Oh so close

Well I had a resolution in 2009 to read 50 books. I'm not a fast reader at all so this was a lofty goal for me and I managed to get in 43. Mostly I aimed for juvenile fiction though because of the quick read aspect. I have a side bar on this blog to show all the books I read. It would be easier to name the few books that I didn't so much like, but I won't get into to those. I liked almost all of the books I read. Some of the books I really loved were The Hunger Games, The Book Thief, The Millionaire Next Door, and the Fablehaven series. So if you're looking for a good book those are some of my recommendations!

The results are in...

We had our ultrasound a few days ago. We are pleased to announce that there is just one baby in my tummy! Yay! It also looks like we're having another girl. We're all very excited. I was about 95% sure it was a girl this time so it wasn't very surprising. A boy would have been convenient so Tanner would have a brother and the sharing of the rooms would have worked out nicely. But what we really wanted was a healthy baby and everything looks good in that way. We couldn't be happier and we're trying to think of a good name for her. I really feel I need to meet our children before I'll completely settle on a name, but we do have some favorites.
Our new little girl will be sharing a room with Tanner for a while so I'm trying to think of a good boy and girl way of decorating. Anyone have any good ideas? I've been meaning to do something nice with his room so now would be a good time to get around to that. This will be the first baby I'll have where we won't be moving when I'm a month away from my due date! Another yay! I can actually take my time decorating and all that before she arrives.

Christmastime

Wow, where did the time go? And why do I have so few pictures of all the stuff we did this month? Oh well, we did a bunch of fun stuff and I can't really remember it all right now because I basically have no short-term memory when I'm pregnant. Really wish I'd taken more pictures for that reason! Oh thing we did do was go see the lights at temple square. We haven't been in years and I just don't think it's the same without the malls right across the street. We used to always go see the lights and then go inside the mall to warm up and get a treat. Now there are not many places to go inside and get warm and no where to get a treat. But it was still lots of fun! Very quick visit though since the kids were freezing. Apparently I didn't bundle them up enough.

Josh and I went to the Kurt Bestor Christmas concert for our anniversary. It was so good! We also went several parties and the kids met with a couple of Santas. I think that confused Sydney a bit. She must have noticed they didn't look or sound quite the same. She asked me if they were the real Santa Claus's. So I told her no they're not really Santa, but they are happy, jolly and gave you a present just to be nice so that's really what Santa is all about anyways. We think she might become a non-believer pretty early. That would be fine with us. We're not really big on the Santa thing and try not to focus on it much anyways.
So Christmas Eve finally rolled around. Do everyone else's kids go a little crazy the few days before Christmas? Ours sure do! The anticipation of Christmas was making for some emotional children. I didn't really think about it being caused by Christmas until it was over and everyone has been much happier ever since.

The kids and I got new jammies for Christmas.

It's hard to pick a favorite gift but we did recently have a lot of fun with the fire pit that Josh's brother and sis-in-law gave us. I've been wanting one for years because I always like going up in the mountains and roasting stuff over a fire. Now we can just do it in our backyard!

Hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas too! We had so much to be grateful for this year. We can only hope that 2010 will be just as good!

Photo shoot

Here's what I did today! I took these pictures, edited them, printed them and got them in frames. Yes, I am feeling very accomplished. It's about time I updated some of the baby pictures around the house. I'm no professional so please don't look too closely. They are good enough to be framed in my opinion. And since my kids cry pretty much every time we go to a photo studio, throwing a sheet over the back of the couch works much better for us!

Natalie's a sheep

This is a how Tanner talks now. "Na-any's a sheep" means Natalie's asleep. It's one of Tanner's favorite phrases since he's usually the first one up every morning. Tanner also likes to call things "two one", we haven't figured out what it means. He'll say this things like "Daddy's a two one", "It's a two one", and whine about "two one." He talks about "two one" when he's happy, sad, annoyed. Who knows! He still jabbers on in his own special language and will tell me whole stories that way, but he's also starting to throw in a few more English words. So we're happy about that!

