Goodbye to Nicole, Cameron and Hudson

Well, my big sister and her family went home yesterday evening. We loved spending time with them and can't wait to see them again. Here's what else we did together before they went home:

1: Keldrie "held" Hudson. He didn't like it very much. 

2: Tyler and Hudson cuddled some more. All of us and Hudson cuddled some more. 

3: We all fell deeply in love with this boy. 

4: Hudson got to swing in the baby swing. Keldrie was very jealous of the swing, but putting her on the one outside seemed to help. 

 5: Keldrie played with her toys at my mom's house while the grown ups showered affection on the baby.

6: Grandma missed a lot of school and work while Hudson and his parents were here. Who can blame her though?

7: We gave Hudson a few baths. How chunky is he? 

8: Keldrie played in the dirt with Uncle Cameron and Grandpa Keller. My dad has been working on some outside projects for a few weeks and was able to finally finish most of them up with the help of Cameron. Whenever Cameron wasn't helping my dad, he was playing with Keldrie. They went on walks together, jumped on the tramp, went swinging on the swing, played with the chalk, and played in the dirt. She loved it. She will sorely miss her Uncle now that he is back to Arizona. 

Hudson

I have 2 nieces and 5 nephews on Matt's side of the family. And I love them all dearly. But on Wednesday I got to meet my first nephew from my side of the family. My sister Nicole and her husband Cameron brought little Hudson up to meet us Utah people.  My mom has been down to Arizona 3 times  since he was born. My dad has been down once. Chelsea, Tyler and I have had to be patient, but on Wednesday night, I was done being patient. 

My dad brought them home from the airport, since he was getting off work about the time they landed anyway. Then the plane was late and it took a long time to get their bags. AH! Didn't those people at the Arizona airport know how long I had waited? Why did they delay that flight? The good news is that Hudson was really good on the airplane and when Nicole FINALLY walked in to my mom's house holding her son, I was quick to relieve her of her precious bundle.  By now it was 8:30 PM. I hadn't eaten dinner. I had been smelling my mom's roast cook for an hour. I didn't care. I didn't care when everyone else sat down for dinner. I kept holding him. Eventually I gave him up to my mom and then he made the rounds. 

When Hudson was born, he weighed 9 pounds even. (Yes, this is my sister's first!) Now he is about 14 pounds. Keldrie weighs 23 with a wet diaper. His hands are huge! Nicole is a beautiful piano player, so if he gets his mom's talent there, he should be able to reach well over an octave. He also looks like he might be the first red-headed great-grandchild of my grandparents. My Grandma is  a red-head and she has two grandchildren who are red-heads, but none of the great-grandkids, until now. 

Aunt Chelsea with her first nephew. I had to elbow her out of the way to get Hudson first. She might have let me win, but I don't know. 

Uncle Tyler is so easy with him. Most boys his age (16) might be nervous holding a 8 week old baby, but not Ty. 

Of course Grandma got him to go to sleep. We love you Hudson. I might have to resist holding him today, because Keldrie woke up with a cough. That means we might be home-bound for the day. Those days are usually so hard for me. I don't like being home all day, especially when my sister and nephew are ten minutes away. Here's hoping Kel gets better quick! 

Good times!

Fall is definitely here. On Friday night/ Saturday morning, it was raining so hard I was surprised Keldrie didn't wake up. A forecast for bad weather on Thursday prompted my friends and me to move our usual play date inside. I offered my house and we had lots of fun. Becky brought a new friend and her daughter for us to meet. The kids played together and we talked. We are also planning a craft night in the coming weeks. I'm going to try this amazing looking wreath I got off a friend's blog.

http://sixsistersstuff.blogspot.com/2011/09/diy-ruffles-and-yarn-fall-wreath.html

Logan and Peyton checked each other out. Peyton, who is a little bit older, has learned to crawl and Becky was hoping that watching her would inspire Logan to start to crawl too. 

Keldrie's hair was toast by the end of our play date. Her "smile for the camera" face is coming along. At least both of her eyes are open.

Leola took a nap. She is such a sweet baby. Her 'cry' is barely audible over 5 women talking. 

All these babies have me so baby hungry it's a miracle I haven't tried to keep any of them here. If I wasn't already pregnant, I would be pulling out all of my wifely charm to try and talk Matt into it. Lucky for me, I'm more than halfway to the finish mark. And my sister is bringing her new little guy up on Wednesday and I am going to be elbowing my way past my brother and sister and maybe even my Mom to hold him as much as possible.  Nicole and Cameron will be lucky if the rest of us even notice they are there. Not really though. I'm excited to see both of them too. I haven't seen Nicole since May and Cameron since February. 

