Family Birthday Party!

We just got back from a fun-filled trip to Panaca where we celebrated not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR family birthdays. Yep, four of us have birthdays in August, so we have a party for all of them every year. So happy birthday Aunt Rie, Uncle Steve, Shane and Jazmin!!!

Sadie and Curtis started the day with some sword fighting. They were running around chasing eachother with those things for so long! It was so funny and cute! Curtis is Sadie's cousin and probably her best friend. They get along so well (most of the time). I'm so glad she's got cousins her age to grow up with :)


Grandma Rie with Ambrie


Curtis showing his newest little cousin some love


My grandma and Ambrie

The birthday people: Jazmin, Uncle Steve, Aunt Rie, and Shane

These three make a pretty cute group :) As I said before, I'm so glad Sadie's got some cousins her age to play with and grow up with.

One Month Old!

Today Ambrie is a whole month old! I can't believe how fast its flown by! And she's grown so much from when she was born. So here she is, one month old Ambrie :)

I think this picture is so cute!




*sigh*...already having sibling rivalries ;)


Sadie is seriously such a good big sister! Anytime Ambrie starts fussing or crying Sadie tells her "Ambrie, its ok" and tries to comfort her. Usually this just makes Ambrie more mad ( I think it has something to do with Sadie's volume (loud) and Sadie's hair falling in her face) but Sadie's heart sure is in the right place and I'm so proud of her! I think Sadie's pretty proud of herself too, because she always tells us that she's a good big sister too :) She also loves to hold Ambrie, and gets really excited if I let her hold Ambrie by herself. Unfortunately, in these pictures, Ambrie's not as happy as Sadie...they're still cute though :)





And last but not least, I just had to post this because it makes me laugh! The other day I was doing some things on the computer for Brian's business and put a movie on for Sadie in my room, which is just down the hall. She usually plays while she's watching and so I can hear her every now and then. Well, it got really quiet for a few minutes, so I decided to check on her. When I walked in I found her with the baby lotion, and I promise, this picture does NOT do the mess justice.... :)

Catching Up

Ok, so today I'm playing catch up with my emails and blog! I feel so behind! But here is a little update into our lives.

First of all, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has congratulated us and wished us well. It really means alot, and I'm sorry I haven't thanked everyone individually- one of these days, I will!

Ambrie is now two weeks old, and it has just flown by! She's been such a good baby. She seriously has had a good sleep schedule from about four days old- she eats around midnight, around 3:30 a.m., around 6:30 a.m. and around 9:00 a.m.- how awesome is that? And she sleeps the rest of the time! She's starting to be awake more and more during the day, which has been fun. She really likes to snuggle, and seriously, she hardly ever cries :) She's just an angel :)




Sadie still has her jealous moments, but overall she's an awesome big sister. She loves to hold Ambrie, and she always tells her how cute she is and that "its ok Ambrie" if she fusses or cries. I will admit though, its been hard for me not to be able to give Sadie as much attention as she and I are used to. I really feel bad because we used to go to the park every day and just run around town and stuff, but I've been kind of a homebody with a newborn. Brian's been really awesome though and has tried to do some special fun things with Sadie. He'll take her to different parks, and he took her fishing up at Duck Creek one saturday, which Sadie LOVED! He's planning to take her again soon :)





Don't ask me why, but when they went fishing the only pictures Brian took of Sadie were of her eating Nutter Butters....LOL


So in a nutshell, that's what's been going on with us. I know its not terribly thrilling, but we're just enjoying this time as a newly expanded family :)

Announcing Our Newest Addition!

Ambrie Solei McNeel was born Tuesday, June 23 at 3:34 PM!

