happy halloween!

wow. today was busy! and i am tired. so this will be a short post, but at least i'm posting!

this morning was abbey's very first primary program! she did an amazing job, i am so proud of her! and she's awfully proud of herself, too. she was pretty shy about the songs she didn't know very well, but she absolutely belted out the one's she did. it was awesome to watch. i'm so glad that we had henry when we did so i didn't have to miss this!


after lunch and ellie's nap, the girls carved pumpkins with daddy! abbey went right to work on hers and cleaned out her pumpkin faster than anyone i've ever seen. she did a great job drawing her face on, too (dan was very careful to carve it exactly the way she drew it). she made a "spooky" pumpkin. ellie used her spoon to dig the guts out of her pumpkin and then put them in her mouth. gross. we tried stopping her several times, but eventually gave up. really, it's squash, it's not going to hurt her. danny carved her pumpkin into the surprised face ellie makes, because trying to carve out the scribbles she drew was just a little tricky.

henry and i had a postpartum appointment at the hospital this evening. a doctor's appointment at 5pm on a sunday? yeah, i thought it was weird, too. but they said it was important, so we went. and wasted 90 minutes. we did get to weigh henry while we were there, though. he's 4 days old and already back up to 6lb 11oz, only 1oz shy of his birth weight. way to eat like your mom, little guy!


we rushed home from the hospital to dinner in a pumpkin (yum. i could eat this every day.) and trick-or-treating. the girls actually went trunk-or-treating last night and had an absolute blast, so they only went to one house tonight. our next door neighbor, a sweet little grandma, wanted to see the girls, so we got them all dressed up and danny ran them over. it worked out really well, because abbey really wanted to t-o-t on halloween, but it was way too close to bed time to go out. it was a good compromise that made everyone happy.

oh, a note about costumes. abbey was "not a scary" witch. ellie was supposed to be her little black cat, but we lost her costume. we looked for it everywhere, could not find it. "renaissance princess" was the only costume in her size at target. the only one. so, that's what she was. she was cute, but they didn't match. i hate not matching... henry was going to be a bat, but i didn't make him a costume in advance because we weren't sure when he would be born. we got home from the hospital friday evening and let me tell you, i just didn't feel like sewing a costume two days after having a baby. weird, i know. so he wore his pumpkin tush suit, which i think worked out just fine. ;D

hm..so much for a short post, huh?

he's here!

after a very short labor (my water was broken at 7pm, i was 4cm. in less than an hour i was at a 10) and one push henry elliot made his debut at 8:04pm on october 27th! he weighed 6 pounds 12 ounces and is 19 1/2 inches long. his apgar scores were excellent and he is perfectly healthy! we are all so excited that he is finally here and doing so well. thank you, everyone, for all the help and support we received during this pregnancy! it was a little tough sometimes, but very worth it now that we're holding our baby.

false alarm?

well, more of a slow alarm, rather than false. i've been having a lot of contractions the last few days (5 minutes apart). yesterday afternoon danny finally convinced me to go to the hospital. everyone reading this probably thinks this should have been a no-brainer decision. what you have to understand is i've been having contractions since i was 13 weeks. and since they were the same contractions i've been having for 23 weeks, i didn't think it warranted a trip to l&d, but i still went.

after 7 hours and being monitored and 3 hours of walking, or rather waddling, the halls (no small feat when you're 8 months pregnant and contracting), we got to go home. the doctor said that while i am officially in labor, my progress is slow enough that i didn't need to stay at the hospital. so, baby is on his way, but we have a few more days to get everything ready for him (and find a name...) before he gets here. <3

a trip to the pumpkin patch

i could never find a pumpkin patch in idaho or utah, so we always ended up getting pumpkins from the grocery store. not very festive. this year is different. this year we're in washington. this year i know right where the pupkin patch is.

we packed the girls up this afternoon and headed over to bi-zi farm for their first trip to a real pumpkin patch! they had an absolute blast! and we got to make some really special memories together before baby makes his debut. <3

as soon as we got there abbey scaled the hay bale pyramid. i was really surprised that she went all the way to the top all by herself (she didn't know that dan was right behind her with ellie). as soon as she got to the top that batteries in my camera started to die, so i missed some really cute shots. :( for some reason, anything battery powered (cameras, computers, remotes) hates me lately. it was irritating having to keep shutting the camera off and flipping the batteries around, but i eked enough power out of the thing to get pictures of our whole day.


the hay bale maze was a lot of fun. as soon as we said "go", abbey grabbed ellie's hand and they ran through the thing as fast as they could. it was hard to waddle fast enough to keep up with them ;D we also made a stop at the "corn bin". a huge hole full of dry dent corn, sort of like a farm version of the ball pit at chuck e. cheese. abbey had a lot of fun making corn angles and filling up the little tractors. ellie didn't like it at all, her feet kept sinking into the corn and she couldn't move, until dan sat her on her tush and showed her how to fill up the tractor, then she had fun, too.


the petting zoo. the girls could not get in here fast enough. as soon as we did abbey got a little nervous and didn't want to pet anything. ellie isn't old enough to be afraid of goats that are three times bigger than she is, so she was chasing after the animals and wanted to touch everything. abbey warmed up after a few minutes (and getting to feed a bunny) and tentatively enjoyed herself.


taking pictures while we waited for the hay ride to take us out to the pumpkin patch. i love that ellie is screaming in both our family pictures. she didn't want to sit still at all, there was way too much to do!


the girls had a blast getting to pick their pumpkins out of the field (so much better than the grocery store parking lot). it took us a little while to find pumpkins that were small enough for them to pick up. apparently we went to the wrong end of the patch, while we were driving away we found a mecca of baby sized pumpkins. even though it took a little looking, the girls still managed to find some pumpkins that were just the right size.




after you get off the hay ride with your pumpkin, you get to give it a "bath" with old fashioned water pumps. even though it was getting a little cold and the girls took the liberty to get a little wet, it was a lot of fun to scrub our own pumpkins (and it made mommy and daddy very happy not to have to put muddy pumpkins in the car). after the pumpkins were squeaking clean, we warmed up with hot chocolates before we headed home for dinner. it was a really fun day, i think that dan and i had as much fun as the girls did ;D