Dancing baby!

Today I went in for my 11 week doctor's appointment. We were in for a surprise but first, I have to tell you about some of my pregnancy woes.

About 3 weeks ago now, my doctor put me on bedrest for some bleeding I was having. I got better but then last night it started again! I called him after hours and he prescribed something to stop it and put me on bedrest again. Ammon drove me to my appointment and I saw my doc first thing this morning. Thankfully, the babies were just fine. And we were even in for a little treat. The baby you see here on the bottom (left in the other picture above) was totally moving around. It was like he was so happy to see us, he was doing a dance! You can distinctly see his little leg sticking out to the side. So fun! The other one just laid there with his arms across his chest not moving. I guess the first one was such a scene-stealer that he didn't want to try to compete. ;) Both hearts beat very strongly and they look so BIG. They used to be these little beans and now you can see distinct body parts. Even though I keep referring to them as "him/his/he", we don't know what we're having yet. In the next few weeks, we should though, and much sooner than I thought. Usually it's at 20 weeks but my doc said anywhere from 14-16 weeks we can know. I really don't care what gender they are; I just hope they're healthy.

Shiver me Letters!

That's the title of Connor's favorite book right now. He first saw it in his kindergarten classroom. He came home and drew the book without the benefit of having the book- all from memory!!

I guess on that same vain, Connor and Ammon have been going on letter hunting walks dressed as pirates lately. So adorable! So, when Uncle Brian visited on Sunday, he wanted to take us all on one. We diligently acquiesced to the wishes of our captain and dressed up like pirates in search of hidden letters on signs, license plates and street signs on our walk. Connor was really cute when we grown-ups would find letters too quickly he would say "they're not clear." We didn't get what that meant at first but we soon caught on. Letter Q was by far the hardest letter to find. We had to resort to looking in someone's recycling box to find it!

Air and Space Museum

On Labor Day, we headed over to our local Air and Space Museum. We were amazed at how big that place was! They have 75 acres of old planes on display and about 7 out buildings with equipment in them. It was very interactive for kids so Connor loved it. We had a cool day, which made it possible for us to last the whole day, despite Connor breaking his shoe, my pregnancy and not bringing quite enough food.. We'd definitely recommend it and will be going again, especially on a day the "Bone Yard" is open. That is at the local Air Force Base where they have thousands of planes in various stages of dismantling. Should be cool.

It's TWINS!!!

So, we went to our ultrasound last week and found out we're having twins!! I went again yesterday and still saw them thriving (just an amazing miracle) so I felt comfortable blogging about them. Whew-hoo, I just have to say how utterly excited Ammon and I are about this!! It's been so long in coming that we're really glad there are 2.
(Sorry the picture is fuzzy- it's hard to take a picture of a picture but you can definitely see 2 egg sacks!!). It's really cool to watch on the ultrasound screen the little hearts beating!! Such miracles. I feel so humble to be carrying them, truly.


Here's my belly blog for 7 weeks (I skipped 6 weeks because I really didn't think I looked any different, although I knew I did). Believe me, things are getting tight. I'm definitely getting bigger faster than I did with Connor. In the books I've been reading it says I'll look like I'm about a month or more ahead of someone having a singleton. And there's just an enormous amount of food I'm supposed to be eating! I haven't hit the recommendations yet- there's a killer amount of protein and dairy and carbs required!! And I have some pretty constant morning sickness that makes me so not interested in food! I just have to close my eyes and eat sometimes!

But, why should I be eating so much and what's the big deal you ask? Why am I trying so hard and find myself fairly preoccupied with it (I'm supposed to eat at least every 2 hours)? Well, so we don't have premature or underweight babies. I'm shooting to go full-term with 6 lb (or more) babies each.

On top of it, I'm very sensitive to smells. I go around like a fish most of the time (you know, mouth open, breathing through my mouth) so I don't smell stuff. But, no matter what the costs, IT'S TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!

Fun times

Aww, my little helper. At school, they focused on the color blue and made blueberry muffins on Friday. Well, Connor wanted to come home and make, what else but more blueberry muffins.
His kindergarten teacher does such cute and fun things with the class. Like, for his first week, they focused on gingerbread men everything and even ate gingerbread men cookies she made. So, of course, he wanted to make gingerbread men at home too. We didn't have that shape of cookie cutter so we made one. We had fun making the frosting, decorating them, eating them and giving some away. Connor liked making "families" of gingerbread.


Here's Connor with his buddy Eli. His family recently moved in and they're our nearest neighbors that are in our ward so they tend to get together quite a bit. It was so cute to see them dress up as dragons. One night, they made shields at his house so here they are displaying them. They were acting out being bad and good dragons. Such cuties!


We went to this place that is dubbed on their website as "Disneyland-like". Whoa...was that an exaggeration. I was very disappointed. But, since it was a Tucson Birthday celebration (Tucson is 234 years old this month), with cake and all, we went- who doesn't like cake!! To their credit, they said they are still renovating and bringing in new equipment. I was just shocked at some of the other, uh, clientele. They were like hard-rock black-wearing college kids or worse, still in that stage but parents of young kids. Sadly, I only saw a few other people I would deem "normal."

Something we really did like, though, was the face painting. The artist was really good. Connor said he wanted a cat and I was amazed she did a very good full-face cat. He loved it.

Kindergartener and losing the first tooth!!

So Connor started kindergarten!! I can't believe he's old enough...and we're old enough...to start! He absolutely loves it and tells us all about his day when he gets home. Ammon usually drops him off and picks him up everyday (he works an afternoon shift at work) and, since he's not home in the evenings, he says it's his "bonding time" with Connor. They get up early to play together and then after school we have scripture study (and my dreaded -yet necessary- shot for the pregnancy) and then he's off to work. It seems to work out, although we miss him in the evenings.

Here's our strong little "coyote" in front of his school!! He's howling, so cute.



These are the coyotes in the main office that made him want to go to this school over the others we checked out- such simple criteria for choosing. Thankfully, Ammon and I looked at several other factors in finally deciding on this school. His teacher is from our ward so he thinks it's cool that he sees her at school AND church.


Our little guy lost his first tooth the first week of school!! Just can't believe it. Here he is showing the gap- bottom tooth. The one next to it is loose now too. He loved getting money for his tooth, although he doesn't know quite what to do with it.

Connor's 5th Birthday Party

We had a "Diego Water Jungle Party" for Connor's 5th Birthday. We had a slip n' slide, 2 sprayer pools with slides, water balloons, dump buckets, water guns, water ball sling shots and a Diego pinata. The kids had a blast and I think the parents enjoyed seeing their kids have fun. It was a hot day but not the hottest we've seen, thankfully. We had the misters and fountain going and lots of water flying in the air to help cool things off. We didn't anticipate where all this water would go so we had some puddles- which of course the kids readily jumped into as well.


Slip n' slide fun


Going for the candy from the broken pinata


We had a rocky mountain cake that we added Diego, Dora and Boots figures to. We had ice cream and otter pops (I think these were more popular!).


There were tons of presents and the kids were all so excited for Connor to open them that many were opened without us knowing who they were from!


One excited guest raided Connor's room for a sword. Arrgghh, pirates. I think that'll be the next party's theme.

Thank you to everyone that came to the party and made this a special day for Connor!!