What a crazy hectic week!!

So, in an effort to keep up my end of the bargain, I am again blogging on Friday night.

An update on Daniel first.......

We can add the following to the list of foods that he has tried: yam, applesauce. He actually really likes the yams. He ate two "helpings" the first time we gave it to him. For the applesauce we put just a little in with his oat cereal. He seemed to like it, but we think it might have made him break out, so we are going to lay off for a few days and then try again on that one.

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And an update on my week...............

The week started off with more conference call/online demos. I am still in the process at work of trying to find some scheduling software to help make my life a lot easier. I am working with the two people who schedule in Salt Lake for Temple Square. We also have a Business Analyst that has been part of the team. We finally have it narrowed down to the last two. We have a "live" online trial for one of them currently, and the other one should have a "live" trial for us Monday or Tuesday of next week. On top of 3 or 4 Conference calls this past week I also had 5 Production Meetings for upcoming events. And, to add one more thing, I had someone from the Finance department come out to do an internal audit. Mostly he just followed me around for the day and asked questions about what I do and how things work. He seems to think that he gathered valuable information. He did have a few things that we discussed that might be able to help me out if we can get any of them to come through.

I now have 7 Steinway Grand pianos in the building getting ready for the piano competition that is taking place next week. The total value of these pianos is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000 or more. I just hope that none of the members (mostly the youth) decide that it would be a good idea to carve something into these expensive pianos since we showed up a few weeks ago and discovered that someone thought it would be a good idea to carve "I love Jesus" and "Ne 2:11" into one of the pianos.

February is one of the craziest times of the year for me. Almost as busy and crazy as Christmas time if you can believe that. Hopefully things will start slowing down a little about the end of March. We'll see. We are closing the building down beginning May 1 this year during the week while they work on a new roof and some seismic upgrades. I think as a result everyone is trying to cram everything they can into the first few months of the year and the weekends during the summer. I also have my first requests already for February of 2011.

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I would like to take this time to throw a few "shout outs" if you can call them that.

Happy Birthday Kendra!!

Happy Birthday Isaac!!

Until next week.

Daniel at 6 Months

So we took Daniel in for his six month check-up today. Here are the stats:

Height: 26 inches - 35th Percentile
Weight: 16 lbs 13 oz - 30th Percentile
Head: 14.5 CM - 5-0-75th Percentile

What can I say about the little guy. He seems to really like to just sit back and take everything in. He doesn't really talk much, but he really likes to make sounds (sound effects more). He seems to try and copy Hannah sometimes. He is sitting up on his own and has been for a couple of weeks now. He still falls over occasionally, but I think that is to be expected. He can roll from his front to back and can almost go from back to front, though he doesn't do it very often. He hates his tummy, so we have a hard time putting him on it....and Hannah always seems to maul him every time we put him down.

His growth has tapered off quite a bit, but he is still healthy so there aren't any real concerns there. We have started feeding him "solids" recently. He didn't really like the homemade rice cereal so we switched to oats. He seems to like that pretty good, at least until we ruined him by mixing banana in with it. He has eaten banana, and corn. Hasn't had any reaction that we can tell. The Doctor did suggest that we up it from once per day to at least 3 times per day though. That will probably get him growing more rapidly again.

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I know that we have been total slackers on the whole blogging thing lately. I have a really good excuse....just let me come up with it.

Seriously though, we were without the laptop for nearly two months after the hard drive failed. Luckily I had backed it up about a week before and we didn't lose any of the really important stuff (pictures). However, it made it much more difficult to blog even though we have another computer because that would've required going into the "office" to use the desktop, and that just didn't happen.

We have about 1,500 photos on our memory card that we need to get uploaded, so we will hopefully be adding some pictures soon.

The Holidays were great. A lot of partying and travel. We were exhausted by the time we got into the second week of January. Things have finally slowed down some, but we have Valentine's and My Birthday coming up in the next two weeks, so we'll see how things go.

One of my goals for this year is to start (as of right now) blogging approximately once per week at the very minimum. That way no one can complain that they don't know what is going on or that we never update the blog.

Very Busy Last few Months!!!

