Grandpa Herbert

I'm finally getting around to this post. It feels kind of like when I went to start on Dallin's scrapbook...a year after he was born! I didn't feel like I could tackle it until then and even after a year I cried through the whole process and took about 6 hours to do one page. Anyway, it's not that bad this time but we've had family in town, two friends go into the hospital and I've watched their kids, a trip to the hospital for me (just paranoia and needing to hear the heartbeat...he decided to throw a party and actually MOVE as soon as she put the monitors on me...at 11:45 p.m.!!) and illnesses. Anyway, here's my recap of Grandpa Herbert's funeral.

My sister, Danica, and I flew together. She was 29 weeks pregnant (looking 50 weeks along, she would say) at the time and didn't want to go it alone. What was funny was that as we were squeezing into the aisle to try to deboard one of our planes, and running into each other's tummies, a lady a couple rows back said, "Are you sure you two should be flying right now?" I assured her that I was just past the halfway mark and so i was fine. And Danica told her she had OK'd it with her doctor. She informed us that she was a NICU nurse and she has seen many babies who come in because their mothers went into preterm labor from flying late in pregnancy. Ha! What a coincidence. Although the flights were, for the most part, terrible, we made it unscathed.

We stayed at my Grandma's house with my mom and my Uncle Bryan. That was nice because the night we got there, we sat around and talked about Grandpa. Open flood gates. Grandma and my mom told us lots of cool stories about his last few days. One thing I thought was funny was that he was diagnosed three years (or so) ago with prostate cancer. Since he had known that he wouldn't want to go through treatment because of his age and because he wanted to enjoy his life, they decided that they didn't need to keep track of what was going on in his body. When they went to the hospital a couple of weeks before he died because he was having trouble breathing, the doctors did some kind of a scan and found tumors in his lungs and lots of other places. The hospital doctor asked my grandma who his oncologist was. She asked him what an oncologist is!! Ha! She didn't even know it was a cancer doctor. He explained and she said they never saw one because they didn't want to know and worry about what was going on and he wasn't going to have treatment. So he asked when the last time he saw his primary doctor was and it was two years ago. Apparently he was very amazed that my grandpa had gotten along as well as he had with relatively no pain. That is the blessing and exactly what my grandpa always wanted. To enjoy the end of his life without pain and without worry about dying.

The next day was the funeral. It was hard, hard, hard. The blessing was being there with my mom (who had been through much of her grief already, was handling things well and just wanted to parade her children around to the other family members and friends there!), Danica, and my brother, Brandon. Brandon really took care of me, putting his arm around me, holding my hand. It was a very sweet moment for me. Thank you, Bran. You saved me that day. I was asked to give the opening prayer for the funeral, which I thought I would not be able to do. Amazingly enough, I stood up there and said the prayer without crying. I got many comments on it afterwards, from family, friends and twice from my grandparent's stake president. That made me feel nice. My Uncle Bryan gave a great life history for my grandpa full of really interesting things and, of course, lots of funny stuff, too. My grandpa LOVED a good laugh. My grandma had told my Uncle David that Grandpa had always promised her 20 years (Grandma is Grandpa's second wife. His first wife, my other grandma, died when I was 7.). When he died they had been married 23 years. Uncle David said she got a 13% bonus. That's my family...always being funny.

One of my favorite stories from the funeral was about my Uncle Bryan's 16th birthday. He already had his pilot's license, like my grandpa and my Uncle David. For his birthday, Grandpa handed him a small box. Uncle Bryan was feeling kind of jipped since 16 is a big birthday and he was hoping for something that would fit in a little bit bigger box. When he opened up the box, there were two keychains in there. One was a key to the airplane hanger and the other was a key to the airplane. Grandpa said, "I trust you. I know you'll take good care of the airplane." Hello! When some (spoiled rotten!) kids are getting cars for their 16th birthday, my Uncle Bryan was given access to the airplane! Uncle Bryan then just shared about how Grandpa was very trusting. That would be true. He had me driving his cars when I was probably 10. I was an old pro by the time I actually took my driving test.

After the funeral we went to the cemetery where he was buried with my grandmother, Ella Mae, and where my grandmother, Arleen, will be buried when she passes as well.

Grandpa just wanted to be buried in a pine box to save money. Sounds just like him! Grandma put her foot down and got this beautiful casket.

