3 years old!

Today is Aubrey's 3rd birthday! It's hard to believe she is so grown up!

Such an Aubrey look..full of attitude

Opening presents at the family birthday party last weekend

big girl bike!

Trying so hard to get that last candle out

We don't have any party planned for Aubrey, which I completely feel guilty about. Mostly because all of the kids she is friends with are older or younger. So we decided that starting next year ( once she has all her preschool friends) we will start doing kid parties for her as well. Today Aubrey gets to decide what we do, what we eat, and open presents and eat her cupcake. I have a special birthday outfit for her, but she's not in it yet since the kids are playing outside getting dirty. I hope she has a fun birthday even without the party!

No longer a baby..

Today is Braden's 5th birthday and while I am excited, I am also sad he's growing so big..I found myself tearing up last night MULTIPLE times at just the thought of his birthday today..I blame pregnancy hormones, definately makes me more weepy..
I am very proud of all he has accomplished and look forward to watching him grow up. I would be lying if a part of me didn't wish he was still my little baby..

Still in the hospital

1 month old

Silly smiles

Our lil' pumpkin

Our big 5 year old!

The Birthday Bash

Of course I should be cleaning the house right now to get ready for the family birthday party on saturday, but instead I am procrastinating and decided to update the blog..
Braden's 5th birthday party was on Saturday and he had decided that he wanted to invite all of the kids from his preschool, plus the neighborhood kids. All together there were 22 kids invited and from the 22 there were 18 kids ( including mine) that came to the party. It was dinosaur themed but there were things for both boys and girls to do. I had 2 nests full of  "eggs" that were made from coffee grounds and other things around the house. They all had either a dino or a safari animal inside. The kids thought they were really cool. We had 2 tables of crafts. The boy table was dinosaur paddle balls that they could color and the girls had pencil boxes that they could decorate that had a chalk board on top. A friend of mine did both face painting and tatoos for both the boys and girls. We had our sandbox filled with dino's and squinkees so they could do a dino/prize dig. Finally, we had a volcano that oozed out lava and 2 pinata's. When all that fun stuff was done it was time to go inside for pizza, cake, ice cream, and presents.
All of the kids seemed to have a good time and most importantly Braden had a great time. He was just floating on cloud 9 that so many of his friends were able to come to his party, especially his girlfriend Lily..haha
His actual birthday is tomorrow and while we don't have anything too exciting planned ( mostly because he has t-ball), he will get to pick his birthday dinner, get to open up gifts from us, and get to eat a special birthday cupcake. My parents are coming tomorrow so they can keep the kids out of my hair friday so I can get things ready for the party saturday. Saturday's party will be much less exciting, but the kids will be happy to eat cake and ice cream again and this time Aubrey will be excited since she will also get to open up gifts!

Opening the eggs

Crafts

Lily and Braden :)

Face Painting

The Volcano!

Pinata time

The Birthday Crew

The yummy cake!

Little did I realize that I had bought "trick" candles, Braden thought it was hilarious and enjoyed blowing them out numerous times!

The Birthday Boy!

#3

The 3rd and final baby for us....
Historically we've never had a problem getting pregnant and this time was no different..sort of..
We started trying in January and sure enough got pregnant right away, however, quickly after I learned I was pregnant I also had a lot of cramping and some bleeding and was pretty suspicious that i was going to have a miscarriage..Sure enough, the cramping got so painful one night that I was thinking the pregnancy was over and it was. It was early enough that I didn't have to have a DNC, my body got rid of it naturally,but it took a while..So, needless to say my body was a bit messed up for a few months. The first month that things got back on track we got pregnant again. I was very hesitant to tell people and in fact we didn't tell our family until I had an ultrasound at almost 8 weeks and I could hear and see the heart beat ( ultrasounds between 6 and 8 weeks are standard practice at our dr's office). I really didn't get excited until that point, because in the back of my mind I was always thinking I could miscarry again. Since I will be 12 weeks on Saturday and I heard the heart beat again yesterday, I'm a bit more confident that this one is here to stay. Now I am worried that there is something wrong with the baby..I have no evidence to back up this worry, I think again, it's the miscarriage messing with my confidence. However, I don't have enough confidence in all the special tests they do at this point that could alleviate this worry to even get them done. I guess all I can do is trust that this one will be as healthy as the other two..
This pregnancy so far has been different from both my others..I thought for sure I would know what I'm having depending on whether or not I had morning sickness..( no morning sickness with Braden, morning sickness from about 7-8 weeks on with Aubrey). Nope, I did have some morning sickness, but it wasn't everyday and somedays I had it all day, otherdays I only had it in the afternoon and/or evening. The only constant was that when I woke up in the morning I felt good, what happened after that was anyones guess. My morning sickness wasn't too horrible and usually if I would eat some cheese I would feel better. My food aversions and cravings varied from day to day, again unpredictable. I have been more tired, especially the days I work out, but I feel like that's just normal pregnancy. I've had heartburn a few times already, which I only had with Braden in the 3rd trimester when I was BIG. So that's weird...so my guess as to what I'm having changes from week to week..sometimes I think boy, sometimes I think girl. I really have no clue. Jason thinks boy only because he will have to paint 3 different rooms ( we are re-doing Braden's room) but if we have a girl, he will only have to paint 2..haha.. We will find out what we are having probably the week after labor day. We need to wait until 21 weeks because I guess they need to be able to see if the placenta is attached to my scarring..which apparently will create a whole other set of issues when delivery time comes. The great thing about c-sections is that they are planned..the bad thing about c-sections is the more you have the more possiblity for complications due to all the scarring that's involved. So again, all I can do is hope for the best.
Technically my due date is January 14th, but since that is a saturday, my c-section will be sometime the week of January 9th, depending on when my Dr. wants to do it.
So that's the scoop for now..hopefully the rest of this pregnancy will be uneventful and I can just sit back and enjoy it since it will be the last one!

