~THE PARSONS~

Maternity pics

2012-01-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

My awesome friend Tara offered to take some maternity pictures for us to document our little miracle baby! I couldn't have been more excited! She is such a talented photographer and I love all her pictures!!! Thank you so much Tara!!!

You can see the rest she put on her blog here.

My little man

2012-01-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've just been thinking a lot about Robby lately and how things will change or affect him when the baby comes and wanted to write down some of his latest little things to remember...

After Robby had been in bed for half an hour he comes up to me and says, "Mom, what comes after 199?" OH... that's why you're not asleep... okayyy... it was cute though. He loves counting and does it all the time... today it was counting by tens... He wanted to put "teens" inbetween 10 and 20 (so like 10, teens, 20, 30...) and when I tried to explain why it didn't go like that he said that didn't make sense but that's ok. He'll get it.

Robby has become so into BYU basketball - he loves going to the games with daddy when he can and watching them play on tv. He was sitting with Rob watching the game and cheering, "Come on, Davies! Come on, Carlino!" I asked Rob if he really knew what was going on and he does - cheering for the players who actually have the ball and he knows most of the main players names! It's kind of crazy. He is a fan.

One of Robby's favorite things is to go the Fitness Center and play basketball. We've been going over there just the two of us, with his little basketball, and usually his Jimmer jersey, and he is happy as a clam for at least an hour and then I have to drag him off the court. They have two baskets that are lowered so he can actually make most of his shots! It's so fun for him! And since we have a membership there it's free. Today we went swimming first and THEN played basketball - basically a perfect activity for him.

Oh yeah, the swimming - I would think that since Robby is such a nervous nellie that he'd be super scared of jumping off diving boards but he loves it. I know he's done it lots of times but since we haven't swam since the end of August I thought today he'd just be getting used to the water today and figuring out swimming again but he did that for a few minutes and wanted to get right up on that board! He just surprises me! He was like, "oh I don't know.. it's scary..." and then got his determined face on and just walked to the edge and jumped right off!

He brought home a little picture with the Articles of Faith on the back and said, "we're supposed to memorize these." So he took it seriously and we've been working on them at night after we read scriptures. We spent about a week repeating #1 and he had it down and then in just one day he totally memorized #2. It's just been really sweet to see him working on this and caring about it.

At the beginning of the year when he first went to CTR4 he was pretty nervous and feeling anxious... he got in bed with me that morning and was telling me how nervous he was and he didn't want to go. I asked him if we should say a prayer to feel better about it and we did. Right after the prayer I remembered he'd been listening to his primary music CD and he likes the song about Nephi's Courage and so we talked about how he could be brave like Nephi and go to class. Also, when he got to class and saw the littler newer sunbeams he felt like a big kid and did better.

I'm just so proud of our little Robby and he is such a good boy. I feel so lucky to be his mom! I will miss the time we have just the two of us and I want him to know that he will always be so special to me and loved.

WE LOVE YOU ROBBY!!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-27T00:25:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful Christmas we had! Christmas with kids is the best!!! I have been so excited for Christmas to come and it did not disappoint.

This year I stole Becca's idea to keep Christmas simple: something to wear, something to read, something you want, something you need. We have wanted to keep Christmas simple and more about Christ and less about presents but I still wanted it to be exciting. It hit me that the "something you need" could be A NEW ROOM - we needed to get him a new bed so we could take the crib back for the baby (he's slept in it as a toddler bed) and I thought if we did it for Christmas it would be exciting and not like baby sister is taking his stuff. So for the last two months I've been planning and plotting his room out but not able to execute anything since I wanted it all to be a Christmas morning surprise! So it finally came and it was so great!

In case you're curious the something you want was Ninjago Legos, something to read was a Children's Encyclopedia from Usborne books, and something to wear was snow boots.

So to make this surprise for his room happen we had a few things that needed to get done... first we bought a new dresser for our room so we could give Robby ours. Putting that Ikea dresser together was a BEAST of a project that took us from 10 pm to about 3:30 am... we did it Wednesday night... but it got done! Then we needed to move the 2 bookshelves out of the office into our bedroom so we had a place to put the baby's dresser and crib! We also bought another bookshelf so on Friday we had bookshelf night which resulted in this in our room:

Ok then on Christmas eve we put him to sleep in our room and started to get to work! I felt like I was on one of those TLC shows like "while you were out."

Before pics:

(dresser we'll use for baby, see the collage there with all the black & white pics - I made that about 3 years ago)

crib we'd had turned into toddler bed... he was getting way too tall for this thing! and we'll need it for little sister... see the little bookshelf... and his animal heads were on this wall...

Cleared out and cleaned out the room!

Thanks Andrew for coming and putting the bed together with Rob! Went way more smoothly than the dresser we put together earlier that week! And I could work on re-doing the photo collage at the same time!

The finished product:

he has our old dresser but it's new to him and he's excited about it! Moved toy organizer to this wall...

Close up of the collage I redid... I love doing stuff like this...

took this tall bookshelf from our room, gives us more room to put games and toys on shelves and helped us organize his closet better! Hung up cousins calender and this cork board - the cork board has already fallen off (it was a stick on the wall kind) and we need to figure out a better way to hang it! He was really excited about that part.

He slept on our floor that night. He thought we were just having a sleepover for fun!

We put up a sign and lights so he couldn't go into the hallway without us!

Surprise! He was so excited!!!!!!!!!

He loves climbing into his big boy bed! Up the ladder... and he came up with another way using his stool and the window sill. He was just so surprised!

I couldn't get the video to upload on here so I created a picasa web album and I think the video is the first thing! There's also a bunch of other pictures of our Christmas stuff that I may or may not get around to blogging about! You can watch it here if you're interested:

https://picasaweb.google.com/101513013890981584451/Christmas2011

I was so focused on this awesome Christmas present for him I didn't even think about what I was going to get! Rob still managed to surprise me and get me some fun stuff - including some coupons to get my car washed and detailed which I'm really excited about! I LOVE a clean car!

Mostly this Christmas I'm just so grateful for my little family! And my big family (brothers, sisters, in-laws, best friends...). And for this baby!! Oh my goodness! She is growing so big inside of me and feels like she never stops moving and even though it's not the most comfortable thing in the world it's still the best feeling ever! We are so blessed! We are grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and for the Gospel! All these things bring us true happiness and I'm so grateful for that!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!!

love, The Parsons

little update....

2011-12-16T21:50:00.000-07:00

This was just cute and I wanted to remember it....
Robby asked Rob, "Dad, is Scott your best friend?"
Rob, "Scott? Scott Carter?"
Robby: "Yeah."
Rob: "No, he's a good friend but not my best friend."
Robby: "Who's your best friend?"
Rob: "Who do you think?" (I was thinking at that point Robby would say Will...)
Robby's eyes light up and he says with confidence, "ME!"
Pretty much the sweetest thing ever. :)

One night I was walking past Robby's room to the kitchen and I saw him lying beside his open door, asleep. This is very unusual for him! He thought it was so funny when I showed him the picture. :)

First time ice skating! He was pretty nervous at first because it was super crowded but he can't wait to go back and do it again.

The 6 month belly... (Robby my photographer)

My attempt...

Proud big brother! :)

Happy Birthday Honey!

2011-11-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Rob! We are very lucky to have such a wonderful dad for our little family! We hope he had a good day! He got to sleep in, went to work for a few hours, had a little date and used his bday coupon at Tucanos for lunch, got a massage from my awesome Aunt Miriam, then came home and we had a little party with Andrew & Becca. Since we had a big lunch I was trying to think of something lighter for dinner and one of Rob's favorite things is yummy sandwiches so we had those and tried to copy the dessert from The Chocolate for a cake - warmed up cookie dough with ice cream! Yum! Robby wanted to get balloons for daddy and I even put up streamers - I'm not one to usually decorate really so I think Rob knows he must be pretty special! :)

We had to do the candles BEFORE we cooked the cookie dough cause we weren't sure if it'd hold them up after it was cooked!

The finished product.... mmm...

Andrew & Becca gave Rob a coupon for 5 FREE HUGS! (Modern Family anyone??) Ha ha... the kids were all giving hugs and Luke and Robby wanted to join in...

Robby says what he loves about daddy is that he plays football with him and wrestles with him and he loves him really much.

I'm grateful for how hard he works for our family. I know he'll always take care of us and keep us safe (he is always armed you know! ha ha). We have so much fun together and I feel lucky to be married to my best friend.

LOVE YOU ROB!

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-01T21:38:00.000-06:00

We had a lovely Halloween! Robby decided he wanted to be a football player - surprise surprise! Third year in a ROW. He really considered some other options but couldn't resist his favorite costume. We got together with A&B and Liv&Scott and had a yummy dinner before hand and then Robby had a blast getting tons of candy in their neighborhood! We even added a fun new treat this year - homemade scones! Rob has fond memories of frying up scones on Halloween nights with the Pratts and we were happy to try this! Yum!

We'll definitely have to try these scones again soon - they were sooo good! We made honey butter to go with them and put cinnamon sugar on them...

This morning Robby and I spent a long time looking at his candy... we organized them and counted them... he forgot that we had emptied his bucket into a bag before he went back out for a second round so after we went through the bucket and he was all excited about his goodies I surprised him with his other bag ful and he was soooo happy! Ahhh it was so cute!

Now what the heck are we going to DO with all this candy??? I think back to my childhood with my pillowcase full of candy and I think we were just allowed to eat it as much as we wanted!!! Also we always stayed home from school the day after Halloween to trade our candy and recover... ahhh good times!

While I want to just let him go at it and have as much as he can eat I can really see a difference in his mood/attitude when he's had too much sugar! Today I had him eat breakfast and then let him eat a bunch of candy. Then we had a green smoothie (heavy on the green today) to try to combat the sugar. But I don't know what to do with the rest... let him pick one piece a day for the rest of the year? Buy it from him? Trade it for something else... hmm... and I'd rather get it out of the house sooner than later so I don't eat it too!

Fall fun!

2011-10-27T22:25:00.001-06:00

If I was keeping up with my blogging each of these activities would be its own post but oh well! We've been enjoying this fall weather lots and have gotten to go to some fun places.

Hee Haw Farms

We got to take home a pumpkin...

They had a cute little petting zoo area where the kids had a blast with the animals!

Robby wouldn't look up because he didn't want to be the cow. Oh well. :)

After what felt like forever we made it out of the Corn Maze! Yay!

Orem Fire Department

Demonstrations showing what a grease fire looks like...

Yikes! Point is don't add water and don't use the fire extinguisher on a grease fire. They said try to smother it with the lid of the pot and if that doesn't work GET OUT OF THE HOUSE and call them!

Practicing CPR on the "doll"

Witches Night Out

@Gardner Village

As usual Witches Night Out is the best girls night out of the year! Dancing with your girls and grabbing food afterward? Basically perfect. Another awesome year...

Cornbelly's

This corn maze was wayyyy too hard for our group... we had to ditch out halfway through...

Halloween Parties

So far we've gotten to go to a little neighborhood party and our Ward party! I didn't take many pictures at the Ward party because we were helping so I was busy running around but it turned out awesome!

Robby kept standing by me dancing to the music but no one else was... until we got them to turn up the music and then all the kids were rockin out! (it reminded me of myself usually bouncing around to the music by myself wanting to dance... ha ha)

Getting ready for the ward party! We couldn't find his Spiderman outfit he wore the time before so luckily he wasn't feeling picky and put on his Superman costume which I thought worked great! He was working it!

Robby and his cute friend Seabass... Robby gets so shy at these activities! I'm glad he had a pal to do the trick or treating with!

In honor of his recent hunting excursion... maybe I can get him to post about that later...

Pumpkinland

Robby's attempts at taking a picture of us... he and Syd were taking our pictures and we were laughing so hard because they looked so cute with their cameras pointed at us!

This kid is my best little buddy! I'm so lucky I get to spend every day with him! He makes me so happy!

Whew! We've done a lot! And I'm exhausted! :) Pumpkinland was today - we were lucky the weather turned out perfect!!! It was great to be able to hang out and chat with the girls while the kids ran around.

A healthy baby....

2011-10-19T21:17:00.000-06:00

....GIRL!

I am still in shock. Can't believe it! While we would have been thrilled with either a boy or girl we really thought it'd be awesome to have one of each - then whatever happens happens but there'd just be less stress...

Before we picked up Rob we got some Jamba Juice - give baby a nice sugary kick hoping to make sure he/she would be wide awake in there! I'm glad we had Robby come to this ultrasound - he was so excited!

I can't remember all the details right now.... the ultrasound tech checked everything else first it seemed and baby looked great in every area! We have referred to the baby as a boy the whole time pretty much and even during the ultrasound I was saying, "look Robby, there's his foot!" Then I didn't even realize she was checking the baby's bottom when she announced, "Well there's lady parts!" I basically sat up and shouted, "WHAT?!?!?" I was so caught off guard and didn't realize she was just perfectly sure we were looking at a girl... she even said, "Um... is that ok?" (like oh no this woman doesn't want a girl) and I told her I didn't even dare get my hopes up for a girl so was she SURE it was a girl?? She was very confident. The picture we got isn't great but that's ok. I mean, with Robby it was so clear instantly that it was a boy that this is just harder to believe. Like she said, "there isn't as much to show with girl parts..." but she did a few other things and then checked between her legs one more time and said she was so sure it was a girl she'd "take our stuff back for us" if it wasn't.

Here's our "girl" proof picture - you can see the three white lines that mean girl...

HER foot... not "his" like I'd said earlier... sorry little girl!

Cute little profile...

Her "halloween" mask as the tech put it! Kind of scary angle but still just neat cause it's my baby...

While I will definitely be double checking between baby's legs the second she is born to confirm this information I'm going to go ahead and be excited about this!

As much as of course I've always wanted a baby girl I think a big part of it for me is wanting Rob to have a daughter - he is so cute with all our little girl nieces and I just think that'll be really special for him.

Luckily Robby was instantly excited about this and doesn't seem disappointed he's not getting a brother. His face was so cute when she said it was a girl... we are all going to have to get used to saying SHE now. Which is great. :)

Robby my awesome photographer.... Rob had to go to a work meeting tonight and I forget to take a picture earlier with him!

Me at our Cornbelly's outing yesterday...

We are just SO VERY HAPPY! It already was such a miracle to get pregnant.... now to be having a girl.... I just can't even believe it. I feel so lucky!!!!! We are so grateful.

Breaking Dawn

2011-10-11T13:55:00.003-06:00

So my friends and I are renting out a theater for an early release showing of Breaking Dawn and we always make the cutest t-shirts to wear and they really are my favorite shirts ever (so cute and comfy) - also, I love that the designs are always subtle hints to Twilight not like, "I love vampires." :) So Liv and her husband Scott have come up with another awesome design for this year's shirt and if anyone's interested in ordering one let me or Liv know! Isle Esme is the island Edward and Bella go on their honeymoon!

We need all shirt orders by November 1st!!!! Either leave me a comment or go check out Liv's blog and order one from her!
Shirts are $14 each or $16 for the plus sizes. (see sizing chart below) If you don't live in Utah County Liv can ship it to you for $2 or $3.

and this is what the image is up close:

The shirts run small - I've always gotten XL.

Also, we have a few seats left in our theater for our early showing - it's Thursday November 17th at 7:15 at University Mall. Check my facebook post for the seating chart to see what seats we have available.

For fun check out our past years shirts:
New Moon

Eclipse

Soccer

2011-10-03T17:36:00.000-06:00

We signed up to do a little homeschool soccer program which was just every Friday for the month of September and Robby got to be on a team with Annie and absolutely loved it. Well, the first week he was super nervous and didn't want to be on the field unless he was holding Annie's hand tightly - yes, even while they were running. It was kind of cute... He was so scared and had anxiety all week about going again to soccer - he'd wake up in the morning and the first thing he'd ask me in fear was what day it was and was it soccer... it was so weird cause I knew he'd have a blast once he warmed up to it. Sure enough the next week was a million times better!

