to be safe in our hotel and alive. Gods divine protection.

Here are pictures from the devastation afterward...

This was one of the pools...

This was a hotel honestly just a few steps down the beach from us, it was RIGHT on the water, and literally it split in half, you could still see towels folded in the closet.

This was a resturant right by the hotel that was totally damaged. There were also tons of dead fish on the beach this day too. If you enlarge the picture, you can see tables and chairs.

This is our hotels tennis courts - the ground and fence was totally torn up

And....here is our pool - sick!

The streets were totally covered in debris and people walking around and looking at everything.

The front of the sister hotel to the one we were staying at. We were at RIU Palace

The beach...

And here are those chairs that were so nicely stacked from earlier....

Ah this is long, but SO much happened. The next day it was GORGEOUS!!! Not a cloud in the sky and if it weren't for all of the devistation around you'd have NO idea that something so major just happened. People were back to selling us stuff on the beach, and people were swimming etc. Our pools were out of order, so EVERYONE was at the beach. We were supposed to be leaving that day - it was a Wednesday I believe.., but the airport was under water, so no one was leaving. Scott and I were laying trying to relax in the sun and decided to go in for some lunch...he wanted to rinse off and dip on the ocean really quick...so he did...all of a sudden I hear "OH SHOOT!!!" and see him looking frantically - I screamed, "WHAT??! A SHARK? A STINGRAY?? WHAT?!?!???!"
He quietly and sadly said....."my ring....." it had slipped off, in about 2 feet of water.....the water was SO merky and choppy, we couldn't see a thing. He stayed where he was and I quickly grabbed our face masks. You couldn't see anything under the water. :-( We went up to the hotel room and SOBBED!!!! :-( We were both so DONE with this trip. I had saved a lot of my college money for that ring, it was solid platinum, it was so special to us and now it was gone.

We had no idea how we were going to get home. But we KNEW we wanted to get home. We went to a Michael Jackson show that was in our hotel that night, and our travel agent person had heard that the next morning, people were going to line up at a school and get their boarding passes. We weren't sure if we should go, because once we checked out of the hotel we were on our own. We prayed a lot about it and decided to go. We borrowed someone's cell phone to let our parents know what we were doing - we had to catch a bus at like 3 am. My mom was so scared for us, so was I actually, we had no idea what we were doing. I remember hanging up the phone to her shakey crying voice, and crying myself. It was just all too much, not knowing what was going to happen and telling her we'd call once we were in the US if we made it there.
My parents had considered chartering in a jet for something like $20,000 to get us out of there.

Anyways, so off we went at 3am to line up at the highschool. I wore Scott's clothing, and pined my wedding ring and $300 to the inside of my bra. I put no make up on and tried to look as plain as possible in case people were still robbing people.
We were in line with THOUSANDS!!!!!!! They were all coiled around the school. It was unbelievable. We had no idea if we were even going to get a flight out. We watched the sun rise, and just waited. I didn't care where we flew to, it could be MAINE for all I cared, I just wanted to be back in the United States!
Someone caught wind that a separate Continental line was forming...I stayed in the first line we were in, and Scott went where they speculated another line forming....he came back with boarding passes!!! Again...we cried.

We then boarded a bus that took us to the airport, but we had to sit on it for 3 hours. It was terrible. We then walked all around the airport, I guess trying to avoid all of the damage done. We were going to be flying in to Texas. The MINUTE the plane took off...SHOUTS of joy, applause and cheering happened!!!

We landed in Texas and I called my mom telling her we had made it to Texas!! I'm sure, being a mother myself now, that it was a long night for her, and a long day of worrying!

Here are the lines we waited in....you can't see all of the people, but it kind of shows....thousands of people! We all bought t-shirts that said "I survived Hurricane Wilma."

Here we are with our boarding passes...

And this is the last pic we took with our honeymoon "roomates." :-D They were engaged on thsi trip, and they actually invited us to their wedding in Airzona....I told them we'd come ONLY if we could sleep in their room on their honeymoon. :-D We still hear from them every so often. They were great people, and it now makes for a very funny, crazy story. Scott and I could not laugh about it for a LONG time. We still wish it would have been different. We tried to "re-do" our honeymoon, but it's just not the same as coming straight off from the wedding, and everything being so new for us....also, on that "re-do" trip...we accidentally recorded over our wedding video...that's another blog to come. :-(

Oh well...something to share and remember for years to come. I am sure I have forgotten a few details, but this is the gist. :-D
If anyone thinks they had a bad honeymoon, perhaps direct them to this page to help them feel better about their experience. Unless, of course, it WAS worse than ours...yikes!

My heart aches today

2011-04-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

I miss my dad.
It's almost been a year since I last saw him. April 18th we hugged goodbye for the last time. I didn't know it'd be the last time I'd see him.
My heart aches to see him or hear him again, and mostly, wishing he knew my daughter.

