Most Exciting News!!!

At dinner tonight I discovered...

(drum roll, please)...

Sara's first tooth FINALLY broke through!!! Wahoowee!!!

This picture is of her tonight, right before I found the tooth, we gave her this lemon slice just to see what she would do since she loves other sour things like pickles. We got several faces like this but she always put the slice back into her mouth for another round! What a funny girl!

(Just as a side note: Sara is 14 1/2 months old... really old to get a FIRST tooth!)

Sara and the babysitter

I left Sara with a babysitter that was not a family member for the first time EVER last night. I was a little worried, not sure how she'd react, but she had her brother and sister there and I was sure everything would be okay. We started a new movie (Bolt) and set a big bowl of popcorn in the middle of the kids before leaving. Sara was right in the middle of all of them eating away and watching the cartoon when I leaned over to kiss her goodbye. She pushed me away and when I said, "Sara, Mommy's leaving", she barely glanced at me, shoved her waving fist in my face (while still watching the movie) said "Ba Ma" (translated... "Bye, Mommy") then kept eating and watching, not glancing my way again. I'm glad she is so well adjusted but feel just a little cheated I didn't get all the drama of alligator tears. Oh well.

12 Weeks Pregnant

Not much has changed. I'm not quite as tired... only sleeping 9 hours a day instead of 12 is a definite improvement! I can still fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans but ONLY with the help of hair ties and Bella Bands. I'm only wearing maternity shirts though because my regular t-shirts weren't coming down far enough in the front. I'm showing enough to start getting the "look" at church but so far nobody has had the courage to ask me outright if I am pregnant or not.

I'm rather impressed at Nikolai's photography... 12 weeks down and 28 left to go (so, only 7 more of these belly pictures)!!! I'm 1/3 through already, wahoo!

It's always a zoo when we are with the Rapier's

I had promised my kids a day at the zoo over Spring Break. We took the Rapier's with us. With the number of people I can bring on my membership card and my two guest passes we just had enough to get everybody in (now, if Mike had not been working it would not have worked). The kids love to play on this huge stump. We had to remind them there were animals to see also.
Monkey's watching the elephant.

Poor Sara was having tummy trouble that day. She spent much of it like this, Kevin even carried her around with his hands supporting her feet. Poor baby :(

I have so many pictures centered on this particular frog over the years, I really need to compile them all together from when Nikolai was an itty bitty baby to the present.

This is my favorite picture from the whole day, Sara eating one snow cone while digging out an ice chunk out of another one! Everybody tired, trudging out after it started to get rather warm and way too crowded. Check out Nikolai in the middle, his face says it all!

Kartchner Caverns and Casa Grande Ruins... on the way home.

On the way home we stopped at Kartchner Caverns, hoping for a cave tour. Unfortunately, apparently you have to get reservations weeks in advance so we were unable to see the actual cave. They have a really great museum though with replica's of all the best rock formations, so we got to touch and see what you are not allowed to touch in the caves.

We weren't allowed to bring camera's in but Kevin's phone takes pretty good photos... They had a replica of the size of the original hole that the discoverers of the cave had to crawl through. Considering my baby had to crawl through it I have no idea how two grown men got through it! Nikolai and MaryKate ran in and out of these too but they were too fast and off to another exhibit before Kevin got his phone out.

We stopped at the Casa Grande Ruins because we had never done it before. It was really interesting seeing how these Indians constructed this three story building using piles of mud!

By the time we got here my camera was completely dead so these last few pictures were also taken on Kevin's phone. Not bad.These two pictures show how tall it really is, close up and then far back in the same location.
We had a great time on our little trip!

In the Hotel and on the way home...

Sara was filthy after running around all day in the dust of Tombstone so she got a bath first thing when we got back to the hotel. I put this picture in because you can just see the big red scrape all the way up her right forearm. The inside of her palm got really bad scrapped too... that is what happens when you are 14 months old and insist on doing everything yourself!!!Nikolai spent the evening shooting arrows at the mirror.

