Leaves!

Ella's Birthday

My little baby officially turned 2 yesterday! Since her birthday fell on a Sunday, we decided to celebrate it on Saturday. Grandma and Grandpa Braden even came down for the occasion, so the kids were excited.

Our original plan was to go to Barnyard Boo at Thanksgiving Point, but if you caught the BYU football game you'll understand why we changed our minds. SNOW! Instead we spent the afternoon at hyperactive central, Chucky Cheese! The pizza was surprisingly not that bad, and the kids had a ton of fun riding the rides and playing games. Even Ben and my Dad got in the fun and ended up winning 200 tickets at just one game. (I don't think they expected 30-50 year old guys to be playing).


Here's Ella on some kind of space thing. She actually wasn't too thrilled about this one.

After Chucky Cheese, we went home so Ella could get a nap and watched the BYU game together, while eating enormous amounts of chips, salsa, and guacamole from Los Hermanos.

When we were done with dinner we had Ella open presents, and boy did it feel like Christmas. I attached a few pictures here, but you can check my facebook site for the complete album.


Ella is all girl, so we got her a hatbox full of jewelry and dress up clothes.


Here she has on the wings that go to her Tinkerbell costume that Grandma and Grandpa Braden got her for Halloween. I couldn't get her to try on the whole thing.

Another part of the dress up was 6 pairs of the cheezy plastic high heel shoes. She already can run around the house in them, despite the fact that they are too big and extremely awkward.

Ella had no warm clothes for winter, so Grandma and Grandpa Rohrbach sent some money to get some adorable clothes.

Here she is with the dolly Grandma and Grandpa Braden got her and the stroller mommy and daddy got for her.


Isn't this pack and play so cute. She tucks the baby in every night and gives kisses.


Later we did the whole cake and candles thing. Ben did an awesome job decorating the cake! I'm so glad he's good at making desserts, because just watching him frost it, made me tired.

Overall it was a great day and even though Ella won't remember any of it, I know I will! I'm still laughing at the image of her walking around with enough jewelry to impress Mr. T, in her hot pink glitter high heels, trying to push the stroller. Classic!

Marriage

The other day when we were making cupcakes, Hyrum was just rambling on about marriage. He was just being so funny, so I decided to join his conversation and this is what he said:

Mommy: Why did I get married?
Hyrum: Because you needed a daddy!

Mommy: What did Daddy say when he asked Mommy to marry him?
Hyrum: Please!

Mommy: What did Mommy say?
Hyrum: (in an exasperated tone) o.k.

Mommy: Why do we have kids?
Hyrum: So we have someone to play with.

Oh, well that clears everything up doesn't it. I love kids!

Treats and Preschool

Our ward has been so good to us this last month, in taking our kids every morning, and bringing in meals. Yesterday, we decided to bake a little fall thank you treat. The kids did more tasting than actual helping, but they had alot of fun delivering the plates to all their friends.

Today, we are still trying to catch up on everything and return to our regular schedule. I wanted to get a picture of Hyrum on his first day of pre-school, but unfortunately that was the day I was getting checked for kidney stones. He's been going for about 2 weeks, but I still wanted to get some pictures.

We were so lucky to get into the Baby Bulldog Pre-School that Provo High School runs. They have an amazing facility and there are tons of student helpers to give the kids attention. Hyrum goes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 12:50-3:00 p.m. and the best part of all is it's only $70 a semester (which is October to mid December and February to mid April). He has had so much fun going to pre-school, and mom has really enjoyed being able to spend some time alone with Ella and just some time for herself.

This is one half of the facilty. The dress up center, the art center, the science center, and the exploring station.

Here's the other half. The reading center, the writing center,the creative station, and the bathrooms. They also have a playground outside, but it was freezing, so I didn't get a picture.

Hyrum, about 2 seconds after we got there.

I couldn't get him to even look up and smile.

Dinosaur Museum

I was feeling well enough that we were able to go to Thanksgiving Point for family home evening last night. We have had a pass for several months now, but I've never remembered to bring a camera. It was pumpkin night at the Dinosaur Museum so the kids had fun hunting around for hidden pumpins.

For those of you who haven't been up to the Dinosaur Museum, it's very different from traditional museums. It's a very interactive, hands on, kind of place. This is a picture of Hyrum hiding in one of the caves. If you look really close you can see one of the pumpkins next to the dino bones. Ella would not go near the cave.

This is where the kids learn about erosion. Can you tell who doesn't like to touch wet sand?

