Before and After

I've finally gotten around to transferring the recent photos off of my camera. Here's Alan and Ellie on their exciting first day of school!

It's amazing how much can change in four months:

May

August
(40 pounds later)

My belly has gone from baby bump to baby mountain!

(Also, my hair color has once again changed - sheepish smile.)


In related news, Alan and Ellie are starting to see me as a walking baby carrier rather than a human being. When I pick them up after school they run straight to my belly and say, "Hi baby! I missed you! How was your day?" Every once in a while they'll remember I'm there and give me an unenthusiastic, "Hi mom." It's pretty cute that they're already so loving to the baby. (=

Ellie's 5th birthday

Alan eating a bright red cupcake at Ellie's party



Attalie (Chad and Selena's baby) chillaxing at Big Surf



Nathan, Ellie, and Zach eating birthday treats

Ellie riding a floating alligator with random kids

Enjoying the kid's play area

Looking stylin' in cousin Attalie's glasses

Showing off her birthday presents

Lana and Attalie before swimming

Uncle Chad and Ellie showing off the b-day cake

Striking a birthday pose

School days are here again! Alan and Ellie are both loving their teachers and seem to be adjusting to the back-to-school routine. On Ellie's first day of kindergarten, she set down her backpack, flew onto the playground, and never looked back. Alan's 2nd grade teacher seems to be one of the sweetest ladies on the planet, which is great for Alan. He always thrives with gentle and kind guidance. He told me that she promised them on the first day of school that she would never yell at the class. It takes one patient teacher to make that promise to a class of rowdy 2nd graders.

I usually hover around my kids every day after school and try my best to prod the details of the day out of them. Most often, they give me vague details like, "I saw the principal in the hallway," or "I had a huge slice of pizza," or "I played on the playground." But every once and a while I get a somewhat detailed view of what their day was like. I'm sure all of the prodding drives them crazy, but I love to hear about their time at school. If I could wear an invisibilty cloak and follow them into their classrooms, I totally would.

Things seem to be going well with the pregnancy. Only two more months until our little dude (still not quite sure of his name yet) will arrive! I think that we've collected most of the baby things we need via Goodwill, hand-me-downs, and Wal Mart specials. Maybe it's because this is my third pregnancy and I'm getting a little older, but I don't remember having this many aches and pains with Ellie and Alan. I feel like a waddling old granny that can't ever get comfortable. At least the nausea is mostly gone though. I'll take back pains and leg cramps any day over a sick stomach!

Ellie celebrated her 5th birthday last week with a fun little family party at Big Surf. My mom and brothers and sisters drove up for the day and we spent the late afternoon enjoying the water park. We took advantage of the 10 dollars per person special, which was a great deal! It was a fun surprise to see that Sara and her kids were at the park too. They were taking advantage of the discount like we were and Alan was able to swim with his cousins!

Ellie had a lot of fun and was a very gracious gift reciever. Every time she opened a present, she exclaimed, "Thank you so much! This is what I've ALWAYS wanted."

Cross-eyes kids

When Alan and Ellie have been angry lately, the most unexpected expressions have shown on their faces. The expression involves a very tight jaw and extremely crossed eyes. I think Alan started it and Ellie picked up on it. It's so hard not to just burst out laughing when they express their frusturation with crossed eyes. When they occasionally fight with eachother or disagree with us, those two sets of beady blue eyes immediately start to cross and we KNOW that they are really angry about something. Maybe I'll catch these fierce expressions on camera sometime if I'm lucky. It's just too funny to possibly explain.

Mindless doodles

The other night while watching a TV show, I grabbed a nearby pen and paper and started to doodle. I didn't really pay attention to what I was drawing because I was trying to follow the plot of the show. Afterward I looked down and realized what a strange and random mix of drawings I had on the paper. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out why I'd sketched certain things (like Groucho Marx glasses, a boy with a weird-looking cat, a flip flop, and a fish with a nose) but couldn't really make any sense of it. Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me that I'm a lot stranger than I thought (=.

