disneyland 2012

once upon a time we went to Disneyland. we got home a month ago. yes, it's really been that long. (I'm telling myself more than anyone - I need a good scolding).

I suppose I don't need to write much, considering we went on our first trip a little more than 8 months ago - but the trip was different, so I'll share a little.

we had the same strategy with driving - staying with Tim's wonderful grandparents in st george to split up the drive to & from. we stayed in a new hotel that was further away and required a shuttle. we drove our own van instead of renting a car. and we didn't go to San Diego this time, just disneyland & newport beach. so our trip was a week versus nearly two like last time.

our trip was near the end of April, last time it was in September. Tim & I both agreed that we enjoyed September more. though we missed spring break madness, there were still more people & longer lines in April. the weather was also phenomenal in September and April seemed a bit hot. I know I shouldn't complain - I've heard summertime is an absolute disaster. I think we may have spoiled ourselves with our first trip.

besides all that, our trip was excellent. there were elements that I enjoyed far more this time around - like the fact that Ava had grown up a bit and was soooo into the characters. in some cases, she was more excited than her big sister, which I didn't think was possible! the girls were absolutely delightful and as long as we kept them fed & hydrated, they were super easy to please.






























we also surprised emerie this time, because this time around she knew what Disneyland was. I didn't think I could handle hearing her whine to go beforehand, so we kept it a secret. we were asked to record her response when we told her, and it was pretty great. she was so excited, but she hated that I was recording her. so she asked I turn off my phone. I did, and sadly we didn't capture her big response. there was whooping and hollering and dancing. oh well, I think what we caught was pretty cute, too. (I apologize if the video doesn't work - first time doing it this way from my phone).

we saw a lot of characters & did lunch with the princesses again. I'm so glad we did, because lines to see princesses elsewhere were over an hour long. we did stand in line for over an hour for tinkerbell, but emerie insisted on meeting her. it ended up being worth it because emerie told tinkerbell & her friend all about her "talent" - coloring. it was just darling. the girls very favorite this time was tigger & pooh - tigger played tag with the girls for a few minutes and they just squealed with delight. gosh I love Disneyland.



























the food is the best part for Tim & I. we made sure to get a temporary fill of the monte cristo sandwich & my friend holli told me about the caramel corn in California adventure. yuuuuummmm. so much good food that my pregnant self is drooling just thinking about it. and I may or may not be counting down the days until we can go again. since we'll be California residents soon, we can get discounted yearly passes and I'm seriously considering it.
























this trip was so fun & a huge thank you goes out to my husband for planning it. I had been so sick with pregnancy and I'm sure the girls were so stir-crazy. this trip was a breath of fresh air and needed by our little family. Tim is always looking out for us & taking good care of us. I love vacations with our little family. :)


loves,
megan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

wow. just wow.

blogging has obviously not been my strong suit lately. there are so many posts to write that my head is spinning a little just thinking about it.

first, we went to Disneyland...and now it's been a MONTH since we were there. of course I'll need to do a separate blog post about that. but later.

and while I would love to do separate blog posts about all the things happening in our life right now, this one post will need to suffice. moving right along...

second, we found out the gender of baby #3.
IT'S A GIRL!
most - if not all - of you, already know this news thanks to Facebook and instagram.
but it's true, we are specializing. :)
we were told by several people that we do pink well or make the cutest girls and that's a great compliment. better than the other reaction we got by some people - the reaction of, "oh, it's ok. you might get a boy someday. hang in there."
hang in there?!
now it's time for my soap box...
when we received this reaction, we knew it was obvious these people didn't know Tim and I very well. Tim and I are thrilled about another girl. honestly, I couldn't be happier. we both got teary-eyed at the ultrasound and not because we were sad. Tim is not the kind of man that demands a boy or needs that testosterone in our home to stay sane. (though we are looking into low maintenance male animals so he's not so outnumbered). our family does well with princesses, flowers, singing, dancing, girl drama, and so many hugs & kisses we lose track.
simply put, girls are amazing.
my best friend and I talk often about having all boys or all girls - she has all boys and she receives negative comments constantly, similar to what we have received recently. I'm confident that "specializing" is not a negative thing, but a compliment.
we don't think of having three girls as a problem - "you guys aren't supposed to have boys" or "some people just can't handle boys".
Tim's patriarchal blessing tells us we will have sons and daughters. but we have felt that it won't be in this life. instead, my miscarriages could have been boys that only needed our family for a short time. our girls' husbands may be those sons. or really, we will only know in the eternities.
this ultrasound seemed more for my benefit than anything else. (i had to KNOW). Tim knew it was a girl. he's always right. he always knows. and he's always so happy.
we are blessed with little girls. and I don't like to think it's because we can't handle boys. it's just because we do girls really, really well :)
ok, off my soap box.
in related news (and yes, there is a lot to say about the fact that we are having a girl)...one reason we were so thrilled it was in fact a girl was because emerie absolutely refused to have anything else. I prayed the entire way to the ultrasound for a girl so we didn't have to deal with emerie being upset. that may seem silly, and in retrospect - she knew just like Tim did, but I still prayed for more bows and frills. emerie's reaction? "I know. and thanks." :)






