grandma visit

my mom visited this last week, she was down for another baby, but we made a family party of it and had a great time. here's some pics of the soiree. we wanted to have everyone take a pic with my mom, so there's only a couple of candid ones the rest are just pics with grandma

hair do's

so i finally found some elastics that were small enough for the girlies, here's the results
maddie with a pony tail

maddie with pig tails & abby with pony tail

i need to work on getting things in focus,
but look at how good they are sitting up now

update

ok, so jason informed me that it has been two months since i've posted, and he's been getting mail that i need to post. i can't believe it's been that long, but here's what's been going on with us...

week one:

i get the stomach flu. i never threw up, but i also never ate anything. i thought i was over it, and then jason asked me what i wanted for dinner, and i said gatorade and saltines, so like a good husband he made me dinner.

jason's oldest sister, cindy also visited with her youngest girl quincy. it was the first time meeting the girls, so we had to have lots of parties - i just wish i had felt a little better while they were here.

week two:

my mom came to visit because jason was going out of town for the week for work. this is where it gets interesting. we found out that jason had to leave town about two months earlier, so i asked my mom if she would come down and help out while he was away, she said she would and maybe she would have my youngest brother taylor come along and visit with everyone as well. so when i told tyson (other bro) about it, he said 'well maybe taylor should stay and we could live together', so... jason & i thought maybe we could rent them our house and we could get a new one as we could see needing more space in the very near future. so, just for fun we started looking around, and before i even knew it, we had found a great house in a great neighborhood, and we were signing papers!! so - no more trainings for jason, they're just too expensive. but a great big thank you to my mom for staying with me - i didn't even worry about jason being gone because i knew i would have all the help i needed.

one other fun thing that happened while my mom was here is that the girls started teething. first i was hoping that they would start teething when they were six months and not five and a half, so i wasn't mentally prepared for them to be teething, it took me an afternoon to figure out the cranky drama. oh, and i also thought that the teething process involved a few crabby days for the tooth to push through and then you have a glimmering white tooth - ha boy was i wrong. it took maddie two weeks of on again off again teething to get her first tooth.
this sums up april - moving along to may

week three:

holy crap we just bought a house

there were a couple of things we wanted to do to the house before we moved in, like paint the cupboards, and put some shelves in a closet in the laundry room - for a pantry, etc so this week was spent getting quotes, looking at appliances, trying to rent our other house, oh and one other minor little thing... preparing a talk so we could speak on mother's day

week four:
speak in church on mother's day - jason & i stayed up way too late on sat night trying to prepare for these things and when i finally felt like i had a beginning, middle and end to the talk i called it quits and prayed that it was more than 5 min long.

holy crap we just bought a house

guess we better start packing

my sister came over and helped me pack things up which was great, it really goes 4x faster with two people. we got everything packed up and moved on Saturday with help from the men in the ward. thanks guys, nothing was broken.

maddie got her first tooth! you couldn't see it, but you could feel it break through the gums. holy smokes my little girls are growing up!

week five:

holy crap we just bought a house

time to unpack, because last month i told everyone they could come for a swim party on memorial day at my house. what was i thinking? probably that it only takes me two days to unpack a whole house - this of course does not factor in my two girls who turn 6 months this week into the whole unpacking equation. thankfully tam came over and helped me unpack the necessary areas needed for a family party.

maddie got her second tooth about 3 days after her first. i'm going to say this is the way to go. i like baby things in pairs so teeth in pairs is great. abby still doesn't have any teeth.

week six:

holy crap we just bought a house - and invited my three sisters, two brothers, spouses and children over. the party went well - we didn't think it would be warm enough to swim after the cold rainy snap of last week so only my brothers brought their swim suits, but oddly enough all the kids got in with parental supervision of course. it was a good time and there was plenty of room in the house for all those kids.



after the party and the girls were in bed for the night jason & i undertook the task of taking all the kitchen cabinet doors off - tuesday the painter came to paint the kitchen cabinets.

(sort of a before & after. you can kind of see what color the cupboards were before, and after with the doors back on. mucho bettero)

the rest of this week i had the painter here painting cabinet doors, the front door (which I absolutely love now) and then there was a hall linen cabinet, and the girl's bathroom that we decided to do at the same time. he was done on thursday and said they were dry enough to put the doors back on, but that night maddie had a temperature of 102.9 that kind of freaked me out.
i picked her up while she was rolling around on the floor and she felt a little warm to me so I took her temp and it was 99.8 or something, so i gave her a little tylenol and let her just sit for a few minutes, she just kind of laid there not moving a whole lot, with is very unusual for her, so after 15 min I checked her temp again hoping the tylenol had started to kick in, and it was way higher 102.9!! so i called jason and let him know, who then called his mom who could get there faster and i ran in to the bathroom to give her a lukewarm bath. i put abby in the bouncer in the bathroom with us so she wasn't unsupervised, but she was happy as a lark. i think she knew that i was worried about maddie, so she didn't fuss or make a peep, even when grandma showed up and didn't even look at her. thanks for understanding abby. after the bath her temp had come back down to the 99 range. i called a nurse, i love that you can call a nurse 24/7 from any of the banner hospitals 230 - CARE and she said i had done everything right, and babies can handle higher temps than we can, and they really only worry if the temp gets to be 104 and doesn't come down with tylenol. it was reassuring to know that i was on the right track and not rush to the pediatrician so they can say 'she'll be fine' the next day was still in the 99 range all day, but never got any worse than that.

ok, so i know this may sound crazy, but i actually enjoyed the whole experience. i know crazy right, but i don't know if exciting is the right word here, but it made me feel like a real mom, having to deal with fevers and feeling like i knew what to do immediately and then finding out that it was all that really needed to be done. i know that most people don't get excited about fevers, but i think it was just the whole mom experience that brought out new feelings and instincts and worries, and the reason i got to experience all those feelings was because i was finally a mom which is the best feeling in the whole world.

week seven:

the first half of this week was running errands and trying to get life back to normal after the move the cabinets are back together, and we had shelves installed so now i can finish putting the pantry away and start decorating the kitchen - if only we didn't all have colds.

maddie had it first and in true sisterly fashion she shared it with abby, the next morning jason & i both woke up with small symptoms which only got worse. so i've had the humidifier going in the girl's room for a week now and have barely had the energy to take care of two babies. and by 'take care' i mean feed them, change diapers, and let them entertain themselves while i sit and recover from the feeding and changing. ok so it might not have been that bad, but there wasn't a whole lot of singing or book reading or playing happening on my end.

and that brings us current with the runny noses still in swing, but i feel like i'm on the upswing which is good because jason will be out of town for thurs & fri.