8 Week Appointment (August 13, 2014)

As I have mentioned on my blog that we have been wanting a baby for awhile and it just hasn't happened, for some reason. We never had a problem with Matthew or Allison. Three months max and we were pregnant. It has been almost a year since our last "little miscarriage" (4 weeks along)  and a year and a half since we lost our other one at 14 weeks. Of course I say this every month, but I just knew I was pregnant this month because of the way my body was feeling. I finally was so anxious on July 15th I bought a pregnancy test and instead of waiting until the next morning like it says you probably should I took the pregnancy test in the afternoon and it finally came out positive this time. (I should invest in pregnancy tests) I was surprised to actually see a positive but I didn't want to put any emotion into this new fact.
I wasn't sure if my doctor would want to see me earlier or not since I had previously had 3 miscarriages. They just had me schedule my 8 week appointment but also had me go in the next day to get blood work done. My hcg level was 700 and then two days later I went in to do more bloodwork. My hcg level then was 1700 so my dr. was happy that it was going up how it was suppose to.
I haven't necessarily been denying this but just not accepting it, keep my wall up for sure. I figure if something happens then I won't fall as hard. August 13th, I found a babysitter for the kids so that Chris could come to this first appointment with me. I didn't even want to look at the ultrasound because the last time I was in there for an ultrasound it wasn't good. I was preparing myself for bad news but once they said everything looked good, I finally looked. We saw the heart beating, but then again we saw the last one too. They gave me pictures of that ultrasound and I put them somewhere, not sure where they are right now though.
Some things that irritated me about the nurse that came in. First was that I had to complete this page front and back about my history and family history and "the baby's daddy's history".  At the very end of the whole thing it asked if you would be ok discussing these items with the people you were with. When we got in there she started asking these questions, the EXACT questions that were on the sheet. I started answering her and realized they were the same questions. I gave her the sheet but she just put it to the side and went through every single question on that sheet. I was irritated. Why did I need to answer all the questions if they were just going to ask them anyways. The other thing was that I was glad that I was ok with them asking me those questions in front of Chris because that could have been confidential.
Another thing that irritated me was that she asked me if I had felt it move yet??????WHAT???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? I am 8 weeks pregnant. If I start feeling it at 16 weeks I would be surprised. Usually it isn't until about 18 weeks. WHY WOULD SHE ASK ME THAT????
The last thing that just topped the irritation chart is that the last time I was in the they searched to find the heartbeat they couldn't. Ok, so I already have that in my mind. I am ONLY 8 weeks, and she even said, you usually can't hear the heartbeat until around 12 weeks, she said that she was lucky once and heard it at 10 weeks....but she still started trying to hear it, and don't you know she couldn't find one. And then she said, "Oh, you just had an ultrasound, that is much better then this." I don't know what she was on but apparently wasn't focused on me.
I was so glad once my dr. came in and the nurse was gone. Grrr. That nurse just irritated me on so many things. It is already hard for me, and she didn't help anything. Everything was good but still not getting my hopes up.

Flag Football

I asked Allison if she wanted to play flag football and she said no, (she may not have even known what it was but that is besides the point). I had thought that I would put her in a dance class for a month or two while Matthew was doing football but somehow I have a hard time wanting to put money into that when I am not really into that myself. I am sure she would have fun but it just isn't me. Anyways, I never actively researched anything so she isn't in dance right now.

Matthew has never played football of any kind, only seen it on tv a couple times so he doesn't really know what is going on. However, he is out there learning.

Allison and I take Matthew to practice every Thursday night and we watch him. She also notices that I am spending more time outside with him trying to get him to learn how to catch and throw. She now wants to be in flag football. We will see if she will still want to next year. She is catching and throwing pretty well for just starting out. If she wants to play sports, I am 100% supportive of that. Now, that dancing and cheering stuff, is cute but just not something that I do, therefore my kids probably won't do any of that.

We had such a great experience with the Upward Sports program for soccer that we are doing Upward again for flag football AND I just signed both the kids up for Basketball with Upward sports. I love that they focus on learning the basics of the sport and teach sportsmanship and it isn't SUPER intense.

When it isn't too late, I have been having Matthew watch Texas A&M and BYU football games with me and trying to teach him the game. Of course, how flag football is played and how real football is played is really different, these kids are just learning the beginning.

