February 2017

On February 2nd I had an ultrasound because I had been measuring small as usual. The technician got a 3D pictures of his face:

Ellie's class did some Groundhog's Day activities and Mrs. Barbano sent this picture. Ellie is in the middle:

Ellie went to Ellie S.'s birthday party at Dimple Dell and Alta got to go hang out with Ruby.

Olive was pretty sad she couldn't go to the party so after we dropped the girls off she got in her swimming stuff and played in the tub:

Whenever we had warm days Alta and Ellie would beg to get their bows and arrows out. One day Dan stuck a dollar bill on the target and whoever shot it first got to keep it. Ellie was so close but Alta won:

Emmie had given me a gift certificate to Sundance for Dan and I to do a full moon snowshoeing thing and we were supposed to use it one weekend in February. Unfortunately pregnancy was making my hip so bad that there was no way I'd be able to snowshoe. Instead we had a family night out and went to get sushi:

Valentine's Day is always pretty uneventful around our house. Olive opened up her chocolate maze and dug in first thing in the morning:

A boy in Ellie's class gave everyone normal-sized Valentines but gave Ellie this. He's had a crush on her all year. She's smiling in the picture but she was really embarrassed about it!

 I picked out my own Valentine's/anniversary necklace and ordered it for myself. When it came I told Dan it was from him to me.

 A typical day with Olive:

There was no school on the Friday of President's Day Weekend so Anna and I went on a walk with the girls riding their bikes. We hadn't stopped to see the zebra for a long time but he was still there:

 That night my sweet friends threw me a baby shower! I'd never had a real baby shower so I felt pretty loved. We met at Blue Lemon for dinner and it was a perfect way to celebrate this baby boy.

On Saturday night Dan and I celebrated our 11th anniversary a few days late. We drove downtown and had dinner at the Copper Onion (finally! It was delicious) and walked around City Creek. Now that I'm writing this 9 months later with a little baby I'm kicking myself for not going on more dates before he was born!

When I downloaded Dan's pictures off his phone I found this one from February and laughed. He spent far too much time than a 30-something-year-old should playing Mario so he could finally beat it:

(The funny thing is my dad tells a similar story of when he became obsessed with beating Mario when Brian was little. Once he beat it he never touched the Nintendo again.)

A lazy Sunday morning.

That ladder was in our room for way too long; we (meaning Dan) painted our bedroom little bits at a time and it took weeks. But we finally got rid of the pale green accent wall! We also painted the extra room in the basement and the room on the main floor. With the baby coming we had to shuffle everyone around. We completely cleared out the main floor room and moved it all to the basement, which meant we finally had to really organize our storage. Alta and Ellie moved to the main floor and Olive got to take over their old room upstairs. We had to move a lot of toys upstairs in order to fit everything in the basement so Olive went from having zero toys in her room to an entire closet full. She would make a huge mess every day during "nap" time and then cry when I told her to clean it up:

I sat on our computer chair and broke it. It had been cracking a little bit along the back and I guess it couldn't handle my 9-months-pregnant belly:

 Dan went to St. George with his friends the last weekend in February. I was 99% sure I wasn't going to go into labor since it was still two weeks before my due date and I hadn't been progressing as much as I had when I'd been pregnant with Olive. So off he went while I enjoyed having the entire bed to myself to make my pillow nest. Oh the joys of pregnancy:

My friend Tess had extra tickets to the Hale Center Theater production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and she invited Alta and I to come with her and Emmy. I thought it was a perfect activity to distract me from the last days of pregnancy and I knew I wouldn't have a chance to do something like this with a nursing baby so I asked Lorna to watch the other girls (since Dan was in St. George). I've watched that movie countless times and it was fun to see it as a play and introduce it to Alta.

Alta had been asking and begging to get her ears pierced for a long time. I told her when she finished her set of piano books she was working on she could get them pierced. She worked hard to pass off all her songs and we finally got to go to Claire's at the end of February! She was nervous but too excited to be really scared. In the chair with one done (and a captivated audience) -

 I never got a good picture but here she is with newly pierced ears! She chose studs with her birthstone:

They ended up getting infected a lot those first couple of months and it was kind of a pain, but they look adorable and she loves them. Now she likes the responsibility of being able to choose her earrings and change them when she wants. And of course Ellie is impatient for the day when she is old enough to get hers pierced!

I also spent a lot of time the last week of February trying to decorate a baby boy nursery. I'm not sure why, but I kept putting this off my entire pregnancy. Having a boy seemed a little daunting and unreal (I laugh now to think how worried I was about him being a boy!). But with a scheduled induction date coming up very quickly I wanted to have at least something in his room. I made a plan and ordered some stuff, which of course didn't get there until after he was born and then didn't get set up for weeks (or months) later. But it was a good distraction to work on something those last few days when I was so uncomfortable and done being pregnant.

