Ready for the cutest things you'll ever see?

These are 3 of the cutest pictures I've ever seen in my lifetime. (Nevermind that they all happen to be of MY daughter.)



...and NOT part of the "cutest" motif, but recent. Here's my 31 weeks photo, though I'm now at 32 weeks, unbelievable! Number 2 certainly goes by faster than number 1!! I was thinking that I am much bigger this time around, but upon examination of past pictures, it looks like I am just barely past where I was through my first pregnancy, and that is heartening! (Can you say 'that's heartening?' It's the opposite of DISheartening, whatever that is.) Though, I am already lengthening a stretch mark or two-Boo. Things continue to go well - I am in 2 week visits now, and all my diabetes and other tests have been normal. Alisa is seriously the wiggliest thing ever! She keeps me awake, or moves my whole body with her kicks and rolls. Looks like her and Amie will both be dancing queens. I can't wait!

Meanwhile... 5 days 'til Christmas!!!!

Dancing Queen!

Here's just a tiny snippet of Amelie's moves. It's actually very short and mellow compared to her usual dancing escapades, but it's the only video we have so far. This is while watching the kids perform at the Festival of Trees.
She just can't hold still while there's a good tune on!

More long lost photos and missing events.

Here are just a few pics of Amie's bday at my mom's (her FIRST experience with being given a cake to devour.)





Also, I really don't have much visual draw for Thanksgiving, but it was still a pretty fun weekend. Thursday, I got up too early to go to Kmart-they were having a THURSDAY sale, including cameras, and I wanted to have one for the weekend, so I went, figuring when could I get a better deal to replace old flatty? So I got up and waited just a few minutes in line, got the camera I wanted (barely) and then found some super scores on girls' clothes for Amie. When I got home, we watched the parade and cooked a bit, then went to Grantsville for TG with Jeff's fam. There were tons of people there, and TONS of food. We had a great time, and played the 3 dollar game. (I predicted the winner, too, a visitor ALWAYS gets the big pot! I agree with you, Marcie, I think we should limit players to family!) After heading home (with a tupperware of leftovers) we went to bed and Jeff went to work.
The next morning, I was glad I got the camera I wanted, so I didn't have to fight the crowds. I usually enjoy the shopping, but didn't need really anything I saw on sale, so I was glad to sleep in and hang out. We then went to a TG party with my big family, junk food style. We had 3 different kinds of wings, various sides and about 6 billion cookies, as well as lots of games. It was really excellent to see so much of the family-almost everyone was there! After we went home, Jeff went to work again, poor guy. When he got home, he was just too spent to go out, so we hung at home til the big game. I have to say, I'm sad Utah lost, but by the end of hour 4, I just wanted it to end either way!

In the days since, we have finished all our Christmas shopping (Yay and Nay! I actually love Christmas shopping) and have been rehearsing for this year's production of the Messiah. Jeff and I both have some solos, and we love the amazing music. We'll be performing Sunday the 13th at the Taylorsville Stake house (where we had our wedding reception) at 7pm. You should come! I already performed in the Taylorsville City production last night-that one is shorter and more casual. I am also hosting a cookie exchange this week, and my sister Jaimie will be coming to live with us during her winter break from school. This past week and this next week are the craziest for us, then the next 3 are wide open. I think people always want to stay away from doing anything too close to the holidays, but for me it just makes a crazy start to the month!

Jeff got the "back to normal" stamp from the orthopedist this week. This makes me happy and sad. I like having him home on his nights off, but I'm sure he'll be back to ball! Alisa is cooking along just as she should-somehow it totally snuck up on me-only 10 weeks left! That is so crazy. Life only moves faster and faster as you gain more reasons to want to savor it.

Halloween!

I recovered the photos from the dead camera, so here is just a beginning of what has been missing. *The camera got run over during trick or treating, so no pics of mom and dad. I was a bandit (I wore a real gun, sshhh) and Jeff was a price is right watcher... ask him about it. ;)

The three faces of Amelie at Halloween:
Giraffe (for trick or treating in the cold)
Ballerina (for family party)
Witch (for witches night out)

Mom and Dad-bitter rivals... sort of
Family rivals shot (Amie's 4th costume!)
helping get messy
the incredibly creative finished product

More to come!