His group was the 4-7 year olds and there were a lot of kids and since it's pretty much just parents volunteering and running it there weren't a lot of coaches so it started out as just 2 big teams! The kids would spend the first few minutes doing "drills" or practice kicking the ball and learning a few things about the game and then would play a game. It was so cute! The kids would just follow the ball around in one big pack... I got a little video but can't get it to upload all the way so if I figure that out I'll add it.

Robby also got some sock-shingaurd things and he thought that was pretty awesome. He was brave on his last week and even got to try being goalie!

Now he wants me to sign him up for soccer again right now but we will probably wait for spring and I don't know how he'll do if he doesn't have his trusty cousin Annie with him but we'll see! This was definitely a good introduction to soccer for him and a taste of being on a team.

Lately...

2011-09-25T22:28:00.000-06:00

Robby is just so funny and so cute - we continue to be in love with him and are probably spoiling with our attention but what can you do? He'll have to share the spotlight soon.

I'm so glad he'll give hugs and kisses and loves to snuggle with us. With dad it's usually "knock down hugs" or "tickle bombs."

Last night in Women's Conference President Uchtdorf talked about good sacrifices - an example was helping a child who has woken up with a bad dream get back to sleep. This happens at least once a week and while of course I'd rather not be woken up in the middle of the night I'm grateful for the sweet moments this can be as he climbs in bed and snuggles with me for a few minutes and then I carry him back and tuck him in again to his own bed. I kind of can't get enough of him when he's asleep. Every night before I go to sleep I stop in his room and hug and kiss his little squishy cheeks a bunch of times and he just kind of rolls over and smacks his mouth... why are little kids such angels when asleep?

I know I'm lucky because I feel like Robby is a little angel most of the time! It's worth mentioning his most deviant moment in years was last week where he and a friend ran away from me in our neighborhood and I could NOT find them for several minutes - when I did find him and tell him it was time to go home and he'd have room time (time out) he went in his room and TINKED on his bed! On PURPOSE! I was so mad! I made him take the sheets off himself and put them in the washer. But that was so out of character...

He and Rob were wrestling and Rob made some weird face and said, "I'm gonna get you!" and Robby says, "You look FREAKY when you do that." And he told Rob, "I'm gonna CREAM you!" Rob was like, huh? And Robby smiles and shakes his head, "I'm not gonna cream you...." ha ha... cream you? What?

He thought these weird faces were hilarious! Or, as he would say, "freaky"

He's my little buddy!

I ordered a diaper bag (they had a great labor day sale) for when baby comes and it came in the mail the other day - Robby was so excited and kept saying, "I just want the baby to come now!" He got out a pack of wipes and wanted me to put it in the bag. When we came home from being out we opened the door and he saw the bag on the floor in the living room and exclaimed, "Oooo the BABY bag!!!" So cute!

Anyways I've been such a lazy picture taker and blogger this... year.. I felt the need to just kind of brain dump about what's been going on!

A big change for me - I got released from being Primary President! It was definitely bittersweet. I'd been in there 2 years but it was nowhere on my radar - I thought I'd be in there forever. I loved being in primary with all the kids and loved working with my presidency and the other teachers and primary workers. It definitely felt like a workout every week - I'd come home sweaty and exhausted! Especially since Rob has a busy Sunday calling too. So today was my first day not being in Primary and it was strange! I thought Robby would have a hard time going to Primary without mom but he did great today!

I had a horrible dream last night that I had lost the baby - I was very relieved to wake up and know everything was ok! Everything seems to be going well with baby - I have another check up this week. It's always so neat to hear the heartbeat so I'm looking forward to that!

Sooo....

2011-09-16T15:49:00.000-06:00

Before.... beautiful cape on and everything...

After!

And apparently I stink at taking pictures on my phone of myself while driving... she curled my hair and made it look all cute! I'll add some other pictures later cause I don't know if you can really even tell what my hair looks like - we just did a little trim and I love the color she did!

Thanks Stacy! You are great! If any of you need a hairstylist in Orem/Provo (she's right on the border) let me know I'll give you her number!

What to do? What to do?

2011-09-12T22:52:00.000-06:00

So I have a hair apt coming up this week with my wonderful cousin Stacy and I really don't know what I want to do with my hair... I feel like as soon as I cut it in my head it was like, ok, now I have to grow it out again... but I really did like it when it was first cut short like this:

Short hair I feel like is "cute" on me but doesn't necessarily make me feel beautiful... if that makes any sense... and I feel like I don't want short hair when I have the baby, I'd rather it be longer... but why? And I'm sure my cheeks/face is going to get chubbier throughout the pregnancy so maybe short hair would just accentuate that?

Long hair feels more like me...

It got really long...

I feel like I just don't love the inbetween length and don't know what to do... definitely need to touch up my roots.... I shouldn't worry because I'm sure whatever Stacy will do will be great and fun but if you have any great ideas let me know! :)

Time flies....

2011-08-21T23:06:00.001-06:00

...when you're having fun!

We went to Maryland for 3 weeks to spend time with Pincocks and Parsons. I've wanted to blog about this since we got back a few weeks ago but the thought of uploading all the pictures has kept me from getting it done! Not to mention I've been really busy catching up on some pool time, doing my work from home job for Vivint, researching midwives, reading birth books, and for the last 8 days having a miserable cold.

So in Picasa I was able to make a few little collages to make posting pictures easier!

PINCOCK TIME

Playing at the church, visiting the temple, Lebanese Taverna and the fountains in Silver Spring, the Zoo, swimming at Sarah's pool, visiting Grandma, day trip to the beach...

PARSONS TIME

Deep Creek, creamery, swimming, tubing, Kids Day, family pictures, whipped cream fight, naps on the boat, movies in the theater...

NEW YORK CITY

Visiting Will & Amanda who were excellent tour guides but we didn't get enough pictures WITH them, riding boats in Central Park, walking all over New York City, getting to see my childhood best friend Kristen, eating lots of good food, happy to be with friends...

Whew! Ok, there's our 3 week trip!

I can't believe August is almost over! The summer is slipping away! Why is it so short? I had planned to go to the pool pretty much every day til summer was over but being sick put a cramp in my plans and we were just at home last week. This week I have 3 interviews with midwives set up that I'm really excited about!

Hope everyone's summers are going well!!

Celebrate!

2011-07-14T20:50:00.000-06:00

We are happy! We are excited!!!!

It was fun to take a home test and see the 2 lines appear instantly! Getting the blood test results over the phone was huge but it was neat to see the proof on a home test as well!

Stuff I meant to blog about but never did...

2011-07-07T20:28:00.001-06:00

I cut my hair.

I went to my cousin Stacy for a haircut and since Gwen had recently chopped her hair off for Locks of Love I felt inspired to do the same. I figured my hair might not ever be this long again so I wouldn't ever have 10 inches to cut off and still leave it as long as it would be which is the shortest you'll probably ever see my hair.

I like it. I might even consider keeping it a little short for a while before going straight back to growing it out as long as possible like I usually do.

I had really long hair. And this picture is from a Ward Rollerskating party that was great! Have I mentioned Rob and I first met at a rollerskating rink when we were 12? So fun.

Will & Amanda came out for Amanda's graduation. It was so great to see them. We miss them and are excited to visit them in New York in a few weeks! We love you guys!

Sunday naps in the closet....

We had a great Easter. The Easter bunny came to see Robby.... I put a little trail of candy from his room leading out to this basket.

He was pretty excited! Then we dyed eggs with cousins and did a hunt at A&B's.

We had Gwen's baptism in March...

Then Robby the kid's in April...

Pincock side

Pincock fam

Parsons side (yes we are in both)

That reminds me - Robby said to me the other day, "I heard that when you were a kid you were a Pincock, mom!" I said "yes I was before I married daddy I was a Pincock." He said, "Oh, were Andrew and Becca and Annie and Tyler and them there?" Ha ha. I told him, "Nooo... just Andrew. But did you know that when Becca was little she was a Parsons?" *blank face* One day he'll get it.

We got swept up in JIMMER MANIA! How could you not? Although if you asked Robby he'd waver between Jimmer and Jackson Emery as his favorite...

We played "Golf Ball" at Trafalga... we could finish a round in like 10 minutes sometimes because Robby would just run ahead so fast and do all the holes himself... he'd whack at the ball over and over again until it got in the hole and then he'd be ecstactic! We sure got our money's worth out of those Pass of All Passes. We did Go Karts too at Trafalga and went to the one in Lehi also.

Saw some of my awesome Russia friends... (now we're all the way back to February, was it really that long ago??? Crazy!) Emily came into town and we got together at Nancy's place. Made me miss our good times in Voronezh! And speaking Russian. :(

Emily's Edward, Nancy's girls Miram & Rachel, Robby

Emily, Me, Nancy (Robby was our photographer)

Bringing Valentine's doughnuts to dad at work...

Snuggling on the couch...

And an important one! The birth of 2 new little nieces and a special trip to MD in April to see them. Sarah's #5 Quincy and Vanessa's first little one Ruby who was born on Robby's bday! How fun! It felt like a fast trip but it was filled with baby love :)

Quincy and Ruby

Getting to see Grandma Hazel

Ness, Me holding Ruby (in the quilt Taba made!)

Taba, Sarah w/Quincy, me, Rach, Mom, Dad - see how I'm the shortest one in the fam?

And that's all.... for now....

Ready for tomorrow

2011-06-28T00:54:00.000-06:00

Tonight when we were saying our family prayer Robby kept telling me things to add to the prayer...

I don't remember what I was saying exactly but was praying that tomorrow (the egg transfer) would go well and that my body would be strong and healthy for a baby and he interjected:

"Bless that we will HAVE a baby!"

Then I was saying something about the eggs and he added:

"Bless the eggs will turn into babies!!!"

Guess I wasn't being specific enough!!

And we were talking about having faith and how he believes he's going to have a brother or a sister one day even though he can't see them right now and he said, "Yeah, but we don't know HOW MANY babies we're gonna have because I mixed it up! One baby, two babies, three babies..." He was so serious about it too. As if all his prayers for different numbers of babies has just mixed up our order... as I've always said, we will not be picky - we'll take however many Heavenly Father sends us!

Also talking to Robby and explaining to him that Heavenly Father knows just what's best for us and when the best time to send us a brother or a sister would be so we have to trust him helped strengthen my testimony of that.

We're excited to be doing the egg transfer tomorrow - it makes this all feel so much more real! Once they're put back inside me then we just have to wait to find out if it worked! It's made me pretty emotional the last couple of days the closer we get to this point. Definitely going to have to stay busy the next 10 days! Well, the first few will be spent on bed rest so I can't be that busy but at least I'll need to stay distracted! :)

Late Happy Father's Day!

2011-06-26T00:07:00.000-06:00

I love my handsome husband!

I love that he's been around so much more often lately! And that he's been so helpful lately! I love that he and Quattro can hang out, like buddies. They go on scooter rides, wrestle, watch sports, read books... he is strong and a takes such good care of both of us.

I love a lot of things about him... and while neither of us is perfect I think we are perfect for each other.

Thanks Rob for being the best dad and husband!

We love you!

And thanks Quattro for taking these pictures of dad.... ;)

Hurray for summer!

2011-06-18T00:09:00.000-06:00

So when we're not at dr's or acupuncture apts you can usually find us at the POOL! :)

When a friend asked me, "have you come every day this week?" My response was, "yeah, but most days was only like 3 hours." I've only had a couple all day pool days - which are my absolute favorite thing - but it's ok! I'm working from home again this summer and trying to fit that in with all the IVF stuff and trying to get Robby out of the house has been a little crazy. Sometimes I feel like I'm operating with only half a brain - I think it's just taking up a lot of my mental capacity (IVF is).

But the pool has been a blast and it's great to have had lots of cousins to come play with us!

It's basically impossible to get a picture of all the cousins looking - forget about smiling! Oh well! They are a fun bunch.

I was talking to Robby in the hot tub at the pool the other day about what to name a baby if I got pregnant. He was shooting down all my ideas...

Me: "What about Jordan?"
Robby: "That's a movie name."
Me: "What about Chase?"
Robby: "No, that's a movie name."
Me: "What the heck is a movie name?"
Robby: "A name from a movie."
Me: "Is that a bad thing?"
Robby: "Yeah, I don't like movie names."

Ah ha.... then today...

Robby: "If we have a baby boy can we name him Yoda? Or Darth Vader? Or Chewbacca?"

I thought he didn't like movie names! And pretty sure he is fired from any name choosing. Chewbacca? Seriously?

Anyways! It's fun to think about what to name a baby... hopefully we get to name one again someday! Soon!

Baby stuff blog...

2011-06-11T22:34:00.001-06:00

I decided I wanted to share all the details about my IVF journey but wanted to keep this blog more about family stuff and start a separate baby blog! That way I don't feel like I have to keep apologizing for sharing my thoughts on all this! If you are interested in more detailed updates you're welcome to read the new baby blog, if not, no problem, I'll still put the major things - like whether it works or not! - on this blog! So! There you go!

http://parsonsbabysteps.blogspot.com/

Patience

2011-06-06T14:24:00.004-06:00

I can't remember the start of the conversation but something about it taking so long to get pregnant...

Me: "You know how mommy is always telling you to be patient?"

Robby: "Yeah..."

Me: "Well, mommy having to wait to get pregnant and have a baby helps teach mommy to be patient. And you and daddy."

Robby: "Oh!" And he got this big smile on his face like, ha, you have to be patient too!

baby steps...

2011-06-03T23:33:00.007-06:00

Tonight Robby is off with his daddy on his FIRST fathers & sons camp out! He was so excited! I can't wait to hear all about it tomorrow! Hopefully they'll take some pictures!

So you guys have all been so wonderful and supportive and I wanted to give you an update...

READ: SKIP IF NOT INTERESTED IN MORE TTC (trying to conceive) UPDATES!

Well, it's been almost a year exactly since our last step in this process... and since then I've been "trying not to think about it." You know, "relax" as the "experts" say. ;) I'm so grateful we've been happy and able to really enjoy life and the one amazing child we have even while we've continued to hope and pray every single day for another baby.

Now we're taking another step...

We are starting our first try of IVF w/ICSI. We've thought a lot about it over the last year and have decided now's the time to try it and we're able to borrow some money to pay for it and get help from family. We've started the process and the actual invitro will happen the end of June, and then we'll find out if it worked 10 days later so July 5-10 ish.

The timing will all depend on how my body reacts to the medications they'll have me on and then how fast the embryos are ready to be put back in... the doctor recommends we transfer 1-2 embryos - he said he wouldn't put 3 in unless I was much older and the egg quality was poor and he'd put just 1 if we were really opposed to twins but I think if we could get 2 babies for the price of 1 in this case it'd be great. Robby's been praying for 2 babies for the last year so maybe I'll get pregnant with twins and he'll get his wish!

It's a pretty intense process, lots of injections and medications for me and some for Rob and lots of doctor's apts and time it'll take but we feel like this is the right thing for us to do right now. I would be due middle-end of March so just before Robby turns 5! I don't feel any kind of guarantee going into this but according to the doctor we talked to we have about an 80% chance of it working.

If it doesn't work - we will probably have embryos left over that we will be able to freeze and a frozen cycle will be about $3000 as opposed to a fresh cycle like we're doing that's $11,000. So a much more affordable option and we'd try that again probably pretty soon after if we can.

We are also doing acupuncture in conjunction with IVF. There are studies that show doing acupuncture with IVF has higher success rates. Trying to increase our chances as best as we can!

I'm kind of torn between wanting to write down every little detail and wanting to just wait and see what happens and then tell you all... maybe it's time for me to start an actual journal so the whole wide world doesn't have to read my personal stuff! But for some reason it helps... sharing it with people... putting it out there for someone to find if they're in the same situation or wondering how this all works! We'll see.

It's a weird thing - wanting to be excited, trying to be hopeful, and trying to stay realistic. It's a weird mix of emotions. But I'm definitely happy to be doing something more to try to have another baby! And definitely just saying lots of prayers...