She weighed 6 lbs, 2 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long

She came a little earlier than we expected. I was scheduled to be induced on Thursday, but when I went to my doctor's appointment Tuesday I had a lot of protein in my urine and high blood pressure, plus I've been SUPER swollen for the past few months. The doctor told me "I think we need to get this baby out soon". I said "soon, as in, Thursday?" and he said "no, soon as in now. I want you to go down to maternity." So Brian and Sadie (who were there with me) ran home to get some things and Brian took Sadie to daycare for the day. I was kind of freaked out, because I wasn't expecting everything to happen so fast, but obviously it all turned out ok :)

I will say, the one really hard thing that happened was once I got the epidural, I dilated from a 5+ to a 10 in about half and hour- and the epidural hadn't kicked in all the way! I was in a ton of pain, and I thought it was from the catheter the nurse had just put in, and she told me, "no, the baby's coming NOW". I was like "NO!" because I could feel everything, I swear and I was so scared. And it really did hurt- I totally look up to women that do it completely natural because I at least had a little relief. But I didn't have to push long before our beautiful new little girl came, and she was worth all of it! I mean, the bedrest, the difficult pregnancy, and the labor pain that I really didn't want to experience but had to anyway ;) We're so happy though and excited to have her here :)

This picture makes me smile :)

Sadie's first look at her new sister! She's doing better than I thought she would. She was really excited when she got to the hospital and was so cute with Ambrie! She kept kissing her and talking to her :) Since we've been home, she still wants to hold her sometimes, but not as often and she gets bored with it fast. She's been a little jealous, asking me to hold her if she notices I'm feeding Ambrie, but I really think she's doing great with the whole thing :)

Brian and his "mini-me"

Happy to be a big sister!

Just Four Days Left!

And I'm running emotions between "yes, finally!" and being nervous about having another baby. Mostly though, I'm just excited.

I am a little worried too though because today it looks like Sadie is coming down with a cold :( Mostly she's just been really congested and hasn't wanted to eat much- she hasn't had a fever or cough yet, so I'm hoping its just a little thing that goes away soon. I'm going to take her to the doctor tomorrow anyway though because

1) if she's sick, I want her to feel better before I have to leave and can't take care of her. I'd feel HORRIBLE if she got really miserable and I wasn't there

2) I REALLY don't want to get sick right before I give birth (who wants to go through childbirth AND be sick while doing it?)

3) I don't want to risk having the new baby get sick from any of us who might catch it!

Hopefully she just has a really mild cold, but this close to my due date, I don't want to take any chances. I'm kind of a hypochondriac that way. If she is sick, I think I'll hold off on getting induced, but I'm still due in six days, so I still just want all of us to be healthy. I'll keep everyone posted, and OF COURSE as soon as the baby comes, I'll see if I can get Brian to post some pics :)

I Moved My Due Date Up a Couple of Days

I realized the other day that our insurance deductible for the year is almost met (yay!), but it starts over July 1st (boo!).  Which got Brian and I talking about how we need to have the baby and get out of the hospital before July 1st or we'd probably have to pay twice as much.  Who wants to do that, right?

So at my doctor's appointment this morning, I talked to him about it and we decided to induce me on the 25th (yay, three whole days early!) if I haven't gone into labor by then.  I'm excited to know I'll have the baby a few days sooner, but I'm also kind of nervous about being induced.  Who knows though, maybe the baby will come on her own.

I was also excited this morning to find out I'm dilated to a one!  Yippee!  I know its not much, but at least its something :)  I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high yet though, because I was dilated to a two with Sadie for a couple of weeks.  Still though, the end is in site!!!!  And I think we've got everything ready (clothes, itty-bitty diapers, blankets...), so this baby can come any time she wants!!!  I'm so excited!

37 Weeks Today!

And I think we've got everything ready other than buying some itty-bitty diapers!

Tessa is 36 Weeks Today....

Just four weeks to go!!!!!

Our New Set of Wheels!

We're now the proud owners of a family-sized car!  I will miss my cute, sporty little Civic (which is now "Brian's  car") but I'm LOVING our new one so far!

(this is from my cell phone and really doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea)

Since our family will be expanding soon, and our family car has been my itsy-bitsy 2002 Civic, we've been car shopping for the past few weeks for a car that would fit a 4-person family comfortably.  I'll be honest, its been kind of stressful because our budget wasn't very big and most of the cars we'd been finding in our price range were either too small or weren't what we'd call "quality cars", and we'd been looking all over the place for weeks- KSL.com, Craigslist, different dealerships.  It was pretty discouraging.  

