Sunday Fun

One of our favorite Sunday activities. Making something chocolate for dessert! Kalianna is always my little helper. Helping stir: (this is the face we get when we ask her to smile. Goofy girl!)

Pouring it into the brownie pan. She kept pointing at the batter and saying, "I want that":

Finally all her patience pays off and she gets to lick the spoon:

After a bath and some pjs, enjoying the fruits of our labor:

February Fun

Valentines Day

The Friday before V-day Matt arrived home from work with a dozen pink roses. I was very surprised! He said he didn't want to wait until Monday, because then the flowers would be more picked through and he would have less options. Plus, receiving them on Friday made it a huge surprise! Then, valentines morning, Kalianna and I came downstairs for breakfast to find a big teddy bear with a pink bow sitting on Kalianna's chair. She was ecstatic and immediately attacked him with hugs! He is so good about making sure to give our daughter a special day too. Kalianna and I had a good day together and were even able to go out with a couple other moms to the mall for a much-needed break. But we couldn't wait until that night, when Matt arrived home!

Matt and I never go out on Valentines Day. We have sort of made it tradition to get crab legs and steam them at home for our own fancy little dinner. They are definitely not something we normally buy! But it's fun to splurge once in awhile, and we also like avoiding all the crowds. So we sat down for a nice romantic dinner...just the three of us. We bought Kalianna a happy meal, so she could have her own special dinner too. Then she enjoyed her chicken nuggets and fries while Matt and I enjoyed our crab legs, shrimp, and potatoes. So yummy! For dessert, Matt picked up a chocolate chip lava cookie from Red Lobster. My favorite dessert in the world! Even if you don't like seafood, this cookie makes a trip to Red Lobster worth it! After our bellies were all happy, we sat down together and watched a little bit of a movie and then played until bedtime. It was such a wonderful, relaxing evening at home with the two people I love most!

My Birthday

I've decided birthdays have improved since the invention of Facebook. It's really fun to receive texts and e-mails all day wishing me a happy day because Facebook reminded people to do so. My birthday was last Thursday. Wednesday night Matt got me a yummy double cream lemon pie from Marie Calendars. After Kalianna went to bed, he had to do homework. So I decided to start celebrating on my own. I ate some of that yummy pie and snuggled up in bed while watching "27 Dresses". (Totally not on purpose because I was turning 27. Matt pointed it out to me).

Thursday was honestly kind of a boring day. Not much to report, but I did get lots of birthday wishes from my friends and family, which made me feel special! And Matt did give me my gift that night. The new Taylor Swift CD, which I have been wanting. He also gave me a very nice, long foot rub. Fridays Matt gets off earlier, so we had planned to celebrate then anyway.

Friday Matt came home and surprised me with another dozen roses, this time red. We went out to dinner at Outback and enjoyed some yummy steak. We had some time to kill before our movie started, so then we went to the mall and walked around. We bought a cute little newborn outfit for our daughter to come home from the hospital in. And we also bought Kalianna a new outfit. (I never, ever buy clothes! 99% of what Kalianna wears are hand-me-downs, so it was really fun to splurge for once and buy each of our girls a new outfit!) After our fun shopping trip, we headed over to the theater and saw "Just Go With It". It was really funny! We both really enjoyed it! I was very pleasantly surprised at how well Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler worked together. We came home and were told that our little girl had been great and went to bed without any problems at all (lately she has given sitters a hard time at bedtime). It was the most perfect evening! Matt definitely made my birthday wonderful!

Girl's Day

The celebrating continued on to Saturday, where we had our quarterly family girl's day. I hadn't actually slept well the night before, so I enjoyed the day of not doing much at all. We sat around and talked, and painted toenails (thanks Ricci!) and watched Gilmore Girls. That evening, we met up in Centerville at Chilis for dinner. We had a really yummy dinner, followed by free dessert to celebrate mine and my aunt's birthdays. Awesome! Then we went to the new Centerpoint Legacy Theatre (used to be Rodger's Memorial) to see Hairspray. One of my best friends from high school, Breezy, was the lead so it made the show even more fun! I love Hairspray! It's such a funny show. And Breezy was amazing, as usual! The kid who played Seaweed was incredible too! If you get a chance, I highly recommend seeing it. (Just make sure you go see the T/Th/S cast)

It turned into a really fun birthday weekend! And the celebrating continues on. Tomorrow night we are going to dinner with Matt's family to celebrate mine and both his parent's birthdays. I just love February! (it's just a bummer I didn't get pictures of any of this)

Snow Day

Yesterday Kalianna was playing in the yard in bare feet and no jacket. Today she is playing in this:

65 Days

I realized I have blogged a lot less about this pregnancy, and with only two more months to go, I should probably take advantage of it while I'm still preggers! Any woman who has ever been pregnant can agree, you have your good days and your bad. But even on the days that I feel sick, I still love being pregnant! With how much we struggled to get here, I'm just so grateful to be pregnant! Every movement my little girl makes is precious. I love feeling her and I feel her A LOT! The placenta is apparently right up against my back, so I feel every little thing she does. It's so fun!