Camera-less update

I've been wanting to post about lots of things, but have been waiting on my camera. I finally accepted the fact that it's never going to wake up again. I'll have to put my memory card in someone else's to retrieve the pictures... Until then, here's a little bit about what's been going on for us.

Jeff hurt his knee playing basketball some weeks ago. It never got better, so he went in to see a GP, who told him he thought the meniscus (sp?) was torn. If it wasn't better after a week and his instructions, he'd need to see an orthopedist. Well, before even a week, Jeff called back for a referral, cause it got worse still. At the ortho, the x-rays showed that Jeff's knee cap lives off to the side where it rubs directly on the bone. This is good and bad because A) he only needs physical therapy and not surgery, yay! but B)it's started a small bone spur, bleh. So, he's been going to PT for a few weeks now and has a follow up in 2 weeks or so. Here's hoping! Jeff doesn't love the PT-including shock therapy-but is psyched cause he hates light duty at work AND needs to keep his vaca for when we have the baby.

As for me, I've been doing lots of shopping and crafting to get ready for Christmas. We're pretty much done with everyone for Christmas, except we haven't gotten anything for Amie yet! Next paycheck. (This whole PT twice a week thing set back out budget a bit.) I've also been making things, but I won't say what, cause chances are one of them is for you or someone you know! No spoilers.
I'm feeling ok these days, just lots of heartburn, reflux, etc. (Yum!) I get pretty sore in funny places, too, like every single day, but I have remained faithful to my wake up, exercise, read, get ready in the morning program. Loosely faithful, anyway. I've done it every single day, but you may occasionally find me switching up the order, snoozing after a particularly late night, or only doing stretches for exercise when the soreness is too intense. I also recently went to Denver on a day trip for my father's business. Fun, but a little too non-stop. Otherwise, I just truck along in my daily routine, which will soon include watching my 2 nephews twice a week.

Amelie has turned into a little fireball. Now that she is a pro at walking, she can not sit still. Church is becoming more difficult to get through, and going to movies with her are totally out of the question. Of course, the phase does come with some adorable perks. She is the world's cutest dancer! Anytime she hears music, she shakes her booty... and I mean that literally. She shakes her little butt to the beat, and I have no idea where she got that from! She has even been awakened from a nap by a cell phone song and sits straight up, immediately dancing. So cute! Finally, my favorite new addition to her repertoire is the singing. She'll do it anytime the people around her are singing, just wah wah wahing along. She even waves her arm sometimes when we're singing hymns at church. I love that munchkin!

As for Alisa, things have been going just fine. She's growing on track, and kicking like no other! She's a wiggly little thing-maybe she'll be a dancer like Amie. Dr. Brown and I even decided to postpone going from 4 to 2 week visits one extra time, cause everything looked perfect! I certainly look bigger this time, though. (It is also hard to believe, but my weight gain is on the same track as my pregnancy with Amelie.)

And, I just have to throw this in there-I'm so excited for the upcoming holidays! Holler!

Amelie's first birthday!!

I can't even believe Amelie is already 1 year old! In a way, it's so fun and I love to have her older, able to do things and communicate a little better, but it is going by SO fast! (Of course.) We had a Pretty in Pink Party for Amie the Saturday before her birthday, and it was well-attended by family and good friends (though not everyone wore their prettiest pink...) We had all pink foods (I didn't get a photo,) presents, a pinata and a picture frame to sign (I never noticed the continuation of the "P" motif til just then.) My camera was MIA, so I scrounged pictures off of others (Thanks Vanessa!) Luckily, we got everything between everyone.

The pictures are all out of order, but I didn't have the fire to rearrange them one by one, so look from bottom to top. :) You can see I had to help lots with opening presents, but she got the hang of it after awhile. She thoroughly loved all the toys she got! (When I was un-packaging everything, she had the musical ones all lined up and would push one button after another, making them all make noise at the same time.)
She also knows how to put away a cake! No problems there.
Then the pinata. That was fun-we had to go all the way up to the 20 yr olds before it broke! (I didn't put pics up of everyone, sorry. There were lots.)

