Baby Tess is on her way!

This week we had the exciting event of going to the ultrasound. We asked the boys before we left if they wanted a brother or a sister and they were both set on a brother! When we told them during the ultrasound that the baby was a girl they were quite disappointed. However, I was thrilled! Even more thrilled to see that everything looked good and baby Tess is healthy.

We had a 3D ultrasound which is awesome! You can see things so clearly and it was a lot of fun. She had her hand up by her face the entire time. It was very cute. I have already received a few pink things from friends and can't wait to increase that collection.

20 Weeks

The belly popped out this week! The boys remind me of that everyday they look at me.

Santa Clause

If Gingerbread houses are the favorite activity.....sitting on Santa's lap is the LEAST favorite activity! The only reason they do it is because I tell them Santa can't come unless they tell him personally what they want. Ethan braved through it!

Gingerbread House

I think the boys favorite Christmas activity is the gingerbread house. Mostly because they like to steal candy from it!

19 Weeks

Merry Christmas 2010!

JOY to the world! Another year has come;

Yet, Matt is still in school;

Let every heart prepare for June,

And wife and kids will sing,

And wife and kids will sing,

And wife and wife and kids will sing,

JOY to the world! The boys have grown,

They turned 5 and 3;

They both had stitches and surgery,

And jump on the trampoline,

And jump on the trampoline,

And jump and jump on the trampoline.

JOY to the world! A new babe grows;

It should arrive in May;

You might find Beth nesting, or resting,

We send you all our love,

We send you all our love,

We send and send you all our love.

18 Weeks

Here is what the baby looks like so far......FYI, my ultrasound got moved until December 16th! So, we are all anxiously awaiting to find out if another boy or a girl will be joining our family!

I don't know that I was as tired as I looked in the photo, maybe just a little camera shy!

PTD and Thanksgiving

This year I decided I needed to have my mum's Thanksgiving dinner so we made a PTD (pre-Thanksgiving dinner)! All my memories from Thanksgiving revolve around the food as we never celebrated with any other family or friends. So, we whipped up our turkey, copied her gravy, made yorkshire pudding and had English stuffing. I have to say, it was awesome. We cooked the turkey to perfection and everything tasted delcious!

Then we spent Thanksgiving with friends. It was again delicious but better yet the company was fabulous. I experimented with some home-made rolls that turned out great!

We have many things to be grateful for this year and we enjoyed reflecting upon that all week long!

SNOW!

It generally snows once or twice a year here in Seattle, however, I have never seen it this early. I hope that doesn't mean we are in for a bad winter! This year it conveniently came the week of Thanksgiving. It was awesome! Matt worked from home and school was cancelled. for a whole 5 inches! Granted the snow plows don't really come and the tempurature makes everything icy. The boys enjoyed playing in it and we even went out sledding. 

Who doesn't love to jump in the snow!

 

After working Matt took the boys out it just happend to be dark already!

This is our "sled." It is our shovel! 

The activity of choice, eating snow.

Our snowman got a little bit bigger when we got a few more inches.

Staples

 It is official, both the boys have now had stitches or some other mechanism to hold opened skin together! Cole's was doing what he does most every day and jumped off an end table to do a cannonball onto the chair when he misstepped and landed on the windowsill. I was the lucky parent that got to accompany him to the doctors office and we walked out with 4 staples a little later.



Pre Staples




Post Staples

Note to anyone else who may be in this situation....We opted for staples because they are easier than stitches in the hair. However, Cole opened them up about 3 times in one week which ended up moving two of them! In the future, I might go with something a little more secure!

There is always one...

Each year at the primary program there is always one kid that makes the program memorable for the rest of the folks. This year, Cole was that kid! He happened to be conveniently located in between the primary president and another adult, but yet managed to entertain those in the congregation. Fortunately, for the middle seats he was largely out of view.  He had his sweater over his head zipped up, his feet in the air with or without shoes and he landed himself on the laps of the adults next to him at least 5 times.  Later the primary president mentioned that the most annoying part was that he kept practicing his part out loud until he was supposed to say it. However, when it came time to say it he ran up there, mumbled something and then ran and sat back down. We are so proud.

