GRANDPA!!!!!

We live in NC, Grandpa lives in CO...too far for frequent visits.  BUT--thankfully, grandpa is responsible for the East Coast with his job and is required to travel to Charlotte every now and then.  Tonight was one of those nights.  We met up with my dad tonight at our traditional spot - the Outback Steakhouse - YUM!  The girls got their hairs curled and all dolled up and they were soooo excited to meet up with Grandpa!  Evelyn made him a card and was so proud to give it to him.  We enjoyed a short but sweet visit with grandpa and got as many HUGS and KISSES in as we could until next time.  We love you GRANDPA!!!!  ---Grandma, we really missed you, next time...squish in grandpa's suitcase and come with him!!! 

Super duper cute kids...but I'm a little biased!

Fast or Slow

When Evleyn woke up this morning, she came in our bathroom to find me getting ready for church and I told her as soon as I was done I would help her to get ready....she then said...
"is it a FAST or SLOW Sunday today?"
I cracked up laughing.  She started laughing too - but she didn't know what was so funny and then I told her to ask her daddy the same question.

Oh to be young again!  She's so cute!

For my non-Mormon friends, in our church we have special Sunday once a month where all of the members are asked to fast for two meals.  We contribute the money we would have spent on those to meals to the families that are in need of food or other things. It is one of my favorite Sundays each month and I am excited to teach Evelyn when she's old enough about the true meaning of Fast Sundays!!

Dinner happiness!

Our family dinner times have really become quite hillarious!  The girls are getting older and the older they get, the more they interact with us and joke and laugh and it's hard to get through dinner without someone spitting their food across the table because something was just that funny!!  I'm talkin' table manners - out the window!  Sometimes I wish they would just stay this age - funny, silly and stinkin' adorable!!!  This one of Claire doing her fake-pouting just cracks me up!

Almost 28 weeks!!!

"IS THAT ALL?" I keep asking myself that very question because it feels like I have been pregnant F.O.R.E.V.E.R!!!  Almost in the third trimester and I feel sooo close...yet sooo far away!  Here's a belly picture to enjoy my roundness! 

SCORE!

Gordon scored some free tickets to the Carolina game last Friday - so he took off work and came and picked me up for our hot date in the afternoon!  It was so much fun!  It was my very first live Carolina game.  They played Miami and practically the whole game I thought for sure we were going to lose.  Then somewhere in the last 5 minutes of the game, Carolina found their groove and we won by a basket!  I was on my feet screaming the whole time!!  It was great!  I recorded the winning shot for Carolina, but for some reason blogger is giving me trouble so I can't upload it right now - GRRR!  Probably better that way anyway because all you can hear is me screaming and laughing!!  LOL!
Anyways - we had a great time and even though we were in the nose-bleed section with our seats (I mean the top of the top seats...like there was a wall behind us becasue you couldn't go any higher!) we still had a great time and I don't think our seats took away from the excitement of the game in anyway! 

Too bad Carolina lost to DUKE for the ACC tourni...but now onto MARCH MADNESS!!!!!! 

Our Girls

We took these pictures a few Sundays ago and I just remembered to post them!!  We love our girls!!!! 

Hello, my name is Evelyn.