While MaryKate laid around in the most uncomfortable of ways, playing her flute.

We went out to dinner with Kevin's cousin, Greg, and his wife, Lyn that same evening. They live over in Benson which is reasonably close to Sierra Vista (where we were staying). It was great to see them even though I forgot to get a picture of them... whoops.

Sara fell fast asleep almost immediately when we got in the car to drive home the next day. How she stayed asleep with all the commotion going on around her I will never know.

The World's Largest Rose Bush

I can never go to Tombstone without stopping by and visiting the Worlds Largest Rosebush. It came from Scotland in 1885 which makes it 124 years old. It covers 8,000 square feet and has never been fertilized!!! The house is a museum filled with 1880- early 1900 Tombstone paraphernalia. I think that kind of thing is really interesting. Here the kids are checking out a miniature rock crystal garden that somebody sculpted.
There is a platform constructed in the back of the bush so you can climb up and see the top. The trellis that holds the bush up is constructed with old mining pipes, in and of itself it is a work of art!

Sara will not let anyone but her Daddy carry her like this... not even me! But she LOVES it when he does.

You can see MaryKate's horseshoe around her neck that she bought.

This is what the trunk looks like. It is bigger around then most trees!!!

Souvenirs and Downtown Tombstone

Look at the dead guy!
Oh, wait, maybe I don't like it... (she burst into tears immediately after snapping this picture)
Nikolai loved the dead guys. MaryKate would not go anywhere near them!

We stopped at the park to let Sara run around. She wanted to push her stroller!

We gave each of the big kids $20 and let them spend it any way they wanted, but once it was gone they were not allowed to ask for anything else. Nikolai picked out this bow and arrow set that came with a knife and belt and target. He had enough left over he got a crystal growing rock and gigantic jaw breaker at Kartchner Caverns.

MaryKate bought this Indian flute and a pretty stone ring (you'll have to zoom in to see the ring very well). She had been begging the mine tour guide to let her take a pretty rock home so after she bought the ring made out of a local pretty rock she saw him out on the sidewalk and had to run up to him and show him that she got one the legal way! She also bought a horseshoe painted pretty with beads that she calls a good luck dream catcher.

the Good Enough Mine Tour

We took the kids down to Tombstone for a little vacation over spring break. Our main reason of going there was because of this really cool mine tour that opened up a couple of years ago. We thought that they would just love it, and we were right.

Out on top of the mine, with all the modern excavating equipment in the background. Sara had been asleep and I was trying to get her back so in the carrier... it sure didn't last long though...

This is my all time favorite photo of the entire trip. Kevin took over carrying Sara. We gave her a bottle to keep her quiet and we all had to wear the hard hats. She just looks so tough hanging there, in her hard hat, with her bottle in mouth!

A nice lady offered to take our picture and somehow even managed to all of us, including Sara, smiling and looking at the same time!

I would recommend this tour to anybody. It is informative in a real hands on, up close sort of way. They have a lot of the old time equipment from the 1880's and early 1900's. They even demonstrate how the work was accomplished. It is amazing to see all the work the men did all by hand. There are even some veins of silver left in the rock and you can see how unappealing it looks in the rock.

Sara was soooo done being carried and insisted on walking out of the mine, this is the front entrance, hanging on to Daddy's hand and the railing, it's not very obvious, but it is a good size ramp for a little 14 month old baby.

Aloha Festival

The first Saturday of Spring Break we took the kids out to the Aloha Festival at Tempe Town Lake. MaryKate wanted a picture of what this flower looked like in her hair before she decided it was the one for her.
It was a long, hot, fun afternoon, this is us on the way out, overlooking the lake.

The kids picked out these cute little birds that move and sing for a souvenir.

Sara was so tuckered out from the sun, she fell fast asleep. You can still see the remains of lunch on her tray! We got her a couple of really cute Hawaii outfits (not the one she is wearing, that is an old one of MaryKate's)

Snippets of the first half of March...

