IT'S A......

We are very excited to have a little boy in our family! I got the cake idea from a tv show and we thought it would be a good way to find out together if Nate missed the ultrasound. He was actually here for it, but we still decided to do the cake. It was a pretty fun way to reveal the news. Alyssa wanted a sister and commented many times that she didn't want a boy baby, but she seems pretty happy now and was obviously more interested in the cake at the time. I'm a little nervous about having a boy. I don't know anything about boys having two sisters and a daughter. But it will be different and fun. We will have trucks and trains instead of all pink and princess. As many people have said, we will hang on and get ready for some wild, fun times ahead!

3 Years Old!!

Alyssa had a big party for her number 3. She invited a few friends and had them and their parents over to our house. It was pretty crowded and pretty crazy, but I think everyone had a good time, I know Alyssa did. We did a crown making craft to start out with and the little girls actually wore them! And they were cute. We did a few games- pin the nose on the clown, bean bag toss and the pinata. Then we did the cake and presents. Alyssa was very excited about her princess cake ( if you couldn't tell she had a princess theme:) and blowing out the candles. At the end we had a bouncy house set up in the garage for the kiddos, graciously provided by my friend Tamara. It was a pretty successful party. It was fun to see Alyssa so excited. She was so excited in fact that she had a very hard time going to bed that night, but it was worth it:) Happy Birthday Alyssa!!

Big Girl Bed

This is definitely a "real life" video. But I thought it captured a little bit of the array of her personality- Very grateful and sweet, wild, very concerned about her clothing and a little sassy- Sorry about the stripping :)

Alyssa finally got her big girl bed about a month ago. We kept putting it off because it never seemed like a good time, and I was afraid she wouldn't sleep as good anymore and get out of her bed all the time. She has done great! We told her that she has to stay in her bed and she's been staying in bed! Sometimes she calls for us a few times before she falls asleep, but nothing different than when she was in the crib. She's pretty excited to be a big girl and says that the baby can "borrow" her baby bed. Another little milestone, I can't believe she is almost 3!!

Fall Festivities

We have done a few fun fall things this month. Two different pumpkin patches, a cider mill and all these places have a ton of fun things for kids to do. We did a corn maze, pet lots of animals, went on a hay ride, slid down slides and picked pumpkins. Alyssa also loved pushing the wheel barrow. I'm so glad we made it out even though I wasn't feeling great. We had some beautiful days in Sept. and early Oct. so I'm glad we took advantage. Now it's raining and I won't see much of the sun until we move to CO!

Guess where we're moving?

COLORADO!!!!! Yes, thats right, we got the shocking news yesterday that we should be moving back to C. Springs in early summer. We feel like it's too good to be true and had no idea it was really an option for Nate. We are very excited that this is what God has for our future and that we will be close to our family and friends again! YAY!!!

Alyssa is.....

going to be a



Yay I'm preganant! So now I have an excuse for being AWOL for 2 months:) I'm 9 weeks and not feeling great. I've had some very bad days with lots of vomiting, but I hope those days have passed. Now I can just continue to figure out how to function and keep up with a little one while feeling nauseous all day. Nate has also been gone the last 2.5 weeks so it's been pretty tough, but my mom came and rescued me for a few days this weekend. We are very excited and so happy God has blessed us with another little one. If you think about it, pray for me and pray that Nate gets home SOON!

I have so many other pictures to post, I'll try to work on it:)

Potty training update

It seems like a lot of people I know are in the trenches of potty training. I've read a few blogs this week on potty training so I thought I'd give an update on how Alyssa is doing with it. We started introducing the potty right when Alyssa turned 2. She was pretty excited about it for a while and would go 2-5 times a day. But she would go such small amounts and so often( like every 10 minutes) that it just wasn't practical. I figured her body wasn't mature enough yet so we waited until after the holidays to try again. Well when I was ready to get serious about it, Alyssa was NOT! She wanted nothing to do with the potty and would scream and cry and never go on the potty. So I decided to wait a little longer. We had a lot of changes and traveling this past spring so it was really hard to pick a good time and be consistent with it. After another month or so she seemed to warm up a bit to the potty idea and if I caught her in time she would usually go. Somedays were good, and other days were terrible, but she would never tell me when she had to go. This was incredibly frustrating because I knew she could do it, she just wouldn't tell me. And the telling me part is a big part of being "trained" So we went on like this for a couple months, with lots of accidents on the carpet, on the couch, in the car seat...just about everywhere. I tried to prepare Nate for it, since (lucky him) he missed all this, and he was not excited. He was ready to put her back in diapers. But when he got home everything changed. The day he got home she started telling us she had to go! And she has seriously only had two wet accidents in 2 weeks!! I guess there is just something very motivating about Daddy coming home. Last time Nate came home from deployment Alyssa started walking. So you just never know what that motivating factor is going to be for a kid. I thought seeing other kids go potty, bribing her with stuff, not letting her wear diapers at all etc. would motivated her. So we are doing great with pee but still not good with poop. She has only gone twice on the potty and now goes during naptime or bedtime, so she can do it alone with out me trying to get her to go on the potty, I guess. But I feel alot less stressed about it because I know she'll do it eventually, and maybe the bribe of getting her a big girl bed when she's fully potty trained will give her a little incentive :)