Matthew had previously said that he would be going to Texas A&M but since I have been introducing BYU into our household and I keep telling him that he needs to go to BYU because it will be the only place we can afford to send him. The first night that we watched BYU play, Matthew said that he has decided that he is going to go play football for BYU. I am ok with that:) If you can get a scholarship too that would be even better:)

I don't always make the time to go outside and play catch with Matthew but yesterday I made it a point to do it. In fact, I didn't even make them do their chores. They got home from school and we stayed outside. It was also such a beautiful perfect temperature weather day. We actually stayed outside playing catch and the kids playing different catching games and such for an hour and a half. I can see the improvement with him after every time we play together.

  

Matthew during warm-ups

 

Today was his second game that he played. Last week he did get a hand-off once and handed the ball off once. Not a lot of action as far as ball handling is concerned.

There are 9 kids on the team and you play 6 on offense and 6 for defense. So they get quite a bit of playing time.

Matthew got to be quarterback for a few of the plays and I was super surprised that they put him in that position. All three of the plays that they called were all running plays so Matthew just had to hand it off. None of the kids made it to "half field" which is first down so the ball was then "punted" AKA the ref takes the ball to the other side of the field.

The next time they got the ball back I thought they would put somebody else in as quarterback but they had Matthew do it again.

 Finding the threads on the ball...

Spotted his receiver and threw the ball.

Look at the spiral on that ball.

It was an excellent pass with an excellent catch.

The received ran it in for a TOUCHDOWN!!!!

Matthew's first TD pass of his career:)

So instead of kicking an extra point, they basically are close to the goal and let them run another play to see if they can get into the zone again. 

Matthew continued as quarterback for the point after.

He dropped back, even had a player coming rushing him (only one can rush the quarterback and they have to start way back until HUT). Matthew threw the pass into another receiver and the received caught it and they got the extra point!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

I WAS BEYOND EXCITED AND HAPPY AND PROUD OF MY LITTLE BOY!!!!!

They don't really keep score here but the kids do in their heads. The score was 13-0, and MY MATTHEW who has never played before contributed to 7 of those points!!! Kind of unbelievable to me because even as much as I want my kids to be awesome sports people, they kind of aren't so this is HUGE for me to see this!!

It was also fun for Matthew to see the results of his hardwork paying off today. He asked if we could play catch some more today. Each time we do it is getting more and more fun to play because he is actually starting to catch with just his hands (not his body each time) and he is throwing it well also. Yes, this stuff really delights me:)

VERY PROUD OF MY LITTLE FOOTBALL PLAYER TODAY!!!

Tie Breaker

Since this is a private blog and only the ones that actually care about us will read this, I am letting you, my readers in on our secret that I have been wanting to tell:)

First Day of School

September 2, 2014 was the first day of school.

I had said previous that Allison has been ready to go to school. She kept asking, "how many more days do I have to wait before I can go to school?" I liked hearing that rather then the kids dreading it. Matthew even told me the week before, "mom, I am kind of excited to be in 3rd grade because I will get to learn a lot of new things." YAY:)

We didn't know who their teachers were until the week before school started. I didn't know any of the first grade teachers so seeing that Matthew had Ms. Hand as his teacher didn't make me happy or sad. However, I did know one 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Johnakin because that is who Matthew had for his last two months of first grade (his 3rd teacher of 1st grade). So I knew her and she was fine but I didn't get to spend a whole year with her but when Allison found out that Mrs. Johnakin was her teacher we were all excited since we actually knew her.

The first day was kind of a rude awakening getting up at 6AM!!! I have been used to getting up at 8AM, usually kids had gotten most of the chores done and then we would eat breakfast. One day they didn't even get up until 8:30 and I didn't get up until 9am:) The benefit of having older kids. But then again during the summer, we let the kids stay up later since they could sleep in.

I wake up about 6-6:15am and then start waking them up. They have been more and more tired lately. We have to be out the door to walk to the bus stop by 7:05 or we will probably miss the bus.

Even though we have been putting the kids to bed by 6:30 and 7pm, they are SO tired. I can tell cause they are more cranky. We have had to pull the bedtimes back to 6 and 6:30pm. Hopefully they will adjust to this new schedule soon. One night when Allison came home from school (they are home by 2:30pm) she told me that she fell asleep at her desk doing her work. I told her that we would put her to bed early that night. Around 4:30pm she started asking if she could go to bed. Good thing we eat early anyways, we ate around 5ish and by 5:45 she was in bed, by 6pm she was completely out. I finally woke her up at 6:30 the next day and she was still tired. Poor girl, that school is really wearing her out. I think they will be adjusted this week or next.

Allison's 6 year old measurements

We were able to go see Dr. Tull again for Allison's 6 year old well-check.

She is 54 lbs which is in the 87%. 

She is 47 1/4" tall which is in the 83%.