Ever since her birthday Sara has been in love with helium balloons... or "Blooo! Blooo!" as she calls them. She got this particular one when we were leaving Fry's one morning, they had them hanging everywhere near the entrance, when she saw them she excitedly started squealing her "Bloooo! Bloooo!" The greeter at the door thought it was too cute so he untied one and handed it to her. I tied it to her wrist and we spent the next 20 minutes in our front yard with her running around with her new Bloooo.

A couple of weeks ago was Seuss Week at school. There was a lot of fun activities that the kids got to do in honor of reading and the great author, but their favorite by far was Friday. MaryKate's class got to do pajama day and Nikolai's class did cowboy day. They went dressed up like this to school, got to bring a "bedroll and a book" in Nikolai's case and a pillow and a book in MaryKate's. They had snacks all day and a relaxed, reading, game playing Friday.

Another thing Sara has discovered is climbing into the car all by herself. She gets such a kick out of getting into the front seat and pretending to drive. Now if I could get her to willingly get into her car seat in the back and wait to be buckled....

Because another awesome thing happened in the car this month... Sara got to turn around in her car seat!!!! When we finally took this step she wasn't quite at 20 lbs yet but a real close 19 1/2 lbs. We deemed it close enough when the straps on her infant seat (that is only rated to 20 lbs) started cutting into her neck and hurt every time we went anywhere. She is still getting used to sitting forward, she likes it but at the same time complains when we buckle her in, she's still not used to the idea that she is SUPPOSED to face forward and it disturbs her for a minute (she's really into everything being the same lately and even though it's been almost 2 weeks, she's still not quite into it). It makes her look like such a big girl.

Two of Sara's favorite things caught into one picture... running around naked and coloring! (By the way, this has a funny side story, it was taken about 5 minutes before she peed all over this chair and onto the floor, actually a rare occurrence when she runs around naked, I was trying to run around, cleaning up after her, getting the kids to do homework, cleaning up the kitchen enough to be able to make dinner and put groceries away since we had just gotten home and it was past 6:30 pm. Kevin innocently walked through the door in the middle of all this chaos after being gone since 7 that morning and asked me "What's for dinner honey?!" At which point I looked around at everything that was going on, felt completely overwhelmed and sat down on the kitchen floor, sobbing. Kevin walked around the counter, looked at me, and said "So.... we're going out to eat?" I couldn't talk, I was crying too hard so he got Sara cleaned up and diapered and dressed. Got the kids shoes on then asked if I was going too. By then I was calm enough, I got up, cleaned my face, and enjoyed a dinner OUT with my family. Wow, you've got to love those pregnancy hormones and an understanding husband!")

Our Peanut due October 7th

I'd like to announce the newest arrival to our family, a definite peanut if I ever saw one! We got to see our baby for the first time today and see a heartbeat and the little fluttery moves. It really is hard to tell, even watching it live, but I'm pretty sure the baby's head is pointing down here and you can see one little leg bud up in the upper left corner.

I am doing really well. For you who are aware of the pregnancy-from-hell that I had with Sara, it has been nothing like that, thankfully! I've decided I'm going to have the perfect pregnancy, no morning sickness (none yet and only 3 more weeks of 1st trimester) and no preterm labor this time (we'll see how that one goes, I've had three out of three so far but if I am bound and determined to talk my body out of it... THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING!!!)
Nikolai took a picture of my 8 week bump for me, I think I'm going to commission him to do one of these for me every 4 weeks so I can watch my baby grow. Still little but I'm big enough that I can't button my jeans any more (thank goodness for Bella Bands!) and my shirts are getting too short (thank goodness for transition/maternity shirts).

Kevin is so ecstatic, of course, Sara is oblivious, and Nikolai and MaryKate want to know NOW if it is a boy or not.

February

Sara discovered how fun it is to ride in the wagon and Nikolai willingly obliges to please her.
She loves to help MaryKate with her coloring.

and adores that her big brother or sister can read to her.

Messy baby eating an ice cream cone...

And everybody needs at least one spaghetti picture in their babyhood!