We also had a celebration at my mom's, but said camera is dead, so those pictures will have to come later... Enjoy!

Dolls and Tomatoes

One day I had Amelie shopping at Target, and I thought I'd stop by the dolls aisle just to do some preliminary research for her birthday. We have recently learned that she is in love with everything baby, doll and especially baby doll. When we got to the right aisle, she could not contain her excitement and joy. She almost jumped out of the cart. OF COURSE I could never capture her face just right, but let me tell you she was in love! You can at least see her impatience to get the dolls, and unwillingness to let go once in hand. (I have since given her her birthday present of a doll early, cause she just loves it so much!)






I have acquired a humongous amount of tomatoes, and was trying to wash and sort them one day so I could make them last. I guess I didn't notice that one had rolled onto the floor, and I thought I heard a big bite like from an apple or something. I looked down to see my little munchkin holding that giant thing in her 2 hands, taking big old bites of it. You may notice she also has tomato goo on her face, hands, running all down her shirt and pants. But it sure was adorable.



Man she's cute.

Opening the Heavens

I have been wanting to write this blog for sometime now, but life always gets away with me... or from me..? I feel... exposed writing more personal things like this in my blog, but always love reading similar things in others' so I'll go for it.

Anyway, a few months ago, I came across this talk in a friend's blog. It is entitled "Opening the Heavens" by Elder Yoshihiko Kikuchi in the August 2009 Ensign (an LDS magazine, for those of you who may not know.) For some reason, I felt very strongly about reading it and did so right away. It was all the things I had been looking for at this time in life, and some I didn't even know it. First, a very brief synopsis. The article talks about starting your day with a sort of devotional. This includes: Rise Early, Exercise a few minutes, Make yourself clean, Get ready for the day, Go to a quiet place, Kneel in prayer, Wait for inspiration (study scriptures/talks, ponder problems.) The promise is that if you do these things, you will feel the love of God more powerfully, be more in tune with His Spirit and have the heavens opened to you daily.

So, as I said, this was exactly the thing I had been needing in my life, and on various levels. I have been (my whole life) spotty with reading the scriptures, for example. I always respond to a talk or thought about scripture study, renew my intention to make it happen and then fall out of it shortly thereafter. Another one-I have been much more lazy this pregnancy for a few reasons and have tried and tried to get a regular exercise program going, but nothing successfully. I also just felt constantly tired, and as a result, more crabby in general. I never got quite as much done in the day as I'd liked. I never had any me time.

The wonderful, wonderful thing about this simple program is that it has more than met every single one of these unfulfilled needs in my life. I have been doing the "program" daily these past few months and have had amazing results. I now get up at 7:30 every day (I know-not "Rise Early" according to some of you, but it is early for me who has an infant on the verge of toddler and am almost 5 months pregnant.) I start with about 20-30 minutes of exercise (depending on how sore I am from previous days' exercises.) This might be yoga, a series of exercises from my pregnancy books, or a prego video. I then get ready for the day, then go out to the living room and say prayers. (Amie is still asleep, and Jeff is just going to sleep, so I have the whole quiet house to myself.) I have recently picked my personal scripture study back up during this time, but started by rereading every talk from April Conference before this past weekend's conference. (My stake issued a challenge to do so-it was so beneficial for me, too!) Now, I either have to fit breakfast into "Get Ready" time or eat while I study, cause I can't make it the full hour/hour and a half without food-Alisa's a hungry girl these days!
Some of you may recognize this as quite similar to the missionary morning regimen. The thing that has worked perfectly for me, is that it is structured but not strictly regimented. You know, I get to do whatever exercise feels good for that day, I can study talks or scriptures, and I don't always keep to that order of things, but do get them all in every morning before my little lovie gets up and takes my attention.

