The Guessing Game

We have had an anxious weekend. I woke up Friday night feeling pretty regular, though not painful, contractions. I got excited and we thought that we would have our new baby by the end of Saturday. Though at times things seemed to pick up a little bit, they never got real intense or closer together. We took our girls to the carnival Saturday night and after all of the walking around I was sure labor was on it's way. But after we got home I was just worn out and it backed off again.
I woke Sunday morning early with some really strong contractions, so strong that I could hardly stand up straight. So we stayed home from church waiting for things to get going. Again they backed off though. Now we are just guessing at what will happen. I keep thinking that we are definately in labor, and then it turns out to be nothing.
We are dialating little by little, so we will see what happens over the next few days. I just hate the guessing game and not knowing when things are going to happen. Plus, I feel bad for keeping so many people on alert all weekend, thinking that we are having a baby. Hopefully this baby will make up his/her mind soon. He/she can't stay in there forever, though right now it seems as though that is going to be the case.

Snow in Arizona!

We actually got snow down here in Sierra Vista! It was actually during the week before the wedding, but I just hadn't gotten around to posting about it until now. It is the first time they have had measurable snowfall since 2002. The girls were so excited. Lyla has been saying for a long time, "I wish for it to snow in Arizona." I have been telling her repeatedly that we weren't going to be seeing any snow around here. It just goes to show that if you wish for something hard enough, it just might come true. Of course every trace of snow was gone by about 9am, but still, we had snow for a little bit. It was pretty exciting. This weekend is supposed to be in the 80's, so that is about all of the snow we will see this winter.

Our van even had snow on it, but I didn't have one of those snow-scraping tools, so I had to get the broom out of the kitchen to clean the car off so that I could take the girls to school that morning.

Playing Dress-up

Anyone who knows my girls knows that they have always loved to play dress-up. I still have a hard time keeping them in regular clothes for an entire afternoon. They were playing dress-up the other day and decided to dress Jaxon up too. I thought he'd rip everything right off, but he didn't. He seemed to really enjoy it and when some of the things fell off he brought them over to me to put back on him. So here's the little superhero:

And the two princesses that he was supposed to be rescuing: (Lyla's in pink and Mckayla's in purple just FYI)

More weekend fun

On Sunday we went to church with my mom and then we went to see my niece Lily get baptized. They had been debating for a long time when to do her baptism, and finally decided that they would do it up in Utah (they live in Albuquerque) when we were all there together. It was neat to be able to be there for that. We weren't able to go to Ashley's baptism (sorry Ashley!) because it was right before Jake was leaving for Iraq. So it was great to be there for Lily's. Afterwards we went back to Amber's for food and visiting all night. I love getting to hand out with my family. I hate that we all live so far apart from each other so we don't get to hang out very much.
This is my niece Lily with me and Mckayla. The girls were so excited to see Lily's baptism. They now are talking about what they want to do at their own baptisms. Of course they are talking about what they want at their weddings too.

Here's some pictures I stole off of Karley's blog that I thought I'd share. Here is the only smiling picture of Jaxon from the entire weekend that I have seen:

Here is the girls eating at Karley's moms house with her son Karter who is 4. We were supposed to all wear either dark blue or gray, but I had a hard time finding anything that wasn't light pink or yellow or purple. I got these dresses at Marshalls on clearance and they were the closest I could get to a dark blue dress. I think they were cute though.

Here is a really cute picture of the girls and Karter. The three of them really had a great time together. Karter is such a cutie.

On a yucky side note, though we had a lot of fun over the weekend our drive home was pretty bad. Jaxon and my little neice Abigail came down with some sort of stomach bug Sunday night. Jaxon threw up many times on the way home and had terrible diaherria. He went through all of the clothes we had for him, including wearing anything that he had already worn over the weekend. As long as there was no barf or poop on it, it was deemed clean. It did explain the grumpy mood he had had all weekend, but it was not a fun drive home. It mostly affected the two youngest, but several of my family members said they felt a bit sick for a day or so after the weekend.

We had a ton of fun for our last trip for awhile. We don't plan on doing much traveling this spring. But anyone who wants to is welcome to come visit us! Probably the next time we see most of my family members won't be until this summer at the family reunion in Michigan, that makes me sad. But we are about to have a baby, and we won't feel up to traveling for awhile after that.

