what?

I don't really have a story to go along with these pictures other than that Axel is pretty stinking cute...

We are still here, just busy, Axel has a cold. Major bummer. I woke up with it this morning. Boo! But that's what winter is about, colds, flu, crappy roads, yada, yada, yada, there really is nothing good about it after the holidays are over.

I am so looking forward to spring! Even though I will be huge and we have too many stray cats, so I wont be able to plant my garden this year, (unless I can convince Kory to do it for me or my mom). I am still excited. I can't wait to go for walks and see all the flowers in bloom, I love Easter and Mother's day too.Wahoo! I am excited.

Anyway I love spring, I am really excited for my tulips this year. I planted a bunch of new tulips last year, and I can't wait for them to all fill my flower bed! And maybe this year I will get a few more strawberries from my plants, we got like 3 from each plant. Axel loved it tho, he totally hated them at first, but learned to love them. He had fun picking them and just eating them, and even though they tasted tart, he eventually enjoyed them. He loved our garden, we would go out and pick stuff and chop it up for dinner, and he just thought it was pretty neat. I did too, it was my first attempt, and although my tomatoes died and most of the plants we planted didn't really work out. We did get some yummy squash, zucchini, peppers, corn, beans and a teeny tine cantaloupe. (which the birds finally ate, or the neighbors dog)

And then of course I am SO excited for summer, this summer will be somewhat of a challenge, with a new baby to add to the mix, but even still, the idea of warmer weather and watermelon, oh how I could really go for a big bowl of cold crisp watermelon right now. Sigh, sigh, sigh... Something I really miss about being pregnant during summer, although with this pregnancy I would probably have thrown it up and hate it now, so I should count my blessings.

Just a few things

I love my boy, he is quite unique, and to be quite honest, I can not even fathom loving anyone more than I love him. (I know I know, somehow you just do) But each day he fills my day with so much joy, it goes by so fast tho, I feel like it was yesterday that he was in my tummy. It just went by so fast...

Here are a couple stories I wanted to share, before they get lost in my mommy brain forever...

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Anyway, yesterday I was tending my neighbors 3 kids.

Some background a little, in Axel's room I have a toy bin, and each drawer has different things in them.
The top has stuffed animals, the middle has bigger random toys, and the bottom has 5 buckets with links, blocks, cars, balls, and rattles in them. (I did this so we could find all his basketballs, since that really is the only toys he plays with regularly)

The idea of the buckets (in a perfect world) is that they can take one bucket out at a time, play with it and put it back in exchange for a new one.

So the oldest neighbor girl, opened the drawer and proceeded to take them ALL out. Axel saw this and started shouting "HEY HEY HEY" and walked over to her and began putting them all back in his drawer, and closed his drawer shut. He does share, but we have rules at our house, he was just enforcing them :)

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Later that night, Axel was playing with his toys in his room before bedtime, and he saw a stuffed animal on the floor, to which he said "Ah OH" he went over picked it up, opened the top drawer, put it in and closed it. I WAS SO PROUD!

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Each night before dinner we pray, we try really hard to get Axel to say Amen by emphasizing it at the end (not really an unrealistic task since he says things like "Er you go mama" and "basketball" But for whatever reason he just did not get it.

Well on this particular night, I was particularly exhausted, and we just said our prayer normal, no loud amen, or prompting him to fold his arms. (What can I say, we are not perfect parents ALL the time :) ) We then proceeded to dish up our plate.

Then Kory looks over at Axel and sees him head bowed, eyes squinting and fumbling with his hands over his tummy, and says "What are you doing buddy?"

