Fun at the Clark County Fair 2015!

Dad got his bratwurst, Mom got her Texas Twister, and Austin had his entrance ticket that he refused to let go of most of the day. Life is good!

We went out to Logandale for a weekend at the fair and to visit my parents. It was such a blast! Austin cried and cried when we left for home on Sunday. We finally had to pull over at a gas station and bribe him with chocolate milk to get him to find happiness in life again.

Even though his sadness was slightly irritating, we couldn't blame the poor boy. Who wants to go home after all the fried food, ice cream, farm animals, pig races, horse riding, and sand box play? Who wants to go home after helping Grandpa water all of his trees out in the yard like a big boy, digging in the dirt for hours with Buddy, enjoying a beautiful spring night on the porch playing with all the solar powered butterflies lighting up Grandma's flowers, and waking up to waffles and fresh strawberries for breakfast? I didn't think so......

The three amigos headed to Logandale for some good times!

Petting the mini pony with Momma.

Visiting the baby goats with Grandma and Grandpa.

Austin loved the massive Clydesdale horse but was scared to death of the John Deere tractor next to it. He was frozen in fear until Grandma picked him up and forced him to touch it. Kids are so funny sometimes!

Learning how to ride with Daddy.

Petting the piglets! This was Austin's favorite stop and it was so cute watching him. He gently laid his hand on them and watched them sleep :).

Meeting the chickens with Grandpa.

As you can see, we all had a really good time!

Wandering around the carnival and checking out all the cheaply made toys that Mom and Dad wouldn't buy for him no matter how hard he cried....

LOVE this guy.

At the food area trying to decide what we all wanted to eat! The smell of all the fried food was heavenly and made it so hard to make a decision!

We met up with our good friends Jura, Adrien, and Juliette at the pig races!

Love my girls!

We've decided to make it our yearly tradition for Austin to ride the ponies. He was so serious about it and tried really hard to get his horse to go faster by bouncing on it.

Our serious cowboy.

After dinner we all got some ice cream!

It was ridiculously messy...

....but totally worth it!

We took Austin back to Grandma's house for his afternoon nap but he refused (go figure). So we got back in the car and on our way back to the fair grounds he fell asleep in the car! He was so out of it he didn't even wake up when we put him into the stroller! That's how you know it was a fun day!

Digging in the dirt with Buddy.

These two are the best of friends. Austin talks about Buddy constantly no matter what day or what time it is. He even asks to FaceTime with Buddy! It's going to be a very sad day when that old dog passes away....

Baby Bump News: 37 Weeks!

The last Baby Bump pic of baby girl before she graces us with her presence in 11 short days!

The comparison photo: 37 Weeks with Austin!

This will be the last edition of the Baby Bump News for this baby and although I have loved being pregnant and journaling about it, I am soooooo excited to meet this little girl!

Oh. My. Goodness. Talk about nesting!!!

I caught the nesting bug pretty bad this time around. I am the proud owner of an entire closet full of nursing supplies, feminine supplies, diapers, blankets, and lots and lots of adorable baby girl clothes! When I was pregnant with Austin we didn't have a home of our own quite yet so I wasn't able to nest properly, and to be quite honest, it was my first baby and I had no idea what I would even need to buy anyway! I knew babies needed clothes and diapers, but after that, I was clueless. Luckily I had two AMAZING baby showers that filled in the gaps.

I am carrying baby girl much differently than I did Austin. Austin carried high and I suffered from extreme back pain if I sat down for too long. When I say too long, I mean a half hour. So I found myself walking around a lot and I was unable to do anything that required sitting, like church or the movie theaters. Now with baby girl I have the opposite problems! I'm carrying her low and instead of pain from sitting, I have extreme pain from walking! I get shooting pains down my pelvis that leave me immobilized until it resolves itself, and when I walk it feels like the baby is falling out of me..... I now understand the waddling jokes!

However different the pains might be, the cravings have been the same lately. Fruit and chocolate (mainly strawberries)!!