Now, to expand on the benefits that have come to my life. Of course, one of the best and most obvious has been the return of regular scripture study to my life. For some reason, I have always attempted to do this at night, and it just never keeps. Reading in the morning, I never miss a day, and I am alert and retain more since I have already gotten going that morning.
Rising early-since starting, I have given myself a bed time of 10:30-this is really no stretch. (Jeff leaves for work at 9 and Amie goes down at 9:30-although I'll be late tonight, cause this blog is longer than planned!) I straighten up the house before turning in, and still get a good half hour of winding down time to putz around however I want. If you noticed, this is actually 9 hours of sleep I'm getting every night-just what a pregnant woman needs. I am not nearly as tired or cranky as I was before-trying to stay in bed til the last second, catching every possible second of sleep, willing Amie to take naps so I could, etc.) Of course, she still wears me down, but I feel much better.
Exercising and getting ready-this has not only given me the wonderful benefit of regular exercise, but the surprise benefit of just feeling good when I start my day, dressed, awake, fed, spiritually fed. I get SO MUCH more done around the house each day. I have plenty of time to play around, run errands, read, veg with a movie-all after cleaning up the house and taking care of my daughter. It feels really great!

I am a little apprehensive about how I may continue this when little Alisa joins our family-at least for the first 2 months or so. It has not even been difficult so far to keep up the wonderful routine, but I know this wonderful girl will throw a wrench in it. In the meantime, I'm working hard to make it an indispensable habit in my life and know I'll have the Lord's support when I get there.

Now, I could keep going on, but I'm not sure I even want to read all this, so I'll close. I'm very grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows what we need when we need it most-even little things. I encourage you to read the talk and see if it doesn't fit your life.

It's a...

GIRL! It's no longer a brister, it's a sister!



I'd wanted to let you all decipher the ultrasound and figure out for yourselves, but as we were getting ready to go, the ultrasound tech said "Oops! I didn't print a picture of her bum!" Oh well.

The ultrasound went well today, they checked just about everything under the sun, and everything looks good and normal. Her measurements are also right on track. (This was the same with Amelie-I wonder when she started being small?)

At the moment, we're pretty sure she will be Alisa Danielle North. (Like A Lisa, not Alyssa. My sister thinks we should spell it Aleissa so people don't call her Alyssa, but I want a simple spelling. What do you think?) Alisa comes from Jeff's great grandma, Alice-we wanted to incorporate her, but weren't in love with the name Alice. Danielle comes from Jeffrey Daniel, of course! I never thought I'd be a naming-after kinda person, but we're laying them on pretty heavily so far! With some liberties, of course.

Anyway, we are very pleased it is a girl, since she and Amelie will be so close. they can be BFF and I won't even have to clean out the spare room! Yet. :)

Last few random summer events.

These are just a few fun things from this summer-ish that never made the blog.

This is from the cousin party we did a month or 2 ago. We went to the zoo, then had pizza at the park and the kids played in the fountain. (Amie wouldn't be left out!)


She snuck away like a bandit, taking the cups with her!


This one was a relaxing trip my family took to my husband's family's lake house. Amie was so tired, she fell asleep swimming in her tube on the lake. I deposited her in Jeff's hammock to finish her nap.



RIGHT when we got back from our cruise, Jeff had to rush off to do a flag ceremony for the Utes opening football game. It got us free tickets-Fun! Amie enjoyed it more than I thought she would, but we were so exhausted, we left in the third quarter. (We won, of course, but it was closer than it should have been!)

We also went to Raging Waters on Labor Day, but we never had the camera on us while Amelie was doing some super-adorable things. Another thing that was really fun, but when half of you works graveyards and the other half is creating another human being, your stamina suffers a bit. We stayed for maybe 4 hours, but it was worth it! (And that was long enough for us to get pretty darn sunburned.)

Amelie's 11 month latest and greatest.