Funny Robby story - today as I was giving myself my morning shot of Lupron (here come some details) Robby asked me, "well, maybe we will get THREE babies since you are getting so many shots!" I kind of laughed and said, "no, honey, we won't get three babies, we might get one baby, maybe two, but not three!" He quickly said, "I'm gonna say a prayer!" He ran to his room, knelt by his bed and prayed, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the day, please bless that mommy will have three babies. Please bless mommy will be stronger than all the other mommies. Name of Jesus Christ, Amen." He's hilarious...

FrontSight

2011-05-14T21:59:00.009-06:00

We were lucky enough to get a certificate to take a class at Frontsight from a friend at church. We used 1 certificate for the both of us and did a 2 day defensive handgun course.

I will admit - I was pretty nervous but decided to just go with this and tried to act like it was normal. Rob and I have gone shooting lots of times but I'm no expert. I knew it'd be good to get more educated and have some real training with shooting a handgun to make me more comfortable.

Guys, it was so great. It was an exhausting, long, but very enjoyable 2 days. I left feeling a million times more confident - kind of on a high... I don't know how to describe it really!

Don't worry - that's my name on my hat. They put your name on duct tape on the front and back of your hat. Helpful...

It was pretty awesome. We both learned a ton - I feel much more confident with my shooting ability and am excited to keep practicing and working on it. At the end of the 2nd day we had to do a Simulation where we were in a small room (pretending it's your house) and they had bad guys (photographs) pop up. One bad guy had a little boy in his arms as a hostage that looked just like Robby and I took a deep breath and put a good shot right between that bad guys eyes! It was intense and emotional but a good experience. Heaven forbid we ever actually have to use our guns to protect ourselves but I'm grateful to be learning this.

We spent most of the time outside at this range - and then had a few lectures in this big classroom. This gives you an idea how big it is! We were surprised how many people were there! And it's not like drill sargents or feel like the military - the instructors were all super nice and very helpful and just seemed to really care about helping all of us learn as much as possible.

People going up and checking their targets...

One thing the instructor talked to me about for a bit was the importance of making a plan for your family if something bad were to happen. If there's a fire do you know where to meet? If Robby hears a noise in the middle of the night what should he do? And having some keywords to say to each other and some kind of action plan... anyway it's something we're going to work on and think about. Again, hopefully we NEVER have to use it but if we do it'd be great to be prepared.

They have a ton of land with this huge ropes course and lots of other ranges and targets for different kinds of classes.

We were outside most of the day the last two days in the ridiculous heat so at night we've been going to bed super early - after watching these funny cooking shows! Kitchen Nightmares and Restaurant Impossible. We love the food network. Sunday we checked into our hotel in Vegas where we plan on doing as little as possible and just relaxing! :)

We sure miss Quattro and we're lucky he's having a great time with A&B & fam. Both times I've called Andrew has a funny Quattro story to relay to us!

First - Robby the kid and Quattro were playing basketball and Robby the kid told Quattro, "Ok I'm BYU and you be Utah." I think at first Quattro refused to be Utah but then Andrew overheard him later say, "Ok, I will be Utah, but don't tell my dad." Ahhhhhh!

Saturday A&B took the kids to Macey's grocery store for Pirate Day where they had all these cute Pirate activities for the kids and towards the end they had their Pirate Mascot come out which was like a Pirate Moose I think he said. Of course Quattro freaked out at first but the moose was handing out ice cream and they asked him if he wanted to be very brave and ask him for some ice cream and HE DID - Andrew said he said, "May I have some ice cream?" And Quattro told me, "he was nice! He talked funny, he said, 'Of course!'" I guess after he got the ice cream he said, "i should call my mom and tell her!" (about talking to the mascot) So cute.

Robby is turning 4!

2011-04-01T23:03:00.005-06:00

I can't believe that 4 years ago today I was in labor with my little baby boy! What an amazing experience that was and what an amazing 4 years we've had with him as part of our family!

Since his birthday is tomorrow and it's conference we had his party tonight. After changing his mind about what kind of party he wanted like 5 times - back and forth between Pirate and Spiderman.... "I promise I won't change my mind, mom! I want a spiderman party!" The next day someone would ask him what kind of party he was having and he'd tell them, "Pirate." BAH! After I had bought some pirate stuff and he was trying to change his mind again he said, "Ok fine, since you already bought something for it..."

Anyways! Our "parties" are usually just food and friends! So I tried to step it up a little in the decorations to fulfill the "Pirate" theme he wanted. He had a great time and loved having everyone over to celebrate him and of course loved getting some really fun new things to play with!

Tomorrow Rob and I are going to take him on a little date to continue celebrating so there may be a Part 2 post later...

The girls... love these ladies...

When we were getting ready for bed he got all sad and said, "but nobody got me new Pirate or Spiderman pajamas...." I wanted to be like oh brother! And I was... and then I was like, er, hold on, I actually did buy you some! We didn't give him our presents we were saving them for tomorrow but I pulled these out and he was SO EXCITED.

And good night! :)

Holiday

2011-03-05T22:32:00.003-07:00

So it's no secret I like to drink diet coke... I might be a little ashamed at the amount I drink and the fact it's such a part of my routine.... BUT! It's the truth and you guys know I like to keep things real! So when Liv blogged about the joys of Maverik I thought I would take a chance to also spotlight another beverage location that I love. :)

HOLIDAY. The one on 1600 North & 1200 West in Orem.

SOOOO many drink options! Cubed or pebble ice....

And one of my favorite things... look at all the straw choices! My favorite is the tall skinny straw! Also they have fresh sliced lemons and limes to add to your drinks...

So great. And this location is also complete with a redbox (Maverik is too).

Refills up to 44 oz are .$89... great price...

Pincocks

2011-02-24T20:42:00.005-07:00

For Christmas this year I helped organize this gift for my parents. I saw it on someone's blog last year and knew immediately I wanted to do this! It's such a cute idea! Every year I put together "grandkids" calenders for my parents and Rob's parents - they love them but it's no surprise anymore. So! I saw this and realized we have 7 kids that would perfectly spell out PINCOCK and knew we had to do it!

They were SO surprised and loved it!

So we asked everyone to dress in dark colors and take the pictures outside so they'd look similar. Then we made them all b&w to add even more uniformity. For the letters we used large white posterboard - taking up as much of it to make each letter as we could. It helped that Ness happened to be in UT for the weekend and I had her help me make all our letters! :)

Here's where I got the idea from.

Thanks for caring

2011-02-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

I feel so loved from all of you who've commented, texted, facebooked.... thank you. I'm sorry I made you guys all wait in suspense with me to just once again be let down. :( Luckily not every cycle is like this one... most I can get through without too much wondering about it. Otherwise these last almost three years would've KILLED me.

I don't know how you ladies who are TTC and have long, irregular cycles do it! I've taken for granted my super regular cycles and even the fact they are so short (26 days usually) means it's over and we try again right away... So I can't imagine every cycle going through this long uncertain phase... so emotionally draining...

I just had really really wanted this to be it - the idea of not having to go through doing more fertility stuff was so exciting! I don't want to do invitro, I don't want to figure it out, I don't want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on it.... ahhhh! But I do want to have another baby. Just one more! Or if we did IVF and got 2 or 3 ok! I just want one more baby and then I won't even ask for another one! Just one sibling for Robby. One more kid. And I don't know why but adoption doesn't feel like the answer for us - at least not right now.

Anyways! Thank you guys for being so supportive and for caring!

One day I'll have good news! I promise!

Sad day - but not what you think

2011-02-17T17:22:00.005-07:00

Today was a sad day! No, I didn't get my period still but the test I took this morning was totally negative so the fact that I'm 2 days late for me still makes me feel like it'll show up any minute since I feel like it would've had at least a faint positive! So I'm going to try to take my temp tomorrow which should give me a heads up and take another test... I'll keep you posted...

BUT! It was a sad day because today Robby said coyote. Not, coyoNe. He said it this morning and Rob and I just looked at each other like, "oh no!" It's one of Rob's favorite little Robby voice things he says... so I took a little video of him saying his new big boy version of coyote.

Seriously, can he stop growing up??? And then this is just him telling me about his dream...

Robby is hilarious... we were watching Baby Lily today and Robby was dancing around in front of her and trying to tell her jokes ("Knock knock... mom, she's not laughing... what kind of jokes do babies like??") and I suggested he tell her a story so he told her The Three Little Pigs. His first version was short and adorable... something about how then the pig put a pot of milk and syrup and the wolf came down and he ate him up.... but later today I told him I'd write his story while he told it to me.... so for his records:

"Once upon a time there lived three little pigs. And a big bad wolf came up to their houses and one minute ago the big bad wolf thought they were hens, i mean grass, so the big bad wolf though he could eat them. And so they went the pigs went out for a little walk. And they saw the big bad wolf on the way to their mommy and daddy's house. And maybe I think they just lived alone in their own houses. And so they went out for a long long walk through the woods and they lost their maps on the way to the woods. So they couldn't find anything they wanted to find. The map said everything they wanted to find and they only wanted to find like keys and old stuff so oh yeah. And on the way on the next walk they believed that they were going the wrong way soon on the way to their woods. And so they met that anything they could hope for could go and the maps came finally and they thanked Heavenly Father for helping them find their maps and also they, the big bad wolf, and Heavenly Father helped the three little pigs kill the big bad wolf because Heavenly Father wasn't interested for the wolf to stay up cause it was not good."
--by Robby

So grateful for this awesome little guy....

Me oversharing - what's new?

2011-02-16T23:39:00.005-07:00

Again, I don't blog very often because what I feel like blogging/talking about I feel like not everyone wants to hear about all the time... but you know what? Sometimes writing about this on my blog gives me a little bit of release - like sending these thoughts and feelings out there into the world for all you people to see just takes some of the pressure... the heaviness... out of my heart.

So, if you're not interested in the oversharing-ness that is me SKIP THIS POST.

I'm late. I'm just one day "late." As in, I usually start on day 26 and today's day 27 and still nothing. Obviously a normal cycle is an average of 28 days, great, sure, but for the last year I get my period on day 26. Ok. Normally I would not even give this a second thought, I don't let myself even *think* about maybe being pregnant because guess what, I never am! The combination of patience and my handy dandy basal thermometer = not having to waste money on pointless HPTs (home pregnancy tests) because my period without fail always shows up.

Every couple of months.... every now and then... like today... I let myself start wondering if I *could* be pregnant. Sure, the dr recommends in-vitro w/icsi and we haven't done any fertility meds or anything since last year but I have gotten pregnant twice on my own so it IS possible. I told a friend of mine I wanted to go buy some pregnancy tests because I was actually letting myself wonder if I could be pregnant to which she said something like, "there's no harm in that" or whatever...

But, oh, there is. When I don't even let myself think about it, don't consider it an option, when I just expect and then get my period it isn't hard. Well, it is, but I'm used to that feeling. What I'm not used to is this little sensation of hope or wonderment and then when those hopes get smashed it's awful.

But you have to go with your feelings and so I'll waste money on pregnancy tests and probably get my period an hour later and it'll go on...

Or I could be pregnant! *ha, there it is again! I almost just want to say to that thought, "GO AWAY. You are NOT HELPING."

And let me clarify - I do believe that one day I'll be pregnant again. And I know it *could* happen on it's own so that is a real option. We pray every day to have a baby (or Quattro who prays for 3 babies now) and I have faith that one day we'll have a baby. I don't know how to explain this... in the long term I'm hopeful.... Overall I'm happy and have a wonderful life but sometimes these moments are just painful and HARD.

I think it'd be easier to not think about it each month and one day be a happy surprise! All of us TTC'ers out there have heard, "if you just stopping thinking about it it will happen." After I punch those people in the face I'd like to ask them how do they suggest not thinking about something like that? Because even when I do my best to surround myself with other things, distract myself... you never don't have this in the back of your head....

Thank you for letting me take a little of the load off of my shoulders - even if no one reads this I feel better. Sorry this is one of the "darker" posts on this topic in my life - I promise I know Heavenly Father has a plan for me and all of that so please don't feel like you need to tell me that. I'm just sharing my thoughts and frustrations while I'm on this journey!

*********

And something to cheer me up and a happier topic! My distraction for the last month has been getting more healthy/losing some weight and while I didn't really seem to see much of a difference when I looked in the mirror here are some kind of modest before and after pics that made me happy...

Do you like how the before is your classic, I look so blah and just kind of gross - not that the after I'm glammed up or anything but what is with that expression on my face? Ha. And apparently Rob did not think I would've lost weight in my calves and therefore they did not need to be photographed... ;)

Yes this is kind of a lot of oversharing today, huh? Sorry folks! Don't say I didn't warn you! ;)

Five Guys... and more...

2011-01-31T23:18:00.006-07:00

"Mom, can we go to Five Guys today?"

"Um, what? Why do you want to go to Five Guys?"

"Cause they have lots of peanuts."

"Oh, well mommy is on a diet right now and I can't eat that food so we can't go there today but we will sometime soon, ok?"

"Well, you can just bring your own food there and I will eat."

Oh. OK. It's no surprise he likes to eat out... we are so alike.... and yes, I wish we could go to five guys. Mmm.... cheeseburger....

*********

Robby is so good at always remembering to pray for a baby - when I asked him to say the opening prayer for Primary he was like, "ok, yeah, and I'll bless for a baby..." I tried to explain we didn't have to pray for a baby when we were in big groups and everything but he couldn't really see my logic...

And lately praying for A baby isn't good enough - he's been praying for 3 babies! A boy baby for him to play with, a boy for daddy to play with, and a girl baby for mommy to play with.... sounds like a good idea but triplets would not be my ideal. But like I tell him, we're not going to be picky...

**********

When we went shooting with Rob one day.... Robby sure knows how to strike a pose! :)

I just want to bite his cute little cheeks!

Today (my birthday) Robby tried to let me rest for a little longer after Rob left for work. When I was up and getting out of the shower he said, "Daddy told me to call him when you got out of the shower."

okaaaayyyy.... so he called Rob and they were having a discussion about what to get me for my birthday. It was so cute. Robby was so excited and he said, "Don't histen, mom! Don't histen."

He just looked so grown up - he knows how to call Rob from my phone and loves to do it. Later in the afternoon he wanted to call dad to find out what he'd ended up getting me... just takes my phone and calls his dad... so cute.

************

He put on his button up shirt and tie and came up to me and said, "Mom! I'm going visiting teaching. Now I just need a hesson..." (lesson)

Robby is just so hilarious and makes me laugh with all the crazy stuff he says like when he tips his head to the side and raises his eyebrows and says, "not at all" or "don't hook mom... don't hook till I tell you to..." um... that always means he's trying to do something tricky. I think he really thinks I won't know/notice what he's doing if he tells me not to look, or "hook".

He likes to send emails to Rob while he's at work... I let him type random letters on the keyboard and then I transcribe what he says. This was his last one:

"i hove you we hike you i wish you could be home today and i wanna go to target with you but if you're not here i wouldn't hike to do that but i need to go to target with mommy so i wish i could see you bye.

from robby

robby

i love you daddy

i hove you dad. i couldn't have known what you done can you tell me what you have done i mean can you tell me what you are doing and what you were doing and then can you write a message and tell me that on i love you robby bye"

And this was his to me that Rob typed for him while I was at a meeting on Sunday:

",lollll;llkkllllkopkgkckjkjhhnryyftuuh7q5ghhgugdhttgtgyguyujdyyuguigusyuiuyu

I hove you and Jackson is the one with 5 many dollyers. I hove you. That means go up in the mountains. I hove you and I wish you could stay here and go with us and have fun and watch us do kawatee and you wouldn't see the price that you have been living on is a baby. "

************

Basically, I just love my little Robby. He is awesome and we are so lucky to have him.

busy busy busy...