On Friday morning, I got real ambitious and made some cinnamon rolls. I am definitely feeling it's time for cinnamon and Carmel and all that good stuff. So I made the rolls and got them cooked. As they were cooling, I realized I only had about 1/4 cup of powdered sugar, not near enough to make the frosting. So they had to wait as Kel and I went about our day. By the time I got to the store, I was too tired to think about mixing up the frosting, so a can of pre-made frosting got put in my cart in lieu of the powdered sugar. 

The next morning, Matt and I had a breakfast to be jealous of. Hot Chocolate and warm cinnamon rolls.  I think the baby liked it too because he spent the next two hours rolling around in my stomach.  Or maybe he just got a sugar high. I know I had one!

 Congrats to all the Utah fans, and my condolences to the BYU fans. 

Have a great Sunday! 

And the baby is probably a....

My thoughts before our ultrasound:

So what is it going to be? Boy or Girl? Pink or blue? Football cleats or ballet slippers? I'm so excited to be finally finding out. This time I have to think about what the effect on Keldrie will be, too. 

Having two little girls would be so fun, but having a boy would be something new. We have tons of cute clothes that I would love to come home from the appointment, dig out of the boxes in the basement and put them in the washer with a new bottle of Dreft detergent. I would have two little girls to do hair on and they could play dolls together.

But what if it is a boy? If it is a boy then he won't be lonely. My sister just had a boy back in August and the nearest in age cousin on Matt's side is also a boy. Plus, it will even the numbers of boys and girls in the house. Not that Matt would feel at all bad about having three girls at home, but it might be nice for him to have a son to look forward to all the "guy" stuff. 

Overall, I just want the doctor to tell me that the baby is doing well and growing well. What did women do, like 20 years ago, when they had to wait until they delivered to find out the gender? Talk about anxiety. 

Well, I'm going to leave this now and finish it after my appointment this afternoon!

Well, now it is Wednesday morning.

My little peanut refused to unfold his legs, so we are still just guessing, but the guess is a Boy! I have my in-depth ultrasound in 3 weeks and we should know with more certainty then. But as it is looking most likely to be a boy, I have a new problem. And that problem is that Matt and I can not come up with any boy names. Whenever I bring it up, Matt says something ridiculous like John, or Jehoshaphat or Solomon. We are in the Old Testament in our family scripture study, so he has a lot of ammo. Keldrie is no help either. When I asked her what we should call her baby brother, she just said "Baby".  Let me know of any fun names you guys can think up.

PS- Now I get to buy a whole new set of baby boy clothes! (Okay, Matt pointed out I  should wait until the next ultrasound before I buy stuff, but I can put them in my shopping carts on the websites, right?) 

Last time for a swim suit

On Thursday, my friend Sara invited me and Kel to come meet up with her and the little girl she nannies at a park with a splash pad. I don't have much to write about, but the pictures of Keldrie are just too cute to not post.

We didn't stay long because the wind was blowing, making the kids freeze and then the sprinklers behind Sara and I came on and sprayed us real good! I'm sure if there is security footage of that it should be on America's Funniest Home Video.

Labor Day 2011

Well, just like that, summer BBQ's are over. 

Matt had to work on Labor day, but not until the afternoon, so he got the chance of going golfing with his dad and brothers in the morning. Around the time he left for work, Kel and I headed to my grandparents for the family party there.

My grandpa manned the grill, like always.

The adults always sits around this tree. During most holidays it is to get some shade, but this year the weather was beyond perfect and you didn't really need the shade because it was cloudy and warm. 

The kids, well, they have to sit on the cement, grass or sometimes a blanket.

All of these kids are children of my cousins. That makes them my second cousins, right? But what is the proper term for Keldrie's relation to them? Everyone is either a Grandparent, Aunt, Uncle or Cousin in this house. We don't get too technical.

After almost two hours here, we headed over to Steve and Elaine's for the Smith Family BBQ. When we got there, we had a few tantrums and screaming, boo-boos and disobeying mom moments. I almost packed it up and called it a day after about 40 minutes, but then Steve got on the hammock with Keldrie and it was smooth sailing from there. After everyone had eaten, Ryan and Spencer decided to try something. Steve and Elaine had just bought a new swing set for the backyard. But it wasn't put together  yet. However, the slide was just sitting there. So the two of them had an idea to lay it on the hill in the backyard and see if the kids could slide down it. 

