our little miss at 10 weeks...

When Ethan was napping the other day I had to take some pictures of my cute little Alayna. She is 10 weeks now. The biggest news this week is that she slept in her own bed (the pack and play) for the first half of the night three nights in a row.... yay! We're making some progress :)

The Park with Great Papa and Grandma

On Tuesday my Papa and Grandma came with us to our favorite park. Ethan had a blast running around and showing them what he likes to play with. They pushed him in the swing for quite a while, which he thought was great.

He loves to ride the motorcycle at the park

Ethan and great Papa are looking for squirrels here... they are all over the park

After the park my Papa and Grandma treated us to lunch at Chick fil et. Ethan gobbled down his meal and thought it was great to go out to lunch with them.

Monday

On Monday my grandparents came over and spent the morning with us. Ethan thought it was wonderful having all of their attention. He ran around, showed them his toys, ran around, wanted to be pushed on the swing, ran around, and just had fun playing with them. The weather was gorgeous so we spent much of the morning outside in our backyard.

Miss Alayna napped much of the morning, but woke up around lunch time.

Nothing like a popsicle on one of our warm November days :)

They left around 1:00 and Ethan went down for his nap. He ended up sleeping for 4 hours! I finally had to go in and wake him up at 5:00 so that he could eat dinner and want to go to bed at bed time. My grandparents and my mom came back over and we enjoyed a yummy pot roast, mashed potatoes, rolls and salad... a good comfort meal :)

Alayna just LOVEs when people talk to her.... she coos and smiles.

We were reading Ethan his new book called "Binky". It's a cute book and he loves it.

Papa holding Alayna.

Perspective

Do you ever have those days where you struggle to keep a positive perspective? This morning has been one of those days for me. It's amazing how I could go from feeling so overwhelmed by the love I have for my children.... to wanting to just run away from them. Last night I got four hours of sleep total. Not four hours at once, but four hours added together in little chunks. Alayna would just not sleep. Then this morning Ethan was a cranky mess, Alayna wouldn't eat very well, she was overtired, and wouldn't stop crying or go to sleep. I felt so tired that my head hurt, so I wasn't exactly in the best state to deal with a morning like this. I wanted to run away. I started daydreaming about how easy life was before I had children....

I remembered how I could sleep in on the weekends and do whatever I wanted....

how I could go on dates with Matt and weekends away whenever we felt like it....

I never had to listen to whining or crying or....

I only had to take care of myself.

Then I was finally able to get the baby to stop crying and go to sleep.

I had a few moments to breathe.

I layed with Ethan on my bed and we giggled.

I got a little perspective. I remembered what a blessing children are, and how much I love them. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that although the days are long, the years are short.

I may be tired, and there are days where I may be worn out, but I wouldn't trade being a mom for anything.

Alayna's Baptism

This morning was very special; we had Alayna baptized. We were so blessed to have my grandparents, my mom, my brother, Matt's parents, Matt's brother Mike and his family, and Danny and Jolene all present for her baptism. I'm so bummed because not only did I not take any pictures of Alayna, I failed to have anyone take a nice picture of our family. I kept saying "we have to take a family photo of all four of us", and then I totally forgot. Oh well. Faith took a few pictures for us from the pews. Alayna looked so cute in her dress. We borrowed it from Faith. Her daughter Hope wore it for her baptism.

The photos are super blurry, but this is Pastor Will pouring the water on Alayna's head. She was actually asleep and really only stirred a little when he did this.

Danny came up on stage with us and offered the prayer. My mom and my grandparents were also with us up there. After the prayer Sid walked around and showed Alayna to the congregation while a special song was sung. Then we got to watch a slide show with pictures of Alayna during the offering. Our church does such a nice job with baptisms.

After church we all went out and Matt's parents treated us to a nice lunch at Mill Creek Cattle Co. The picture below is my Papa and Jerrod.