Broken bones, sickness, a blizzard and lots of activities..

I haven't posted in a while, so get ready..this one is long!

The past few months have been a whirlwind of activity. Helping Lisa get everything ready for her wedding pretty much consumed my life until the big day. After that, my life was getting ready to host Christmas eve as well as traveling to Indiana to celebrate with extended family. In between we had christmas ,new years, and birthday parties that we attended with neighbors and friends which were a lot of fun!

January was pretty low key. All of our winter activites started including all of my fitness classes, Jason's basketball league, Braden's martial arts class, and Aubrey's ballet class

Braden seemed a bit unsure of what we call his karate class( it's actually called Tang Soo Do- pronounced ' Tong- Su')..but now has grown to love it. His instructor is very strict, but fun. It helps with coordination, discipline and concentration. It's on Tuesdays and Thursdays which is perfect since he only has school M/W/F so it gives him something to look forward to. Braden is an on the go kind of kid and loves it when we have lots of activities planned

Last session Aubrey took a tumbling class that was down the hall from the little one's ballet classes. Every time we would leave tumbling she was plead with me to take ballet. The youngest age classes the park district have is 2 1/2-3 1/2..so..this session started at the beginning of january and Aubrey wasn't 30 months until Jan 31st. I got a nice lady at the park district office who let her join because she was 30 months within 2 weeks of when we would start the class.

Aubrey LOVES ballet. It is her first class without me and I was worried how she would do, and she had no problems at all. She loves everything about it. She struggles a little bit with the listening to the teacher at times and following all the directions. But overall she did really well for her 1st time and she will get it all by the end.

January 31st was a day of broken bones in this house..not all that serious,but painful.. That morning I somehow stubbed my toe on one of our step stools just the right way and managed to break my 4th toe on my right foot. Nothing that can be done, but EXCESSIVELY painful to walk on. Had to take a break from working out, it got nice and purple, swollen, and just overall gross. Don't worry, I didn't take a picture. Then that evening Jason called me around 8:30pm ( the time he was supposed to be playing basketball) and asks me " Can they do anything at the ER for a broken nose?". During his basketball game his nose got abused and ended up gushing with blood for a long time. It didn't stop bleeding until about 10pm that night. He did end up going to the ER, but it was crazy busy. So, they gave him the option of waiting for an x-ray or he could just follow up with an ENT, so he followed up with the ENT that friday. Yep, sure enough broken. If he wanted to get it fixed he would have had to do it this week, however since he is traveling this week, he can't. So next time you see Jason, you can see that one side of his nose is now smaller than the other.. good thing he's a guy and really could care less.

The blizzard. It was a bit scary the night before the huge snowfall hit. It was So windy and the thundersnow freaked me out. We were sitting in the family room watching tv when the lightning struck. I have never experienced thundersnow, didn't like it one bit. Of course the next 2 days of school were canceled and Jason even got a day off out of it, which was great! By the afternoon everything was clear around here and buisness's all opened back up again. The kids had a fun time playing in all the snow. I think overall we got about 18 inches??Not sure on that one.

Currently, Braden, Aubrey, and I are all trying to get rid of a cold that just won't go away. Lots of mucous with this one. Last saturday Aubrey came down with a 104.3 temp. I wasn't sure what it was until she started throwing up..Even with motrin her fever only came down to 102.7. We were a bit concerned. After some time we were convinced that it was the stomach flu and thankful that Braden had a bunch of stuff planned on saturday, so we could kind of quarantine Aubrey. I of course was on bucket and take care of the sick kid duty and Jason was in charge of taking Braden the various places he had to be. I was SO glad that this happened while Jason was in town. In the past, the kids always seem to get REALLY sick when he's traveling, which starts this week. So we were glad I had the help that I wouldn't have normally had. Thinking back I realized that Aubrey has never had the stomach flu, so I guess she was about due. By sunday her fever was already down to 99.8. And she started eatting normally yesterday. Hopefully we will get all of our sickness out of the way in the next month so that we will all be healthy at Disneyworld. We decided to go during spring break this year to hopefully avoid serious sickness as well as experience warmer weather. Usually when we go at the end of Feb. it's only warm 3 days at the most and one if not both kids are usually sick with something more serious than a cold. The only down side, a lot busier. So we will see how this goes this year