She is a very healthy little girl.

She had to pee in a cup, which she did not want to have anything to do with, but we got it done.

She also had to prick her finger and she fought it tooth and nail. Matthew was telling her how much it hurt so she did NOT want to get her finger pricked. I couldn't believe out upset she got even before she was poked. She cried and cried and did I mention that she cried?

Not only that but apparently they don't check for everything they need so then they sent us to ANOTHER place to get blood drawn. 

After her episode I thought there was no way she would go for getting more blood work done. We got into the car and she settled down. We started talking about it and told her that she only had two days to get it done or she wouldn't be able to start school. She has been very excited to start school so it started putting it in perspective. I also looked up one of the labs and it was super close to Chris' work. I knew that he would be out of class by the time we got there so I told her that if she was brave and went and got it done then she would be able to go see daddy's new office. 

(A guy in Chris' department retired and so now Chris has his own office and it has a window. He thought that he would not get that, so he was very happy when they offered it to him. They like him, but they are also buttering him up to take on more work. It is only 5 doors down from his previous office so the move was very easy.)

She wanted to see daddy's new office so we went to the other lab. I warned the guy that she freaked out when she just got her finger poked, but not only did Allison not even flinch when he put the needle in, but she WATCHED him do it!!!!!!!  Can you believe that???? I don't even watch them put needles in me. She didn't say a word, didn't wince, NOTHING!!!! You would not have noticed that she just got stuck with a needle at all. The guy was SOOO impressed with her. He told her that she did better then some of the adults. She really liked that. She was such a trooper and did so well. I COMPLETE turn around from what she was just like getting her finger poked. I was very happy and impressed with her.

Allison's 6 year old photoshoot

I always like taking pictures of my kids close to their birthday. 

Here are Allison's 6 year old photoshoot

LOVE HER SMILE!!!

I miss her long beautiful hair but she is still a cutie:)

Allison's 6th Birthday!!

August 16th, our little girl turned 6 years old:(

She is definitely a sweet little girl and so LOVABLE.

She makes so many people feel good with her awesome hugs.

She is bubbly, happy, very affectionate, learning new things, very social, pretty obedient, wants to help out, loves playing Uno Flash and makes us smile.

Our traditional birthday breakfast of champions, donuts and chocolate milk. 

At least we had bananas too:)

Allison has been into Frozen and singing the songs (who hasn't?) and so we did a Frozen themed birthday. I knew that I wanted to get her a Frozen doll and make it into a cake.

Matthew and I went and and started looking for Frozen stuff for her. It was harder then I thought it would be. We had to go to three stores before we finally found what I was looking for.

I learned a lot about making cakes like this. I didn't get the right color to match her dress either but oh well, Allison still thought it was the coolest cake ever.

She was also very excited when I pulled Elsa out and she got to have the Elsa doll.

I found a box that had both Elsa and Anna in it so we loves playing with both of them.

I think one of her favorite gifts was the Frozen cd. She loves to sing along with it.

Instead of a party, Allison chose to go to Disney On Ice's Frozen so we will be going to that September 20th.

Matthew's Fourth Tooth

Matthew had this tooth that was sticking out a lot and I think many people were going to start getting in line to pull it out. A member of the bishopric wanted to pull it out and said that if it wasn't out by the next Sunday, he was going to do it himself:) 

At the beginning of August we finally convinced Matthew to let daddy pull it out. This is ONLY the fourth tooth that he has lost.

We can already tell that he will need braces, *sigh* but I am glad that there is something that can help straighten teeth. I am thankful that I was able to have braces and become more confident with my smile. We aren't noticing any other loose teeth yet.

Locks of Love

I have had a post about this before stating that Allison' hair is getting so long. Since her hair is so pretty, I really wanted to send it to locks of love. All summer long I would ask her if she wanted to cut her hair yet. It was always a no. Finally, at the end of July, I just randomly asked her if she was ready to cut her hair, AND SHE SAID YES!! I had her take her bath and then right after that we went to cut her hair. I figured that if I waited at all she would change her mind.

She got a little sad about it but not too bad. We just had to not think about it.

We both had to keep thinking about the positive of having short hair. When she went to bed that night there were tears and it wasn't just from her:(

I like long hair, and I may have cut it shorter then it needed.

Good thing she is smiling in these pictures.

A friend as facebook said that they actually dye all of the hair so it doesn't matter what color the hair is. I of course have never told her that but we probably won't be donating her hair anymore. I would rather just trim it to keep it manageable rather then cutting it all off.

I really miss her hair and all the things that I could do with it.

