Surreal...

The other dayI received our first baby gift for our little boy coming in June. It was a really cute set of onezies. It is so surreal to see boy stuff. I know this will only be our 2nd child, but I feel like for the past 2 years or so all I have seen is girl girl girl stuff (and to be honest I really thought we were just going to have all girls for some reason), so to see boy stuff is just weird (very cool, but weird). :)

The cool thing about this onezie is that Ryan has a shirt that says "1st Round Draft Pick", so they will be twins.

Ryan is so excited for a little boy to play catch with and to go camping with and to do all that boy stuff while Paisley and I go shopping. :)

Its A........

BOY!!!!!!!!!

We just did our ultrasound appointment today and found out we are having a BOY! We are so excited. Here are a couple pictures for your viewing pleasure.

                                               Face

                                                              Foot

                                                            Hand



All Hail Princess Paisley's Castle!

A week or so ago, Ryan and I were walking around the toy section at Target with Paisley. We came across a couple really cool playsets. There were some fun kitchen playsets and some fun house playsets, but the one that caught my eye was the castle playset. Ry and I were both shocked to see that this playset was over $100 and so Ry said "I could make that and it would be cooler looking than that expensive one" and I was like "you totally should". I have learned over the last 7 years that when Ryan says "I can build/make that", I totally believe him! So fast forward a couple days later and Ryan comes home with this huge cardboard box.

He got started on the cutting/sawing and both Paisley and I were so excited with each cut he made. He made a cute Paisley size door and a really fun crawl door on the side for a fast get away if invaders come to attack the castle.

He even cut the up down things on the top (I'm sure they have a name, but wikipedia was lame and couldn't tell me).

Then came the paint job. I painted the whole thing white and painted the flowers and Ry did the bricks and the vines and Paisleys name. Oh and he added a tower on the top right to make it even cooler looking.

We put her pink chair in there for the purpose of taking a picture of the princess on her throne. The chair is not normally in there. Paisley has been dragging all her babies and stuffed animals in there as either prisoners or to keep her company, we are not sure which yet, but by the look of her smile I am guessing they are her prisoners.

Target castle: $100

Castle idea from Target: $0

Cardboard box: $0

Paint: $8

Family project that has and will create tons of fun memories: $priceless

Paisley 1st Time In Nursery

A couple weeks ago, Ryan and I got called to be CTR 5 teachers in our new ward. We get to teach all the 5 year olds in our ward. :) At first when he heard the calling we both weren't too excited about it because Paisley has another 2 months before she can go into nursery, so that meant that she would have to come to Primary with us and not get to run the all too familiar halls like we have become accustomed to doing after spending only 5 mins in Sunday School, Relief Society or Priesthood. Paisley is a mover and a shaker and loves living life that way, so I wasn't sure how she was going to make it through 2 hours of Primary. When our Bishop called us he told us that we could "sneak" Paisley in early to nursery "under the radar" if we wanted to. I'm pretty sure he said that because his wife is the nursery leader and their 16 month old son is in the nursery "covertly". Ryan and I talked it over and decided that we didn't want to trouble the nursery workers anymore than they already are with 18 month-3 year old kids, so we would just bring Paisley with us to Primary for the next couple months and then put her in nursery when she was 18 months. Well last week was our 1st week teaching our class and Paisley was a HUGE distraction to the 5 year olds we teach, so we were kind of dreading the next 2 months with her. Today in church we sat in front of the Bishops wife in sacrament and she convinced us to try Paisley out in nursery today and so we did and Paisley did GREAT! She walked right in and started playing with the toys without a glance back at her old mom (tear tear). When we went to pick her up, the nursery leaders said she was better than some of the older kids. She even did her first little nursery lesson art project and ofcourse that went straight on the fridge. :)

One of the leaders did say that Paisley hasn't quite mastered the "dismount". Apparently when she gets off of her chair after snack time, she doesn't do it very gracefully. :)

Can You Guess What This Is?

For Christmas, I got Ryan a game called "Creationary". Its like "Pictionary", but instead of drawing, you create the items using legos. Anyways, as you can imagine Ryan is VERY good at that game. So he has decided he is going to build some things and see if you can guess what they are. Can you guess what this is?

Please submit your guesses as a comment on the blog or feel free to send a text. :)

First Family Home Evening of 2011

One of our families New Years goals is to have FHE (Family Home Evening) every week. Our families are our greatest source of happinesss and joy and FHE helps to strengthen the family relationship. FHE, in the Mormon religion, is usually done on Monday night, but can be done on any night that works for your family. FHE will help hold your family together through the tough times in which we live. It will help to strengthen the relationships between family members. Its a night that is spent with your family where you play games with eachother and learn as a family more about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A couple years ago we were given 52 simple and fun FHE lesson/activites for the year and so we decided that we were going to use that. The first lesson is entitled "I Am My Heavenly Father's Child".  We sang "I Am A Child of God" (Paisley lead the song) :) and then we gave the lesson and then Paisley got to do a coloring activity.

It was so great. I'm pretty sure Paisley didn't understand ANYTHING, but I still feel really good about starting it now and getting into the habit of it early. :)

Snow in Las Vegas??

This morning when I went to get Paisley out of her bed, I opened the curtains in her room and this is what I saw:

People made snowmen and snow angels and a couple schools cancelled school. :)

New Year's 2011

Ryan and I decided that we wanted to start some New Years Eve traditions with our family. One of those traditions we started was to do a "backwards" dinner. This is done by having dessert first, then the main course and finally an appetizer. So last night we started out with one of Ry's favorite desserts which is funfetti cupcakes with rainbow chip frosting, then we had some fancy nachos from Macayos, and lastly we had some cheddar biscuits (like red lobster has). It was fun and I think Paisley liked having cupcakes before dinner. :) We also rented "Gone With The Wind" because neither of us had seen it and we thought it would be fun to watch one of the "classics". We had no idea that the movie was a tragedy, so needless to say we were shocked a lot while watching it. :) We brought in the New Year with a whole bottle of sparkling red grape juice (it was soo good) and then wrote up our 2011 goals.

Ryan and I are really looking forward to this year because there is a lot of exciting things going on. I start student teaching in a couple weeks which means I will be graduating from college in May!!! Baby #2 is due in June!! And Ryan is applying for the nursing program in August!! Its going to be a GREAT year!!

When Ryan and I were working in the temple, we had the opportunity to work under an amazing temple presidency. One of the assitant temple matrons, Sister Earl, became like a 2nd mom to me. In her Christmas card this year, she enclosed the following inspirtational "New Year" thought:

The Optimist Creed



Promise yourself:
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. 

Happy New Year!!!