2011-01-25T21:20:00.003-07:00

Where has this month gone? I feel like I'm so busy! Rob and I spent a week babysitting for Rob's Aunt & Uncle (their 5 kids) last week... and now my mom is out here visiting which is always great! And what's taken up tons of my brain power this month has been working on getting in shape, losing some weight... it's been a nice break from focusing so much on trying to get pregnant. Turns out this whole "eating healthy" thing is so new to me it's taking a lot of planning and preparing. And will power. And primary always keeps me busy too... new year, lots of new changes there.

Anyway I don't know when I stopped finding time/desire to blog. I haven't taken as many pictures and I feel like without pictures you can't blog. I've taken some cute videos with my little video camera and I should upload those and post them for all of you Quattro fans out there....

Maybe next week I'll have something more interesting to post about! Like my birthday on Monday! :)

The Holidays...

2011-01-07T21:52:00.006-07:00

We had such an awesome Christmas and New Years! We've been too busy enjoying it to blog about it I guess... now that life has slowed down a little bit and we're starting to get back to normal... except this crazy diet/New Years resolution stuff.... oh well!

Christmas Eve we visited grandparents with Andrew & Becca and Amy & Nathan...

We were shooting for 3 for 3 but Gran had laryngitis that day... we're lucky to have so many wonderful grandparents here in Utah!

Christmas Eve afternoon we went to see the reindeer at Thanksgiving Point... they weren't in their usual spot so we had to track them down... when Rob went in to ask the lady inside where they were she slyly told him, "They're helping Santa today!!" Yeah right lady... where are they? It was kind of funny...

Christmas Eve... new jammies per Rob's request (his family's tradition)... then Rob and I watched The Holiday while we wrapped presents and got Christmas ready...

We let Robby open his present from Uncle Daniel - it was a monkey from Build A Bear complete with a blue and white "Byu-ish" jersey outfit and a little jacket that said "Quattro" on it.... It is the cutest thing ever! Robby LOVED it. He looked at it and said, "0-0... he must be a mascot, like Cosmo." Apparently Cosmo's number is 00... who would've noticed that??? He's so crazy observant... he took monkey Quattro to bed with him and the next day that was the one toy he picked to bring over to Andrew & Becca's.

We hung lights across the hallway with "do not enter" signs - we had told him, "In the morning, don't go in the living room without mommy and daddy! We'll put signs up to help you remember!" And little mister smarty pants said, "Well, I can't read so I won't know what the signs say..." like so of course I can still go in the living room... he's so funny!

Opened some presents and then had a yummy Christmas breakfast! Complete with MaryAnn's cinnamon rolls - made by Becca and her lovely assistant, Rob. ;)

He loved that he could read his name on the presents... and when he opened this one (Playmobil Knights & Castle) he was so excited it was so cute!!

Had a lovely Christmas dinner of Cafe Rio Pork salads at A&B's....

And apparently took no other pictures from Christmas.... except on the new little video camera (it's like a Flip camera but it's called Bloggie) Rob gave me for Christmas! Videos may be posted soon...

***NEW YEARS!***

Not really having any energy to plan a party or anything we kind of all just gathered randomly and enjoyed a fun low key evening! Frozen pizzas and treats...

We did a "kids countdown" early - thank you, youtube - before they went to bed!

So glad I have such great friends & family around here to celebrate with!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! :)

Gymnastics Recital

2010-12-21T16:20:00.003-07:00

Robby had a gymnastics recital last night which was so adorable! We've been sick all week so I was really hoping he wouldn't miss it. He was doing ok yesterday so we decided to just go for it. He had such a great time showing off his "cool tricks" to everyone. He was even lucky enough to have his best little buds, Liv's kids, show up to cheer him on!

The three little kids are Robby's preschool class and then there were three big kids were an older class she had. I love how in this picture Annie is whispering to Quattro... they had so much fun being in the same class together!

Balancing on the beam...

Warming up... doing some bridges...

Doing his little donkey kicks... this is how they learn to do handstands. Now he can balance on his hands a second and he'll go all the way over and kind of land on his back... and do handstands against the wall... it's neat to watch them get better at the things they're learning.

Bridge meltdowns on the cheese mat...

So proud of our little guy!

With his best buddies!!!

Now gymnastics is over... Miss Kandice is going to have a baby and is taking a break from teaching... anyone have any other ideas for a fun, not expensive activity like this for Quattro? Annie's going to do a little ballet class and while I'm sure he would LOVE doing that too Rob is putting his foot down on that one... and everything else seems too expensive or too intense... ideas?

Grateful

2010-12-05T23:44:00.005-07:00

I know I haven't been blogging as much lately... sometimes my heart and mind are just so full with deeper thoughts that it's difficult to not share so at the risk of constantly oversharing I think I've just not written anything... does that make sense? So here's just a few thoughts because my heart is overflowing and I need to get some things out...

I'm grateful for Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful time surrounded by family and good food.

I'm grateful for Christmas - and the chance to teach Robby about the true meaning of Christmas and in the process remind myself!

I can't NOT be grateful and happy with my life right now. I thank Heavenly Father EVERY DAY for the amazing little boy that I have and wonderful husband and just a great happy life. I can't even believe they are mine and we get to spend each day together! Obviously we are heartbroken and sad and want to have another baby and we pray for that every day... "Please bless for a baby... please bless for a baby brother and a baby sister... please bless that mommy's tummy will get big and pregnant..." It breaks but warms my heart to hear Robby's sweet pleas to our Father in Heaven.

Sometimes he'll come up to me after he sees me finish praying and ask, "Did Heavenly Father say we could have a baby?" Or if we are going to the temple he asks, "Are you going to get a baby there?" Or when I went to the hospital to be with Liv he asked, "Are you going to get a baby at the hop-is-it-tal?" He can't quite wrap his brain around it. But I know he has faith and he believes that one day he will have a brother or a sister and we do too.

It's just hard... the illusive "one day"... and "somehow".... you want to be doing all that's in your power to move things along and yet being restrained by money and not knowing what's going to work exactly is difficult and frustrating.

But I'm grateful that I know where to look for comfort and guidance and that I am still able to enjoy the NOW... the present... my hilarious son and darling husband. It's weird to feel such a mix of emotions on a daily basis. I know it's because of my faith and my hope that I'm able to fully enjoy each day as it is and I'm so grateful for that.

Happy Birthday to My Handsome Older Man

2010-11-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday darling!

Thanks for being my best friend and such a great dad!

For me it was love at first sight... with your black roller blades and red bandana, I knew you were the guy for me. And I patiently - and not so patiently - waited for you to figure out you wanted to be with me forever too!

In some ways you haven't changed at all in the 16 years I've known you and in some ways you've changed a lot. Like there's no way you could've grown a crazy long beard back then... ;) And you've become Mr. Mountain Gun Man... And your name has changed from Robby to Rob... But constants like football and loving BYU remain. And you will always be my handsome older man!

I love seeing you and Robby together and the dad you have become.... thanks for making me so happy honey! I love you!!!!!!!!! Happy Birthday!!!!

(I woke up from a Sunday nap a few weeks ago to this sight - so adorable!)

Side notes...

Robby and Annie put all the candles on... I gave them a box of 20 and a few more to make 28 candles and they just put all the candles from 2 boxes on.... 14 extra for good luck?? It was quite the fire hazard. :)

And when Rob was opening his gifts Robby was sitting on me and nervously asked me, "Are there any mascots coming???" I assured him there weren't. Except Spiderman. Obviously....

Marie Diane Jeppson

2010-11-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

Olivia's sweet mother, Marie, passed away last week... Tuesday morning... After her first stroke in 2001 I know her health has been very bad and life was pretty difficult for her. I've watched over the last 9 years as the roles reversed and Olivia became the care provider for her mother... as an only child and with her parents divorced this became such an important role in Olivia's life! I know we were there to help with the occasional move or cleaning party but for Olivia she saw and served her mom almost daily.

More importantly I know that Olivia loved her mom and now she misses her. To have her mom no longer a 10 minute drive away will take time to adjust to....

I know Marie is in heaven with the ability to run and sing again - our testimonies of the Savior and the plan of salvation have truly carried us this week and I know this knowledge comforts Olivia tremendously.

I'm so grateful for Marie and for her raising the wonderful daughter that is my best friend... I know she will be watching from heaven, smiling down on Olivia with pride.

Gymnastics! And Annie...

2010-10-13T22:42:00.005-06:00

Robby has LOVED his gymnastics class! It's once a week for 45 minutes and he looks forward to it all week! His teacher, Miss Kandis, is a former BYU gymnast and is great with the kids. It's only $30/month and it's in Provo.

Robby goes to the "preschool" class. She does a mom and me class for littler kids and it's only $2/class and you can just come when you want! You don't have to pay upfront or commit to a certain amount of time.

I know she still has openings in her classes - check out her blog! http://ilovetotumble.blogspot.com/

And these videos are specifically for Aunt Ness who requested some! :)

It's always easy to tell which one Robby is - he's always in a BYU shirt. (Not to mention there were 2 kids in the class that day... in a different video there were more but I didn't post it) In fact this week he was getting dressed for class, looking through his t-shirt drawer, and pulled one out saying, "I don't think Miss Kandis has seen this BYU shirt before!" Okayyyy.... he's so funny!

Handstands!

It's been so fun to go and watch him enjoy this so much! And he and Annie are so funny together! The dialog between them is always hilarious to listen to...

Annie: Ok, and you're my brother and our parents are dead, right?
Robby: Right. And you're my sister and we're in the car, right?
Annie: Right.

Everything they say they add "right" at the end, like constantly confirming their story with each other.

One time we were at dinner with A&B and kids and Annie didn't want to finish part of her meal and so Quattro started eating it for her and I said, "Robby, don't eat that - one of her brothers might want it, it's their food." And he looks at me all hurt and confused, "But I am one of her brothers!" Oh! It just made my heart hurt! I was like, "Ok, yeah, just eat it..."

They sure are special little friends!

This is like a 2 second video - I didn't know it was on video but they are just too cute and then when I took the picture it was the one above, not quite as cute as the video so I just had to include it...

I'm so grateful that Robby can have such wonderful cousins close by to be like siblings to him.

Childbirth Classes

2010-10-04T22:05:00.001-06:00

ATTN: Anyone who is pregnant, even barely pregnant, or knows someone who is pregnant!!!

I just want to let you all know that my darling sister in law, Rebecca, is doing another round of Childbirth Classes!

Tuesdays starting October 12th from 6:30 - 9 pm for 6 weeks
Fee is $150 per couple - this includes materials

I'm so grateful for the awesome example Becca has been to me and I have learned so much from her! I've had the honor to be at 2 of her births and let me tell you, she knows what she's talking about!! :)

I feel sad for people who are scared of childbirth or who have had somewhat negative experiences in the past - there is SO MUCH TO LEARN about pregnancy and labor and delivering a child and it can be such an amazing experience! Educating yourself is the first step to removing any fears and having a positive experience.

Whatever kind of birth you are planning this class covers all kinds of useful information for you!

You can look at her website here and email her at rebecca@gentlebirthchoices.com.

If you know anyone who might be interested pass this on! Thanks!

Diving board

2010-09-24T21:04:00.003-06:00

One of Robby's most favorite things lately has been videos on my phone. As in, I take 1 minute videos of whatever he's doing and then he spends forever watching them all back... it's kind of great.

This summer when we were still in Maryland and Rob was in Utah Robby went off the diving board for his first time. It was pretty awesome and I'm glad I thought to grab my phone to get some videos to show Rob and Robby LOVES watching these back.

By the end of this summer he was swimming like a little fish - it was amazing! We did one week at the beginning of the summer of swim lessons but it was really basic stuff - blowing bubbles, jumping in the water... and then we did a couple private lessons with someone at our pool... the real kicker was just the fact we went swimming every single day pretty much. I love our pool. :)

Robby update

2010-09-12T22:32:00.008-06:00

Robby is hilarious. He makes me laugh every day... here are some random Robby thoughts for you...

One day we borrowed a book from Provo library that had a "Governor Walker's collection" sticker in it with a picture of the lovely Governor Olene Walker. We don't know her, ps, just saw her sticker in the book. Ever since then we will randomly find that other books we have rented and brought home have a Governor Walker sticker in it too.... and you would've thought it was a Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! On Sunday we had Andrew & Becca over and Robby comes running in holding this book about football in the air yelling, "Mom! MOM! GOVERNOR WALKER!!!!" So excited!!! I explained it to Andrew and he was dying laughing....

I was talking to Robby about what would happen if he ever got lost and if he was talking to a police officer and role playing...

Me: "What's your name?"
Robby: "Robby Parsons."
Me: "What's your mom's name?"
Robby: "Esther Parsons."
Me: "What's your dad's name?"
Robby: "Uncle Rob Parsons."

Ha. He loves calling Rob "Uncle Rob" - that's what Tyler & Robby and all the cousins call him and he thinks it's funny.

He sure does love his daddy. He is so observant and always makes sure to "match" daddy when leaving the house. One day Rob was going on a long run (training for a half marathon) and he didn't have a shirt on. When it came time for Robby and I to leave the house to go to the mall Robby would NOT put a shirt on. I finally figured out it was cause "daddy didn't have a shirt on." The mall is a less acceptable place to be shirtless though... sorry kid.

Another time Rob had on a sweatshirt and I watched as Robby noticed Rob's sweatshirt and went and got out his big winter coat... we tried to get him to leave it at home, Rob even took off his sweatshirt but then Robby was trying to carry his coat over his shoulder... oh wait, cause that's what Rob did with his sweatshirt! It was hilarious. The things he notices!!!

He is loving playing with his football mat from Liv. He sets them up in different formations, huddles... one day he put them in partners and said, "Look mom, they're dancing!" Ha! But usually it's things like, "these are the Utah players... these are the BYU... and BYU makes a point! Woo hoo!"

Lately he's been playing a lot of "the shadow game." This is where they just repeat everything you say and do. Rob did this to me when we were little, like 12, and of course it was so annoying/awesome because he would just follow me around everywhere to copy me/be near me. I don't know where Robby learned it but he thinks he's hilarious.

Tonight when I tucked him in I told him, "do you know every night when you're sleeping mommy comes in and kisses you and says I love you?" He smiled and said, "will you do that today?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Thank you." He is so cute and is so good about saying Thank You for things. Like tonight for dinner he said, "thank you for making this mom!"

We've been doing a lot of "practicing my scooter." I tried to say, "do you want to ride your scooter?" And he quickly corrected me, "I'm just practicing my scooter, mom." So we had a little photo shoot outside since I've recently realized I have taken hardly any pictures lately!!

I like how he has one leg pulled up... #gangster

I took this one:

And then he said, "Het me see!" He was all upset I hadn't gotten his hands on his hips so we did a re-take:

And here he just looks so grown up! What is he like 5, 6??? I told him the other day, "Can you PLEASE stop growing up?" He said in a concerned voice, "I'm trying, mommy!" Ooo, I don't want to stress him out or anything but oh my goodness he is growing up way too fast.

Oh how I love this little boy!

Trying not to think about it...

2010-08-31T15:05:00.001-06:00

I think I've been missing the "therapy" that is writing about what I'm going through...

In other words - SKIP THIS POST if you don't want to hear about trying to get pregnant and all that jazz...

So we did the one cycle of IUI (insemination) and that failed. The day we did the IUI they said the sample we had brought in looked low - low count and low motility... we did the IUI anyway but they suggested we do a full SA the next week. It was stressful waiting those 2 weeks, waiting to find out if the IUI worked, waiting to get the results from Rob's test.

At first I thought I was pregnant because my chest was really sore and then I looked into it and that is one of the main side effects of progesterone which I was taking. Then my temps started to go down and I just had that sinking feeling that I knew my period was going to come. Combine that with then getting the results of Rob's test, over the phone, delivered by a not so smart nurse who said, "Uh, yeah, the count was 5 million so.... um... it looks like the recommendation for you now is to do Invitro with ICSI. Does that sound right?"

I wanted to scream, or cry, and I was just shocked. We went from thinking we'd be spending like $800/cycle to $11,000/cycle for IVF w/ICSI. NO that did NOT "sound right." I was so mad. Flustered. Upset. I got off the phone quickly and just cried.