I completely agree with what I've been told, my second pregnancy has been so much easier! With Kalianna, I was fresh from surgery, lost about 20 pounds, and was pretty sick through most of it. I did get to enjoy my third trimester with her though. I was definitely sick in the beginning with this one, but I started out my pregnancy in such better health, that I felt it was easier to deal with. With Kalianna, I was working full time. Sometimes working 11 hour days. Which really wears you down when you're pregnant! But with this one, I get to be home all day. When I need a nap, I can take a nap. When I need to rest, I can put on a movie and rest. It's been so great! I still get to chase my rambunctious soon-to-be two year old around, but it is so much easier than taking care of 12 men who act like two year olds. =)

I'm still pretty small. People tell me all the time I can't possibly be due in two months. Well, I am! I'm basically the same size at the same point as I was with Kalianna. I expected to be bigger with my second, but I seem to be carrying this one the same as my first. I just have a very long torso, and wide hips. So the baby has plenty of room and doesn't need to poke out much.

Matt and I have been having fun getting ready for our new little addition. We completely re-did our bedroom (hurray!) to make more room for the rocking chair to move in with us, so we can fit a second bed in Kalianna's room. With Kalianna, we only had her in our room for about two weeks, while I was recovering from the C-section. It's going to be weird having her in our room longer this time. I don't want to put her with Kalianna until she gets a little older, so she doesn't keep Kalianna up at night. It will be an interesting adjustment.

It's hard not knowing how this delivery is going to go. With Kalianna, I was all ready for a regular delivery, and then was surprised when I ended up having to have a C-section. I'm planning on trying to go for a vaginal delivery again, but as Kalianna proved, you never know what's going to happen! For instance, once you've had a C-section, you can never be induced. So if she doesn't come on her own in a timely manner, I will have to have a C-section again. Or if there are any problems, I will have to have a C-section again. I don't mind having another C-section if that's what it comes to, the only downside is too many can limit the number of children you can have. And once you've had two, you can never do a vaginal delivery. So everything depends on this little girl and how she decides to come! She gets to decide how all my future deliveries will go.

Matt and I still feel the same way about names. I know some people have names picked out for their kids long before they are born, but that just doesn't work for us. We had a name picked out for Kalianna. It was so definite that we almost started telling people what it was. Kalianna was our backup. Then, once we saw her, the name didn't fit at all! She looked like such a little Kali that we couldn't name her anything else. We knew in that moment what her name was supposed to be. With this one, we are less sure about a name. We have a list of our favorites, but we definitely won't settle on one until we see her pretty face.

As each day passes, I am getting more and more excited to meet her! But in the meantime, I am having lots of fun enjoying each moment with Kalianna as my one!

Not A Day Goes By

Yesterday I was driving in the car and I put on one of my old Lonestar CD's. I haven't listened to it in forever! Mostly because Matt doesn't like country music. One of my favorite songs ("Not A Day Goes By") came on and it brought me back about seven years. Matt was on his mission and as I was leaving an IWA (Institute Women's Association) sleepover, this song came on the radio. I had never paid close attention to the lyrics before, but at that particular moment, I heard the words for the first time and I began to cry. It made me think of Matt (especially the chorus).

