And speaking of growing up...

This little kiddo is two and a half! He just amazes me every day at what he is learning. Full of energy and excitement and tenderness and just such a little boy! He's been figuring out how to entertain himself lately and its so fun to see. :) Here's just some cute pics -- we love this little Landon!

Jordan loves to shovel snow (Really, when neighbors come and shovel our sidewalks just to be nice, Jordan's always kind of disappointed that somebody stole his fun!), and Landon's learned to hear the sound of the shovel when Jordan goes outside - "I got to help him shovel!" he says, and off he goes! 
Just my cute boys...
One of Landon's most common phrases -- "You all done with work?!?" followed quickly by, "You want to play in the munchkin room with me?!?" These boys sure love each other! 
Playing with Uncle Nathan -- you can't tell so much from this picture, but this is just classic Landon, climbing and climbing and trying to get front and center for your attention - he does this to Jordan while he's biking at his computer too! 
Landon was so proud of himself for his great towers with our year supply food! (Jordan had a fun time w/ some help from Winslow digging out under our house in the crawl space to make more room for about 20 boxes and buckets of wheat, rice, beans, etc.)

What a cute little guy he is! 

One Month Old!

Oh, these little ones grow so quickly! Ellie is just a little sweetheart -  so precious and happy.  She loves to be held and cuddled right up, but she's also content to just look around and see the world too. Landon loves his baby sister - her eyes get so big when he comes near, we're sure she must be thinking "Oh no! What's going to happen to me this time?" :) He will be thrilled when this little one can play with him. He loves to get down all the floor with her for tummy time - so far that's as close as he can get to having her as a playmate. :) I can not believe how she is growing and changing already -- we are just treasuring this time while she is so, so small!

We all just love her so!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a happy Valentine's Day celebrating with our little family. Sleeping in (Well, I got to sleep in thanks to my sweetheart Jordan!) A delicious waffle w/ strawberries and cream brunch after a shopping trip w/ everyone -- quite an event in itself :) Then just a fun afternoon and evening of hanging out, reading our Peter and the Shadowthieves book, picking out chocolates at Sees (Thank you again Jordan!) and making this fun video! (For those google-readers out there, you can see this super-cute video on my blog! :)

Hooray for such a happy holiday to celebrate all of the people that we love!

Why little boys need daddys :)

I was busy telling Jordan to BE CAREFUL till I finally realized what fun Landon was having sliding around the house on his new train ride :)

Here's the story...

Of our little baby Ellie's arrival. :)

I was scheduled to be induced on Friday morning (the 16th) -- we had a hard time on Thursday night deciding if we wanted to go with it or just keep waiting, (My doctor w/ Landon had recomended I be induced at 39 weeks this time around since Landon was so big, we hadn't gone for that but I was just past my due date) - we finally decided to go for the induction. So, that night we got all of our things together, talked to Jordan's parents about plans for Landon while we were gone, and got a good nights sleep!

Friday morning, we got up and ready to go -- feeling great (although a bit nervous of course!) and well prepared. We got in the car at 6:30 to head to the hospital and as soon as I sat down in the car my first contraction started! Five minutes later when another came I told Jordan and we joked 'wouldn't that be funny if I went into labor on my own on our way to the hospital?' Sure enough, by the time we got to the hospital in American Fork, I was definitely in labor and I got to be my nurses "easiest induction ever."

When Landon was born, I decided to get an epidural after several hours of some tough contractions. I was very glad that I did and remember thinking, "why would anybody choose to give birth without an epidural?" 

For some reason, I decided to give it a try this time around. :) (Why? Partly because I remembered the epidural being so painful. Partly probably because I figured if women have been doing this since the beginning of time, surely I could too... partly because I didn't want to feel like I had to defend  why I chose to get an epidural whenever I heard other mom's talking about their natural child births and the amazing experience it was...)

And pretty much, it turned out that my labor was actually a pretty neat experience. It was really really hard but I was okay! The nurse and midwife were super positive and encouraging and in between contractions, I felt so amazed that I was doing it - when they told me I was doing such a good job, I felt like I was! :)

On the other hand, the delivery (even though it was only about 25 minutes) convinced me that I really would not choose again to give birth without an epidural! It was just too hard and too painful - more than I could put myself through again and more than I would make my sweetheart Jordan watch me go through again. Too, too hard.

But oh we were so happy to have our little Ellie here!

And, one great thing about no epidural was a super quick recovery. Grammi and Grandpa brought Landon to come see his new baby sister and I was up and about that afternoon and the next day walked laps around the mother baby unit with Jordan! :)

And that's the story of our beautiful little baby Ellie's birth-day!