The last few months have just flown by. We have kept busy though. September was a particularly eventful month for us with Daniel's blessing and Hannah's third Birthday. It was a great weekend for us. We decided that we would have Hannah's Birthday party the same weekend as the blessing because we would have so much family here and we thought it would be great for Hannah to have family from both sides there. I am very grateful for all those who helped me with games and activities for the party. The kids had a blast with bubbles and homemade go fish. We have tons of pictures, more than we could possibly upload to the blog, so if you click here for the baby blessing, here for Hannah's Birthday, here for milestone pictures of both kids, and here for Halloween Pictures you can see all of the pictures, and we are putting a few here on the blog as well.

Here are some pictures of the baby blessing.

Here are some pictures from Hannah's Birthday.

Daniel has been growing like a weed. At his two month check-up he weighed in at 14 lbs 3 oz. He was 24 inches tall as well. In the 90-95th percentile for both categories. He is already half of Hannah's weight and 2/3 of her height. He should be a very big boy. Here are some pictures of Daniel over the last few months as well.

So, last night was Halloween. We have had a lot of fun with Halloween this year. Our Stake had their annual carnival/trunk-or-treat the Saturday before Halloween. They always have a "photo booth" set-up so everyone can get their picture taken in costume. Last year we only got a picture of Hannah, but since we were all dressed to the same theme this year, we did a family picture. We were going for the whole 50's theme. I think we pulled it off pretty well. For Halloween we went to the Ward carnival/party for Grandma B's Ward. It wasn't as big as our Stake one, but there was more food included. It was fun. Hannah had a good time. Then we helped pass out candy at Grandma B's. We didn't go out trick-or-treating this year. We aren't quite sure how to handle that with Hannah. She can't eat the candy, but if she gets it she will want to. Hopefully we will figure something out before next year. Hannah had a great time helping Grandpa pass out candy. Tim decided to lay down next to the Elvis tombstone in the yard. He scared a few people who weren't quite sure if he was real or fake. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of the yard and all the pumpkins.

So, Tim out-did himself this year with the pumpkins. We had four pumpkins this year. Hannah decided that she wanted to have a doggy carved on her pumpkin (we found a Disney kit) so Tim"helped" her do the doggy. Tim decided to do a dragon. He saw a face that was similar to the one that he did, and used it as the basis to start the dragon. He then added the wings himself. It turned out pretty good, only took about 4 hours to do. I was going to carve the Tigger, but with it getting late Friday night, and being really busy Saturday morning trying to get ready Tim ended up carving the Tigger too. That one only took about 2.5-3 hours.

Tell us what you think.

First Day at Church

We took Daniel to Church today for the first time. It was interesting, because most people for the few weeks leading up to the birth everyone kept asking when Rachel was gonna pop. They would say things like, "Any day now, right?" and today they were saying, "You had the baby and you're already back?" It was very interesting. Anyway, he was a big hit. Everyone loved him.

A few more pictures from today. Enjoy!!



Proud Papa






Hannah doing her best "Rachel pre-delivery" impression.

It's a ..........

Boy!!!!


Name: Daniel
Born: 8/5/09 @ 10:00 PM
Height: 20 inches
Weight: 8 lbs 5.5 oz

Rachel sent me a text message at 2:10 PM asking me to come home. She didn't say if she thought she was in labor or not, and I was just starting my weekly staff meeting, so I finished as quick as I could and got home by about 3:00 PM. Rachel felt the first contractions about 4:30 PM. We stayed at home until about quarter to 7:00 and were checked into the hospital at 7:15 PM. Rachel did great!! About 9:30 PM she started pushing, and at 10:00 PM we had our handsome baby boy. Things went much faster this time (5.5 hours compared to 15 hours).

It was pretty intense. Everything happened so fast neither of us really had a chance to take any sort of break between contractions.

Well, enough of the boring stuff that you don't really want to hear about. Onto the pictures:




















Hannah seems to be adjusting pretty good. She definitely loves the little guy. She wants to hold him all the time, and when we're in the car she is always trying to get his paci or whatever she thinks he might need. She is a very good little helper......most of the time.

Updates, updates, updates

So, we have been total slackers in the blogging arena. Finally have a new picture of Rachel's tummy up. It is still from about two weeks ago, but that is better than the last time I updated the side picture. I will try to get another one up this week.

