20-Week Ultrasound News

We had our 20-week ultrasound a couple of weeks ago and got the great news that our baby is healthy and doing well. We were also able to find out that we are going to have a little boy! It was really fun to watch the ultrasound and see things like his brain, heart, stomach, umbilical cord, face, arms and legs. At one point he even reached up and was scratching his head with his little fingers. That was really cute. Here are a few pictures from the ultrasound. They aren't the best quality and we had to scan them in which didn't help, but you can still tell what's what :)

First of all, proof that he's a boy :) (Look for the arrow.)
Cute little crossed legs...
Head (so it kind of looks like an alien head, I know, but don't they all look alien-ish in ultrasounds?), hands, and knees...
This news was also monumental on my (Emily's) side of the family because all of my siblings who have kids either just have boys or just have girls. And, with the exception of one of my brothers, all of my siblings' kids are the same gender as my siblings (my 2 sisters have just daughters, 2 of my brothers have just sons, and then my other brother has 2 daughters). So it is fun and exciting to change things up and break the trend. The same type of thing happened in Drew's family with Kathryn since she was the first granddaughter to be born on his side (she has 5 boy cousins that are older than her and thankfully now 1 girl cousin who was just born in October). It will definitely be different having a boy, but we are very excited for him to join our family.

Surprise Trip to Seattle

We recently went up to Seattle to surprise Drew's dad for his birthday. Drew's siblings were all able to come as well and his dad was really surprised. It was a lot of fun! Our first night there we all went to a hotel called the Great Wolf Lodge. It has a pretty big indoor water park which was the highlight of our stay there. They had a pretty large infant/toddler area which Kathryn LOVED. The rooms were also nice and when we first went into our room, Kathryn just kept walking around exploring everything and saying "Oh!" "Wow!" in the cutest little voice over and over again. It was so funny. Anyway, we all had a great time there. Here are some pictures from our time there...

Two of our nephews in the top bunk of their little kid cabin area...
The huge fireplace in the lobby...
A view of the water park from the lobby...
Part of the water park...
If you look closely at the above picture, you'll see a big bucket (top center of picture). It was constantly being filled with water and when it was full (it holds 1,000 gallons), it would tip over and drench everything under it. It was actually really fun to wait under it and then watch all that water coming toward you right before getting soaked.

Here's Kat playing in the kiddie area. She loved it.

The day before we left Seattle, we took the new dog, Hugo, to an off-leash dog park. It was a lot of fun and Kathryn was in heaven with all the other dogs around. She was just sad that none of them wanted to let her play with them for very long (they were all pretty distracted by all the other dogs). Here are some pictures from that day...
Kathryn giving Hugo a hug...At least one dog payed a little attention to her. He was just her size...
It was a great little trip and fun to be with family again.

Drew's Birthday

It was Drew's birthday on January 27th. Since I haven't been feeling too great, Drew told me not to do anything big for him. I usually like to give him breakfast-in-bed, but instead we went to the best donut shop in Denver-Walton's. We got some breakfast sandwiches and of course a couple of donuts. They are the best! Then later I picked him up after work and we went out to a steakhouse downtown called the Chop House. He wanted to get pizza, but just thinking about that made me nauseous, so since one of my cravings with this pregnancy has been meat, he chose the steakhouse. Thanks babe! It was good and I devoured a good part of my steak that night and most of both of our leftovers the next day :) When we got home, Kat and I gave Drew a mini-candy bar card.
We had fun celebrating and Kathryn even sang Drew her own version of "Happy Birthday". It's really cute, but we haven't been able to get a video of it yet. Thanks for having a birthday Drew! :)