A personal best

2011-03-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have never been a runner, I HATED days in junior high and high school where we had to run the mile, and I hated running during basketball training. I like sprinting, but nothing long distance. Which long distance to me is pretty much anything over a mile :-D
I have easily done 3+ miles on an elliptical machine before, but running? It was a challenge to run for 10 min with out stopping.
When B was 8 weeks old, I thought I'd get into running. I was recovered from my surgery and thought I'd start to try to lose the weight I had gained. My knees began to hurt, I threw my back out, etc. My body was NOT ready to run. I danced through my whole pregnancy, and I didn't "deliver" a baby, so I thought I'd be able to hop back in it. I was wrong. I kept getting injured or sick.
Little by little i just started walking. That was what my body could handle well. And then started dance again in Jan. And then started running for 5 min, and walking the other 25. Then ran for 10 min, walked the rest. I then ran 20 min a few times in a row, then pushed it to 25 min last week which was my personal best.
We have a large shop and a treadmill with a TV out there, so Scott and I watch movies while we work out. Scott runs in the morning, and I try to sneak out there while B is napping in the afternoon. (I of course take the video monitor so I can watch to make sure she is still sleeping) Scott has been doing incredible. Running for 30 min 4 days a week and then on Saturdays he will run for a full HOUR!!! Blows my mind.
So yesterday my run started off kind of bad, my knees were hurting a bit and I didn't think I'd make it even 10 min, I sometimes have bad run days, but slowly my joints warmed up and I kept running. I kept having to tell myself I was strong and that I could do it. I always warm up with a 5 min walk...then run. I kept running, and ran for a full 30 min, at a speed of 5.4, and ran 3 miles!! I have NEVER done that before. I snapped a picture to document it!!! It's not super far, and most of my friends run MILES and MILES, but it's something for ME to be proud of! 508 calories!
I still have about 8 more lbs to lose before I'm at my pre-pregnancy weight (which is still a little heavier than I'd like to be) but it's taking quite a while to fall off. I hope with my next pregnancy I don't gain 40lbs again. It's been harder to lose than I thought. Some people lose their weight right away just from nursing. I'm still nursing Brooklyn, and the weight definitely has not fallen off, I have had to work really hard to lose the first 32 lbs. The first 20 fell off, and now I'm down 14 lbs since December though...and hope to be back at my pre-preg weight by summertime.

Expressions and cuteness

2011-03-25T09:59:00.001-07:00

Here are a few more photos I wanted to add. This facial expression really reminds me of myself, and many have commented that BK has my expressions, especially looks of anger, disgust, or concern. Ha!!! What a doll. I think she wasn't happy about her headband this day.

And here are some sweet photos of her. She was tolerating her headband in these moments. Lauren made these headbands for her and they are SO cute!!!! I LOVE them on her.

Crawling

2011-03-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

Our sweet girl is crawling now and it's so fun to watch. She looks SO little crawling, but I love seeing those buns move across the floor. She will crawl to Tubbs or random things on the ground. You can always tell where she's headed cause she sets her eyes and GOES for it.
Here is an adorable photo that I wanted to make sure made it to my blog book.
OH and she also started clapping her hands!! I should add that video. It's the cutest. It's such a strange thing that she mimics us now and does things in response to us...she is really becoming a little person. It's so fun.

Almost a catastrophe

2011-03-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

I went to Target the other day, and was in there for maybe an hour. I came back to the car to see THIS in the parking lot...
This what we call "RAFFI" Brooklyn LOVES Raffi. I'm so thankful no one stole him, or ran him over. He was patiently waiting for us when we returned.
Here is the evidence that we have a happy girl after I found Raffi on the ground.

Sleep Pictures

2011-03-25T09:49:00.001-07:00

There really is nothing like a sleeping baby. Sometime Scott and I wish we could go wake Brooklyn up to play with her. We miss her while she sleeps. And other times we wish we were small enough to crawl in her crib and cuddle her. We can't wait until she's older and we can have snuggle parties. :-D
These are a few pictures I have captured while she's been sleeping. It's so precious!
I also have had the joy of watching her through the video monitor. The past few days, I've watched her fall asleep sitting up. It's HILARIOUS!!! I actually go in there and lay her down before she smacks her head on the way down. It's so cute though.

She is just so peaceful when she sleeps. I love hearing her breathe and feeling the heat from her body swirling around in her crib. There is also a specific smell that her room smells like that I love...sometimes combine with a poopy smell :-D But it's usually just this sweet baby Brooklyn smell that I love.

Brooklyn's Dedication

2011-03-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

Today was a special day, I'll blog about it later this week, but here is a picture of Brooklyn on her special day. Auntie Lauren made her headband and it was SO cute!!

