Coming out of the fog

All I have to say about my lack of blogging these past two months is I am definitely playing the pregnancy card! With all three of my pregnancies, for the first trimester I am sick all day every day and I lose so much motivation because I feel so yucky. I absolutely hate not wanting to get things done, I am such a to-do lister. Plus blogging is something I struggle with even not being pregnant, so it's no surprise to me that this fell by the wayside :) So blogging, running, eating healthy, reading, and giving more than necessary to any task may have not taken top priority for these past 3 months, but I am happy to report that the things that matter most, Tyler, Cole, and Kate, did. I'm glad I felt good enough to still play, read stories, cuddle, cook (most days), and for the most part keep the house running. Big thanks goes out to my sweetie, who picked up all of the slack.

That being said, I am now feeling GREAT in comparison and ready to get back in the saddle. I'm picking up where I left off with my goals to accomplish before 30 and still feel good about getting those done. I'm running 4x a week in the mornings again and it's amazing how that just changes my whole day when I know I've worked out already. I feel so grateful.

I'm now 17 weeks and things are looking great so far. I love hearing that little heartbeat at my doctor visits and am looking forward to the ultrasound on the 26th. It's such a different feeling this time, going in to find out the baby's gender, because I completely don't care if we're having a boy or girl. We will be ecstatic either way. I'm going to say girl?

Things have been relatively quiet in a great way around here since we got back from our fun Christmas trip to Oregon. Getting away is always great, but it's also nice to get back into a routine and just relax at home too. We spent 10 days traveling over the holiday and drove hundreds and hundreds of miles, even doing 13 hours in one day on the way back. The kids were terrific considering, but we haven't driven more than 30 minutes at once since :)

And here are some memories we've been making recently :)

Cole has the biggest imagination and makes up the most random situations for us to be in throughout the course of a day. Just today I pretended to be a dragonslayer, person who was swallowed by a whale but got stuck in the middle tube and was safe, alien on the moon who had gills to breathe air and didn't need an air tank, and punch-balloon fighter (all his ideas and terminology). I love just playing along and letting him amaze me with his ideas. I don't know what having an extremely active imagination pans out to in adulthood, but I'm sure it will be a great quality for him now and always :)

This day he came to me with an empty vhs case, rubber band, and the (now)broken antennae tip off the stereo in his room. He wanted me to secure the case on his back with the rubberband around his tummy and put the broken antennae inside. The case was his lightning pack so he could fly and the tip was his supershooter to shoot the aliens with when he got to space. Here he goes, off to get the bad aliens!! I love this kid.

Kate is really doing new things daily these these last couple of weeks and it's so fun to see the differences between her and Cole now be more apparent. She loves to do all the normal 1.5 year old stuff, but has quite the love for cleaning and taking care of her dolls. With her own free will, she'll get the broom and pull the barstools out and attempt to sweep underneath as she's seen me do, and she can always be counted on to help me empty the dishwasher or pick up toys. She likes organization and cleanliness much more than her brother, and also in more interested in fine motor skill type things (using her spoon, putting small things in the right place, etc) than her brother ever was at this age. She is such a joy and we love having her sweetness in our home.

Loves to paint!
Let me see your muscles!! So true to their personalities!
Cole has such a sweet spot for Kate. It's not always evident, he for sure can get frustrated with her and push or yell, but usually it's more like this. He will randomly give her kisses, hugs, and he has the cutest "Kate" voice that he'll use to talk to her. It is the best part of being a mother, seeing them grow in love towards each other and learn how to love and be selfless by being around each other. They also both love to help me bake which makes me very happy.
Matching ties! Handsome. That jacket used to be Tyler's when he was Cole's age.
Tyler's Christmas present to me! I've wanted a banana holder, so he made me one in my favorite color! Utah red. I love it! Don't you think he should sell those through the bookstore?
We spent Christmas in Oregon with the Petersen side, but we also got to spend a day or two after that with Parker, Jenn, Jackson, Josh, and Tyce at my parent's which was wonderful. We had a family night where the boys were the stripling warriors. It was so fun.
Gotta love cousin tubs! Kate and Tyce had a cute little bond, I think they both kind of knew they were the littlest and sort of looked out for each other.
Like I mentioned, spent Christmas in Oregon which was wonderful. But all the driving was not so super :) The kids did great, thank goodness for a dvd player (which we only pull out on OR trips so it's a novelty for sure) and plenty of new snacks. This was what I usually saw when I looked back though:
Had some fun memories in OR, this one was my favorite: we wanted to go see Haceta, even in the pouring rain (it rained the whole time we were on the coast!) so Tyler, Jess, her fiancee Chad, and I headed out. We turned down this side road for a couple miles we like to run on cause it's so beautiful thinking it would be a cool little drive in the rain. It was, then we turned around and came to a tree that had fallen while we were down the road! It was HUGE and there was no way around. Luckily we were close to the main road and help was not too far away. We informed the ODOT about it and they sent out the parks guys to check it out. They determined it was such a big tree they would have to call in a professional faller to take care of it. We had to leave the car there overnight and when we came back the next day this was what it looked like: crazy!
Our Oregon family, minus Jordan, Jolene, and Austyn:
Happy face!
Christmas morning!! Wearing his new superhero gear my mom and I made him!