A baby in the belly

Yes folks, we have a baby in the belly! The little munchkin should arrive around the first part of May. (or April if it follows the footsteps of its brothers!) The pregnancy has been very different! I didn't get sick as soon, I can touch food and even open my fridge, I didn't get as severely sick but granted did have full accessibility to Zofran! However, the bad news is that the sickness continues! With the boys at 12 weeks I woke up from my 2 month hiatus and went on living just fine. This one is dragging out a little longer with moments of feeling fine and others not! I'm thinking it has to be a girl of course, but won't be disappointed if we get to have another wild boy! I have my ultrasound on November 30th so feel free to post your guesses! Currently the dear is the size of a fig, can bend its fingers and even suck its thumb.

Pictures of the Boys

For the boys pictures this year my friend Melissa took these shots.

Ethan 3 years

Cole 5 years



Buddies!



Cole enjoyed hanging out in the tree afterwards!



And then doing flips on the tramp!




E took a turn on the tramp!



Pumpkins and Halloween!

We carved pumpkins a little early this year so that we could catch some time with dad. The boys loved it!

For our Halloween festivities we hit Matt's work, had lunch with him and trick or treated around the office. Saturday Matt took the boys to the ward trunk or treat that was a success. I don't have any pictures of costumes because the boys decided they didn't want to wear anything but glowing bones shirts this year. That makes 2 years in a row that the kids wouldn't wear costumes so the costume budget for next year just got slashed! They had a good time without their costumes anyway.

Happy Birthday Cole and Ethan

Cole turned 5 and Ethan turned 3 this year! First thing in the morning we had their presents laid out so that Dad could participate as he had class later that night.

They added to their collection of batman stuff and got some Kung Zhu pets/stuff.

 We had a party for the boys with 7 friends! That's right, 9 boys were running around for awhile! We played games, ate cupcakes and then played. The theme was Ironman, but I forgot to take pictures of the decorations!

We had a frosting theif.....




 And discovered who it was!





Nice action shot!

 

 The friends.

 And the presents.

Many thanks to my friend Melissa that stuck around to assist with the madness.

That night we went to dinner with the Elenbaas clan at Red Robin. The boys had a great day!

First Day of School for Ethan

This year I am doing a Mommy School for Ethan! There are five kids in the class and I got to teach the first day. Ethan was very excited about going to school and since then has had mixed reviews. In the end I think he likes it! He is very interested in his letters and numbers so I think he enjoys that part.

 Here are his school friends. Ethan, Caleb, Emmett, Leah and Thomas.

Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy

Now you see them.....

Now you don't!

Over the last year Cole had been having periodic episodes of fevers and sore throats. They came every couple of weeks and I visited many different doctors! I finally convinced one doctor to give me an ENT referral and we had our appointment the day we got home from summer vacation. They diagnosed Cole with PFAPA. It essentially stands for periodic fevers and sore throats! The treatment is a tonsillectomy. They happened to have an opening two days later so I signed up. I was tired of missing out on so many different things so I figured we better get it done soon than later! They decided to throw in an adenoidectomy as we also suspected a little sleep apnea.

I was the lucky winner who got to go with Cole. After Ethan's surgery we decided it only took one parent to take a kid through surgery. It was a drive through tonsillectomy! We showed up, they took him back, knocked him out (he didn't go down as peacefully as his brother), they called me back about 20 minutes later when he was waking up and I knew which room he was in from the screaming I heard! He also didn't wake up as nicely as his brother. I held him while he was screaming and in the meantime he pulled out his IV and bled all over us. He eventually stopped, ate a popsicle and they wheeled us to the pharmacy to pick up the meds and we were on our way home an 1 hour and a half later. It was pretty crazy.

Cole recovered pretty well and overall the experience wasn't any worse than his fever episodes so we knew the drill. I'm happy to report, two months later Cole hasn't been sick! I think it is a record for this child and we are so happy with the result!

First Day of School

Here is Cole on his first day of school! He is going to a gymnastics preschool which so far he loves. This is his best friend Jack that he goes to school with.

McIntire Family Reunion

At the end of our trip we went out to Heber Valley camp and spent three days with Matt's family. We shared cabins and spent many hours doing crafts and eating delicious food. The boys were sobbing when we left. It was fun to spend so much time with Matt's family. I even got a few folks to run with me while there!

Cousins and dogs

Oh how my boys miss their cousins. They could play and play for hours with them. We counted up the other day and the boys officially have 52 cousins and only 5 live outside of Utah!

They also woke up every morning and went straight to visit the dogs. I think the dogs were a little relieved to see them leave!

My sister Becky and her baby Ella were able to make the trip out while we were there. Here are the two girlie cousins one week apart!