Jaina's Birthday

We crammed a few friends into our little house (Reilly's 1st birthday was easier; we had it outside!) and made sure that Jaina had pictures of her first birthday. :) She enjoyed the cake, and the presents (though not as nearly as much as Reilly did) and is enjoying being one. She still seems like such a baby to me, especially since she's not walking yet, but I don't give her enough credit. She is growing up so much and so quickly!

Enjoying her cake...


Getting so unsolicited help from big big brother. He had been asking for "cake!" ALL day...


Isn't she cute? (and cleaner than her brother was after his 1st cake...)

Reilly testing out one of her presents...


Angry at Daddy for not letting her hold the phone while she talked the Grandma and Grandpa.

Picture Post

So... we're very busy around here. Trying to get everything done and hoping the weather will come and go and be calm again for our traveling on Saturday and Sunday! Jeremy's had a bunch of tests, and is excited to get done soon. Instead of being productive I'm updating the blog... hmm. Just a few of my favorite pictures from the last week or two:
Reilly, thoroughly enjoying the one time Mommy has gotten us both (Jaina was sleeping) bundled up so he could check out the snow:
Chilling while talking to Grandma and Grandpa. Yes, there is a lamp in the middle of the living room.
The kids love when Daddy comes home. He's been gone a lot lately, so he tries to make the most of his time with them when he's here.
They were a little unsure about Santa. Jaina started to tear up just after this picture, so I rescued her, and Reilly had some pretty good looks for Santa, but was excited to get the little present he was handing out. :)
A beautiful sunrise I caught the other morning. I try not to see those too often, but when it happens after 7 am, it's not such a big deal. :)
Jaina, the night before her birthday. She was craning her head trying to see what brother was watching on the DVD player, so we did the grand "Turning of the car seat" at that point. :) She was bewildered, but happy.

Happy Birthday Baby!

This time last year I didn't know we'd be parents again by the end of the day, but we were suspecting. We expected her early, but didn't know she'd come more than 2 weeks before her due date!
I can't quite believe it's already been a year, and that we've survived it (having 2 so little, not survived Jaina), and that she'll be a toddler before we know it. It's just a little crazy... But we're so grateful to have her, and we love her so much! Happy Birthday Jaina!

All moved in

Some of you might think that means you're getting to see pictures of our new place. No such luck. It's not exactly picture-worthy yet (though the ratio of unboxed things to boxed things is decreasing!). Hopefully by Jaina's birthday this Friday at least the main rooms will be pretty enough to take pictures of. Until then, you'll just have to imagine it. Unless you live here and ever visited the McPhie's. If you also visited us, you can picture their house with our stuff all over it. :)
The move went really well. It was a ton of hard work (which I've never fully experienced before, usually being on the sick end or the huge end of a pregnancy) but nothing went wrong, we had plenty of help loading and unloading the moving van (THANK YOU everyone!) and a two amazing friends (in the same family) even helped us clean some on Saturday. That was quite the job. It's nice to be in our new place, though, and amazing to have two rooms for our two kids. I feel spoiled, but it is so much less stressful for right now! We're a little further from the school, and not really close to any stores (vs. having Wal-mart in our old "back yard") but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I definitely prefer the new view. I liked it even more before it was covered with several inches of snow, but only because Reilly could actually play out there before that. We finally even got our Christmas tree decorated tonight, and things are looking better. I need to kick into gear and finish getting these last "bedroom" and "bathroom" boxes unloaded...
Okay, so now that I look at our pictures, I guess you do get to see some of the new house. These were all taken (I think) with our new camera! It is our Christmas present, since the old Cybershot (which we loved) was being held together with a hair tie, (not a problem for me) and starting to take too many blurry pictures. (a problem for both of us) Here is our new camera: (the Sony Cybershot DSC-H10). Loving it.

Here is Reilly in the kitchen, "helping" me by mopping. I guess he's trying to hint that the floor's not so clean... Really, it's winter here, and he's dressed 99.8% of the time. He just wasn't that very moment...

Here is Jaina being cute and happy to wake up in her crib. You can also see the grey elephant that equals sleep for her. Kind of fun, since Reilly never attached to anything but his pacifiers.

Reilly, in the living room, with the kitchen and back door behind him. He's watching something on the portable DVD player while I played with some of the camera's features. He wasn't very impressed.

Jaina, looking out the front window at the snow. I can't believe she'll be a year in less than a week now. She's still my baby!

Reilly, playing with all the little toys he found in a box in "his" room. This is a rare sweet smile, that we seldom get to capture.

And finally, the view out our back door. Well, it was, until the next snowfall. Now there's more white and less gray. Er... brown. :)

So much excitement. Aren't you happy I updated?

Brrr....

Actually, it's not bad today. It was 50º coming home (early) from church! But too many days lately the high has been in the 30's, which is just too cold! Mostly just with little kids that are sick, I guess. Here is a cute picture of the kids getting ready to go outside... Jaina loves her hat, because she knows it means we're getting out of the house!