Same tradition we had, sitting at the top of the stairs for a picture before running down and seeing what Santa brought.
Pre-OR, we had a great family night at temple square looking at all the lights. Tyler brought hot chocolate and we had a nice little break during our wanderings, it was fun!
Touching the temple.
Cole was really excited to see Santa this year and tell him he wanted gummi sharks. I'm holding Kate off to the side because she didn't want anything to do with him!
Everyone loves cuddling with daddy.
I love that he loves cooking with me!
Our first snowman of the season! Poor Bob was knocked down within the hour by some neighborhood hooligans on their way home from school. We had fun making him!
He loves helping shovel. Too bad we haven't had much snow this year :(

This dollar store squishy stuff was such a hit and kept him occupied for days.
Loves those dolls!

Loves to pretend to go shopping or to the park with the dolls in the stroller.

Mom made this adorable countdown for Cole and Kate during December, they both looked forward to it every morning. They were paper tubes with treats inside!
Okay, this is far back, but here's mom carving the Thanksgiving turkey!!
We found the best Christmas tree!
Whew. All caught up. Life is good!

Guess what!!

Well, we're EXPECTING!! Baby #3 will be here in June and we couldn't be more excited. Well, I take that back, I'm excited but will be LOTS more excited once this yucky nausea subsides. It's just like it was with Cole and Kate which gives me hope because with them it died down around 12 weeks, which is just a couple weeks away. So I can make it. I had my first prenatal visit today and saw the little one and it's heartbeat on ultrasound. It's really happening! I love it.

I'm still thinking about my list of 29 things and have crossed off several. One of my goals, to blog more often, has been on my mind although I totally haven't been feeling up to blogging, and when I sat down to do it a couple weeks ago and our computer was taking a whole 10 minutes to upload 3 pictures I decided it could wait. So I'm not going to be too hard on myself until I feel better :) You gotta play that pregnancy card while you can I've learned.

Well Kate has been busy lately, making messes in anyway possible. She somehow reached my mascara that I always put out of reach the other day, and this was the result.

And this girl loves markers! This is actually our first color-on-the-wall incident in our home, Cole never even thought of doing that. Thank goodness for washable, came right off. You would think this girl has no adult supervision, but not so. She's just lightning fast.
I've been doing great with my goal to make a homemade pie from a new recipe each month on the 23rd (our anniversary day, we always try to do something a little fun). Here's Apple Pie, it was SO good! And I used apples from mom and dad's tree which made it even better.
Halloween was great! It just gets better every year. Cole has been planning on a clown for a month or so, we have a costume mom made for us kids when we were little that he's been wearing around the house and seemed to love. The day before Halloween, he decides to be a cowboy! Which was fine because we had all the stuff. Kate was a ladybug. She loved holding her hands out and saying BOO! She's scaring me here while Cole is holding his pumpkin he helped carve.
Our friends have season tix to Utah football and couldn't make it to the Utah vs OSU game, so we were the lucky recipients! It was so much fun especially because we are Beaver fans too. Tyler wore his OSU tshirt and Utah beanie with his red-orange sweater. It was especially great with a crazy lady fan behind us that kept screaming "WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOOOOOOUSE!" every third down. We couldn't help cracking up every time after the first quarter.
Our second Halloween Half! Well second for dad and me, first for TP. The weather was beautiful, the course was downhill, and it was fun surprising my family with us being pregnant. I made a tshirt that said Running for 2 on the front and Baby on Board on the back, so everyone was pretty suprised at the finish line when they saw my "costume" :) I loved talking to other runners that would run next to me and say Hey, I'm pregnant too! Tyler carried his iphone the whole time so he could call mom and let her know when we were going to finish, so he also got a couple pics in. Crazy guy!

Carving pumpkins with our buddy Connor.
Cole's preschool Halloween program - they just paraded through the library then sang a few cute songs and fingerplays, it was adorable. Cole however was as shy as ever! It was hilarious.
Here's September's pie!! Over the top Banana Cream!! At Tyler's request. It was delish!!
Hanging out with Sundance at grandma's for the weekend means early mornings with the horses.
We went up and cut a bunch of firewood on a beautiful fall day. I love seeing my dad and Tyler do manly things together with power tools, they are totally in their element.
We also went to the local pumpkin patch which we've done for the past few years. They have this little shed that they just fill with corn kernels and let the kids play around in. Here's Kai and Christine.
Kate was so funny with corn stuck on her face! She loved it!
Haha!


Playing in the leaves at grandma and grandpa's.
I just had to add this because of his face, he was so frustrated. We were late for preschool but he had to wear the rollerskates, we were trying to get things moving and he was not cooperating. Resulted in a small meltdown. Lasted for like 30 seconds. At least he gets over things quickly.
Annual trip to Gardner Village! We love going down and seeing the witches and beautiful fall decorations. It was a Tuesday afternoon and Tyler was one of two dads there. He's the best!! Here's how we roll. I totally love my double stroller, I use it almost every day.
Our firefighters held an open house and Cole got to dress up and pretend to go in a smoky building. He was in heaven.
We went for a little hike a couple weeks ago and Cole was in charge of Biscuit the preschool bunny. I was carrying Kate in my hiking backpack so we made one for Biscuit too. It was so cute to see him talking to the bunny the whole hike and turning around so Biscuit could see the different things he was referring to.
They love their cousin Kai! Especially Kate, she's really into babies lately.
Kate is totally an artsy girl. Really into paint, markers, and creating more than her brother. He just hates sitting still for longer than 3 minutes.
This was our pie from August! I know, a ways back but wow fresh peach pie is soooo good.
Kids playing in Cole's bed.
One of our last outdoor family outings before fall weather set in. We did a bike ride on the Legacy Trail, here's Tyler fixing my flat. What a guy!
We borrowed our neighbor's bike trailer, it was awesome. We have to get one of these.
Now we're totally looking forward to the holidays!!! Thanksgiving with the Morrill side, Christmas in OR with the Petersens. Can't wait!!