Then on Monday, Brian saw a little Kia SUV at a small dealership here in Cedar City.  Its was priced at $6,000 (the lower end of our car budget), but looked brand new, so he asked me to call and see why it was priced so low.  So I did, and the woman on the phone told me that it didn't have any airconditioning- definitely NOT the car for us!  But she was so nice on the phone, I told Brian we should go there after work and see what other cars they had.  

So Monday night around 7:30 (we had dinner first) we headed over there just expecting to browse a little since we thought they'd be closed. Well, the owner, who is an older gentleman came out and asked if we'd like to see any cars.  Luckily, I had our infant car seat with me since I'd been trying it out at other dealerships in other cars to see how much room it would leave (in our Civic, you have to push the front seat ALL the way forward to fit it), so we tried it out in a few small SUV's they had and it didn't leave me much leg room in any of them :(  I was so discouraged!  Then the owner said, "why don't you come look at this car" and took us over to a big ol' beast, a 2007 Ford 500.  It was like a cave inside!  The infant seat fits in the back with the front seat pushed almost all the way back, which leaves me a TON of leg room!  So we took it for a test drive, and it was sooooooooo smooth and comfy, and the engine sounded great!  I hadn't even heard of a Ford 500 though, so I told Brian we ought to go home and do some research on it before deciding to buy it.  So that night, we looked up a bunch of reviews, the safety ratings, carfaxed the vin, etc. and decided it was the car for us!  

The owner and his wife are the only people that work at the dealership, and he was gone Tuesday to an auto auction in Salt Lake, so asked us to come first thing Wednesday morning.  We went in yesterday, and there was some paperwork we had to run over to our credit union since we were doing our own financing in order to get the loan.  While we were with our loan officer, he priced the value of the car, and was amazed that we were getting it for $3,500 less than they valued it :)  Yay!  He asked where we were buying it from, and we told him Cedar City Truck Sales, and he said "oh yeah, we do alot of auto loans for them".  So I asked (just in case) if he'd ever heard anything bad about them or their cars (since our price was so good) and he said he'd never heard a bad thing about them, and that in general their prices were always really good.  So that was great to know too :)  

After the bank, we went back to the dealership, finalized everything and came away with a car that was MUCH better than we'd thought we'd get in our price range, which will fit all of us without me having to ride with my knees up to my chin, and which doesn't look too bad either :)  So I'm pretty excited!  

Here are some pictures, not of my car, but of the same model and year.  Like I said before, my Civic was probably alot "cooler" and definitely alot sportier, but this will be great for us I think!

Some Prego and Mountain Pics

I'm pretty sure most, if not all, of the people who read my blog are women, and most of them have kids.  I don't know if most of you are like me, but I love seeing other women's pregnancy photos!  I just think they're cute!!!  I haven't really had any of me yet, but today we went up on Cedar Mountain for a bit and took the camera, and I asked Brian to get some photos of me and my big ol' belly :)  

Compare this first one, which is me today, six weeks from my due date, to the one right under, which was taken four days before I had Sadie.  I guess its true you get alot bigger with your second :)

I feel pretty good overall, but a big difference I've noticed this time, and I think its because I'm pregnant in summer instead of winter, is I'm retaining so much water!  My feet look like elephant feet and I have cankles!  And I can't fit my wedding ring onto my finger  at all :(  So thats been kind of hard, but its worth it.  Of course, if this one decides to come a few days early, I won't complain...... ;)

Here's a cute one I took of Brian and Sadie up there.  She's so much like Brian, in that she LOVES the outdoors and keeps saying she wants to go fishing.  I'm not sure if she really knows what that is or not, but I have a feeling Brian might try and get her going on that this summer :)

This is what Sadie does now when you ask her to smile- so funny!

Cedar Mountain is kind of our "getaway" area.  This is the first time we've been up since fall, so it was really nice to get up there.  I'm sure I'll have plenty more posts from the mountain as the summer goes on :)