Birthday Bash

We celebrated Carli's birthday last night. She still has a lingering cough and runny nose from being sick over the weekend, but I think she still had fun. However, she started a small coughing fit as we were singing Happy Birthday and had to move the cake away a bit so she wouldn't cough all over it. :) We invited some friends over to help celebrate. We had pizza and cake and everyone had fun. It was nice to have a small family and friend party instead of the big blowouts that the older kids want with tons of kids, treats bags, activities, etc. :)

Here are some pics from the party. I let Carli open a gift from Grandma in the morning so she would have a cute outfit to wear for her special day. Then it's time for the party. We did a heart theme for the party with the heart cake, plates and napkins in a heart pattern, too. I just thought they were fun and cute for a birthday party and easy to get since all the Valentine's Day stuff is in the stores. When we were getting everything ready for the party Kate asked why I did hearts for the party. I said I just thought they were cute! She said, "Isn't it because her middle name is Hart?!" LOL! I totally hadn't thought of that. Duh... Yes, her middle name is Hart (a family name) so the theme was perfect!!!

She loves pizza!

She has no clue why there is fire on her cake. ;) I made a cupcake cake for her. It was so easy and so fun! I love how it turned out!!!

Mommy and Carli

She loves the Baby Einstein videos. She got Baby DaVinci last night.

Grandma and Grandpa sent her this fun fridge magnet set. She loves it!

She got a double doll stroller for the twin babies she got from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. Our friends brought her baby bottles so she can "feed" her babies.

We got her a new bike. She always wants to ride the big kids' bikes so she is excited to have her own finally!

My baby is 2!

Yep, 2 years ago today Carli came into the world surprisingly 4+ weeks early weighing in at a whopping 5 lbs. 15 oz. She was the tiniest little thing and sooo sweet. What a crazy weekend it was! Friday evening we were at the stake center at Ben's basketball game. By the end my back was starting to ache, but I figured it was just because I had been sitting for a while. After we got home we put the kids to bed and Ben and I tried to watch a movie. I tried every position to get comfortable. The back ache would not let up. I tried going to bed. I laid there for a while, but nothing was changing. By 1:30 Ben was getting pretty nervous--understandably. Brandon had taken about 27 hours to get here, but Kate and Megan came flying into the world in 5 and 3 1/2 hours, respectively, from the first felt contraction to delivery. This one could have been a little scary!!! Luckily, it didn't look like it was going to be an extreme birth in that I had been feeling yucky for several hours.

Anyway, he finally talked me into calling my good friend, Kirsten, to come over so we could head over to the hospital. I do not like inconveniencing people and in the middle of the night?! Of course, she didn't mind and came right over at 2 am. When we got to the hospital I was only at 2 cm. :( So, we walked around for quite a while and slowly made progress. By 6:30 or so I was still only at a 4 so it wasn't going at quickly as we had anticipated. We spent time watching the Bond marathon that was on TV. However, 2 hours later I was really hurting and telling them I needed to push. No meds for this mama (that's a whole other story), but I was tempted this time. By the time it's really hurting, though, I'm already close enough to be almost finished so it's too late and I know I can get through that last little bit. The nurse was so great. She had a feeling once I got to a certain point it was going to go very quickly so she had been getting things ready. When I was ready she was ready! The on-call doctor (my doctor had disappeared upstairs to do rounds and they didn't know where he was) came rushing in and Carli was born after a few pushes at 8:53 am. My doc came in about 10 minutes later and she was already here! He thought he had plenty of time to make it back. Ha, ha.

