Growing Babies is Hard Work

I'm 33 weeks pregnant today, and this is my first blog I've done since I've been pregnant. I'm really sad about that. I have never been able to understand it when people have told me, "I hate being pregnant", until this pregnancy. My other 3 pregnancies have been awesome! I didn't get sick, I never had any health problems....I just enjoyed watching my "baby bump" grow, and feel the little miracle growing inside of me. But now I get it. I was really sick for about 14-16 weeks. I couldn't eat anything. I was so dang tired and nauseous all day every day. Then when I hit 10 weeks, I started having horrible migraines. (I had never had a migraine before in my life.) They woke me up in the middle of the night. My right arm and my tongue went numb. I had Mike take me into the doctor's office on a Saturday morning, who then sent me to the ER to get a CAT scan and a couple of other tests. Ok, that freaked me out. (As if having migraines wasn't bad enough, now I had to worry about radiation making my baby have problems.) Everything came out fine of course, but I dealt with those awful migraines for 2 weeks straight before they started to level off. The doctors gave me Lortabs to get rid of the pain, but those things made me more sick than having my "morning sickness." I'm still having them, about every 2 weeks or so, and when I do I'm down for a whole 24 hours. I was feeling pretty good for a few weeks in my 2nd trimester, but as soon as I hit my 3rd trimester I started feeling awful again. I'm extremely tired all of the time, my back is killing me, and I'm still having migraines. I know, some normal things of pregnancy, but for some reason they are much worse this time.
This all kinda sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm really not. I love being pregnant, I'm just not enjoying it as much this time. It is such a miracle to me the whole process of growing babies! Even though I haven't felt very good for the past 7 months or so, I love feeling every movement of the baby growing inside of me. And we are having a little baby boy!! We are so excited!! Now we are counting down the days til this little guy comes!

Blog? What Blog? I Have a Blog?

I think I almost forgot that I had a blog. It's a new school year, we are on a schedule again, and now maybe I can remember to fit "blogging" into my schedule again. ;)

I seriously can't believe how time flies. My kids are growing fast, I'm getting old fast......and time isn't waiting for me to catch up. Anybody have a solution to this problem? There never seems to be enough time in one day. Maybe I need to take the turtle's advice on Finding Nemo, "Ride the wave, and go with the flow Dude."

(Picture of me and my siblings. I love this picture!)

Oh My Puppies!

My puppy (Belle) just had puppies! What an experience this has been. We bred our poodle with a malti-poo (maltese/poodle mix), so I guess these puppies will technically be malti-poos too. They are so tiny they fit in the palm of my hand. My kids just can't seem to leave the poor little things alone. The other morning, Lexi was the first one awake and she took the liberty of taking one of the puppies out of the basket, and took it upstairs to her bed. Not quite sure why Belle didn't bite her, but thank goodness she is a great dog!

(These pictures were taken when they were one week old.)

More Wedding Pix

Here are some more wedding photos. (And I actually think that I mixed up these two wedding posts, but oh well.) My sister Danielle took most of the wedding photos (all of the ones that look professional). She is amazing! I wish I could post more, but I have no more room and no more time! ;)

Kylie's Wedding

My baby sister Kylie just got married! I am feeling sooooo old! She looked so amazing and the wedding was beautiful!

My,Oh My, How Time Flies

Has it seriously been 3 months since I've blogged? Goodness gracious how time flies! I don't think I would've even blogged for another couple months if it wasn't for a few hints from some of you ;) One example of why I'm not a good "journaler." (Not sure if that's a word.) In this picture: Me and my siblings, minus one (miss u Noel!)

Easter in Phoenix

We travelled to Phoenix for Easter, where the majority of my family lives. We got to spend time with my parents, siblings, and niece and nephews. I was expecting Phoenix to have beautiful weather......nope. It was chilly, and it had rained all day Saturday. Thank goodness it was good enough weather for the Easter Bunny to hide the eggs! In these pictures, the kids are dying eggs, and going on an Easter egg hunt. The kids wanted to eat the eggs as soon as they were done dying them, except for Raimee. She didn't want to ruin her pretty eggs.

Phoenix Zoo

We were able to visit the Phoenix Zoo while we were there for Easter. The kids loved it, especially Raimee. She was climbling all of the fences to try to get a closer look. While watching the otters play, she had climbed the fence and straddled it. If I hadn't been so mad and panicked, I would've taken a picture. By the way, I don't even know what is up with Sean and his peace signs all of the time.

Snow in St. George

December 18th, 2008. 4" of snow on the ground. They cancelled school. Where I'm from, they wouldn't cancel school unless there were 6 foot drifts of snow. Ironic, I live in St. George because it doesn't snow here. I guess once in blue moon is kinda fun. The kids LOVED it! They made a snowman, but I can't find the picture that I took of it.

