2021 Recap

 January

January was a pretty uneventful month. We celebrated a new year with some fun couples (one of my favorite new year's we've had). We moved Lucy to her own room and got our room back (always the nicest feeling...even though I do end up missing them a little bit haha)

February

February was actually more eventful than usual. We took a family staycation, which was actually one of the more fun ones we've taken. We also started figuring out what to do during the witching hour while it's too dark and cold outside.

March

We celebrated (is that the right word??) being home for a whole year. I only say celebrate because it's been really nice working from home this whole time. I also went and visited my best friend a few times, including once in March.

April

We had a GREAT Easter this year, one I was proud of how much I accomplished for it. Based on Lucy's 10-month update, it was finally starting to get warm enough to be outside more, which is always nice!

May

May might have been our busiest month of the year! We celebrated Cara's 4th birthday (STILL can't believe she's THAT big already). We went to the dinosaur drive through event, which the girls really liked (even though it ended way messy for us haha). I had a really nice Mother's Day, they are getting better and better each year. We also had a family day at the Zoo, which is always fun for me!

June

We had a fun, eventful, unexpected Memorial Day Weekend (yes, this is technically in May, but I posted about it in June). We had such a fun 1st birthday party for Lucy, one that I was pretty proud of! We celebrated Larry for Father's Day. 

July

In July we had a decent 4th of July (not the best, but not the worst...this holiday is still finicky for me). We celebrated Larry's birthday with a fun day away for him haha. We were planning for our 4th baby AND found out later I am pregnant (such fun news!).

August

Unfortunately, the sickness from the pregnancy hit HARD in August, so all I posted about was my first pregnancy update.

September

September got a little more exciting, this month I was constantly getting sick (because of the new schooling and pregnancy), but we found ways to have fun still. Cara started school and loves it still! And we had a fun Labor Day Weekend (I really loved the 3 day weekends we had this year!).  

October

October was one of my favorite months since it was my New York trip with Stace. Unfortunately, I was feeling a little better, but everyone else was so sick! We also had a very fun Halloween!

November

We celebrated Gwen's 3rd birthday (3??! what??). We took her out for our 1:1 dates with her, which were tons of fun! We also had a low-key Thanksgiving this month.

December 

We tried to do a fun Vegas Vacation this month (but it didn't go NEARLY as planned as I had hoped). We all were feeling well enough to get our Santa picture, which was fun! I got some unfortunate news about one of my sisters right before Christmas, but we were still able to celebrated Christmas Day, which also didn't go as well as I had hoped, but the kids had fun so that's all that matters. 

So the year didn't end as great as it started, but knowing we're adding a new little one next year is an exciting moment. Now that I'm finally starting to figure out how I want to do holidays and free moments with our kids I'm glad this is our last one so that next year can be the start of a GREAT many years as a complete family.

Christmas 2021

So, Christmas this year was very...off. I got some news a couple days prior that Jordyn (a younger sister) had had some health issues and ended up in a coma. The outlook wasn't great, and she was declared brain dead on Christmas morning. Luckily, she was able to donate a bunch of her organs and save some lives (and those people all got calls Christmas morning about their own miracle coming).

Despite the downer news, we made the most of our holiday weekend. We made some gingerbread houses on the 15th (I forgot to take pics). We went to Marie's on the 18th for gifts and dinner...we were supposed to drive through some light display, but we got caught in a horrible traffic jam on the way up and we didn't end up having time for that. But the girls did get to do a craft with Marie, and they all seemed to like that. 

I was feeling sick a bunch of the time before Christmas so that put delays on wrapping (I had a whole plan to have my shopping done by the 1st and my wrapping done by the 15th so that I could just enjoy the last 10 days before Christmas...that didn't work) and soaking in the movies. I did watch a bunch of the cheesy Netflix ones while I wrapped so that was nice. 

The girls also got their own advent calendars (Paw Patrol for Gwen and LOL dolls..or whatever...for Cara). They looked forward each day to getting to open a new tab and getting their little chocolate. That was probably my favorite part of the holiday.

LOVE having snow for Christmas

We did go drive through our neighborhood and see lights and decorations on the 23rd. The girls always love that...but I believe it's mostly because they don't have to be buckled and get to walk around the car haha. We had more houses decorated for Christmas than Halloween, but the Halloween ones were more fun, so it was kind of "eh" again. Hopefully next year we'll be able to drive to the places they map out on KSL for fun neighborhoods...or go to the Luminaria at Thanksgiving Point...something that's really decorated up. 

