When I found out I was pregnant with Aidan, I wanted a little girl so badly. I kept telling myself it was a boy so I wouldn't be disappointed when it was...and then we found out it wasn't.

I can remember lying in my bed during the insomnia parts of pregnancy in the third trimester, wondering what a child made from Terry and Alicia might look like.

I can remember wondering if she'd be a tomboy or maybe girlie--if she'd like music as much as we do--if she'd grow up loving the Lord.

You can never accurately predict what your unborn child is going to be like. Terry mentioned a few days ago that had he prayed and asked for the most incredible kids and tried to describe what that was, he would have fallen short of what we actually got. We're biased, of course--they are our kids--but we are crazy about them. They're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but neither of us would want any two other kids or would want them to change in any way.


I am pregnant once again with another girl. This time I am not really bothering to try and figure out what this child will be like--I just anxiously await the day that we'll find out.

People tell me all the time that girls are easier when they're little, and then they turn into drama queens and are so hard. Maybe. But I also have a number of friends with little girls who are drama queens already. ;) Maybe she'll eventually get there, but I don't see a lot of that in Aidan so far. She has her bad moments like any kid would, but mostly, she is just really sweet.
Her latest "thing" is that she has to do everything just like I do. I have no idea why; every time she does it, I immediately think of the last time I yelled at her or something similar. Why would she want to be like me? But she won't get dressed in the morning until I do so that she can try to match it (a task that's increasingly hard since she owns mostly skirts and my preggo belly does not). Last night we both wore white tee shirts under tank tops and simple flip flops. She wants the same color nail polish as mine. She puts her towel around her waist when I do at the pool. She will crawl into bed with us in the morning and try to lay exactly like I am.

It is cute, and it is non-stop. Last night we were trying to hurry and eat dinner, throw the dishes in the dishwasher, and get to the church for practice, and she just incessantly was asking me questions like "which shoes are you wearing?" "what are you going to do with your hair, Mommy?" "are you taking a purse?" to the point that I just looked at Terry with that non-verbal communication: I just needed her to get her stuff and get in the car.

He reminded me, "In a few years, she's going to want to do anything BUT what you do. You better enjoy this now. It's sweet."

It is sweet. And so I am enjoying it.

Day Trip to Mountains

We took a day trip up to the mountains last Friday to Estes Park. The kids love the drive up with the river alongside the highway and the "tall mountain" (like on Dora). Aidan looks for different colored flowers, and Taylor just made up stories that had us laughing.



We've gone up a few times, but this time we decided to just go to one of the fun parks for the kids. They rode bumper cars, the big banana slide, go karts, played putt putt, and we all got soaked on the bumper boats. Mostly the kids had to take turns riding
with Terry since I wasn't so sure bumping into other cars would be good for the pregnant lady.

Every time we went to a different section of the fun park, Aidan would say, "Are we still in the mountains?" She didn't want to leave.


We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant on the river and then got ice cream, because according to Aidan and Taylor, the ice cream is the most important part of the trip.


I really love my family and feel so blessed on days like this that it doesn't take much for us to just have a really great day.

Taylor's surgery

Taylor had surgery one week ago today. He has had a hernia pretty much since he was born, and the doctors have had us wait because they apparently tend to correct themselves by the age of 2. Taylor turned 3 a couple of weeks ago, and that hernia was bigger than ever, so last week, we drove down to the Children's Hospital at Denver.
You feel better about your child's surgery when you walk into a state of the art building that is ranked in the top of the children's hospitals in the entire country, but it's still surgery--still anesthesia for the little guy--still scary.

He was such a trooper. We talked about the doctor "making him really sleepy" and other things before he went to the operating room, and so once he got back there, he just lay very still and breathed into the mask. They gave him laughing gas to start so that he would fall asleep first, and then they did the I.V. with anesthesia. We were there for the laughing gas, and while he wasn't exactly giggling, he had a goofy grin on his face as Terry asked him silly questions.

We didn't see him again until afterwards, and while he was a little grouchy (no smiles to be had), he just seemed to handle everything so well! We only had him on his pain reliever that first day, and he just went back to normal the next day. Last night I took off his bandage and could not believe the tiny, tiny incision that looks like nothing. I guess we had a good doctor. :)

The funniest part of the whole thing was picking up Aidan after the surgery. She got to play with her best friend Brielle all day that day, and when she got into the car, she turned on the mother hen mode, patting Taylor's head and saying, "Hi, Buddy! Did you have a nice surgery?" Terry and I just started laughing, but Taylor kept on his stern surgery face.

The next day we kept him home all day with Terry while I took Aidan to gymnastics and ran some errands. He did not want to stay home and tried to reason with me: "But the doctor fixed me! I all better now!"

I'm sure I'll feel bitter in a few weeks when the bills start rolling in, but for now, I'm thankful that he's doing well, that he's "all better," and even for that experience that somehow made us treasure him even more.