So basically the result from the SA showed counts so low they recommended not only Invitro which is super expensive but ICSI as well. ICSI is an acronym for intracytoplasmic sperm injection - which is a fancy way of saying "inject sperm in the middle of the egg". This process adds a couple grand to the cost of Invitro.

Anyway this is just really not an option right now, IVF, so I felt kind of deflated. I eventually made an apt to go in for another consultation with Dr. Slater to talk about my options. She walked me through the process of invitro and ICSI and the success rates with that. She also said we could still try IUI which is obviously much cheaper but the chances would be less. We could try taking multiple samples of sperm and combining them and doing IUI like that which might be a good option...

We decided to do a blood test for Rob to make sure his hormones and all that were fine. We were a little concerned because when we had him tested in 2006 when we were trying for Robby his SA came back with great results! It is interesting and helpful to know that apparently that can change over time!! So even if your DH had good levels at one point, there's a chance there could still be a male factor problem.

Rob's blood test came back fine, all normal. Oh yeah, she said if it was because of "stress" then his FSH levels would be low but they were normal. Now we are just trying to figure out where to go from here. Do we try another cycle of IUI even if the odds aren't great because that's more affordable? Do nothing now and save up money for invitro? Or what about the fact we can't even really afford everything we've done so far?? Minor detail.

It's a super busy time for Rob at work so we are trying to just put this on pause right now.

Meanwhile, I apparently am having hysterical pregnancies each month where I randomly feel so sure that I'm pregnant. No really. I've taken 2 pregnancy tests MID CYCLE just because oh my tummy looks so big, or my chest is so sore, or oh this random thing and then I can't get the thought OUT OF MY HEAD. It's like a stupid obsession. I hate it! I don't WANT to think I'm pregnant when I'm not! I don't want to think about but the thoughts just keep coming. It's so annoying.

You want to know something else that is hard? There are SO many random things that other people do right before they got pregnant that are things that you think, oh we should try that but there are SO MANY different things and obviously none of them actually are proven they are more like coincidences and it's just SO HARD to want to do all that you can to improve your chances but I'm already making Rob and I choke down a handful of multi-vitamins and supplements each night and it's just hard to know what else, if anything, we should try. HARD.

Even though this is a trial and even though it's hard I do know that we have so much to be grateful for. I don't need people to tell me it's part of Heavenly Father's plan because I already believe that with all my heart. I just also know He wants us to try our hardest and do all in our power to work for the things we want before He does His part and I feel this is me doing that.

I am happy, I have a great life, the most amazing little boy, wonderful husband...

MARYLAND

2010-08-23T21:06:00.007-06:00

We were able to go back home to Maryland to visit both of our families! We spent the first week at Deep Creek Lake with Rob's family and then in Kensington with my family. Rob had to leave before me to get back to UT so he missed out on some of the Pincock fun.

We had such a great time seeing all our family! We missed the beautiful green scenery there, the lake, being so close to the DC temple, some of our favorite food places like Qdoba's and Continentals... but really just being with family was the best!

side note - things we have NOT missed about Maryland: the HUMIDITY & the TRAFFIC!! And for Rob, the gun laws. ;)

I don't envision us moving back there anytime soon but we sure enjoyed the good dose of family time and will need another one soon!

*the Lake*
boat rides, tube rides, waterskiing, barefooting, hot tub, watching movies, getting to see Will & Amanda, kids doing a talent show, naps on the boat, MaryAnn's homemade pancakes and ice cream... we missed Liz & her family! And I can't believe I didn't get more pics of all the bigger/little kids!!! They are all so grown up now!

*Pincock Time!*

staying up late at night, watching SYTYCD, Girls night out... twice, playing at the church gym, laying on Babu's bed, eating lots of ice cream, having my mom put velcro rollers in my hair, visiting Kensington ward, lunch at Lebanese Taverna, going downtown, seeing Grandma Hazel, family Temple Night... but we missed Taba and her family there!

Hopefully one day soon we'll be able to have a reunion where no one is missing. It's impossible these days to get the whole family together - now for both families! But we sure are lucky to be blessed with such great, big, loving families!

Hill Family Reunion

2010-07-31T21:49:00.010-06:00

We had a good time attending the Hill Family Reunion last weekend up at Heber Valley Campground. We spent Friday night there in cabins and then spent Saturday doing one of the ropes challenge courses.

**I didn't mention who the Hill Family was! This is Rob's mom's family! So MaryAnn's maiden name was Hill.

Warning: picture overload

Some of the Hill family making treats!

Enjoying smores! He was posing all funny. And thanks Amanda for this awesome fleece, he loves it! :)

Rob was telling stories to Robby and Annie to get ready for bed. Stories about a boy named George which Quattro pronounces "Dordge." After each one ended he would say, "Read me another story about Dordge." How can you say no to that?

Proof I was trying to be a happy camper - despite the lovely woman issues I was having that weekend! Party! Hey, I was happy to be sleeping indoors at least and we weren't freezing cold all night!!

We played this game where we had to swing from one spot to the other... the rope hung between the two places and Rob had to dive out to grab it... I usually hate these kinds of activities but it was actually pretty fun.

Robby couldn't swing across by himself so he held onto Rob to get across. Oh yeah, and we were supposed to all stand on that black mat together - if one fell off it we had to start over. Kind of tricky!

We had two groups, and raced on these wood boards - had to hold on to the ropes and all lift up the same foot at the same time... teamwork...

This one was two cables that formed a V, you held hands and walked down the cables getting farther and farther apart - you had to push against each other's hands to stay up. Annie and Quattro looked so cute doing this!!

Almost there!

"We did it!"

Me and Becca's attempt...

Yay for us!

Andrew and Rob - getting to the end!

Zip line time!

Ok I kind of can't believe I did this so it needed to be well documented. Sorry for all the pictures.
I kind of surprised myself by just climbing all the way up quickly - I was trying to go fast to not be scared.

Oh yeah, let me just walk across this beam all the way up high. No big deal. AH!

One word: PROOF

So proud of mommy! :)

Or you could go like Rob and JUMP off and then not even hold on! I sat down before I got off the platform and ended up bumping my bum on it - so not recommended... but a safer feeling way to go! :)

The last time I went on a zip line I was about 5 years old - I was the test dummy for my brother and his friend's zip line they made in the back yard... let's just say they hadn't quite worked out the "stop" part which they figured out as I slammed into the tree. ;) I survived. The ride at Heber Valley was fun but I'll say for the scariness factor once I finally got going and enjoying myself the ride ended much too quickly.

Wish I'd gotten more pictures of the family but it was a good time!

Am I a brother?

2010-07-28T20:39:00.002-06:00

On the way home from Taba's house last night Robby asked me, "Mom, am I a brother now?" Wondering what he thought had changed from earlier today to make him a brother now I replied, "No, why?" And he said in a crying voice, "But I WANT to be a brother now."

I tried to explain, "You're not a brother now but you have cousins that you're like a brother to, and their you're friends. You'll be a brother when mommy has a baby. You'll be the baby's brother when we have one. Okay?" Robby wasn't satisfied: "I want to be a brother TODAY!"

I know, Robby. I want you to be a brother now too.

Tonight I was asking Robby what he was going to do to pay me back for the wave machine he broke (he just broke the stand off of it) so I said, "What are you going to do to help pay for it? Hmm??" He looks at me and says, "take a hower with you?" (shower) Um, no, honey, thank you for that generous offer but that's what YOU always want to do, not me! Then he said, "do some jobs for you?" Yeah, that's more like it. It was just hilarious though, Rob and I had to hold back the laughter. But yeah I can't really take a shower without him running in the bathroom and stripping down and hopping in! No privacy around here!

We have a blast driving in the car, singing along to our favorite songs... the other day we were listening to Justin Bieber's Baby song and Robby loves to sing along to, "when I was 13, I had my first hove." It's so cute! He loves to dance in the car and sing along!

The other day we were eating lunch and he was across the table from me - so, a whole 2 feet away from me - and he's like, "but I want to be near you!"
I said, "you are! You're right next to me!"
He said, "I always want to be near you."
Me: "You are!"
Robby: "No, not when we go to the gym!"
Me: "But you like going to the gym! You play with toys and have fun. It's good."
Robby: "Yeah, but not the part where I'm not next to you."

I sure do love that he loves being with me so much!!!

Wow, this kid just doesn't even know how adored he is and how lucky he is to have all of our attention and not have to share it with a sibling yet! So we'll all just look at the positives and enjoy the time with just Robby cause he is such an amazing little boy. We thank Heavenly Father for him every night!!!! And hope he'll get to be a brother soon.

False alarm

2010-07-21T10:37:00.003-06:00

Ok everyone who has been worried about me driving across country with my mom can take a deep breath and relax because CHANGE OF PLANS!

My mom decided she didn't really want to leave when I did - I was trying to get there by the time Rob flies in so we can spend time with the Parsons first but she originally had planned to leave the second week of August and that was just going to be much better for her. So Robby and I will be flying out with Rob - still doing driving back and forth to Deep Creek when we're there and 2 long plane rides, on the way back without Rob, but NOT driving all the way across the country. I know this is going to be much easier on us and probably my mom too, I'm a little disappointed to not have our big adventure!

And I feel like I owe an apology to you guys who've been worried about me - especially AMANDA who we have been receiving awesome things in the mail from for our trip! Amanda, I'm sorry!!! But we'll still be having a lot of travel time so we can use all the stuff and Robby will LOVE IT but we won't be as desperate as you thought. Ah!

I have to admit, I'm a little relieved. But I spent HOURS researching games and activities for the car, making a huge list of all the stuff and snacks we'd have, going to stores looking for good little things to buy... so I feel super super prepared for the 4 1/2 hr flights back and forth and 3 hour car drives we'll be doing.

Thanks everyone for all the great ideas - they won't go unused! :)

Road trip - HELP!

2010-07-12T20:12:00.002-06:00

Ok everyone, I posted this on FB and got lots of good suggestions but I'm still looking for more great ideas!

I'm going to be leaving in 2 weeks to drive from Utah to Maryland with my mom... and Robby. I love a good cross country road trip, but I've never done one with my kid! Ah! Robby is pretty good in the car and I think this will be a great adventure but I just want to be armed with as much as possible for this experience!

So for a 3 year old - best movies? Games on itouch? Other games or toys that are great for the car? That will distract him for like 5 hours??? Ahhh! Snacks that aren't too messy?

This is definitely going to be interesting! I'll let you know how we survive!!

July 4th

2010-07-06T23:30:00.006-06:00

My parents drove from MD to UT and got here in time to celebrate the Fourth of July with all of us! It was a family-fun packed weekend...

Trunnell Family Gathering

Too bad the picture turned out all spotty... this is my amazing Gran! She had 17 kids! And has about 100 grandkids now...

Quattro so happy to be with his Babu... (my mom)

Annie and Gwen watching the talent show... I asked Robby if he wanted to go up and sing the fight song during the talent show and after a few minutes he said, "mom, come up on the stage and sing the fight song with me!" It turned into me and Rob basically singing it and him whispering it... oh well!

Can't believe I didn't get more pictures from that day...

FIREWORKS

Rob gave all the kids and I motorcycle rides while we waited for it to get dark...

Crazy cousins....

The Carters joined us just in time...

Thanks to the people next to us we had a nice little pre-show...

Robby thought he'd be scared of the fireworks but they weren't too loud! It was a good way to celebrate!

CAMPING

Annie is my little buddy. She kept wanting to sit on my lap...

Luke enjoying an apple...

Annie & Quattro helping me shuck corn... we had corn, hot dogs, pasta salad, and watermelon for dinner....

the kids LOVED playing with the fire... and look how dirty they got!

Robby loved staying up late...

Enjoying this chair... much more comfortable than sitting on the ground. And at one point I made us sing patriotic songs which was fun!

Breakfast... muffins, bananas, eggs...

Rob cookin the eggs...

And I surprisingly SLEPT some on this camping trip! Might've been the 15 inches of padding Rob brought with us for me, including a tempur-pedic mat... but it was quite the miracle! It was nice not feeling so grouchy and tired in the morning! Overall it was a great time! We'll definitely have to do it again...

And who would've thought throughout all these things I was having some of the roughest bad news days I've had in a long time! Grin and bear it... I do have a lot to be grateful for. We're grateful for the wonderful country we live in! Hope everyone had a great Independence Day!

Grateful for Robby

2010-07-06T22:49:00.008-06:00

Lately in Robby's prayers he keeps saying, "and please bless that we can be grateful for the things that we need..." Hmm... we could interpret that to mean, grateful for our trials? Anyway, we sure are grateful for him. Robby is such a joy - I couldn't even IMAGINE my life without him. And to think I desperately wanted to have a girl first! Ha! Another testament that Heavenly Father has a plan - he gave me this lovable little momma's boy first to hug and kiss and enjoy and I love him so much.

(at Berto's birthday party)

Ok so what have we been up to lately?

Lots and lots of swimming...

with cousins and friends at our clubhouse...

got to go out on Tara & Jeremy's boat one day! So fun!

I even took Robby to Seven Peaks one day with some other girls in my branch and their kids. It was so crowded and crazy but we had fun!

Quattro showing off his tan line at a Primary activity...

"thanks dad!"

And scooter rides
(thanks Will & Amanda)

Do you know this kid can drive the scooter all by himself? Rob actually lets him steer and do the gas! I couldn't believe it till I saw it. It's pretty cute...

Just enjoying the summer!!!

playing at the park...

birthdays...

hiking the Y with dad... Rob said Robby walked almost the whole way up by himself!

more to come...

2010-07-06T10:37:00.002-06:00

I've been meaning to write about the other things that have happened this cycle, the IUI and how it was and everything but I'll just tell you right now that it didn't work and now we have other information that is making us need to look at other options for treatments and it's discouraging and frustrating and hard. But. We know Heavenly Father has a plan for us and we will continue to do everything we can to do our part. We have so much to be grateful for right now... I'll give more details later...

HSG - Hysterosalpingogram

2010-06-18T22:57:00.002-06:00

Sorry for two medical posts in a row! I thought this should be it's own separate post in case anyone is searching for this topic...

In my consultation apt Dr. Slater recommended that I do an HSG test. I wasn't sure if it would be necessary or not but since we were kind of doing an "all in" approach for this cycle I figured we should go ahead and do the test now - better than to wait, have this cycle fail, then do it and find a problem that we should've fixed in the first place, does that make sense?

The HSG test looks to make sure your tubes are clear and gives you a picture of the uterus. Sometimes just the act of pushing the dye through your tubes can help clear them out and women will have success getting pregnant soon after they have the test. (They inject the dye through your uterus and into your tubes so they can take an x-ray of it)

I had scheduled an apt to do mine at Timpanogos Regional Hospital. Like I said before I spent hours on the phone trying to figure out how much this would cost and sounds like I would need to meet my $1000 deductible first and then pay another few hundred dollars. Neat. If I planned on having a baby in this calender year or going to the hospital for other stuff I might be interested in meeting my deductible but not really. So when a friend of mine just had an HSG the week before and chose to do it at Riverwoods Imaging Center I was interested in why. You can go to Riverwoods and just pay in cash for this procedure for $459. You have to agree to not send a claim to your insurance - you just pay that price and you're done. This is much less than I was planning on paying and so this worked out great! I called on Monday and was able to get in on Wednesday, which was my cycle day 8 and I needed to do it on day 6-10 so I was glad they could fit me in.

The procedure itself only takes about 5-10 minutes. I had to wait a few minutes, then change from the waist down, and then the assistant got everything ready. The doctor came in and within a few minutes he said, "well, I think I found your problem. Well, one of them..." Obviously I was very interested in what he found! He said there was some scar tissue in my cervix making it very narrow - this definitely could pose a problem for sperm trying to reach their destination! He was able to remove that in the process and then finish the test. His "preliminary" report to me was that my tubes looked open and it all looked good.