Sports and Spongebob

Wow, is July really more than half-way over?! I can hardly believe that the start of school is less than a month away. We've been browsing Goodwill and Wal-Mart for back-to-school clothes and supplies recently and found some pretty good bargains.

Alan had basketball camp this week. He wasn't super thrilled about it, but seemed to enjoy himself for the most part. I have to admit that we're one of the very few families that doesn't watch sports. I don't think a basketball, football, or soccer game has ever been intentionally watched on our television. I used to watch basketball during my U of A days and I'll ocassionally watch gymnastics if I see it on, but all in all, we are not a sports lovin' family.

During high school I didn't take the sports route either. I did pom team, yearbook, student council, and art club...but no sports. Church ball was tons of fun and I loved summer volleyball camp and skateboarding, but I was never on a high school team. Looking back, I wish I'd tried school sports. So, I've let Alan try different sports (football camp, soccer team, and basketball camp) in hopes that he'll find one he loves. When Ellie starts kindergarten this year, I'll have her try sports too.

The day before basketball camp started, I pulled out the old sports photos and newspaper clippings of my dad during high school and college. In high school, as a gangly 6'6 teenager, he was on the list of "100 top national high school athletes" and recieved a full ride scholarship to college for basketball to EAC and University of Utah (where he was captain of both teams.) He was also offered a scholarship to play football for Duke University and a couple of other prestigious universities, but decided to follow my mom to University of Utah instead. So, he was really into sports before he chronically injured his back lifting a copy machine.

Anyway, I showed Alan all of these clippings and photos and told him about how much his namesake loved basketball. He was pretty impressed (no pressure, right?) and was excited to start right away. When he got to the camp, I quickly realized that since he has NEVER watched a game or anything similar, he was totally confused when he got out on the court. He didn't have any idea about dribbling or passing or anything else basketball related, but after standing in bewilderment with his hands up in the air for a few games, he finally started to get the hang of it. So, I've decided that I'm going to try to watch a game now and then on TV so that my kids have a general idea of what to do.

But, if Alan and Ellie decide to follow down the path of their daddy and pursue more technological interests or down the more artistic path that I took, I'm fine with that too. I guess it's all about finding their niche. I just want them to find something that they love to do.

This morning Alan watched an advertisement for a Spongebob marathon tonight and was totally excited. I decided to make an evening out of it. Before the marathon started we played Spongebob mad-lib and pin the pants on spongebob. We also completed some Bikini Bottom mazes and made yellow cupcakes. Right now, their eyes are glued to the screen and they are emitting ocassional belly laughs. It's been a fun evening!

It's how we roll

Last week I was asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for my wife and family. No I didn't start showering on a regular basis, I traded my tC in for our new family vehicle. With a third munchkin on the way we figured fitting three car seats across the back row in the xB was just not going to be practical. Goodbye sweet scion, we had good times pretending to be a real sports car. Why not trade the xB? It just made more sense financially to get rid of the higher payment, keep the car with better MPG, and I had the most positive equity in my car to roll over to the new vehicle. It certainly helped that my car was bought in '05 and yet still hadn't broken the 30k mile barrier. Then began the quest to find out what would be a good fit for us. If you know Pam and I, you know we hate large vehicles and are very heavily in the "bang for buck" category on most things. My criteria was it has to still be a smaller vehicle, it has to have decent MPG, and it has to have a third row seating a minimum of six people for future growth (you never know). I sadly turned to the Internet feeling we were going to be stuck with a bulky gas sucking mini-van with more room then we needed for much higher then we wanted to pay for a vehicle. And then one enchanted evening, I saw on my monitor a strange vehicle across my beef jerky and empty Mt. Dew can crowded desk. Ladies and gentlemen, the Mazda 5. There technically isn't a class for it though mini-mini-van is the closest. However it drives like a car and is pretty zippy for it's size.