It's funny how with each pregnancy you get a glimpse of what your baby's personality is going to be like. Austin was all over the place! He moved constantly and was always stretched out, not wanting to be restricted in any way. When I laid in bed, thinking about my baby boy, I always got the feeling that he was going to be blonde, adorable, stubborn, and was going to have a unique personality that would give us a run for our money! OH HOW RIGHT I WAS!!!

With baby girl I have gotten completely opposite feelings. I already know she is going to be so sweet. She moves around, but not too much. I can only think of one night when she kept me up all night with movements. This was a nightly occurrence with Austin..... She has been so much nicer to me as far as symptoms go like nausea/vomiting, and acne. I could be totally wrong about this, but I imagine her looking just like her Daddy. The Scandinavian genes run strong in my family (blonde hair, pale skin, and light eyes) but I think this little beauty is going to be dark like Josh and his Native American ancestors. I guess we will see!! I also already know she is gong to love being swaddled. Austin HATED it and would kick off any blankets we tried covering him up with. Baby girl, however, always seems to be curled up in a ball, rarely stretching or making me miserable. At her 20 week ultrasound she was all curled up with her hands up to her face, making it hard to get a good picture. I think she is going to be the perfect baby for the Solly Baby Wrap I bought to carry her around in! I think she is going to be the silent, intelligent type whereas her brother is the loud, intelligent type. She's going to love watching Austin and will get a kick out of his craziness! I could be totally wrong about all of this, but I guess we will find out very soon!

I am counting down the days to April 21st when our sweet baby will be delivered by C-Section and I can spend the next three days in a hospital bed being waited on by the nurses (finally a role change!) just snuggling, nursing, and smelling her sweet baby scent! I think that's why I have loved nesting/preparing so much. It gives me a glimpse of the beautiful miracle that is about to happen! And when I say miracle, that's exactly what this little girl is! It's a miracle that I somehow got pregnant with her. It's a miracle that she survived the first trimester while I miscarried another baby and then proceeded to bleed and be put on bed rest once the doctor figured out that I was somehow pregnant again! It's a miracle that she continued to survive all the craziness and drama of my life and that her brother's karate kicks to my stomach haven't somehow damaged her. I thank God every day that I am still pregnant and that I have made it this far. You don't even think about these things until you lose a child. Once you know what that pain feels like, you find yourself grateful for every little thing you experience, painful or not, because it means you have not yet lost another one.

Up until this week the baby has been measuring small. Never small enough to cause alarm, but on the very edge of the growth chart kind of small. I haven't stressed about it though because Austin was the exact same way and he turned out just fine. Then, at this last doctors appointment, the fundus of my stomach grew 2.5cm in one week and she is in the normal range now! In case you didn't know, they measure your stomach at every doctor's appointment the last trimester and it is normal for a baby to grow 1cm per week. The measurement should be equal in centimeters to the number of weeks you are pregnant, plus or minus 2. Anything out of that range is abnormal. So for her to grow 2.5cm in one week and suddenly jump to the normal range was quite a surprise! Must have been all that chocolate from Easter???

Austin loves petting my stomach and he calls his baby sister, "circle." Close enough, right?! He also loves kissing my stomach and it makes me melt when I imagine how sweet he is going to be with her! 

Enjoy your last two weeks in heaven baby girl because life on Earth is going to be quite the shocker! But I promise no matter how hard it gets, or how painful that "owie" is, we are going to love you more than enough to make up for it!

