Baby Time

In case you haven’t heard, Mike and I are expecting our third child!  We are thrilled and can’t wait for our little bundle of joy.  The due date it February 15^th, 2012, but maybe we’ll be having a Valentine’s baby.

Noah is so very excited; he’s such a great big bother to Amelia … I am so lucky to have such an awesome seven-year-old.  I’m not sure how much Amelia really understands the concept of me having a baby.  We’ll tell her, “Mommy has a baby in her tummy,” and Amelia will say she has a baby in her tummy, too!  But if she likes this baby anywhere as much as she loves her baby dolls, I think we’ll be okay.

Noah started 2^nd grade today and that really hit me!  I think partly because I remember entering 2^nd grade so vividly; it was a few months after my family moved to Park City, and I just remember life seeming so important from then on.  Amelia has already asked me two dozen times why Noah isn’t home.  I keep telling her he’s at school, so she runs and gets her princess backpack and says, “I go to school too!”  After playing together every day this summer, I think the transition of Noah being back in school will definitely be the hardest on Amelia.  I was looking forward to the routine and also getting to spend some one-on-one time with Amelia before the baby comes.

Unfortunately, I’m still battling morning sickness, which is especially frustrating since it was gone by this point with both Noah and Amelia.  But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that any day now I’ll wake up and feel like my old self!  I will say that, overall, the morning sickness with this pregnancy isn’t nearly as bad as the last two, meaning that I’ve only actually thrown up a handful of times.  Whereas, with the prior two pregnancies, this unpleasant experience occurred all day long . . . maybe I’m paying for it by it not going away.  I don’t know which is worse.  

6,847 Miles, 57 Hours

We drove through 10 states covering 3,847 miles over our six-week car trip, which was 57 hours in the car. It was an adventure, to say the least!  The highlight was getting to see so much family, some of which I had not previously had the pleasure of meeting (more on that later).  The hardest part was that Amelia only took ONE 30-minute nap during all that time on the road, and Noah NEVER slept!

Mike's Sister, Shelley, went to the OC Fair with us.

We'd loved getting to see Grandma Sandy and Angus!

 

 

Uncle Al and Amelia snuggling; they were buddies after playing in the pool!

After leaving Utah, we headed to Orange, California, to spend the last two weeks of our trip with Mike’s family.  It was so enjoyable to go into Ray and Nancy’s pool every day; Noah seriously turned a different color after spending so much time in the water.  We were able to go the beach a few times; Amelia was obsessed with the ocean!  She has no fear of the waves and would just try and run into them and then laugh hysterically! 

Nancy almost had Amelia swimming on her own; she's one amazing Grandma!

Mike’s dad, Ray, was home for one of the weeks, and I swear you would have thought Noah was his shadow!  They worked on Noah’s boat for Boy Scouts -- it turned out awesome, I think he might win another "Best in Show."

We had so much fun taking the kids to Disneyland.  It was Amelia’s first time, and I think it was a bit overwhelming.  However, she was SOOO excited to see Minnie Mouse and get to take a picture with her.  It worked out perfectly because, Ray and Nancy came with us and basically took care of Amelia.  She lasted for seven hours and rode about every ride for her age, so they took her home so that Mike and I could spend the rest of the day with Noah.  We expected terrible wait lines since it was the middle of summer but, miraculously, we never waited for more than 30 minutes and rode all but one of the rides we wanted to.

We ended the road trip with a stop in Sun City, Arizona to see Mike’s grandma (Nancy’s mom) and some other of his close family members.  It was great for me to get to meet some of the aunts that I had heard so many wonderful things about!