She has gotten used to it but I am wishing I never cut it this short. Oh well, live and learn. Thankfully it will grow back, and I think that I still see some curl in it so that makes me happy:)

Allison can SWIM!!!

Allison learned how to swim this year. You just have to be able to swim across the pool, however possible, and you can be on swim team. She has really been wanting to be on swim team so that was her motivation this year. Surprisingly to me, she has DONE IT!!! She can "swim" across the whole 25m pool. It doesn't look pretty, it is definitely FREEstyle. She kind of just does whatever it takes.

I have to say though, I have been so impressed with Allison this year as well. She has a little friend, Laura Eliason, who is a year and a half younger then Allison and she doesn't really talk but boy oh boy, she can swim. Her parents were big swimmers, her brothers are also, and they are all in swimming lessons all year long. Allison has really been wanting to keep up with her and sure enough, it worked. I am so proud of Allison. She knows when she needs air, comes up, gets a breath and then goes back down. At the beginning of the summer I didn't want Allison to go past the 4ft rope unless I was out there with her. By half-way through the summer, I felt very confident that she could go anywhere she wanted in the pool. She never did want to go off the diving board even though she did it a couple times last year but finally one night when I was having a board meeting and the kids had the WHOLE pool ALL to themselves, Matthew convinced Allison to jump off the diving board. Since then she does it whenever. She is so excited to be able to be on swim team. Sadly coach Mari said she wasn't going to be coming back next year so she and I were/are both sad about that. Hopefully they get another great coach. Hopefully she will be able to learn a lot next year.

I have two swimmers!!!

Swim Banquet

The Saturday after Champs we had our swim banquet. It was fun to attend.

It was great being apart of the team this year.

These were Matthew's AWESOME coaches. They are seriously so good and really teach the kids how to do the strokes but getting in the water with them and taking their arms and legs and showing them.

Coach Will was the head coach and worked with the older kids usually, but also helped with these younger ones.

Coach Mari was incredible with these younger ones (called mites). She has to deal with all of their craziness and having that much patience for all of those kids that like to talk so much is amazing.

 

Mari sits and makes all of these paper plates for all of the kids, which is something unique to each one. Matthew's was best storyteller....but he also got that last year so that must mean that he talks a lot.

Champs

While Kris and Heather's family was here, Matthew had his last swim meet. He has only been able to go to 3 of the 6. He swims the backstroke much faster then his freestyle which seems really weird but it was true. His second meet he swam his 25 freestyle in 40 seconds. Then he swam his  25 backstroke in 35 seconds. I was very surprised that his backstroke really WAS faster then his freestyle. That isn't usually the case. Well his last meet, he just needed to take 1 second off of his backstroke to make it to Champs which is basically the best of the best swimmers. If you swim the backstroke in 34 seconds then you make it. We were really hoping that he would be able to take that one second off of his time.

While Heather's family was here, I don't know if he was trying to show off for them or what but it all clicked and came together. He swam his 25 freestyle in 27:78!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WWWWHHHHHHHAAAATTTTT???????!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!??!!!!???!

THIS KID TOOK 13 SECONDS OFF OF HIS BEST TIME!!!!!!

He had to have a time under 28:00 to make it to Champs in Freestyle!!!!

We thought there was a mistake when I heard that time. He finally figured out that he doesn't have to breath on every stroke and he just went faster!!!! I WAS BEYOND PROUD OF HIM!!!!

He already made it to Champs but we were still hoping that he would make it in his backstroke as well since that is his favorite stroke.

He swam his 25 backstroke in 30.87 seconds!!! Five seconds faster then his best and 4 seconds better then he needed to make it to champs!!! 

I WAS BEYOND PROUD OF MY LITTLE BOY!!!!

A week and a half later he went to Champs. Here he is before his first event.

That pool was an indoor pool and IT WAS LOUD!!!!! It truly felt like the Olympics to me. There was so much cheering and yelling. SO LOUDDD!!!!

I was sooo nervous for him also. My heart was beating SO fast.

He did just fine. He added a couple seconds on his freestyle, 29.68 seconds but other then that he did great.

His second event was his backstroke. He actually had another personal best of 29.50 seconds!!!!!

I was so proud of him!!!

His coaches actually put him in another event, it was the 100m relay freestyle.

Matthew was the 4th leg on his team.

