Baby News

After many walks, we still have not seen a baby. I got a call from my doctor today telling me that he has scheduled me to be induced on Friday at Midnight. I know weird time, but I will take what I can get since this little boy has not cooperated with us. So some time Saturday we will have our baby. I will try to get up pictures as soon as I can the following week.

2 cute!

I love this age! I just can't get enough of it. It seems like you can't take a bad picture of a 2 year old. Some of my favorite pictures of my kids are all when they were 2.

Valerie helping decorate the tree.

sucker first thing in the morning when she saw it in her stocking

Valerie with one of her puzzles she got for Christmas

On Harrison's hoppy ball, she spent pretty much all day on one of these, she loved it!

Christmas

The Christmas Tree decorated 90% by the kids!

Christmas Eve in new jammies. Harrison had a hard time falling asleep that night, he told Darin "He was just tired of sleeping because we do it every night!".

Lydia with her gifts


Harrison with his gifts

Valerie with her gifts

Winter Update

Lydia has recently lost both her front teeth and when Darin made a comment about all she wanted for Christmas was her two front teeth, Lydia's response was, "That's not ALL I want, I want other things too." She turns 8 next month and will be baptized in February and she can't wait! She always asks people if they are going to come to her baptism.

Harrison has had a problem with saying his K sound, but has been working so hard with the speech teacher at school that now is doing so much better. Darin mentioned to him one day that while he is at work during the day, Harrison is the man of the house. He has taken this job very seriously and has asked me for things to do because "if he is the man of the house he needs something to do" he says.

Valerie is growing up way too fast. It doesn't help that she is Miss Independent and wants to do everything herself, she acts way too old. We recently watched the 2nd Night at the Museum movie, but before that the kids loved watching the commercial for the movie with The Thinker statue saying, "Fire Power" even Valerie would go around quoting him. One night while at my parents house she was pointing to the Christmas tree and saying, "Fire Power" it took me a minute to realize that she was talking about the angel Moroni that my parents have on top of their tree. Then the next night the spiderman with the sand man was on TV and when she saw the sand man she called him fire power as well. It is funny how kids make those connections.

Baby News: Thursday I had an ultrasound per my Doctors request (I think because I was measuring small), but everything looks great. The baby is now 6 pounds 10 oz. Friday I had an appointment with the Doctor and I am at a 3! I was hoping for this because I am happy to know that things have started.

Halloween

The kids had a four day weekend, Friday was NV day and Monday there was a staff development day so we took off to Salem to spend Halloween weekend with Papa and Grandma Pope. We had a great time!

Valerie with her pumpkin

Harrison with his batman pumpkin

Lydia wanted people to know her pumpkin was a girl, can you tell?

Valerie (cat), Harrison (skeleton), and Lydia (cat) in their costumes.

Our trip to Mexico

Darin's company was having a contest with the award being an 8 day, expenses paid trip to this 5 star resort in Playa del Carmen. Darin was the only one from the Las Vegas office to qualify and so after weighing the pros and cons and checking with our voice of reason (thanks mom) we decided to go.

The suite was amazing!

The property was so beautiful

We had a good time relaxing.

We spent most of our days down at the pool by the beach, until we got burned while sitting under an umbrella! The next two days we spent in-doors.

This is our plunge pool just outside the back door of our suite with a pretty sunset.

We took a boat tour around the property and saw tons of different kinds of birds, but no crocodiles.

This trip fell on our 10 year wedding anniversary so Darin's boss took us out to dinner and the restaurant did this for us.

When we got back to our suite from dinner, this was waiting for us.

Darin did get an iguana to pose for him.

and some beautiful birds.

We had a wonderful time there. We have never been on such a quiet and relaxing trip. We had never been so pampered. The staff was so willing to help, they would stop by almost every hour to see if we needed anything (it got annoying at times).

Thanks Mom and Dad for watching all three of our kids for the week and to Brad, Sydni, and Grant for helping entertain them. We love you!

Valerie's B-day

Valerie turned 2 last week and we celebrated a little early because Darin and I were going to be out of town on her actual birth day.

Valerie excited with the 'you are special today' plate.

We had Valerie's favorite meal, spaghetti.

to my surprise she had no problem opening her presents.

My Big 2-year-old!

They are getting married!

My brother, Brad proposed to his girlfriend Sydni this past weekend.

The happy couple kissing.

We are so excited for them and are happy to have Sydni join our family. They are talking about getting married in March. Congrats Brad and Sydni!

Valerie and her Toddler bed

We set the toddler bed up about a month ago so that we could see if she was ready for it yet. She loved playing on it, but the minute we said "night night" and started to walk out of the room she would start to cry. Throughout the month she pointed to it a couple times and we would try again, but it didn't take till about two weeks ago. She slept her first night in her toddler bed with a little crying, but it only lasted a few minutes and then she was asleep. I thought nap time would be a little more difficult, but as you can see from the above picture, she is doing great! We even have moved the crib out of her room and into Harrison's room. This week I eliminated the bottle cold turkey and she is doing great with that as well. The first morning that I gave her a sippy cup instead of the bottle she threw a fit for about 15 minutes, but when I gave her another sippy cup for lunchtime there was no fit at all. I just hope potty training goes this well after the baby comes. Cross your fingers!

First Day of School

The first day of school was a success for both Lydia and Harrison. Lydia said her favorite part was reading 2 books and playing a game. She also got a yellow smiley face for behavior (which is good). Harrison was so excited to go to school he kept asking all morning if it was time to take him to school yet? (He is in afternoon kindergarten). Harrison said that all of school was his favorite part, he loves school. He did mention that he didn't like the hand sanitizer though. I think they are going to have a great year!

Ultrasound

Monday morning I had my ultrasound appointment to measure the baby and find out the gender. Everything looks great and...

We found out that we are having a BOY!

Harrison is so happy to be getting a brother and we couldn't be more thrilled with 2 of each. We can't wait til December when we get to hold him.

Salem Days 2009

We had a great time this past weekend up in Salem, UT for their annual Salem Days.

Valerie loved the big kid swings and would not let us take her off them. We even went back to the house and put up a baby swing for her and she wanted off that one in a matter of seconds and wanted back on the big kid swing. I guess she isn't a baby anymore.

The second night there we had a fire in the backyard and made smores. Lydia loved them!

We finally got to meet baby Morgan and give her loves.


Saturday we enjoyed the Parade with the contestants throwing tons of candy.

Harrison really enjoyed dressing up like a cowboy and pretending to take people to jail. He love this outfit so much that he wore it the next two days!

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July. My brother and sister-in-law came into town with their son and we joined them at my Mom and Dad's place for a pancake breakfast followed by mid-day swimming. We were joined by more friends and family for dinner and the Boulder City fireworks show from my parents' back yard. After that, Dad had bought a whole box full of very large fountains that we set off out front. The kids and I ended up spending the night because we didn't want to fight the traffic, but Darin decided it would be best to travel home that night because he had to be at our ward in the morning. It took him an extra hour to get home that night! The kids and I went to church with Mom and Dad and Darin joined us later that evening for Dinner.

Dad trying to dive through a tube (he missed)

Lydia jumping off the mountain

Mom and Valerie

Valerie and Grant

Chad trying to make a basket while doing a back flip (he missed)

Harrison

Harrison got brave and decided to slide down the last 3 feet of the slide, then Chad carried him up to the top and forced him down the entire slide. Harrison went down several more times by himself the rest of the day. He says he is going to try the mountain next!

Lydia going down the slide

Aidan

Lydia blowing bubbles

Valerie with her bubbles (she was blue all over after this)

Aidan and Harrison