The next 3 months...

2011-03-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

The next 3 months are going to be filled with lots of emotions. March 16th marked the day my dad went in for his big surgery in San Francisco and spent the next 30 days were filled with fear, anxiety, worry, good days, bad days, and ultimately he did get to be outside of those walls. I think it would have been terrible if my dad passed away there.
His mind had a hard time coming out of a anesthesia. He was hallucinating a lot while he was there, and they could not get him to come into reality. It was a really scary time for all of us as we were not sure if he'd ever "wake up." He was terrified at night, believing the doctors and nurses were literally trying to kill him. It was very very real to him. I don't even know all of what happened, as i know my step mom tried not to make us worry. There were a few really scary days though.

Scott and I flew down to visit him on April 16th and we brought him home from the hospital on the 17th. That was such a great day, and a really really hard day. He had not been outside in over a month, and then had to drive a 6 hour drive back to Eureka, I still remember all of the stops we made a long the way. Dad was so yellow from being so jaundice. His liver had just not kicked in yet. We finally made it home, and had some quality time together, that I have written about before...it was a long day, but I knew dad was so happy to be home.

Dad had good days after coming home, but they soon quickly turned to mostly bad days. Again, I know Paulette tried to protect all of us by not sharing the details. I was also 8 months pregnant, so there was a concern about stress there too. I started to hear defeat in his voice on the phone. He was tired. He had gone through A LOT and he was on lots of meds, and didn't have much desire to eat.

Finally, June 14th came, he decided to stop taking his meds. He knew his fight was over...and 2 days later, June 16th, he passed away.

I had Brooklyn 16days later.

There will be lots of reflection in the next months...I can't believe it's been a year. There were many times when I was younger that we would only see dad once a year once he moved to California and we were too young to travel there by ourselves....but we'd still hear from him. And as we got older, we'd drive down to him, and he would drive up and we'd see each other a few times a year. I have not heard his voice in almost a year now, or seen him, hugged him, etc. It's just a hard realization to know that he's gone, but my hope is not in things here on earth, I'm thankful my hope is in Christ and that one day I'll get to embrace my dad again!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

2011-03-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

I am not doing anything too exciting for St. Patrick's Day it's not been a day we have really celebrated, BUT, Brooklyn and I did have Green Smoothies this morning. They have become a favorite of mine thanks to my friend Elisa explaining all of the health benefits. And they are great for Brooklyn to eat too. Although, she has a weird thing that her food has to be warm to eat...so I added a bit of rice cereal to thicken it up and heated it up a bit. But she loves it!!
1 apple
1 banana
1 orange
Lots of Spinach
And Water

Delicious!

Here is BK enjoying her GREEN smoothie for St Patty's day!

And, we will now always remember the day Brooklyn crawled...St Patricks Day!!! I will write it in her baby book later today. :-D I will upload the video...this was her 2nd time crawling. She crawled right before the video, then I went to grab the camera. She has been really close for the past few days, and taking little movements forward, but today...she definitely crawled! I'm SO thankful I was home to see it!
I'll have to record her later today when she is out of her jammies, this was early this morning, so I'll put her in green to document the festive day!

Random just to post...

2011-03-10T10:21:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I have been learning 2 African dances to perform this weekend and next - one performance is for a safari silent auction for Lynden Christian school, and the other is for the March Benefit show for the dance studio next weekend. Boy oh boy, African is HARD!! It's been great exercise every Friday for about an hour and a half. I'll be sad to see it end, it's been so fun. Here is the blister I came back with on my foot after dance 2 weeks ago. Yikes!! That's some serious MOVING!!

These are pics of Brooklyn's demeanor. She is just one of the happiest babies I have ever seen. This is a pic in the rearview mirror that's in our car. If I look back, this is the face I see. I smile every time!!! Click on it to make it bigger if you can't see it very well. She is constantly smiling. I'm so thankful. The next one is how she wakes up from 99% of her naps. Just laying there, playing and SMILING!!!! She melts my whole heart. I am SO blessed.

This picture just cracks me up. I was trying to take a pic of her teeth, but it didn't really work, but look at her sweet face, just putting up with ANYTHING I do to her!!! She is so patient and so tolerant! Ah, I just love this sweet pic.

And finally - this is a picture of our video monitor. At first I didn't think these were necessary - and thought they were a bit overboard. But my gosh, we love it. We can see if she has turned over, gotten stuck, out of her sheets, etc. It's so helpful. Anyways, this bear is the bear my dad gave to me last Christmas. BK sleeps with it every night, she talks to it, throws it, cuddles it, etc. We have gotten in the habit of calling the bear "Grandpa." I know that might sounds weird to most of you reading, but it's just what we call him. :-D It's a very special bear and she LOVES this bear. I just think it's such a sweet picture of her cuddling him.