I will admit - it was kind of painful. More than I expected. There is definite cramping that comes with the procedure. It was uncomfortable... and then you might have some spotting and leaking afterwards so they said to bring a pad. I took some ibprofen and I think that helped. It wasn't anything major and I went about my day in a normal fashion but yes, it did hurt.

Overall I'm very glad I did the test. The fact that he found something *wrong* with me and fixed it (the scar tissue) is great and knowing that even just the sheer act of performing the test might help pave the way is good. And only spending $459 on it as opposed to $1500 helps a lot too!

The latest...

2010-06-18T22:00:00.003-06:00

Another TTC update - skip if not interested!!

Since I had my consultation a mere 8 days ago... I spent days 2 - 6 of my cycle taking clomid, then day 7 & 9 had to give myself a shot (with Rob's help - I HATE needles, it was so hard for both of us to do those shots! Even with teeny little needles... still, not easy), then today on day 10 I went in for an ultrasound.

The Clomid went fine - I know lots of people have some bad side effects like nausea or hot flashes but following some good advice from a friend I took the pills at night and didn't experience any side effects!

The injections were a drug called Bravelle which is used to stimulate the growth of follicles. Today my ultrasound was to look at my ovaries and see how my follicles were developing. There was one mature follicle on one side and several on the other side that were almost mature. In order to avoid having 5 or so mature follicles (read: RISK OF QUINTUPLETS) they chose to trigger my ovulation today so the one mature follicle will give us the best chance of a healthy single baby and there are 2 or so others that also would have a chance to be fertilized but not likely. As much as I think I'd love to have twins, 2 babies for the price of 1 (to get pregnant with 2 at least), I'm sure Rob will be relieved to decrease the risk of multiples as much as possible.

So I left my apt and went home and needed to give myself a shot of HCG to induce/trigger ovulation. Luckily my sister Taba was coming over and I made her help me since Rob was at work. Seriously, I hate needles! And these are tiny little guys but still it was hard.

24 hours after the HCG shot we do the IUI at the Fertility Center. So that means 11:30 am on a Saturday and yes they are open! After that I will do the progesterone suppositories - apparently that is much more effective than taking it orally via a pill, fyi - for the next two weeks and then I'll find out if it worked or not.

**For the medications, the only one I filled at a pharmacy myself was the clomid. The Bravelle, HCG, and progesterone were ordered through a specialty Walgreen's pharmacy by the Fertility Center. The prescriptions I needed were overnighted to me! It came with the everything I needed to give myself the injections and I thought it was great that they came to my door - or actually I had them delivered to Rob's work since someone needed to sign for them and I didn't know if I'd be home. Another interesting thing about those meds, the Bravelle was really expensive and they said the company that makes it had a program for people who's insurance doesn't cover those drugs - I could pay $10 to join the "club" and then received almost a $100 discount on them. I was grateful for that! The total I spent on this cycles meds were $282 on the specialty pharmacy ones and $33 on the clomid. I had NO IDEA how much they would cost!

I'm sure this is obvious and all but I just really really really want this to work. This time. This cycle. I want it to work. It's hard to be hopeful and at the same time not set yourself up for disappointment. It's always been hard when my period comes but I think it will be crushing after putting in this effort, financially and emotionally... and yet I know statistically it could very well take 3 months, 6 months, or more even with treatments... so it's just a hard balance. I don't know how to explain that to people...

I'm grateful to be doing all that I can do to try to get pregnant and I want this to be successful so much.

Guess I'll find out in two weeks...

Big Boy!

2010-06-13T21:28:00.004-06:00

Oh my goodness! Robby is just getting so big so fast! He needs to STOP.

We had his 3 year check up on 5/20 and this is how he's grown:

Weight: 35 lbs - 80 %
Length: 40.5 in - 95 %
Head: 50 cm - 55 %

this was where he was at his 2 year:

weight 28 lbs 6 oz - 50th percentile
length 35 in - 70th percentile
head 48 cm - 25th percentile

So he's definitely had a growth spurt! Now when people always ask, is he tall for his age? I'll say, yes! :) We hope he grows to be taller than his mom and dad one day!

Today we converted his crib to a little toddler day bed - it's adorable. We've been talking about it for a few weeks since he recently figured out climbing out of his bed but since he usually would stay in there till I got him anyway or at least until I told him he could get out we just didn't bother. I always just thought we'd put him in a big bed when we had another baby but he's now 3 and climbing out so we'll just do it now!

This was his last time in his bed as a crib:

"What what?! I'm a big boy!"

He was so happy with his big boy bed daddy *made* for him!

He's a good kisser! :)

All ready for bed! He went to bed like a champ. We pulled the giant patrick dog out from under the crib to next to it in case he rolls out! He didn't get out at all and fell asleep within 10 minutes! We'll see how this goes though!

Free Early Pregnancy Class

2010-06-13T20:36:00.003-06:00

So, Becca and I were talking about her childbirth classes and things and we've noticed a trend among pregnant ladies... lots of women get pregnant and pick a doctor but aren't aware of all of their choices until much later in their pregnancy and then it feels hard to switch doctors, make different choices.

When I was pregnant with Robby I knew I didn't want an epidural, I'm petrified of needles. Knowing I wasn't planning on having that as a pain relief I started looking into my other options - this led me to taking Hypnobabies. I also knew that I wanted a doula to assist me in my labor and that was a "problem" for my first doctor.

I ended up switching doctors two different times, so, 3 total doctors, till I found the right one for me that supported me in what my goals were for my birth. I even changed doulas once! The more I learned in my pregnancy and found about different options I realized those doctors weren't a good fit for me and I'm so grateful I decided to change.

THE POINT --- so my wonderful sister Rebecca is going to do a FREE Pregnancy class for people who are pregnant or planning to get pregnant soon to talk about all kinds of good stuff including:

*nutrition during pregnancy
*how to choose the right care provider
*where to give birth
*which childbirth classes to take
*how to have the best birth experience

Saturday June 19th
from 9:30 - 11:30 am
in North Orem

Email Rebecca at rebecca@gentlebirthchoices.com to reserve your spot!

I can't get enough of this stuff so I consider myself Becca's assistant and am so excited to be able to just share what we can with everyone! I'm sure this won't be the only class of this type but this is the first!

Please let anyone who is pregnant that you know and might be interested know about this class!

Summer buzz

2010-06-12T01:00:00.000-06:00

Now that it's that time of year, you know, where we go to the pool all day long every day, I figured we needed to get rid of all that hair Robby had!

He does NOT like the clippers! But when he woke up at 7 am on Wednesday morning and he wanted to watch a show and I was trying to think of another distraction, I remembered I'd been wanting to cut his hair! So I made Rob help me before he left for work! So with the two of us helping we got a pretty decent job done... just don't look too closely! But I just LOVE his short hair and seeing his cute little head.

And we take this swimming time serious around here... we had swim lessons every day this week at 9 am and then would come home, get some food and then camp out by the pool at our house till dinner time.... we are tired. Today we swam in the straight up rain with the cloudy weather and cold temps but it was still fun.

And you've got to see this boy swimming! He's doing great! He started out pretty scared, not wanting to jump in unless holding hands, but he's branching out more every day and like a little fish! He can hold his breath for so long and float/swim around, it's really cute! I'll try to get a video of it soon! I don't want to forget this!

Happy Swimming time (aka Summer) to you all!

Consultation

2010-06-11T23:43:00.003-06:00

Ok, here we go, full speed ahead.... STOP NOW if you aren't interested in the details of our baby making journey. :) I'll have a more exciting Robby post coming soon...

Our consultation apt with Dr. Slater went well! We sat down with her, went over both Rob and I's history, and then made a plan. I happened to get my period just the day before so it was good timing. She asked if I just wanted to do an HSG this month and see what that would show but I told her I was ready to just dive in.

At our apt Rob and I both had blood drawn and I had an ultrasound to make sure my ovaries looked good, no cysts or anything, before I started any medications. The blood draw for me would check my hormone levels at the beginning of my cycle. During the ultrasound she showed me both of my ovaries and that they had 5 folicles each which she said is what she wanted to see. Then in her words, "you don't have the most robust looking ovaries I've ever seen, but you know, it's ok, they're average." Great, I've got average ovaries. Ha! I just thought it was funny. :) But so everything in there looked good so far.

I have an apt to do an HSG test this cycle which is done at a hospital which will give us a much better picture of what's going on in there - and ps, if you're trying to call and schedule one ask for RADIOLOGY. I got bounced around with no one being helpful or knowing what the heck I was talking about for a while. And I already wasted about four hours of my life last month on the phone with both the hospital and the insurance company trying to figure out how much an HSG would cost me (somewhere between $86 and $1500, you know, somewhere in there) so we just had to decide was this important to do now or not and we decided yes so we're just going to do it and we'll find out how much it costs when the bill comes.

Speaking of the bill.... oh my... I mean, I expected to spend close to a $1000 per cycle on these treatments but at the end of our apt when the receptionist told me we owed already almost that amount I was a little flabbergasted. We had been planning/hoping the insurance company would pay for the consultation apt which is $230 and they still should but what I didn't know is that WE pay for EVERYTHING upfront and then it gets sent to the insurance company and if it's something they cover they send you a check. The consultation apt is really the only thing that is usually covered so hopefully we'll get that back. Then we had to pay for the medications separately which were an additional $300 so it all adds up super fast.

This is a lot of money for us to spend right now but we feel like it's the right thing to do for us. Even if we had to go into debt for this - I figure, it's way less debt than buying a home, still a great investment, and a worthy purpose. We'll figure it out and make it work. We might have to take a break inbetween cycles but we'll just do what we need to. It just was a bit of a shock to me how crazy expensive this is and it makes me a little sick to my stomach... or maybe that's the clomid? ;) But I can only imagine what people are paying for repeated IVF cycles or adoption and know that it is so much more and my heart goes out to you.

And I'm sharing this with you guys not to be woe-is-me but to help share the information I've learned through this process!!!

So Clomid - I always thought it was only for people who don't ovulate. I always get a positive ovulation so I didn't think this would be part of my treatment. Apparently it can help "super ovulate" you, per Dr. Slater, very technical terms here, and help with a luteal phase defect which I have. So I'm taking Clomid, then I'll do 2 FSH shots to stimulate my follicles, do ultrasounds to monitor the process and my uterine lining and then induce ovulation using an HCG shot, and then probably go for IUI this cycle as well. Then 2 weeks later hopefully find out I'm pregnant! Easy, right? If not, start it all over again!

Any questions?

I'm grateful the people at Utah Fertility Center are great... that I have a great support system... so thanks for thinking of us and keep your fingers crossed for us! How great would it be to get pregnant with just one cycle?? I'm trying to not get my hopes up too high! Their statistics say that 50% of their couples are pregnant within 3 months, 75% of them are pregnant within 6 months...

Next step

2010-06-04T00:00:00.003-06:00

Update - it's super late and I'm exhausted from a long day but wanted to quickly update on what has happened since we went to that seminar.

The seminar was interesting - I have to say I felt like I knew pretty much everything they said in their presentation but that made me feel pretty good about the fact that I'd done my research. It was really nice to just get a feel for the practice as a whole and meet the doctors. Everyone was so nice and I felt really comfortable with them.

The main thing I took away from this was feeling validated in going to a fertility specialist - they said "infertility" was defined as trying for 12 months and not getting pregnant - and that didn't include necessarily charting your cycles or anything, just 12 months of not using birth control and not getting pregnant. So after 16 months of charting my ovulation and trying hard to get pregnant it is a very appropriate time to see help. I was able to talk to the doctor about my situation and give her my history and it was great to get an idea of what the process would be like.

The next thing is to go in for a consultation - this costs $230-250 but is usually covered by insurance. They said if we had trouble getting insurance to cover it then they could work with us on this, even deduct it from my first cycles charges. We will go in next Thursday for our consultation and hopefully be on our way to getting my body figured out and knocked up! :)

Come on, let's give this kid a sibling! Please!

I appreciate everyone's support and concern for us! I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Eclipse t-shirts - want one?

2010-05-31T23:02:00.005-06:00

Remember how awesome our tshirts for New Moon were? Well, Liv and her husband Scott have whipped up an amazing shirt design for Eclipse! Check it out:

We are doing the same exact shirt as we did for the New Moon shirt except a light BLUE.

I just love how these shirts are like secret codes - no one has to know you're sportin a Twilight shirt unless they get the reference themselves and therefore they can appreciate it! :) Like how this refers to the store Bella worked in, Mike's family's store... anyway!

So if you're interested in getting a shirt - even if you aren't coming to the movie with us - let me know! We're going to do one big order next week or so so I'll need to know sizes and get money from people asap. Shirts are $12 and $14 for the Plus 1x and Plus 2x. Leave a comment or send me an email!

Utah Fertility Center

2010-05-16T23:59:00.003-06:00

This week we are going to this. (free fertility seminar)

Malea and I have been friends a looong time. She and her husband tried for a long time to get pregnant and after going to this Fertility Center she had success! Now she is getting close to giving birth... it's interesting how we are now in opposite positions - I've learned a lot about birth and new babies and have lots to share with her! And her experience and information about dealing with infertility has been a strength and example to me... we are flip flopped and are able to help each other with the experiences we've had.

It's been hard knowing what to do next in this process. I've talked to my doctor, a homeopathic doctor, been in the Eager study, used a fancy-dancy fertility monitor, charted my last 15 cycles after my miscarriage.... there are lots and lots of things to do when trying to get pregnant and different courses of action. Everyone has to figure out what's right for them and when. As much as part of me has been wanting to go to a fertility specialist for a while now we haven't felt like it was the right time, we have been working towards our goal as a couple and as a couple need to be ready for the next step. It's hard to feel like people are judging you, thinking why aren't you doing x or y and really it doesn't matter - it's just important to figure out what is right for you.

Sometimes I feel like Heavenly Father lets me have these experiences simply because he knows I'm going to share everything that happens with everyone else... so part of me feels like, of course I have to go to a fertility doctor and experience that and see what happens...

Anyways it's late and I should just stop rambling but just wanted to give an update and also let other people out there know that Fertility Centers have things like this seminar to get information out! I didn't know that till I happened to be browsing their wesbite...

so let the sharing continue... I'll let you know what I learn... :)

Do the "hope"

2010-05-16T23:46:00.003-06:00

Today I walked by nursery and paused at the door, listening for Robby... I overheard them doing their lesson, talking about helping at home...

Maeris (Robby's beloved nursery leader): Robby, I know you help at home! You have a special job you do at home, don't you? What's your job at home?
Robby: Hope.
Maeris: Yeah, to help, and your job is to unload the silverware isn't it?
Robby: (nods then says) And do the hope.
Maeris: Yeah, it's good to help... Dylan, how do you help at home?

I laughed to myself and went to class.... Robby was trying to tell her his other job is to do the SOAP. He helps fill the dish soap in the dishwasher. And Maeris knew he unloaded silverware cause we'd talked about that... anyway it was just a funny reminder that he says lots of things I'm sure people don't understand! And it was very cute to overhear them talking about helping at home... thanks nursery, thanks Maeris! We love you!

Childbirth Class

2010-04-28T22:03:00.003-06:00

Attention anyone who's pregnant or if you know someone pregnant:

My awesome sister in law Becca is teaching another round of Childbirth Classes starting this Friday April 30th in Orem! She has a few spaces left in her class. The fee is $150/couple which is a great price! Her class covers a ton of important information to help you make informed decisions and learn great comfort measures for labor and more! She is an amazing teacher.

I was lucky enough to be at 2 of Becca's births (Robby & Luke) and I tell you what, this woman knows her stuff! I have learned so much from her example and seriously go to her constantly with questions - about everything!

Check out her website! And if now isn't a good time send her an email and see when her next set of classes might be...

There is so much to learn when it comes to pregnancy/giving birth.... I would recommend to people who are pregnant to take a class as SOON as possible so you can learn more about your options and make sure you find the right caregivers for you.

And this just happens to be one of my favorite topics and I'm just excited about it in general! So spread the word about Becca's class!