So next up, March and the birth of Palmer!

January 2017

Welcome to 2017!

After Christmas we got the Mazda cleaned and detailed so it would sell a little easier. When I went to pick it up it was so clean it felt like a brand new car! I should have done that years ago.

We listed it and sold it within a few days. Dan took a picture of our big pile of cash:

A Saturday morning in early January waiting for their turn to go up to Snowbird and ski:

That night we had a family movie night and watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids (we watched it at the Brower's house when they were gone, I don't remember why). It was hilarious to watch it with the girls. They thought it was pretty funny and were super in to it:

Olive hates when I do her hair so it's usually just a wild mess, but every once in a while she doesn't put up a fight:

Nicole sent me this picture of Ellie walking home from school on a snowy day with Ellie S. and Naomi Maughn:

On the second weekend of January I went on a girls trip to St. George with Anna, Amy, and Cheryl. We ate good food, got massages (prenatal ones for Cheryl and me!), painted nails, watched a movie, sat in the hot tub, walked around Snow Canyon, and talked non-stop.

While I was gone Dan decided to take all three girls skiing. It was Olive's first time skiing for real and she thought it was the best. He texted me these pictures and I just love them!

 He also sent me this - descending into the inversion:

We drove home Sunday afternoon but not in time for church, so Dan was in charge of getting the girls ready. Olive chose her own outfit and ended up in a hand-me-down dress that was too big, socks over tights, and a weird purse:

The next week Ellie went to her friend Stella's birthday party and got to stay out late, dye her hair, and put on lots of tattoo jewelry:

Olive in a non-unicorn costume:

On a no-school Friday we went to the Midway Ice Castles with Ruby and Ellie. It was bigger than when we had gone a few years ago and more fun. The girls loved going down all the ice slides and exploring everywhere.

That weekend Dan borrowed his parents' Wii and figured out how to get the old original Mario on it. We introduced it to the girls and laughed so hard watching them bounce around while they played - especially Olive!

They asked to play a lot for a week or two and then forgot about it, which I was happy about.

And then it was the end of the month and Olive's birthday! Three years old:

She got to go to the Red Balloon with Lorna that afternoon. One of her favorite toys she picked out was this Gumby and Pokey - which she has never seen or heard of, but loves them. I had the same toys when I was a kid and loved them too!

We had teddy bear cupcakes after dinner that night.

I've always thought age three is the hardest and Olive hasn't disappointed. She's learning the arts of whining and tantrum throwing and negotiating and refusing and dawdling and screaming and hitting. But she can also be absolutely hilarious and so much fun. We just love her big personality!

Alta read a book about two sisters making a Sister's Club and decided to implement the idea at our house, so she and Ellie made a special Sister's Club birthday set-up for Olive. It was adorable:

Happy Birthday to our crazy Olive!

December 2016

On the first day of December we went to The Lifthouse and got new skis for Alta and new boots for both of the girls (Ellie's feet are almost the same size as Alta's so we can't really pass down ski boots anymore). We spent the evening getting boots and bindings all set up and finishing the Christmas decorating. Olive wanted to try on That Friday the old boots too:

That Friday night Alta and Ellie sang in the children's choir for the stake Christmas program. My parents came up to watch them and besides the whole program being a little long, it was enjoyable to hear good music and watch the girls sing their few songs. I swear I took a couple pictures but they are no where to be found.

The next day we drove to Provo for our annual Christmas lunch at Riverside with my family (sans kids!), and then that night we went to Sicilia Mia with some friends for a Christmas dinner. The food was mostly good even though the service was not, but it was fun to go with my good friends and their husbands!

Apparently I was pretty bad at taking pictures during the month of December. The next weekend Dan and I got to use his parent's extra tickets to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. Heading downtown on a weekend in December was nuts, but after parking a mile away and cramming in the quickest sit-down dinner ever (at From Scratch - we'd never heard of it but walked past it and noticed it wasn't overly busy and it ended up being quite good) we got in a ridiculous line at the conference center. Even though we had tickets for a specific section, we kept getting sent to a higher and higher section because everything was full. The whole thing seemed disorganized and chaotic and a little frustrating, but we finally made it to our seats (after the concert had already started) and enjoyed some beautiful music. The only downside was sitting next to a young guy in his 20s who kept wanting to talk to us about how boring the concert was. But despite all that it was totally worth it! I'd love to get tickets in the future - the concert was so impressive.

That Saturday was also my family's baking day, again with no pictures, but it's always a fun day!

