Joel's Birthday

So my wonderful hubby Joel turned 33 on Thursday. He had a good day, went golfing and then had dinner with family. Here are a few pics from his day. Jeiven got him some boxing gloves so they have been having a lot of fun hurting each other!
I attempted to make him a cake, but it was so hard to find enough concentrated time to do it. I think that is going to be a big problem with 3 rascals :)
I didn't have the right colors for my icing, so he had a dirt track with a street bike. Oh well, what can you do?

We ended up having dinner on Friday night with our friends James and Jaimee at the Adrift in Anacortes.. such a good place, then we came back and watched the newest LOST episode. All in all a good night.

Malea's birithday

I can't believe that my girl is 3! I took the day off from spending time with Finley so hang with Malea. It was a difficult day. Malea has been having a very hard time with me being gone so much. I was hoping that having a day with me would help, but she was very trying. I took her down to see Finley and then we had lunch and went shopping for some summer clothes. She came home and went to the park with Joel and then we had Joel's parents, my parents, her cousin Harleigh and her auntie Kendra over for pizza and cake. Here are a few pics.

Finley's blog

I have started a blog to keep you all informed about Finley. You can read all about what happened and get all the details.

http://finleyfacts.blogspot.com

update...

I had my doctor's appointment yesterday and thankfully there hasn't been much change since last week's appointment. I am still 3cm dilated and now 60% effaced. So I am still on strict bedrest for another 9 days, then we will switch to modified bedrest for 7 days.. then back to some freedom. After 36 weeks they will just let me go so we may still have this rascal early.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts and prayers! They obviously worked.
I will continue to keep you posted if anything changes.

love to all!

bumps in the road....

Well I guess it's time for an update. Things have been going great around here. The kids are doing great. Life has thrown us a little bump in the road...I have been placed on bedest for at least the next two weeks. I had been having contractions pretty regularly and when I went to the doctor this last Friday, I was dilated to 3cm already. I am only 33 weeks now so we have to try and hold her in until at least 35 weeks.

I would have to say that being on bedrest has always been a lingering nightmare and it sucks!

I know that this is what is best for our little munchkin but man it is hard. I have never been a big TV watcher so daytime televsion doesn't really appeal to me and you can only do so many crosswords and word searches in a day. I have already polished off one book and just started another.

Joel has been incredible. He is still trying to work as much as he can, plus do all the cleaning and cooking. He really is amazing. We have had some help from friends too, which has been nice.

I am pretty much trying to go day by day. I promise I will keep you posted. I have another appointment on Friday. If I have dilated any more, there is a chance I will be sent to Seattle as our small hospital doesn't have the neo-natal care that she would need. Pray, if you are a praying type!

The kids are getting excited for the new baby sister. They have been so much fun lately and seem to be adjusting ok to this all.

I will post a few pics of them from the last little while. Jeiven has lost his two front teeth, he is growing WAY too fast!

updates

Ok, so much for doing this on a regular basis!

I just don't seem to have enough energy! Lame excuse, I know.

Life is moving at what feels like the speed of light. I can't believe that it is almost February already. We are doing great. Christmas flew by, we hosted our first Christmas here at the house and it was great. I realized how unprepared I am for hosting that many people and will have to get some things figured out before my family comes out in August. There will be 19 of us here at the house so it will be busy but I am very much looking forward to it.

I thought I had blogged about this.. but it must have just been good intentions. :)
We are having another girl. We had an ultrasound on January 2nd and everything is looking fine. I have another ultrasound on Wednesday to get a better look at the heart, as she was laying funny. The kids are excited but scared. Jeiven cried when he found out it was a girl.. he really wanted a brother. He says he is over it now but admits he is nervous that I won't have any time for him once the new baby is born.. I told him if he "helps" me with stuff it will make it easier. Who knows how that will all play out. Thankfully we have 3 more months to figure it out.

I am still adjusting to life at home. I have great days where I love being here with the kids and other days when I long to go back to work. I am sure all stay at home moms have good and bad days so I am taking it as it is.

Starting tomorrow I will get the feeling of what it is like to have a baby around again. My dear friend Jaimee is returning to her nursing job two days a week and I am going to take care of little Noah for her. Malea is thrilled, as she can't get enough of him. It should be good, he is a great baby.