Yesterday was a very special day! Yes, it was my birthday but what made it super special was that Evelyn got up and bore her testimony for the first time in church!!  Our meeting begins at 9am and we get there early enough to have the chapel by ourselves for about 15 minutes.  In that time for the past few weeks, we have let Evelyn go up to the pulpit on the stand and she 'practices' bearing her testimony at the microphone.  For the last few weeks, she's been getting pretty good at saying appropriate things that make up her sweet little testimony all by herself.
We want our kids to do this on their own - meaning, we don't want to whisper in their ears what to say - we want their testimony to be their own from the very beginning.  So we practice together on Family Nights or on the days we get the chapel to ourselves and hope that one day our kids will get up on their own to say their own testimony without any help.
Yesterday was Fast and Testimony meeting (it happens once a month) and we asked her if she thought she was ready to go up and bear her testimony.  She looked at the stand and said yes, but it wasn't her turn (because there was already a person up there).  So when that person finished, she folded her little arms and walked very reverently up to the front of the chapel, all the way up the stairs and across the stand to the pulpit.  She stood up on the little step to give her a boost up to the microphone and then my beautiful little blondy faced the entire congregation!!  I was so nervous for her!!!!  She took a long moment (almost too long) to stare out at everyone and then she finally made eye contact with me and I mouthed to her to 'go ahead and start!' Finally, she spoke up and said "Hello, my name is Evelyn and I have a testimony..."  LONG PAUSE...followed by more LONG PAUSES....!!  So then I started to get a little nervous that she had stage fright and wasn't going to finish.  So I am mouthing to her what to say and she leans over and whispers down to me (mind you I am sitting in the middle of the chapel, not the front row) and she says 'can you help me?'
So of course I am going up there to help her finish.  So I go to the front and stand off to the side and tell her talk about the Book of Mormon - she says "I know the Book of Momon is true"  ...looks at mom for more help...I tell her to say she loves her family...."I love my family"...looks at mom for more help.... I tell her to end her testimony and come sit down...she ended it all by herself and then walked off the stand, grabbed my hands and we walked back to our bench.  I was so proud of her!!  I know she needed a little extra help from mom, but I was so proud of her that she had the desire to get up there and for the first time she bore her testimony in church!  My little Sunbeam!!!!!  We love her sweet spirit and her love of the Gospel of Jesus Christ at such a young age!  We must be doing something right!!!!!!!!!!! 

Best birthday ever!!!

25 weeks

OH BOY!!!  (I mean GIRL)  I am getting bigggggg!!  It's getting harder to do a few things- tie my shoes, sleep, shave my legs, sleep, eat as much as I used to (which I guess is a good thing), sleep, climb the stairs at the gym, sleep, roll over, sleep, get off the floor, sleep...oh did I mention SLEEP?  I am waking up several times during the night because someone is poking me and it isn't Gordon!!  LOL!  This little girl is VERY active around the hours of 2am - 4am and by then I have to get up and pee anyways so I am literally up all night!!  It feels like she is running laps around my uterus!!  It's a lot of fun to feel - in fact it's one of my favorite things about being pregnant - but I just wish it happened during the day and not in the middle of the night when I am trying to SLEEP!!! 
I just can't believe how fast time is flying and in just a few weeks, I will be in the THIRD trimester and in just a few months, the baby will be here!!!!  WOW!  We can't wait to see this little girl and have her apart of our family!  Evelyn asks me almost every day if it's Bonnie's birthday yet!!  I keep telling her soon!! SOON!!  All of us are so excited for a new baby in the house!! 

I can dress myself!

Notice the layers...the MANY layers!!  Ha Ha Ha!!!

"Evelyn go get dressed so we can leave...you have 5 minutes!!"

...5 minutes later...

"Look at me mom! I am going to wear THIS today!!"

ummm...ok?!

Mom and Dad visit North Carolina!!!

My mom and dad came to NC for a short visit and we enjoyed every minute of them!!  The girls LOVE LOVE LOVE their grandma and grandpa and the habit of waking them up early in the morning by climbing in bed with them and snuggling started early on in previous visits...you bet they did that this visit too!!  LOL!  I feel very lucky to have these two wonderful people as my parents. 

 It was upper 60's and even broke into the 70's the weekend they were here and we took advantage of the outdoors and we took the kids to the park and spent a few hours there!!  We packed a lunch and met up with some friends and enjoyed the heat of the sun!!  It was great to see grandma climb up and down the rock climber and the stairs and run across those bouncy bridges and slide down slides - I don't know who had more fun...the girls or GRANDMA!! HA! HA!

 So...mom and I went to our local GoodWill and found somd hidious sweaters to wear for an Ugly Sweater Party that we went to.  It was a blast!  My mom even found these highly fashionable BLUE high heels to match her ugly sweater...she should have won an award for matching accessories!!  We laughed so hard that night - which is highly dangerous considering my condition!!!  LOL!!!