To which Axel lifts his head up throws his hands in the air and replied "MEN A MEN"

Just when you think they are not listening :)

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Another night we were going through animals sounds

Axel what does an Elephant say? "BRRRRR"
What does a Bear say? "RARRR"
What does a Lion say? "RARRR"
What does the Fishy say? "pop pop pop" (imagine your lips popping)

What does daddy say?
Small pause "AHHHHHHH!" (imagine high pitch scream of a girl)

What does Mommy say?
LONG PAUSE
"ummph" (imagine a low grunt of exhaustion)
****
Anyway my point to these stories, and what I realized this week is how much our actions, and attitudes influence our children, even at such a young age. They pick up on sooo much, good traits, AND bad traits. Right now our family is in a good place, we have things more organized, I am not nearly as sick as I used to be, and things are just easier. It seems like even my calling is more doable. (something I really thought was not possible, since it has been really hard)

We are finally seeing some of the reward to all of our hard work, not that hard work has to be rewarded but it's kinda nice when you do. One day I will get to post all the exciting changes and additions to our home. We have some finishing touches to do before we can post about it. But until then we are doing pretty good. Kory said last night that this is our year of fruition. To which I said "What does that mean?" and he said the year all the hard work is coming to fruit. I couldn't agree more.

It's a....

***I have added pictures to this now!****

Today we had our 20 week ultrasound, and I had anticipated that today would go by REALLY slowly for me because I have been dying to know the gender of our baby, well duh right?

But at 8:30 am this morning I got a call from Kory saying his car was overheating on his way to work! FETCH, and only us right?

So between going and picking him up and dropping his car off and coming home again, just to turn around and pick him back up, today went by quite quickly.

However, the minute I sat in that chair and had that TV in front of me it felt like time just froze. This wasn't the same tech as the one we had with Axel or the one we had for this baby's first one at 10 weeks, who was ultra talkative and informative. She was very quite the whole time, so that made me really nervous, and I kept asking,

"Is that a normal size for her or his I mean it's head, leg neck abdomen?" and she would answer yes, very normal, or spot on. So that was a relief, and I thought that hearing all that would put me at ease, but nope, I still was dying to know if it was a he or a she. (Which brings me to a point, I don't know how people can NOT find out. I know a few people who choose not to know, that would drive me absolutely crazy.)

She showed us the face,

and the feet, which we got a really adorable picture of them crossed and together...
And then she said "Are you interested in knowing the sex?"

"uh YES PLEASE!" was my response

So she got a good angle and said...

"this is the babies leg, and this is it's other leg do you see that?"

" and right here, you will see NO BOY PARTS, so you're having A Girl!"

So there you have it, Kory was right all along, and I my intuition was right as well.

When I started this pregnancy the idea of a girl was like, I guess if it has to be a girl, I'll take it. But as we neared today, the idea of a girl became more and more exciting to me, and just felt right.
I am excited to have a baby girl, I knew one day I would have or want one, I just didn't know it would be so soon. I think Kory will be a very good papa to his daughter, and Axel will be so gentle with his little sister. He will make the perfect older brother. And lets just be honest, having a little dancer girl of my very own!? Heck ya, I will keep her!

Merry Christmas AND a Happy New Year!

Can I just say I am so glad this year is over? Not that we had a terrible year or anything, just a year that was quite exhausting for us, but with that said, we GREW a lot. 2010 for us was "the year of Growth" for our little family.

But before I get into that, I just want to share our Christmas.

We had a pretty great one, (Christmas eve on the other hand not so great.) I don't know how many of you know this about my husband (actually a lot of you do know) but he waits until the very last minute to make a decision when it comes to gifts. Which is why he hates Christmas I think, because I nag and nag and nag him all month long about what I should do for this person or this person. I come up with fabulous idea after idea, and they never are good enough for that person, and because I can never come up with the "perfect gift" (is there such a gift?) I always end up going out Christmas Eve to pick up last minute gifts.

So anyway, on Christmas Eve, I was pretty proud of how quickly I got our gifts done, (all before lunch time I may add) all I had to do was run to the store grab some last minute grub for our Christmas dinner and breakfast and then I could spend the rest of the day wrapping presents, or so I thought...

But when I got home I remembered that in order to cook our delicious Christmas dinner I had to first clean out the week old ham juice that spilled out onto our oven floor last week when someone asked me to cook the ham for our ward dinner (side note, I am not a bad cook, I am a decent cook, I make balanced meals that are MOST of the time worth eating) However, I do not EVER cook things like ham, or whole turkeys. So I had no idea that putting a tray at the bottom of the oven would be wise to catch all that grossness. Needless to say our house REEKED of not just Ham juice but BURNT HAM JUICE all week, and literally our entire house filled with smoke every time we tried to use the oven.

