Q and Carmen

Summer lovin'

2015-01-01T06:53:00.001-08:00

This past fall G2 decided to play soccer he had so much fun with his soccer mates. Hollyn was just a few weeks old when I was taking him to soccer. The team liked seeing that small baby.

G2 also learned how to ride a bike this summer. He did such a good job with it.

G2 turns 5!

2014-12-27T05:43:00.001-08:00

I can't believe how big he is. He has grown so much. We had a Yes Day for his birthday and did everything he wanted!

After this we went to Chick-fil-a and went to a movie. Happy 5th Birthday!

Utah trip with Isa

2014-12-27T05:38:00.001-08:00

We went to Utah for a work thing but got to see all the family too. It was such a fun trip they could meet the new baby. They were expert fliers, and played the entire time without any movies.

Ann Marie and Curt came from Colorado to meet the baby.

Lexi, Devin, Ella, Ammon, and Easton played all day.

We went with all the young cousins except Sarah's kids to the Natural History Museum of Utah. It was fun coming back after working here in College.

Sarah babysat Isa while I worked and Ammon loved on her all day. He was so gentle with her.

Josey came and saw her and had some good dinner after work.

Ella didn't want to put her down. It is her baby! And she wants her back.

Ronnie is G2's favorite uncle. He is so fun and really plays with the kids a lot.

We are really going to miss him! They got really close when he lived with us.

One last cousin play date before we left.

Saying goodbye before we went to the airport.

Hollyn's Birth

2014-09-09T09:09:00.003-07:00

After going through several IUI treatments last year we had one shot left. This was the last time we could try for a while. The circumstances were not ideal but when are they. I was traveling to New York at the beginning of the treatment which presented the first problem because usually you have an ultrasound done early on to confirm you do not have any cysts present on the ovaries. I didn't have the option to get that done because I was traveling to New York to meet my sisters. I asked the Doctor if we could do this anyway and he agreed. The treatment this time was much more aggressive than previously as they knew it was our last shot for a while. After going through that we get another ultrasound to check for "eggs" that will be released that month. I had SIX! That means I could have had six babies. Wow, that would have been crazy. The doctor advised us to not go through with it that month and to try again at a later date. We thought about it and decided we would still want to, knowing the chances of multiples was high. The best part was I found out I was pregnant on my due date from the miscarriage I had earlier that year, which also happens to be my brother Anthony's birthday. What a blessing to make a bad day better. A couple weeks later we got the confirmation we only had one baby in there. What a relief!

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Now we have a baby!

These are the photo's my doula Danielle took from Rising Dawn services.

I love the photos she took and it showed that the Epidural didn't work to well. At least my legs were numb. Greg was such a big help with this labor, he was helping put pressure on my right hip with the babies back against it; I felt a lot of pain on that hip.

I am way behind of posting anything on here. I will catch up soon with my break from work.

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Newborn Photo's from Danielle as well!

What better way to end than with a newborn smile!

Christmas Parade and a Santa Train

2014-03-22T07:36:00.001-07:00

I love living in a city where they still have a Christmas Celebration. The city does a Christmas parade and sleigh rides and so many other activities over an entire weekend. The was fun with how warm it was.

This is the downtown of Apex where we live. It reminds me of Park City but all the buildings says Tobacco on them.

They had two sleigh's you could ride on with the kids. It was fun watching the horses walk up and down the street the entire night.

Because we usually don't get much snow here they brought some in for the kids to play with. If you have seen the weather at all in the East you know we have had TONS of snow for North Carolina since January. This snow was melted and very slushy.

This was from the Parade the next night. It is fun watching all the old cars and bands roll by.

We have lots of different churches here and you get to see a lot of Christian floats.

Lastly we had to have Santa at the end of the night.

The next weekend I purchased Santa Train tickets. This is a real train, and you get to pick whether you want to ride on a diesel or a steam engine. They run year round mostly. This was a very cold, wet day!

They had these old trains you could walk in an they were either a store or a museum about this rail road company.

Someone took a nice picture of us.

This was kind of a sad Santa compared to the one we saw in November for our pictures.

When Santa came by he gave Q and piece of coal and G2 and I candy canes.

We got to see the engine up close when it drove by to switch where it was being carried.

He was really cold and trying to warm up. I should have brought a blanket for us.

Our new house.

2014-03-22T07:14:00.002-07:00

Here are some pics of our new house. They were taken with my iPhone so they aren't the greatest. And the color is off on some of them.