Aren't we smashing!!!??

 These two love birds make my heart super happy!!!!

Thanks mom and dad for making the trip out here for a short visit!  We can't wait to have you back in a few months to welcome baby #3 into our family in June!  We love you and we miss you already!!! 

Two Peas in a Pod

A long time ago in a castle far far away....

A little princess was born!!

Four years ago, our family grew from a twitterpated couple in love (which, I guess we still are!!) to a little family of three!  A nervous yet excited new mom.  A new daddy that melted like butter when he first met his little girl.  And a little Princess named Evelyn weighing in whopping 6lbs 10oz and 19.5 inches long!!!

Yesterday we celebrated Evelyn's FOURTH Birthday!!!  We had a few of her little girlfriends come over for a PRINCESS PARTY!  It was so adorable to see each guest arrive in her own Princess attire!!  We played a few games like- KISS THE FROG (just like Pin the Tail on the Donkey only with big red lips on a green frog), PRINCESS WALK (just like a cake walk, just with princess pictures to walk on), ROYAL PARADE, and a ROYAL BALL where the girls learned to curtsy!  After each game the princesses were given Princess Accessories to add to their already cute ensamble!  A crown, a wand, a bracelet and a necklace!!

I made Princess Hat cupcakes that were PINK of course with PINK Lemonade and all of the girls sang Happy Birthday to Evelyn! It was a wonderful day and Evelyn LOVED her Princess Party!!! 

We love this little girl so much and we are sooo blessed to have her in our little family!  She is a wonderful helper around the house, she is a very loving big sister, she is her daddy's biggest fan and she is most definately a Princess at heart!!  She loves all things PINK and anything princess.  She loves to 'decorate' and use her imagination.  She dances with her daddy pretty much every night with special princess music.  She loves to be 'musical' and 'artistic'.  She brings sunshine to our home and we love her very much!!  Happy Birthday sweet girl!!!!!!!!

Sick sick and then more sick....

"Oh great!  MOM'S SICK!!!"  Words from my four year old!  So compassionate, isn't she?!  LOL!  I have had the most wonderful week of being sick - probably the best I have ever experienced!!  Harty-Harr-Harr!! Sense my sarcasm? 

It all started last Tuesday...I wasn't feeling too hot, but didn't really have any serious symtoms.  I had a little cough and that was that.  I was feeling great and then WHAM! It hit me like a ton of bricks!  What started as a cough ended in disaster.  On Wednesday afternoon I started feeling some chest pain. I'm talking about some serious P.A.I.N. in the chest.  It hurt when I coughed, breathed, talked, sighed, moved...and it was getting out control.  By the time Gordon got home from work, I told him what I was feeling and I that I was a little scared about it because I have never felt pain like that before in my chest.  I didn't know if it was my lungs or if I was having a heart attack!!  Not likely, but still it felt that way!  

So by 7:30pm and a few phone calls back and forth with my after hours nurse, it was recommended to go to the ER.  I am so blessed to have famliy close by, so we called up Mom and Dad Lindsay and took the girls to them while Gordon took me to the hospital.  

Now, keep in mind I am also pregnant and extremely hormonal so you can imagine the tears - OH THE TEARS - of this sick, tired, pregnant lady!!!  Poor Gordon!! 

So off to the ER - it's now 8:30 and I am being taken back to a room where they put me on a nebulizer machine - a device used to administer medicine in the form of a vapor to the lungs.  That made me super jittery - like I had the shakes all over as if I was just given a shot of the strongest caffine in the world.  Then they had me breathe into this other machine to test my oxygen levels - which were fine. 

So a few other people/nurses/Dr came in to check my lungs all while monitoring the baby the whole time too - which I was soooo glad for!!!  

After four hours it was determined that I had Bronchitis and this condition that is common with respiratory infections called Costochondritis - it's basically inflamation in the tissues attached to the breastplate/sternum area so any tension on them causes severe pain.

So I was given my drugs, a pat on the back and sent on my merry way around 11:30pm.  That was Wednesday night.