Christmas Eve, we went to my Grandma's for breakfast with Cindy and Andy (and their families and even Andy's puppy). Breakfast was good and it was fun seeing everyone and getting to open gifts. However, my Grandma's house just feels smaller and smaller each year and so it gets cramped very quickly. And she's getting so easily confused so I always feel bad. But we still had fun. After nap time that day I "made" cookies with the girls...I wanted to make them from scratch, but I had gotten these Mrs. Field's "already made, ready to be baked" cookies so we decided to just do those. They were good, but it wasn't as much fun as I had hoped it would be.

I'm so bummed this ended up blurry, but it's the 
Only stocking shot I got so it's going on the blog

Christmas Day, we got up and opened gifts. The girls seemed to love everything. Unfortunately, I put ALL of everyone else's gifts under the tree already and I had only gotten the girls 5 gifts (one from each person) so when they came down it didn't look like MUCH had been added. They did get excited about their stockings, but I didn't get a picture of that. We didn't get any snow, which is always a bummer for me, and since we had already seen family, we didn't go anywhere. So, after opening gifts we just kind of hung out. It felt boring (even though the girls had so much fun playing with their new toys). I think because I was feeling bummed already and then not having anything to do (I didn't get any presents to "play" with) just made me feel stir crazy. Maybe in future years I need to make sure a game or building toy (like Legos) is part of the gifts so we can do that as a family? 

Once gifts were opened, I was getting antsy to get things cleaned up I started to wonder if I'm the only person who gets loves the build up to Christmas, but gets too anxious to actually enjoy the day. The mess was driving me crazy. Luckily during nap time we were able to open all gifts (plastic wraps and ties and all that stuff) and get them sorted and any messy ones got moved to the closet...away from little hands. I watched a happy movie as well to help get me out of my funk. 

Today is nice, we'll just do our regular grocery shopping and laundry. I also found out the Packer's played on Christmas day (I hadn't seen anything about a game) so I'm going to watch that later. We'll pack up our Christmas stuff to be put away and get ready for the new year (that's my absolute favorite part of the year). Just get back into a regular routine to get back to normal. 

I really feel that next year the holidays will be better. No more pregnancies to make me lazy, by the time the holidays come around this new baby will be about 6 months, which makes it easier. So, this next year can be the start of our family traditions for each year, and I can make it the best ever! 

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you had a great day.

That Time We Attempted a Family Vegas Vacation

So initially I was going to be posting about our first real family vacation in a loong time. I made so many great plans and packing went so smoothly, and I was so excited. It was going to be great! When we left for the trip, I kept kind of thinking about how I didn't take our family road trip pic or play "Holiday Road" (I love playing that for road trips), but I didn't think it was that important. 

When I planned this, we were going to see a Lion Habitat, the Shark Reef Aquarium, The Hulk at Madame Tussaud's, go on the High Roller, eat at the Sugar Factory, plan a day at the Adventure Dome, go to the Children's Museum, play at a container park...so many fun things! I was going to do a big breakfast every morning and let the girls pick whatever they wanted. I even did a grocery order to our AirBnB for eggs, milk, juice, etc. We brought bacon, cereal, waffle mix and our maker. It was going to be GREAT! About a week before the trip, Cara gets Pink Eye and I got the flu, so we were nervous, but by the time we left were both doing great. The day we left Gwen started to get pink eye, but we had some eye drops for Cara we brought with us to help her get over it.

The drive down went so well, the girls hardly had any melt downs, we only had to make one stop for stretching, bathrooms, and water refills (in Toquerville, so we had only a tiny bit left of our drive). While that city felt a little cult-ish, it wasn't a horrible stop. Unfortunately, the 2nd half of our drive was the biggest part of the elevation change, and my right ear just wouldn't pop, no matter what I did - yawn, chewing, swallowing, rubbing over and over - it just wouldn't pop. By the time we got to the house my ear and jaw were KILLING me! We decided to order dinner to be delivered so that we didn't have to go out, I was almost in tears over the pain.

Unfortunately, dinner didn't go as great. They had trouble with my order and had weird issues with the chicken nuggets for the girls...it was weird. We put the girls to bed and just relaxed while I tried to get my ear to feel better. 