This is my family with Grandma and my cousin's wife and two daughters. Grandma bought herself two new dresses for the two days of services. She said Grandpa was always doing that...buying her two of something because she couldn't decide between them. She looked lovely and she said it made her feel good to have new clothes.

Here's my mom with her brothers and my Uncle David's wife. Yes, I have tall uncles. And a short mother. Where did my mom's lack of height come from? Her grandmother, who was only about 4'11"!! My uncles are so darned handsome.

After the family luncheon, one of my cousins, Jordan, had an awesome idea. See, during the summers when Grandpa and Grandma lived in Mesa, Arizona, my parents would drive us halfway and my grandparents would drive halfway. We'd meet in Blythe, California, a total armpit of a town, and my grandparents would take us to back to Mesa for a few weeks. What great memories! Just about the only thing in that desert town was a Thrifty's grocery store and they had ice cream for really cheap. They scooped it with this cylindrical-shaped thing. Grandpa would always take us there before headed out for Arizona. All of us cousins (seen here in the picture, except for my sister Feney) have vivid memories of stopping there for ice cream. Anyway, Jordan said there aren't any Thrifty stores anymore but there was a little convenience store that had Thrifty ice cream. And maybe they used the cylindrical-shaped scoopers! We decided that in Grandpa's memory, it was a must to go there and get a picture of us eating our Thrifty ice cream. It put such great smiles on our faces. I wish I could've thrown a picture up to Grandpa in heaven so he could get a smile out of it, too.

Me, Danica and my mom all went to the Mesa temple after that. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we enjoyed walking around that beautiful temple.

And, of course, I couldn't leave without getting a picture of my favorite kind of trees...

Sisters...pregnant together again!

Me and my cute mom.

I'm sure there's lots of things I wanted to share for my benefit that I have forgotten about. It was a great trip to Arizona. It was wonderful to see my grandma, although it was very hard to leave her knowing that she would be alone and sad. It was wonderful to see my handsome cousins and spend time with family to cover the sad moments. I love my family. They are the greatest. I feel so blessed to have each of them.

The day before we left, we went to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix (I think!). It was basically cacti. It was pretty fun. The cool part was that it was during a Chihuly glass exhibit so there was his glass stuff interspersed through everything. I loved that part.

Great Wolf Lodge!

So, we actually took a family vacation! We left the day after my grandpa died. It was a good time for me to get away, enjoy some time with my family (which I know he would have wanted) and just relax...well, kind of. I was kind of having too much fun to relax. What a great place! I decided we needed to do something like that before the baby comes and we're stuck at home, sleep-deprived. It was WAY worth every dime we spent. And now, without further ado, here are...a whole bunch of pictures!!

The room we got had a cute little "cabin" for the kids, complete with bunk bed and their own TV and Nintendo (seriously, who has time to play Nintendo or watch TV while they're there?). It amazed me how well they took to the bunk bed. Evan had seemed leery of them in the past but was way excited about it and did a great job sleeping up there without being scared. Maren is still in a crib at home so I wondered how this would be for her. She loved it and called it "my yoom". She slept great on her bed and now I'm thinking bunk beds may be the way to go for these two. Exciting stuff to come! What silly faces they have here!

Evan took quite a while to warm up to the whole water park thing. But once he did, he had a blast! He would go down this purple slide and then skip/run through the water to get back on. The boy who is NEVER pushy or aggressive with other kids he doesn't know was trying to get ahead of others to get to the stairs first. I definitely saw a different side of him that was fun to see. I loved watching his face when he came down the slide and said "wahoo!".

Yes, Maren looks drunk here but I thought it was a really cute picture of Michael.

In addition to the slides, Evan really enjoyed playing in the fountains. I couldn't believe how free he got with letting water spray in his face. I love watching my kids overcome their fears and come out of their comfort zones!