Never Say Never

2011-03-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

This happened a few weeks ago, but I wanted to post about it. I LOVE my hip hop girls!!! I have been teaching dance for 6 years now and have really watched some of these girls grow up! They are MILDLY obsessed with Justin Bieber, and I like him myself...just in a 27-year-old-mom type of way ;-) I decided to take my girls to the movie. Not all of them could make it, but here are the few that could. Sierra, Bailey, Melanie, and Taylor. We had a great time! The movie was great, it was really fascinating to hear how Justin Bieber became famous. He was really the first person to rise to the top via you-tube and the internet. He seems like he has a great family, they prayed a lot in the movie which was great to see. I can't judge where they are spiritually, but I do know that I pray for Justin as he gets older and has more choice in the type of music he wants to sing. I hope it doesn't turn into songs about drinking, sex and drugs, like most do. :-( But for now, I think his songs are positive, and just mainly about love, which of course, every 14 year old girl loves.

We were all a bit crazy after the movie, and here was the result! :-D I love being in these girls lives, and being a good example for them, and an influence separate from their parents (who are all fantastic) it's just sometimes important for young girls like this to have other people in their lives, and I'm happy to be one of those people. I watched these girls (ages 13-16 I think) and watched them watch this movie realizing that they are in some of the greatest years. Honestly, that 16 to 22 were some of the best years of my life. I really feel like I made great decisions, and had great friends. It's a care free time that you're just starting to gain some independence and really develop who you are as a person, but you're also not fully responsible for everything... :-D Your parents still have a vital role in your life as far as provision...or hopefully they do. I know mine did and I was thankful. It was the perfect balance of independence and responsibility for that short period of time. Anyways...we had a great night and hope to watch positive, good message movies together more often.

I love them!

Date Night

2011-03-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

Scott has now been at his job for about a year and a half. But they have a policy that when a new employee comes on staff, someone else who has been with the company for a while takes the new employee and their spouse (if they have one) out to dinner.
We got a baby sitter and dressed cute, and were out the door to enjoy a dinner with Nate and Cassie. We didn't get a picture of them. Oops. They are a young couple, and they have 3 young kids also, so we all felt great getting out of the house and enjoying each others company...on the company :-D
This is us as we were leaving the drive way. Nate and Cassie picked us up. We went to Dirty Dans down in Fairhaven. We have never been there. Scott and I have lived in Bellingham for about 5 years now and we really have not experienced much of the dining places. We have usually been pretty strapped financially, and choose to spend our money elsewhere besides food. I just can't stomach "eating" hundreds of dollars of food. It seems like such a waste. However, Dawson expects the couples to spend a lot and enjoy a great meal out.

Here we are at dinner. We had appetizers, a main meal, and dessert. I think our bill ended up being about $245 for all 4 of us!!!!!!!!!!!!! And most people when they go out, especially on the company, order alcohol. We did not. Can you imagine what THOSE bills would be? Wow. Even though we didn't pay for the dinner, and the company won't even blink at that cost, I still felt really guilty and would have been just as satisfied eating at Red Robin. I'm just that way I guess. All in all we had a great time though and were excited to go out on a date. But also anxious to get home to our little girl. :-D

Valentines Day

2011-03-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Well I wanted to make sure this made it in my blog book for the end of 2011, so I wanted to document these pics.
This is Brooklyn with her card from my mom, Grandmama, or G-mama as we call her! G-mama sent Brooklyn her first Valentines Day card. :-D

Here she is reading her card from Grandmama...very studious face.

"See mama, look inside!"

Then Bumpa, my Grandpa, Brooklyn's GREAT Grandpa, also sent her a Valentines Day Card with $25 inside. She was very thankful and waved them in the air and of course tried to eat them.

"Thanks for the money Bumpa!!! I'm waving it around - I'm rich I'm rich!!!!"

And of course a sweet smile for the photo op! This girl is always ready with a smile!

The True Vine

2011-03-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in our staff meeting, we were given this verse to read, ponder, pray on and think about:

John 15: 1-4

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardnener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me."

The word that stuck out to me most was TRUE VINE. I thought that, and had conversation with God about it. And he led me to our rose bush that is in our front yard. This past year Scott and I forgot to prune it, it was HUGE and I don't think it blossomed as many roses as it could have. So this year, we cut out the center that was dead, and we trimmed it way back. I can't wait to see what it looks like and how many roses it produces this year. I then started drifting in my thoughts about how I can't wait to cut some roses from that bush and put them in my house this summer. They are SO beautiful and make the house warm and smell good, etc. I love fresh flowers.

However, I then realized that it doesn't matter how fresh the water we put in the vase is, how much we tend to the roses we've cut, they will still die in a matter of days. The second we cut them, they begin to die. Even if they remain pretty for a few days, or weeks, they are dying.

