Bree's Baby Blessing

Since my parents were here for Bree's birth, we decided to go ahead and do her blessing while they were here. Since she was only 5 days old when we did it, I didn't want to take her to church. So, we did it at home! Had I known you could do that before I probably would have done that with all my kids! It was so nice to have just our family around to participate in the blessing and knowing that everyone there loves and cares about her the way we do. She was perfectly quiet nearly the whole time, and then let her daddy know when she was done being balanced by a bunch of men! Then, of course, lot's of pictures afterwards to remember who was there.

Funny Story

I'm blogging about this mostly so I don't forget about it and remember to write it in Rylee's journal.

When I was a kid, my dad use to tell us that he can take our spirits out of our body, and we believed him because that's exactly what it felt like! I'll explain. Do as follows:

1. use one hand to squeeze the wrist of your other hand that is in a fist very tightly and wait a few seconds. If you do this on someone else's hand (your kids) you will also rub their fingers and knuckles toward the wrist (pushing the blood down out of the hand).

2. open fisted hand very slowly (to my kids, i then push on the tips of thier fingers like thet're buttons and count to five).

3. Lastly, pinch the middle of the childs hand while letting go of his/her wrist (or just let go of your own wrist if doing this to yourself) and it will feel like someone is pulling out your spirit (when really it's just the blood rushing back into your hand).

Well, recently, I taught this cool little trick to my kids telling them that I was pulling thier spirits out and then I would return it. As I said "spirit" I thought to myself "That's probably going to come back to bite me." Well, on sunday, it did.

The sharing time lesson in primary yesterday was about THE SPIRIT! The teacher used a glove and her hand to demonstrate how we have the spirit in us. Dialogue went as follows:

Teacher: Can anyone tell me what the spirit is?

Rylee raises her hand and is called on.

Rylee: The spirit is what helps us to be good and make good decisions, and . . . (here's the part that kills me!) my mom can take the spirit out of our bodies!

Teacher: Noooo, mommy's don't take spirits out of kids.

Rylee: Oh no! My mom can take the spirit out of ANYTHING!

What must that teacher be thinking at this point! I can only imagine what they heard in that innocent sentence. Funny how just one phrase can mean such different things depending upon prospective! I guess I better explain to her teacher, and maybe use a different word to explain my magic with my kids!

Hope you enjoyed a laugh!

Bree!!!

Monday morning at 8:22 am, Bree came to be a part of our family. She was 9 lbs 3 oz and 21 1/2" long. Mommy and Bree are both home now, enjoying being done with the pregnancy. More pictures will likely come soon.

E.R.

So, here is how we ended our Thanksgiving vacation . . .

I put Gracie down for a nap on our next to last day in Idaho and left her upstairs alone. About 30 min. later, Justin got back from his daily adventure and I asked him to go upstairs and check on Gracie since I wasn't finished cleaning up and hadn't gotten to her yet. A few minutes later, he calls my cell phone and says I need to come up right away. I ran up and found Justin cleaning up the floor which was covered wish Rylee's spray de-tangler. At first, I was like, "why am I here?", but then Justin handed me an empty bottle of claritin and showed me the two left he found on the floor. I grabbed the bottle and rushed to find my mother-in-law who it belonged to in order to find out how many were in there. She said somewhere around 10, no more than 20 maybe, but wasn't completely sure. I called poison control and they sent us to the E.R. We spent six hours there so they could observe her. They did have to give her an i.v. in case anything happened, but overall, she was fine. Seven hours after the incident, we took her home and went to bed. She woke up shortly after we were all asleep screaming because of stomach pain. We figured it was gas, but after the third time of her waking and screaming, we decided to take her back. Turns out we were right, and that it was probably a side effect of the charcoal she had to drink to absorb the pills she swallowed. So, after another 2 1/2 hrs. at the hospital, we went back to Justin's uncle's house, slept for a few hours, got up, packed, and came home. Everything ended up fine and she's back to her normal, crazy self again!

(Forgot the video for previous post)

Here is Justin and a few of the cousins attempting the eating portion of our Thanksgiving "Fear Factor."

Thanksgiving in Idaho

We had so much for Thanksgiving this year. We packed up the kids and my giant belly and drove up to Idaho for the Holiday. We did so many fun things! First, there was the constant supply of snow for the kids to play in.

And of course, there was fantastic food, but I had lost my camera that day so there's no pics, but luckily I found it in time to get some pics and video of the cousins "Fear Factor." There were a few categories that I missed cause of the whole lost camera thing, but I got the most fun ones!

First, they spun around 30 seconds and had to stand on one foot for a minute. Then they had to hold their legs up as if they were peeing like a dog. Followed by the eating challenge. There were five items that they got 10 pts each and an extra 25 if they ate them all: jalepeno peppers, pickled pigs feet, sardines, 2 TB. lard, and one raw egg. I'm proud to say, my husband finished them all off! You can watch the funny video below.

Gracie is Two!!!

Gracie turned two last sunday! We had a little family party for her and she had so much fun playing with balloons, blowing out candles, eating cake, and opening presents! She got some cute little outfits, some adorable fashion boots, some dress-up dresses, and a rocking horse that moves and makes sounds. In the video below, you can kinda hear her yell "he-ha!" when she begins to open her last present (that's what she calls the horse).

Gracie has grown up so much in just the last few months! Her little personalitly has exploded and she's become such an entertaining part of each day. She does the most random things to entertain herself and it just kills me! She is very dramatic ( a lot like her sister) and likes to dance and play dead a lot. Her favorite game is to play "dance party" where we put on music and dress ups and dance around the living room. She still doesn't talk a whole lot but is finally learning more words and becoming easier to understand. We all love her and enjoy watching her. Who needs t.v. when Gracie's around!

This first pic was suppose to be a family pic, but my mother-in-law was trying so hard to get Gracie to look and smile that she cut off heads a lot. This was the best of them!

For my mom

These are some videos of Gracie opening the presents that my mom mailed to her yesterday. It's difficult to keep clothes on her anymore so that's why she's naked. She was so excited to open presents that I don't think she really cared what was in them! But she loved everything!

Halloween 09

I love Halloween and I'm just a little bit sad that it's already over. (Emphasis on the "just a little bit." Walking all over the place all day can wear a pregnant lady out!) So here are some pics of our Halloween festivities!

First, we made cookies!

Then, we carved pumpkins.

You can see that Gracie was more interested in coloring on herself than decorating the pumpkins!

The finished product. Rylee drew a bat and a ghost on the smaller one that she wanted me to cut out. You can see the bat in the picture and a little bit of the ghost on the far right of the small pumpkin.

Then, it was time to play dress up and off to trick-or-treating. We first went to downtown Chico, then to the church trunk-or-treat, then off to a Halloween Party at a friends house to finish the night. I decided to not go with themes this year and the kids picked out their own costumes (although, I did help Gracie with hers.)

I tried to get Gracie to wear the hat, but she just kept being funny with it and covering her face, and then wouldn't wear it at all! So, we decided to stick with the pony and a pretty. But we love the cape!

We had tons of fun and accumulated a whole lot of candy, including chocolates! Woo-hoo!

A Giveaway

Okay, I don't usually post about these kind of things. But since the giveaway is from my good friend Becki, and I really, really, really want to win, I figured I'd do it this time! Anyway, Becki is super creative and talented. I've purchased many an item from her Whippycake store. If you want to learn more about it, you can click on the pink Whippycake button to the right. She has super cute things for mom and baby. You can read about her latest give-away there too!