Lilly is 4 Years old today!

Yes my little sweet pea is 4 today. It's amazing how fast they grow. She isn't a baby anymore she is a kid! She is still my darling sweet child though. She is fiesty and stubborn but the moment she thinks she hurt someones feelings she will run over and kiss you and tell you " i still love you, ever" and she wont stop until you are happy again. She makes me and everyone else around laugh constantly with her silly sayings and the ideas that pop into that head. It really is such a blessing to get to be around children. I feel very blessed to have such a sweet little lady in my life. She is excited about having a baby sister. She was so set on it being a brother in there that I was a little worried she wouldn't be happy if it was a sister but she just loves the baby already. She comes and kisses my belly from time to time and pats the baby in there and talks about her and emma and baby being sisters. I just have a very sweet little girl. God couldn't of given me a better gift 4 years ago and I'm excited to be getting another one from him shortly. We aren't celebrating lilly's birthday today because allan is gone to africa and well we just had christmas so it would be a bit overwhelming. We will celebrate at the end of jan probably when Dad gets home. But since it is her special day I'm going to spend some extra time playing with her and doing some fun stuff just the two of us. First off is some breakfast. She wakes up every morning and tells me "it's morning time" then the next words out of her mouth are "i'm hungry and thristy too" So i think i'll get a jump on it this morning.

Happy Birthday my sweet LILLypad.

christmas dinner party pictures

there really are more on shutterfly too!

a few texas pictures

these first two are of me and mom going out to the ballet the other night.

there are more on our shutterfly..

Merry christmas eve/ its a girl!!!

We had a wonderful party last night. Lets see there were so many people.. Ana and jeff and zane came. Keane, mom, aaron, karen, lynette, serrah, john, payton, cynthia, sean and then all of us. It probably doesn't sound like that many but it was a house full. We had a wonderful time. Allan cooked the crablegs (with my help) in the garage with the boys on a new toy he picked up at home depot. I cooked a ham in the house and mashed potatoes, salad, garlic biscuits, brocolli and cheese casserole then my mom brought beans and corn. Serrah brought more rolls. cynthia brought deviled eggs and ana brought cream puffs and karen brought a cake and keane brought cheesecake and a cake.. are you catching on to the fact that there was alot of food but even more deserts. All the food got devoured but i have a ton of cakes, cookies, and sweets that i need to find a new home for. Seriously some of them are unopened not touched and need to stay that way and go to a new house. lol..
Okay for bigger news.. WE are having a GIRL. Yes we are having another little girl. That will be three for this household ( i have a step daughter emma and then one of my own Lilly for those of you that don't know). So we are adding another little girl to the mix. So now we have a little prayer request. The bleed I had went away but now they have new concerns. It looked like my placenta is a little low. It could move up when my uterus grows a little which happens at the end of second trimester begining of third. So they want to see me again in two weeks to see if it has shifted. They were a little afraid that i had placenta previa which can correct itself but it is something that can prove to be serious not only for baby but also for the mother if there is bleeding. Bleeding doesn't tend to happen till the end of second trimester early 3rd but if it happens i have to go to the ER and go from there. For now they just said to watch for any signs of bleeding and we haven't had any. I'm still on hip rest.. very strict hip rest and the doctor also gave me a talking to about lifting cause she knows i'm a nurse. So i'm going to be trying to not work much for th enext two weeks and then see what they say on the 6th and then i may not work at all or who knows.. we will see. So please keep us in prayers until we know more. This pregnancy has been a roller coaster let me tell you. There are more details and treatment things but I don't want to go to far into it until we know for sure. It's a little scary but not that uncommon. It happens in 1 out of 200 pregnancy's and well having a c-section before can lead to it so maybe that's why.. who knows. Anyway celebrate with us in finding out that it's a girl and pray for us about the upcoming stressfulness. Thanks. Hope everyone is having a merry christmas.!

little quick update

today im heading into work (just for a few hours). this afternoon is our ultraouns also why im only working a half day. tonight is our christmas dinner that im hosting and hoping i get some help cooking lol. so those are todays plans and i will take pictures. i also havent forgotten that i havent uploaded any pictures of texas trip.. i know and ill get there but it may be in jan.

so ihave to tell you about what else i did... i went to see moscows great russian nutcracker ballet. this is the first ballet or even real play that i have seen. it was amazing. my moms friend bought her two tickets for christmas because she knew mom had always talked about taking me and every year we have came up with excuses to not go. one excuse is that tickets arent cheap.. i couldnt believe that there were parents who bought these crazy expensive tickets for children in there. they are close to 100 bucks and there were t year olds closer to the stage.. seriously? girls got very dressed up to. like christmas gowns. anyway by the middle of the show i changed my tune. it was all so amazing that i decided i would think about taking the girls maybe next year. at intermission the little girls er dancing around like ballerinas in their gorgeous christmas gowns and i imagined that their heads were filled with images of sugar plum fairies. lol it was the cutest thing watching these tiny girls all dreaming of being ballerinas. so next year im going to see what farther back tickets might be like and perhaps take the girls. its a little like going to a ball. i really enjoyed it!

so stay posted to find out the sex of the baby. im really hoping it cooperates today and isnt shy. anyway have a great day!

baby keyes update

ok i thought that maybe i should give an update on the pregnancy/baby business. its still going. i think we are 17 weeks today. i am not feeling it kick or move very much yet. its like a tiny bubble popping in there when i do feel it and its usually not more than one bubble pop at a time. maybe it will start moving more in the next few weeks. i kinda like when you feel them in there. it makes it more real to me and reassures me that they are in theredoing ok. other than that im still not feeling awesome. i think it may have gotten a bit better but my morning sickness with this one has definetly lasted into the second trimester. perhaps it is just payback since i didnt have much with my first child. if this was our first child i dont think we would have any more. so we get to find out on the werd what this baby is. i still dont have a strong feeling but im leaning towards another girl. i have had two dreams where it is a girl lwith dark hair so thats why im thinking girl. no other reasoning. just dreams. thats really all i know for a baby update till the 23rd. today im headed into work. wish me luck cause i havent been there in weeks now due to our vacation. after work we have a christmas party allan wants to go to. im going to try and make an appearance if im not just wiped out. allan is taking thegirls christmas shopping today. thats all thats going on in our world.