Can you guess who does?

This is the kids using paint brushes to uncover dinosaur bones.

Apparently dry sand is completely fine.

It was so fun to be able to be up and about and actually get out of the house for family home evening. The kids loved hunting for pumpkins and digging in the sand. Afterwards we stopped for some ice cream. Hopefully we'll be coming back to Thanksgiving Point for the Barnyard Boo at Farm Country this weekend for Ella's birthday.

10 Weeks

As of Sunday, I finally hit 10 weeks! This week my baby is about 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 inches and weighs .18 oz. Small! And baby is about the size of a small plum. Ten weeks is nice because most of the major organs have formed at this point and the baby no longer looks like a tadpole (which Hyrum was really relieved to know).

Ten weeks is also nice, because I'm finally starting to feel a little better. I still have the nausea and all the yucky pregnancy stuff, but I'm at least out of bed. Saturday, I did a little test run to see if I could drive by myself and go shopping by myself. Oh the healing powers of the mall! It was alot of fun to get out. I was even able to go to church on Sunday, although I was totally out of it because I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and could not get back to sleep. After lunch on Sunday we went for a drive on the Alpine Loop and it was so pretty! I was bummed that we didn't bring our camera. I got a little car sick, but it was worth it.

Today was the first day in over 3 weeks that I was able to watch the kids by myself. Ben still came home at lunch to help, but I did pretty good. I even cleaned out our fridge that has been accumulating moldy food for the last month. Hopefully I'll feel good enough to take the kids to Thanksgiving Point for family home evening tonight. I'll try to remember to bring the camera.

I'm adding some cute pictures we took of the kids before church on Sunday. It was the first time in over a month that they actually had on matching clothes, teeth brushed and hair done for church. God bless daddy, but he just can't do pigtails like mommy.

Ella looking cute!

And a little devious!

The ta-da pose!


Big Smooch!

Missing in Action

Well I've been M.I.A for the past three weeks and I've really missed posting on my blog. I'll give you a little clue as to what I've been up to. . . .

That's right, I'm having a baby! Well not today, but it is on it's way. The due date is May 18th and since none of my babies have made it past 36 weeks, you can probably count on an April baby. Thanks goodness the technitian added little arrows, because I never know what the heck I'm looking at. So here is our first picture of our little bean baby. The baby seems quite content, but has been causing me quite a bit of trouble.

About three weeks ago I caught some horrific virus that more or less just makes you feel like you want to die. I couldn't eat a thing and I had diareah like nobodys business. The doctors were trying to figure out if it was the pregnancy making me feel so darn awful or something else. So a million tests later, a couple of stool samples, and we still had no answers. So they sent me home with some Zofran and I had to go in to get an I.V. put in because I was so dehyrated. It only took them about a million pokes, because my veins kept collapsing.

A week or so later I started having these back/abdominal attacks that were so bad I would black out. I was already so weak because I couldn't even eat saltines, so we went in to get an ultra sound to make sure I wasn't having a molar pregnancy (the baby stops developing, but you don't miscarry) or a multiple pregnancy. Fortunately, it was neither of those options and the baby was doing just fine, but the doctors were still baffled as to where the pain was coming from. They ran some more tests and discovered blood in my urine. So I was carted off to the urologist to test for kidney stones.

They weren't able to run the regular cat scan due to the fact that I was 8 weeks pregnant at the time so their only option was an ultra sound, which unfortunately isn't very accurate. They didn't discover any stones, but my left kidney was slightly enlarged, which indicates there is a high probability I have a kidney stone.

This week has just been so fun waiting for that stone to pass, and lucky me, it's decided to just take up permanent residency inside. If it doesn't pass real soon it means I might have to go in for a surgery to try and remove it (not something I'm looking forward to). So now we are just in the waiting game.

It's been especially hard because I haven't been able to take care of my kids. Fortunately the ladies in my ward have been taking them every morning, but I really miss my kids company and just being the one who can take care of them. They really miss it too! Daddy's been sick this last week as well, so I think they kind of feel lost about who to turn to for a parent.

Yesterday, however, I actually got dressed and went and ate a hamburger, so I think that must be a good sign. I was starting to go crazy being stuck in my bed for three weeks. So hopefully, I'll start feeling better soon and can rejoin the human race. I'm currently 9 weeks pregnant and I'm really hoping to be up and moving soon because in the late 20 weeks I go back on bed rest, so I better have some time where I can enjoy the joys of motherhood. Or is that when the kids go off to college?