Ellie is 3!

Ellie turned three in July.

What can I say about this little girl?

She is such a little imp.  And so cute, but of course I'm biased (as every mother should be!).

She loves to make us laugh....

Constantly!

Always dancing..

 Opening presents....

My parents always call and sing "Happy Birthday" over the phone to us:

Her cake with strawberries on top:

We took the kids to SeaWorld the weekend before for Ellie's birthday:

Ellie wore her new "3" shirt:

They even got to meet Shamu, which they still talk about:

Ellie is such a huge blessing in our family.  She makes us laugh, makes us crazy, and can scream like you wouldn't believe (while we were in PA, my grandpa commented that her shriek [happy or sad] sounds just like one of those loud, high-pitched whistles.  Spot on!).

Ellie is still doing great in her swimming.  She's come a LONG way since those early days right out of swimming lessons.  She can swim pretty far now, and just today she randomly started doing a back stroke (I don't think she knew what she was doing, but it was pretty cute to see).  She and Abby have so much fun playing games in the pool, jumping in together, and diving for toys at the bottom.

Ellie says the funniest things sometimes.  A few weeks ago I was going through some pictures on the computer and came across pictures from when she was born.  She saw a picture of my mom holding her as a newborn and she has talked about it ever since.  She randomly says excitedly, "I was born!!  And grandma was holding me!!"  The other day I told her that Abby held her too when she was first born, and she just said simply, "Thank you, Abby.  Thank you for holding me when I was born."

Ellie and I have a little game that we play... sometimes when I want her to do something, I'll just say to her in a teasing voice, "You'll never... {insert act}!"  My favorite is to say, "You'll never kiss me!!" Then I hide my face a little bit from her.  So, she'll essentially tackle me and kiss my cheeks over and over again.  Who wouldn't love that??  

Three things we love about Ellie:

1. She is so funny, and she loves to make people laugh.  She makes funny faces, says hilarious things, and just generally tries to make people happy.

2. Ellie loves to dress up and dance.  I'm not joking or exaggerating when I say that Ellie changes her outfit at least 5 times a day.  Church dress, leotard, tutu, bathing suit, back to church dress, back to bathing suit, etc.... it never ends!  You never know what she'll be wearing next time you see her.  She is also a great dancer.  Her face is always so serious while she dances, it really cracks us up.

3. Ellie is pretty stubborn and she knows what she wants.  While it makes parenting a bit difficult sometimes, I really like this about her.  She won't let anyone deter her from what she wants to do and she'll put up quite a fight.  In fact, Garrett and I have both tried to take things away from her (toys, for example), and she has such a good grip that she actually lifts off the floor as we try to lift the toy out of her reach.  Frustrating, yes.  But also kind of funny.

And can I do a fourth thing, to grow on?  Ellie is very grateful.  Like I said above, she thanked Abby for holding her when she was born.  She says "Thank you" very often, even for little things like when I hand her something, when I kiss her, or when I lift her up to wash her hands.  She just says it very simply and it's become second nature to her to say "Thank you".  I love it.

We love you, Ellie, and are so happy that you are in our family!

Independence Day

We had a really nice 4th of July here in Florida.  Our city did their fireworks on the 3rd, so we headed to campus with our camp chairs and blankets and had a great time with friends from the ward.  There was a live band and the kids had fun running around with their friends, waiting for dark.

I have to admit... the fireworks were pretty lame and only lasted about 10 minutes (my hometown where I grew up had bigger productions than this!) but they were still fun and the girls loved them.  Although, Ellie was a bit frightened at first.  About a minute into the show, I looked down at her (sitting on a blanket in front of me) and she was just staring at the fireworks, sobbing!  This was kind of shocking (she's our little daredevil) but I will always welcome any excuse to pull her onto my lap and snuggle her.  She was fine after that and loved the show.

The next night, our friends down the street had their annual "Cul-de-sac of Fire".  There was a huge turnout and it was a great party!  And go ahead and make fun of the goggles, but you probably would have done the same thing if there were dozens of kids running around with sparklers!  In fact, many other kids were asking me if I had any more for them to wear.  They were just the free goggles from Lowe's (or Home Depot?) from when they do the kids' craft.  Thankfully, the girls loved wearing them so it wasn't a battle to keep them on.

This is how Ellie sat, even when no fireworks were going off.

I have to admit... for the most part, I really dislike "home" fireworks (like these above, and sparklers).  I think they are an unnecessary risk and way too many people don't take proper precautions.  However, I'm trying to not be such a stick-in-the-mud and we had a really good time (and I watched my kids like a hawk when they had their sparklers!).

 And finally, a picture from the ward's annual pancake breakfast, always a good time:

Growth spurt

24 weeks vs 28 weeks:

What a difference a month makes!  And it sure didn't help that I spent 2 weeks eating s'mores and ice cream in Pennsylvania, and only exercised a handful of times (okay, twice). (more on our trip soon.)  But the baby is definitely growing, and my face is too (it always does, haha).

My pregnancy is going great.  Honestly, only during the last week or two have I started to feel a little of that day-to-day discomfort.  Bending over to tie my shoes or pick something up is a little uncomfortable, but that's to be expected.