She was here and she was perfect! We had debated calling parents before not knowing if we were going to be sent home earlier or not so since she arrived we figured it was time. What a shocker it was for them to get this call today! It was fun telling them the story. My mom hopped on a plane that afternoon and flew down. My inlaws were at a Mary Kay leadership meeting when we called. She was so excited to tell everyone around her that her newest granddaughter was here. We were not ready! We didn't have a stroller or new car seat yet. We didn't even have any diapers! We thought we still had another month or at least 3 weeks before she came. When My baby shower was scheduled for 2 weeks later so we ended up having a Welcome Baby shower instead. It was so fun! I felt great and Carli was doing perfectly! She was able to come home with me Monday afternoon. They had to do all the preemie tests on her since she was more than 4 weeks early (only by 2 days). She passed them all and was ready to go home! It was so wonderful having my mom there already. She is too incredible for words. How blessed I am to have such a mom in my life!

Right after she was born.

Daddy with Carli All four kiddos.

Sweet baby sleeping .
She was just sooo tiny! Still little. That Boppy pillow looks huge!
Blessing day. My aunt made this gorgeous dress when her first daughter was born about 35 years ago. I wore this dress when I was blessed and all my girls have, too. The whole fam on Carli's blessing day.She has the most beautiful blue eyes!
What a sweetheart she is. We are so glad she is part of our family! She brightens our days with her smiles and hugs. I can't believe she's already 2!

Christmas Day!

Ok, I know it's now practically the middle of January, but I need to post Christmas morning pictures! It was such a fun day with my inlaws, Wayne and Sandy, here with us. The kids had a blast and so did we! There are tons of pics because the grandparents like to download them off my site.

My mom sent me this great Tast of Home cookbook and pretty apron. I have used them a ton already. Ben got me GREAT thing for my camera--a tripod, and cleaning pen for the lense, and wireless remote.

We gave our dads these aprons with the kids' picture on them. They both thought they were pretty cool. This is Ben's dad, Wayne, sporting his lovely apron. ;)

Here he is again using the apron! Every Christmas morning it is tradition in my family to make abelskivers. They are little round Norwegian pancakes that are sooo yummy. Wayne became a pro at cooking them.Here's Megan enjoying Christmas breakfast.

Megan, NaNa, and Brandon at breakfast.Kate was sooo enthusiastic over all her gifts. It was so cute. This was the thing he asked Santa for, the 2007 Holiday Barbie. I got a few of those when I was young, too.
All Megan wanted was Hungy, Hungry Hippos! She was excited to get it. I, however, cringe everytime I hear that game going. It's fun, but what a crazy game!
Here's Megan in pink! She got that fun headband in her stocking and she's looking over the jewelry box she and Kate received.
Brandon was in Lego heaven! Santa gave him this really neat Fire Boat that actually has a motor and he spent a while in the bathtub that afternoon playing with it. He had it put together pretty quickly! He is so good at these sets. He also had help from PaPa. They gave him a fun lego Mars set. It's like a space car or something like that. Grandma and Grandpa sent him a fire truck and fire helicopter to go in his Lego City.

He LOVES Monopoly so when he saw this Sponge Bob Monopoly he had to have it. :) Here's Kate with another very excited face when she opened her HSM 2 DVD. She also got the soundtrack.
I've been going to get Ben a personal trimmer :) for quite a while now. I finally got it this year and you can see how happy he was about it! (Ha, ha...he got a good laugh out of it)
Since the Cowboys have been doing so well and we live in Dallas I figured it was time he had a Cowboys t-shirt. Funny story--he wore it to work a couple days later and after finally taking his jacket off late in the day he went over and was talking to somebody when they reached up and pulled that size sticker off his shirt. LOL!
Here's Kate in her new duds ready to go see the movie Enchanted. She got the headband, jacket, pants, and boots for Christmas. She was stylin'! Ben found this crazy heart-shaped potato while we were getting dinner ready! Is that not the craziest thing?!
I set up the camera on my new tripod and took a picture of all of us at the table for Christmas dinner with my wireless remote! So cool!!!

Christmas Eve

Ok, backtracking a bit here, but I need to get it documented for my own sake. :) Here's our Christmas Eve! Ben's parents flew into town that morning and we had a festive evening. NaNa and Megan started with dipping these beautiful strawberries in chocolate to eat that night.

Here's Megan lining them up for dipping.

