Kate's pictures

Here are the rest of the 1 year old pictures that I took of Kate. They could have been better but I am still happy with the result.

Alyssa's 4th birthday

Alyssa has been talking about her 4th birthday for about 6 months. She was so excited to turn 4. She went back and forth on what kind of party she wanted, but she insistent that she wanted to invite her friends. She has so many friends from different groups, daycare, play groups, church etc. She wanted to invite them ALL. I thought that people might not be able to come so I agreed. Well they ALL came. Alyssa was so excited and didn't seem to mind the chaos. I had my mom and friend stay to help. We had 5 adults and that was necessary! We had 4 stations of different activities. The party was Tinkerbell themed. The most recent Tinkerbell movie is where Tinkerbell finds her long lost sister, Periwinkle, she lives in the winter woods. We had winter activities and spring activities to simulate the two areas. The stations were; planting a flower, tinker toys, frosting a winter tree (sugar cone) and animal activities. The rotations were more chaotic than I expected but we went with the flow. We also hired a face painter. That was a hit! That night when I put Alyssa to bed she said, "Mom that was the best birthday party ever!" She is such a socialite that she loved having ALL of her friends there. Needless to say I think in the future I will limit the number of kids to maybe 5.

The cake! I hire the same lady to make the cake every year. It is the BEST cake I have ever tasted and the CUTEST!

Me and my girls!

Kate the Great

My computer crashed so I can't post the rest of the pictures that I wanted to.
My sweet baby is one. I can hardly believe it. She has been such a joy. Here are some things about Kate at age 1. We had her 1 year old check up yesterday,. She is 27 inches (1.29%) Yea!! She is growing at a steady rate and we are not so concerned anymore. Weight 19lbs.  She is walking all over the furniture and the walls. She will push this little chair around so that she can walk with it. (Although she wont push the push toy that she has). She has taken 5 steps. She stands by her self and pick things up off the floor and stand back up. She will walk very soon. I think she could do it now but gets scared and then leans towards me or just sits down. She blows kisses(so cute). Points to everything new she sees. Babbles non stop, says Dada and occasionally Mama. She loves her sister but doesn't like it when Alyssa picks her up or smothers her (which happens often). She loves to climb up the stairs. This is not safe! Every step or 2 she stands up to look around. I let her do it when I am right behind her. When she heads towards the stairs and I come after her she starts laughing and crawling as fast as she can towards the stairs. She is a great eater but she will not allow me to feed her, she has to feed her self. She is becoming more demanding and will yell if she wants more or is done. I am trying to teach her sign language, she does it sometimes but is not as good at is as Alyssa was. But if there is ice cream in front of her she will sign "more" for sure! She loves to explore all the cupboards and drawers. She is so much fun and I can't wait to see how she grows and develops this year.

Kate's 1 year old birthday

Kate's birthday was yesterday. It was sad and happy at the same time. I am sad she is not a baby anymore but excited to see her learn and grow. We had a small family party with my mom and Russ's mom. Kate wasn't interested in opening the presents, so Alyssa didn't mind opening them for her. Alyssa had a hard time yesterday. I think she was jealous. We made little cakes that were darling, the taste wasn't as great but still okay. Kate enjoyed her cake and dug in right away. So happy to have this girl in our family and I can't believe how fast it went.

Valentines Day

This year I decided to surprise Russ with a Valentines night get away. He had talked about it before but I kept saying I didn't want to leave Kate. After she had her tubes she has been so much happier and sleeping better that I decided to do it. We both love skiing and snowboarding. I found some really cheap tickets to Canyons on KSL and then booked a night at Zermatt resort in Midway.  My mother in law was kind enough to watch the girls. We had fun skiing at the Canyons. It is my favorite resort. It is so big that we never had to wait in line for the lift. There are so many lifts and runs that we could have skied a different run all day if we wanted to. We stayed on my favorite side of the mountain the whole day though. Now that I have kids I am more cautious. I wasn't wearing a helmet (which I will start to do, it is so much safer). Before I had kids I would fly down the mountain so fast. I still went a decent speed, but Russ wishes I would have gone faster. The day before at work, I was talking with my co-worker about people that died from hitting their heads skiing, so that was on my mind. It was a beautiful day even though the snow wasn't great. (We are snow snobs, since we can have the greatest snow on earth (literally)).  It was a great weekend!

Russ got me these beautiful flowers. I would love to have fresh flowers everyday if they weren't so expensive! 

Snow Snow Snow

Last week it snowed for 2 days straight. We got about 18 inches at my house. I was trying to build a small hill to sled down in my yard. We invited a friend over to play with Alyssa. They had a lot of fun. The hill I built was too tall for them to climb up by them selves. I tried building steps but the snow wouldn't pack down enough. I also found a cute thing on pinterest called Snow icecream. We got 8 cups of fresh snow, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla, stirred it all together and added toppings. It was fun and pretty good.

Kate the Great and her ears

Kate has been suffereing with ear infection after ear infection. This last episode was the worst. The fluid stayed in her ears and would get reinfected days after stopping the antibiotic. We did 3 courses of anitbiotics for 10 days each. The last one (Omnicef) is a great antibiotic and if it didn't work the only other option would be to get tubes. I checked her ears almost everyday. They never looked better. I missed almost a week of work because she was so sick. On her last day of antibiotics I was at work. In my office we have a few ENT's(Ears nose and throat) Doctors that share our space. They are only there a few times a week. I decided go down and talk to Dr. Hamilton and ask his opinon on Kate's situation. He immediatley said that she needed tubes. I went and got her from daycare and brought her into see him.(Benefit of working with Doctors) He said that both her ear drums were full of thick glue like pus. He said, "I can do the surgery tomorrow morning at 8 am" Russ is out of town so I was hesistant. But I knew if I waited she would be sick the whole time. I decided to do it. I was anxious all night. I was nervous because she had to go under general anesthesia for the surgery. I  know too much about medicine and the risks that it scared me. But he reassured me that she would only be under for 15 minutes at the most. We got the the surgery center at 730 am. My mom came for support and to watch Alyssa. The hardest part was handing Kate to the nurse when she was screaming bloody murder. The nurse told me that she calmed down and stopped crying in the surgery room until they put her on the surgery table and put the mask on her. She screamed but fell asleep quickly. The surgery went great. Dr.Hamilton said that her ears were really bad. When he cut open the ear drum that pus shot out because there was so much pressure. He suctioned out all the pus and then placed the tubes. Kate was fussy for a few hours. When she woke up from her nap she was so happy. She hasn't been that happy in months. I so glad that we did the surgery and now she will be ear infection free!!!



Waiting to go into surgery. They gave her a shirt that says Super Patient.



At home after surgery. Happy as can be! (Crawling everywhere too)