I finally can say .....

Who's been bouncing on my bladder!

Two ultra sounds ( one at 14 weeks and the other today , at 18 weeks) show that this little bean is a BOY!This is a picture of a very healthy looking foot and secondly, a curled up baby boy, sucking his thumb.
Side note: With Mike having had severe bilateral club foot at birth, Mike and I have been a little anxious to see healthy looking feet for both kids. We've never mentioned the foot issue to the ultra sound techs during our appointments but at both anatomy scans , the tech printed a picture of each child's healthy foot! That is definitely God calming our worries.

The tech was not able to get clear pictures of a few things so we'll be having another ultra sound in the next few weeks. The doctor says that there isn't anything that they are looking for and there are no concerns but it's just normal procedure if they get some unclear views. Though I shouldn't worry since the same thing happened with Mackenzie, I think I'll be slightly nervous until the scan is done.

No rest for the all-nighter

Who can get in bed when it's Michigan v. Ohio state week in college football? We were both really glad the boys in blue made Mike's skipping sleep worth while! Of course, there's no harm in catching a little pregame nap:

Choo-chooooooo

Mike and Mack were equally excited about going to the Denver Merchandise Mart for the " largest train show west of the Mississippi!" :

Christmas tree 2011

Mackenzie was a much more enthusiastic helper as we put up our tree this year. In previous years, she put up one or two ornaments and then went off to play with something else. This year, not only did she decorate our tree, but Grams' tree, too!

Putting up the tree was no easy feat. In fact, Mike and I both has scrapes and scratches after wrestling with the tree. First, there was the task of deciding where the tree should go this year. Our living room now doesn't have the obvious place to put a tree but after lots of rearranging of furniture, we finally discovered the perfect place. Then there was the issue of the lights. You see, we had a few blown out bulbs and , despite our desperate searching , were not able to find them. So the only choice left was to unlight our pre-light tree and add new lights. Mike did the majority of the de-lighting and salvaged our Christmas decorating mood!
Placing Grammy's angel:
The final product:
We had fun decorating the rest of the house and I couldn't wait for rest time to clean up all those " needles" and place the finishing touches!

Scratchy, shiney and screwy

Mackenzie discovered Mike's tool box last week which made for an exciting morning. She sorted each type of tool based on it's description- scratchy, shiney, screwy, broken....To be sure, the " screwy " pile was bigger than the rest.


While Mack played in the tools, I raked up the leaves in the front yard. The maple tree finally lost it's leaves, making for a big pile!

"Happy Thanksgiving Dinner day"

Or so Mack calls it! I guess that is what she hears most everyone talking about- how big is the turkey? What kind of pies? Discussion does tend to center around the food. No matter what you call it, we had a fun day!

Here are a few snapshots from our day:

Dad raised this years' turkey and , at dress weight ( no feathers or....insides ) it weighed in at 28 lbs!
Smoking a turkey is hard work. Dad sat outside turning the bird as needed and making sure it turned out just right:
Sitting outside for almost 6 hours while cooking the turkey could have been very lonely if not for Mack who learned plenty about turkey cooking and tire changing as Papa worked on the turkey and a flat tire. Here she is showing him how she can bounce from " My buns to my toes!" :
It wasn't long before there was more company!
Mike had to work but he came just in time for dinner and to enjoy the company:
The younger kids sat together at this table that Mom found at a craft fair! Kaleb really wanted to show his silly face. Everyone got a chuckle at Mackenzie's prayer " Dear Jesus. Thank you for our foods. Please bless it to your body and your body to your service. And please help Brooklyn be nice. Amen." For the record- Brooky wasn't being unkind, she just wasn't in the party spirit( you can tell by the picture):
We also celebrated Dad's birthday since it was just a few days later. Mack was very curious about what was in that wrapping paper:
Though we were missing Nikki from our motley crew, it was really great to have Clay and his family with us for Thanksgiving. This is my favorite picture of the day:
Anaka came home to spend the night with us since she and I had a movie date the next day. She read Mack her bed time stories, even when she picked a really long one!:

Thanksgiving

Teeny Tiny

We recently borrowed a book from the library called " Ruth and the ( not so) teeny tiny lie" . The main character of the book, Ruth, a little red fox, loves all things " teeny tiny" . She collects tiny toys and trouble comes when she finds a " lost" teeny tiny camera on the playground. Mackenzie loves this story so much that she , too, has started collecting " teeny tinies" as she calls them. Here she is today playing with her teeny tiny spoons. I hope she can stand to part with them by the time we need them for a certain little baby who's expected soon ( or by the next time I need that teaspoon!):

Mack with her teeny spoons:
And another one just because. Ellie is spending entirely too much time with the cats. Not only does she " bat" at things that she wants to play with like cats do, but she has a love for sunbeams!

More projects, please!

We sure do love our projects here! Where Mackenzie used to be content doing one project a day, she now asks for more ( " one HUNDRED projects today, Mommy!") . Here are some of the projects from one day last week:

These need to get in the mail box before Thanksgiving is over!







This little guy is made with a combination of shaving cream and glue. Messy AND gooey...a preschoolers dream!

