Making Waves

This morning, while trying to get me out of bed, Carter discovered something.

"Mommy, when I smack your arm it makes waves!"

Is that his subtle way of telling me that I need to spend more time in the gym?
I was curious as to what he would say about his dad's arm so I said, "Does Daddy's do that too?"

After trying it on Andrew he said, "Um.....yeah." Then he paused and tried it again, "but not really."

The truth hurts!

Family Pictures

We finally got some family pictures and I wanted to post them. Melissa and I can't decide between the two family photo's. Which one do you pick as your favorite? the first picture or the sunset picture?

First family Picture

Sunset Picture

Aren't we cute together

I'm so lucky to have such a beautiful wife

November in review

Andrew and I have been married 5 1/2 years and this is our very first Christmas Tree! I thought I would celebrate by blogging this momentous occasion. It all started off by me saying, "I think we could get a small tree to fit in the corner." When all was said and done we ended up with this 7 1/2 foot beast, but I thought it turned out pretty good considering our budget.
We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We did Thanksgiving dinner with a few other families who decided not to brave the holiday traffic to do Thanksgiving with their families, and had a lot of fun!

This was the kids table. All the kids had a blast. There was a little playground right outside that was all fenced in so we were able to send them out to play and not have to worry about them.

Is that what it would be like to have a fenced in yard? Ahh, how nice that would be?

Later that weekend we did a gingerbread house with the boys.

Their job was to put the candy on the gingerbread house and they did a great job. They also did a great job eating it. Andrew thought it tasted like it had been doused in lighter fluid (it was a store bought kit and tasted very chemically-is that a word?) but I guess the kids liked it because they have already eaten half of it.

I had to put in this cute picture of Andrew reading 'The Cat in the Hat' to the boys on Thanksgiving night.

And the most exciting news of all is that Parker is potty trained! It's been about a month now and we have not had any accidents in about 3 weeks! We are so very happy that he is potty trained, having 2 kids in diapers is no fun.

Tristan

I got some cute smiles out of Tristan today! Here they are.

And here is one of us for good measure

7 Tag

7 Things I can do:
1. Eat cereal everyday for breakfast
2. Play the piano
3. Make almost any recipe into whole wheat (went through a whole wheat kick, learned a lot, including that Parker cannot have any large amount of whole wheat without breaking out in hives.)
4. Live on a tight budget
5. Go over a month without any candy/desserts (tried it, don't recommend it)
6. Be patient
7. Make my husband happy

7 Things I cannot do:
1. Buy anything unless it's on sale
2. Eat sushi
3. Watch any sport on TV (besides the Olympics)
4. Sleep in (like Rena, I have tried but I just can't seem to do it anymore, must be all those years of waking up early with the kids)
5. Take a good picture- I am not very photogenic
6. Sew, knit, crochet...(and the list goes on)
7. Go a day without kissing my cute boys

7 Things that attracted me to Andrew:
1. He makes me feel pretty
2. His awesome water skiing/cliff jumping abilities
3. His "never give up" attitude
4. His smile
5. His testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ
6. His willingness to make the 2 hour drive to Ephraim, UT to see me while we were dating
7. his willingness to help others

7 Things I say most often:
1. Please stop whining
2. You are so cute
3. You need to be nice to your brother
4. What do you say?
5. I love you
6. Share with your brother
7. Please leave Tristan alone

7 celebrity admiration's:
I don't think I have any celebrities that I really admire.

7 Favorite foods:
1. BJ's spinach and artichoke pizza
2. Peach crisp
3. Anything chocolate
4. Sweet potatoes
5. Peanut butter
6. Turkey wraps
7. Indian Food

7 People to tag:
1. Abby H.
2. Dani C.
3. Teresa H.
4. Abby B.
5. Jackie B.
6. Amy P.
7. Andrew H.

His First Creation

Parker absolutely loves Wall-e! He gets so excited every time he sees Wall-e on TV or at a toy store. He also frequently asks me to find Wall-e clips for him online so that he can watch them. I thought that since he has such a love for all things Wall-e, I would set out to make him a Wall-e cake for his birthday.

When the time came for actually decorating the cake I knew that I was not going to have time to do everything myself so I asked Andrew if he could help me by mixing some icing. In the end he took over the project and decorated the whole thing! It was his first decorated cake and I think he did a great job!

I loved how he put "Park-e" instead of "Wall-e."

When Parker was younger he would always refer to himself as "Parky" so I thought it was quite appropriate.

Happy Birthday Parker!

We Love You!

Halloween at last

I know we are a little behind getting our Halloween pictures up, but we have been so busy with all the prop 8 stuff on top of our already busy schedules that I haven't had much time for posting. Although I am glad we were able to do so much to help out with prop 8, I am truly happy that it is Nov. 5 and election day is passed :)

The boys got most of their candy at our ward trunk-or-treat. This is them sitting in the back of our van after they collected all their candy. As you can tell Tristan had had enough of the trunk-or-treat and was ready to go home.

We didn't get any pictures of Tristan by himself on Halloween so I thought I would post this picture of him with his pumpkin shirt. Yes, I know it is sideways, but I am not quite sure how to rotate it.