Christmas 2009

Now that it's almost Valentine's Day, I'm finally getting around to posting about our Christmas vacation. Sorry it's taken me so long! Anyway, this Christmas was a lot of fun especially with Kathryn being a little older. The three of us celebrated at home the night before we went to Seattle to be with Drew's family for Christmas. Kathryn's favorite present was a doll. She has been infatuated with dolls and didn't want to open her last 2 presents after she had opened her doll. She kept wrapping it in the nightgown my mom made for her. It's really fun to watch her play with it. Here's our tree with our presents (mostly for Kathryn of course)...
Here's a silly picture of Kathryn in the cute nightgown my mom made for her. She is squinting because of the camera flash and kept saying "bright!".
The next day we flew up to Seattle and stayed for 2 weeks. It was a lot of fun being with Drew's family and we had a really nice Christmas. Drew's mom was worried about the kids having enough presents for Christmas. We told her not to worry about it and that they would be just fine. Then on Christmas Eve we were surprised by a huge shipment (12 or 13 boxes!) that Drew's mom had ordered from the Lakeshore Learning Store. It was all toys for the kids! Here is a picture of Drew's mom and our nephew Tyler with all the boxes...
Tyler had fun making a fort out of the boxes. I love how he established it as a Brazilian colony :)
That night after the kids were in bed we opened all the boxes and were amazed at all of the awesome things she had ordered. There was a TON of stuff and only 3 kids there for Christmas, so we set a lot of it aside to give to the kids for their birthdays and other occasions and to send to Drew's brother's family who wasn't there. Here's a picture of everything...
Here are some other fun pictures from Christmas Eve...

Kathryn and her cousin Owen in their matching jammies.

Me, Kathryn, Sara (Drew's sister) and Owen.
The kids have on matching shirts that Sara made, but in case you can't read them, here's a close-up of Kathryn in hers...

Yep, that's right, I'm pregnant! (This is the main reason why it's taken so long to get this post done.) I'm about 15 weeks along now and am due July 27th. Sara is due near the end of June so it will be fun to have kids so close in age. It's just too bad we don't live closer. Anyway, it was really fun to have the two kiddos walk in on Christmas Eve to make the announcement for us.

Christmas Day was a lot of fun and full of presents, awesome food, relaxing, and ended with going to see Avatar (great movie, by the way). Kathryn had fun opening presents and was also a little overwhelmed with everything going on around her.

Check out her cute horse slippers she got from Aunt Becca.

Here she is riding her cousin's cool police motorcycle while we were at the movie...
While in Seattle we did a few other fun things. My sister and her family live about 45 minutes from Drew's parents so we were able to see them a couple of times. The first time we got to make gingerbread houses. Drew was the chief engineer for ours, but unfortunately we forgot to get a picture of it. He did a great job and it was definitely unique :) We also got to see them on New Year's Day. Here we are with my nieces...
It was really great to see them again and they were so good with Kathryn. She was definitely well-entertained!

Another thing we did was go to the zoo with Drew's family. We had a good time there and got some fun pictures...

Kathryn, Owen and Tyler

Kathryn loved riding in the wagon.

Drew and Kat at the eagle enclosure

Another day we went to see Drew's sister Becca's horse, Jules. Kathryn loves animals and had a lot of fun feeding her and riding her.
One other fun thing we did was go up to the mountains to go sledding since there wasn't any snow in Seattle. Kathryn didn't like sledding too much but she did like playing in the snow. The rest of us had a lot of fun sledding and thankfully left with no injuries :)

Kathryn with Grandpa Bill

And, one last random picture we took the night before we left. It's Drew, Kathryn, Drew's mom, and Becca.
Thanks everyone for making it such a fun Christmas. We had a great time.