Hannah's Wedding

Last weekend we drove up to Utah to see my sister Hannah get married. We left on Thursday after Jake got off of work and drove all night to get to my sister Barbara's house around 8am. Not a fun drive, but we had a great weekend. Friday we hung out with Karley, my best friend from high school, and then we went to a family dinner Will's (Hannah's husband) church. With the family alone we nearly filled the church. You all know that I have a big family and 8 of the 9 siblings were there with accompanying spouses and children. But Will's family beats ours believe it or not. He also has nine siblings and he is the youngest and was the only one not married and without kids. So they had quite a gaggle of people too. It was a lot of fun though. Very crazy fun as all of the little kids were running around playing the whole night. We preformed our traditional "sister dance" that turned out really cute. And we played family feud against the Bairds. We won of course!
The next day Karley watched my kids while we went to the Provo temple for Hannah's wedding. My sisters had brought their kids to the temple and I am so glad that I didn't. Jaxon slept the whole time we were gone, and woke up covered in poop, so we were able to wash his clothes before the reception. I can't imagine having to deal with that at the temple. Plus, he really needed the nap. We didn't take any family pictures or anything at the temple because it was snowing really hard and it was freezing cold outside, so there was no need for the kids to be there anyways. It is funny because a lot of my sisters spent considerable time on their hair and then we had to walk up the hill in a blizzard to get inside the temple so all hair efforts were lost.

Above is me with my sister Hannah and below is me with my friend Karley. It was so awesome to see her, even though we didn't get to spend a lot of time together. We had made a deal last year that we would get together during the year and it never happened, so I am glad that we got to get together this year.

This is Jaxon with Karley's son Ty. He is such a cutie. Jaxon is only about 3 months older than Ty, and they became little buddies while we were there.

Here is Hannah holding Jaxon at the reception. He was being pretty clingy the whole time and only happy if Jake or I were holding him. So you won't see any smiling pictures of him.

Here is Hannah and Will coming out of the temple together. Hannah looked so gorgeous and happy. I am so glad that she found the right guy. All night people kept talking about how happy they looked together.

We went to the reception Saturday afternoon at Will's church in Provo. We were able to see a lot of old friends from my ward that I grew up in, as well as some old friends from high school. It was fun to get to see people again.

After the reception we went up to my sister Amber's house for a Valentine's Day/birthday party for my two nieces Ashley and Lily. Mckayla and Lyla really enjoyed making valentines and didn't want to stop making them until they had made at least one for everybody in the house. Lyla says we need to move to Utah because "In Utah is snow and cousins and Grandma!" What more could we ask for?

Belly Shot!

I have had a few requests for pictures of my belly before this baby comes out, so I am finally giving in. This is a picture of me with my younger sister Jessica who is due on April 15th. This was this past weekend at my sister Hannah's reception (to be blogged about later). It is completely unfair how tiny Jessica is. I am very huge and feeling like I will pop at any moment. Though I am only at 37 weeks, the baby has dropped and I have been having frequent (though not regular) contractions. So we will see what happens this next week!
PS. I don't know why my hair looks so red in this picture. It doesn't look red at all usually, I think it was just weird lighting or something. I haven't dyed it in a very long time and it is pretty much my natural color at this point.

Hiking around in AZ

These next pictures are from a Saturday in September where we just went up into the mountains for some hiking as a family. These are the mountains we can see from our house. They don't look that big from our house, but get bigger once you are up in them. This is a sign that is posted in the beginning of the canyon, I just think it is funny.
In case you can't read the sign, it says "TRAVEL CAUTION: Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area"
Below is a pretty waterfall (the only waterfall) on the road up.

This is the bumpy dirt road with a million switchbacks that you have to drive up to get to the top: Well worth it though.

Here's me and the kids. There usually are no pictures of my on this blog because I am the one always taking the pictures. But Jake got me this time.

Here's a cute shot of Jaxon with an awesome background. I just can't believe how long his hair was. We have been keeping it pretty short lately, but he has to get a haircut a month to keep it that way.

Our trip to White Sands in August

Last August we went to White Sands, NM on a camping trip with my sister Katie and her hubby Gordon + kids, and Gordon's sister Betty and her family. I didn't realize that I had never written about it until I saw that the pictures from it were still stuck on our other camera. I don't actually have pictures from our time we spent actually in White Sands because we were warned not to bring our camera to the dunes because the sand is really fine and can ruin electronics when it blows. So we took some pictures there with a disposable camera that I never got developed.
Here is Jake, Gordon and Jaxon at the look out point up in the mountains. Though we played at White Sands we camped in the mountains because there was no camping available near White Sands. You can see the sand dunes over Jake's left shoulder off in the distance.

Left to Right: My nieces Eve and Lily, then Lyla and Mckayla, and Jake and Jaxon.

We also went to a solar observatory while we were there. We walked around to the different giant telescopes that they use to observe the sun. It was very high in the mountains and was a beautiful drive.

