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

happy birthday, dan!

we celebrated danny's 29th birthday yesterday! it was pretty low key because danny doesn't like to make a big deal out of his birthday and because i wore myself out doing abbey's birthday on monday (when i was supposed to be on bed rest...). so last night we had chinese takeout for dinner and a frosting free lemon (birthday) cake topped with nerds for dessert. danny's family all got on the webcam to sing him happy birthday, and i think that really made his night. after we got the girls in bed we watched "clash of the titans". i ended up missing most of it because someone (abigail...) wouldn't stay in their bed. it was a nice night, though. a very simple birthday, but i think danny enjoyed it. next year i will not be on bed rest and we'll make a very big deal out of the big 3-0.

abbey turns 4!

my baby turned 4 on the 26th! i say it every year, and i will continue to say it, i can't believe how old she is! and i can't believe how quickly we've gotten to 4! it seems like every year is shorter and shorter.

this year we had a fancy nancy birthday. if you don't know who fancy nancy is, she is a little girl who loves everything fancy. fancy clothes, fancy decorations, fancy pets and especially fancy words. it's a wonderful little book series that introduces children to vocabulary that they otherwise wouldn't hear. abigail loves fancy nancy.

now, you can't have a fancy nancy birthday without an extraordinary (which is a fancy word for remarkable) birthday cake. i promised my child such a cake. a mistake? probably. it took me two days to create that monster, even with my mom helping me roll fondant all day (thanks, mom!). it didn't turn out quite as fancy as i had planned, but i ran out of time and energy. abbey loved it, even though it wasn't perfect, and was so proud to have such a fancy cake.

continuing with the theme of her party she received several fancy nancy books (abbey loves books!), a leapster, and a princess bicycle from mommy and daddy. she was so excited to open her presents, and she couldn't decide what she was going to play with first. it was so much fun to watch her dash back and forth between presents every couple of minutes.

abigail was ecstatic (which is a fancy word for very happy) to have danny's whole family and alyssa and jacob at her birthday party via web cams. i am so grateful for video chat, i don't know what we'd do without it.

here we go again

at our doctor appointment today we did a fetal fibronectin (fFN) test because i've been having so many contractions. the fFN test helps doctors test for preterm labor and delivery. unfortunately, our test came back positive, though we weren't surprised. so, i am back on bedrest (boo) until at least 32 weeks but probably 34 weeks, if we make it that long. luckily we have lots of wonderful family to help us this time and we won't have to leave the girls with strangers, like we did in utah.

our year in reveiw

so, to catch everyone up, here are a few of the highlights from the last year. if all goes well, we won't have to have another one of these posts ;D



abigail makenna turns 3 years old! we celebrated abbey's 3rd birthday just a few days before our move. she had a really fun (but simple, since everything was packed in boxes) tinkerbell birthday. aunt emma came up from provo to be with her and we got to have my parents on the web cam.


happy birthday, danny! dan turned 28 last july, just a few days before we moved, which made celebrating a little difficult. i think we had his party on the floor, because everything had been packed up by then. danny likes cake, by he hates frosting (or anything creamy and delicious for that matter), so making a cake that looks like a birthday cake is always a little tricky. this year i wanted to make him a transformer cake and since all of my cake decorating accoutrements were already packed, i made a paper stencil of optimus prime and dusted it with powder sugar. simple, but an effective frosting-free method of making the world's best husband a fun cake.<3 href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGs_qDhAW8gvyaE_P-gOXsJB6_7gC2HD86WTkmvczoIO4HgO6EJk2wIiNyvjQLgZcMwTu4AwCutd7S5ZxE-ZWsltcTnURJ-n6S7Ot5ANpIivyT_DHlVZtCeE7bqAHm_QYlA4cwfpB6-SzF/s1600/canon13136-1.jpg">last august we decided to move up to washington so that we could be closer to family (and because we LOVE the pacific northwest!). it was a two day trek from salt lake to vancouver, we stopped in idaho to see the girls' great grandma <3 style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons">
i'm 25, i'm a mom, and i love twilight. i'm a nerd, blah, blah, blah, i know. luckily, my best friend (hi, chelsea!) is as big a nerd as i am. so one october morning (at 4, i think) we packed up our babies (just the little ones) and drove to forks! i'll spare everyone the details (but not the pictures ;D) and just say that it was a BLAST! we will be going back some day.




happy halloween! we had a super fun breakfast on halloween! (abbey loved it!) tombstone pancakes, black cat toast, turkey bacon fingers, and really orange eggs. the girls dressed up as cinderella and her pumpkin. (i made that pumpkin costume, by the way. without a pattern or a sewing machine. since i'm no good at sewing, i was pretty darn proud of myself.) they were both really cute! we went trick-or-treating at a few friends' houses, and then went to a trunk-or-treat at our church. abigail had so much fun! ellie (at 8 months) was indifferent but cooperative.