Nana showing Megan how to dip the strawberries in the melted chocolate. All the girls together! Those strawberries were scrumptious! Thanks NaNa!
Carli and NaNa smiling for me. Here's Ben getting our Christmas tradition ready--chicken wings! There were soooo yummy! After the food it was time for the kids to open their Christmas Eve gift. This year they were from NaNa and PaPa! They were so excited!
Matching nightgowns for the girls and pjs for Brandon! They loved them. Brandon was not so hot about his, though.However, once he put them on and pretended he could 'fly' he thought they were pretty fun. ;)Carli wanted to try on the slippers Kate and Megan got. They don't make these ones small enough for her!Here they are all ready for Christmas. So cute!

Brandon was kind of bummed that the only gift they were able to open was clothes so I let them open one other thing that was from one of their siblings. Carli was just starting to discover this gift-opening thing.Brandon got a Transformer.
Carli opened this cute chunky puzzle. It's darling! She played with it for the next hour and just love it.After gifts we just hung out and played around. Here are Carli and Daddy. They are so cute! No question where my kids got their big beautiful blue eyes! (Megan's are green, however, thanks to me).
There is a picture of me when I was little just like this so I love this one of Carli! I don't think I have the picture (maybe I do--I'll have to check), but I would love to put them next to each other.This post is starting to seem one-sided--Carli. :) She was just so cute that night and having so much fun. Here she is putting an ornament on the tree. She really didn't bother the tree much the past several weeks, but once in a while she would go take one off and try to put it back on. Megan and PaPa playing!

Stay tuned...next time I'll get Christmas Day posted!

Another New Year post

I'm posting a ton today so be sure to scroll down. ;) Don't want to miss anything. Hee, hee.

Last night we spent the evening with some friends from church. It was a family we haven't really had a chance to get to know very well so it was really fun! There was Dance, Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and tons of yummy food and people to talk to. It was a great night. We gave up at 10:45 and took the kids home. Poor Carli was still wanting to fight sleep, but as soon as we got home she was out. Ben and I rang in the new year with some sparkling peach juice. Festive, eh?! Then I got in bed and finished my book Ben got me for Christmas, Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale, which I completely recommend to everyone. I loved it! I read most of it yesterday so I just had to finish it last night!

Here are all the girls (there were lots of them!) drawing and coloring on the paper. What a great idea. This kept them busy for quite a while.Brandon jammin' away to Motley Crue on Guitar Hero. He was really getting into it. :)Ben on Guitar Hero. Megan thought it was pretty neat, too.I didn't notice until we were leaving that Brandon had brought all his little stuffed puppies and strapped them into the backseat with him. I thought that was so sweet. Carli is ready to go home! Look at that tired face.

Just a pic to share

2008!

Wow, another year is beginning and another has flown by again. We had a pretty good 2007, but I must say it feels good to sort of "start over" with a new year. This year I don't want to make a list of resolutions, per say, but I would like to work on a few things.

1. Be in better shape--I want to exercise! I have never done that on a regular basis since high school when I was in gymnastics and dance. Since then I have been carrying around and running after kiddos all the time. Who has time to sit and eat? :) I DO eat--quite a bit, actually.

However, that's another thing I want to work on this year

2. Eat healthier and plan meals--I want to make monthly meal plans and shopping lists so I am organized and prepared. My life is such chaos that having a little (actually HUGE) thing like meals planned out would help tremendously. I have done it for a few weeks on and off in the past and it has been a great help to me, but I have not been consistent about it. That's what I will work on this year.

3. Not be afraid to talk to people about my business. It's never going to get anywhere if I don't get to work. It will be a huge finincial relief to have extra money every month!

4. Be more spiritual--plan FHE better (we do it often, but not very well), read scriptures, and read the RS lessons before going to church on Sunday.

5. Spend more time with my family and friends. :)

6. Expand my photography knowledge.

Happy New Year everyone! I pray that 2008 brings joy to everyone's hearts.