Hope's visit to Utah

My sister, Hope, flew back with Abby and me on Tuesday and went back home to AR this morning. She got some good pictures while she was here and I thought I'd share some of them...



This was taken while we were driving through Park City trying to find dinner because I was STARVING after following Hope around the Tanger Outlet mall all day. We ended up eating at Davanza's, a cool little pizza place in downtown Park City.


A cool mountain shot headed into Park City...Hope was going nuts over the mountains, just like we did when we got here. We still do, actually...

This is the Salt Lake City temple. She took this picture from an observation area on the tenth floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial building. Cool, huh?

The amazing Christus inside the Visitors Center. It's HUGE!

Zac came home Thursday night and announced that we were going to go driving in the mountains so Hope could see the valley. The skies had FINALLY cleared up and the drive was gorgeous!

This is the still-under-construction Oquirrh (pron. like "acre" with with an "O") Mountain Temple in South Jordan. We've heard that the Open House for this one will be in August. We just went to the Open House for the Draper Temple and it was awesome!

A cool view of the Jordan River Temple against the mountains. This is one of Hope's favorite temples.

We had a really fun visit! Abby likes when people come to visit our house, but all afternoon she's been telling me that she wants to ride a plane and "go home." Lucky for her, she'll get to see some more relatives next month. If anybody else gets a wild hair, come visit us!!!

How do I love thee...

I had a fun trip in Arkansas, but I am so glad to be back in Utah. Our move away from family has really strengthened our relationship...I've realized that my "home" is wherever my husband is. If I have him and our children, that's what I need. I absolutely love our families - but the scripture telling us that a married couple "shall cleave unto [each other] and they shall be one flesh" (Gen 2:24) has come to mean a lot more to me in the last few months. Zac is truly my biggest support group. When I feel like I've hit rock bottom, he can always bring me back up.

Ok, so now my eyes are so full of tears that I can't see the computer screen anymore. I guess as long as my pregnancy hormones are around, I'll have to do short sentimental posts.

I love you, Zac!!!

NCAA Basketball

Most of you know that I enjoy sports, especially watching football and basketball. But check this crap out....

Aubrey Coleman, this kid that plays for Houston STEPPED ON THE FACE of Chase Buddinger, a player from Arizona. He almost looks smug as he does it and I wish they'd let Buddinger get a few good punches in. This Coleman guy should be knocked off the team, in my opinion. You can read the article and see the video here.

Despicable.

I WON!!!

Do you remember awhile back when I posted about the ModMum baby sling giveaway? Well, I just got an e-mail and I WON the December giveaway!!! WOOO HOOO I am going to get a FREE Lily sling - isn't it cute?? It was a tough call between that one and the Bella...but I went with Lily!

Hooray for free stuff!

BabieS

So, for those of you who don't have Facebook or haven't heard.....we're PREGNANT! And to make the news bigger...it's with TWO BABIES! AHHHH!!! I must say, my first thought was a very not nice word. But I'm getting excited as I get over the nervous feelings!!

Most of you probably know about our NICU stay with Abby. As wonderful as the LR Baptist NICU is, any stay there is not fun. As a new mom you expect to have your precious little one go home with you and if that doesn't happen, it really messes with your psyche. Not cool at all.

And so, between my blood sugar problems and the twin situation, I will be seeing perinatologists (high-risk OBs) for this pregnancy. I will try to keep you updated on my doctors appointments and how they go. For now, here are some pictures of my precious babies. We were SHOCKED at how good the picture of "Baby A" came out. He/she is closer to the front, so we got a clearer shot than we did of "Baby B." Although both shots are better than any I got with Abby at this stage of the game (these were at 8 1/2 wks). Even on "Baby B" you can distinguish head from rear and see the arm/leg buds starting to show. Abby looked like a lima bean.

I still can't believe that Heavenly Father has entrusted us with these two sweet spirits. Now my prayer is that He will help us to do our part to get them here safely and without any health problems. All prayers are appreciated!!!



There are TWO babies in there:

This is "Baby B" hanging out in the back.

And this is "Baby A" playing the part of the front runner.

Getting to knoooooow you...

Another one of those goofy getting to know you things that I love!!


1. What is your occupation right now? Zac's wife and Abby's mommy....and I LOVE my work! :)

2. What color are your socks right now? Pink with little presents on them

3. What are you listening to right now? The Iron Chef on TV and Abby rustling around in her sleep

4. What was the last thing that you ate? Chicken quesadilla at Casa Mexicana

5. Can you drive a stick shift? If my life depended on it, I could manage

6. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My wonderful hubby who I MISS A LOT right now

7. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Yup, it's my father-in-law...he bought my dinner! lol

8. How old are you today? 26

9. What is your favorite sport to watch on TV? Football or basketball

I guess #10 got lost...