Speaking of out of his comfort zone, that purple slide isn't the only one newly-brave Evan went down. He also went down some serpentine ones that started at the top of this four-story fort. Michael took him up a couple of times. I was shocked to find that Evan had to go down by himself, instead of on Michael's lap, and he did it! Well, at one point all the adults except me went on a crazy slide that I had no desire to go on, especially being pregnant. So I was taking care of Evan, Maren and our friend's daughter. Evan wanted to go on the serpentine slides while we waited. Well, I knew I didn't want to climb up all those stairs with these other two girls. Plus, there's water spraying everywhere in there and see that bucket about to spill at the top of the picture? That's full of 1,000 gallons of water that dumps out about every three minutes. I knew we could end up right under it at just the wrong time. So I told Evan that if he could climb up there by himself, he could go. First of all, I couldn't believe myself letting him do that. Second of all, I can't believe he took me up on it! I watched my little guy go and was so, so nervous. I tried to watch him like a hawk but it was hard to see him at times. I just hoped for the best. Evan wasn't too fond of the dumping bucket and he said it did dump while he was up there but he was fine with it. He came down the slide with a big smile and I let out a sigh of relief. Still can't believe I let him do it but it feels really good now knowing that I did.

All the fun really tuckered Maren out. Plus, we had stayed up until 10 p.m. the night before and she hadn't had a nap that day. Poor thing was exhausted. This is them waiting for me to get back with our pizza lunch. I was really looking forward to getting some snuggle time with her while everyone else played. Unfortunately...

She woke up just in time to get some pizza, regain her energies and get ready for more wet and wild fun! No snuggling!

Maren also loved the purple slide and would go around and around on it. She seemed so small to be going on this "big" water slide (comparatively, you know?) but she loved every second of it...as you can see by the big smile on her face.

And this is the Bybee family at the end of day 2 of our Great Wolf fun. It was about 10 p.m. by this time and everyone was completely beat. Ha! This was the best we could get. So, our neighbor, Anton, came over the day saying he was going to GWL and wanted to find out what it was all about. Well, we pulled out the pictures. We showed him videos. And we talked to him about it for about an hour. Yeah, we're ready to go back...like now!

Lisa's 2009 Visit

So much has happened since Lisa visited last month that I hadn't gotten around to blogging about it yet. For those of you who don't know, Lisa is my "oldest" friend, in that she is the friend I have had the longest. She moved around the corner from us just before 2nd grade started. So I six. Yeah, that was a long time ago! Anyway, she is blessed to be able to do quite a bit of traveling and chose to visit us this year. The kids had a great time waking her up in the morning! We went to The Children's Museum and our favorite restaurant, JoPa (if you're in the area and haven't been there yet, you must go!). We went to Target and she spent her whole Saturday with me at the church getting it ready for our annual Sweetheart's Ball. Yeah, pretty much she just lived my life for 5 days...nothing exciting! Ha! Before my kids came along we used to go to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival or Seattle and other "fun" places. Oh, how things change with kids around! Anyway, for some silly reason I didn't get many pictures (maybe the batteries were dead...again?!?!). These are all from The Children's Museum...

Obviously, there was a Bob the Builder exhibit. The kids loved it. Unfortunately, Maren was always looking at something and never at the camera. But I thought this picture of Evan was too cute to pass up.

And here's Maren pretending to be Daddy in her scrubs, showing off the x-ray she took. Looking at those bangs makes me wonder why on earth I waited so long to get them cut. Sorry, Maren! I think that borders on child abuse.

And here's Lisa with Flat Stanley. Lisa's nephew made Flat Stanley in school and Flat Stanley had quite the trip. He got his picture taken on the airplane, with lots of different strangers, and in some very cool places. It was fun to have him along for the trip! :-)

What a Day!

Boy, this body has had quite the day. This morning I went to Zumba. That's 8 - 9 a.m. That's some super aerobic, hip-shaking working out. Oh-so-fun and oh-so-sweat-inducing! Anyway, I got home, jumped in the shower, got dressed in my clogging outfit and headed for a church building where we had an audition for a fine arts showcase next month. We were going to audition this new dance we started in September. It's awesome, it's fast, it's hard. It's impressive. Well, I had missed quite a few weeks of practice because of sick kids and Michael's birthday and other random things. So on Thursday I got together with a fellow clogger and got caught up on the ending. I hardly slept all last night because the dance was running through my head...making sure the last steps were cemented enough that my feet would do what I needed them to during the audition. When I got to the church at 10 a.m., we ran through the dance two times. I'm starting to feel like I have Jell-O for legs by this point. Then we go into the audition. They love the dance, but not the music so much. Doesn't quite fit into the evening's other events. So we tell them we have other songs. Then we proceed to show them THREE more dances. Hello! Way more than I bargained for today. My poor body. That would be a lot for a non-pregnant person to do. I would've liked to have seen myself in bed by 10 p.m. tonight because I'm EXHAUSTED, but I had too much work to do. I just stopped, without being done, because I could hardly keep my eyes open any longer. It's been a long day. Three hours of dancing, an hour of weeding the garden, two showers, a trip to the temple and lots of work. But I did enjoy a small bowl of ice cream. It was nice knowing that I had worked it off by 8:20 this morning!!