Our staycation

Shame on me, I've been a bad blogger lately! It could have something to do with my laptop dying and going through the process of adjusting to my new laptop. Thanks Josh! Glad you understand how important a computer is to me. Anyways, no photoshop on this computer yet so the pictures are not edited. About a month ago we decided to do a little "staycation" (a vacation where we stay home for those not familiar with the term). We did go down to St. George for the first few days so we were away from home for a bit enjoying the nice warm weather.

Here are the kids doing some exploring in Snow Canyon.

Playing in the sand dunes.

The kids are getting to a good stage where we can actually take them to a restaurant without completely embarrassing ourselves. So nice! When we got home we made a list of some things we've wanted to do or see but never get around to it. We decided to get a 6-month membership to the Discovery Gateway museum. The kids love it there and I'm excited to take them this winter when we get a little stir-crazy.

My favorite thing about the museum is that they have all these toys to play with and yet my house stays nice and clean.

The next day we went downtown to the church history museum. Sydney actually has requested to go back to this one more than the discovery gateway. She really loved the "I am a Child of God" exhibit. There were a lot of fun things for kids to do and there was a station that looked like a hospital nursery with lots of little baby dolls and you could hold them, rock them, pretend to feed them, etc. I was happy Natalie really enjoyed the babies too. I hope she likes having a real baby around in May! I'm a little concerned she might get a bit jealous. We'll see.

We walked around temple square and went in one of the visitors centers and also had lunch on the grounds. It was a very pretty day.

On our final day we just went to the zoo to see all the baby animals we've been hearing so much about. My pictures from that are still on my little camera. It was our first visit to the zoo with no stroller. The kids did pretty well! I'm just loving the fact that they can all walk, talk (sort of), and feed themselves. I guess it's time to start potty training soon. Ugh. Anyways, it was a very fun and low-stress vacation that I would definitely recommend.

Halloween

Last week was so fun! I love Halloween. I got to help in Sydney's kindergarten class with the Halloween party which was fun.

Then we had a party with our neighborhood playgroup. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures there. Tanner was a lucky boy this year and got to use 3 costumes this Halloween. I wasn't done with his Peter Pan costume, so he was Super Tanner and wore one of his super hero capes.
We usually go to my parents' ward for their Halloween carnival. Josh took the kids this year since it was on the same night as our Young Women's mystery dinner, which was also very fun. So I wasn't there for the carnival but it looks like the had a good time and my Dad took lots of great pictures.

Here is our Peter Pan, mermaid, and Tinkerbell. I finally got Tanner's costume done and it turned out really cute I think! It seems that Peter Pan and Robin Hood get mixed up a lot. Just to clarify, Peter Pan has jaggedy edges on his clothes while Robin Hood's shirt has straight edges. Peter Pan has a green hat with a feather, Robin Hood's is yellow. And Peter Pan uses a dagger while Robin Hood has bows and arrows. I saw so many costumes online with Peter Pan using bows and arrows! Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sydney thought the eating a donut off a string thing was pretty cool and told me all about it when she got home.

We tried to think of a fun place to go during the day on Halloween. There were quite a few places doing fun stuff for kids. We have passes at the aquarium so we decided to go there.

This is us at the entrance to the "haunted rain forest."

They decorated for Halloween by putting skulls and detached hands and feet inside the aquarium tanks.

Halloween night my parents were so nice to come and pass out candy for us to Josh and I could both go trick-or-treating. I love trick-or-treating in our neighborhood that has so many kids. It makes it so much fun to have lots of people out walking around.

Sydney is a seasoned trick-or-treater and was right with her friends running from house to house. Tanner and Natalie caught on that running was the thing to do but it took them a few times to understand that they were collecting candy. Tanner would go up with the group of kids and stand there with them and as soon as some of them started to leave he would turn around and follow them without getting any candy. They figured it out eventually.

And here is Tanner's 3rd Halloween costume. I found it for cheap the week before Halloween and thought it would be a fun addition to all our dress-up clothes. We decided to have him wear it on Halloween since it was a little warmer than Peter Pan. Also, he has a rather large head and I'm pretty sure that hat is not going to fit him next year. Isn't he a handsome little pirate?