Amelie's been hitting a lot of milestones lately, and has a few fun tricks as well. Here are some of the cute things my cute daughter is doing:

-When you say "say hi" she waves. When you say "say hello" she puts the phone (or whatever is in her hand) up to her ear.
-When you say "yay!" she claps her hands. She'll also do this whenever she sees others clapping, including on tv.
-When you ask her where her head is, she grabs it with both hands (usually scrunching up all her features.) Occasionally if she feels she needs more attention than she is getting at the moment, she'll grab her head and wait for the requisite applause.
-She now has 4 teeth! Well, 3 and the second top one is almost out. They took their sweet time, but then came all at once.
-She has somehow learned the keep away game. If you ask/tell her to give you something she's playing with, or try to grab it, she'll hide it behind her back. Sneaky.
-Her other sneaky thing is to do the run away crawl. She loves that.
-She also talks quite a lot, but still no real assigned meaning to words. Some frequenters are mama, dadada, owy, whoa and me. (Still woofs when she sees or hears a dog.)
-She's obsessed with crawling up stairs, probably because we don't have them... ok, really she'll climb anything she can. She has just barely started to try going down. She doesn't quite have it down yet, but she knows to reach for mom or dad's hand when she wants to try.
-Finally, she is aaaaaaaaalmost walking. She now has good balance, stands well, and can consistently take 2-3 steps before falling. She's gotten up to about 6 steps or so, but often she'll just stop. And of course, she cruises the furniture like a whiz. When she gets very interested, it'll be no problem.

Only one more month until she's a year old! We really can't believe it!

Catalina/Ensanada, I mean Cabo San Lucas, I mean Catalina/Ensenada, here we come!

There are bazilmillions of things I'd like to blog about just piling up, so I'm gonna jump right in on a few and give you the short versions. (If I'm capable.)

This "short" post is regarding our 2nd Anniversary! Aug 30, Jeff and I have been married 2 years. They've flown by so fast, but it feels like we've been together forever, of course. Many many months ago, we found a super-cheap cruise over our anniversary, so we booked it. 4 days on the Carnival Elation to Ensenada and Santa Catalina. Well, a few months after booking, we got a letter saying they shuffled all their itineraries, and the cruise leaving on our date is now a 5 day to Cabo. We could do that for no extra charge, or do our same cruise on a different day. Never ones to pass up a great opportunity (or a steal of a deal) we decided to go to Cabo. Totally psyched (and baby-less, I might add) we went to San Diego. (Insert a long, dramatic story here about a 2hr delayed flight and worries of missing the cruise. I'll spare you the details.) We got there in time, and immediately had a blast-lots of great food, games, food, shows, food and views.







Our first full day at sea, halfway down Mexico, the captain announces to the whole ship that because of Hurricane Jimena, we can not go to Cabo.


It will be exactly where we are supposed to be, exactly when we are supposed to be there. We'll go to Ensenada and Santa Catalina instead. This is a major bummer, but we decide to be quite happy about not being in a boat in a hurricane. Plus, we figure this is what we signed up for anyway, but with an extra day at sea, right? (Insert stories about obnoxious people complaining about NOT sailing to our deaths. Hearing their absurdities made it easier to be appreciative.) So, we end up having essentially 3 days on the ship... Now, I love cruises, but this was a bit much. By the time we rolled into Santa Catalina, I was among the first in line to get off! Even with not enough sleep. Catalina Island was beautiful, Jeff and I are determined to come back and vacation there someday. After seeing the sights, we soaked our feet only in the beachy ocean (so sad, I know, but there were bacteria warnings, and I figured that was not the souvenir I wanted to give my current unborn.) Some of the views:






(Note the sky: the hurricane-gray-clouds-of-doom on the left, and the California-fires-smoke-of-death on the right. Not the healthiest place to be at the moment.)




The next day, Ensenada! This is where Jeff and I cruised on our honeymoon, but we did an excursion, so we were happy just to walk through the city and buy cheap Mexican souvenirs. We got Amie the cutest dress and I got some jewelery-all well within our budget, I might add! We walked quite a bit, and with the hurricane humidity, it wiped ole preggo here out pretty quick. We went back to the ship after only a few hours. (But it sure was nice to get out.)






About a billion pounds later, our cruise was over, and it was almost pathetic how ready we were to go home and see our baby girl! (That little stinker got her first tooth while we were away!) But she appeared to have had a great week at grandma and grandpa's. Thanks to the many who pitched in to take care of her!!
Stay tuned for more "abbreviated" escapades.