third, Tim & I traveled to San Francisco.
right before we left, I learned that I had a severe sinus infection and pink eye.
it made the trip interesting. :)
I couldn't smell or even taste for most of the trip. my sinuses made my head fairly miserable. and pink eye is just a joke. just rotten.
despite my sickness, we did so many fun things. I had one really good day where I didn't feel quite as miserable and was able to see most of the city during that time.



























fourth, we came home to sick girls, Ava especially. poor little thing. I shared the sickness quite well before I left and now we are stuck inside for the next while so the girls can get all better. Ava has a double ear infection, sinus infection, and pink eye. Emerie has pink eye and is "on watch" for the sinus infection. Emerie can't go back to school just yet and unfortunately, she won't be able to perform in her dance recital this weekend. the girls were well taken are of while we were gone and I'm sure they are dreaming of those days playing with their aunts rather than stuck inside with me right now.



fifth, Tim accepted the offer to go San Francisco. adobe made it pretty difficult to refuse. on top of an amazing compensation package, they are giving us a relocation package - something we wouldn't have had with San Diego. this means everything is packed and moved for us. we are moved into temporary housing and given a rental assistant when we arrive to find a new, more permanent place to live. everything we could possibly think of is taken care of. that alone is a once in a lifetime opportunity. the only downside we've found is that maya cannot stay in the temporary housing with us and will have to be moved separately, after we find a permanent place. fortunately, we have some friends that have been fighting over who gets to watch her.
Tim and I both commented that THIS must be what it feels like when a relocation is right. San Diego was so incredibly stressful. this possibility has seemed too easy. sure, things have come up, like with maya, but then friends offer to help and everything is better again.
we are excited for this new chapter and adventure in our lives. I get nervous and teary when I think about leaving Utah and our family & friends. I get butterflies when thinking about making a completely new "family" out of strangers - it makes me feel like a little kid on the first day of school.
but overall, the feeling has been a happy one. and visitors are welcome. :)
we still say that nothing is certain until we are actually there, but it's fun to start planning.

sixth, there was a mother's day in the middle of all that craziness. we weren't in town for much of it - we got home from San Francisco that day and I received the best present I could have ever hoped for - seeing my girls after a long week!! I miss them so incredibly much when we're away (to the point that i cry when i see pictures their aunts have lovingly taken for us, so tim has to hide them from me) and I couldn't wait to see them and get their perfect little hugs and kisses. they didn't disappoint. of course there were other things that contributed to a great day - like my amazingly sweet husband and time spent with in laws - but the girls stole the show and my heart. ;) I love being a mom.

see?!? so much has happened in such a little time - and forget all the little posts I could have done with the little things we do everyday in between the big things. I hope that after this illness, I will get back to being a better blogger, mother, wife, friend...the list could go on. :)


loves,
megan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

lost that baby chub

little miss Ava turned 18 months old this month. time sure flies when you're having fun! and fun she is. she is an absolute delight.


she had her well baby checkup appointment the day after we got home from Disneyland (post to follow soon...I'm trying to keep up with life lately and kinda failing), and her stats are:

height: 30.7 in (22nd percentile)
weight: 20.7 lbs (4th percentile)

she has grown length wise and is still the same % for weight. no concerns. she's small but she's always been small.

her doctor told me that she had lost her baby chub and was beginning to look like a little girl finally. that thought made me extremely sad. why can't they just stay little?! the one redeeming thought was the fact that we were stopped constantly during our trip last week and asked how old she was. when we'd inform people she was 18 months old, they didn't believe us. she was just "too small". we also received a few judgmental glances, as though we were starving our child. nothing like that, people. goodness. Ava will be like emerie - always the smallest kid in her class. and that's ok. :) I guess a part of them is staying little. ;)

so now comes the little things that I want to remember about Ava at 18 months old. the little things that make our little miss who she is.

- she loves technology. blame her daddy for that one. the girl cannot be in the vicinity of a phone, remote, or gadget with buttons without NEEDING to play with it. it becomes all she thinks about and all she wants to do. we've learned to hide things really well and others who come around eventually learn. :)

- she has amazing eyes. they started out blue and recently, they can't decide what they want to be. there's a small amount of brown, a lot of blue, and sometimes they are green. when the light hits them, they literally sparkle. our girls were blessed with sparkly eyes. the thing that makes her eyes unique is her lashes. extremely long and DARK. the girl will never have to wear mascara if she doesn't feel like it. she definitely got her daddy's lashes and I'm grateful one of our girls were blessed with them. we get comments & stopped by strangers on a daily basis about her eyes. I'm hoping emerie won't get some sort of complex, because Tim & I think her eyes are incredible, too.