And I was just reminded how important it is to remain "plugged in" and connected to our VINE. Jesus! So that God, our gardner can tend to us. And what do gardeners do with their fruit, or their crops? Sure, they have some of it, but they also end up giving it away to let other enjoy their harvest. I think God does the same, He will enjoy some of our friut, but the fruit that we produce is not ALL for God, it's for others, to share with, for others to see and to enjoy. If we are not pruned, our fruit may be TOO tall that it's out of reach from others, or worse, we may not produce any fruit.

I also love how it says the TRUE vine, because this tells me that there are false vines that we plug ourselves into. They aren't always bad, however our world seems to have many false negative vines - drinking, drugs, sex, false religions, etc, there are many things our world is plugged into that isn't even in the right GARDEN! But there are some vines that can appear good. Small groups, bible studies, discussions, opinions, ministry, church, etc, those are all great and necessary things, but if we are doing those, and getting lost in the midst, weare not wrapped in the TRUE vine himself, they still might represent a false vine and therefore produce no fruit.

It was just such a profound vision that God gave me with my rose bush.

No matter how pretty those roses are for a few days...they will die. Just as, if we are not in God's Word, our spirit, our fruit, and our branches will die.

I'm so thankful that God's Word is alive and living, and no matter how many times we hear it, or read it, He ALWAYS speaks to us.

Frien-emies?

2011-03-04T09:19:00.000-08:00

Well, as most of you know, Tubbs has pretty much been the "baby" of the house for the last 2 years. We took him everywhere, we cuddled with him, we spoiled him pretty much. Since having Brooklyn, he has taken a tiny bit of a back seat. Scott still gives Tubbs lots of attention and I try to remember during the day, but Brooklyn has higher priority and I have to meet her needs. Also, it didn't help that Tubbs blew out his knee just 2 short weeks after BK was born. He was cage bound for 2 weeks after that, so I think he kind of felt banished. And he has been pretty limited since.
He is also unable to go to dog parks anymore or really long walks. When Scott and I walk, we usually go for long ones - at least a few miles. Tubbs leg still can't quite keep up...we need to work on it, but I'm sure he feels very left out and "abandoned." However, he is still a very well taken care of dog. I just find it hard when I clean up after B all day long, wash her clothes, feed her, play with her, change her, etc, that the last thing I'm wanting to do is clean up after a dog, even though he is pretty low maintenance, and quite easy to please. I love Tubbs, I still think he's the greatest dog...but I DO love my baby more ;-) And there are some things about him that have started to annoy me, ha!
Anyways, he is great with Brooklyn...most of the time. He'll come up to her, smell her, lick her, and she LOVES it!!! She LLOOOVVEEESSS Tubbs!!! If he were really smart, he'd cuddle up to her all the time because she probably loves him most.
But, it's very strange, if he is laying down, and she reaches to him, or touches his foot, or some part on him, he'll kind of growl (complain growl, not aggressive) or he'll quickly get up and walk away...???? It's strange. He doesn't like her touching him.
BUT - we've found out, now that she is eating from her high chair, he has figured out that she will sometimes drop food - so suddenly he is RIGHT near her every time she eats. So I'm hoping that once he realizes that she's the one he really wants to be close to since she'll feed him, cuddle him and probably one day let him in bed with her...he'd be smart to love her!!
Here's a photo:

Last Day Full Time

2011-03-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

Well I thought I would document the day!! March 3, 2011 was my last day working full time....for now :-D That means one day maybe I won't work at all, or one day maybe I'll go back to full time. Nothing is permanent, so I always say, "for now."
I had a good day, and it doesn't feel real yet that I won't return for 40 hrs next week. I'm excited, especially as spring/summer arrives. I want to take BK places around town, go out walking with her, show her things, play in the yard, make things with her as she becomes more interactive. I just want to spend some good time with her before we start trying again for siblings!

Whole Grain Bread

2011-02-27T20:12:00.000-08:00

Today I tried a recipe that is pretty detailed, for whole grain bread. This bread also has quinoa, and mullet. It's high in protein, and fiber. I know I have a little ways before I perfect it, but we're really going to try to only eat bread that we make, its much healthier for you and if you do it right, it should be cheaper. But this probably didn't rise as much as it should have, but it was still delicious!
Here is the recipe and some photos of my batch.
Oh, and the recipe I'm going to post makes 4 loaves, but I halved it in case I messed up, I didn't want to waste a lot.

