Joy Poetry

Joy just told me this poem, I wrote it down word for word. 
"Roses are blue, violets are red.  I love grandma candy, but most of all, I love you"
Kids on the TV were saying poems, so she said one too.  She's very cute.

In other news, I'm almost 32 weeks along, it's a great milestone.  Everything looks good so far, and we're getting ready for a new baby.  It's kind of an anxious time, but we're trying to be calm and hopeful.  Last weekend, Chrissy and Lisa Rogers gave me a great baby shower.  It was really fun (despite my terrible cold) and it really helped us with our blue supply needs :)   

We appreciate your prayers as we come into the final weeks of this pregnancy.  With my history of complications and last year's loss, we are hoping that everything goes really smoothly.  Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Love, 
Aubrey


 

BethAnne's 10th Birthday!

It's hard to believe that I have a ten-year-old.  It's been a busy ten years.  We're so grateful that we have our beautiful BethAnne.  She is such a light in our lives.  I'm amazed at how strong and kind and faithful and helpful she is.   We are so blessed to have her in our family.


We had a friend party for the first time in many years and the kids had a great time. 

Here is the table all set up for our origami activity.  BethAnne really enjoys origami so she showed her friends how to make some things.

The girls loved playing our X-box Kinect at the party.  They played the game Kinect Party, which is a super fun game and lots of people can participate at once.  It was hard to get some of the girls to go home after the party because they were having so much fun playing :)

Pretty Birthday Girl.

We had a chocolate fountain at her friend party and at the family party the next day.  Thank you Aunt Chrissy for letting us borrow the fountain.  It was a hit!

Here's BethAnne's birthday cake for her family birthday party (for the friend party, we just put some candles in the pound cake that was used for the chocolate fountain).  This is one of my favorite cakes that I've made. 

This was at the family party.  It's so much fun to have so much extended family in town.  It was a wonderful party.  Happy Birthday sweet BethAnne!

At the Zoo in February

We took advantage of an unusually warm day a couple weeks ago and we went to the Zoo.  We got some cute pictures and had a great time. 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great weekend!  Love you all!

My Funny Valentine

Joy was so cute this evening, walking around with her Valentine's gift bag on her head.  She was marching like a soldier.  We had a great Valentine's Day.  Mark brought me some chocolate covered strawberries and a sweet card.  I got the girls and Mark some See's candies and I made them all cards.  Then tonight we went out to dinner at Chilis and the girls were great and it was fun and yummy.  Earlier today I had an ultrasound, everything looks good and they confirmed that the baby is a boy.  I'm almost 18 weeks and it was an emotional time at the doctor, I don't feel my babies very well so I was concerned.  I lost our last baby at 20 weeks, but they said she stopped growing at about 18 1/2 weeks.  The doctor today was kind and said I can come in anytime for a heartbeat check if I'm concerned.  We are hopeful and happy.  I hope you all had a great day and are doing well.
Love, Aubrey

McCall Winter Carnival!

One of my goals this new year was to do more fun family activities.  So today we headed to the McCall Winter Carnival.  Earlier this week, we felt like it would be too hard on me physically to go, but then this morning I felt impressed that we should go and we ended up having a wonderful time, with minimal walking.  It was like the angels orchestrated a lovely outing for us.


I haven't been to the McCall Winter Carnival since I was a kid, so we didn't know what to expect, but there were lots of fun things for the kids.  The drive up to McCall was beautiful also. 

 

 

The slide in the first three pictures was actually a part of this amazing scultpure.  A lot of the scultpures had melted at least a bit (it was a beautful sunny day), but some of the sculptures were amazing still.

This  picture shows how big it is. (Sorry the pictures aren't great.  I forgot my camera so they were taken on my iphone).

Pretty Joy!

This was a fun sculpture that was very large.  There was a large cave inside that you could walk around in and it was lit by Christmas lights that were encased in ice.  It was very cool.

The first sculpture we came to was a sledding playground.  There were big tracks on one side but we stuck with the small tracks.  They were small but slick and so they were still fast and thrilling for the girls.  We forgot our sled, but it was okay because this sculpture was in a large grocery store parking lot and Mark found some great sleds at the store.