Grammy's coming!

Just a few more days to go before Grammy's plane touches down. This is reason to dance ! Doing it with your tongue sticking out makes it even better!

A morning at the park

It's been pretty windy over the last week so we haven't been outside much. With no wind and temps in the high 60's, today was the perfect day to get outside!
Every trip to the park starts with the swings. I think your foot getting stuck in the foot holes is a sure fire sign your too big for the baby swings:

Trying to decide which slide:
This one looks great!
Creative sliding is always more fun:

Mackenzie found a few friends at the park, so I was banished to the bench while she trailed after them. There was a little girl that Mack really wanted to play with. After several attempts to engage her in play, the little girls brother told Mackenzie that his little sister only speaks Spanish. Mackenzie thought hard for a second before she asked the girl " Hola! Tienes hambre?" ( Hi! Are you hungry?) The little girl shook her head and off they ran together! Thank goodness for "High Five" magazine and their spanish conversation section. My four years of high school spanish seem distant but it's fun to relearn what I've forgotten with Mackenzie.

" No dogs!"

Mackenzie can't decide whether to love or like Ellie. On one hand, she can't stand chasing Ellie around, trying to retrieve her favorite toy from her puppy grip. On the other hand, she is fun to lay on and cuddle with and is a reasonably good fetch partner. What's a girl to do? But for the most part, the older Ellie gets, the better they get along. In fact, 9 times out of 10, when asked who her best friend is, Mack answers " Ellie!"

That's why it caught us by surprised the other day when Mike and I were talking about how we thought one of those wooden decorative signs would fit well in our living room. When we began talking about what the sign would say, Mackenzie piped in from the other room " No dogs!" This was funny timing since she'd spent fifteen minutes that morning pretend driving Ellie back to the shelter....

Bump watch 2011/2012

I have had several requests for a picture of my " baby bump" . I am pretty shy about showing it off since I don't consider my " bump" to be the cute " can't resist touching it" kinda belly but , because I love you, here it is:
16 weeks:


Everyone said that, after the first baby, you grow so much faster with those that follow. I'd say so! I feel so much more pregnant than I really am. Thankfully, not much weight has really accompanied this belly yet. Our little bean continues to jump and flip around happily. Just 15 more days before our " BIG" 18 week ultra sound !

Catching up- the Denver zoo

We visited the Denver Zoo a few weeks ago ( just before we got hit with a big snow storm!) and since I took the pictures on my phone, I forgot about them until now! Here's a glimpse at our day:

We didn't plan on going to the zoo "this day" ( as Mackenzie says) but our other plans to visit the Cars characters at the Children's Museum fell through when the line for the event stretched for at least a half mile outside of the museum. We improvised and ended up spending a beautiful fall day at the zoo! Mack had been waiting to go and was so happy to be there. The Denver zoo is HUGE and we had planned on just doing half of it since we had plans later in the day . We didn't know that Mackenzie would go at top speeds through the whole zoo, not wanting to miss a thing! I, in my first trimester exhaustion/nausea, lagged behind a few exhibits.Even still, what a fun day!
Mack and Mike were both impressed looking at the jaguars up close:
The Denver Zoo has tons of peacocks that have free rein of the entire place. Mack really wanted to feed them her pine cone but you can only get so close to these pretty birds before they take off in the other direction:
" The top of the world!" Mack exercising her climbing legs at the kids play area:
With all the mature trees dressed in their fall colors, I was so sad to have left my big camera at home. Next year I'll be sure to remember it.

Caught ya!

Ellie isn't very good at hiding when she's gotten into the trash. The first clue would be the mess she leaves behind , the second would be this:
Come on, Ellie! The first rule of " trash removal" is to EAT the evidence. Leaving it hanging out of your mouth seems a bit cocky. At least she looks acceptably guilty in the mugshot.

When education backfires

Ok so, a little background. For the last year, Mack has been really wanting to read. So we've been sounding out words and playing I-spy with words when were out or reading together. She's gotten really good and can read a crazy amount of words. So it wasn't long before she started wanting to write the words herself in thank you cards and those types of things. She'd tell me what she wanted to say and I'd spell it out as she wrote. Now she likes to sound out the words and write them herself. Usually, this consists of " I love you" or writing the persons name or random words.

Fast forward to yesterday. Mack decides she wants to make a card for papa . She knows how to write papa and I assumed she was going to write " I love you, Papa" or " I (heart) U , Papa" and sign her name. So I hand her a pen and a few minutes later, she returns to me, card in hand and laughing hysterically. This is what I read:
Yes, indeed, that does say " I love you, Poop-o " . She was just so proud and tickled by her own cleverness that I ALMOST didn't give her the talk about how calling someone, esp your grandfather " poop-o" might hurt their feelings. Even still, I couldn't contain my amusement, especially when she laughed until she couldn't catch her breath.

Something I'm even more proud of :
Mack has mastered sequencing:
For this one,we sounded out the words together the first time and then she did this page all alone:
We are really loving the Mead brand preschool books. We'll be on the hunt for more since this one is almost done!

Simply exhausted......