Thanksgiving

We had a fun and delicious Thanksgiving. My little brother, David, came from Provo, UT for a few days and it was fun to hang out with him. He was really cute and sweet with Kathryn and it was fun for her to have more time to get to know him better. She was very fascinated with all the "toys" he brought with him-like his phone, i-pod, laptop, etc. She loves books and easily got him to read to her...
David also got Kathryn hooked on eggnog! :) We are actually very happy about this because she doesn't like milk. So we have been mixing eggnog with milk and are gradually putting in more milk and less eggnog. Hopefully she'll be drinking straight milk soon. Thank you David! You're a genius! :)

On Thanksgiving, we slept in and then did a lot of cooking. We joined a bunch of other people at church for a Thanksgiving potluck. We brought a turkey, sweet potatoes (pretty much the best recipe ever-check it out!), mashed potatoes and gravy. It was the first time we had ever cooked a traditional turkey and amazingly it turned out so well! It was really fun to have Thanksgiving with friends and we definitely got stuffed with great food. Yum! Unfortunately we were working so hard to get everything ready, we forgot to take pictures of it all. Oh well.

On black Friday, David convinced me to get up before the crack of dawn and hit some sales at Target and Wal-Mart. I had never done that before and it was fun and we got in on some great sales-yea! :) Drew unfortunately had to go in to work that day because a big project had come in that week. My parents had a long layover at the Denver airport that day on their way home from a big trip to Australia, Japan, and Hawaii, so David, Kat and I went and hung out with them. We got to see a lot of pictures, hear about their trip, and came home with a lot of nice souvenirs :) Thanks mom and dad!
Later that day, David, Kat, and I went to the zoo with a friend that was in town for Thanksgiving. It was great to see her again. Her daughter is about 3 1/2 months older than Kathryn, so that was fun too. It was a perfect fall day to go to the zoo and we had fun even though some of the animals weren't out.

Kat and David

Bonnie, Sadie, Kat, Emily

Thanks, David, for coming and making our Thanksgiving so fun! We miss you!

Much Belated Summer Garden Post

I have been going to blog about this for months, but since it was kind of an ongoing project I kept putting it off. Well now that this project ended about a month-and-a-half ago telling you all about it is way overdue. So here we go. This past summer one of our friends from church roto-tilled her backyard, divided it into plots and let anyone who wanted to come plant their own garden. We had never really tried growing anything but had wanted to for awhile so this was a new and fun adventure for us. This friend lives about 2 miles away and we would rollerblade over to her house with Kat in the jogging stroller and work on the garden together. We planted starter plants of pumpkin, butternut squash, zucchini, green onions/chives, and green bell peppers. We also planted lettuce and parsley from seeds. We figured we couldn't go wrong with plants that had already been started for us, but we were pleasantly surprised with how well our lettuce and parsley did as well. In addition to the things we planted in the garden, we also grew herbs in planters out on our porch at our apartment. The herbs we grew (also from starter plants) were rosemary, basil, sage, oregano, green onion, and a red bell pepper plant (I threw that one in for fun because this was before we found out we could plant at our friend's house). It was a really fun summer project and so nice to have fresh vegetables and herbs! Now, on to the plethora of pictures! :)

Here is when Kathryn and I first planted our herbs:

Oregano and basil plants:

Red bell pepper and rosemary plants:

A couple of weeks later we got another planter and planted sage, a green onion, and more basil. Here is what everything looked like at the end of the season:

Green onion and oregano:
Basil and sage:
Rosemary and red bell pepper (yes, it only produced one-I learned my lesson:)

Now here's some pictures we took of our garden plot:

Kat had a lot of fun playing in the dirt and pulling off pieces of the big zucchini leaves

Zucchini:

Butternut squash:
Pumpkin (if you look closely you'll see the orange string marking our plot and then see how far out of it the pumpkin went!):
Lettuce (with some green onions/chives in the background):
Green bell pepper (with more growing room this one actually produced 4 or 5):
Parsley:

I think my favorite part of the garden was our pumpkin plant. It grew four good pumpkins. Here are a couple of pictures of Kathryn with some of them:

I became attached to our cute pumpkins, and since we never ended up carving them for Halloween, I've tried to make them last as decorations...
But now that we have below zero temperatures and they are shriveled and frozen solid it's probably time for them to meet the dumpster. Sad day!