This is the Dining Room.

The Stairs to the second floor.

Mud room and Laundry room

Kitchen

Living Room

Thanksgiving and a lot of Cousins!

2014-03-21T19:07:00.001-07:00

We had so much fun visiting family for Thanksgiving. We did a lot of fun things and had a lot of fun with cousins.

It's a .....

2014-03-21T18:50:00.004-07:00

A few weeks ago we had some ward members over to find out what we were having. I had the ultra sound tech put the gender in an envelop and I brought that to a bakery for them to make a cake. The top of the cake said, "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how we wonder what you are..." The center of the cake was pink or blue... Before we cut the cake everyone asked us what we thought it was and all of us said "girl".

And it was a GIRL! We are thrilled to be having a girl in August. It was so much fun having everyone over. The playroom was a hit and the adults got to stay downstairs and talk.

G2's new shirt

2014-02-20T11:00:00.002-08:00

In a few weeks we will find out what this little peanut is. He is so excited to be a big brother. We also moved into a new house this past weekend. Still have boxes everywhere.

I hope to one day know where things are.

2014

2013-12-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

We are excited to be starting a new year tomorrow. I am not one to make New Years Resolutions but this year we decided to make a few goals as a family. This is what we decided to do in 2014:

Have Family Night every week.
Focus on learning twice a week.
TV only on weekends.
Read one chapter a day in the Book of Mormon (chapters may be split up, if they are long).

Tonight we are going to a couple in our wards house. It should be a fun night of friends. I am excited for 2014 and I think it is going to be a good year. In a few weeks we will be moving into our house and I will post pictures.

Santa Pictures

2013-12-10T06:03:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago we got our pictures taken with Santa. This was an awesome adventure. You pay a small fee and get to spend 15 minutes with Santa while a photographer takes photo's. G2 ate cookies with Santa and got to open two presents. We will for sure do this again next year.

Beaches.. Where are you now?

2013-11-16T17:01:00.000-08:00

These pictures are from his summer at the beaches in North Carolina. I love the ocean and eating on the pier. We had such a fun day.

New York, New York

2013-11-16T16:56:00.001-08:00

A couple weekends ago I met my little twin sisters and mom in New York for a long weekend. We had such a fun time. The day I arrived I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art. I spent hours there, it was nice to see the many beautiful things from all different ages. That evening I met up with my mom and sisters and we headed for dinner.

Trunk or Treat

2013-11-01T21:17:00.003-07:00

We decided to dress up for our Church Halloween party. It was a lot of fun dressing as Mayan Warriers. Q is Mayan so we thought it would be a fun thing to do.

Cary Halloween Festival

2013-10-31T06:11:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday we went to the Cary Halloween festival. We had a lot of fun playing games and eating treats. G2 wanted to wear his Bombero costume. After a while he got sick of wearing his hat and gave it to me to wear. We went to the festival with another family from our Church. I love Halloween and all the events and parties. We carved pumpkins friday night at a friends house so we were ready to start our Halloween activities.

Visiting Friends

2013-10-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

This week has been a lot of fun with a good friend from Utah visiting. We have known each other since I was about 15 years old. William was here for a training for work but got to spend the evening together. I really miss my friends and family. We had a great time going to dinner, getting cupcakes, seeing Despicable Me 2, and just having dinner at my house. William is so good with kids, my son loved playing with him. He was helping him walk on the ceiling, color, and draw. I told William he should move here, let's see if I can convince him.

Hopefully more friends will come visit.

Life and Science Museum

2013-10-22T04:41:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago my work had a family day at a children's museum. It was such a fun day with pumpkin patches and train rides with lots of bugs and butterflies in between.

From Beaches to Birthday's

2013-10-20T18:17:00.002-07:00

This past weekend we went out of the beach. We stayed in Wilmington with Ron (my brother). He went to a special Battleship tour, while G2 and I went to the aquarium on Carolina Beach. G2 loves spending time at the aquarium and there is an awesome playground outside. During our visit we got to see a diver go inside the largest tank and play with the fish.

After we finished with those we ate lunch on the beach. It was a beautiful day. The Oceanic is right on a pier of Wrightsville Beach. It is the only commercial place around. They always have a good menu with a few fresh fish options. I ordered an awesome Salmon salad. I can't wait to come back when the warm weather returns.