Get this:

Swimmers 1 & 3 were on the other side and swimmers 2 & 4 (Matthew) were on this side, there is one of their coaches on each side to help the kids. The first swimmer takes off swimming toward us, our coach is yelling at our first swimmer, "go, go" our 2nd swimmer thinks that she is yelling at her so while our first swimmer hasn't even gotten half way, our second swimmer dives in and starts swimming. Coach yells at her to "Stop, get back" she actually stops a little before our 1st swimmer, she beats him back to our side, gets out of the water and gets back on the block just in time for swimmer #1 to touch the side. She takes off and then #3 left when they were suppose to and then Matthew finished off the race. There were only three teams competing in that heat but THEY TOOK FIRST!!!!!! They never got called for disqualification, I guess since she didn't obstruct the first swimmer, got back and left when she was suppose to. The coolest thing was that Matthew has never finished first in a heat before and when you finish first in your heat you get a Heat Winner ribbon. He was very excited about that. 

He didn't get top eight times in any of his races but I am so impressed with how well he has done. 

Last year he only raced in two meets and was only on the team for 3 weeks.

This year he has been a part of the team all year and seeing the improvement has been awesome!!!

SO PROUD OF MY LITTLE SWIMMER!!!

NYC

I had an opportunity to go to NYC for a girls couple days. I looked into taking the train but it seemed too expensive. HOWEVER, after doing this, I would definitely take the train next time. It might only be a little bit more expensive after all the tolls and gas. I would have been able to relax more also.

It took me seven hours to get to NYC. I DROVE IN NYC on a Friday night!!! You definitely have to be aggressive to drive in that city so I sucked it up and was aggressive. 

That night we went to Newsies on BROADWAY!!! I didn't think I would EVER see a play on Broadway but I actually did. IT WAS AWESOME!!! I loved that the cast could just sing there hearts out and I was just in awww the whole time. It was cold in the theater but such an awesome experience.

We had NYC pizza. I actually didn't really like it, I will stick to my non-NYC pizza:)

That night in the hotel right before I went to sleep I check facebook and a good friend from MT mentioned something about being just arriving in the city. I had to verify that she was actually talking about NYC because that would be too crazy of a coincidence. Sure enough she was in NYC and not only that but our hotels were only about 5 blocks apart!!!!!!! Can you believe that??? Saturday morning we arranged to meet and have breakfast together!!!!! It was UNBELIEVABLE!!! She was there for a work training the following week and her mom and sister who I know were with her also. It was SO much fun to see them and catch up. What are the odds right?

After breakfast we went to Top of the Rock and that is where I met up with my group.

Before we made it to the top they took pictures of groups. I wasn't going to join Sam, her mom, Linda, and her sister, Brandy, but they INSISTED I join them.

Sam's family bought the picture and sent it to me.

 This is from Top of the Rock

 

 I like these two pictures because it is proof that Sam and I got to see each other but I hate them because I am so fat that I hate seeing pictures of myself during this time.

It was such a fun weekend. We walked around NYC some more and then it was time to get my car out of the parking garage so I didn't have to pay another 24 hours. The worse part about driving in NYC was that the buildings were so tall that my GPS kept loosing its signal and then I wouldn't know where to go.

On the way home I took the longer route and skipped going through DC and it also took my seven hours to get home.

Beach

There are three major history cities about an hour from us, Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown.

We took Heather's family to Yorktown and we got to drive around the battlefield. It was cool but would have been so much better if Chris was with us to actually tell us all about it. Then we went to the beach at Yorktown.

The kids had fun until we started spotting JELLYFISH!!!!

Emily was the first one to get stung by a Jellyfish, we didn't quite know what to do but she jumped around a lot and then eventually it stopped hurting her.

After awhile Kris was in the water, then Heather, I got in a little. Allison was out by Kris. I told her to come swim to me. Right about the time she got to me all of the sudden I saw this white bubble that she was going into. I tried to reach out and grab her and stop her before she got to it. I thought we were lucky and didn't touch it but about 5 minutes later she started crying A LOT. I took her up to our chairs and there were still tentacles on her. I pulled off a bunch. It was pretty crazy. For some reason it never affected me, even though I pulled all of those tentacles off of her. She was hurting for at least 30-45 minutes. She just cried and cried and then cried off and on. 

There was a security guard that came by and had some Lacitain (numbing stuff) to put on her. He said that most of the jellyfish that we actually saw that were that close to the shore were probably dead but they can still sting for 5 hours after they die. If they are alive then the way that we can get rid of them is by pulling them out of the water and digging a whole for it in the sand. Bury it and put a marker on it so it doesn't get dug up. Once it is buried for 4 hours, then it won't sting anymore. Kris was our jellyfish catcher, and he caught 8 that day. We won't be going to the beach any time soon.

Andrew wanted to be buried so they buried him and then the sun was in his face so we put my A&M visor on him:)