The answer was yes and it was so perfect. It wore Keldrie down to just about empty, but she was so happy that she wasn't fussy, crying, or throwing tantrums. So great. Made her and my day.

You can see how tired she is here as she waits for her turn down the slide.

Andrew sure had a fun time watching everyone go. He has just the greatest smile. 

The men enjoyed watching the kids too. Probably because they weren't chasing them all over the place. They all stayed it the same place and entertained themselves.  

It was a good end to the summer. Now it's time to break out the long pants, the Carmel (both apple and popcorn), apple cider and hot chocolate. 

Fun with Cousins and the Ogden Farmer's Market

Last Sunday, Ryan asked me if I would be able to watch Jacob on Friday. I said of course! We love having cousins over at our house. Jacob is Ryan and Megan's son and he is about 18 months and he is all boy.

This is what they did together:

First- they played in Keldrie's room. I really don't know how Keldrie got so many toys, but she has a lot and it was nice to see them actually get used for a while.

Second- They ate some bananas. I opened Jacob's bag to get out his sippy cup and before I had even filled up the cup, Keldrie and Jacob were both standing with a banana in hand. For a second I was really confused because we had bananas too, but they are really ripe (as in ripe enough for banana bread). These were bigger and looked not too green but not brown yet either. Perfect.  Then it occurred to me that they must have been in the bag Megan packed and that Jacob knew they were in there. 

Third- They watched Phineas and Ferb. Keldrie quite enjoyed this new show. It is a favorite of Jacob's. The two of them were mesmerized by it. Keldrie usually comes and goes while watching a show but the two of them just sat together and watched. It was pretty funny.

Fourth- They ate ice cream cones. I had bought these cones at the store earlier that day and was pretty excited to make them. Jacob did really well until his tongue couldn't reach any farther into the cone and I couldn't get him to bite the cone. About that time, Kel got bored of hers and once she got down from the table, he obviously wanted down too. 

Fifth- They played with Keldrie's trains. She has  Thomas, Percy, and Rosie trains. They light up and make noise if you push them on the carpet. Keldrie had a hard time sharing at first, but she got better. 

It was a great three hours and we loved hosting little Jacob. There was one time out (Keldrie) but that was the only blemish on a wonderful afternoon. 

Yesterday, (Saturday) some of my aunts, cousins, mom and grandma went to the Ogden Farmer's Market on 25th Street. It was a fun time. We walked around and looked at all of the booths. I didn't buy anything but my grandma bought some honey and some of the older girls got their faces painted.  For lunch we went to Rooster's there on 25th. They are a pretty good little restaurant. They are a beer brewery too, and make some really good root beer. I recommend you try the Root Beer if you ever go there. They have a great house dressing too. Our waiter was really nice and handled our group of 14 plus a baby very well. 

Averie, my cousin Jamie's Daughter. This face painting only cost $2! That is a pretty good price if you ask me. 

Keldrie and I wait for our food.

My Aunt Barbara, Mom, and Grandma Nicholas. 

This is Brynlie, my cousin Kensie's daughter. She got those flower clips in her hair at the market too. 

It was a great day to go. Not too hot and good company. It was a blast! It got me in the mood for fall for sure! 

100th Post!

This is the 100th post on my blog. Sure, it has taken me 4 years to get here, what about it? 

Keldrie is still working on her "smile" face. It's a work in progress. The handsome young man with her is my little brother, Tyler. He spent all summer lifting weights, and put on a lot of muscle mass.  I'd say his hard work paid off with the reaction he got from the girls at the start of his junior year last week. 

Yesterday, some friends and I had planned to go to one of their houses and have our usual lunch play-date in the park, except we were going to do it in the backyard instead. Sweet Becky volunteered her house and so we all planned on it. The other two ladies had to back out due to complications with nap time and their babies. However, when Kel and I got to Becky's house, there was a special surprise for Keldrie: Becky's 3 year old nephew, Eli. 

The two played together like they were best friends. I guess that is the beauty of being little. Everyone and anyone is a friend and there is no need to size them up first. Those two entertained themselves and Becky and I were able to talk and she gave me a tour of her house. It is so cute. We also got to play with Becky's six month old, Logan. Becky and her husband were blessed enough to adopt him and a few weeks ago they finished up all the legal stuff and so last weekend they were able to be sealed to him in the Salt Lake Temple. How wonderful that the Lord has prepared a way for any and all children who come into a family to share in the temple blessings. 

Hey there, Handsome!

The chips were the favorite food around.

Keldrie and Eli started a band. Keldrie played the piano and Eli was on guitar.

We had a blast! Thanks for hosting, Becky! What a fun day it was.