Family Pictures

2010-04-26T20:03:00.008-06:00

Saturday we were able to get some family pictures taken by Susan Monson! We went over to Vivian Park in Provo Canyon and had a lot of fun! And Susan got some great pictures!

I love getting family pictures taken because I'm always the one TAKING the pictures - it's fun to be in them! :) And I just love having great pictures to look back at - I've looked at these pictures over and over already!

Check out Susan's blog and email her to book a session! She is great and only charging $40 right now!!!! Seriously! That includes the photo shoot and a cd with some edited images & the rights to them! So great!

Robby turned 3

2010-04-06T23:34:00.008-06:00

April 2nd, 2010

All week we had been counting down the days till his birthday on our fingers... "Today is Monday, then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then you wake up Friday and it's your birthday!" He kept asking me, "say it all again!"

Rob wanted to see him in the morning so we woke him up before he had to go to work. The first thing Robby said when he woke up was, "Am I 3????!!!! Am I 3!!!???" He was SO excited!

He wanted to open something right away (and we had spoiled him beyond belief so we had some extra gifts) - he opened new diving sticks and was like, "AHHHH!" We asked him, "do you know what those are?" Robby: "No... (with an excited face)" ha ha.... when we explained he was ready to go swimming! So he took a bath...

Then when mommy was spending the morning trying to frost cupcakes (what was I thinking? Definitely doing a cake next time....) we got a visit from Tristan! One of Robby's favorite people! So Robby played with Tristan and the neat Moon Sand stuff she gave him...

...till it was time to go to his party! We had it at Rob's work...

*thanks to Liv for the awesome Robby Football player image! ;)
Which Robby said to me after looking at his invitation... "Mom, I want to be a football player now!"
Me: You are a football player. You play football with Daddy...
Robby: No I want to be a grown up now.
oh no! Oh Robby! You don't know how good you've got it!

Robby was not really in the mood for pictures... but we took them anyway...

And COSMO was nice enough to make an appearance at the party too! He and Robby are just such good friends...

And we didn't even get one good (Robby smiling) picture with him - we didn't warn Robby he was coming because up until the last minute we weren't sure if it was going to happen or not. So every time he said, "I want Dosmo to come to my party!" We would remind him that Cosmo is very busy and might not be able to come. Then we heard Cosmo was on his way, so we turned on the BYU fight song, and Cosmo burst into the room and you should've seen Robby! Oh man! Like a little monkey he climbed up into my arms. He was so surprised... he was definitely happy Cosmo was there but he was SO SCARED and didn't want Cosmo to come close enough to touch him. Cosmo even brought him a t-shirt. The minute Cosmo left Robby asked to put the tshirt on and if you ask him now what his favorite part of his party was he'll say without hesitation, "Cosmo."

Robby wearing his new Cosmo shirt, so excited to blow out his birthday candle on the cupcake.

He didn't even bother making a wish... pretty sure all his wildest dreams had already come true that day...

o
Our little family....

Robby opened gifts and was so excited about everything he got! And this kid was so spoiled! We're so grateful for the wonderful friends and family we have! He got lots of new playmobil sets to try out - we're venturing into a new era here! And of course ridiculously way too cute and crafty gifts from Liv....

Yeah. It's awesome.

Robby is so lucky and has so many awesome new things to play with! They busted open all the toys at the party and we played and hung out, eating pizza and treats...

Then I took Robby home and made him take a nap so we could hang out with Rob when he was done with work. We went to Cabela's and looked at the animals and walked around... one of Robby's favorite activities!

Followed by a late dinner at McDonald's in Lehi with the playplace....

Happy Birthday Robby! We love you, as you say, "ho ho ho hooooooo" much!

Comments

2010-03-06T16:05:00.001-07:00

So I kept getting TONS of random anonymous spam-ish comments so I turned on that word verification thing to see if they will stop... we shall see...

He was a mean knight...

2010-03-03T20:41:00.002-07:00

Oh Robby, Robby, Robby, Robby! Oh how I love that boy. He's hilarious. And he just gets funnier and funnier the older he gets.

The funniest thing lately is just how much he moves his mouth, head, and shoulders AND hands while he's talking! Super animated! It looks like he's chewing the words out of his mouth.

He's been so super into imagination, making up stories, and just overall talking non stop. The other day our friend Maeris, or as Robby says, "Sister Maeris" and her boy Kingston were over (she's his nursery leader and our awesome neighbor friend) and Robby would NOT let me have any kind of conversation with her. I could not finish my sentence because he kept yelling, "Sister Maw-wis! You want to hear anoder funny story? Ok..." and then go on and on about nothing but it was funny.

At one point during their visit Robby stops playing and says with a big smile on his face, "That makes me happy you are here Sister Maw-wis." It was so sweet.

Here he is showing her his card he got from his Babu & Dedu (my parents) for Valentine's day... he's "reading" it to her, but not really...

Translation: "It says Bab... u... and Dyed... u... and the funniest story in the whole world. So I found it. Right heeere. It says... ?? the King and a Knight and a Princess. Oh, and the knight... he was a mean knight..."

And then my camera cut it off but can you just see the expressive-ness of that face? I'll try to get some stories of his on tape but he usually stops when I pull out the camera... I was trying to sneak up on this conversation and it worked but then my camera failed me.

I had some funny Robby stories to share but can't remember them right now! One thing he said that was funny was when he told us, "I'm gonna marry Daddy. Then mommy." Oh, ok. That'll work out I'm sure. But it was very sweet.

Today when he was building a "nest" with rocks outside in the grass and he said it would be a home for someone... "for Jesus.... when he's a little baby..." And he's always asking me to get out the "Activity" aka, nativity, to play with.

Robby likes to watch tv. Yes he likes to watch a good "ho" (show) every now and then... or several times a day... ah we go through phases where I'm a lazy mom and let him watch lots of tv and times where we watch less but still... anyway the point is sometimes, usually in the afternoon, when he's relaxing with a little "ho" he will ask me, "Mom, can you get me water-juice, milk, and cheese crackers?" So I always water down his juice and we call it "water-juice" and then he also wants a cup of milk and cheese crackers are Cheezits.

So I talked about our nap time issue... today we wore ourselves out playing with a friend outside all morning and he fell asleep listening to Backyardigans music which was good cause I needed him to take a nap but then it was hard cause I wasn't sure how long to let him sleep cause I didn't want him to be up all night! I just love how sweet he looks while he's sleeping too... it's so hard to wake him up!

He's often sleeping sideways like this... doesn't look very comfortable...

Love his little face....

But I took a chance and woke him up and luckily he was happy! Also I opened the blinds so he could see that it had started snowing and he thought that was funny...

so we sat on his dresser and watched the snow for a while...

and had a little photo shoot with him making some funny faces...

Tonight while I was having a blast at a Stake Scouting meeting, and Rob was working late, my wonderful friend and visiting teacher Erin was nice enough to come and play with Robby. I came home to find they had had an awesome time playing...

Here's Robby as "Awesome Man" as he called it....

Yes, Robby, you are an awesome little man! :)

I beat-ed you!

2010-02-25T21:05:00.015-07:00

This is one of Robby's "Bobo brothers." Or as he says it, "bobo budders." So he calls it a bobo brother because it looks like the monkeys on Go Diego Go called the Bobo Brothers. When I was in MD for Nessa's wedding I found him a second monkey to get him to make a pair so he could have Bobo Brothers, plural. He was very excited. He even let Daddy hold one of his Bobo brothers in the car on the way to the zoo, hence, the monkey driving.

So without meaning to we have created a very very competitive little guy. It became a way to get him to do things - "let's race to the door!" "Race to the car!" "Bet you can't put your shoes on super fast!" And now it's turned into this constant yelling of "I beat-ed you!" Ah! Oh brother! What did we do!? And he doesn't like to lose but we are working on that.

Rob: "What do you say if daddy gets there fast?"
Robby: "Oh dang. Good job, daddy."

He doesn't like it when his friends say, "I beat-ed you" to him (which pretty sure they only started because HE was always making it a race, whoops) so we are trying to explain the whole, "if you don't want them to do it to you then don't do it to them!"

We knew this was a SERIOUS problem when we were in church last week.... we take the bread for the sacrament... sitting there quietly... and Robby looks up at Rob and says, kinda loud, "I beat-ed you!" He opens his mouth to show he's chewed his bread already. Oh my goodness. Seriously kid? Rob and I just looked at each other like, NO WAY! Ha ha ha... something's got to change.

I usually try to think through the psychology of what I'm saying and can't believe I didn't forsee the consequences of making everything a race! Sheesh! It was just so darn effective at a time where it was just so hard to get him to sit down and put shoes on or get dressed... Oh well. So we'll have to work on un-doing some of that...

We've been working on reading our scriptures at night before we read bedtime stories... with this we've been working on being reverent during scriptures... it's hard to sit still and listen to something you can hardly understand. We have him repeat words as we go which is always so cute... and I knew he was getting the picture when the other day he did a big sneeze and then said, "I'm horry my neeze was houd." (sorry my sneeze was loud) He's always making us smile.

I've been trying to come up with ideas for how to deal with this weaning off of naps business... he would probably still take a nap every day if I let him but it'd be from like 3-5 by the time he falls asleep and then he's up until like 10 pm. No thanks. I've tried having him do "quiet time" in his crib and gave him some books to read but all he ends up doing is yelling the BYU fight song. So, not much resting going on... and come 4:30 he is cranky and falling apart.... so tricky!

Something I've been wanting to try is getting some stories on cd for him to listen to during "rest time" to see if that would keep him quiet... Sunday I put him in his crib and put on some Primary songs on the ipod and within 30 minutes he'd actually fallen ASLEEP! I was shocked and thrilled. So I rented some cds to try from the library... today he was listening to a Backyardigans cd and fell asleep. Not so great though cause he fell asleep at like 4 pm... but I woke him up at 5 and he didn't go to bed too late. We'll figure it out. But I'm excited about this whole stories on cd idea.

Why have I been taking NO pictures lately? I'm gonna work on this! That also helps me remember what we've been doing and what things Robby's been up to...

He's my snuggly little boy.... I love it. He's always playing with my hair, likes to give hugs and kisses... this morning when we're eating breakfast he looks at me and smiles and says, "I hove you mommy!" I love listening to his sweet little prayers... "peese bwess I can have a brodder or a sister." Although when I said that the other day he added (during the prayer), "a brodder." Okay... we'll take either one!

I love that he LOVES playing with his cousins and friends but also is great at playing by himself! He'll get into his own world playing with his firefighter legos and spiderman guys... I heard him the other day playing with his toys and saying, "Can I be excused? No, you need to eat more. Okay...." ha ha ha! Love that they totally mimic what their own life is like in their play. So cute.

Today we did some preschool stuff while I watched Syd & Rob and our neighbor Ryan joined in for some of it too! We talked about My Sense of Touch and Sound... I'll leave you with the recap of the day!

We talked about what our hands can do and sang a bunch of songs including Where is Thumbkin - I drew smiley faces on their thumbs...

We looked at touch and feel books and tried to describe how they felt...

We buried animals in beans, dug them up, buried them and traded....

then we practiced our motor skills - using lids to fill up little cups... and spilling a lot in the process! But it was fun!

Drew in flour...

took a break and watched Backyardigans while I cleaned up all the flour! Look at these 3... Syd was totally snuggled up to Robby... so cute!

Traced our hands, talked about things we do with our hands, drew pictures....

Made "sound canisters" out of easter eggs then tried to match up the different sounds... then had fun opening them all up to see if the match was right! And then making a general huge mess of all the eggs! There were a LOT more than this...

Ate....

Lots of different "feels" - crunchy, chewy, soft... Syd described the apples as "skinny and wet." :)

And did some other stuff.... we had fun.

Wow it's been a while...

2010-02-23T22:00:00.009-07:00

....since I blogged! Where has the time gone? What the heck have I been doing anyway?

One thing that's taking up a lot of time and brain power this month is trying to diet/eat more healthy. Every time I get my period I decide, heck, I'm still not pregnant, might as well try to lose some weight! But this month I got serious about it.

Liv & I had just been talking about how we wanted to do some kind of cleanse, detox diet when I happened to be flipping through Glamour magazine and came across a "healthy detox plan" which follows up with a 12 week diet plan... anyway! We decided to give it a go and we both lost like 5 lbs the first week which was exciting - and made the week of no soda horrible-ness worth it.

So the first week was intense and difficult and now I'm trying to figure out how to maintain this whole "healthy eating" thing... low carbs, whole grains, tons of veggies.... the diet plan gave lots of great recipe suggestions - go see Liv's blog, obviously I am not a real blogger and will probably never get to posting about these! Maybe one day! And she also is good at creating her own variations of this healthy eating stuff. My favorite so far has definitely been the Turkey Chili!

Me on the other hand.... I spend hours staring at the recipes, making grocery lists, walking up and down the aisles looking for things like "wheat bran", and trying to figure out what to eat each day taking into account I don't want all these mounds of vegetables, berries, and lettuce to go bad.... this is seriously slowing my brain down. I just need to make a plan for a week at a time and stick to it. I say this, and I even do it to an extent but it's still not perfected. I'm working on it.

Also eating up time is spending time at the gym - I go with Liv and our kids go to the daycare together and never want to leave when we come back to get them so that helps me feel better about leaving him there! We've really stepped it up the last couple weeks with our weight training and cardio.... feeling sore.... I kind of love lifting weights. Liv loves cardio. We try to balance each other out.

I've also been doing a lot of reading. This means I'm not on my computer as often, hence, less blogging.... I just finished the Time Travelers Wife and before that Angela's Ashes.... I like reading but I have a problem where I feel like I need to read all the time till I'm done with the book! I have a hard time putting it down to do other things.... it's like a marathon to the finish! So I go through phases of reading a lot and not reading at all so I can get other things done. I've got Peeps on my "to read" shelf next to my bed, one Liv reccommended to me a long time ago, but it's a YA book so a faster and easier read so maybe I can multi-task? Maybe?

Been doing a lot of trading kids with Olivia and my neighbor too.... it's so great to spend a couple of hours with the kids at my house and then another day get a couple hours to myself to run errands ALONE! Today I got to walk around the mall for 2 hours trying to spend my birthday money... it was wonderful. And we are going to start doing more Preschool activities during this time we trade which is fun! Liv did some awesome stuff today with the kids - I'm sure she'll blog about it! :)

Oh, and did you notice I can't describe one aspect of my life right now without talking about Olivia. Oh wait, that's because we pretty much talk every day if not hang out every day. Yeah, she's that cool. Just sayin....

Another big thing in my life is my calling in the Primary in our branch. I love the people I work with and the kids are so great and there's always more I could be doing there so it's always on my mind...

I went to MD for Valentine's Day weekend for my sister Vanessa's wedding - welcome to the family, Matt! They are perfect for each other. So happy for them!

WOW this is a really long post! I'll do a separate one for what Robby's been up to lately and his funny little things.... that's the good stuff anyway! I just figured since I'm not keeping any journal really right now I might as well make some notes about what I've been doing too!

A TTC update for those interested - ha, if anyone made it this far into this post! I spent 6 months doing the Eager study and it was nice to have someone to talk to about this but my study nurse was no fertility expert. They only keep you in for 6 months if you don't get pregnant. It'll be a year next month since my miscarriage and I can't believe I'm not pregnant yet. So far this is the longest it's taken me to get pregnant (first time 7 cycles, 2nd time 9 cycles, now I'm on cycle 12....).

While this is definitely a trial in my life I'm grateful for the chance it's given me to learn and become somewhat of an expert on this subject! Obviously I'm no real expert or I'd be able to get myself knocked up, right? But I have had the chance to learn so much during this process and I absolutely love getting random phone calls from people who have some TTC question or miscarriage question... it brings me joy.

I'm talking with my doctor and figuring out where to go from here... I know I ovulate, I know my body CAN get pregnant - it's done it twice now - so there are a few things we can look at and try. It's emotionally draining and we're not rushing into any treatments of any kind... we'll see what happens! I know Robby really needs a little brother or sister to play with and I hope it happens soon!

