Lots of pampering...

We've had a pretty nasty cold bug going through our house the past couple weeks, but despite that, we've had a lot of fun stuff happening. Last week we had girls weekend! Woohoo! Most of us will be moving soon, so we took it as the perfect excuse to leave the kids with our hubbies and stay at a resort in town. Awesome! We seriously should have done this before, because it was such a good time. I felt like I was in college again hanging out and being silly with my girlfriends. Since I have a nursing infant in tow, I didn't spend the night, but joined in on most the rest of the activities. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was getting a group picture taken at the nearby Albertsons. So fitting to have all us moms getting our picture taken in a grocery store... considering how much time I spend grocery shopping. Anyway- don't we look so cute and sassy? ;)



We also had a great dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and spent a lot of time at the pool, spa, lazy river, and waterslide. LOVE resorts and LOVE awesome friends! To see more pics of our weekend, go to Heather's blog.





This past Friday I attended Emma's preschool for Mother's Day Tea. It was so cute! Emma "shaved" my legs, painted my toes, and pampered me with treats and a crown and necklace to wear. What a sweetie she is!





I felt extremely spoiled for Mother's Day this year. My sweet hubby spent all day Saturday cleaning our house from top to bottom (and he did it all while having a cold!) - he did everything from vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, sweeping floors, spraying off our back porch, etc, etc... he even took our van to get it washed, waxed, and vacuumed. What a guy!! Then on Sunday, with the girls help, he made me my favorite breakfast of eggs benedict. Mmmmm. On Saturday he had taken the girls shopping with him and they picked out some pretty pink flowers and some new fun clothes to give to me on Mother's Day. I heart Mother's Day. :)







So, in the last post I mentioned that we put an offer on a house. Well, we ended up getting outbid on that house - but just the next week we found an even better house for less money than the first. So, yay! This time our offer was accepted - hooray!! So far, we've had the home inspection - next up is the appraisal and then we wait for financing to get sorted out for closing. Our current closing date is May 27th - our lender thinks it may take a week longer, though, to actually be ready to close... so anyway, hopefully we'll be moved into our new house by the end of this month or first week of June. I'm soooo anxious, because I LOVE this new house! In any other housing market, we'd never be able to come close to affording a place like this, but it seems things have worked in our favor. But I'm a bit of a pessimist, it seems, and until we've actually signed our closing papers and have keys in hand, I have a hard time believing we're actually about to buy a house. So, I'll hold off on posting pics of the house till we're actually moving in. :)

To tie up this post, let me end with some random stuff. First, Becca's quite the personality lately, so I thought I'd put up some pics of her silliness.





Also, Emma's been getting rather creative at bedtime. She has these wood boards under her mattress to hold it on the bedframe and we've never actually secured them together. Well, she apparently took one of them out and created a unique sleeping situation for herself. She was asleep like this when we checked on her later... very weird, yes..



And lastly, you must check out this video - Ben's brother and his wife are currently living in Japan and will be for the next year while they teach English classes out there. Apparently, they are having quite the cultural experience... click here for their latest discovery at the grocery store.

A whole lot of stuff

Oh my goodness! I have so many pictures and fun things to blog about - so this may be an epic of a post. :)

I just got a bunch of pictures sent to me from Ben's family from some stuff that we did in March, so I thought I'd start with that. We went to a St. Patrick's Day Festival in downtown Phoenix last month. It was an interesting crowd and a hot day but it was a fun time. There was a parade first and then we were entertained with music, food, and bouncers for the kids. The kids had the most fun dancing to the Irish music - it was played live by a band and it was really great. My favorite part was dressing the girls in green.




Ben took Emma camping with his family in March as well. Seeing as I was so prego, I stayed home with Becca - but it was fun to see these pics, since I wasn't there to see it myself. The campsite and surrounding area was so green and beautiful! It almost makes me wish that I went along.








So, fast forwarding to the past 2 weeks... We recently all went camping in Sedona as a family along with so many great friends. Since I was toting around a 3 week old Jacob, I was the lucky one who got to take off to a hotel for the night while everyone else braved the cold night in their tents. I almost felt guilty about being so spoiled and having a nice shower and getting to watch TLC on my comfy bed in my resort style room.... but not too guilty. :) It was awesome to get to spend some fun time away with our friends and their families. We are nearing the very end of medical school and will be parting our different ways for residencies throughout the country... I'm incredibly sad to have to leave our good friends of 4 years and try to make new friends... sigh. (A lot of these pics were taken by Jess and Heather - thanks guys!)


































Ben's birthday was on the 19th of April - he turned 29! Can't believe next year will the big 30... I guess we'll just enjoy our 20's while they last for they won't last much longer!


