New baby!

Welcome little Jonathan David! He was born on June 29 in the evening, our first completely natural birth. It was awesome. So far he's been a pretty good sleeper and an overall adorable baby. We're so glad he joined our family!

Happy First Birthday, Rebecca!!!

Rebecca turned 1! Here are her party pictures:

We hung construction paper butterflies everywhere. She loved it-- she went around the room pointing and making happy sounds.

She got a pink butterfly cake.

Ready to get into her cake!

Tasting her cake-- she mostly pulled off pieces of frosting to eat. She only stuck her mouth in when Steve held it out to her.

Opening presents (she got frosting all over her shirt).

Happy birthday, our sweet little one-year-old baby! We love you!!!

february

Snaps from this month...

Adam turned 5!


(fabric paint would be why he's shirtless...)

Happy birthday!!!

Decorating aprons at his party.

Rebecca got her first pizza (and loved it!)

We got a van. Now we'll all fit when the baby comes!

Nicole's first day and some news

Today was Nicole's first day in Sunbeams. We thought she'd do just fine, but she actually cried for a bit and had a really hard time adjusting to her new class. Adam did okay, and seems to really like his teacher. It's hard to believe that we have two kids in Primary now!

And no judging about her hair... it was not me!

Oh, and I guess we're telling people now... we're expecting another little one around the end of June! I think I'm through doing tickers, so we'll just post when we find out what it is. :)

Happy Mother's Day!!!

To all the moms in the world, thank you for all you do... for your children and your families. You help make the world a happy place.

easter, birthdays, and a little down time

Soo... we're having a rather busy few weeks.

First, Steve had a birthday. It wasn't a big deal, really, just involving turning 30!!!

Oh yes, I made him have all the candles. :D

But I digress. He got a Kinect for his birthday and it's fabulous! Adam will demonstrate a driving game:

See how there's no controller? This thing is amazing.

Then, it was Easter. The Bunny did his usual thing of bringing small outdoor toys and new books, plus hiding candy-filled eggs in obvious places so a 2- and 4-year-old could find them. The Bunny courteously comes to our house on Saturday so Sunday is not wrecked with sugar-filled insanity. :)

Here they are, both playing with the baby's new blocks. Baby toys, apparently, are always more fun.

Next, we have some guests coming this weekend as we are blessing Rebecca, and then next week is our 7th wedding anniversary.
And after all that, you may not hear from us for a while.
:) kidding.

In other, less-important news, we got a second bouncy chair so we could have one on each floor. It's rather cushy and Rebecca likes it. It also plays harp music, which I really appreciate.


I also enjoy having a baby with enough hair to put a barrette in.


We also took a little trip to the Mukilteo Lighthouse beach so the kids could throw rocks in the ocean. It amuses them to no end, and resulted in Steve's brilliant new house rule of "We only throw rocks at the beach."


(Our house has these decorative rocks they liked to throw... anyway.) That's what we've been up to.

She's here!

We welcomed little Rebecca Rose Ivie to our family early Sunday morning. She was 7 lb, 15 oz. and a sucessful VBA2C. A big thank you to our fabulous medical team at UWMC and especially everyone who helped with our kids and our first few days at home!

Look at all that hair! :)

Meeting Adam and Nicole. They just love her.

pics from lately

It's been a few weeks, so here's the update.
We'll start with our greatest achievement from January: giving up pacifiers (Nicole) and potty training (Adam)! Here they are with their Big Prizes from the goals:

There was a lot of excavator-drawing, of course.

And here is Nicole, practicing the law of Where There is One Picture Taken, There Shall Two Be Taken Also

Here's Adam climbing on large fake rocks at a park nearby that they've just started to develop. I don't have pictures of Nicole at the park because her favorite thing to do was say, "Oh no.... I running away!" and take off.

So here is a cute picture from bedtime instead.

There was also building of things, like excavators, and garbage trucks, and what Adam called a "flying excavator, which is so cool."

And yes yes yes I am still working on taking pictures of our house... the problem is I want daytime pics, and we're usually really busy during the day, or really crabby. :) But we did get Adam's new dresser put together and all the dressers rearranged, so progress is being made! Pictures soon to follow. Really.

all grown up

Yesterday was Adam's first day of Primary (he was sick last week). Steve and I cannot believe that he's already so big! Our baby boy is almost 4!

the extra-long catch-up post

So, yeeeah. Turns out blogging just falls to the bottom of the to-do list when you're moving. BUT.... we are all moved in, and almost every room is unpacked! And I have to say, we are in love with our new house! We want to post pictures but not to brag, so I think we'll just post a few as we get our rooms in order, curtains up, etc. So more good stuff to come in 2011! :)

As for the rest of November and December, here's some things we've been up to:

This is how we crash after moving and not getting naptime (this was around 4:30pm).

Thanksgiving in our new house-- yippee!
I love how there's room for our table with both leaves in!

Playing at the Pacific Science Center.

Going to see the Bellevue Botanical Gardens lights.

First picture with Santa-- they got pretty scared!

Adam's letter to Santa, showing Santa (middle) bringing Adam (right) a chainsaw (left).

It was wonderful to have some family up for Thanksgiving, we loved playing with everyone and managed to have some good times despite the crazy SNOW and the fact that we were moving!

Happy Birthday Nicole!!!

Nicole turned 2 yesterday- she's getting so big! Unfortunately, we're in the process of boxing up to move* so the party wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be. And also, I put the cake in the oven (after we sang to her-- at least we got that on film!) to hide it overnight and accidentally pre-heated the oven the next day.... it came out looking like a giant toasted marshmallow! So yeah, it was a birthday to remember!


Ah, the cake. Didn't look that great to begin with. My excuses are threefold:
I did not think through the decorating
I did not thin my icing enough
I let the kids help

Tasted pretty good, though.

Notice Adam's haircut? I took him to our regular place and it was a lady we've never seen before. She took 45 minutes to give him the Haircut from Hades. There are no two strands that are the same length, and it's so very short it will take months to grow out long enough to get a decent cut. I'm beyond mad because we're supposed to take our Christmas card pictures this month! I feel like taking him in to our regular person and demanding a free cut next time... there was just no excuse.

Blurry pictures of them playing with some of her new presents. (Like I was really going to get a still shot with new toys around!)

She got a big cabbage patch doll that she loves. She named it Baby Nuk because it came with a pacifier.

And here's some bonus pictures from a couple of weeks ago:

Nicole loves scripture time.

Being silly in pajamas!

*and for those of you who didn't know, we're closing on our house this week and will be moving in this weekend. Yippeee!!!

Adam writes his name...

...instead of sleeping.

p.s.-- he now adds the second "A"

pigtails and swings

I put Nicole's hair in pigtails... she was so cute! By naptime, she'd ripped them out, but at least she's good about letting me do her hair. :)



And Adam has finally branched out from mixers and humongous smiley faces with itty-bitty-smiles: he proudly showed me yesterday that he had drawn swings.


Oh, and Nicole got to go to nursery for the first time (officially) on Sunday. We'd taken her a couple of times, but this time, I left her after the first half. She did great!