~Large Mixer Method W/Dough Hook~
½ cup honey or molasses
½ cup canola oil
5 cups warm water
2 Tbsp SAF Instant yeast
1 Tbsp salt
10-11 cups freshly ground whole wheat, (you can also mix in spelt or kamut flour to your liking)
1 cup whole millet
1 cup whole quinoa
1¼ cups organic vital wheat Gluten

Proof your yeast in 1 cup of warm water (so you have 4 cups remaining) & 1 tsp of honey for 10 minutes.
Grind your flour and set aside in large bowl 11 cups.
In your large bowl that goes with your mixer add vital wheat gluten, millet, quinoa and 2 cups of the flour, set aside (while yeast proofs). Combine in a separate bowl the honey, oil, & remaining water; add proofed yeast.
Add this wet mixture to the 2 cups of flour, millet, gluten, quinoa mixture that is in your large mixing bowl. Mix together & sponge for 15 minutes.
Put your bread hook attachment onto your mixer. Mix the salt into the remaining 9 cups of flour that was set aside. Add this remaining flour to sponged ingredients in the Large Mixing Bowl 1 cup at a time. Make sure each cup is blended before adding another cup of flour. The dough will become stiff and cleans the sides of the mixing bowl. This kneading process should take approx. 6 minutes on speed #2 should be sufficient to develop the gluten if you are using fresh flour. Transfer Into very large greased bowl for rising process.

Cover Bowl And place in a warm area to complete first rise. Approx 30 minutes or when dough has doubled in size, punch down, placed on large greased bread board & cut into four equal sections. Place three of the pieces back into bowl & shape into loaves one at a time. Rolling into loaf shape & pinching off seam together.
Set into lightly greased stoneware loaf pans. Cover with towel and set in warm location for 2nd rise approx. 30-35 minutes. Should rise approx two inches above pan edge. Do not over rise.
*Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes. Take out of oven and let stand for 50 minutes;remove from loaf pans onto wire cooling racks. Cool completely before using a electric bread knife (serrated edge) to cut; enjoy.

Valentines Day Lunch

2011-02-26T22:15:00.000-08:00

Scott and I both met on our lunch break from work on Valentines day and had lunch at a little cafe in Fairhaven. We both tried their soup of the day and it was a Carrot Ginger Curry Soup. It was delicious. This restaurant serves mainly local stuff and nothing is processed...or very minimal if so. Ever since then I have wanted to make this soup.
I googled it (what did we do before Google...wow) and a recipe on Oprah showed up.
We made it tonight and it was delicious!!
Except, we think the restaurant added peanut sauce, and we made it first with out the peanut sauce, then added it in and that made it taste exactly like the restaurants.

Here is the recipe - it's super healthy and delicious!

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion , chopped
2 stalks celery , chopped (1/2 cup)
2 cloves garlic , minced
1 piece (2 inches) fresh gingerroot , peeled and finely chopped
10 to 12 carrots (about 2 1/2 pounds), scrubbed and sliced into 1/2-inch pieces
1 Tbsp. curry powder
8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk (we did not add this)
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
3/4 cup shredded (unsweetened or sweetened) coconut , toasted (optional) - We did not add this either
1 jar of peanut sauce (we added this to recipe)

Directions In a large, heavy saucepan or stockpot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery, garlic, and ginger. Sauté until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Add carrots and curry powder and stir to coat vegetables. Add stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 25 minutes, or until carrots are very tender. Skim foam and fat from top.

Transfer from heat. Puree soup in batches in a food processor or blender (or puree in the pot with a hand blender). Return to pan and stir in coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Spoon into bowls and garnish with toasted coconut, if desired.

Forgot

2011-02-24T09:05:00.001-08:00

I forgot to add, I begin my part time schedule after March 6th!
Wha hooooo!!! :-D

Part Time!!!

2011-02-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

AH, the day has finally come. I met with my boss last week and he approved my request to work part time. My new schedule will be Sunday, Monday, Tuesday - 20 hrs total. I get Wed-Sat with my sweet baby. Time to meal plan, clean the house, spend special time with Brooklyn, work out, etc.
I am so excited this is going to work out.
Financially it will be a little bit tight, but we are willing to cut where we can to make ends work for me to be at home more. And we are trusting that God will honor this decision. These are such formative years of a child's life and I want to invest in my sweet pea. My job is great, i LOVE it, but I also know that I'm called to be a mother right now. There are seasons for everything.

She is my angel! I just don't think I can say it enough. My heart BURSTS uncontrollably with love for her! She brings me and Scott so much joy! What a miracle she is!!

First Time Swimming

2011-02-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

We also took BK swimming a few weekends ago. Sundays nights from 5:15-6:30 is 50% off at our public pool so we decided it'd be fun to take BK to see what she'd do. The pool heater that night happened to not be working, so it was a little chilly.
Here is the video!
She isn't crying, but she's definitely uncertain!

Some pictures...