happy guy fawkes night! we don't live in england, we've never been, but we do have english ancestors and this just sounded like fun ;D if you don't know about guy fawkes night, you should google it. to celebrate, emma and i (but mostly emma) made a guy fawkes doll and very safely (we're responsible adults now) burned his effigy on dan's grill. we may have also roasted mini marshmallows over top of him. it was a lot of fun and we will be celebrating guy fawkes night every year.



happy thanksgiving! emma and i spent ALL day cooking and we all ate WAY too much. it was a lovely day.



ellie stood up all by herself, for the very first time, on december 17th! luckily, i try and keep a camera in the same room as me and the kids all the time and we were able to snap this before she fell right on her tush. <3 href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFBlLsjXd6S-kY58V-fELssB-y0Aidf1AiSOFBNDmGuvQrME6uT8f8y_gFLZ24CuBfSCVNewTxk0vjyoioLZ8CkpRr0AJGwkpDqxZ0gZqrPUWdMDMIS5cCGr_27GcsAugJPnPo3-6f7lS6/s1600/P1130978-1.jpg">dan has been trying to get me to cut his hair since the day we got home from our honeymoon. i don't cut hair. i don't even trim abbey's bangs, i make emma come over and do it. i stubbornly refused, for almost 5 years, to go near him with a razor but he kept asking me to do it. just before christmas i caved and we bought a razor. i was terrified. luckily, alyssa and jacob guided me through my first, overwhelming experience as a stylist. it was a little tricky, and it didn't turn out perfect, but dan was happy with it and now i'm hired.



we spent christmas at my parents house. the girls had so much fun leaving cookies out for santa and opening their presents in the morning. i think ellie was just big enough to really enjoy her first christmas <3 href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixBMzuZ3uKDLqkqa4G0WMGoP12Kx3n47ZQhtZa4A8JtgeJbK8Y5_BpE40FM_Xe5GvYtmsFQcU3up1GHy2cu5aDVxNjmUjG9ZkZAfZV_rCg2FylMI1hR4kiQEYKiYSsvpXHOw8lzb4iBaq_/s1600/D50_2010-01-31_1400-54_6356-1.jpg">first day of primary! abigail is a sunbeam now! she was so excited to start :D luckily, i was a primary teacher for her first few months, so i got to be there with her! she had an amazing time today, and she adores her teacher. (she has the BEST primary teacher in the world. i say this was absolute confidence. sister chambers is AMAZING <3 href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizLNAcQiU95n0FPSBqAPrpnz2TQKS5Nd290cfdjo_RcXsGm6f_NWpXccmD8TuQwkGu7_2NIBhPOXe81M3XCx3kBedT26SHc2QrDuPO45IjnOEP8nUzAGCe50e1U8oYim5WVvYNphR1ikRv/s1600/D50_2010-02-04_2249-25_6638-1.jpg">ellie turned 1 on february 4th! wow, that went fast. it always does :( we had a really fun day with her. and both of our families were able to attend her first birthday via web cam! (i love web cams!) she did really well opening her presents, and and even better job eating her cake. ;D



surprise! we found out in march that we're having another baby! we were all done with babies after we had ellie, so it took a little while for us to wrap our minds around being pregnant again, but, we're so excited to be adding to our family! <3 href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7tGHDDKaV2A_Ear3_2Hso-jl5irwep7eaoGxDqb0X6a0R4BGW0szI1SdX3baREFvrKGIXQtQLucadcAIpfhNw1VJTQ1YqwgFXXNQcJ1nR9jmnuPjoF47Fj4rAMxixCWfLR4S9PJncrKT/s1600/D50_2010-03-21_1656-41_6760-1.jpg">happy birthday, to me. i turned 25 this past march and was presented with this epic pink and black, sparkly, argyle cake. dear emma, you rock! thanks for making my birthday amazing!



happy easter! the girls had so much fun dying easter eggs the day before with daddy. abbey especially had fun, we painted half of the eggs with glitter :D it was a little tricky easter morning to get abbey to let ellie pick up some of the eggs, but she did her best to share. the girls had so much fun playing with the eggs and opening their baskets. we made a lot of special memories. <3 href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA55Ac-SUcWKS0Q74NytcOX-8Ae38hFa-SY1kMiH7zDV8-V5SsYSYXKT4cDJip4ZFNib-PQT7NzcqTIqF8VWSIZOyDMF5JFN9yrEMx02hLWbjh8uD4aqLk9Ry4PKffM_CafYbIrbcBoJKf/s1600/P1140806-1.jpg">we went to the coast for mother's day this year. i love the oregon coast, it is wonderfully relaxing. while we were there we took the girls down to the beach for the first time. ellie was a little hesitant about everything at first but got more excited and curious the longer she was there. abbey, on the other hand, was going nuts the second she could see the water. we picked up little shells and stones, made a sand "castle" (that was more like a sand mound), and dipped our toes in the water (which was unseasonably warm for may, but made it a much more enjoyable experience for the girls.) :D



we try to do something special (read: homemade with love) for danny every father's day. this year we made him a little scrapbook filled with photos, pictures drawn by the girls, special memories we have, coupons, and some of the reasons that we love him. abbey worked her little fingers to the bone helping me get it ready. it turned out better than i thought it would, and danny really loved it.