Luckily the next morning my ear and jaw were filling much better so I thought it would be on the mend. We went out to a playground to let the girls play before the Lion Habitat opened up. I kept thinking how many germs were on the playground, but we made sure to clean hands as much as we could before leaving. We headed over to the Lion Habitat and had the coolest experience. We got to see the workers feed the lions and get really close to them. We got to see their one giraffe paint a scarf and were so close we could almost touch him. Then we let the girls feed lettuce to the giraffes, they seemed to love that. We were about to leave when ALL the lions suddenly burst out roaring for about 2 minutes...it was the coolest sound and experience. We're not sure why they did (one of the female lions was making a cough roar sound so we assumed that started it, but no idea what it was). I tried to record it, but they stopped right as I started. 

We went back to the house for nap time, but it was kind of later than normal, so nap time didn't go as well as we had hoped, but it was fine enough..so I thought. After that we went to the Shark Reef Aquarium. What I didn't know is that the big Rose Bowl game (Utes VS Oregon) was playing nearby so parking was a firm $25, no matter what. I thought we'd be parked for a while so I convinced Larry it was fine. We went and did the aquarium, and it was REALLY cool. However, I was starting to rush the girls because I was getting stressed on time (we had a bunch of things to squeeze in and traffic on the strip was a nightmare - I can't believe I forgot that part). So while we enjoyed the visit, it was quicker than it should've been, in hindsight. We then drove over to Madame Tussaud's. Luckily that parking was free, but we did have a ways to walk. The girls were kind of getting tired, but I figured it would be worth it once we got there.

We got there. Then I quickly realized this one might have been a waste of money because we only went to see the hulk and the girls had NO idea who anyone else was in the whole museum. So it wasn't as exciting. I couldn't even kind of explain who the people were because they hadn't seen most of the movies/shows or heard most of the music of the people so we basically just rushed through that as well. They did end up liking the hulk part and they got to do a 4d movie (Lucy and I waited outside for that one). So it wasn't a total loss, but not worth what we spent. By this time we decided it was dinner time (a very late dinner) so we were walking looking for the restaurant I found, the girls all having meltdowns because they were getting tired and hungry and I'm just yelling at them to stop whining and just keep going (yes I feel horrible about how I was with them). Around this time my ear and jaw were starting to hurt all over again so I was getting extra cranky. We FINALLY find it and by the time food comes, Lucy is in full melt down mode and won't touch her food. Not only that, but she just keeps crying, nothing is settling her. After me taking a few bites of my food, I take her out of the restaurant so that those around us weren't TOTALLY disturbed. She would NOT calm down for anything. So we took the rest of our food to go and then decided we were done for the night. Unfortunately, Cara was starting to cry because I told her we could have ice cream after dinner, but we were NOT sticking around for that so I told her we could have it another night (she didn't like that answer). 

So now we have the LONG walk back to our car, all 3 girls crying over something or other, I'm in a TON of pain, Larry's just trying to keep the peace because all his girls are freaking out right now. It was a NIGHTMARE!

So by the time we get home and get the girls down for bed I'm commiserating to Larry about how horrible the night went and how I'm in so much pain and I don't know how I'm going to do the rest of the vacation in pain like this. But he was nice enough to remind me that it was just the first day and we have plenty of days to have fun and learn from our bad moments. 

We decided to make Saturday a recoup day to let everyone recover from this first day. We had plans to meet up with my dad and some of the "misfit" kids for dinner, but other than that we'd take it as a chill day. I still made a big breakfast, but we were lazy all day. It was a nice day, but my jaw went back to hurting really bad as we got closer to dinner time. I still couldn't open my jaw very well to eat (it felt like after I got my wisdom teeth out). We were able to make it through dinner fine enough and visit for a while, but the girls got restless and wanted to leave so we headed home after a few hours together.

After the girls went down I started to make comments to Larry about how my eyes were burning like I was tired, but I didn't feel tired. We watched a movie and while we were watching it my eyes were watering pretty bad. By the time the movie was over I wiped my eye and noticed I had the same green goop that the girls got right before their pink eye showed up so I had a feeling I was getting it too. I already had plans to go to the Urgent Care nearby in the morning so I figured if I did get it I'd already be at a medical facility. 