Andrew took part in the pie eating contest, even though he didn't win the boys loved cheering him on!

I was lucky enough to get this shot of Doug shoving pie into Brady's face at the start of the contest.

Carter and Parker really like Halloween but LOVE Christmas and are very aware that Christmas comes after Halloween. They also know that Christmas means a trip to Utah. Parker woke up the morning after Halloween so excited and said to me, "Halloween is over and now it's Christmas, so are we going to Utah now?"

Fun with the Fam.....

While we had family in town for Tristan's baby blessing (and since we won free Disneyland passes, woo hoo!) we were all able to go to Disneyland. We had a ton of fun and happy kids, what more could you ask for!

My Grandma and Grandpa Albertson, Amy, and me w/Tristan walking into the park

Of course because it is October everything is decorated like Halloween. It's fun to be there at night when all the pumpkins are lit up.

My sister's and I getting ready for "Honey, I shrunk the audience!"

Tristan slept most of the day while I carried him arround in the baby carrier. My back was killing me by the end, but Tristan sure was happy.

My Grandma just had surgery a few weeks ago so we had to get her a wheelchair, which meant we got to go to the front of every line! I sure do love my Grandparents. Not just because they got us onto every ride fast, but because they are great!

This is my nephew, Kiyden. He is so cute, I just want to squish him.

I think Carter looks so grown up here playing video games

My sweet little Tristan did so well for a full day at Disneyland, he was quite the trooper.

The boy's, as always, had a blast and stayed from about 10:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night! They lasted longer than I did.

Standing in line is one of our favorite things to do.

Some of Andrew's family joined us late so we weren't able to get any pictures of them at Disneyland.

Smiley Tristan

Here is some cute footage of Tristan smiling after taking a bath

What a bundle of joy.

Favorite Quote of the Day

Carter's response to Andrew playing a computer game called Dune,
"Daddy, Heavenly Father doesn't like you playing these mad games!"

I totally agree!

Updates

Tristan is now five weeks old! He really is a pretty content baby and like all babies loves to be held and talked to. He is now officially afraid of his brothers although they love him to death and still ask to hold him any chance they get. He will now smile at you when you talk to him, maybe, he is pretty selective of who and what he smiles at. I have yet to get a picture of him smiling, hopefully I will get one soon and will post it as soon as I do.

One day Parker brought me a pair of gloves and a clip on tie and asked me to help him get them on so he could go to work. Soon Carter followed suit and did the same thing. Carter took them off shortly after putting them on, but Parker kept them on almost the entire day!

Incidentally this was also his first day of preschool, which he loves. It actually is just a group of us mom's who take turns teaching at our houses, reguardless, Carter loves it and can't wait for Monday to come so he can start preschool again. 

Our New Addition

I wanted to share a little bit of my experience with Tristan's birth. Mostly just so that I can look back on it and remember details I otherwise would have forgotten, but also for anyone who might be interested in hearing how it went.

The morning I was scheduled to be induced the hospital called me at 5:30 am to tell me they were too busy to get me in and asked that I call back every three hours until they had an opening. I pretty much figured I would not be getting induced that day and just hoped I would have the baby before my parents had to go back home. To my surprise I got a call that afternoon from them asking me to come in.
When we got to the hospital my nurse checked me and I was dilated to "almost" a 4. I had been having contractions all day, but that really wasn't anything new, so I was surprised to find that I was dilated that much. Who knows, maybe I would of had the baby that day anyway. They started me on a low dose of pitocin at around 3:30 pm. After getting my epidural at around 5:00 pm, which didn't really do much for my pain but it sure sped up my labor, I went from a 4 to a 10 in about an hour. After finding out I was fully dilated the nurse went to get my doctor. She came back a bit frazzled and trying to hold back tears while telling us that my doctor was doing a c-section and she couldn't find another doctor to deliver me. Whether she had been crying because of my situation or something else I will never know, but seeing her like that didn't really put me at ease. Any way, she told me not to push (yeah, right) and left the room in search of a doctor. Luckily she found one quickly and the baby was born a few minutes later at 6:18 pm!

Here are some of our most recent pictures of our little Tristan!

This is the first time Parker held the baby, he did such a good job and I was so proud of how gentle he was with him.

Tristan is a pretty good sleeper and so far sleeps right through the loud noises his brothers make.

Carter and Parker LOVE their new brother, maybe a little too much. They never want to leave him alone and I constantly have to make sure they are not being "too nice."

This is a picture of Tristan's first bath after coming home with us.

Tristan has a shocked looked that he gets every so often. I am just starting to realize that he gets it a lot more often when his brothers are around.

We are so happy to have Tristan in our home! And even though he adds a whole new level of craziness to our lives, we could not imagine him not being here and we love him very much!

Pictures of Tristan

As Promised here are some pictures of Tristan and Family!

Melissa just going into labor

Tristan ~5 min old

Tristan's Ear

Tristan's Hand

Tristan's Feet
(they had black ink on them so I made it black and white)

Tristan's Hair

Carter holding Tristan

Mommy's tummy just before going into labor

Post delivery tummy