This is my sister Katie with most of the little girls. They had so much fun together. We did have a lot of fun playing on the dunes the one day we went, but the kids were pretty content to run around the campsite and play together.

On our drive through New Mexico we went through a terrible lightening storm. It was pretty freaky, but also very cool. After many many attempts I was able to catch a shot of some lightening through the windshield. I am pretty proud of that. We actually stayed in a hotel the first night because we didn't get there until after dark and it was pouring down rain. We didn't want to set up camping stuff in that weather. It also poured down rain the second night and I think that every single tent leaked. So much for rainflies!!!

White sands was really cool. It was different from other sand dunes I have been to because, not only are they white, but it is really fine sand so it has a much different texture. Only a few feet below the surface it hardens into a plaster-type feel that is so hard that they just plowed through to it to make roads and parking lots. They just use snow plows to clear the sand down to the plastery-type surface. No other sand dunes can do that. You always have to park on the edge and hike in to it. The most fun thing to do at the dunes is to go sledding. We got sleds at the visitor's center and went sledding in the summer. It was a blast, and not nearly as cold! After dark though, the wind started to blow and the sand blew so hard it felt like it would cut through the skin to the bone.

We had so much fun on that trip, and hopefully I will get those pictures off of the disposable camera soon so that y'all can see what the dune look like!

Long Lost Pictures

Long ago I had posted that we had lost the battery charger for our camera, and were unable to download any of those pictures. We never found that battery charger, and I went to several different electronic stores but was unable to find a replacement for a long time. We tried buying one online, but it didn't work out either. Someone suggested I got to a specific radioshack here in town, and though I had tried a radioshack I hadn't tried this one.
This radio shack is unappealing when you first walk in. It isn't well put together and is run by a husband and wife duo. But, when I asked the question about my camera battery the guy looked everywhere and then found a "universal" camera battery charger and worked with it for 30 minutes to figure out how to get it to work for my battery. The thing was totally complicated, I never could have done it on my own. I was so impressed with the incredible service of this place and the knowledge this guy had. Though it was a radioshack it had that "mom and pop's electronics" sort of feel. It was really nice to go to a store like that.
Now our camera works again!! And I was able to download all of the pictures off of it from last summer! There were several pictures on there that I had totally forgotten about. So the next couple of posts are going to be way way backtracking. I really use this blog as a family history/ scrapbooking type thing because I don't scrapbook at all and this is the only place that I journal about our family's comings and goings. So really I have to write about the pictures for posterity's sake.

Look at what Sophie gave me!

Mckayla has a good friend at school named Sophie who she has been talking about constantly since Sophie moved in. On Friday she came home from school all excited because Sophie had given her a present. I small shiny white rock. Only it wasn't a rock. Any guesses?
The girls have been obsessed with rocks since Jake has taken them rock hunting a few times and it is the Tucson gem and mineral show so we got to go up and see some really awesome rocks. We now have a small rock collection growing in their bedroom. Mckayla was very happy to recieve a small white rock from her friend and it even had a certain smell to it....
When I asked where she got it she said that Sophie gave it to her for a present, and when I asked where Sophie got it, she said that Trevor had given it to her....
I had her give it to me and go wash her hands. I didn't throw it away in front of her, but quietly got rid of it at another time. She didn't know any better, as I'm sure Sophie and Trevor didn't either. So, any guesses as to what it was??? The answer will be revealed in the comments section in a little while.

Proof that I do something during the day

Too often Jake comes home from work and says, "so what did you do today?" Most days my reply is "nothing." Not because I did nothing, but I don't really feel like I did anything if I've just been home doing housework and taking care of kids all day. I never feel like there is anything to report unless we've gotten out of the house. And those occurances are becoming more and more rare. I thought I'd show some proof of what I usually do during the day, which is follow Jaxon around and clean up his disasters.

One of his favorite past times is to pull everything out of lower cabinets and then get inside them and hide. Though it's pretty obvious where he's hiding because of the fallout all over the floor in front of it, and the giggling behind the closed cabinet door.

This one was a couple of days ago. Cute, but what a waste of spaghetti. Jake got him a big Tonka truck for Christmas and he loves to fill it with his toys and push it around the house dispersing his toys in every room he visits. Today while straightening the house I had an entire laundry basket full of things from Jaxon's room that I had collected in the other rooms of the house. I really actually love this age because Jaxon isn't to the fit-throwing years yet and he is so cute and playful all of the time. BUT it is a lot of work to chase after him and try to have a clean house when he is awake. So there's my proof. I DO do something during the day.