April is a big birthday month in our family - Becca, Ben, Ben Lee (Uncle Ben to the kids) and my dad all have birthday's this month. I was actually quite pleased that Jacob came a little early because that means he can be a March birthday instead of part of the pile of April birthdays. :) Our good friend Aubree also had a birthday this past week. What a wonderful friend she is... and she just gets younger and younger looking the longer I know her. For her birthday we got together for a little swim party. This was our first swim of the summer! Is it summer? Maybe I should say it was the first swim of spring? Well, anyway, the weather was good, the treats were good, and the company was great. :)





Singing Happy Birthday!
I feel like I've been neglecting posting much about my dear little Jacob. I look at him and think.. he's such a little man. LOVE him! I'm losing lots of sleep getting up with him at least a couple times each night, but I honestly enjoy doing it. I'm sure I won't say that in another month, but for now, he's just so sweet and little and perfect and I just love to care for him. Let me say, though, that having 3 kids is hard - I'm still trying to figure out how to continue to be a good mother to Emma and Becca while spending all the time needed to care for Jacob. At the same time, I'm very happy right now with our family of 5. I'm very blessed. Heather recently took some wonderful pics of my little Jacob man... here's some of my faves-








At Jacob's 2 week appt, he was 75th for weight, 95th for height, and 25th for his head.... so basically the opposite of Becca. :)

And finally, we are currently in the process of buying our first home. Holy cow! We recently put an offer on a home and are now just waiting to hear if we'll get it. There were 2 other offers on the house, so we're not so sure what will happen, but if we don't get this house, then we'll just keep looking. Either way, it's exciting (and a bit scary) to be reaching this phase in our lives. But I'm soooo anxious to have a house of our own!

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter everyone! We had a really nice day. The best part was that Ben ended up not having to go to work! Hooray! One of the doctor's at the hospital where Ben's been working gave the other doctor a hard time for making Ben come in to work on Easter Sunday saying that "he's religious and stuff!". Well, I guess being religious pays off... because then you don't have to go to work. Ha! We went to Ben's parents ward and afterwords we had a great Easter feast and then an egg hunt in the backyard. The girls always get so many fun treats from Grandma Dangerfield's Easter hunts.






Becca was too busy trying to unwrap her chocolate egg to bother looking at the camera for a picture.

And here she is enjoying the fruits of her labors.
Since today is Becca's actual birthday she was also showered with more presents from her aunt and uncle and grandparents. And she got another birthday cake! What a lucky little girl.

Past and Present

I've gotten a little behind in my blogging, so this will be a little bit of catch up. First of all - I'm LOVING my little boy. He's the sweetest little thing and I love being a mommy to a newborn. On the other hand, I'm going a little crazy being a mommy to my girls. They are taking turns being extremely dramatic and emotional. But, all in all, we are doing very well and I'm quite happy currently - stressed at times, but happy nonetheless. :) My mom and sister came to visit and help last week - they flew in on the 30th and left on April 4th. The plan was that they would be here in time for the birth, since my induction was to be on the 31st, but Jacob had other plans and they missed it. But, the good part was that I got to spend more time with them once I was out of the hospital. They were a big help and stress reliever - they took the girls out to the park or library every day, giving me some much needed quiet time with just me and the baby. Wonderful! This past week we also had dinners brought to us everyday, which was also wonderful! LOVE family and good friends!

To back track just a bit - Ben and I had our 7th anniversary on March 30th! - since we knew the baby was coming, we celebrated early on Saturday, the 28th. Ben's parents kept the kids and we ate out at the most amazing place - Quiessence Restaurant at South Mountain in Phoenix. It's located on a farm where they grow their own produce - their menu changes nightly depending on what is in season and it was so good! Ben and I love to eat out and try new and fun restaurants and this one was one of the best we've been to. In retrospect, this dinner out became our 'last supper' of sorts, since we ended up having the baby the next day. It was incredibly good timing, really, because Ben's parents kept the girls overnight that night to give us a bit of a break for our anniversary. So, we went to church without our kids the next morning (and can I say that Sacrament meeting is sooo different without kids?!) and then during Gospel Doctrine I was suspicious that my water may have broken and was slowly leaking (no big gush, thank goodness!), so we left church and went to the hospital (with a quick stop at home to grab our bags and change out of our church clothes) - once at the hospital my contractions started coming very regularly, about 2-3 minutes apart and were getting progressively uncomfortable. I got my epidural and we eventually were greeted by a grumpy-faced Jacob at 6:02 that evening. :) The whole thing went very smoothly and with the kids already across town with Ben's family, it was so very convenient to go into labor. :)

And in honor of Ben and my 7th anniversary, you are lucky enough to see some of our engagement pictures. Look how cute and little we are! I was 19 and Ben was 21 when we got married, so yes, we were little. I love my Ben so much. I'm a lucky girl.




So, switching gears to more current activities - yesterday morning the girls had their first Easter egg hunt with a bunch of friends. Becca was too little last year to really enjoy this much, so this was really fun for her. She did well and collected as many eggs as her big sister.





Becca's birthday is tomorrow (Sunday, the 12th) and she is turning TWO! Ben has to work tomorrow so we celebrated it yesterday. We went to Chucky Cheese for dinner (not my favorite place, but for Becca this was heaven!) - afterwards she opened presents and had cake at home. What a cute 2 year old she's become. Yes, she's begun the terrible 2 phase (ie: recently caught coloring with crayon on the flat screen tv - thankfully it came off), but she's also extremely loving and motherly. She loves her little brother and her big sister. She's very orderly and enjoys putting things in their place and staying clean - she signs clean to me often if she needs something wiped up. She also comes to me when her diaper needs changing and says "poo" and pats her diaper - that always makes me giggle.






The ride above was her favorite - she rode it like 6 times.


The Hunter's joined us for birthday festivities - Craig climbed up through the tubes with the kids and into this little car - Emma, Craig and Addy are peering down giving their cheesy grins. :)





Today has been rainy and gloomy outside - we were going to go to another Easter egg hunt at Ben's school this morning, but we were deterred by the wet weather and stayed home instead. This afternoon, however, we cheered ourselves up by spending some time dying Easter eggs - this was messy but fun! My fingers are currently a little bluish-green.