my little sister, emma, loves her french horn. a lot. she also loves her niece. it was only a matter of time before emma started to teach her to play.

starting over

i am a terrible journaler. i am no good at taking time to sit and write, even about really important things. i started this blog last year to see if it would help me to keep a better record of our life and to keep family (who we don't see or talk to nearly enough) up to date on what's going on. did it work? was i motivated? nope. not even a little. i thought about posting all the time, but something always "got in the way". usually it was finding time to download and sift through the gigs of pictures i take of the girls. (write a post without pictures ?!? can't be done!) so here we are, nearly a year after my last post, starting over. i'm not going to promise that i'll post every day, or even every week, but i will at least try to hit the big, important, exciting, or too-funny-not-to-share events in our lives. so, without further adu: take two.

company picnic

it was a fun evening, and nice to be able to catch up with some people i haven't seen since i was pregnant with ellie. dan (and the rest of the party planning committee) did a great job. i think it was especially fun for the kids. while the "grown-ups" visited, there was a bouncy castle with a slide, a blow up rock wall, beach balls, bubbles and a cotton candy machine!

abigail blowing bubbles.


going down the slide on the bouncy castle.

abbey's first taste of cotton candy. it was a hit!


a medieval club was meeting in the field next to us. all the men were dressed up as knights in full suits of armor. the women were either dressed as royalty or peasants. it was one of the most interesting things i've seen.


abbey was so worn out when we got home. she fell asleep right in the middle of her book.

happy father's day!

i hope everyone, especially the dads, had a great day today! we had a very relaxing day here (aside from the ma rush to get the babies ready for church). we tried to let daddy sleep in this morning, as long as abbey could stand ;D she was so excited to show dan his "surprises". we worked on most of them while he slept this morning. i was afraid if we did anything in advance it might escape from little lips.

after abbey bounced daddy awake (channeling her inner tigger) and he took a few minutes to wake up we had a yummy father's day breakfast: crockpot hashbrown breakfast casserole. for those of you who've been to girl's camp, it's basically mountain woman breakfast. yummy! we ate till we couldn't eat anymore and then abbey gave daddy his surprises:

abbey worked very hard coloring everything especially for daddy.


danny's special father's day flowers.


the bunches of grapes were their little finger prints. i was so excite about how well these turned out! my craft projects (or anything else for that matter) rarely turns out the way they look in my head. luckly, these turned out even better!


abbey colored the inside of hers.


dan's father's day card from mommy. it's a bbq grill (if you can't tell. dan thought it was a spaceship at first) because we got him a grill stand for father's day. now he won't have to squat down on the ground while he's cooking!

we spent the rest of the day relaxing and not doing much of anything. it was nice to just rest and spend time together. danny made some ribeye steaks (oh, they were SO good. that boy can grill!) for dinner and we had orange milano cookies for dessert. mmm...

roly poly

ellie rolled over today!

ellie's first bite

preface: ellie is 4 months old today! i can't believe how quickly she is growing!

hooray! ellie ate her first bowl of cereal tonight! or, rather, ellie spit out her first bowl of cereal tonight ;D she did very well though, she didn't cry and she even swallowed a couple of times (accidentally?)! she's supposed to be eating 1-2 tablespoons of cereal 3x a day. i think we'll have to work our way up to that.

danny and i are very proud of our big little girl, though, and can't believe how quickly she is growing. abigail is very proud of her sister, too. she encouraged ellie to eat it all up and told her she was a big girl. abbey was very excited to help mommy spoon some dinner in ellie's mouth, too.

in other news: the girls had their checkups today and everything is looking good! abigail is just over 38 inches tall and weighs 32 pounds. she was a little shy with the doc at first but about halfway through the visit she decided it was more fun to show off than to be shy. ellie is growing, growing, too. she's grown to 24 inches and weighs 13lbs 2oz. what a big girl! abbey is in the 73rd percentile and ellie is in the 36th!

making dinner

abbey helped make dinner, for the very first time, tonight! we made taco soup together. mommy opened all the cans and abbey dumped everything into the pot and then got to stir it (she snuck the spoon into her mouth a couple of times, too). she was so proud of herself for making dinner! she kept telling danny that she was the one who made the soup!

a good helper

abigail loves to help! while i was vacuuming the floor today abbey ran to get her little, red vacuum so she could help. she vacuumed along side me for a little while, then decided she could do a better job in mama's pumps, so off she ran to get them. i thought she looked like a little 1950's housewife, cleaning in her high heels ;D