2011-02-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I have been bad at keeping this up. It's also because my camera is not working right - the lens is messed up :-( So I'm not taking as many photos and we haven't been out doing things, so I haven't snapped a ton of photos.
Brooklyn continues to find her independence, learning how to use her hands, and her body to get to things. She is not crawling, nor do I feel that she is close, but it could be right around the corner. :-D
She definitely finds a way to get to things she wants.
I can't resist her baby buns!

Weekends Home in January

2011-01-25T12:36:00.001-08:00

Scott and I love time with our friends and family. I am pretty much the planner of the house and Scott goes a long for the ride, but he likes it that way! :-D

Usually every weekend we have something different going on, traveling down to Seattle to see my parents, or to hang out with friends, or traveling up to Canada to see Scott's family or friends, or traveling East of the mountains to visit friends in Wenatchee, Ellensburg and Chelan. We are just usually pretty busy every single weekend. We are social and our relationships in our lives are important. Sometimes we feel spread too thin, we don't have enough time in the weeks to see everyone, but we do make an effort. And we love it, it takes us out of our working world and let's us get away for a day, or a weekend. It's harder since I work at the church, obviously, I work Sundays. I have Fri/Sat off and Scott has Sat/Sun off. So we only have one day together as our complete family.

I'm beginning to feel that, because on Saturdays that we're really busy visiting everyone, I feel like I didn't get good time with my family.

For January, Scott asked if I could not make any weekend plans to travel or go do things. It's his birthday month, so I honored it. And actually, it's been so refreshing. We have been able to invest in our friendships here in Bellingham, we've been super productive around the house and just getting things organized and done, and most of all, we feel like we've had good time together as a family. Especially since Saturday is our only day, sometimes we wish we could make that our "Family Day" and just being together, doing activities, getting out and spending time with eachother, but most everyone does things on Saturdays, family birthdays, get together, friends hanging out, that we'd only have Friday nights, which is too short to travel anywhere, and Sundays I work until 1pm.

We have really enjoyed staying home in the month of Jan, and we're going to try to limit our travels every month in general. But we usually always have at least one thing, someone's birthday, or a get together or something, but we are definitely going to stick around more often than not.

A little video...

2011-01-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

Here is just a little video of her hanging out with Tubbs.

6 month check up

2011-01-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

I can't believe Brooklyn is already 6 months...it does just go SO fast. She had her 6 month check up today and here are her stats:
Height: 28.5 inches - over 95th percentile
Head: never know measurements just know it was over 95th percentile - big head :-D
Weight - 18.5 lbs - 86th percentile - she really so long and lean, not many rolls on her...

The doc says Brooklyn is really advanced for her age, and really alert and aware. Of course, I'm such a proud mama, but just so thankful she's healthy!
I asked about her "rocking" I'll have to post a video on here but Brooklyn ROCKS front to back a TON and I was pretty concerned at first if that was ok, or normal. She just loves moving, kicking her legs, bouncing, rocking, anything, she loves movement....probably from all of the movement in my belly from dancing while pregnant :-D The doc said it's totally normal and that she is just a "go-er" :-D Fun for me once this little one learns how to crawl and walk. Praying my body, and energy will keep up. :-D
I'm just in awe of this little person every day, I see more and more independence coming and sometimes it makes me sad, but ultimately that's what every parent wants obviously but it's crazy just watching them grow up, I cannot wait for more life with her.

Been a while...

2011-01-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

I can tell the busy seasons of my life, because it takes me a month to finally blog again. Ugh, I hate that. I want to stay on top of this, but I guess, I can only do my best.
Today marks 7 months since my dad has been gone. Part of me can barely believe it. I take it one day at a time, and I have good days and bad days. I have been thinking about him a lot over the past week. I think partly because I got some great, meaningful gifts from my step mom. For Christmas, she packaged up a sweatshirt that I had bought dad when I was in college, some of his flannel PJ bottoms and a motorcycle shirt. It's special to me to have those little items to think of him.
Also, I guess dad started to paint a little bit after he had retired, he wasn't as good as he would have liked, he wanted to take some art classes, but he painted a few pictures, and Paulette framed a painting for me, and one for my brother. They are of a little cabin in the woods.
Anyways, I think that sparked me thinking about my dad more, and missing him. I saw someone drive by on a motorcycle yesterday that reminded me so much of my dad, it was cool.
Anyways, so that's been hard. I miss him most when I am alone with Brooklyn at night for some reason. I just wish he would have known her. I know I have SO much to be thankful for and the amazing Grandparents that she DOES have, but I guess just sometimes it's still just hard knowing that she'll never know him how I knew him. Losing a parent is never easy I don't think, no matter the age.