Everyone but me has been sick again, and Jaina got it kind of bad this time. Between that and teething, she has been pretty miserable the last few days. One night was probably the worst she's had EVER, but we've been pretty blessed the last two nights. :) She felt well enough this morning to go to church (at least to sacrament) and I think she's on the upswing. Here are cute pictures of us and our kiddos just before church today:

One slightly sad thing. I cut Reilly's hair today (and Jeremy's). Not really, but I always get his hair a shorter than I wanted it. Even though it was way too long and always messed up, I was sad to see it go! Here's a before and after...

And lastly, I got to go see the Twilight movie last night (thanks Jeremy, for watching the kids, and Debra for making it fun!). It was SO not the book (which I expected) but still so enjoyable. For the most part, I loved seeing places and faces to put with the story and characters in my head. Not in love with the movie's version of "Edward" - he's just NOT like that in the book, but everything else I could deal with, and it was a lot of fun! Not to mention that I go to like 2 movies a year in the theater, so it's always rather exciting... :)

11 months old and pics

Here are Jaina's 11-month pics, (remember, you can click the picture for full-size) as well as a picture of one of Reilly's cool block-walls, and a picture of some laundry fun the other day...

Christmas Time

Yes, I finally changed my background. Yes, it's Christmas-themed. Yes, there's Christmas music playing. In my little world, as soon as Halloween is over, it is Christmas time! Especially this year, since we're more or less skipping Thanksgiving. We'll be moving that weekend, so we'll be busy busy busy! Enjoy the Christmas music! Some of my favorites are definitely NOT there, but I could only find so much stuff without working too hard...

Edit: To answer a few "comments:" We are moving a few miles away to a slightly bigger place... We are very excited, especially to have a back yard! Also, yes I made the background, just from a digital scrapbooking kit I downloaded somewhere.

October Week 5: My parents and Chicago

Back to our regularly scheduled programming... (i.e. How our kids didn't go trick-or-treating this year)

The day after I got back from California, my parents flew out for a quick trip. They flew into Des Moines and drove to the Quad-Cities. My dad hadn't ever been out here, so that was fun. The kids LOVED having them here. In this first picture you can see poor Reilly's eyes were puffy because he had just gotten an infection in both eyes right before they came! Poor kid... it cleared right up with some drops though. He was so amazing about getting his drops in. He would go lay down and get ready for them half the time. All for a few fruit snacks! :)
It was such a nice visit, and my parents even got brave and watched the kids for us overnight so Jeremy and I could get away for a bit. We haven't been overnight together without the kids since Reilly was 8 months old! I say they were brave because with teething and Reilly being sick, sleep hasn't been going terribly well around here. They did fairly well though, and Reilly and Jaina loved having Grandma and Grandpa all to theirselves Friday and Saturday.

I haven't ever actually been TO Chicago (just in O'Hare 4-5 times) so we drove and parked in downtown (thanks to the Lees, who gave us all the insider info) and spent about 5 hours there. It was a beautiful day (like 70º) and we walked up and down "the Magnificent Mile," seeing all sorts of cool buildings and shopping choices.
We tried to get drawn for some cheap "Wicked" tickets (that would have been especially fun, to see "Wicked" on Halloween!), but it didn't happen. Probably a good thing, since I was starting to get sick. I don't think I would have been alive by the time we got to our hotel, which was 30 minutes away. (By the way, this is the only non-blurry pic of me - that's the only reason it's here. We have GOT to get a new camera...)
So yeah, our hotel. We got on Priceline and put a 3 1/2-star for $50. And it upgraded us to a 4-star Hyatt! Finding it that night was a little crazy, since "Hyatt" does not appear on any of the signs leading to it. It's actually owned by McDonald's, and is just called "The Lodge." It's the hotel at their world headquarters, connected to "Hamburger University" (where new owners get trained?) by a walkway over a pond/lake thing. It was a very nice, rather quiet, slightly strange visit... We like it though, and the bed was amazingly comfortable! Between that and no kids, we slept like rocks... (after we finally found some dinner at Maggiano's in a very nice mall there at about 8:30 that night...)
The next day (after sleeping in) we met up with our friends the Noordas and had some authentic Chicago-style pizza at Giordano's (too lazy to see if that's spelled right). It was very good, and it was fun to hang out with them without chasing our crazy kids around. Though I'm sure Reilly would be sad to know he missed hanging out with Kennedy, not to mention eating that pizza... Then we went to the mall with them for a little while. It's a very cool mall, but it was starting to get really cold and stormy, and I was starting to get sick, so I was glad to head home!

7 Things

Melesa, if you meant the other "Sara" on your list, Sorry!