11. Have you ever dyed your hair? Oh, YES!

12. Favorite Food? Sushi! Haven't had any in awhile...

13. What is the last movie you watched? Because I Said So

14. Favorite day of the year? I can think of a lot...but these days, any day that Zac's at home with me and Abby is great

15. How do you vent anger? These days, I usually cry

16. What was your favorite toy as a child? Probably my Barbies

17. What is your favorite season? It used to be winter - but that might change now! :)

18. Cherries or Blueberries? Strawberries :)

19. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? Sure - or post it on your blog or Facebook

20. Who is the most likely to respond? I hate this question...

21. Who is least likely to respond? See previous answer

22. Living arrangements? Zac, Abby and me

23. When was the last time you cried? Wednesday at the airport when I left my hubby :(

24. What is on the floor of your closet? A buncha junk

25. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending to? Christine will read it on here...

26. What did you do last night? Waited for Abby to finally go to sleep!

27. What are you most afraid of? Losing my family

28. Plain, cheese, or spicy hamburgers? Plain with cheese :) And bacon is always good, too.

29. Favorite dog breed? One that doesn't live at my house....although the Rott/Lab mix I had was a pretty cool dog

30. Favorite day of the week? Monday or Tuesday - Zac's days off!

31. How many states have you lived in? Five - Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Utah

32. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds

33. Trees or concrete? I'm getting really fond of my mountains :)

34. Comedy or Drama? Comedy

35. Worst thing about getting older? More bills :)

36. Best thing about getting older? Wisdom gained from experience

Kids say...

Today Abby was pushing one her babies around in a "buggy" - actually an infant push toy that she shoved it into - and I asked her where they were going. Her usual answer is "Wal-Mart" or "the store."

But today she said, "Going to the doctor to get his face fixed."

I almost fell over I was laughing so hard.

Abby's "bo-bo"

Yeah, make sure you pronounce that right - it's not "boo boo," it's "bo-bo." That's how Megan has always said it and, all of a sudden, Abby started saying it. Kinda funny. Anyway, for those of you who haven't heard it yet, here's the long version of how today went at the Elliott house.

I was babysitting for Tate and Lexi today. Zac works half days on Wednesday, so he was here this morning. Which was a good thing - I got bottom braces yesterday and wasn't exactly feeling up to par.

One of Tate's favorite things to do is "build a house" with the couch cushions. It's generally a good thing to keep them occupied. Easy to clean up and a soft landing place. But today they decided to stand the cushions up and were getting a little rough. After Abby got tossed to the floor and started crying, we put a stop to the house building and put the cushions back. A little while later I was making lunch and saw, out of the corner of my eye, the big couch cushion going up in the air. In the split second that I was saying, "No more playing with the couch cushions..." Abby climbed on top of it right as Tate got under it and jumped up to 'throw' Abby off. My immediate reaction was to just pick her up, figuring she just "bonka-ed" her head, as she says. Then I heard Zac say, "Oh no!" and I saw the blood all over the right side of her face.

We took her into our bathroom and put her on the counter so we could clean her up. After wiping off the blood and trying to keep a wet cloth on her eyebrow, we got the bleeding to pretty much stop. We examined the cut - it was about as long as my pinky nail and about an 1/8" deep and wide. This being our first accident, we tried to figure out if the ER was necessary. One of those times you wish a grandma was closer...

We called Sarah White, Tate and Lexi's mom, but she was working and unable to answer. (She's a nurse, FYI). Then I called a friend from church who is also a nurse, but she wasn't home. (She called us back, but we were at the doctor's office by then - thanks, Mary!) So Zac called his Mom on my cell phone while he sent her pictures with his cell phone. She gave us the advice I was thinking - since the blood was pretty much stopped and it hadn't knocked her out, called the pediatrician's office. Of course, we didn't have a doctor here before today! I had e-mailed some ladies from church about doctor referrals, so I pulled up the e-mail and called the office. The nurse was super nice and told me to come on in and they would see her. Their main concern was her age - if she fought too hard about having it cleaned, we would have to go to the hospital so they could sedate her. (Enter prayers here!)






Zac stayed with Tate and Lexi, called Jake about what was going on, and Abby and I were off to the doctor. They took us right back and the doctor came in. He basically said that this was the "perfect accident." It was a linear cut, which meant it closed cleanly. And because it was still in her eyebrow (barely), it wasn't so close to her eye that they would have to sedate her.