After the craziness of running through temple square on a weekend trying to get to the concert, we decided we needed to take the girls and see the lights. We don't do this every year because honestly it's not my favorite thing. But we drove up at 5:00 to avoid the crowds, grabbed some dinner (I've already forgotten where) and walked past the candy displays in the windows

and through the lights on temple square.

It was windy and freezing cold so Dan made the girls run laps around the temple to warm up:

 The next night was Ellie's mid-year tumbling performance in the studio. It was fun to watch as always. Mark and Lorna also came.

Some random pictures from the next couple of weeks. We made gingerbread men and decorated them and Olive thought it was so fun to eat her little person:

It is well-known that Olive wears her unicorn costume alllll the time so one day Alta's friend Emmy came over to play and brought her unicorn pajamas so she could match Olive:

Olive decided to add the tutu this month and always wore them together. She started sticking Whomper in the skirt so she could carry him around hands-free:

Ellie's morning face with a scraped lip from a sledding accident:

We also had our annual Christmas party with Dan's friends on the weekend in the middle of December. We hosted it at our house this year and had a fun dinner and white elephant exchange.

Alta went to Ruby's birthday party and got creative with her wrapping since we had no wrapping paper. These two are such good buddies!

On the last day of school before Christmas break both the girls had class parties. I helped with Alta's party and made a jingle bell toss game that was a hit. Olive came with me and sat next to Mrs. Beesley and colored with her. I didn't help in Ellie's class but Mrs. Barbano sent this picture from their polar express pajama party:

And that night we...bought a mini van.
The weekend before we had decided to go test drive vans just because we knew we'd be buying one sometime in the next six months. We had no plans on buying one that soon, and we had always assumed we'd buy a used one because that's just how we do things, but after a lot of talking with car salesmen (which I hate doing) and with the help of Dan's car dealer friend Jason, we ended up buy a brand new van that week. And I love it.

The day after we got it we had parked in the Brower's driveway for a big family Christmas party and when we left we found a huge scratch on the side like someone had scraped their ring on it or something. We never found out what happened, but we were both just sick about it! Our brand new car! I guess it was bound to happen at some point though. I was definitely nervous the first couple of weeks driving it around since I'd never driven a new car in my life. We also had quite a few good snow storms the month after we got it and it turns out the factory tires are horrible so we put snow tires on it right away.

Speaking of spending money, we also started looking for a new washer and dryer in the middle of the month and bought one. We had old and very cheap models from years ago and Dan volunteered to donate them to a refugee family in Salt Lake City that was in need. So we ordered new ones, gave away the old ones, and then got an email saying our new ones couldn't be delivered for another few weeks instead of the few days it was supposed to be. I think it ended up being 3 weeks without a washer and dryer and it was such a pain!

Dan started taking the girls skiing as soon as school was out and they picked up right where they left off last year:

On the Thursday night before Christmas we used our Luminaria tickets and walked around the lights again. They really were gorgeous! It was cold of course but much better than wet and rainy. Dancing in the pavilion:

 Taking a rest:

And watching the moving light show:

The Friday before Christmas we had our annual Christmas dinner with the Browers at the Deer Valley seafood buffet again. We love this tradition and I think this is our favorite place!

It was all great until the next night when Dan started feeling sick and spent the next 24 hours with horrible food poisoning. Kevin got sick too and even though other people ate oysters and didn't get sick, they're pretty sure that's what did it. Dan swears he will never eat one again because nothing is worth feeling that sick! It was pretty bad and a crappy way to spend Christmas day. Poor Dan!

But the rest of us had a fabulous Christmas. We spent the night at the Brower's on Christmas Eve, maybe for the last time since our kids are getting a little old for that tradition, but it's so fun to wake up with everybody on Christmas morning! I didn't take many pictures but Alta and Ellie each got a real bow and arrows and a target, along with some small things, and Olive got lots of stuffed animals and puzzles and legos.

And it had snowed all night so we had a beautiful white Christmas! Dan and Kevin took the kids on snowmobile rides or pulled them on a sled behind:

We stopped by Provo in the afternoon to see my parents and ended up back at the Brower's again that night.

After Christmas it got cold enough for Dan and his brothers to play pond hockey at night:

As a side note, for some reason we all got sick so many times this winter! It started in December and lasted for months. I always tend to catch germs when I'm pregnant and the girls just couldn't stay healthy. It was so frustrating! And it also meant we couldn't be around my parents a lot while my dad was going through radiation and chemo. But the last picture from the month is this sweet note that Ellie wrote to Olive when she was sick. She tied a little present to the string and left it outside Olive's door:

The very last day of December we went to the Cornish's house for a little New Year's Eve party (and definitely did not stay until midnight) and kicked off the start of a new year! Up next, 2017!