7 things I can do:
1. Video edit
2. Sing (at least for my kids)
3. Stay up all night reading a (good) book
4. Paint
5. Write with my toes
6. Remove and replace an internal hard drive (that's a new one...)
7. Start three new projects while trying to complete the first one

7 things I can't do:
1. Eat stuff with coconut in it
2. Keep my "workspace" uncluttered
3. Relax when my kids won't go to sleep
4. Run a sewing machine without tech support
5. Throw
6. Run (as in the exercise-type. I CAN run, just not long-term)
7. Go to bed when I should

7 things that attracted me to Jeremy:
1. How friendly he was
2. His dark eyesand long eyelashes
3. I thought he liked ME (not the case at the time, but we worked through that...)
4. His cute smile
5. We could talk and talk and talk
6. He had just been baptized, and was so excited about everything to do with the church
7. His sense of humor

7 things I say most often:
1. Reilly, I said "no."
2. Jaina-love
3. Reilly, you just had breakfast/lunch/dinner!
4. What's wrong, baby girl? (she's been teething and grouchy lately...)
5. We're not watching tv until after naps.
6. Really?
7. How's your day going?

7 People I admire the most:(no particular order)
1. Jeremy
2. My mom
3. My cousin, Leisel
4. The people that created Panda Express
5. My dad
6. Karen and Naomi
7. My Aunt Robin

7 favorite foods
1. Nuts
2. Panda Express
3. Popcorn
4. String Cheese
5. Carrabas' Fettuccine Alfredo
6. Cheetos
7. Avocados

7 people I tag:
1. Jennifer
2. Heather
3. Sophie
4. Karen
5. Gina
6. Mindy
7. Jeremy :)

October Week 4: Sara's CA Trip

So I went off and left poor sick (recovering) Jeremy with the two kids and flew to California (Anaheim area) to visit two of my best friends: Karen and Naomi. We were roommates at BYU for our last 1 - 1.5 years (Naomi was married the last semester), and we have managed to make time to get together every year since then. It was so great to see them , relax a lot together, and not be a mommy for 4 whole days and 5 nights! The flight out (to LA) was pretty good, even though I left Chicago at like 8 pm our time...
Here we are at Naomi's grandpa's beach house. So nice to get away! (this picture was taken Sunday after we went to sacrament at a random ward. It was nice to be able to listen and just SIT with no kiddos...

The first thing we did when we picked Karen up Saturday morning was go get hair cuts. If at all possible, we don't let anyone other than Naomi cut our hair...
Look at the amazing amount of Chinese food we ordered! (in order to have leftovers to get us through Sunday, as well - it worked, we didn't have to cook lunch OR dinner Sunday...)
Walking on the beautiful beach just a house or two away behind the beach house. I love the ocean!


We had lots of fun, even though Karen had to do a lot of homework and lesson plans for the graduate program she's currently in. Naomi helped a lot (they're both L&D nurses) and I... read several books. :) It was nice.
It was so nice to see them, and hard to leave, even though I was excited to see my family again! (And Jeremy was very excited for me to come home!)

Jeremy and the kids did great - he didn't feel terribly well most of the time (had a bad cough), but a few people brought them food, and they mostly hung out in the house until I got back. Reilly and Jaina kept him plenty busy!

Ho hum (October week 4)

Just kidding actually. Life has STILL been crazy, but not in wonderful ways. Jeremy studied like crazy most of last week, and took his first final on Friday. Then Friday evening I got sick with a really yucky cold. By Saturday evening Jeremy was either coming down with that or something else. Whatever it was knocked him out for the day, and we were so grateful he felt well enough to go and take his second final on Monday. At this point he only has two finals left, but he also has no voice! We're both feeling better, though Jeremy's still feeling pretty icky some parts of each day, and, as I said, he can barely whisper. Jaina is teething (again... she already has 6 teeth!) and a little crabby, and Reilly seems to be doing just fine. We are making it, though, and very excited to get these finals over and have our break!
And I am very excited because Friday evening two of my best friends, Karen and Naomi, are flying me out to California to play with them. It will just be a few days (I'll come back Tuesday, but Karen has to back in Seattle before then) but it will be so nice to see them and just have some girl time. I'm trying to imagine what it will feel like to not be "Mommy" for a few days. I'm sure I'll miss the cute little munchkins, and Jeremy too, but it will be a much-needed break, and I can't wait! It was actually Jeremy's idea, several months ago, and really appreciate him being willing to watch the kids by himself during his break for 4 1/2 days! :) Here is a picture from the last time I visited them in California, in November of 05. The two time after that they have visited me, because I was was pregnant both times! (and not much fun...)
Jeremy and I are hoping to have a day/night on our own in Chicago during the last half of the break, if everything works out. We haven't been without kids overnight since Reilly was 8 months old! Wish us luck...

I guess I should do a little update on our cute Jaina, since she's growing up so fast.
She's finally army crawling and cruising along the furniture, both as of this week. She's not too talented at either yet, but she's sure proud of herself!
She's getting so big, but I still can't believe she'll be a year by Christmas time... It's just crazy!
This last picture is for you, Sophie. :)

Random aside: The new Twilight trailer is really cool and got me more excited about the movie than the other ones have... if you haven't seen it, check it out here: http://www.twilightthemovie.com/ecard_widget/. I'm sure there are better places, but I don't know where they are. :)

One last thing. If you're bored (or being a slacker, like me,) you should check out http://www.taaz.com/, where you can play with all sorts of fun hair styles on your own picture. Here are few of the fun ones I created... though I'm not planning to do anything different to my hair right now but hopefully get it cut again... Now I want to see your pictures!