Halloween

Our Butterfly and Frankenstein getting ready to go trick-or-treating. Justin took the kids out while I stayed home and passed out candy. It was a beautiful night and I sat outside and waited for the kids to come.




Justin dressed as a pirate this halloween. As you can see only Anna is posing with him. We put black eye make-up around Justin's eyes and Cameron refused to go near him, saying he was "scary". So no group picture this year.

Here is a photo from the pumpkin patch we went to last weekend. The kids had a blast and they had lots of fun things to do. We decided to forgo individual pumpkins this year and got a big (70 pound) family pumpkin. That meant a lot less carving on our end!

Here's Justin getting ready to "prep" the pumpkin and very appropriately still in his scrubs from work. Surprisingly the pumpkin had very few seeds inside.

And yes, the surgeon needed TWO large knives to cut the top off the pumpkin. Why? I have no idea. I was just glad he didn't cut off his fingers!

Excuses

There is a good reason as to why it's taken me a whole MONTH to update our family blog. Well here it is.......baby number 3! Now I know that's not really an excuse, but the daily sickness and nausea definetly is!!

I am starting to slowly get better and can now sit down for dinner with the family (which is still consisting of frozen foods). However my energy level is still down and any sort of vigorous activity makes me want to throw-up.

My daily running routine has turned into weekly yoga and pilates classes. The kids' new favorite activity is watching tv in mom and dad's room while mom takes a nap on the bed. The house we bought for the fantastic kitchen has yet to be used and the highlight of my weekend is when Justin takes the kids out to dinner and I get some quiet rest time alone.

I'm around 14 weeks along now (I'm never good at keeping track) and I know that soon the sickness will be gone. Yeah!! So baby will be due sometime in April.

The OB I go too does these 3D ultrasounds which were pretty cool and I didn't get with my first two kids. So I posted a picture of what the little tadpole looks like.

Anna is hoping for a girl, Cameron wants a boy, Justin doesn't care, and of course I have an opinion on what I want; but have always gotten the oposite. After a recent tragedy I've definetly changed my thinking to wanting a healthy child and whatever comes will be loved.

So here's to baby number 3 and I promise to start posting more regularly.

OSU/USC Game

Justin flew out to LA this weekend to go to the big OSU vs. USC game. He met my brother-in-law Eric (who is a huge USC fan) out there and they teamed up for the game. One doning the scarlet and gray buckeye gear the other decked out in his USC Trojans. They probably looked quite the couple. They went to ESPN game day where their photos made it onto the ESPN web page (photos to come on our blog). Then they did a bit of tailgating before the big game. Unfortunatly OSU got trampled over, but Justin still had fun and came home with a smile on his face. He's already talking about next years OSU/USC match-up game and Ohio States come back. Let's just get through this season first!

Labor Day Weekend

We had a nice Labor Day weekend hanging out as a family.


We tarted out by going to a baseball game on Saturday night. Cedar Rapids has a minor league "farm team" for the California Angels. We had hot dogs and ice-cream, and then after the game they had fireworks. Lots of fun.
The photos were taken at the beginning of the night before the kids had ice-cream all over their clothes and they were all happy with smiles on their faces!
Here is Justin on his new tractor. Believe it or not, this is the first time that I have ever seen him mow the lawn.....we've never lived anywhere that didn't have an association who maintained the lawn. The kids were sooooooo excited to ride on it! As you can see Cam is on Justin's lap "driving". I thought the tractor was cute because it's orange.
The kids were riding their bikes and wearing their PJ's, patiently waiting for their turn to ride the tractor.















On Monday we went to a lake about half an hour away from here that has boating and beaches and we hung out there for awhile. The kids loved it, but I refused to get into the water past my ankles. If I can't clearly see through the water, then I'm not getting in! Unforunatly I don't have any photos of it. Next time I'll remember my camera.

Back to School...

Well, it's that time of year again! Anna had her first day at her new preschool today. She was very excited to meet new friends and was also very excited about her new pink-cupckae-backpack. Here she is posing infront of the house.
Another little shot infront of the purple flowers, she likes the flowers because they're purple....duh!
And of course a picture with Cameron. We decided not to put him in preschool yet. So for now it's just him and me running errands and hanging out on preschool days!

Cameron-Doo

Monday was Cameron's third Birthday! We are out here in Utah for Jacob's wedding, so we were able to do a big birthday party for him with lots of family. Cameron requested a Scooby-Doo birthday party this year. So I made a haunted Scooby party. The whole party was set up so that the kids had to follow theses clues and find out who the ghost was that stole the birthday presents. (we had the presents stolen at the beginning of the party) It was a lot of fun.

Here are the kids with their Scooby masks on. Ian and Olivia are on the left (my sister Angela's kids) and Anna and Cameron are on the right.
Here is Anna and her uncle Jason. She was scared of the whole ghost thing and didn't want to participate in the games. It didn't help that the ghost (who was played by Eric) kept making scary noises.
One of the games was for the kids to each choose and adult and wrap them up like a mummy. Here is my nephew Ian and my "mummy" mom.
Of course the kids found out who the ghost was and were able to get all the presents back. Here is Cameron opening up one of his presents!

The Drive....

We made it to Iowa! We've been here about a week now and are still feeling very unsettled, but are loving the new house! We leave tomorrow to go out of town for Justin's brothers wedding, so I thought I'd put up a few pics from the drive while I had the chance. It wasn't too bad, about 8 hours, and thank goodness for the big new car!

As you can see I arranged all our stuff around Chauncy's dog bed so that he would be able to lay there and see out. Unfortunately that didn't work to well. He was very confused as to what was all going on and wanted to be as close to everyone as possible.....
As you can see from this picutre, he spent some time acting as Anna's pillow. He was actually sleeping ontop there.
And finally he found his spot, underneath Anna's chair on the hard mats. Forget that I spent forever arranging everything in the back around his nice comfy bed, he spent the majority of the time on the ground.....go figure!


















But we're here, we'll post more pics and update you all soon. We think of you all often, especially with all the uneasiness of moving and having to meet new friends all over again.....but that's life.