Our Trip to Utah

My grandma passed away on May 1, so we all took a quick trip down to Utah for the funeral. Although it was for a sad event (and a joyous celebration of a lovely, long life), we made the best of our time with family.

Who knew SeaTac airport had a little play land? Rachel loved climbing and sliding on the toys, especially the slide and the airplane.

We went to feed watermelon rinds to the local horse and colt. The kids were very intrigued.

We also made a point to visit with Andrew's elderly grosseltern, Oma and Opa.

The bottom two pictures are after the funeral, where we got a picture of all of Grandma's grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Quite a legacy!

I will miss my Grandma, but I know I will see her again. And, as one friend said to my mom, "Look at the great lengths she went to so that you could have all your kids with you on Mother's Day!" And look at how wonderful it was for all Grandpa's grandchildren to be with him for this day.

Our Little Fish, Continued

Here are some more pictures of Rachel at swimming lessons. This time, with me.

Rachel waving hello; "jumping" out of the water; going down the slide after the last lesson (she has pretty much refused to go down any slide since); wrapped up in her towel; post-dunk.

Rachel did great at swimming lessons and I had a fun time with her!

Our Little Fish

I signed Rachel up for swimming lessons, you know the kind where the parent is in the water and you sing songs and splash and pretty much just try to help them be comfortable in the water. She loved it. So did I.

She liked "swimming" after the rubber ducks, singing the songs, "jumping" off the wall into the water, and watching the other kids. She did not like "floating" on her back very much. Some days she liked blowing bubbles and splashing, other days she did not.

Since swimming lessons have been over, she has found her swim suits and said "swinnin" almost every day. I think we will be spending a lot of time in the pool, lake, or wading pool this summer.

Who Wore It Better?: 25 Weeks Edition

Who wore 25 weeks pregnant better? Pregnancy #1 Sarah or Pregnancy #2 Sarah?

The details:

Pregnancy #1 Sarah

• is happy to finally look pregnant instead of slightly fat.
• has a round belly.
• has an old school phone.
• is having a girl.
• has no acne and crazy leg/armpit hair.
• feels great.
• is freakishly pale in July.
• is making a soft, "madonna and child"-like smile.
• is looking forward to her new baby.

Pregnancy #2 Sarah

• has been looking pregnant for a while, but is happy overall about how she's carrying the baby.
• has a lumpy belly.
• has a phone she wants to upgrade.
• is having a boy.
• has horrible acne and is almost a naked mole rat in shaved areas.
• feels sick and tired.
• has a tan in May? in Washington?
• is sticking her tongue out because she is sick and sassy.
• is looking forward to her new baby but does not know how she is going to manage two kids.

So----who wore it better?

Honestly, I do not know. I think I'm currently looking pretty great for being 25 weeks and feeling horrible and in my second pregnancy. And what you can't see in my bathroom selfies is my legs. I think my legs are in better shape this time around than last time. But the first time, I was not all lumpy yet. I am currently lumpy thanks to pregnancy #1.

You can tell me what you think of how I look if you want to. My feelings truly will not be hurt! I have a pretty positive self image and body image. But you don't have to say if you don't want to. ;)

Easter Fun

This is my 350th post on the blog! Wow. That is a lot of posts. I am also trying something new with pictures. It takes more work, but it will take up less space.

As you know, it was just Easter weekend. We had a fun time celebrating in many ways, mostly in egg hunts.

Ward Easter Egg-stravaganza

Rachel chilling at breakfast; throwing a fit because she wants to go outside NOW; finding an egg; a full basket of eggs; finding a sneaky egg.

She also learned how to say "egg" so she had plenty of opportunity to practice.

Finding her basket at home

It's Easter morning!; searching for the basket; found it!; and there are treats; eating a Reese's peanut butter egg for breakfast; showing dad what she got; too cute.

Rachel seemed pretty excited about the things in her basket. We did not go crazy with gifts from the Easter bunny. Thanks to my parents, we did not have to buy any candy.

HOA egg hunt

I'm on our HOA board and headed up an egg hunt for children.

Finding eggs strewn about on the grass; a plethora of eggs; the kids who came; on the hunt with mom; an egg in a tree!; family Easter picture.

The other people helping me with the egg hunt thought we needed about 400 eggs. And then only 7 two-year-olds showed up. By the end, the parents were saying, "If you get five more eggs, we can go home."

And Rachel's dress is a size 18 month dress. It looked more like a ball gown because she is barely into 12 month clothes.

We also tried to remember the reason for Easter---our Savior, Jesus Christ. We had a wonderful stake conference on Sunday. I was in the choir. It was nice to sing songs about Him and feel the Spirit testify of His resurrection.

And The New Baby Is...

VERY CUTE! And also, A BOY! And he sure wasn't shy. He was sleeping, so he doesn't sleep in a very shy way.

Baby Boy

We were excited. Andrew was smug because he guessed it. He just knew it. He was especially smug because he "knew" it two for two. We'll see how smart he is in the future.

Rachel is disappointed there isn't any chocolate in the bucket.

I was pretty sure it was a boy, but I wasn't positive like Andrew was.

Of course, every pregnancy is different, but this one seemed very different.

I broke out. My belly seemed lower. I wanted to eat hamburgers instead of curry. And those are the not gross differences between this pregnancy and the last.

I did hope for a boy. One of each would be nice---and I had wanted a son first, so second will be great. Hopefully this pregnancy continues to go well!

Blogging Woes

So, I am having some blogging issues and it is not necessarily because I am lazy or don't want to get on the computer. It has to do with images.

I ran out of space to upload pictures to blogger a while ago. I opened a flickr account. This works OK, but people started added some of my pictures to their favorites or whatever. I don't know these people. So then I started making my images private and that worked for a while, but then suddenly you couldn't see them. Then I made the images in my last post public and a bunch of people marked them as favorites. I still don't know those people who are favoriting my sweet little girl. And the main point of this blog is so you who I know can see pictures of my sweet little girl and future sweet little baby (coming in August, I haven't mentioned that). As of late I have been using Facebook to share pictures (I know, the safest and most private place on the internet---not).

Pretty much I will have to explore my options but I'm thinking I might need to delete some earlier posts and maybe make my blog private. Sorry to those who have private blogs, but I really hate private blogs. I hate checking them, I hate that I have to be logged in. I am pretty much 90% less likely to read your blog if it is private. I will keep thinking about this and exploring options but input from my readers would be appreciated.

That's all for now!