Spring is in the Air

This is an attempt to fill our sabbath with more purposeful content and stay in touch with our extended families better. We are going to try out a blog post a week and then mass e-mailing the link to all of our family so, if they wish, they can peak into our lives.  This will also hopefully encourage me to take more pictures and document this wonderful time (all the time) of our lives.

This St Louis spring has been my first serious introduction to allergy season.  I have thought before that I may have a touch of allergies, but now there is no doubt about it.  My eyes itch, my nose runs, I am sneezing and itching and rubbing.  But, the blossoms that surround us are gorgeous to behold.

There is a tree behind our building that has beautiful white blossoms and each time I pull into the garage I tell myself I need to take a picture, but get upstairs and become engulfed in the running of a home and the rearing of children.  So finally yesterday while Trevor was home, we managed to run outside with the girls and snag some pictures. 

                         

Aleigha is quite the lovely portrait poser. 

Our down-stairs neighbor, Marley, was outside playing too and wanted to jump in on some pictures. The girls are really sweet and love to take drawings and little gifts down to her all the time.  She always shows up a few minutes later with something that she's made for them. Their eagerness to make friends and include everyone is one child like attribute I need to strive harder to posses. 

Every now and then, when you take enough pictures, there is one that comes out just perfect! We love having this angel in our family!

Little monkeys.

Sophia blesses our home with her sweet contemplation.  

Wearing her moccasins from Grandad. 

What lucky girls the four of us are to have the greatest man in our lives!

We thought one picture with all three girls would be nice...but 4 are even better!

After our photo session we went back upstairs for dinner.  Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas (from Six Sister's Stuff) and Beans and Rice (from Mel's Kitchen Cafe).

Isla loved the beans and rice! Sorry, a couple more months until you can have honey, sweetheart.

We are so blessed to have such sweet, silly girls!

Trevor just finished up his ENT rotation and will be starting an Anesthesia rotation at Christian Hospital this week. He has submitted applications for rotation spots this summer and fall, so hopefully we will start to be able to plan out the next year a bit better once he starts hearing back from them.  

I will be teaching Joy School this week. Sophia loves when Joy School is at our house because then she gets to be a part of it. Isla doesn't always love not getting a full dose of attention from mom though and having extra noisy girls in her house disturbing her naps! 

Just because I want to, I'll throw in a random picture from previous months at the end. Who needs a trampoline when you have a bed? 

Happy Easter

We had a wonderful Easter holiday! I finally decorated the Monday before Easter and so Aleigha was very curious about what I was doing and excited for Easter from that point on.  We did an FHE lesson about the atonement and watched a short video about the Savior's last days. If you're interested in watching the video you can find it here.  I am always amazed at how well Aleigha picks up on things, the rest of the week she would tell us "Jesus is alive!" and about how all of the people were being very very very mean to Jesus but he was nice to them.  I love the pure testimony of little children, they are taught truth and believe it without hesitation.

Saturday I took Aleigha to an Easter egg hunt put on by the SAA.  She was not interested in petting the live bunny that was there but enjoyed collecting Easter eggs and was thrilled to find so many stickers and "smooshmollies" (AKA marshmallows).

Cute little plumber bum!

We died eggs later that evening once Trevor got back from studying.  Aleigha was pretty excited to see the eggs come out of the dye and enjoyed dropping eggs in the cups and splashing all the surroundings.  As usual Sophia is pretty content to watch her big sister have all the fun.  She is on the verge of crawling though and I'm sure before long she'll be right along side Aleigha in all her escapades.

Sunday morning we woke up at around 7 and I tried reminding Trevor that the Easter bunny still needed to go and hide eggs in the back yard.  He wasn't thrilled to leave our nice warm bed though so instead waited until Aleigha wandered into our room around 7:30 and then quickly hopped out of bed and ran downstairs.  While the Easter bunny was at work I watched another short clip with the girls about the real meaning of Easter.  Trevor then came back up to let Aleigha know that he saw some cool things hiding downstairs. We came downstairs to find baskets and goodies on the couch. Both girls were excited about their cool prizes.

Next we went out back to gather Easter eggs. In my family we always hid our dyed eggs, so we did that along with a few plastic ones filled with 'sooshmollies' and fruit snacks.  Aleigha is quite the egg hunter but we managed to help Sophie snag a few to play with as well.

 

These girls are so blessed to have such loving grandparents that always make sure the have plenty yummy treats and goodies for all holidays and occasions! We are so grateful to them for their sweet contributions. We had a very nice church meeting.  I am so grateful for the atonement in my life and the amazing blessing that it is!  I know that my Redeemer lives and that He died and suffered that we all might one day return to live with our Heavenly Father and our dear families and loved ones.  What an amazing gift!

We were able to catch a few pictures with the girls in their Easter dresses before they became too wrinkled, however, Sophie didn't take a nap during church so there was nothing we could do to force any kind of a smile!

Yes, that is a clod of dirt hanging out of Sophia's mouth...whatever keeps her happy!