Easter 2015

I love this little family of mine so much and can't wait for sister to join us in a few short weeks! (36 weeks prego)

This was Austin's second Easter and it was a lot more fun now that he is old enough to understand what's going on. We started the festivities a week early at the Inspirada Community Easter Egg Hunt! We walked down to the pavilion with some neighbor friends and had a blast finding eggs and listening to the DJ play kiddie songs. Austin thought the DJ was awesome and stood there watching him in a trance for the longest time until the Easter Bunny caught his eye! He ran over to the photo booth where the Easter Bunny was busy taking pictures and went under the rope that was being used to hold back the crowd, determined to go see that bunny! We had to run after him, trying to push people out of the way before he interrupted the photo taking that was going on. The ironic part is we later waited in line for a half hour so Austin could properly meet the Easter Bunny and get a picture with him and that was when Austin suddenly chose to become shy and reserved and wouldn't look up from his feet! He let the Easter Bunny hold him but he wouldn't look up at him and wouldn't look at the camera either. He's such a funny kid. Everything has to be on his time table.

Once it came time to do some egg hunting, we spent most of the event teaching Austin how to find the eggs and put them in his basket. By the time he grasped the concept, there wasn't much left to find. But he didn't care! He was having too much fun opening up the handful of eggs he did find and discovering what was inside!

Afterwards we made the trek home and stopped at the park on our way, letting Austin get some more energy out on the playground. There just happened to be a political meet and greet luncheon going on so we got some BBQ out of it too! Score! By the time we made it home we were all exhausted and took a nap.

Discovering the goodies inside!

Daddy teaching Austin how it's done.

Finally getting the hang of it and searching for eggs on his own!

All worn out after all that fun in the sun!

Austin talked about the Easter Bunny all week after that and loved telling us about the eggs! It was the perfect prelude to the actual Easter day because he was now a professional at finding those eggs! Josh and I woke up Sunday morning excited to see Austin's face when he spotted his Easter basket and found ourselves instead waiting for the crazy kid to wake up! Of course he chose this particular morning to sleep in! By 9:15 we decided we should just go in and wake him up or he was never going to take a nap later on in the day! It was so crazy because he NEVER sleeps that late! The little sleepy head came downstairs and went to town on all the candy waiting for him and still has not put down the little magnet-drawing board that was in his basket!

Then we went outside and found all the eggs the Easter Bunny had hidden around the front yard. The bunny must have figured plastic eggs would suffice this year since Austin isn't quite old enough to handle the real thing yet (and his parents were too tired to deal with cleaning up egg dye). This was just fine with Austin as he opened every single egg before he dropped them into his  basket, shoving chocolate into his mouth as fast as he possibly could. We had to take the basket away from him soon afterwards because he would have eaten the entire thing if we would have let him! He was not very happy about that....

We hid eggs once more before it was time for breakfast and General Conference. We ate cinnamon rolls and hard boiled eggs but Austin hardly took a bite because he was so busy with his new drawing board. We spent the rest of the day as a family, relaxing and listening to Conference. It was the perfect day! So calm and fulfilling! We were all sad to see it come to an end. Before we put Austin to bed we sat in his room listening to him jabber on to us about all the fun he had. He kept saying, "fun! fun!" after every little story. His English is getting good enough for us to actually understand him speaking partial sentences! It is amazing listening to his vocabulary grow and hear him put proper phrases together! He cried for quite a while after we laid him down for bed because he didn't want all the fun to end. We couldn't blame him. We felt like crying ourselves when we thought about work the next day......

Happy Easter Everyone! We hope your day was just as full of love and happiness as was intended by our Savior the day he made the ultimate sacrifice for our salvation.

Milestones: 20 Months Old

Austin's vocabulary is growing like crazy! He chats away all day long and sometimes clear into the night when he should be sleeping.... We get a kick out of standing by his door at night and listening to him talk to himself ;).