The News I Can Hardly Bear to Share

When I was looking up the picture I wanted to use for this post, I thought the pain in my heart might kill me. Oh, this is hard. My grandpa, who I made a really great post about a while back and can't find it now, passed away on Wednesday. He's had cancer for years now so I shouldn't be surprised. And we had about a week's notice that it was coming. But nothing can prepare you for the realization that it could be 50 years before you see someone you love so dearly again. I have kept pretty busy since finding out...Maren being sick, packing for a little vacation, vacationing, cleaning, etc. But whenever I stop for just a second, he is always on my mind and the tears flow freely. I can't imagine my life without him and I wish my kids didn't have to spend so much of theirs without him. He loved them and me so much. If you asked anyone who knew him what one stand-out thing was about him, it was that he loved his family. He made it known ALWAYS. There is a huge hole in my heart right now and it saddens me to think of how long it may be there. And then I think about Dallin and realize that it will always be there. I wish that I could've talked to him before he passed and asked him to kiss my grandma for me and to scoop up Dallin and tell him we love him. I'm sure he did that anyway because he would know. But it would sure make me feel better. Michael went into the Missionary Training Center on March 4th. He thought that was pretty cool because he was "marching forth" to fulfill his calling as a missionary. My grandpa died on March 4th. I know that he is "marching forth" to his eternal glory. I fly out to Arizona to attend his funeral on Monday. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say and get off my chest when I get back...

Gender!

It has been quite a week around here. There is much to post about. Maren has been really sick with an ear infection, which we found out about the day I had my ultrasound. For three days straight I pretty much did nothing but hold her. It was great to get to do that but terrible when I would look out at the ever-worsening state of affairs around our house. Luckily, she is on the mend.

Anyway, as I said, we had our ultrasound. Well, Evan and I went to the ultrasound. Michael had too many patients that day so Evan held down the support fort in Michael's absence, which was fine with me since it's about the 30th ultrasound I've had and Michael promised to bond with the babe in utero regardless of being there or not. Everything appears to be fine, though they weren't able to get all the views of the heart they needed. I have to go back in a month to have that part redone. Evan was a trooper, hanging out with me during the ultrasound and then with the perinatologist afterwards. He was so, so talkative that I had to ask him a few times just to not talk at all. He was asking tons of questions and talking about the baby. It was very cute...most of the time. And he was not disappointed on the gender. It's a boy! This should surprise no one who is at all connected to my circle of ward friends, friends and family. In our ward there are two other girls who are pregnant within about a week of me. Both with boys. My two best friends are pregnant with boys. And my sister is pregnant with a boy. It's the boy cycle. I'm happy (would've been either way!) but slightly sad for Maren who will be alone in her girlyness, having two brothers, three boy cousins on my side, four on Michael's side and the only girl cousins being 13 and 15 years old! Oh well. She'll be well looked after.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Mikey Dear!

It's Michael's birthday today and I was just writing him his birthday card (10:45 at night. Nice, huh? But I did LOTS of other stuff today for the occasion, in my defense!). I wrote, "When I met you, you were 23. Now you're 36! Wow! We really ARE growing old together!" Gee whiz, time flies. And what happened to Michael's 30s, anyway? They're more than half gone. When did we become such old farts (ha! Just kidding to all of you "older" friends of mine!!)? Sometimes I feel like I'm still 20 and he's still 23. When did the life of adults creep up on us with a house and kids and, uh, stress?!?! Oh, well. He's got a lot less hair now than he did back then, but that just saves on gel. And the great thing is that his glasses are much smaller than they were back in the day. But, Mikey, I love you more than I could've ever thought possible back when you were a wee lad of 23. Happy birthday, Love!

New Take on the Doggy Door!

So today we're driving home from taking Michael to work and Evan tells me he has a great idea. He wants to cut some of the wall out of his room in the shape of a square. Then he wants to put a square piece of paper over it. That way whenever he wants to go outside, he can just rip off the paper and go out through the hole in his bedroom wall. A ha! Of course! He wants a doggy door. But when I asked him where he had seen that before, he told me he'd never seen it. He just thought about it and thought it was a great idea. So, son, could you think of another great idea that hasn't already been invented and make your family financially stable?!?! :-) By the way, sorry, but no on the doggy door. Haven't you ever seen that America's Funniest Videos where the people record the raccoon coming in and out the doggy door in the middle of the night? I told Evan he'd wake up and have raccoons and squirrels laying on his bed with him!