Sophia Beth

Just because I'm thinking that the more I blog the better I will get at it I am going to update a little about Sophie.

Some background: We moved into our home on June 27th and we felt very blessed to have found somewhere that met all of our necessary qualifications.  We negotiated a lower rent rate if the landlords would let us take down the existing UGLY wallpaper and paint instead.  I figured that we had a month or so before our baby would be here and that painting would give us something to do...Trevor wasn't too happy with this plan, but he goes along with my insanity.  We finished painting the hallway and stairwell at 12:30 am July 22, 2012 and I went to sleep exhausted!

So I woke up sunday morning and told Trevor jokingly that I thought my water broke and as the day progressed I was more and more sure that it had actually broken but I wasn't having any contractions and so I decided to go to church anyway because I didn't want to be sitting at home bored all day :) we went to church, got home, Trevor gave me a blessing, and then I took a nap and when I woke up for dinner contractions started (about 6 pm).  I ate dinner and then we started trying to make plans for Aleigha and get ready to go to the hospital. 

We checked into the hospital and the lady told me later that she didn't believe that I was in labor.  She put me in a bed and we finally got ahold of some friends for Aleigha to stay with.  I was dilated so she let me stay and Shophie came much faster than her big sister.  She was born at 11:06 pm after only a couple of pushes.  I much preferred being in the hospital for only 3 hours as opposed to the 14 hours that I was there before Aleigha came.

Missouri

I would attempt to play catch up for the last 7 months but just like in journal writing I know that it is nearly impossible to do it justice and not decide to quit entirely, so we will just pick up here and hopefully I can do better at updating. (I think I make that resolution every time I start a journal entry after a long break as well :S)

We are Loving Missouri!  Trevor is excelling in medical school and I am told weekly by other students and their wives that my husband is smart, but I knew that already of course.  I think that he is really enjoying it and this whole medical school experience already feels like it is flying by.

I get to watch my two favorite girls all day long and I wouldn't have it any other way.  The medical school here has a significant other group that provides a social outlet.  There are weekly get togethers for the kids at various parks and craft, sewing, reading, and cooking clubs that have monthly meetings for a chance to get out of the house for a bit.  We have met so many great people and are looking forward to getting to improve new friendships over the next two years.

Aleigha can almost simultaneously make me beyond frustrated and then laugh and smile the next minute.  She loves singing, especially songs that have actions with them, being outside, eating grapes, strawberries, and peanut butter.  Aleigha is probably the smartest little girl we know; she sings her ABC's, counts to ten, and amazes us daily by all of the little things that she picks up.  She loves her little sister and can't wait for her to get a little bigger so that they can play together.  Sophie is sleeping really well and getting bigger every day.  Her daddy gets all her smiling and cooing when he gets home in the evenings, she is a happy little girl and we are so blessed that she has joined our family.  

St. George

The whole family was able to go to St. George this weekend.  Trevor's sister Kaity wanted to go down for a friend's birthday and wanted some company.  We had a lot of fun! There is nothing quite like being 'home' and Aleigha loves being able to spend so much time with her cousin Parker.  We figure that we should try to spend as much time with our families as we can in the coming months before moving to Missouri.  I think that Trevor and I are both really excited to be moving and to start that next chapter in our lives but I am slowly coming to realize just how far that is and just how much I will miss being so close to family!  Here are some pictures we were able to capture while we were down there...

Trevor, Grandpa, Mattie and I made a toy shelf For Aleigha's room

Aleigha finally figured out how to rock by herself. Luckily Grandma has two horses!

We watched Breaking Dawn, played a game of Chicken Foot, played at the park, jumped on the trampoline, visited with Grandma and Grandpa Andreasen, Grant, Brenda, Kylee, Dave, Tyson, Carter, Kiffyn, and Preston, and overall enjoyed a nice weekend in St George!

Girl's trip

Ivy and Aleigha got to go down to St George this past week to spend some time with the Andreasen family.  I was left home alone and got to do tons of fun stuff like go to school, work, and sit around on my hands wondering what my girls were up to... lol, no, but it wasn't too bad.  I did get to go to a BYU-Gonzaga basketball game with Landon, which was pretty fun, and I liked spending some time with family, but it was still a pretty lonely week without my girls.  Ivy and Aleigha both ended up being sick while they were gone though, so they didn't exactly have a fun in the sun trip either.  Aleigha got sick a couple days before they left, and Ivy got sick from having to get up at all hours of the night and take care of a sick little girl :(.

They're both troopers though and when they got home both of them put on a good face and did a good job of pretending to be excited to see me even though they were both sick ;), so that made me feel pretty good.

In all I think it was a good chance for Ivy to be able to spend some time with her family though before we leave for the next few years for med school, and I got a couple good shopping trips in trying to figure out what to get Ivy for Valentine's Day.  So in all, I guess there were some positives lol.

I'm not looking forward to any repeats any time soon though...

Trevor