Hey, it's my birthday I can cry if I want to!!!

Ever since joining the church I have had the pleasure of sharing my birthday with General Conference. Which don't get me wrong, I love general conference because your with family or friends typically eating good food, but I would like to just have that be a separate time and my birthday be a separate time. And since my birthday fell on a Saturday this year I had to give up my husband to go to priesthood. Okay....I love priesthood too, the guys always come back better, but honestly I was a little bummed. JJ knew how I felt and tried the whole day to make it special before he had to leave me. I woke up to a fresh cut pineapple boat in bed and donuts (he knows the way to my heart) and he got me the most beautiful nativity set for Christmas that I have ever seen. He knew that I wanted one, but not just any one, I was looking for the perfect one. He surprised me with the most beautiful one that I have ever seen in my life. I just love all the colors in it, and can't wait to display it for Christmas. And of course he gave me a full body massage. I just couldn't ask for more, but he says he still has more planned for this coming weekend, so we will see!

Had a doctors appointment today and I am actually almost 38 weeks. Doc said I could go anytime now and honestly, I am wanting it to stay in. I feel bad even saying that, but I haven't had much time to even anticipate this baby coming because both JJ and I have been so stressed, as we are in the process of buying a chiropractic business. So many things to consider...hiring accountants, lawyers...and so on and so forth. It has been two weeks now that JJ has worked there and he has loved every minute of it. He says he loves being "the big man" and the existing patients seem to love him and are rescheduling, which is a good sign. I am needing to train myself with the office stuff and insurance stuff and, with a new baby, I am wondering how I will find the time. Fortunately the front desk girl in there now is great and we will keep her, but I figure I need to know this stuff just in case.

I'm excited for the surprise of not knowing the gender, but now I'm feeling even more unprepared because I can't get all the clothes out yet or get too many things ready. Things are crazy for us right now and it doesn't help that Riah has had a fever the past few days and the fact that I feel like a 25 year old hag! Three kids at 25, I must be OUT.SIDE.MY.MIND!...pretty much....

Okay venting over....

September Happenings

A couple of sweet girls in our ward offered to pick up my crazy children and drop them back off once a week for preschool. It's so nice to get a couple of hours to myself in the morning once a week! I am so grateful, but I think they are just starting to realize what they got themselves into! It's not a joy school curriculum, but rather focuses on the sounds of letters which has been said to work faster with learning to read then just learning the letters. Then they learn cute little actions or songs that go with that letter and draw pictures. The kids were so excited to finally go to school, and frankly so was I. This past Sunday was Dominic's first Primary performance in sacrament meeting. He had known his line for THREE weeks prior "I can follow the prophet by saying my prayers," which when he finally got up to the pulpit, came out like this, " I du da de da du da la la." Yup, he's my spiritual child! The neat thing was though, that my mom actually came to see it! This was quite a first, considering she didn't even go to his baby blessing. We loved having grandma there, and I think she enjoyed it too! The power of invitation from a child...that's all I gotta say.

Bust A Move

Well for the past week I have been on strict bed rest due to an infection causing pre-term labor, so needless to say I have had plenty of time to get all our family photos organized, backed up on disks, and blog! I came across this cute video of the kids a couple of weeks ago when we went to a Micheal Jackson memorial concert in the park, followed by the movie "This is it." The kids had a blast dancing to the music while waiting for the movie to start. They got so carried away that they attracted a small audience, then of course Dom got shy and stopped showing off his moves as much. Sorry it's such a dark picture.

Summer Happenings

This summer has been full of family, friends, and fun in the sun. We have spent most of our summer days relaxing by our pool with the cousins. Can I just say that being by cousins has been so much fun. The kids play all day and my sister in law and I just complain about our prego pains back and forth to each other and sit on our towels like beached whales eating watermelon. Seriously if that gave you a mental picture that exactly what we look like. She is due mid September and they just bumped up my due date to October 22 and said that my baby is measuring really big already....not really a fan of pushing out a twelve pounder so I'm trying to cut back on the late night ice cream socials.

We have managed to do a few things besides being lazy by our pool all summer. A few weeks ago just our little family took a trip to Pine Mountain Lake Resort and Yosemite. It was just what the doctor ordered. So relaxing...besides the contractions that started up as I began to hike. But the kids loved being in the mountains.






and this is the closest we will come to prego pics of myself.....

For one whole week grandma took just Dominic to the mountains and he had a blast just having his special time with grandma, meanwhile I was missing my baby horribly.

So Riah and I just swam to keep our minds off of it.


For 4th of July our friends The Owens came and stayed with us. We love their cute little family and their little daughter who barely makes a peep! Seriously we barely knew she was there( I keep praying for one of those). We know the Owens because Richard was JJ's favorite missionary companion on the mission and the only one we have stayed in contact with. It was fun getting together with them to watch fireworks and sneaking out with Lindsey to see a midnight showing of Eclipse. Thanks Lindsey for being my only friend that I have to go with....


Oh, and did I mention that we laid the big red banana boat to rest? Yes oh yes we finally said good bye to her and all the H.E. (double hokey sticks) that she has put us through.....

Goodbye! We won't miss you

and said hello to a big silver banana boat...Meet the dreadful Honda minivan...very ugly, yet very practical. Fits all our babies and all our junk.

Does having a minivan make me a REAL mom now?!....unfortunately I think so....

UPDATE!!!

I'm thinking it is finally time to update the blog because I was beginning to feel like a blog stalker without any contributions. Well JJ made it!! he graduated chiropractic school!!! Just in time, my camera broke so pictures are to come after I go old school and get them developed. Then we made the long trek across the US to California with a big Budget truck. Dom still talks about the "big truck" with daddy. It was a very long exhausting trip. We were fortunate enough to be able to stay with my brother and sister in law in their big house until we found a place that we liked. JJ started his job a few days after we arrived and he LOVES IT!!! He comes home so happy every day from work. We feel very fortunate to have such a job in these hard economic times. JJ passed the state board a while back so we are waiting for his license to come any day now so he can get a big bust in pay and actually call himself a chiropractor. California is so slow on these things!!! We found ourselves a very nice townhouse four miles from the family with a swimming pool that we have been living at lately with this hot weather. I feel like I'm in a mansion compared to the trailer. We feel very fortunate to have found such a pretty place. It's so fun being close to family and having BBQs and get togethers, although the simple life of Missouri and all our great friends are so missed. I think my sister in law is sick of me saying, "oh its better in Missouri" because in so many ways...it is. We like our ward and already have a speaking assignment for fathers day (yikes) but is so missing the Rockwood ward. I'm about 18 weeks along and huge as a whale and this baby is so active already!!

Such a small update for so many things that have happened this past month and a half, but now that we have Internet in our new place I am hoping to have more updates and pictures to come!

Maria's Good Finds!!

Well she has finally done it! My very good friend Maria who I have always said is the luckiest person in the world, because she somehow finds the best deals ALL THE TIME!!! and I well....never do, so she finally created a blog in which maybe she can pass some of her luck onto me, thanks Maria!! Besides selling my couches for the same amount I bought them for today, this was my second most favorite thing of the day!! From free music downloads, to free shirts, she finds it all, you should check out her blog HERE. Steph and I will be claiming our free shirts tomorrow from Aeropostale!

Exciting full month

Things have been so crazy around here with all this packing/selling of furniture/ saying our goodbyes, that sadly my blogging has taken a hit, but a lot has happened. We celebrated two of my most favorite people's birthdays, sent out graduation pics, Easter, preparing for Auntie Steph to come in next week and found out that JJ's parents are coming in for the graduation which was such a wonderful surprise! Having people we love there to share such a big accomplishment means a lot to JJ and I.

JJ is such a good sport to have to share his birthday with Amariah. He told me that she was the greatest birthday gift I could give him....he's so sweet. So that night I made them a nice steak dinner because Riah and JJ both love their meat! Then I made her cupcakes and JJ got his very own German chocolate cake from SCRATCH!! I mean even down to the freshly grated coconut!! He got the whole cake to himself because the rest of us wont touch coconut with a ten foot pole! He was in heaven.


I'm so glad these two were born.

My handsome hubby is graduating in about two weeks, and these are the pics that my dear friend Meggan took of him and made into an invitation.




Easter was so great this year and falling on conference I think made it extra special. We woke up and had our annual Easter devotional outside, then the kids came inside and looked for their hidden Easter baskets.




So many sweet memories here in Missouri, we sure are going to miss it....