Life in Washington

Oh, man, I let myself get behind. I like to try to blog about the goings on in our lives at least once a month, and I haven't posted anything for nearly 2. In a way I have maintained this blog as a way to journal about our family. It's a way of keeping a history of our little family. So bear with me as I run through all the things we've been doing since we moved to Washington in September.

I've been growing. I'm 22 weeks pregnant at this point. I'm feeling her kick more and more. On Sunday I actually felt her kick from the outside, and Aaron even thinks he has felt her move. I am feeling big but know I have so much more growing to go. I have been very tired this pregnancy. I get heart burn pretty much every evening so tums has been my friend. I had a few weeks of really bad headaches but thankfully that has passed. I am starting to go into oh-crap-we-got-rid-of-all-our-baby-stuff mode and want to just buy everything now. Aaron keeps telling me to wait.

Aaron's cousin Logan left on a Mission to Nevada. We went up to their house in Monroe for his farewell talk and a lunch at his house. The kids have already written to him, and they just got a letter back yesterday. They were pretty excited.

The kids get to do more fun things with Daddy since he works from home. The weather seems to have finally turned (rainy and cold most of the time), but it was beautiful when we first got here.

Out on the boat with Daddy and Grandpa.

The view of the lake after hiking up behind the house.

I haven't made the hike up behind the house because it is so steep. The kids love going out with Aaron trail blazing through the woods.

Just goofing off with Daddy and his phone taking selfies.

We all went to a corn maze.

And to the cider mill. The kids had their faces painted and had a blast playing in/on the bounce house and bounce slide.

Spiderman Eli.

She is so shy that she looked miserable the whole time she had her face painted. She refuses to speak too. But believe it or not she was pretty excited about this butterfly.

We celebrated Halloween. We carved pumpkins, went to the ward trunk or treat party and fall carnival, went to a party at the kids' gymnastic's center, and went trick or treating in the rain.

Again with the looking miserable while getting her face painted. I asked her if she was happy and she said she was. haha

Noah bobbing for donuts on a string.

Sarah got all powdery after bobbing for her donut.

One night she's in the most glittery, girly costume ever and the next she wants to be Spidergirl.

Pure joy! Trick or treating is fun rain or shine when you're a kid.

Sarah as Rainbow Dash, Noah as Kylo Ren, and Eli as a storm trooper.

It's a girl! We gave each of the kids a little gift bag to open with a baby item inside. Does Sarah look excited or what? While it was an exciting day finding out that we're having another little girl it was also a very scary day. The doctor came in and told us she believed there was something wrong with her heart. I left in tears since they had us believing there was something seriously wrong with out baby's heart. They were talking major atrial septal defect and an enlarged pulmonary artery. We drove all the way up to Renton the Monday after the ultrasound to have an echocardiogram of her heart. After looking at her heart the doctor believes everything is normal. There is only one concern that we have to have checked out when I'm closer to 30 weeks pregnant. They don't think it's a problem but some of the images made it look like some of the veins are connected to the wrong side of the heart (but some of the images looked normal). Her heart was just too little to tell. It was a very long weekend after learning that something might be wrong. Aaron and I were immediately thinking the worst since we'd gone through hell and back with Eli. There were lots of prayers said and tears shed. But I can say I have never left a doctor's appointment feeling so relieved and happy. We are just very grateful and optimistic that everything will be fine.

Aaron's cousin Raleigh works for Amazon our of Tokyo. He was in Seattle for a couple weeks at Amazon head quarters, so we got to spend some time with him. We decided to take him to the beach house. It was a lot of fun catching up and just hanging out.

No beach house trip is complete without doing a puzzle.

The other day while I was cleaning up the floor in the homeschool room I found some pieces of blonde hair that looked like they'd been cut. I may have overreacted slightly and yelled a little about Sarah cutting her hair. Sarah just cried and through the tears explained she didn't like her hair getting in her face. I was able to calm myself down, and we sat down and looked at pictures of short hair together on the computer. She decided that she did in fact want short hair even if that meant we couldn't do cute pony tails and braids. We picked out a picture and took it to the salon. She was super excited and of course looks cute as a button. Though I loved her long hair, I think the short her suits her and her personality (girly yet spunky).

And last but not least, we had some sunshine this past weekend after about a week of grey skies and rain. We went to the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge and walked down their board walk. Deb and I only went about a half mile and then we walked back to do some shopping. If I get walking too much I start having Braxton-Hicks contractions and it gets uncomfortable. Aaron took the kids the rest of the way down the boardwalk which was actually a pretty long hike. He said it was absolutely gorgeous and totally worth it.