Thanks everyone for your support and concern! I have felt so supported through all of this and like I said really feel like I've been able to find the positives in my situation and try to focus on that.

You deserve a big pat on the back if you actually read this whole thing! ;) With hardly any pictures too! How dare I? And now we see one more reason why I don't blog - because I can't do it without talking entirely too much! And now I'll stop.

Cafe Rio recipes

2010-02-23T20:55:00.010-07:00

So for my birthday we made Cafe Rio style salads - they were absolutely delicious. Tasted as good as the real thing. Mmmm.... Not claiming to have Cafe Rio's exact recipes by any means but after some tweaking around with different recipes these have seemed the best to us!

I'll try to start from the bottom up...

Tortillas - gotta have the uncooked kind, we get ours from Costco. Just throw them on the stove for a minute, I like mine barely cooked... but they taste so fresh! I know they sell them at Wal-Mart now too - near the cream cheese...

Rice - not a deal breaker but it's fun to make it a little fancy, Cafe Rio style too! I'm not sure exactly how A&B made the rice that night but here's one option:

4 cups water
2 cups white rice
4 tsp chicken bouillon
2 garlic gloves
1/2 onion, chopped
1 large lime
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped fine

Chop onion, garlic, and cilantro small
Bring water and lime juice (make it 4 cups liquid total) with bouillon to a boil.
When it comes to a boil, add onion, garlic, cilantro and rice. Cover and cook 25 minutes, or as long as package calls for.

Beans - just a regular can of black beans

Meat - love, love, love the Cafe Rio Sweet Pork. Here's the way it was cooked that night and we've done it lots of times this way and always loved it!

3-4 lb. pork roast (boneless)

1 1/2 cup brown sugar
3 cups salsa (I like to mix some mild & medium)
6-8 oz Coke

Mix sugar and salsa, pour over pork. Cook in crock pot for 8 hrs. on low. (Can do it for 4 hours on high but better on low!) When done shred with two forks and return to juice in crock pot and allow liquid to absorb.

Seriously it's soooo good! This size roast makes enough to feed 6 ish people and still have some leftover. I like to freeze the leftovers and then enjoy the rest another day!

Lettuce - just any kind of lettuce, I like to cut it thin, kind of shredded style

Guac - my sister Taba makes the best guac... she's so good at it though she doesn't use a recipe so I will tell you what goes in it and try to guess at the proportions.

4-6 avocados
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
juice from 1/2 a lime, or more to taste
lots of salt - ground sea salt
a little pepper

Tab - did I miss anything? I'm not as good at it as she is but it's a critical part of the salad!

Pico - I got the idea to try making my own pico one day when I was making Cindy's amazing black bean salsa - I can NOT find the link to that right now but I'll keep looking and update it - but the point is when doing some of the steps I realized, hey, this could be pico.... so I looked up some pico recipes and then tried it! This is the one I used and then I just added a bunch of green onions to it and I didn't add the jalapeno because we had a lot of kids eating with us and wasn't sure how spicy it'd be and we aren't in love with hot hot stuff anyway.

8-10 Roma tomatoes (seeded)
1/2-1 red onion (to taste)
1 jalapeno pepper (or more to taste)
2 medium cloves garlic
juice of one lime
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

Seed and dice tomatoes. Chop onion, jalapeno and garlic to a fine consistency. To these ingredients, add the fresh cilantro, salt, pepper, olive oil and lime. Mix well.

Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Best if served the next day.

Dressing - this is the best version of homemade dressing I've had! Got this recipe from the Kentland's Cookbook, it's Diane Romney's recipe (my SIL's MIL, does that make sense?).

Rio Grande Creamy Cilantro Salad Dressing
3 fresh tomatillos, cut into quarters
1 pkg Ranch Buttermilk Dressing mix
1 cup mayonnaise
1/3 to 1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup fresh cilantro
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 tsp crushed cayenne pepper

Combine all ingredients in a blender and refrigerate at least one hour.

I made this and the pico the night before last time I did this and they both tasted great that way! Also, I doubled the dressing recipe and then froze it in small portions to pull out for later use!

And ps, tomatillos look like funny green tomatoes with a crunchy wrapper on them and they are sticky and stinky (see to the left). But I washed them, cut them up and threw them in the blender and blended them first to make sure it looked normal and sure enough it did.

Cheese - if I'd thought of it I would've looked for some Cojita cheese like Cafe Rio uses but I didn't and we just used a shredded mexican blend and it worked great.

Tortilla strips - I love the crunchy tortilla strips on top but we just used regular tortilla chips which you can crumple up on top or use to eat as you go.

Garnishes - I like to add a handful of fresh cilantro on top and squeeze a lime wedge on the whole thing...

Sorry I don't have more pictures - boring! Oh well it's taken me forever to post these so I better just do it and not wait for pictures! :)

My darker 'do

2010-02-02T00:17:00.005-07:00

Before.....

After....

My beautiful cousin Stacy does my hair - check out her blog here!

You've had a birthday - shout hurray!

2010-02-01T22:31:00.004-07:00

Thanks for all the birthday wishes and messages! In some ways I can't believe a whole year has passed and yet so much has happened...

I had a great weekend! Celebrated with the girls by going out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory Saturday night! (girls email me your pictures! :))

Sunday the Primary sang Happy Birthday to me and look at the adorable little cake a friend at church made for me - thanks, Dareth!

Robby and I quickly devoured it when we got home from church!

We had a little party hosted by Andrew & Becca - made delicious Cafe Rio salads, more to come on that...

Played a little drinking game... ha ha.... I thought it would be fun to do a taste test with lots of different kinds of sodas! Rob was in charge and he did a great job!
We had 7 different kinds, all colas, and people tried guessing w/o knowing what kinds they even were but it was really hard! Even knowing what the options were it was pretty tricky!

Coke, Diet Coke, Diet Coke w/Lime, Coke Zero, Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Pepsi.

I'm pretty adamant about the fact that I dislike Pepsi so I knew I better get it right or I wouldn't be able to show my face again! Luckily I did! It was fun to actually test it out and even though it was really hard everyone did pretty well!

I do love being "Aunt Esther".... look at all these cute kids!

So it was a great birthday!

"One year older and wiser too!" It's true. And I don't mind getting older. I'm 27. I'm wiser for the experiences I've had this past year... it's been kind of a hard year but I'm grateful for my family and friends who support me and make my life so filled with joy!

Robby randoms....

2010-01-28T20:01:00.012-07:00

(pictures from today before haircut)

Robby was on the phone with his little uncle Andrew... he was saying thank you for the Christmas presents he'd sent to him. Robby was holding the football from him but wanted the teddy bear so he asked Rob to go get it. Rob jumped up and ran into his room to get it. Robby looks at me with a sweet little face and says, "He is a date wunner." (great runner) "My dad is a date wunner." So hilarious. I think I say that sometimes because that really is one of Rob's many strengths - if we forget something from the house he'll run back super fast and get it... he's good at hustling. Anyway it was just so funny to hear Robby say that.

Today we got his hair cut at Cookie Cutters. Last time he did a little better with the buzzers than this time. "I'm a hiddle bit scared," he kept saying. But he was so excited to look in the mirror and see his "cute piky hair."

(with his best bud Berto - looked like little twinners today!)

Today I curled my hair (trying new things) and then wore some fancier shoes. Robby looked at me and said, "Oooo, you hook hike a prin-hess now!"
Me: "Thanks, Robby."
Robby: "But maybe you hood wear a skirt."
Me: "Oh really? No, it's cold and it's not Sunday, I want to wear jeans."
Robby: "Well, you could wear the blue things... the blue things to keep your legs warm."
Me: "Tights?"
Robby: "Yeah! You can wear tights! And wear a skirt."
I wore tights for probably the first time in his life to church last week. I would rather be cold usually but I was trying some out. He's just so particular and observant.

Driving through the underground library parking lot - at "Pro-bo hibrary" as he calls it.... we see a group of older people walking to their car...
Robby: "Were dose people in the hibrary?"
Me: "Yes."
Robby: "Oh, I didn't hee them. Maybe next time I will hee them."
Sure. You are crazy. :) I didn't really say that but I did laugh.

"Mom, is your hair down?" He asks as I sit here writing this. As he has asked me at least 4 other times today.

Sometimes he sounds like he's German with all his extra h's and hhhhgghh sounds.

Robby: "Mom, I hove you ho ho ho HOOOOO much!"

Robby: "Can I comb your hair, mom? So you can be a prin-hess too?"

He is such an awesome kid.... I love him ho ho hoooo much. :)

Robby randoms....

2010-01-10T21:50:00.007-07:00

I just can't get enough of this little kid! He makes me laugh every day and constantly surprises me! He's always saying something that makes Rob and I look at each other like, did he really just say that?

Excited to eat apart his little gingerbread house...

That's right buddy.... go at it....

Robby steps on the scale in my bathroom, "what time does it say, mom?"
"Um... you weigh about 30 lbs...."

Putting a bag of apples in the scale at Macey's, "what time is it, mom?"
Mom: "Not what time is it - ask, 'how much does it weigh?'"
Robby: "How much it weigh, mom?"
Mom: "Look where the needle is - between what two numbers?"
Robby: "Um.... 2.... and..... 8!" (it was btwn 2 & 3 - hey 3 can kind of look like an eight.)
Mom: "Between 2 & 3! So it's 2 and a half! Like you!" Picture his big smile....

Obviously we need to work on teaching him the difference between telling time and measuring weight.

Sometimes we ask him a question and he won't know the answer so we'll tell him and then he says, "Ask me ______(whatever the questions is) and I will say _____ (the answer)." Like a re-do.

The other day I said something to him and then explained the word handsome, "it's like the guy version of beautiful. Do you think mommy is beautiful?" (yes I know I was obviously digging for a compliment but hey, what's the harm there?)
"Mmm, you are beautiful when you put on a preedy dress with a preedy scarf." He replies thoughtfully.
"Oooh, so you don't think mommy is beautiful right now?" (with no make up and my hair in a ponytail)
"No." He says quickly. Then with a very serious face he says, "Don't cry."
Ah! I didn't cry. I laughed. Very hard.

And the kid does nothing to improve my opinion of myself in a ponytail - my close friends will tell you - I HATE the way I look in a ponytail. I think I look drastically different and just horrible. Bleh. And it's just funny Robby is always telling me, "don't put ya hair up mom!" or "leave ya hair down mom!" It's so funny that he has an opinion on it! He used to be so bugged by it all the time, now he's more used to mom's ponytail... and knows if we're going to the gym it's a must.

His latest favorite book is a version of The Three Little Pigs. It's a weird version where the pigs have a waffle business and at the end the wolf's meanness is "burned" out of him! "The wolf was mean and now he's nice!"

Robby was pretty disappointed today to not have nursery - we just had stake conference. He loves seeing his friends there and loves his teachers. After church today he was making pretend phone calls to "nursery." "Oh hi... daddy is making my table... and... mommy is fixing my scarf.... ohhh! ha ha ha!"

Talking to "nursery" on the phone...

Daddy putting together the little Ikea table & chairs we got the other day... Robby "helping"...

So fixing his scarf - I'm crocheting him a little blue scarf since he's been wanting one. I'm almost done. But everytime he sees me sitting and reading or doing something else he'll say, "mom, work on my scarf!" And then he constantly wants to see how long it is! "Mom, let's see if it dovers my neck now!" then 2 minutes later... "let's see if it's honger and honger now, mom!" Promise Robby, it takes a little longer than that to make it "honger and honger."

Yesterday he woke up at 4:30 in the morning crying... I had barely fallen asleep (having random sleep issues lately) so I listened for a while seeing if he'd go back to sleep. He sounded very awake - not a good sign. I opened the door and he immediately said, "I spitt-ed up mom!" He was so scared and so sad!! My heart just broke for him!

All day yesterday he was burning up with a fever but didn't spit up anymore, thank goodness. He was happy to watch Dora and Little Einsteins on the couch and drink water-juice from a straw.... and when I put him to bed I rocked and sang him to sleep... he's still my little boy... and even though he was feeling better tonight I still held him and let him fall asleep in my arms...

New Year

2010-01-10T20:32:00.005-07:00

The adults played some games.... dutch blitz is one of the only games I'll play...

The kids ran wild... I'm not even allowed to post a picture of the boys considering the outfit my son put on!

Ate a lot of yummy food. A LOT.

Passed around this sweet hunk of chub.... look how big he's gotten!!! (Baby Luke)

Watched the ball drop on the East Coast online with the kids with some bubbly...

Look at that happy face!

Then we big kids stayed up playing games, rang in the new year with some more Martinelli's... a lovely evening.

Some of our New Years Resolutions/Goals include:

-Read Book of Mormon as a family/couple
-Read 1 book a month (already read one for January - The Last Song, liked it much more than I thought I would and am excited for the movie to come out!)
-Get pregnant (Rob says that's can't be a goal but why the heck not?)

and some other things.... already not doing great at "eating healthy" but what's a girl to do when that time of the month comes around and you so desperately do not want it to... I figure I deserve to eat whatever I want at that time! And so I do.

Hope everyone's year is starting out right! Happy 2010!

Childbirth Classes

2010-01-07T19:20:00.003-07:00

My wonderful sister in law, Becca, is starting to teach childbirth classes again!

With her fourth child, Luke....

You can look at her website here and email her at rebecca@gentlebirthchoices.com.

Whatever kind of birth you are planning this class covers all kinds of useful information! I firmly believe in educating yourself about all of your choices and options when it comes to pregnancy, labor, and birth!

So if you or anyone you know is expecting and interested in taking classes email her or feel free to ask me any questions as well!

Christmas

2009-12-28T16:14:00.004-07:00

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! And it's weird to think we still have New Year's to celebrate since Rob's at work today... looking forward to another short work week for him!

But seriously, is Christmas really over? My last post was Thanksgiving! Bah! I'm going to do better at blogging - at least I want to do better at recording more funny Robby stories so what better place to do so than my blog?

Christmas Eve

Christmas morning...

Christmas Evening... acting out Nativity with cousins!

if you want to see a million more pictures you can go here.

It was wonderful to have so much family time this Christmas! So fun to have Daddy home from work to play all day! And happy we have cousins near by. We also visited Rob's grandparents and my Gran Christmas Eve and it was a wonderful activity!

I just feel so blessed to have such a wonderful little family! I'm grateful for the gospel and good news of Christ! Merry Christmas!!!

~THE PARSONS~

Maternity pics

My little man

Merry Christmas!

little update....

Happy Birthday Honey!

Happy Halloween!

Fall fun!

A healthy baby....

Breaking Dawn

Soccer

Lately...

Sooo....

What to do? What to do?

Time flies....

Celebrate!

Stuff I meant to blog about but never did...

Ready for tomorrow

Late Happy Father's Day!

Hurray for summer!

Baby stuff blog...

Patience

baby steps...

FrontSight

Robby is turning 4!

Holiday

Pincocks

Thanks for caring

Sad day - but not what you think

Me oversharing - what's new?

Five Guys... and more...

busy busy busy...

The Holidays...

Gymnastics Recital

Grateful

Happy Birthday to My Handsome Older Man

Marie Diane Jeppson

Gymnastics! And Annie...

Childbirth Classes

Diving board

Robby update

Trying not to think about it...

MARYLAND

Hill Family Reunion

Am I a brother?

False alarm

Road trip - HELP!

*July 4th*

Grateful for Robby

more to come...

HSG - Hysterosalpingogram

The latest...

Big Boy!

Free Early Pregnancy Class

Summer buzz

Consultation

Next step

Eclipse t-shirts - want one?

Utah Fertility Center

Do the "hope"

Childbirth Class

Family Pictures

Robby turned 3

Comments

He was a mean knight...

I beat-ed you!

Wow it's been a while...

Cafe Rio recipes

My darker 'do

You've had a birthday - shout hurray!

Robby randoms....

Robby randoms....

New Year

Childbirth Classes

Christmas

July 4th