The nurse cleaned the wound with a saline solution. This was the worst part because the water running down her face kinda freaked Abby out. I held her head against mine and it went pretty well, especially after the nurse promised her a sucker! :) The doctor came in and we decided to put a pillow (actually a roll of hospital chucks) under her neck to tilt her head back. Then I held a piece of gauze over her eye while the doctor glued her shut. Lots of pediatricians here are putting TVs in their ceilings - a blessing for this situation! Abby ate her sucker and watched Finding Nemo while Dr. Clayton glued her shut. I held her, although she only wiggled a few times. I was SO PROUD of her. She did amazingly well! The doctor said that he glue was a new kind they'd just started using because it dries a lot faster - and it did!

Overall, not as terrible of an experience as I thought it would be. If this is our worst accident (haha) I'll be happy. :) Hopefully the last one for awhile...

Arkansas schedule

Abby and I are leaving next week for another Arkansas visit. This one is based around Christine's wedding!!! We'll be gone for almost three weeks - it'll be a fun visit, but I'm not excited to leave my hubby for that long. :o/

Anyway, here's what I have going on while I'm in Arkansas:

Wednesday, Jan 14
Arrive around 7:30pm
Sheila's birthday!

Thursday, Jan 15
Celebrate Sheila's birthday with Elliotts

Friday, Jan 16
Craft Night at church!!

Saturday, Jan 17
Christine's bachelorette PAR-TAY!!!

Monday, Jan 19
Hang out with my sisters

Some empty time - I'm open for suggestions! :)

Friday, Jan 30
Rehearsal dinner in Dallas

Saturday, Jan 31
THE WEDDING!!!

Tuesday, Feb 3
We fly back to SLC with Hope

$5 dinner giveaway

If you've browsed through my blog links, you've noticed the $5 dinner page. Erin is amazing at breaking down the cost of her dinners and keeping the prices low and nutrition high. It's even more amazing considering her boys' food allergies that she deals with! It makes Abby's little temporary allergies looks very miniscule! Anyway, she's having a giveaway for a $25 Kroger giftcard on her blog through Wednesday. Head on over and enter! And if you decide that you don't need to save money on groceries, you can enter and give it to me when you win! lol!!!

Olympic Park

We drove to Park City Monday to show Sherry the outlet malls and to check out some of the ski areas. Then we discovered that you can check out the Olympic Park for free. Lots of activities you can pay for, but a free museum and lots of fun stuff to see!

Zac being a goober with the huge pile of snow that had been cleared off the parking lot...

Abby wasn't happy about her booty getting cold while she sat on the snow.

One of the fancy, authentic bobsleds.




Then there was this older bobsled that people could get in. The girls had a BLAST and they kept saying that they were going to see Grams and Grampa.

Playing on the sled/luge things.

While in Park City, we all became champion skiiers. :)

Some of the museum stuff. This is one of the eskimo-type costumes that some of the people wore in the opening ceremonies. I believe they were called Children of Light during the program.

We thought these guys were pretty cool.

Another part of the opening ceremonies....people carried this around during the program so it "flew" around the stadium.

This cool buffalo/bison had autographs of lots of Olympians. Here's Brian Boitano's autograph!

Gotta get the touristy posing photos! :)

One of the practice jumps. The bottom of this jump ends in a pool, so they can practice in the summer.

And this concludes our tour of Olympic Park. They have lots of other fun stuff you can do if you want to pay (we didn't). You can run the world's steepest zipline for about $25, do an Olympic bobsled run for $200 (we really wanted to - but money doesn't grow on trees, you know), and they have a sledding place that is only $5/person. If the snow is still around (I'm sure it will be) when Hope comes to visit, we want to go there.

Blog problems

I can't get the spacing right on my blog posts. I have it right when I type it, but then it gets all jacked up when I publish the post. If you know me and how obsessive I am with that kind of stuff, you know it's driving me crazy...

Sledding fun!!

Monday night, we went sledding. Jake & Sarah had told us about a good sledding spot by their house, so we called Sarah and the kids to join us. The sledding spot was PERFECT! It's a big basin with steep enough sides to be fun, but too steep for the kids. And the safety factor of a basin is great, too. So here are some pics of our enjoyable (for most of us!) sledding experience! :)

Sherry only made a couple of runs. But here's proof that she did go down!

Megan was thrilled with the idea, can you tell?

Tate, Lexi and Sarah White. Sarah's sled is better than ours - we'll have to get one of those.

Zac taking Abby on a run. She wasn't overly thrilled, but we got her to go anyway.

Abby going down with me. Why do I look like such a dork in all these pictures? (Rhetorical question...)

Tate had no problems going down the hill and Abby ended up going with him a couple of times. Pretty funny to send two littles ones down the hill and watch them.