On Sunday we celebrated G2's Birthday with my brother and the sister Missionaries in our ward. He really enjoyed opening his presents and eating the frosting off his cupcake. For his birthday we order Lego's and he got books from grandparents and a rocket from my brother. He hasn't stopped playing with the lego's yet.

Awards

2013-10-14T13:21:00.004-07:00

Last week I received an award for Innovation. It was really great for the 5 minutes I got to celebrate before a bunch of stuff started happening at work. I was two thousand miles away at the time and it was difficult to get on the same page as everyone. I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I came back to work the following week. All is okay now but I was a little worried as to what was going to happen. It was nice receiving an award for a project I have been working on for 8 months. Everything turned out good in the end, with lots of lesson's learned for the future.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee Labor Day Weekend

2013-10-05T13:10:00.002-07:00

This is a great place for families to visit. We had so much fun on a short weekend. We hope to come back again.

Traveling to DC and back

2013-08-28T05:56:00.001-07:00

I travel up to Washington, DC several times a year for work. It is usually fun when I bring my son with me as my work has Day Care on site. I am able to see him throughout the day no matter the site I am working from. We can go to lunch together and go out to dinner after.

This past trip I didn't bring G2 with me. I loved being able to call him on the iPad every night and/or morning. I enjoying the little break but was happy to be back. I also had fun going to restaurants and a Pilates class. But these pictures are from when they came earlier this year.

Christmas in August

2013-08-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

On the way home today G2 asked to get a Christmas tree. When we got home, he put his little tree up in his room. He got all his ornaments on the tree, which included pip cleaners. He was having so much fun playing with his train ornament. After he finished, he told me he wanted Santa to come. I had to break the bad news, just because we put a tree up doesn't mean Santa is going to bring us presents. It is so fun watching his inventiveness, I really enjoy letting him follow his adventures where ever they take him. We will have fun taking the tree down tomorrow. As for now, he is sleeping under his tree and reading Christmas stories. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Storytime Picnic

2013-08-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to unplug us from the TV. It seems that TV turns my child into a monster. The ironic thing is we don't have cable or anything. We don't even have a TV hooked up. The TV and computer get addicting and we want to try and clean our systems of it a few nights a week. The TV shows so much violence and even the Disney movies always have someone die (or close to it). Recently G2 has watched a few Disney movies that have scared him. Hopefully I can find good activities and get things cleaned.

Today when we got home I saw my son getting a blanket and putting books on it. I thought it would be a good idea to eat dinner and read stories. One of my son's favorite books is Fire! Fuego! Brave Bomberos it is in spanglish. It is about what fire fighters do. It also gives the definitions of all the Spanish words used in the book. G2 picked out lots of book to read, he loves Dr. Seuss, and many others. This turned out to be a lot of fun to do.

Fertility or lack thereof

2013-08-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

After my son was born we never imagined we would have a hard time getting pregnant. We got pregnant after one time. Fast forward two years... nothing! This can be a long, hard process to figure out what is going on. Now you become the human test subject with the poking and prodding. They started by having my husband analyzed, which presented our first problem. After several tests being done to me, everything is normal for what they have seen.

Doctor's don't talk to each other! I mean at all. One doctor put my husband on this medication which lower's his sperm count. The next doctor can't figure out why this is happening. After seeing several doctor's they finally let us try IUI (artificial insemination)... which actually worked the first time. (Well if it weren't for ending up with a miscarriage, but that is another story). By the second time trying IUI we thought we were golden. If it worked the first time, it must work the second. Right? I think not. I guess god wanted to go back to the drawing board.

Wind, Water, and Air.

2013-08-05T17:26:00.001-07:00

Saturday we went to a science museum. We really enjoyed learning about Catch the Wind. There are so many different ways you can used wind. We had a lot of fun learning about how wind can affect things

We thought he would like to jump on this They strap you in a harness and let you jump and flip for a few minutes. He jumped a few times and then decided he didn't like it

This is a steam machine You push a handle and steam comes out. He stood there pulling and pushing the handle for several minutes watching the steam come out. Right next to this are some drums than you can pound on and it pushes air to a metal coin like wall.

Here we learned about currents and water. We had sail boats going across this water feature. It was interesting to see which way it was going to go. We spent so much time here. They had the small sail boats and larger ones too. The larger boats you could steer but they kept getting stuck. Apparently, I am not very good at steering these or we could blame it on the wind.

Here we had lots of water spraying on us. There were lots of different things to run through and get wet on a hot day. What a fun way to learn about science.