ONLY 3 MORE WEEKS!!!!!

We are getting very excited to meet baby. Since we have no idea what we are having, we are really looking forward to meeting our new little addition. We have our suspicions as to what the baby is, but if you haven't heard us talk about it yet, you'll just have to wait 3 more weeks like we do to be sure.

Grandma & Grandpa Willie came down to visit this last week for a few days. They arrived on Monday afternoon (they actually made it on Sunday, but stayed at one of the Worldmark places the first night). They came to see Hannah before the baby arrives and to help give Rachel a bit of a break. They also decided to bring Hannah's birthday present early. They got her an adorable little bike. Hannah was very excited, even though she didn't know how to ride it yet. Well, before they left they taught her how to ride the bike. I will see if I can get the video from my phone of that uploaded soon as well. Here is another picture of Hannah enjoying her new bike.
While here, we also made a trip to the beach. Amazingly, it is the first time we have been to the beach together as a family since moving to California just over a year ago. It turned out to be a gorgeous day. We weren't sure how the day would turn out since it had been on the cold side for summer all week, and it was supposed to be pretty windy and only in the mid 80's. I think Hannah enjoyed her time with Grandma and Grandpa. Here is a picture of them together working on building a sand castle.

We will get more pictures of Hannah at the beach up this week.

Let the countdown begin. Anyone up for guessing when Rachel will go into labor and have the baby? Provide a date and time of when you think baby will come.

Our Cute Little almost 3 year-old

Hannah is just growing up so fast and so much. It is amazing to see how quickly she learns things and picks up on them. It seems like it was only a few months ago that she was still not talking very much. She could and would say lots of different words, sometimes even a couple together, but that was it. Then, all of a sudden, she starts talking in almost complete sentences. She is amazing. It seems like every day she is saying more and more.

We finally got the crib put back together and in our room yesterday. Hannah was a very big helper. She tightened two of the screws on the bar that holds the one edge up. We told her as we put it up that we had to put the baby's bed together. Then, when we finished, she went and got her baby dolly and brought it in with a blankie for us to put to bed. It was so adorable. I think she is starting to realize what it means that mommy is having a baby. She got to meet the newborn of one of the Ward members yesterday as well, and then she turned to Rachel and said, "When baby come out?" She randomly comes up and gives the baby hugs and kisses, almost knocking Rachel over at times. It is very cute. You can tell that she loves the baby already. Hopefully that will continue after the baby comes out.

We listened to and transcribed Hannah's baby blessing today (finally). It was interesting, because she doesn't really recognize that she was a baby at one point. So, she is listening to the tape with us, and hears herself crying. She says, "Baby loud. Baby crying."

Only 8 weeks and 4 days left until the baby's due date. Rachel is ready for baby to be out. The baby seems to be doing great. It is getting bigger every day. Rachel says she is already almost as big as she was when Hannah was born. We have a Doctor appointment tomorrow and will let you know if we learn anything new.

A few pictures from yesterday.



Well, the other one I was going to put up turned out blurry, so this is all you get.

So, today my little girl graduated from her crib. We have been talking about it for weeks and we let her new bedding a few months ago. Today, Tim finished painting the head and foot boards so we could put it all together. Hannah had so much fun helping make the bed. She would climb on the bed to help smooth it out, all the while making it more wrinkly but she was trying so hard to help and she was just so darn cute.

































After all the to-do with getting ready for bed, Tim tucked her in and sang to her and she looked so small in this big new bed, but oh so cute. Our hope is that we don't have too many issues with her staying in the bed or getting up in the middle of the night. So far so good, and we are about 2 hours into the first night.

It is hard to believe that Hannah is already 2.5 and has reached this mile stone. The time goes by so fast and I realized the other day just how much she has grown and changed in the last six months to a year. Her ability to communicate has increased so much and her desire for life to be hands on has too. She loves to help me clean and cook and won't settle for just watching me do anything. She made her own peanut butter sandwich the other day. The only thing I did was open the jar of peanut butter for her. Her independence is a good thing but it will take some adjustments on my part because I don't think I am ready for the amount of independence she exhibits. She is on the go, full of life and energy, curious about everything, asks more and more questions , and is just so adorable.