The pretty scenery.

My crazy husband. Enough explanation, I think.

Pretty....

I'll post more tomorrow, but here's a cool sunset picture from our sledding adventures Monday night. Good times!

Winter Poem

Mom fwd this to me after she got it from a friend. It's not quite this bad yet, but I feel it coming...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's winter in Utah
And the gentle breezes blow
Seventy miles an hour
At thirty-five below.

Oh, how I love Utah
When the snow's up to your butt
You take a breath of winter
And your nose gets frozen shut.

Yes, the weather here is wonderful
So I guess I'll hang around
I could never leave Utah
I'm frozen to the friggin' ground!

Our Christmas

My family has a long-standing tradition of having our big family get-together on Christmas Eve. Thanks to the wonders of Skype and the internet, we kind of got to be together, even though we are in Utah. Sherry, Jeff and the kids came out to Utah to visit us and Jeff's family, so they were here, along with Chris, the warehouse guy at Zac's store. I made lots of yummy food: mini bacon cheeseburgers wrapped in phyllo dough, potato skins, pigs-in-blankets, cheese dip, Kiss cookies, and chocolate/peanut butter chex mix ("puppy chow"). YUM!!! Here are some pictures from the crazy evening.

My family draws names for gifts - too many of us to buy for everybody! The adults draw between each other and each couple draws a kid's name. Todd & Carrie got Abby's name and got her a GREAT assortment of Color Wonder products. Woo hoo!!

Sherry said that the whole drive out here, Megan kept saying, "I see Abby! MY ABBY!" They had a great time together!

I got an awesome Razorback hoodie and new wallet from Carrie!



I don't where Zac's picture is...but he got new dress pants, Razorback sleep pants and yummy Indulgent Trail Mix from my Dad!


Matthew encouraged this - and then I think he regretted it! :) Abby sat on his face and bounced at one point...hilarious, but I didn't have the camera nearby!



And so we move to Christmas morning. We did our thing and then Skyped with the Arkansas branch of the Elliott family. Abby got a Dora Magic Fizzle Bath Wand. ooooohhh!! :) Megan got one the night before from Hope, and Abby really liked it! Score for Mommy & Daddy!

Wearing her new Abby Cadabby jammies, new cute boots, playing with her new 'puter.

For your sake, I won't tell you what this is - but it was hilarious. hehe (It's not THAT bad)

One of Abby's big presents from Santa. We've been planning this one for awhile!

Her new 'puter that she loves!

We got dressed in our snow clothes to go play in the mini-blizzard. Zac found a Chinese restaurant that was open so I didn't have to cook today!! :) LOVE HIM!!!

Abby likes the snow pretty well unless it's blowing in her face. Some of the drifts were almost half as tall as her!!

Merry Christmas!!!

The true meaning...

Our Christmas was pretty simple this year - finances and such kind of demanded it. But we loved everything we got and, in a way, I'm really glad it was simple, because it helped me focus even more on the true meaning of Christmas. As much as I love Santa and make him a part of our Christmas, I want to make sure Abby knows her Savior - he's much more important, really. :) So I will leave you with a scripture thought:

Luke 2:7 - "And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn."

Merry Christmas!!

Abby's fashion statements

Thought I would share a couple of fun 'outfits' Abby has been sporting here lately. :)

We got her some pink furry snowboots last week. She had a gift card left from her birthday and that covered the boots - yea!! As you can tell, she really likes her boots and her "Santa Claus hat." She does NOT however, really love Santa Claus...the shirt lies! :) She likes the idea - just not the fat guy in the suit!

Here are pics of Abby in her Christmas dress. It's a borrowed hand-me-down from Angie & Vivian and I LOVE IT!!! Abby wasn't cooperating enough for me to get the grand, wonderful pictures that I wanted, but you can still tell how cute the dress is. And the cute kid makes it look even better, of course! :)

Merry Christmas!!

Yummy!!

I normally reserve recipes for my other blog, but I had to share this one. Fig's Cheese Muffins from the Pioneer Woman's blog. They are goooood! Similar to Red Lobster biscuits but with a better (I think) texture. Zac and I are going to a Christmas party this weekend and the hostess is making baked potato soup. These are going to be yummy with the soup! Mmmm...give them a try!!

Baby slings

Another giveaway that I've come across in my blog stalking! I'm posting this one for the benefit of others more than myself. lol For those of you who might need one, Mod Mum is giving away three of their really cute baby slings this month. Check out their site for giveaway details! There are lots of cute ones like the Bella (my overall fave) and the Camden (if I ever have a boy, I want this one). Wish I'd had one of these with Abby...