So to make our Christmas better I decided I better clean the oven first. How hard could it be anyway right? Well, if you have never done it before, MAN it is NOT something you should do while pregnant OR on Christmas Eve, because it will for sure ruin your evening.

So the rest of the Christmas eve I spent mostly in bed, because my back KILLED. Kory helped me wrap presents but our Christmas eve was kind of a flop. We did however still let Axel open up one present before. (Jammies of course :) ) In the future he will not be so happy about that... but until he actually cares, we will keep doing this our way. (he was pretty tired, we kept him up pretty late because Kory was trying to move a bunch of stuff out of his room)

But Christmas, was much much better. My back still killed, and still kind of does. I am pretty sure I pulled something or I am just at that stage in this pregnancy.

But both Axel and Kory slept in until 10:30 that day, I was not complaining since I had a little "Santa" Stuff to do before. We took oodles of pictures and I wish you all wanted to see them all but I know you don't, so here are just a few of my favorites.

Axel was sooo funny to watch this year. He inspected every present and you could tell he was happy about each and every one. (Although his favorite gifts were the soccer and basketball, once he opened those he kept them by his side the whole time.

He thought the stocking was pretty neat

This was our tree this year.
He got a whole new collection of books...
And some blocks and other trinkets...but his favorite of course was the basket ball...and the soccer ball, he thought they were perfect size to ride his new skateboard
he and dad skating together...
We had a simple Christmas Kory and Axel got me a cutting mat and rotary cutter for my sewing which I have been loving and Kory cleared out Axel's room and moved all my stuff down stairs to my new craft room. (Which is why I have been MIA)

Axel and I got Kory a nice big tool box to organize all his tools.

After like 2 hours of watching Axel open presents we went to my parents house for my side of the family Christmas. We ate a delicious food, exchanged presents, and played the white elephant gift game. My mom made each family this year a quilted advent calender, I wish I would have taken a picture that day, I packed it away before I did, but I will take a picture next Christmas, it was really spectacular!
Here is our Family and the WHOLE family in the picture below.

After that we went to spend some time with Kory's parents/and a few siblings. We played some games and ate some good food then went home and did some more moving :) before going to bed.

We ended 2010 with a MUCH more organized home, and are glad 2010 is over with. It's like we get to start over! That is how I look at it. Not that 2010 was awful, it was just a hard one for us.

It had a lot of good stuff in it tho like...
Axel grew sooo much that year, most of his firsts happened in 2010!
He crawled, he talked, and walked all this year (yep in that order), and so many many other things.

One of the biggest events this year is we found out we were pregnant, and although we almost lost this baby, he/she is still here growing strong and we are SO excited to have it join our family in a few months.

WE have learned soooo much this year about faith and patience and hard work. Nothing comes easy, but when you work for it the pay off is SO much more rewarding, than just having things handed to you.

The skills Kory has acquired as he has been building his studio amazes me every day. He has learned so much, we both have. We couldn't have done it with out all the help and support from those around us. When I see all that he has done towards it, with little to no help from me, I am just amazed by him. I married a pretty incredible guy, with pretty incredible talents. He also some how managed to hold down a great job, be an awesome husband/father, and have 4 callings (yeah I said 4 at once) this year. Sheesh! He makes me tired just thinking about all he does each and everyday.

I know 2011 will be a rewarding year for us, we have many things to look forward to in the next coming months, from the house/studio being finished, to a brand new baby! eek we are half way!

Anyway speaking of halfway... Friday we find out what we are having. SO here is where you get to vote, I am torn, Kory is 100% sure we are having a girl. At this point I am just hoping all is healthy and ok, this pregnancy has been a tough one for me, I am not going to lie. Every night we pray that our baby will grow healthy and strong. So boy or girl I just want a clean bill of health for our little worm.

Happy 2011 everyone!

PS CONGRATS TO my good friends Jon and D who had a baby girl Opal Mae Browning yesterday night! Can't wait to meet her someday...