Scott and I are enjoying every moment with our little one. We find ourselves really busy. It's hard to return phone calls, and talk with all of the people I'd like to.
I know I can find time, but by the time I have worked a full day, talking all day, then coming home and taking care of Brooklyn, by the time she's in bed, I want to just sit and relax and not talk. Ha! :-D
Texting has become a good friend of mine. I find it so much easier to just shoot a text, so people know I'm ok, and I can check to see if others are doing ok, and Brooklyn can be crying, or fussing, or playing, or whatever, and I won't be too distracted, or it won't be too loud to others on the other end. Or I can be finally getting myself a shower, and having a text conversation in the middle of blow drying my hair...I know it's not super relational, but at this point, it's whats working.

Brooklyn is getting her first top tooth. It's a big one! She's been doing ok with teething.
She's also on some solid foods now as well as still nursing. She's had sweet potatoes, squash, green beans, pears, bananas, and carrots. :-D She honestly likes it all, she's a great little eater.

I began teaching dance again 2 weeks ago. It's great to be back, I'm only teaching one class, and it's perfect. I'm so energized teaching and choreographing again. I love it, and don't feel over committed, or extended...just busy :-D

We had a great Christmas and New Years.
This year was with Scott's family - we had not seen them since my shower this summer, so they got to meet BK for the first time, and she was spoiled.
Then for New Years, Scott and I didn't even stay up until Midnight, we were tired! And then we met my mom and Mark out for brunch on New Years Day. We met up in Mt. Vernon at a cute little resturant for brunch, and had a great time!

Scott celebrated his 31st birthday on Jan 9th - again he wanted low key. We went to breakfast, had some friends over and watched some football and ate chili. My brother and sister in law stopped by and we went out to dinner. It was low key, but it was nice, just what he wanted.

I will post pics of our festivities later.

I am really looking forward to the spring and summer. This time of the year seems to be hard for me, not too much to look forward to. January through April just feels boring. I'm bored with the weather mostly. Ha! A lot of my friends and family's birthdays fall in these months so that keeps them plugging along.

Alright, I think thats most of the updating for now....

A Day in the Life of...

2010-12-16T18:52:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post about my current schedule just so I can one day look back and how CRAZY I was for working full time with a child! :-D

Basically my current schedule is:
Sunday (since I work at a church) 7-1pm
Monday 7:30-3:30pm
Tuesday 7-4pm
Wednesday 7-12 in office, 12:30-4pm working from home
Thursday 8-12 in office, 12:30-4pm working from home

I work 40 hrs a week, and I have Fridays and Saturdays off.

My mornings look like this:
I wake up at 5am to get myself showered, and have some breakfast (although usually Scott is up with me and makes me coffee and breakfast, which is great!! But there are mornings that he has to be at work early).
I then wake Brooklyn up at 6am to feed her. The mornings that someone comes to our house to watch her (Mondays and Thursdays) I put her right back to bed, and I finish getting ready, making sure I have packed my pump for the work day.
On the days I take her to the Hansen's, I feed her at 6am and get her bag packed, get her milk for the day, and her clothes, and head out the door at 6:30 to drop her off and be at work by 7am.
She has three feedings with our baby sitters, and I pump 3x a day at work...when I remember, or am not in a meeting.

I come home around 4pm, get dinner going, feed Brooklyn play with her, pack her stuff for the next day, and then get stuff done around the house, shopping, cleaning, laundry, etc.
Her last feeding now is generally between 7 and 8pm and she goes down for the night shortly after that.

I try to be in bed around 10pm.

My days and weeks go by really fast, but it's no wonder I'm so tired and that my body is failing on me. I will also go back to teaching dance in january - but only once class a week so that's good. I know I'll be exhausted to teach Thursdays but I do love my group of girls and it will feel good to get moving again as long as my body holds up.

My job is sitting a lot so my soaz (hip flexors) have really tightened up and shortened quite a bit. I really need to focus on stretching .

One day I hope to stay at home with my children, and I'm hoping that day is soon. While I LOVE my job and would be sad to leave, I feel like as long as we can financially make it work, I feel like this is my time to be a mom. Brooklyn is changing and growing so much every day I feel like I'm missing out.

Anyways, just wanted to document the craziness!!

Explosion

2010-12-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

On Monday, we had our staff Christmas party at the church, it was a great day. Bowling in ugly Christmas sweaters and outfits, then Narnia in 3D at the theater. It was great.
However, in the middle of the afternoon I got a call from the girl who watches Brooklyn on Mondays, that there was a loud bang around the house. I reassured her that things were ok and that since we live in the county, people shoot guns. She was persistent in saying, "No, something EXPLODED!" and then she looked out in the front yard realizing our power pole was on fire! The transformer had BLOWN shooting 115,000 watts of voltage through the pole. It blew out the power for our whole area. Scott hurried home from work, and Emily called 911.
It was a crazy day. Scott took a few pictures.

Video of our little muffin...

2010-12-03T11:14:00.001-08:00

Here is Brooklyn actually in the middle of October, so a few months ago.
She was just talking up a storm this day.