Our cruise to Alaska

View of the pool







Mendenhall glacier in Juneau

Ziplining in Juneau




White Pass Railroad in Skagway



Kayaking in B.C

We saw some whales and seals while we were sitting here. I wish we would have been closer, but it was still cool.








Butchart Gardens.

The cruise was great! Nate and I had such a good time together. The weather and scenery were so beautiful. We were so lucky that the weather was in the 70's and 80's at each port which is pretty rare for those parts of AK. We had 4 days at sea and 3 days at port. Our first stop was in Juneau. We went on a zipline tour and it was awesome. We were 50-180 feet off the ground zipping between trees at up to 35 mph. It was pretty thrilling. We also saw the Mendenhall glacier too. That was the one place that I actually remember being at when I was a kid. The next stop was Skagway. We went on a narrow gauge railway up a mountain pass that had spectacular views. We got off and kayaked in a lake at the top of the pass. It was a great day! The third day was in Victoria, B.C. Victoria is such a pretty city. We did some sightseeing around town, found our way to the beach and took a tour to Butchart Gardens. The garden was beautiful, but if you ask Nate, not worth the money. I liked it though:) I was a little worried before we left that we would get bored with 4 days at sea, but there was so much to do that we rarely just sat and read a book. We took a couple dancing lessons(we can kinda cha cha), went swimming, climbed the rock wall, went to a show every night and ate A LOT! I'm so glad that we were able to have this time together! Oh, and Alyssa did great with our parents and was not scarred for life because we left her. Thank you so much Nana, Mimi, Grammi and Poppop!!!

My Daddy's Coming!

Daddy's Home!!

He's Home! God is good, life is good. After quite a rollercoaster Nate made it back late Tuesday night. We are so happy that he's home and to have our family back together again. Alyssa was so excited while we were wating at the flight line. She kept yelling, "My Daddy's coming!" It was a very sweet reunion! Nate and I are off on our cruise tomorrow, super excited for that!

Not here yet :(

Nate's homecoming has been delayed. Just a day, so far, but I'm really bummed. He was supposed to get home tomorrow night and it has been pushed back to tuesday night due to a broken plane. Nate and I leave for our cruise on Friday so I'm sad that Alyssa and Nate will only have two days together before he leaves again. Everyone has been telling me she'll be fine, but I feel really bad for her.....to build up Nate's homecoming just for him to leave again two days later. Oh well, I am excited to go on our cruise though, I just have a little mommy guilt. I just had to vent. I'll let you know when he gets home!

Beach video

Alyssa was building sand castles with my dad and she would get really excited when a wave would hit it and the wall would hold. She would yell "it held! it held!". So thats what she's saying as she runs away, just in case you can't hear what she's saying.

This is Alyssa's friend Caleb. They're pretty cute together....

Kauai!

So there are a lot of pictures....just couldn't weed any out. Kauai was awesome! Beautiful weather, beautiful place, good time with the fam, Alyssa loved her first beach experience, it was almost perfect....except Nate wasn't there :( Nate and I went there on our honeymoon so there were a lot of memories, it was fun to be there again, it just would have been better with Nate. We did a ton of stuff, my family is very go go go on vacation. One of my favorte things we did was surfing. I don't have any pics of that yet but when I get them I'll post them. It was so much fun. Went to the beach everyday, went snorkeling, kayaking, to a luau, ya know all that fun stuff. Now Nate is trying to convince me we should live there. I'm still not so sure, but it's a great place to visit!