Love It!

Okay, this is so perfectly stated. I feel like I'm always trying to make excuses for why I can't get enough done in a day. Whether it be to friends or strangers or Mr. Michael. Now I understand! It's so true...it takes 45 minutes to get done what it takes people not packing kids around 15 minutes to do! Can you believe the nerve of this "friend" who wrote in with the question? Good grief! Enjoy!

Say what?

In the last couple of days, the kids have said things that really astounded us. We'll start with the funny and end with the serious. On Saturday Maren and I dropped the boys off at Home Depot and drove to my mom's house to give her our coffee table. Maren didn't know we had put it in the trunk. She went into my mom's house and me and the table followed. I put the table down in my mom's family room. When Maren saw OUR table sitting in my mom's house, she was quite surprised and said, "What is going on around here?" Huh? I was sure I didn't hear that right so I checked with my mom who confirmed that's exactly what she said. We got a good laugh over that one.

Yesterday morning (Sunday), Michael was working on the talk he would give in Sacrament Meeting that afternoon. I was sitting on the other side of the wall from the computer where Michael was looking quite concentratingly (interesting word, eh?) at his notes. Evan walked up to him and said, "What's wrong, Dad?" Michael replied that nothing was wrong, he was just fine. Then Evan said, "No, what's wrong with your talk?" Michael told Evan that there were just so many things he wanted to say. He wanted to make sure to say the most important things but he was having a hard time choosing which ones were the most important. This is what Evan said... "Well, Dad, the most important things are that Jesus is real. And Jesus will come again. And everyone will be resurrected. And Joseph Smith told us not to smoke." Well, I must've had the hugest eyes ever as they filled up with sweet tears. It's amazing what kids know and understand these days. He was absolutely right. He had no idea what Michael was speaking about but it doesn't matter. Those things are the most important (at least the first three, for sure! I love how that fourth one is the "one of these things is not like the other". Cute.). Michael shared that in his talk and Evan got lots of comments from the adults afterwards on how it was nice of him to help with his dad's talk. Pretty sweet moments for this mom.

Well, guess what...

I'm pregnant! Ha! Feel free to discuss it now. :-) Didn't see what is living inside me, but whatever it is has a heartbeat so we're doing good. Four more weeks to ultrasound. Hooray!

Sweet Shower!

So, I've got to tell you about my sweet shower yesterday! You see, we have a hot water problem. I can never get the water hot through my whole shower. Or I can get it luke warm through my shower but never hot. My showers are pretty miserable. Well yesterday Michael washed his church shirt about an hour before I took my shower. On hot! I asked him what the heck he was thinking and he said it would actually help and that we should have nice hot water for the next hour. Okey dokey. So my ritual is that I turn the shower on to full heat, feel the water from the outside, turn it down to the appropriate temp. and then get in. So I turned it on and was feeling cold, cold, cold. I look away to check something out on the wall and suddenly the water is gone. When I turn to look back, I realize it's not hitting my hand anymore because the water pressure just dropped about 90%. The water is only FALLING out of the shower head. But, guess what! Sweet! It's hot! So I get in and make a note that there's only about ten drops falling per second. Hmm... I try to get wet but I keep having to back up. Back. Back. Right into the knobby thing that turns the water on and off. Well, that's gonna leave a bruise but at least now I'm getting wet. Wash my hair. Start to rinse my hair. And rinse. And rinse. It takes me about five minutes to actually get all the shampoo out of my hair. But you know what? The water is hot! I consider whether it would really be wise to put conditioner in my hair since it will take a while to get it rinsed out and I might run out of hot water from taking so long. But my hair needs it so I go for it. Ouch! Ran into that darn thing again. And I'm practically stepping on the drain. I wish the trickle would shoot out just a little bit more. The problem with the low water pressure is also that even though the water is hot, I still feel rather cold because most of the air in the shower is not being hit by this hot water and it's chilly in there. But I finally get my hair rinsed and decide it would be unwise to skip my body. So I take care of that. All in all, it was a difficult shower. Not all that fun and kind of painful. But it was sweet! You know why? The water was hot!