- she makes the best faces. hands down. I never knew our sweet, calm baby would grow up and be so funny. my aunt calls her our little ham and the nickname fits her personality.


- she's very social. for some reason, Tim & I were given super social children. now, Tim & I aren't anti-social or anything, but we don't go out of our way to talk to strangers. that can no longer be the case when our children are around. Ava flirts with every person she meets. and they happily play along. she loves adults, children, and especially babies.

- she is still our little thumb sucker and I'm so sad that we need to end that stage soon. we wanted emerie to be completely done with the binkie by the time she was 2, and I assume we'll need to do the same with Ava's thumb. but gosh darn it, it is far too cute. the best is when you hand Ava her Minnie lovie, her thumb instantly flies to her mouth. it's incredibly endearing.

- she is very independent. she insists on feeding herself almost exclusively - which is great, but can be messy. fortunately, she caught on quickly and utensils don't seem to pose a problem for her. she also wants to do anything emerie does. it's darling to watch, until Ava's small little size gets in the way (like at the playground). she's still willing to try to keep up and we appreciate her perseverance.


- she will always be our cuddly baby girl. she may be exploring her independence more and more, but she still just wants to cuddle. it feels so wonderful when she comes up to you and just wants to be held and snuggle for awhile. despite the fact that it's a daily occurrence, it never gets old.


- she is in fact lactose intolerant. it's not as bad as it could be, but she's still in the early stages so it's worse than it will be as she grows up (hopefully). right now we are instructed to introduce small amounts of dairy back into her diet every 3 months, in the hope that she grows out of it. so far, it's been fine. she & emerie do really well with the soy milk. we were bad parents and fed her lots of dairy at Disneyland. but it was pretty hard to find stuff at particular restaurants that wasn't mac and cheese - and that's one of her very favorites. we will have to get stronger and keep her away. since giving her soy milk, her appetite has returned and she eats really well. she will often have a roll in one hand while playing, or need a bag of fruit snacks to snack on constantly.


- she's talking! and not a little - a lot. we counted before her well baby appointment and we counted about 40 words on a frequent basis. she has added more in the short time since then, too. precocious like her big sister.

Ava is an absolute joyful child. she hates being sick and teething can be a nightmare, but overall she is the happiest & most smiley baby. we certainly feel blessed to have her as our daughter, let alone part of our lives. we love you little miss Avalynn!


loves,
megan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

featured

emerie's 3rd birthday party is featured on ohdeedoh, part of apartment therapy, today! a friend of mine suggested I submit it and I was notified yesterday that it would be published today! how exciting!

you can check it out here:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/best-kids-parties-alice-tea-party-my-party-169203

thanks to everyone (especially my husband) who helped me with her party!


loves,
megan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

easter 2012

so last year, Tim had the great idea of making our Easter tradition different from what it has been. in the past we crammed everything into that one little Sunday and it was overwhelming & we both felt the reason for the holiday was rushed over. here we spend a full month at Christmas time on the reason for the season, and Easter got about 15 minutes.

so this year we decided it would be different and I'm happy to say we stuck to it. we talked about the reason for Easter throughout the week and prepared emerie for the fact that the Easter bunny was coming Saturday and we would have lessons about Jesus on Sunday.

our Easter week was busy. I spent too much time in the kitchen making my yearly tradition of rice krispie treats for gifts. I make my rice krispie treats differently than any recipe I've ever seen and that means they are gooey - and Tim tells me it makes them extra good.


I don't make them often, usually just around this time of year, and so it becomes a special gift for neighbors, people we visit & home teach, and our families. i usually attach an Easter message I've made & printed, but this year I found out about a wonderful book sold through Deseret Book. it's called "celebrating easter" and it's simply beautiful. it gives scriptures and correlating songs, along with lovely pictures. it's inexpensive, so I would recommend it to anyone.

before Easter, our family went into mystery-solving mode. and it took a lot of our Easter energy. Ava has had troubles with her tummy since birth. she had bad acid reflux after being born and that got better as time went on. it's always terribly difficult to even sense there is a problem with her because she is happy all.the.time. even as an infant, the most she would do is grunt.

when she started solids she had trouble with her extrusion reflex and that took about a month longer to disappear than it should. but again, that happens and she loooooved her food, so it was never viewed as a problem.

well, lately there has a been a problem with her eating. she will still try most everything & love it. she's not picky. but she stopped eating as much. not in a toddler "I'm not going to eat as much and start getting picky" way. she would spit up or throw up after most meals. certain foods made her diarrhetic. my doctor just told me to watch what she ate so we could see what was going on. she never had any rashes, so we didn't want to say she had any food allergies.

so this Easter week we narrowed it down to milk & milk products. so we're mystery-solving and taking milk out of the equation from now until her next appointment in 2 weeks. we bought all soy milk and we've stopped giving her lots of cheese and dairy. already, the spitting up & throwing up has stopped. we did give her some funeral potatoes with cheese & sour cream in them, not knowing how much or how little would affect her. she had diarrhea. so we cut it out even more and her appetite has returned!