I had a very special moment with Austin a few weeks ago that left me slightly freaked out, but in awe of how close our little ones are to heaven and what's on the other side of the veil. It was one of those nights when we could hear him talking instead of sleeping and I was getting tired of waiting for him to go to bed so I went into his room to try and rock him to sleep. What I saw was eerie and had me slightly creeped out. Austin was sitting cross-legged in his bed, staring at something in front of him. Normally when someone enters the room he immediately turns his attention to them, but not this time. Not even me walking over to him and picking him up got him to look away at whatever it was he was staring at. I sat in the rocking chair with him on my lap and began rocking and quietly talking to him, but he just kept staring! I was starting to freak out, thinking he might have had a stroke or a seizure or something! What in the world was going on?! Why was he so calm and unresponsive?! Why wouldn't he look at me when I talked to him?! Then it got even more scary when he started whispering to whatever it was he was looking at..... That's when it hit me. We weren't alone. I tried so hard to look in the same direction and see if I could see it too, but there was nothing. I tried really hard to not get totally freaked out and leave the room that was obviously haunted but I was intrigued all at the same time. So there we sat, rocking, staring, and whispering to our unseen friend for over an hour until I realized he wasn't going to go to sleep. So I put him back in his bed and left him and his friend alone to converse so one of us could get some shut eye.

Here's where it gets crazy! The next morning Austin was suddenly very aware of my belly and what was inside! We have tried explaining the whole pregnancy/baby sister coming soon thing but he always seemed too young to understand..... until now. Now, he knew very well what was inside. Not only was he obsessed with rubbing and talking to my belly, but he started kissing it too! I asked him, "Austin, is that your baby sister inside?" He responded with, "Sister! Baby!" and lifted up my shirt yet again to give my belly one more kiss! Now he kisses my belly constantly and it is obvious that he is very much aware he has a sister in there. I talked to my Mom and Josh both about it and we all feel his invisible friend he was chatting with that night was either his baby sister visiting him or someone else who explained he has a sister coming to him! It makes me tear up every time I think about it! How amazing is that?!

Another fun story about Austin happened just a couple days ago. I took Austin for our usual afternoon trip to the park and sat in the shade while he ran up and down the big grassy hill in front of me. Then, suddenly he fell to his knees and started yelling, "Momma! Momma!" over and over again until I ran to his side. Once I got there he pointed to the grass and said, "Bee!" I looked down and saw a little box-elder bug (or firebug as we used to call them as kids). I told him that it wasn't a bee and tried getting him to say "firebug" but he was busy making buzzing noises while trying to catch it. I picked it up and showed it to him while it ran over my hands and then passed the bug on to him. He got really excited and spent the next ten minutes dropping it and picking it up again. Then, out of the blue, his boy'ish side got the best of him and he suddenly got the urge to squish the bug! He made his hulk face and did the hulk grunt and then the poor bug was history..... I tried explaining to him that he had now killed the bug and it couldn't play with him anymore, but he was too busy blowing on it, trying to get it to come back to life. The innocence of his thinking made me laugh so hard! I pity that poor bug and all the other bugs that are yet to cross Austin's path.....

Some fun moments over the past month:

Playing at the park with Momma!

Mom, Austin, and the belly (33 weeks) catching some sun!

My baby boy.

Getting up the nerve to tackle the big boy slide!

Play date with his best friend Emmett!

cute baby bums :).

"Look what I found, Austin!"

They were so cute taking turns pushing each other around in the doll stroller :).

And of course Austin had to take a moment to study the mechanics of the stroller. He has done that since he was just a tiny baby! I can see him becoming an engineer when he grows up.

Another thing they have done since they were babies: feeding each other and giving each other drinks! It's so funny to watch!

Being a little stud at Chuck-E-Cheese with Grandma P.

Taking a ride in his big boy car seat! He loves being able to face forward and see out the window and I love being able to see him better and watch all the funny things he does!

Hanging out with Mom and eating popcorn when he should have been napping....

Playing in the box the new car seat came in with Daddy! You can't see this, but he has his monkey, bottle, snacks, and blankets in his "house" too! (hehe)

Playing outside in the beautiful spring weather with Grandma P.

Taking a break from all that playing to eat a snack.

He is so lucky to have his own personal Montessori teacher (Grandma P.)! She comes up with the greatest activities to teach him sensory learning and other life skills he will need for the future! I'm just happy to see him doing the dishes! :)