Salmonella Scare?

So, I have my first appointment tomorrow. 16 weeks along and my first appointment. Should be interesting. Have you Googled the V baby video yet? Hmm... Anyway, if you don't hear another thing from me about a baby and that little widget is gone from the sidebar there, you'll know that there has been no baby this whole time and I just need to lay off the ice cream. In that case, please don't mention it to me. :-)

But, about the salmonella...I was supposed to fill out this paperwork with questions like how many pregnancies have you had? Do you smoke? Do you drink? How much exercise do you get? Do you take prenatal vitamins? You know, all those things they want to know to make sure you're making healthy choices in your pregnancy. Well, then there's this list of foods it asks you if you've been eating. Such as raw fish (no way, Jose!), deli meat (haven't been in the mood lately) and some other things. But then I got found out! The Mexican cheese. Yeah, forgot about that one...that it goes in with the soft cheeses. I realized my yummy tacos at Don Chilitos probably had Mexican cheese on them. And I've been there three times since I got pregnant. And then the real killer. Any raw eggs? HELLO! I'm a cookie dough lover! I love the dough better than the cookies. And not just that...brownie batter, cake batter. Whatever is yummy and uncooked I love! And they all have eggs in them, of course. So, I haven't finished filling in the sheet yet because I'm not sure what to put without getting in trouble. The good news, however, is that I'm pretty sure I've been eating raw eggs in this kind of stuff since I was two or younger. So I think I'm immune to salmonella. Can you be immune to salmonella? I'll have to ask Michael. :-) Not sick now, never have been before. Yeah, I'll probably continue with the cookie dough habit. The lizard probably likes what comes through the umbilical cord when I do!

"I Two Years Olds!"

That's what Maren likes to remind everyone of lately. Her birthday was Sunday, the 25th, and it couldn't have come soon enough. For days she was singing herself the birthday song and talking about her cake, ice cream, and presents. Nothing disappointed. Except, oh, yes, the Christmas theme with the camera. Seriously not a single good, worthy picture on her birthday. I'm beginning to wonder if the camera is going downhill or if my picture-taking abilities are! Ugh. So, here's a little video of her (which I couldn't figure out how to shorten - sorry!) singing herself Happy Birthday. If you watch her mouth, she sings the whole thing. Ha! She really is so, so cute and we love her so much. She's on my dad's lap here...

So what's some fun stuff going on with our now-2-year-old? She is big into babies. Real and pretend. She got babies for Christmas and babies for her birthday and she loves every one. And she seems very excited about "new baby". She really loves to draw and she loves to have us draw things for her. Her favorite canvas is her Magna-Doodle. But what's tiring is she will bring it to us about 25 times a day and say, "Mommy, draw Maren, Evan, Daddy, Dowlin (Dallin), new baby, Mommy". Oh, gee whiz, I think. Again? As soon as it's drawn she's erasing so we can do it all over again. Sometimes it gets recorded for posterity...on real paper...with a real pen.

Yes, that's just about the best I can draw anything. Judge not, lest ye be not judged. Ha! Luckily, in this one, I'm the only one carrying the child. Sometimes she insists that she has one in her tummy and sometimes everyone does! Her other funny thing about the new baby is "the song". When I used to put her to bed, I would sing her a Primary song from church. This is the way it's always been done and things were going great this way! Then one day about a month or so ago she said, "Sing new baby song, Mom." What? What new baby song? She insisted. She wouldn't relent and I had to make up a song on the spot...about the new baby...and what Maren would do to help with the new baby after it's born. As you can hear from the happy birthday song, I come from a family of non-singers (missed you guys, Danica and Matt!). Doesn't sound too great. So this song has absolutely not good tune and changes on a daily basis. Right now it includes that Maren will help give baby baths, read to baby, sing songs to baby, feed baby food, rock baby in the chair, make baby laugh, change baby's diapers, get baby's clothes on and more I'm sure I can't remember. But if I ever forget anything, Maren reminds me. And often times she adds things so this horrible song gets longer and longer every week. My only concern with having this new baby is protecting it from its loving sister, Maren.