We have a snow day today as it snowed about a inch and a half and that is enough to shut down the world in Washington :) The kids and I had fun out in the snow this morning.

Well, I would say that I will try to keep this updated better, but we all know it probably is unlikely. :)
Hope you are all well. Here are some pictures from the last while.

Settling, birthday and Christmas..

Well we are getting settled. Still can't park in the garage and we don't have pictures on the wall.. but it is coming together. It has been so nice to have some extra space and see my belongings again. ( the last place we stayed in was fully furnished so I haven't seen my stuff in a while)

We have internet and phone again so that is nice. No more standing out in the rain to talk on the phone.

So a little updating. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. Joel's sister was able to join us and it was great to see her back as herself again after all this time.

I celebrated another birthday.. they seem to come a little too quickly. :)

Joel and I were able to get away for a few nights thanks to Joel's parents taking the kids for a while. We went up to Birch Bay and just relaxed, did some christmas shopping, went to see a movie ( I can't remember when the last time was that we did that), had some nice dinners out and were accompanied by our dear friends James and Jaimee for one evening.

Since then we have put up the tree and decorated the house all nice and festive. We had our first snow fall on Sunday so the kids had fun. Not enough to make a snow man, but still fun.

Ok, well I will post a few house pictures, some treefarm pics and such.



love you all.

Keys..

I have in my hand a set of keys for the house! We are starting to move tomorrow so I will probably be offline for a while until I can figure out the whole internet thing.

I am so excited, I could burst.

:)

I will make sure to post pictures once everything is done and in.

Jeiven

So I am labeling this post Jeiven because mostly I want to brag. That is what blogging is for right :)

So we had Jeiven's first parent/teacher conference today. I admit I was nervous. It is easy to have a skewed opinion about your child and I think it's hard to have someone else weigh in on how you are raising them. I survived. It actually went pretty good. The big thing that I was nervous about was that his potential would have been missed or that he is bored and acting out with misbehavior. I am happy to report that his teacher has noticed that he is very bright and that he is doing very well with his behavior ( for the most part) and he is following the rules too.

Let me give you an idea of what this kid is like ( and how dumb is mother is... :)
Last week we were having a conversation and he was telling me that he NEVER kills insects. I respond with "Yes you do! You kill spiders all the time"! He looks at me with disgust and says" Mom, spiders are not insects, they are arachnids. There is a big difference between the two. Insects have three body parts and 6 legs, and spiders have two body parts and 8 legs. If you don't believe me, you can look online". Well he was right. Am I in for trouble or what?

Things are going well otherwise. We have our niece here this week so that has been a bit of a challenge.. three kids.. I don't know how some of you have your kids SO close together.. I think I would go insane.
Nothing new on the house.. we are still set to move in the week of the 19th.

That's it :)

anyone left?

Ok.. I admit it. This is a bit ridiculous. My last post was September 7th? I am sorry.. Is there anyone left that actually checks this thing?

So life has been good. I honestly haven't had an extra ounce of energy left in my day to update this thing. There is a reason for that ( so cut me some slack..) I am pregnant again with number 3. I have been feeling very miserable with morning, day and night sickness and NO energy at all. I think I am close to turning a corner. I am 12 weeks now so I should only have a few more until things get better. I am crossing my fingers. We had an ultrasound a few weeks ago and severly dissapointed Jeiven, who was convinced that God told him we were having twins.

Last time I posted about Jeiven's school experiences. I am happy to report that he is doing very well and actually enjoying himself. He seems to have made a lot of little friends too which is fun for him.

House.. is almost done. They gave us a move in week of the 19th of November. That is our thanksgiving week so it would be so nice to be in by then! They don't really have that much left to do so I think it is really possible! We have had the joy of furniture and appliance shopping, which is hard. We had to buy a fridge and we have all these extra rooms to fill now. We haven't bought any furniture yet but spent the entire day yesterday in Seattle looking around. The kids were such troopers :)

Jeiven has his Halloween carnival at school on Friday. It was just a fun little thing for him as well as Malea.
Ok I will post some pictures of the house and the kids in their costumes.