One thing that has been pretty different this time around is that I have experienced a lot of pain in my hips and my sciatic nerve.  My hips were especially bad earlier this summer... it seemed like every time I walked, I could feel my hip bones shifting around, making popping noises, and rubbing against each other.  Thankfully that seems to have decreased for the most part.  I go walking most evenings (a couple miles or so) and sometimes it happens near the end of my walk, but not too badly.  My sciatic nerve hurts a lot when I stand up and start walking, or when I try to get out of bed, but it only lasts for about 15 minutes so thankfully I haven't had to take anything for the pain, I just walk it off (well, it's more of a shuffle).

But, other than those minor details.. things are fine.  We are still discussing names and it turns out that Garrett does not like any girls names!  I have a name I really like, but he seems to hate it.  As much as I'd like to wear him down, I really don't want to choose a name that he "settles" on or that I convinced him to go with... I want him to love his daughter's name!  But, I'm beginning to reach the end of my patience, and in a desperate moment I told him, "This is our baby's name unless YOU can start suggesting names that you like!  I am DONE thinking up names!"  Although, the other day I did suggest a new one and he only cocked his head and winced a little bit, so maybe we have a possibility there.  The girls are still making many suggestions... Angelina seems to be at the top of their list (they are big fans of Angelina Ballerina).

Anyway.  I have lots to catch up on here on the blog.... 4th of July, our trip to Pennsylvania, and just our everyday happenings here at home.  Hopefully I can get it all posted during the next week!

Two down...

July 1st is a big day in the medical education world... Garrett officially finished his second year of residency!  I know that everyone says this, but I really feel like time is just flying by.  Now is a perfect time to document a little bit how things are going with this medical journey and the things we have to look forward to this year!

The past year has been a great one.  Okay, it wasn't as awesome (schedule-wise) as Garrett's intern year in Virginia, but it was still pretty light as far as residencies go.  He worked maybe half a dozen weekends, and stayed late (8-10pm) maybe once a week.  Sure, when he comes home he has to study each night for about 2 hours, but at least he was here, so it wasn't too bad.

So, Garrett's officially starting PGY-3 (post grad year 3), and a lot of changes are ahead this year.  First of all, he'll have a lot more responsibility since he's no longer at the bottom of the totem pole.  Starting in late September/early October, he'll start being on-call by himself, which is a huge deal.  In fact, he was chosen to be the first person in his class to take solo call.  I am trying to convince him that it's a compliment to his work ethic and knowledge (in the past, the call schedule has always gone in alphabetical order, but clearly that's not the case here!).  Garrett won't hear of it, though, and believes that it's just bad scheduling luck.

Besides the busy call schedule, he'll also start working a lot more weekends.  I think he said that he's working 2-3 weekends a month for about 3 months straight.  I guess the last two "light" years really had to catch up to him sometime.  It sure was nice while it lasted, though!

I'm so proud of Garrett and all the work he does.  He works really, really hard.  No, his job is not physically demanding in the least, but he comes home exhausted each day because radiology is extremely mentally draining.  I don't know how he does it, but I'm glad he has found something he enjoys.  To be honest, I really don't have much of an idea of what he does all day (besides look at images on a computer screen), but at least he knows what he is doing, and that's all that matters. :)

Thanks, Garrett, for being such a hard worker for our little family.  We love you!  Only 4 more years to go!

Instagrams

We've been.....

Playing with puppies (notice Ellie testing out Anthony & Kristi's brand new car):

Swimming with friends.... May and the June were a flurry of activities as people were getting ready to move away.  We went to a pool for hours daily, sometimes meeting up with as many as 10-15 different friends and their kids.  We were definitely trying to soak up as much time together before they all moved!  We lost 12 girls in our ward (congregation) in the last 4 weeks - mostly due to husbands moving on to new (first!) jobs or medical fellowships.  It was very bittersweet and it was a lot harder for me than I thought it would be.  Most of them were good friends of ours and we will miss them so much.  So far we have only had 3 new families move in... very different from when we came last year (we got 22 new families last summer!).  Hopefully we'll still get some people soon.

Been making lots of homemade pizza lately... my latest favorite is margarita (olive oil & garlic, tomatoes, mozz cheese, and fresh basil):

Abby helping Ellie put her shoes on:

Ellie, about to fall off the bed at Gramma's house:

"Look Mom, we're ninjas!"

The girls love helping Garrett in the garden.  They especially love watching him pull carrots up.  They laugh and laugh so hard.  I'm not sure what is so funny... I think they just think it's so funny to see a big carrot come up out of the dirt?:

Lunch with friends:

Garrett, after a sweaty game of tennis... it's hard to tell, but he's soaking wet:

Success from our garden:

Splash pad with friends:

Excited for tomatoes:

Abby:

Lunch & shopping at Sam's Club:

Eating from the garden:

There is a great lake nearby that is owned by the university that Garrett works for.  You have to have a student/employee/spouse card to get in, so it stays quiet, especially in the summer when most of the students have gone home.  You can rent kayaks, canoes, sailboats, etc. and it's all free.  We even saw some gators about 30 feet away from the swimming area!  The lifeguard assured us that they were too scared of us to come closer, but I was still a bit nervous.

 

Ellie fell asleep during story time:

Me: Ellie, you are NOT wearing those boots again today!

Ellie: But they're soooo CUTE!!

haha, can't argue with that.

This was taken at almost-24 weeks!  Over half way there!

Happy 30th Birthday, Garrett!!!

Lounging:

They've been wanting to go to Lowe's to "build something" for a few months now, but we haven't had a free Saturday in a long time!  Hopefully soon.