Pretty BethAnne.  She went down the big track once, but she loved the little track too.

Joy loves to stick out her tongue when I say "Smile"

This is how Joy went down the track most times.  Luckily she didn't need to steer and she loved it.

Beautiful Grace! 

We ended the evening parked at a great parking spot by the lake which was right by a lovely Italian Restaurant.  We had a great meal and then we were able to watch some amazing fireworks over the lake right from the restaurant terrace.  It was a spectucular show and the fireworks were so close I thought we might get some sparks on us.  The kids (and parents) were amazed.  My pregnancy may be getting a bit complicated already, and I may need to take it easy soon, so we are really grateful that we could have this fun outing today.   We hope you are all doing well. 
Love,
Aubrey

Snowman!

My kids build this snowman all by themselves, BethAnne did most of the work, but they all helped. I'm so proud of them.  They had so much fun playing in the snow today.  It will probably melt soon, so I'm glad they did this today.  Have a great rest of the week!

 

 

Busy, fun December

December was a busy month for us.  We started out by going to Cincinnati on the 8th.  On the 10th, BethAnne had a minor surgery.  It wasn't supposed to be a big deal but then she got an infection and had other difficult complications which made for a stressful trip at times.  In the end, we spent most of the trip trying to get her better (so some of our other objectives weren't accomplished), but we had some productive conversations with doctors, so that was good.


Even with the complications that BethAnne was having, we tried to do some fun things together.  One day we went to the aquarium.  Each of the girls had their own camera at the Aquarium, so it was fun.  Unfortunately we lost BethAnne's camera in Cincinnati (we think at the Zoo), but it was fun while it lasted.

We went to the Cincinnati Zoo one evening to see their Christmas lights, which were quite cool.   We didn't see many animals, because it was dark, but we got to see the Elephants up close in their house and we got to see a new baby giraffe and his Mom in their house.  I think those are the best animals at the Zoo, so that was cool.

 

Here's a picture of a lights show at the Zoo.  It was coordinated to music and it was really neat.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea.  The whole zoo was totally lit up, it was very cool.

Pretty Joy at a parking garage :)

Joy and I went home on the 17th so I could get to a doctor's appointment the next day, but on the 18th Mark and the big girls got to go to the Indianapolis Children's Museum (before they flew home). It's one of our favorite places in the world.  The museum was all decked out for the holidays (above is a life size transformer with a scarf).  There was also a large holiday slide that went from one floor to another and there was an exhibit with life size, street legal hotwheel cars (among many other fun things).  They had an awesome time.

 

A couple days after coming home from Cincinnati we headed to Utah for Rick and Hailey's wedding.  We had a fun time at the reception and the wedding ceremony the next day was beautiful.  We're so happy for Rick and Hailey! 

I love this picture of Carl, he did a great job with the pictures!

Mark took this picture of the cakes.  They turned out so pretty (yay Mom and Lisa!) and so yummy too.  What a great idea!

The beautiful bride and groom!

Then we headed back home to Boise and got ready for Christmas.  We had done most of our preparations before Cincinnati, so that was good.  Mark was a huge help through all the trips and at home so I didn't over-do it.  My blood pressure was a little high at my appointment right after Cincinnati, but I think it's coming down now.  I had an ultrasound at that appointment and the baby looks good and healthy so far.  I'm 11 weeks along now and we are hopeful that everything will keep going well.

Here's our family room after Santa came!

Joy got a rocket and she loves it!
 

A new pony castle!

Entertainer Grace got a microphone

I got Mark and the girls an electronic snap circuit set and it's been a hit.  There are a 300 different projects you can make from lights to microphones to a radio.

Here's happy Joy.  She got an apron from Grandma on Christmas Eve and she didn't take it off for a couple days.  She loves to dress up.  In Cincinnati we didn't have any of her dress up clothes so she insisted on wearing her coat and gloves and hat most of the time (even indoors) and she called herself the pink lady (her coat and hat and gloves are pink).  She's such a sweetie!

So that's our update.  I hope you all had a magical Christmas and that you'll have a wonderful New Year.   We're praying for Chrissy and Jon and Lisa and Brian right now.  We hope there will be many good things to come this year.
Love, Aubrey