A few more of their pics

Budding Photographers

Possibly the problems we are having with our camera are the result of two unnamed budding photographers that love to take pictures. These two accomplices shall remain unnamed, but I would like to give them their first big break and publish a few of their works here on my blog.

She wanted a picture of Jaxon's foot..... don't ask me.

A Fieldtrip to Fry's

This past Tuesday I went on a fieldtrip with Mckayla's class to our local grocery store, Fry's. I didn't go on the last fieldtrip to the apple orchard because I didn't think I could handle an hour on a school bus at that stage in my pregnancy. It was actually quite educational. They took us to different areas of the store and talked about the food groups and what foods are good for what parts of your body. The kids really liked theat they got to eat samples at many different areas of the store. That always makes kids pay extra special attention. It was just a short fieldtrip, but it was fun and I think that kids need a change-up every now and again to do some learning out of the classroom. Our camera is having issues lately, but you can get the jist of it. Mckayla is in the green sweater in the middle of the class. Notice how much smaller she is than most of the other kids. I never thought the girls were that small until they went to Kindergarten and they were a head smaller than several kids in their classes.
This is the kids all looking at one of the live lobsters from the tank. It was funny that the girls were all eager to touch and pet the lobster but the boys weren't as enthusiastic.

A friday night out

On January 23rd, we went to a dinner/dance for Jake's work. It was nice to have a reason to get a little bit dressed up and to have somewhere to go out together. It is also nice that I got to meet some of the people Jake works with, instead of just all of our friends that come over to hang out. There was a nice dinner, and a presentation, and then the dancing started. We had a lot of fun. I love to dance, and we hardly ever get the chance to do it, so we took full advantage of the opportunity.
There was an activity where each table had to engineer something given a bag of miscellaneous items. And this thing had to be helpful in their job. Our table made an EP headset and this is our friend Joey modeling it for everyone.

I had to show off my hair because I actually went to get my hair done, just for fun, and I thought it came out nice. I had told her that I wanted to look nice, but not 16-year-old prom-ish, and I just wanted it to dress-up my dress a little bit. I thought she did really well at following my vague instructions.

This is a bunch of our friends and us in front of the backdrop they put up. Though, the lighting made it so the picture didn't really turn out. We had a lot of fun that night and I wish we could do stuff like that more often. Jake and I hadn't been out since our anniversary, so it was really nice to have a fun evening together.

Bowling with the fam

These pictures didn't really turn out, but I wanted to write about it anyways. We went up to Tucson a couple of weeks ago and took the kids bowling. The girls had a lot of fun, and I bowled over 100 for the first time in my life!! Of course, we were using bumpers. There was only one lane available and you had to either have them up or down the whole time, so we left them up. Otherwise the girls never would have hit a single pin.

Here's some pictures of Jake helping Lyla push the ball down the lane. Neither of them could seem to give the ball enough force to keep going until the end of the lane.

Funny story though was that there was some sort of bowling thing going on while we were there and I only took 2 pictures (the two above) and we had people complaining that the camera flash was throwing off their game. We also got many a dirty look if our kids tried to venture out of our area. Everyone seemed so annoyed that we would take our kids to a bowling alley in the middle of the day. Go figure.

More Ghost Town Hunting

For a good part of January we had a lot of company at our house. Jono, Jake's brother, has moved in with us for the next while, our friend's Jen and Daryl Orcelletto were staying with us, and Ashley, the fiance of a friend of ours, was also in town for several weeks. It was fun to have a lot of people around to hang out with. The only thing is that I don't feel like I am too much fun anymore. I mostly just clean house and take care of kids. It isn't that exciting. I felt like everyone who was stuck at my house while the guys went to work during the day were getting pretty bored. So I tried really hard to find things to do to entertain us.
There isn't much to do, but I did have the idea to go do some more ghost town hunting. We went for an easier town to find. We went to Fairbank, AZ. It is right off of the highway and has been cleared out so people can visit it. There was still some hiking involved, but at least there were trails to follow this time.

We took a trail from the town to the top of a hill where the old cemetary was. Though trails had been cleared out around the cemetary, it was overgrown with thorny bushes and cactus. It made it really creepy. It is not somewhere I'd visit in the dark, just the old broken gravestones were creepy enough. We were able to read some of them though.

This is Ashley and Jono in the cemetary.

This is a shot of some of the old buildings in the ghost town. It truly was a ghost town though, we saw a couple of other hikers, but it was deadly silent. We were pretty far from anything and we kept commenting on how quiet and still the whole place was. A little creepy if ya ask me. But that's what makes it a ghost town I guess.