Tis the Season...

for family pictures.

It was pretty much fate that we found Rachel to take our pictures.  First, I met her at a friend's house and realized that I actually knew who she was since we both take our kids to the library toddler time pretty much weekly.  Then, I later found out that she knows one of my childhood friends as well.  Crazy!

We absolutely LOVED working with her and she did a FANTASTIC job!

Here's a few of my favs.  (I really had a hard time narrowing it down)

I love, love, LOVE this picture.  Mainly because it really does show Alayna's personality.  And I think this may just be the first professional family picture that my daughter has actually smiled in.  Seriously, I am not kidding.  AND, that is one HANDSOME man!  Be still my heart.

 She steals my heart.  (Especially when she is not whining. :)

 LOVE these two!

 I love that girl.

 And a pregnancy pic. 

Now, on to adorning my walls with these photos!

Can I toot my own horn for a minute?

You are reading the blog of a person who has survived being the wife of a shift worker for an entire year.

Now if you are anything like I was a year ago, you wouldn't really know what an accomplishment that is, but let me assure you that it is indeed cause for me to toot my horn.

I never thought having a husband who works nights as well as days, weekends as well as weekdays, and 14 hour shifts where no cell phones are allowed would be so challenging for the wife (as well as the husband), but it is..  I was completely oblivious to the toll it would take sometimes. 

But we did it!  A year has gone by, we are still alive and we know the ins and outs of shift work.  We don't have it perfect yet, but we are getting there.

And now, I really have to give a shout out to the main superstar.  My husband.  He is A-MA-ZING!  Seriously.  He is our rock.  I know this year has been challenging for him schedule-wise, but he almost never complains.  And when he is home, he is home.  He's completely focused on us.  And that says A LOT!

So much for my mother's intuition

And here is where I am admitting I was wrong.  Dead wrong. 

Remember how I mentioned earlier that Dan and I were thinking opposites when it came to the gender of our baby?

Well, we did indeed find out what we are having.  But let me explain a little before I reveal what our baby is.

First. I just knew Alayna was a girl.  I somehow knew long before I even was pregnant with her that I would have a girl first.  And Dan and I were on the same page when it came to her.  I will never forget what the ultrasound tech said to me when we were about ready to find out her gender.

"So what do you think you are having?  What is your Mother's intuition?" 
And I said, "Well, I don't know if I would call it Mother's intuition, but..." 
And then she jokingly said, "Well, we'll call it Mother's intuition if you are right....and an educated guess if you are wrong. " 
Once she confirmed that we were indeed right.  She said, "See, Mother's intuition."

Well, I have to admit, I prided myself on that little fact.  The fact I had Mother's intuition when it came to my baby.  So this time around I figured the same thing.

For the last little while I was just really feeling like I knew what we were having.  In fact, I was 99.9% sure.  But Dan seemed to think differently.  And being, that we could not persuade each other to change our mind, we decided to place a friendly bet where the winner won....... a foot rub.  I mean, go big or go home, right?  Well, a foot rub was sounding pretty fantastic to me.  Not to mention the winner had bragging rights and I was ready for those bragging rights of me and my Motherly intuition.

So the day came and all I could think about was how right I was and how wrong Dan was.  Seriously.  I was SURE I was right.

So when the tech asked if we wanted to find out and we assured her that we did, she mumbled (and I mean mumbled).

"It looks like it's a GIRL."

I had to immediately say, "GIRL? Did you say GIRL?!?" 

(Obviously, I was thinking that we were having a baby of the boy kind.)

She checked again and said, "OH YEAH.  It's a GIRL!"  As she proceeded to show us.  I then turned to Dan and exclaimed, "Well, you were right!"

I think I was in shock the rest of the day.  I mean, I REALLY thought it was a boy.  The heart rate was lower, I was less sick, our boys name list is pretty well set, and I just really was thinking it was a boy for some reason.  (I even had a blog post title ready for announcing the gender--Now that's pretty certain.)

But Dan was right.  (He later told me he was ready for me to win the bet.  Not because he thought it was a boy, but because I just seemed so certain.)  He won the foot rub, which I have yet to give, and the bragging rights.  But because he is a better person than me, he hasn't even given me a hard time about it.  Not once.  Bless his heart.

And now I need to say that we are THRILLED!  Girl or boy it doesn't matter.  I know it may seem like I was hoping for a boy, but really we both were routing for a healthy baby.  And she looks perfect. 

We are both so stinkin' excited for Alayna to have a little sister.  And Dan is beside himself with joy knowing that he gets another Daddy's little girl.  And he loves the fact that we are already equipped for another girl.

So, there you have it.  A GIRL!  

You can imagine my thoughts lately have been about names, bows, frilly dresses, pink, babies, and attitude.  Because you know there's going to be lots of that in years to come.  :)

*And wish us luck in the naming category because our girls name list is in SAD shape.*

19 weeks

So, some of you have been dying for a belly picture.  (Read: My family has been bugging me for some pictures.)