Thanksgiving (one week late)

TOP 11 THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR:

11 - spa days

10 - make-up

9 - contacts

8 - my house

7 - all of my fingers, toes, arms, and legs

6 - the internet

5 - cell phones

4- freedom of religion

3 - FRIENDS!!

2- FAMILY!!!

1- and of course. . . . my husband and my children!!! (They are also included in #2.)

I tend to forget how thankful I am for all of the many blessings I have. I have so many that I can't even name them all. So, here is my top 11.

5 THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN RUNNING A 5K RACE

5. Don't wear pants (unless they are the kind of pants that you can rip off of you while running.)

4. Don't wear toe rings!

3. If you are going to listen to music, don't use anything bigger than an ipod nano.

2. Drink a little bit of water before the race.

1. DON'T SKIP THE WATER STATION!!! (No matter if you have to wait for a couple seconds!)


For some odd reason, I have been very motivated to run some 5k races. I have always hated running. I used to run track in middle school and part of high school. I'm not a good runner. Never have, never will. But, I love to exercise (actually, I have a love/hate relationship with exercise; hate to do it but love it when I'm done.) Anyways, I ran another 5k race on Saturday, November 8th. These are the top 5 things I will definitely remember next time I decide to run a race.

Halloween

Halloween pics! It was a lot of fun taking the two little girls trick-or-treating this year! Raimee was scared out of her mind! Alexis was very content after the first two houses: she had a piece of candy in each hand, and that was all she needed and wanted.

Harley and Sean went with their friends. They are already too cool to be trick-or-treating with their parents. I'm thinking, "Whatever! We are such cool parents!" I even dressed like a devil.

So those of you who know Mike, he absolutely will NOT dress up! I try to get him to dress up with me every year, but he just won't do it. We were invited to a Halloween party that it was mandatory that you wear a costume. Plus, the best dressed couple won a pot of money! Woohoo! Well, I knew we weren't going to win the pot, but I got Mike to dress up with me.

I searched and searched for matching costumes at the last minute. I just couldn't find anything that Mike would dress up as. Finally I found the T-bird and Pink Lady costumes from Grease, and on sale! Well, as you may know, costumes are non-returnable when they are on sale. The T-bird costume was a one size fits all. I'm thinking this will be perfect. Well, I get home and Mike pulls the costume out of the bag. He says, "Oh, this is way too small." I said, "It's one size fits all." He held it up to him, by the way he is football player size: 6'3" and 260 lbs. I cracked up laughing! It was half his size! He said, "I'm a little bigger that ONE SIZE FITS ALL!!!" I said, "Perfect! They wore tight pants and floods in the 50's!" He wouldn't let us take a picture of him full length. But he did wear it, and we did have fun!

BYU Game

We attended the BYU/New Mexico game the same weekend we got our family pix done (thanks to Jon and Tasha and Jon's dad.) Little chilly, but not bad. We were yelling at Cosmo (the Cougar), "Hey Cosmo, buddy, take a pic with us!"

We were also yelling at Bronco Mendenhall (first pic, 3rd from the left), "Hey Bronx, are we still invited to the party afterward?" But I think he forgot how good of friends we are cuz he didn't put us on the party list. I was like, "But we got a picture with Cosmo, doesn't that mean anything?" I guess it doesn't.

New Fam Pictures

Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law (Chris & Karrie), we just got new family pics done! Woohoo! (Chris was the talented photographer.) It is a chore! Kids don't sit still, they pull funny faces, Alexis kept pulling Harley's hair, Sean wanted to hold our poodle in all of the pictures. . . I think this is why we only take them once a year. Out of the billion pictures we had taken, only 2 came out with everyone looking forward (and still not everyone was smiling).
We had gone up to Orem for our niece's blessing, and to take Keetch family pics. We had woken up to snow, (which made a wonderful background for pictures), but it was soooo cold!

Mike and his cousin Cameron entered cars into the Swiss Days Car Show. Mike put his '72 Chevy Truck in (which he's been working on for 3 years). He won first place! Seeing as how he's been working on it for this long, we were ecstatic for him!

Santa Clara Swiss Days

Last weekend, Sean , our friends Heather, Brecken, Kaye, and I ran in the Swiss Days 5k. We had lots of fun and hated it at the same time. But, we all finished without collapsing, so that's good. I'm happy to say that Sean beat me by 2 minutes, without having any asthma! What a good little sport he is! I'm a little embarassed to put these pictures of me on our blog, so just remember I just got done running!

"You Had Me at Hello"

You know, it actually seems like it's been 20 years, but only four years ago (September 4, 2004), the four of us started our journey together. It's been crazy and wonderful, and I wouldn't change it for a thing!