It's braggin' time. It may lack some features you get in a full size mini-van, but you can't beat the price for what you get.

"Best overall value of the year - Minivan", "Lowest fuel costs", "Lowest operating costs", "Lowest ownership costs", and "Best retained value." - Intellichoice.com 2009

"Consumer's top rated for 2009", "15 best family cars of 2009 (budget category)", and "Lowest true cost to own minivan" - Edmunds.com 2009

Consumer Reports has great ratings for it as well, the '09 model is identical to the '08 model and it's rated highest in it's class which funny enough is "Wagons and hatchbacks."

And now for the best part. We looked at new figuring we'd be driving this till it exploded of old age, but then thought what if we just found a used one that was mostly new. We started looking and we found an '09 with only 16,000 miles on it in the exact color/trim we wanted, so we drove down to take a look at it. We test drove it, kicked it, threw rocks at it, etc., and everything looked good, so I put on my mean face, took off my shirt, and went to do battle with the dealership. It took some talking and minor threats of bodily harm, but they finally relented and gave me over KBB value on my trade-in and we were out the door for only $15,660 for this mostly new six seating van of wonder. And last of all, it gets a whopping 21/27 MPG so it's not going to kill us every month at the pump. If anyone is looking for a second car that might need to double as the family vehicle while the main family vehicle is in the shop, you can't go wrong with the Mazda 5.

Going ons

I promised myself that I would blog every week, but it's been about three weeks since I've last written in here. Summer has flown by! We had a low key fourth of July. In the morning Ken and I drove to make an important family purchase, which I will let Ken blog about. In the evening, Ken, Abby, Josh, Ellie, Alan and I packed up an ice chest of drinks, patriotic donuts and a bag of glowsticks, stopped by Subway to get dinner, and headed to the fireworks. We found a spot near the Gilbert fireworks at Mesquite High School and enjoyed the show. It was such a hot night, but We kept cool with a large water spray bottle. Ellie hid in the car for a portion of the show with her hands over her ears, but we finally coaxed her out about about half way through.
Everything is going pretty well with the pregnancy. The sonogram revealed that my amniotic fluid was still a little low but has increased from the last test. I've been instructed to drink a gallon of water a day! A gallon! I've discovered that gallon doesn't seem like a huge amount until you guzzle and guzzle and guzzle until your stomach feels like it'll explode and realize that you still have 3/4 of a gallon left. But, if it's what the baby needs, I will guzzle away.
Another fun thing about this pregnancy thus far is having restless legs syndrome. Now RLS is a condition with a very funny name. Just saying it out loud makes me laugh, but once I am settled into bed for the night and my legs and feet are acting independently from the rest of my body, I am not laughing any longer. Now if you ask Ken, he'll tell you that I've always had wiggly feet at night, which has involved my squirming toes randomly attacking his legs, the blankets, pillows, etc... But with this pregnancy my RLS has turned into WLS (wild legs synrome.) As I try to drift off to sleep, I find my legs doing something that resembles the sideways bicycle. This move usually eventually leads to something similar to Irish step dancing and then to random karate kicks. All the while, from my torso up I am completely motionless and wishing that my attached legs would settle down for the night and join the rest of my body in a sweet, peaceful sleep. But with the nausea almost gone, over-all the pregnancy seems like a peice of cake and I feel completely blessed.
Ellie and Alan went to a sibling class at Banner Gateway Hospital a couple of weeks ago. They brought stuffed animals and learned to swaddle and diaper a baby. They colored pictures, watched a Sesame Street episode about a new baby, and took a tour of the maternity ward of the hospital. They also talked about baby safety. The variety of comments made during the class by all of the kids were priceless. All of the parents had plenty of laughs. Afterward, they had cookies and were presented with a certificate and backpack. It was a really neat program and I'm glad they were able to go.