Fairy Frenzie

Well, we've finished the 2nd of the 3 birthday parties-only 1 to go this Saturday. Ally's "Fairy" birthday party was this Saturday and was a success-I'm not sure any 6 year old birthday party could fail-it's always magical for them! All the little girls came dressed as fairies and earned their wings by jumping Lilly pads and water lilies. The boys became fairy kings-I couldn't come up with anything better but they didn't seem to care one bit! We painted faces, decorated wands, ate "fairy" food, and opened presents. It was a super fun day!!

The Plan

Ok, so I am just about 37 weeks. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and I am at a 2 & 50%-which really doesn't mean all that much for me! My actual due date is on the 19th of May, but of course I can't wait that long-my doctor pretty much induces whenever you want beyond 37 weeks. Since we have a ton going on these next few weeks, I decided that I'll go in on the 11th (the night of Mother's Day) and plan to have her on the 12th-that is unless she comes on her own before then (which I DOUBT will happen!). I feel really good-probably better than I ever have before at this point-not incredibly uncomfortable yet or no major pains. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or bad? I am however getting bigger by the minute-but that is expected, right!? Just thought I'd let everyone know what our plan is, we'll for sure keep you updated!!

6 years-gone too fast!

April 23rd is a very special day in our house! It's Ally's birthday and the day we became parents!! Today she turned 6!! I remember when she was born and someone told me to make sure you enjoy every moment-even the hard ones, because you'll never get them back again. I can honestly say that we have LOVED every minute of being her parents! She is the sweetest, kindest best daughter anyone could ask for and we couldn't love her any more! It has been the highlight of our life watching these little kids grow and learn and what a perfect example she has been to her younger brothers and now will be soon to her new sister. She is a special little girl and we love her so much!


This morning at 5:30 I was woke up by a whisper in my ear, "Mom, am I six yet?". I snuggled her right in bed with us and tried to get her to go back to sleep for an hour-at no success! We then got up and had her favorite breakfast-German Pancakes and sang Happy Birthday! Since we were all up early we put on some of her favorite dance songs and had a little dance party before it was time to go to school-it was a fun morning.



This afternoon we all went to her school to eat lunch with her and stayed and played at recess. We all ate school lunch-very fun!





Then, since Jonathan had mutual tonight, we decided to celebrate at a poolside party with our family right after school. She opened her presents and loved everything. While she was opening her presents she lost her second tooth-we couldn't believe it! How lucky to lose a tooth on your birthday! It was such a fun day! This Saturday she is having her real party and can't wait. We'll post lots of pictures! Happy Birthday Allyson, we love you!!

She lost her tooth!!

Yep, we can hardly believe it either, but it really happened!! SHE LOST HER TOOTH! After watching a few of her cousins and some friends from school lose their teeth-she has been SO excited for this day to come. Well, on Sunday, April 13th-it finally came out. I've been dreading this moment-not only does it mean that my little girl is getting even bigger, but I hated the feeling of losing teeth. It turned out to be quite an emotional moment for her once it actually came out. Right as it came out she cried for a minute and said it was because she was just so happy, then she skipped around and had to call everyone-so funny! Isaac keeps saying, "Ally, your smile is broken!".

Jonathan+Home=No Blogging

Well, April has proved to be another fabulous month with Jonathan's schedule which means all my time is spent with him and not blogging. I love it, but at the same time feel so out of touch with everything-kind-of funny! We of course have spent a TON of time getting ready for this little baby (rearranging/organizing/cleaning out garage, repainting furniture, painting and redoing our bedroom, cleaning like crazy, lots of repairs, yard work, shopping, etc. etc...), but we have also go to do lots of fun stuff. A few weeks ago Jonathan was able to go on a feild trip with Ally's class to the zoo. She obviously was in heaven! He also took the boys camping in the back yard-which they LOVED! There was no way I was sleeping in a tent being very pregnant and Ally (bless her heart) hated that I was going to be "by myself" so she insisted on sleeping inside with me-she is so sweet! He has even had time to rock tired kids to sleep! On top of this being an awesome month schedule wise-he has this entire week off-which has been so much fun and we both have bran new sunburns from the 90 degree sun! The best news is that after this week he only works 3 days and then has the entire month of May off for paternity leave-I'm telling you, this is the BEST residency program possible!! We are loving all of our time together as a family and trying to make the most of every second!

Yep! I'm still here!

It's been forever since I've posted anything!! I've just been trying super hard to get every little thing done before the baby gets here. Not too much longer now!! I'm hoping that I'm just about done and then I can sit down and write a real post and catch up with everyone!!

Easter

I can't believe I forgot to post our Easter pictures! I guess with everything going on....I just didn't! We had a very nice and sunny Easter. We loved having the Monson's (Jonathan's sister and family) here with us and are so sad they are gone!

The Party

Here are some pictures of Austin's 2nd birthday! He had such a fun time and was so cute. It seems like he's already grown up so much just in a few days!

Our baby is 2!!!