Got a picture of you, I carry in my heart

Close my eyes to see it, when the world gets dark

Got a memory of you, I carry in my soul

I wrap it close around me, when the nights get cold

If you asked me how I'm doing, I'd say just fine

But the truth is, baby, if you could read my mind

Not a day goes by, that I don't think of you

After all this time, you're still with me it's true

Somehow you remain, locked so deep inside

Baby, baby, oh, baby, not a day goes by

I still wait for the phone, in the middle of the night

Thinking you might call me, if your dreams don't turn out right

And it still amazes me, that I lie here in the dark

Wishing you were next to me, with your head against my heart

If you asked me how I'm doing, I'd say just fine

But the truth is, baby, if you could read my mind

Not a day goes by, that I don't think of you

After all this time, you're still with me it's true

Somehow you remain, locked so deep inside

Baby, baby, oh, baby, not a day goes by

Minutes turn to hours, and the hours to days

Seems it's been forever, that I've felt this way

Not a day goes by, that I don't think of you

After all this time, you're still with me it's true

Somehow you remain, locked so deep inside

Baby, baby, oh, baby, not a day goes by

It wasn't until that moment, hearing that song, that I realized I had deeper feelings for Matt than just our friendship. Matt and I met in high school and became good friends before his mission. I wrote him the entire two years, but it wasn't until those last six months that something changed for the both of us. I started to realize how important he was to me and how much I cared for him. He also started realizing something had changed when he got a package from both me and his girlfriend on the same day, and he was more excited to open mine than hers. I found myself thinking of him more and more as the countdown began for him to return home. Not a day went by without my thoughts turning to him, and wondering about the possibilities for a future. Now, many years later, I love that whenever I hear this song I think of Matt and that first moment when I wondered if he could be more than a friend.

Radio Interview

Yesterday afternoon was my first radio interview. In fact, it was my first time on the radio. Ever. It turned into quite a chaotic afternoon, but thankfully everything worked out! My interview was scheduled for 4:00pm. Since I was calling into the station, I obviously couldn't have Kalianna pulling on my legs and trying to grab the phone away from me (as she often does these days). So I made arrangements with a neighbor to drop her off a little before 4:00 so I could have a quiet house and concentrate on my interview. I put Kalianna down for her nap as usual, but the little stinker refused to sleep. I could hear her talking and playing in her bed for over an hour! She hasn't done that in a really long time! Normally she takes really good naps! So just when I was about to give up and go in to get her, she fell asleep. Awesome.

4:00 started creeping around the corner and she was still asleep. I thought this was awesome. She will just sleep through my interview, no big deal. I text my friend and told her I wouldn't need to drop her off after all. 3:52pm Kalianna wakes up. Great. At this point, it's too late to rush her to my neighbor's house. Plus if I pulled her straight from sleeping and ditched her somewhere, she probably would have just screamed the whole time. So I scooped her up, ran down to the basement, (grabbing a brownie and her sippy cup on the way) and stuck her in front of a movie. I turned on Winnie the Pooh, handed her the brownie, kissed her on the cheek and said, "Mommy will be right back." Then I booked it up the stairs (shutting the gate behind me so she couldn't come find me and interrupt the interview) and called in to the station with 42 seconds to spare. My interviewer was afraid I wasn't going to make it! So I sat down, took a deep breath, and showtime!

It was crazy, but I had a lot of fun! And people told me I didn't sound breathless on the interview, so that's good. She asked some difficult questions, but I hope it all came across well and I hope it will inspire people to go pick up a copy of my book. I haven't actually listened to it myself, but I don't like hearing my own voice. So I'm not sure if I will. But you can! The station sent me a link to the interview if you would like to hear it: http://www.eckobooks.com/page/3/Ecko-House-Radio/

As the interview was nearing the end, I could hear my sweet little girl crying, as she realized I had locked her downstairs. I felt like the worst mom ever! But thankfully I had given her chocolate, so she wasn't too upset. And the second the interview was over, I came to her rescue. Maybe next time I will make sure to have an extra set of hands...just in case.

Impromptu Trip

Matt and my brother, Bryan, went snowboarding Friday night. So Ricci came up to hang out with the girls and have a Gilmore night with some friends from work. It was so fun! After snowboarding, the boys came home and Bryan and Ricci stayed the night. On Saturday we were talking about how Ricci had never been to Logan before, so we said "Let's go!" We packed a diaper bag for Kalianna and took off. Unfortunately we couldn't show Ricci how pretty the canyon is because it was super foggy that day! We first went to The Bluebird for lunch. It's tradition to go to the Bluebird whenever you're in Logan. It would be blasphemy not to go! Neither Bryan nor Ricci had ever been, so they got to enjoy their first taste of Iron ports and bluebird chicken. Super yummy!

After lunch, we took them to see the Logan temple. It was freezing outside, so we didn't stay long.

Then we took a little drive and showed Ricci our old house, a few of my old apartments and a little bit of the USU campus. It turned into a little bit of a "Princess Sisters" tour. We ate at The Bluebird and then showed her all the places where the characters go in the book. It's always fun to see the places you've read about! We had a really fun afternoon! Before we left, we had to make one last stop at the USU creamery for some yummy ice cream.