In other Maren news, we had her 2-year check-up this week and it was so fun. She was ecstatic to go to the doctor and ran into the room when the door from the lobby was opened for her. She danced around and laughed and talked with the doctor. The doctor was beside herself and I heard her say to her assistant in the hall when the door was closed that she has never seen a 2-year-old so excited to be at the doctor. For my information later on, she probably says 500 words, though when the doctor asked how many, I told her 400 because I didn't want to seem like I was over-exaggerating. I probably did anyway. But I'm sure it's really over 500. Some of my favorites that she says are already, almost and either. Not because she says them cute or anything, but because they're such ideas instead of concrete objects. I just can't figure out how someone so little would learn to apply words like those correctly, but she does. Although she once counted to 18, she rarely gets that high anymore. Usually to 12 or 13. Though tonight Evan counted some stuff up to 20 and she took off from there and went from 21 to 26. That was pretty fun to hear! She's really big into colors right now and is working hard to figure them all out. So far she's got orange down and maybe green and purple. She seems bound and determined to figure them all out so it shouldn't be long now. She is pretty outgoing with her friends, who she really seems to love. She talks about her friends during the day and plays really well with them when they're together. Friends from her age to age seven. They all seem to love to play with Maren. And, lastly, she LOVES to go to Nursery. During the closing song she will ask, "Time for Nursery class, Mom?" I tell her that we have to have the closing prayer first and then it's time for class. As soon as that "amen" is said, she's jumping out of my lap and running toward the chapel doors. Seriously! I run after her with this crazed look on my face, I'm sure, because she's surrounded by giants who have no idea this little, tiny body is there, and I'm sure she's going to get trampled any second. She runs herself down the hall to her classroom and I let her in. No need for good-byes, I guess, because she doesn't look back for one. She loves Nursery, her teachers, her friends in there, and snack time, of course.

We sure love our silly, caring, loving, pretty girl. Happy birthday, Maren!

(In Michael's Flash costume from when he was little! It must be 30 years old!)

Hmm...

I have heard from quite a few of you about my complete dismissal of my blog lately.  Reasons?  I've been mad.  Mad because we had Dollar Store batteries in our camera and I missed TONS of great stuff.  Like the biggest snow in 40 years.  Like Evan and Maren's faces when they saw their bikes on Christmas morning.  Yeah, the really good and juicy stuff in life.  Here's about all I got of that:

Bundled up to pick out the Christmas tree!

On Christmas Eve, Michael and Evan went outside to make a snowman.  Maren wanted to join them, but the snow was so deep and had a layer of ice inside it that would break as you walked on it.  She wasn't enjoying it too much so the boys made her this throne to sit on while they worked.  She loved it.  But each time she sat in it, she tilted her head to the side like this and closed her eyes.  Ha!  Hard work being a princess.

 

Said bikes...terrible pictures but the only ones those dumb batteries let me get.  Notice Evan's face...he looks terrified.

But he overcame that rather quickly...although this picture was taken 2 weeks or so after Christmas.

I think my other problem and why I've stayed away from my blog is that I'm stressed.  I'm 14 1/2 (don't you forget that half!!) weeks pregnant and I haven't seen the doctor yet.  And for a girl with my past history, that's not so great.  But I haven't had insurance.  I've been fighting and fighting and going around and around with some companies.  FINALLY, just at the end of last week, I learned that I was covered.  So I call my doctor's appointment on Monday and of course they can't get me in for another two weeks.  I'll be 16 weeks!  My doctor is going to wonder what on earth I'm doing waiting so long and I have to wonder myself.  But what are my options?  I called the doctor's office to see how much an initial appointment is without insurance.  With all things included (labs, ultrasound, deposit), it would be around $700.  Ha!  So, anyway, long story short...I'm just really anxious to make sure there's really a baby growing inside there and not a V lizard (remember that show?  I used to love it WAY back.  I was going to put a picture on here of the V baby, but when I looked it up, it was way too freaky to include!!).  Okay, I'm just making my long story long.  So, I just want to know that I don't have an ectopic pregnancy and I don't have twins and there really is something going on inside there.  I was thinking today that I can't wear maternity clothes to my appointment in February.  Because what if I go in and find out I'm not pregnant or something?  I'll feel like an idiot.  Oh, the strange things that go on in a pregnant woman's mind.  So, there you have it.  The explanation.  Michael just got up and told me my dad called tonight (hi, Dad!), all worried about me because I hadn't had a blog post in so long.  Hello, world!  I'm back and still kicking.  I've got some great stuff to post about Maren tomorrow, but for now, I'm going to bed!