We can't believe that our baby Austin is 2 today!! It has gone by way too fast!! This morning he got 2 candles in his waffles and we sang him "Happy Birthday" and ever since, he's been walking around saying "Happy Birthday..Me". He is such a funny little boy with TONS of personality-we all can't help but laugh at him all day long. We love him so much and are so glad that he makes our family complete. He loves balls and any sport and will shoot a basketball or hit a baseball for hours. He also LOVES babies and can't help but touch thier faces everytime he sees one. He will be such a good big brother-we are just a little nervous that he will smother his new sister! Tomorrow he is having a "Ball" themed birthday party with our family-we'll post lots of pictures-we can't wait!!

Grandma Sharee's Zoo

My kids LOVE, LOVE to visit my mom's house. She has cats and parrots and they just can't believe it. Austin kept calling it the Tiki Room. Isaac was the only one who was brave enough to hold anything. Ally was not interested at all-except from afar. The Baldwin's also came down from Ogden one day and all the grandkids had fun together at Grandma Sharee's. What a fun grandma!

The Easter Bunny

We even made it to see the Easter Bunny with some more Manwaring cousins-aren't they so cute!!

3 funny cousins

It was so much fun to see these three cousins. They are finally getting old enough to really play together and it is hilarious! Morgan gets to be the princess and Lincoln and Austin just love her!

More fun at Josh and Joni's!

Isaac and Jaden

Isaac and his cousin Jaden are the best of friends! We talk about Jaden ALL the time in our house and everything that Isaac gets he wants to save for Jaden-pretty much everything he talks about is Jaden! So it was so much fun to stay at Josh and Joni's house and watch these two play together 24/7. They had a blast. My mom had bought my two boys these matching shirts-Isaac was so excited to find out that Jaden had the exact same shirt...so cute!

We always have so much fun at the Baldwin's house. Uncle Nicholas is always so nice to take all the kids to do fun stuff. The kids loved the rides on the golf cart, his snazzy new motorcycle and of course the horses. Austin was a little hesitant and scared but ended up loving it all. We love staying with them and playing with Kate and Savannah who are sooo cute and fun!!

Spring Break in a Blog

OK, I have been so out of blogging for a while...I don't even know where to start! So just get ready, I don't really have a plan of how I'm going to get everything on here!

Since it was Ally's spring break I really wanted to do SOMETHING fun with the kids since it will be kind-of the last hoorah before the baby comes. Both Ally and Isaac talk always talk about Idaho and seeing their cousins...so I thought it would be so much fun if we could take a quick trip for a few days. The problem....well, I am 7 1/2 months pregnant and Jonathan is currently in his WORST (as far as hours go) month of the entire 3 years of residency AND it takes 14 hours by car to get there! So NOT an easy task to say the least. On top of all of that, I'm a bit of a "weather snob" and when it had been in the 80's here and I looked on line to find out that the high was 35!!-well, it was almost too much. So after about 10 failed plans of how to get the kids and I to Idaho, about a week before we left a plan fell perfectly into place-well, almost. Jonathan found out that by some miracle he didn't have to work the Saturday we were going to leave so he decided he would drive us to Salt Lake and then fly out that night so he could be back to work at 6 am the next morning! My very nice mother bought him a one way ticket back to AZ-which was so very nice of her!! We then found out that Jonathan's sister Betsy and her girls wanted to come to Arizona the same weekend we would be heading back-so we could just caravan! How perfect is that!? The only thing that just about stopped it all in it's tracks was the fact that Jonathan tore his ACL in a brutal game of church basketball-the night before we were to leave! But he insisted that we should still carry on with the plan. We decided to actually leave on Friday night and try to drive through the night to Utah. It would have been a good idea except that Jonathan forgot the tranquilizers for me and Ally-we were wrecks!! Needless to say, we only made it 5 hours and ended up staying in a hotel. The rest of the trip was GRAND and we made it to my sister Ashley's house in Ogden in time for Jonathan to watch the BYU basketball game. I drove Jonathan to the airport that night-through a snow storm I might add!! and the plan went off without a hitch! We spent a few days in Ogden with Ash for a few nights then on to Idaho Falls to stay with Josh and Joni for another few and then it was back to sunny AZ. We had the best time! I of course didn't take nearly enough pictures of all the fun we had, but I'll try to post as much as I can! It's been fun reading up on what everyone else has been doing to past few weeks-it's amazing how out of touch I felt not blogging!!

Sponge Curlers

The other night Ally let me put her hair in sponge curlers...I'm sure you all remember the ones our moms would put in our hair. My friend Laura and another friend Katie always put their little girl's hair in them and they always look soooo cute! It's taken me a LONG time to convince Ally that we should do it. We got onto Laura's blog so that I could show her what the final product looked like and she agreed. She was so anxious for the morning to come and see what her hair looked like. Right when she woke up we raced to the bathroom and started taking out the curlers. That is when the tears came. She did not realize that it was going to make her hair so short. She was trying so hard not to cry since she knew I loved it, but she just couldn't help it. We got her hair all done up cute and she felt a lot better about it-I LOVED, LOVED it!! I thought it was a success but when she got home she informed me that she didn't want curlers in her hair ever again!-we'll see about that. She is so funny about stuff like that. Here are some pictures-she wouldn't let me take any pictures until I promised her that she didn't look like she had been crying :). I think she looks darling regardless of what she thinks!! Thanks Laura for all the tips!!