This morning and my eyes were so gooped up I could hardly open them so I just knew I had pink eye. We had breakfast and went to the insta care and they confirmed I had pink eye and a bad ear infection so they set me up with antibiotics and eye drop prescriptions. We decided we were done with our vacation at that point, I couldn't keep saying "we just need to get through the vacation and then we can take care of ourselves." So we went back to the Airbnb and packed up. I reached out to the host to let them know we'd come down with some sickness and needed to check out early. They were nice enough to refund us a couple days. We stopped by the pharmacy on our way out to fill my prescriptions and hit the road. Luckily the drive home wasn't too bad, we got home late and Lucy got a little fussy towards the end, but no accidents and snacks aplenty with movies so it worked out. We got home, had pizza for dinner, and then put the girls down. 

Not a flattering pic...but this is how it started

How I looked once we got home

I made sure to wipe down EVERY single hard surface as I unpacked it and then put every cloth item into laundry piles to be washed. I'll make sure to get those done within the two days we have left of our time off so that everything can be cleaned. I'm kind of glad to have these two days to clean and just try and get healthy as much as possible. Poor Lucy might have pink eye too - her eyes are very very goopy (not red yet, but very goopy). So we'll see how this week goes. All I know is we aren't leaving the house for the next 2 weeks to just get healthy and we're not doing anymore public outings for as long as we can keep that up. Just indoor or backyard fun for a while. 

So that was our hellcation recap. It was NOT a great one. I have decided no more family vacations while we have little little kids. Maybe little weekend getaways, but nothing big vacation like. Our next big one will be our Disney trip we have planned in a few years. Lesson has been learned! Also, apparently I've been horrible at getting pics for things we've done. I need to do better with this....once I feel better.

5 months (Weeks 18 - 22)

 

Compare/Contrast: Well lucky me got the 'Vid this pregnancy. With all the colds I've gotten and then that it's been a rough 1st half of pregnancy. Luckily, the symptoms went away within a week so I got a quick version of it (although I can tell my nose isn't as strong as it used to be). Also, working from home means less talking time (I used to do the talking/bonding on my drive to and from work), but I do my best to talk after dropping Cara off at school and on my way to pick her up and then anytime I shower.

I took a sick day...the girls decided to join me

The movements are interesting. Just like with Lucy it felt like it took a while to feel them, but around 19 weeks I started to. This baby seems to really like my daily Orange Julius drink...I tend to get wiggles after I drink that. I started to realize in the morning and after dinner is a guaranteed movement time, I love having a time I know it's coming.

I'm definitely soaking in the fact that this is the last time I'm doing this. Everything is the last: The last time I'll be wearing maternity clothes, the last time I'll be using my doppler, the last time I can gorge on my favorite treats whenever I feel like haha. Speaking of the doppler, I'm still doing my weekly checks and the heartrate really is lower than the other babies. Sometimes I get up to 150, but it's mostly 130s and 140s. I made sure to check often when I had all the sicknesses. 

Speaking of sickness, I still have to take my anti-nausea medicine. Not all the time, somewhere between each day to every few days, but it's crazy that I still get sick...this is definitely the longest that has lasted.

A non-maternity shirt actually fit me!!

Best Moments This Month: Movements, movements, and more movements and finding out what makes this one move more haha. 

The anatomy scan is always a fun one (as long as you get good news haha). Luckily the lady was able to make sure I didn't even get a peak of the gender (she turned the tv off when she was in the lower body area taking measurements) I got to see lots of cute movements and the legs and profile and hands (the profile is my favorite). It was just a great visit - I even got fries and a milkshake from JCWs afterwards.

I love our annual Santa pic tradition...watching our family grow

I also went Christmas shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving (not when I'd usually go out, but it was the only time I had) and found a couple cute outfits that are pretty neutral that we can use for the coming home outfit. I'm not sure which I love more so I'll just wash and bring both and see which we feel like at that moment. Luckily, whichever we don't use we can still use as a regular newborn outfit. 

What I'm Looking Forward To: Just finding more ways to soak in the pregnancy and for the new year so I can get more nesting done (that bug has bitten HARD, but with the holidays it's hard to do much more than shopping and wrapping haha). We also have a vacation coming up that I'm really excited to go on, it's basically the closest we're going to get to a final babymoon and it should be a really fun one!