Ethan at lunch

My mom and Alayna

Heather and Stephen

Sid, Jenelle and Marlene

It was such a special morning. When were in church worshiping I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by how blessed we are with two healthy children, a wonderful family, and amazing friends. I am more thankful than words can describe. God is so good!

last week

Wow, it's been over a week since I've blogged... that's a long time for me! I feel behind if I don't blog every few days :) We've been pretty busy and have been blessed to be able to have visiting family.

I accidentally uploaded all of these pictures in the reverse order that I wanted them. Oh well, we'll go backwards.

My grandparents (my dad's parents) arrived from Colorado yesterday evening. They will be staying for the week and we'll get to spend Thanksgiving with them. We hadn't seen them in a year and a half. The last time we saw them Ethan was only 7 months old. We have been looking forward to their visit. They were very excited to meet Alayna for the first time, and couldn't believe how much Ethan has grown.

My mom made us all dinner and we enjoyed visiting with them for a few hours. I am so glad they are here for the week. Here is a picture of me, my mom, and Alayna.

On Thursday my Aunt Kami flew out from Colorado. She recently became a flight attendant and so she's taking advantage of her benefits. This was her first "fun" trip. She gets to fly for free as often as she wants... how fun is that? On Friday she spent the day with Ethan, Alayna and me. We went to the park and then she took us out to lunch at Chili's. Ethan got a kick out of her at the park because she went down the slide with him :) In the picture below they are looking at acorns.

This is a random picture of Uncle Jerrod and Ethan yesterday (Saturday). Jerrod stopped by for a little while and visited and played with Ethan. He was a good uncle and pushed Ethan for like 30 minutes on his swing.

Another random picture: Ethan wearing Matt's shoes before church last week.

On Monday I watched the two youngest Oates boys for the morning. Grady and Wesley had fun playing with Ethan. Ethan and Grady are good buds and were really cute together. The picture below is them watching cartoons.
Unfortunately a few hours after the Oates boys left they both came down with a nasty stomach bug. I knew that Ethan would most likely come down with it as well, since they had spent the morning playing with him. Sure enough, on Tuesday night at about 8:30 Ethan started throwing up as well. After several jammie and sheet changes he stopped throwing up around 11:30 and we were able to get a little sleep (but not much before miss Alayna needed to eat). Thankfully it was a quick bug and seemed to work it's way out of Ethan in 24 hours.
Thursday night Matt came down with the same bug. He ended up taking Friday off work. By Saturday he felt pretty good. Thankfully neither Alayna nor I have gotten it, and I'm hoping we don't!

On Monday night we went to BJs and met up with my Uncle Larry for dinner (my dad's brother). We hadn't seen him in three years. It's crazy that in the same week we ended up seeing four family members that we hadn't seen in quite a while. It's been fun.

So that was our week... vomit and visits from family :) hehe.

Highlights from our week

A few highlights from our week:

-Going to the park on Wednesday and then bringing lunch (Thai House) to Uncle Jerrod (who was off for Veteran's Day). Jerrod helped Ethan climb the rocks outside of my mom's house. Ethan LOVES his Uncle Jerrod.

-Dinner with the Flores crew on Thursday. I made a yummy pot roast in my crockpot. It was my first ever pot roast and will definitely be repeated. Christian happened to have the same pair of jammies as Ethan, so of course we had to take a picture of them. The picture below is Danny reading them both a story before we put Ethan to bed and they headed home.

Me and my sweet girl at dinner

-We got to have date night last night. Our church offers free babysitting once a month for two hours. We took advantage and dropped both kids off and went for dinner. We had sushi at The Ocean Blue in Redlands and then dessert and a glass of wine at the wine bar across the street. It was wonderful to be out alone together. This was our first official date without any kids since having Alayna. The picture below is Alayna smiling at her daddy right before we left for our date.
-The following pictures are from this morning. Here is Ethan with his "hat". He thinks that's funny.

Ethan was "helping" bounce his sister

I tried to get a picture of both of them together, and this is the best I could get.... Ethan would not take out his binky and Alayna looks like Popeye.

Our silly boy and his binkies

My sweet girl is 9 weeks old now.... and cuter than ever in my opinion :)