Baby #3- What Will it Be?!?!

Yep, we are having Baby #3!!!  We are due June 20th but since we get to schedule a repeat C-section, we will probably schedule the delivery sometime the week before.  We couldn't be more excited!   No, we decided that we would NOT find out the gender of our baby...we decided that since we have one girl and boy, we had all the clothes we need and it would be such a fun SURPRISE to find out at the actual birth!

This baby is a wiggler and likes to wave its hands all over the place.  Whenever the ultrasound tech was trying to get a good look at a body part, the baby's hand was always in the way.  That is why we have so many hand pictures.  Everything looks great with the baby and now all we have to do is wait until June!

Avery is really excited and loves to give the baby hugs.  He wants a brother but knows that it could be a girl.  He wants a brother so he can play with it and have a bunk bed with it.  Lily has no clue about the baby, but we are interested in seeing how she reacts to this new little one.  She loves babies...but she also loves mommy and mommy all to herself.  It will be a big adjustment for her.

Christmas in Idaho 2012

When we went to Idaho to celebrate Christmas with our extended families, we had just as much fun!
First stop was in Downey to see Amanda'a family.  We had a yummy lunch and then we did presents.  Boy did Grandma and Grandpa Downs spoil our kids.

Avery & Kyler cheezing it up for the camera.

this puppy shook when you pressed its ear.

Lily got a hot wheel electric jeep she can ride around on.  She thought that was pretty cool.

It was really funny when they brought out Avery's big present.  It really is too bad the video isn't working.  Avery kinda just stared at what he got, a little scared and maybe a little in disbelief.  It wasn't until they pushed the throttle that he really got super excited.  He started to jump up and down, run around and scream.  It was really funny.  If you cant' tell what it is in the picture, its a miniature electric dirt bike.  It can go up to 14 mph!  Its actually fairly heavy duty with handbrakes and a turn throttle.

 Avery's cousins got a 4wheeler together so this clan was ready for some fun times!

Well we had to go try these fun toys out!  However, it had snowed quite a bit so they couldn't ride them just anywhere.  Thanks to the men shoveling snow at the Downata Hot Springs pavilion, they could ride around the pavilion. 

Lily had no idea about steering whatsoever.  She knew how to press the gas though, we just had to make sure to turn her.  

Avery was a little scared of his dirt bike.  Its a little big for him and it does  go pretty fast for a little guy like him.  However, he did do it a couple of times on his own (he liked to have an audience though).  We can't wait until the snow goes away and it warms up so we can try it out some more!  That's pretty much all Avery wanted to do (instead of sledding and swimming).  He thinks its a really cool present.

We also did a little sledding and swimming while we were down there ofcourse!  We played tons of games and just had a lot of fun.  Thanks Grandma & Grandpa Downs for a fun Christmas!

Then we headed up to Blackfoot for Christmas with the Turpins.  Its always a great time with about a million cousins running around.  Avery loved having cousins to play with.  We did the annual Turpin talent show which was no disappointment.  It was a good time to remember some good memories with the Turpins and have some good food and good playing with them all.  Sorry there are no pictures!

We spent New Year's Eve with Brian's brother Richard and his family.  Our kids actually ended up being sick, but we still had so much fun!  We did some sledding on the way home and then were just glad to be home after a fun week away from home. 

I'll Be Home for Christmas 2012

Well here is finally Christmas 2012.  We are having difficulty getting video off our sd card so I guess there won't be any of the awesome Christmas videos we wanted to share.
This year for Christmas we stayed the night on our own, at our own house.  We love visiting family for Christmas but we decided that we needed to branch out and create some family traditions of our own and plus its soooo much easier not to have to haul presents everywhere (though we did still have to do that on the way home).
We started the celebrations off by having a nice Christmas Eve dinner.  We have had this turkey in our freezer for about a year now (we got it free for buying a ton of groceries last year).  Amanda has never cooked a turkey and has been really hesitant to do so.  However, it turned out alright (for turkey anyway).  We had a bunch of yummy sides to go with it and set the table up really nice.  Avery really liked the fancy tablecloth, which was spilled on quite quickly.  

Then we read the Christmas Story from the New Testament and watched the Animated Version and a short real video online of the Saviors Birth.  We wrapped a baby doll up in "swaddling clothes" and Avery and Lily  helped place the paper Nativity scene in its proper place.  Overall, we think the kids really got the idea of the true meaning of Christmas.
We promised they could open one present so Avery & Lily opened their presents to one another (they got to pick out a 5$ gift at the store).  They thought that was pretty cool.  Lily had actually opened hers earlier so it had to be re-wrapped.  Then it was off to bed.  Avery was so concerned about Santa's cookies and that we put way too much milk in Santa's cup for him.  However, they both managed to go to sleep really well.
We, the parents, stayed up waaayyyyy toooo late getting this ready and were a wee bit tired the next morning when Avery came to wake us up.  Lily actually woke up first at 6 am but we got her to go back to sleep until Avery came in at 7am, then Lily was really hard to wake back up.
Upon arriving down the stairs to the Christmas excitement (sorry no video for this yet), there were some fun reactions.  Lily first went to the tree and wanted to hold the Baby Jesus doll under there (she didn't realize she had presents yet).  Avery saw his scooter and pretty much forgot that he had wrapped presents.  Lily finally discovered her presents and had more fun unwrapping hers, Avery's, Mom's and Dad's presents to actually care what was in the presents.  However, they did discover that they got kitchen sets for Christmas and really liked that.

We (the parents) got a tv and blue-ray player for our room.  Brian spent a good portion of the day mounting it to the wall.

The rest of Christmas Day was actually really busy.  We thought we would get bored and have nothing to do and possibly drive to Idaho that night.  Boy were we wrong!  We had to go sledding (it finally snowed the night before) with their new sleds, and play with all their new toys.  After the kids went to bed we were tired watching "The Dark Knight Rises" but only made it 20 minutes into the movie before we were both zonked out.  It was a splendid Christmas!