I think we're getting somewhere and it's such a relief! I'm just sad I couldn't pinpoint the problem faster - it's been nearly 6 months since she started drinking cow's milk. I've read that it's extremely rare for a toddler to be lactose intolerant - that develops much later in life. but considering we still have zero rashes (so I'm hesitant to all it an allergy) and excellent results since cutting out most dairy, I don't know what to think.

I didn't have much energy this year to do a big and wonderful Easter basket like years past. this pregnancy has been extremely difficult with sickness and exhaustion so I did what I could. that involved buying the pre-filled eggs at the store and just a couple gifts. things weren't as organized as I would like, so our Easter egg hunt involved Tim inside keeping the girls super entertained and me sneaking out around the house to hide the eggs about 15 minutes before the hunt.

but the girls adored the egg hunt - emerie was so happy that the sneaky Easter bunny came to our house. we believe that Ava felt as though she was just cleaning up in the beginning, but watching emerie got her more & more excited. in the end, they both enjoyed their spoils!


the rest of Saturday was spent running errands and the girls did extremely well. we stopped to get Tim's haircut and I took the girls to the sweet tooth fairy for some Easter treats. it was one of those moments that I will never forget. not because it was horrible, but because it was everything I wanted it to be. we sat in the store, eating our selections. the girls would make silly faces and want me to take pictures. we talked about girlie things and it was bliss. I love these little girls! and cupcakes during daddy's haircuts must be a tradition.


after a busy day, we found a park near our house and discovered that it was quite a little gem. a beautiful fishing pod, great trails, and a cute little playground. I love spending time with our little family. I appreciated the Saturday morning session of conference this year and it's focus on family time. I know someday our girls will grow up and marry and create new families of their own. so I'm soaking up as much time with them as possible.





Tim was on call this Easter week and Saturday night was the worst night he's ever had. 7 calls, each very long. Tim probably got a total of 3 hours of sleep, and that includes me letting him sleep in an extra hour. I probably got around 5, and that's not good after a king day of errands and no nap. so, unfortunately, we skipped our 9 am church.

we did wake up eventually, got the house ready, and we did lessons on Jesus and the resurrection. I used the nursery manual and sunbeam manual. I loved watching emerie just soak up all the information. and Ava never misses the chance to say, "Jesus!". it was special and I'm grateful for Tim's suggestion last year.

we had easter dinner with Tim's family. the food was delicious and I actually had seconds. that's a first in months. but hey, when stuff actually tastes good, you have to take advantage! Tim's parents planned a kid egg hunt and emerie and Ava were spoiled with fun. they got a good haul and I'm excited to raid it. then there was an adult egg hunt and mine & tim's team did pretty well! we had a cute little Ava helper and she was a big help. I had picked up cupcake for dessert and they were a delicious end to the food for the day.


our Easter weekend was great and we enjoy all the time spent with family and as a family. holidays always bring such joy and this holiday was no exception. the weather was perfect and I'm fast-thinking that Easter could be a favorite holiday of mine. and that is based partially on the reason for the season.

Tim & I have learned some hard lessons in life. more recently, it has been with people. people in our lives can be a blessing. they can bring us happiness & comfort, support & joy. they can also bring immense pain & sadness, heartbreak & plain annoyance.

we have come to live by a motto: "a lie is still a lie, even if everyone believe it. the truth is still the truth even if no one believes it." we have come to search our patriarchal blessings, the scriptures, teachings from our prophets, and counsel from church leaders and affiliates.

we have learned hard truths - some people seem content to hurt others. some people don't care about us as much as we may care for them. forgiveness is essential in these situations. and it's not easy to come by. and on top of forgiveness, courage is essential for our survival. courage to rise above and courage to avoid situations that may harm us.

we find comfort in the atonement of our Savior. we find comfort in the gift of true repentance. and we find hope in the resurrection of Christ. what a wonderful knowledge to have, knowing that someday our eyes will be opened to all things. a greater understanding of others. a greater understanding of why things happen a certain way. a complete understanding of our trials.

there are NO greater words than this : "He lives!" how eternally grateful I am for Christ and his ultimate sacrifice. our family is often my strength. I don't know what I would do without Tim & my girls. what eternal joy I will have with them. what a perfect thing to strive for - eternal life with my family. this life, and our trials within it, are but for a small moment. and He has suffered all things for us. He rose from the tomb and for that, I have peace.

happy Easter to all!


loves,
megan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone