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.