And here they are.  My 19 week belly pics.  There are two, since I didn't quite realize I wasn't standing all the way to the side.  (I think subconsciously I didn't want you to really know how big I am yet.)

 The full blown side view.  *Gasp*

I am fully aware that I am just one of those women who's body simply cannot. hide. the. baby.  I don't know why my body chooses to be all out in front, but it does.  I am already getting comments daily about my belly and people are shocked to find out that I am not even quite half way.  Just today, A lady at the temple asked when my due date was and I think her eyes were about ready to pop out of her head when I told her.  :)

All well.  All I can do is laugh.  We are so thrilled to be welcoming another little one into our family, that it just doesn't seem to matter.

The great pumpkin

This year was Alayna's first pumpkin carving experience.  Yes, you read that right. Her very first.  Where was she all the other years, you might ask?  Well, we haven't carved pumpkins in the last few years.  Gasp.  A couple years, she was still pretty little, and then we were in the middle of moving one year and so here we are.  Three years old and carving pumpkins for the first time.

Dan took Layna to the store to pick out what she called her "Great pumpkin" (due to her having watched Charlie Brown's: It's the Great Pumpkin several times this year).  Then she came home and informed me that we were going to "cut" her great pumpkin.

And here's the documentation of this new experience.

You might think based on her facial expression that there was some apprehension and possibly some whining when taking the guts out, but there wasn't.  In fact, we were shocked at how well she did and how she just jumped right in to help.  But still, her face is quite funny.

She insisted on helping with everything....including poking the holes.  This is the first year we used an already made template.  Kind of nice, but I think in years to come we will probably be letting Alayna design her own.

The proud pumpkin carver.

She loved "cutting" the great pumpkin (and was quite sad when he had to be thrown away) and even asked to do another.  Guess Halloween can't come soon enough.  

I redeemed myself

Even though I was not the most on top of it for Alayna's costume, I tried to redeem myself by making her a Trick or Treating bag.

And here it is.  Cute, huh?

 And a little closer look.  The front.

 The back.

And the inside.



A few more details.

-I used this pattern from The Sometimes Crafter. 
- I had to get in touch with my cross-stitch/embroidery self.  It's been awhile...like maybe 10 years, but it was fun. 
-I need to stop my habit of starting a project, and not wanting to stop 'til I'm finished because it causes me to stay up 'til one in the morning when I could have just gone to bed at 10:30 with Dan and finished in the morning.  Oh well, maybe one of these days I'll learn.
-All the late hours paid off when I would hear someone tell Alayna what a cute bag she had.  It's not about the costume, it's all about the bag.  :)

A stubborn princess

This year a Halloween costume was put on on the back burner.  Like WAY on the back burner.  Mainly because I wasn't feeling well- I was completely unmotivated.  And also because I kept remembering last year's costume experience where our stubborn child would not even consider wearing her costume. 

So this year, I tried to let Alayna choose what she wanted to be, in hopes to make sure a certain little girl would wear her costume with no fuss.  But she still just didn't quite get the concept of what I was asking her.  So I decided to show her some pictures of costumes online.  I had two or three ideas of what I thought would be cute, and she shot me down on every one.  Although, she did give me a hint, every time I would ask her about what she wanted to dress up as, she would say, "I want a pretty dress."  I figured I could make that happen.  So, a few days before Halloween, we had her go through the dress up barrel and choose which "pretty dress" she wanted.  It took some MAJOR convincing, but we finally ended up with a "pretty princess"....or a pretty STUBBORN princess.  Heaven help us if every Halloween is like this!

So, here's our stubborn princess before our Ward Halloween party.  The gloves and the crown came off almost right after the pictures, but I am just considering it a success that she wore the dress.  We told her if she wanted to go see her friends at the party, she had to wear her dress.  Thank goodness she loves her friends!

Here she is before we went Trick or Treating.  Can you you say attitude?

This is what she did when I said, "Say cheese."

Finally, the attitude has disappeared...somewhat.

The gloves again came off right after the pictures, but I somehow convinced her to keep her crown on.

We went Trick or Treating with our good friends and it made all the difference for Alayna to watch the older kids and follow along.  Holly and I took the kids around the neighborhood and the men stayed home and passed the candy out. 

It was Alayna's first experience Trick or Treating door to door.  She started out shy, but had it down by the end. 

Oh, and I have to add that we Trick or Treated outside (in the upper 60's low 70's) without a coat....or a jacket....or snow!  I think that is MY first time trick or treating under such wonderful weather conditions.  And you could tell that I am a bit of an amateur considering I didn't even think about bringing a stroller/wagon along.  We had to borrow/share Holly's.  Where I'm from, you ride in the car from house to house because it's too darn cold to walk.  I'll be sure to be better next year. 

Here we are trick or treating at our house. Not the best picture, but this was our last stop and I think the kids were tired.

Alayna: princess
Nate (whom Alayna calls "Mate"): gnome
Carter: mad scientist
Gabby: hula girl

I just had to add a picture of this guy.  Isn't he the cutest little gnome?