Thursday night - a lot of the congestion in my lungs were breaking up and now I am having a very (as the medical world would call it) "productive" cough.  All good signs that things are working.  

Friday morning - I wake with HIVES!  I get them with every pregnancy, but this time was the worst case I have seen on my body!!  Sorry NO PICTURES! :)

So I am miserable beyond words, but there's nothing anyone can do more for me.  I am waiting out the Bronchitis and the only thing that is completely healed since I left the ER is the chest pain - thank goodness!! 

Friday night - no sleep, big party to plan/prepare for the next day for Evelyn = STRESS!!!

Saturday - Evelyn's FOUR year Birthday Party with some little friends!!  It deserves a post of it's own because it was the CUTEST Princess Birthday Party EVER!  And I'll just say for me...well, I had to put my big girl pants on and suck it up!  I wasn't feeling better at all, but I wasn't contagious and I wasn't about to cancel my little girl's birthday party so the show went on and I somehow survived.

Saturday afternoon - something else BIG hit me.  "Not THIS" is what I am thinking, but it did - a Sinus Infection!  Swollen eyes. Sneezing 5... 8... 10... 13 times in a row!!! Sinus headaches. Runny nose. Could it get any worse?!  

So here I am Sunday morning - no sleep, itchy-watery eyes, sneezing up a wazooo, coughing up a lung and pregnant with hives!!!  At least I am alive, right????  

Blah Blah Blogging...

I realize I used to be a good blogger.  I used to do a post a day, then that turned into once a week, which turned into once a month and now I am updating what, once a quarter??  HA HA HA!  I need to fix that for all of my blog stalkers out there. 

Here's a brief update:

I am now 21 weeks along in the pregnancy.  If you missed the announcment, we are having another little girl!!  I love her name we picked out too - Bonnie Kate Lindsay.  She'll be named after her great-grandma Bonnie!  For the most part, I am now feeling great!  In the earlier months, I was pretty sick and felt nasty, but now I feel wonderful, just tired all of the time!!  Here's a photo of the baby bump at 21 weeks:

Gordon is ...well, the BEST!  He is a wonderful husband that spoils me everyday and he is the best daddy in the world!  His girls love him sooo much!  They attack him as soon as he walks in the door and he instantly goes into play mode and lets them climb on him and tackle him!!  It's so fun for me to sit back and watch this guy melt into puddy when these little girls are around!!  Here's the proud daddy with his two princesses:

Evelyn is turning into such a big girl!  She wants to go to school so bad like other 'big' kids!  She turns 4 this Sunday the 6th and she is a blossoming SunBeam at church.  She loves to sing songs and go to "class".  She is very bright and clever and she gets her whit from her father.  She loves to tell jokes, be in charge of Family Night, read books, dress up as princesses, color pictures, do service for her neighbors and play with her little sister, Claire. 

Claire is a bouncy, busy, boisterous, energetic, cheerful little 2 year old!!  She is super fast on her feet...she can out run almost all of us around the house!! Once she gets outside, she is immediately thinking of her 'escape plan' to run away from mom!  She is mysterious and shy around new comers, but give her a cookie and she warms right up to you!! She loves to play play play!!  If you ask her to come to the table for dinner you will hear her reply "no mommy, I playing!"  She is learning more and more each day and is finally starting to add words to her vocabulary!!  She adores her big sister and wants to be doing everything that she sees her do! 

Here's the girls together - love them to pieces!!! 

Here's a picture of me and my hottie at Olive Garden for date night!!!  MUAH!

**SIGH** ...are you a sucker for romance like me??? **DEEP SIGH**

Wait for it....

We're having a GIRL!!!

Mmmmmm... Chocolate Pudding!

Every Monday night our family has Family Home Evening (aka FHE)!  It's a time devoted to just our family.  We typically have a lesson from the scriptures and what is a family night with out 'refreshments'!!!  We have been making chocolate pudding as dessert for FHE and the kids LOVE it and they expecially love to help make it!!

(PLEASE EXCUSE THE LOOK OF MORNING SICKNESS ON MYSELF--EGH!)