Home sweet Home!

We finally made it back home. It really has felt like a long trip. I mean like we were gone forever. We had such a good time and got to see just everyone down there in texas. FRiends and Family! So fun. But it feels good to be blogging from my home computer in my pajama's.. hehe! I just looked at the clock and realized it's almost 11pm. We got home around 3pm today and have been busy since then. I dropped off presents at my mom's house and let lilly see LALA and Aaron. WE visited for a while then we came back home and allan has been busy fixing our security system. We have always had one but never plugged it up so he has been testing it and getting it working the way he wants it before he leaves again. ;-) So lilly and I watched some movies tonight. She loved the frosty the snowman show and rudolph show. We set the dvr to record a ton of christmas shows while we were gone so her and emma can watch one or two every night before christmas and drink hot chocolate till there hearts are content. Well that is if i go to the store tomorrow and get groceries because let me tell ya.. this house is bare! i didn't get any groceries before we left thinking it would go to waste or bad before we got back. WEll it shows.. nothing in the house at all. We are going to have to eat breakfast out in the morning cause i can't even offer allan and lilly cereal cause we don't have milk in the house. lol.. So grocery shopping is a must tomorrow. I also have to go get a TB test done at work. It's free if i drive up there and apparently mine expires tomorrow and they really need me to work on sat and i can't work if i don't have it done soooo guess i'm driving up there. I talked to my friend niki that I work with tonight on the phone and she is working tomorrow so at least i'll get to see her for a few minutes. She said it felt like i had been gone for a month and she is having sarah withdrawals.. lol. We are still having a christmas dinner at our house probably on the 23rd so i'm hoping her and her husband finally make it down. Allan hasn't met them yet so I'm pretty sure he thinks I have make believe friends, but they are real!
anyway I still plan on posting pictures but our computer is on the fritz half the time so i haven't decided wether or not I should try to upload from a new camera onto this computer or wait.. or what. We are at a crossroads deciding to buy a new computer or not. WE just bought a new monitor but it looks like the motherboard is going out too now so I should have just bought a whole newe thing probably. Oh well.. I'm sure we will figure something out soon. Good night everyone!

end of the trip tonight!

well our texas trip is going good. we are leaving tomorrow morning. we are playing some late night poker and we had delicious texas bbq for dinner. tonight we are with my friend jenny morgan in austin. i havent seen her since i got out of the navy so its really fun to get in a last minute visit and meet her kidos. ill post pictures when i get home.

have a good mondays.

We made it to Texas

We made it to texas on sunday afternoon. We stayed the night in fort stockton the first night on the road and then ended up here in rockport on sunday. We had a nice dinner with opa and dd ( my grandparents). DD has been feeding us so good. She is a wonderful cook but we have went out for several meals too. She cooked up chili and tamales for the first night we were here. We had a delicious breakfast casserole that i want to get the recipe for. It wasn't anything crazy just eggs, sausage, cheese, etc but it was so yummy. We went out to a chinese buffet that was amazing. They had just tons of choices and you could get it like mongolian style fried up for you in the back of the buffet. Today we went to aransas pass and went to a place called the butter churn. It was another buffet. ( i think they have discovered all the good buffets here, i'm not usually a big fan of buffets but they were clean and the food was great at both) This one had home cooking. about 6 or 7 different main meat dishes then a ton of veggie side dishes and a really good salad bar that had peppers which made me happy. I realized that I have talked about the food only on here but being pregnant all this yummy food is making me happy.
We have had story time many times since we have been here. It's so good to hear all the stories and laugh with family. Oh and my aunt sue is here till tomorrow. So we didn't know if we would even get to see her this trip and we have gotten to spend a good chunk of time with her now. I'm glad for that too. We have wrapped presents and put up dd's tree and decorated it. Lilly is behaving pretty well. She is laughing and chasing allan around right now but she just loves all the animals here. She thinks that opa has a airplane in his yard. Its actually a small sail boat but i let her go ahead and believe opa has an airplane in his yard. lol.. We went and sat on the sailboat for a few minutes just to show it to allan i think. We are hoping to get to go sailing tomorrow but it has been very windy. Too windy for sailing. Opa has some older sails so they wouldn't do good in wind. Anyway i'm going to go watch " the help" good night!

holiday busy season...

Hello all,
I have been busy and neglecting my blog. I am still really busy today but thought i might squeeze a little blog in here. Allan made it home late the other night and we have been going and going since he got home. Yesterday we went to the mall so allan could get some ideas for me for christmas.. lol and we were wasting time while my car got a oil change and a look over before our big trip. We picked up emma from school yesterday and we went to dinner at olive garden last night. Yummy food. We watched christmas movies with the girls after dinner and bathtub time and had hot chocolate. This morning allan is taking emma to school and lilly is still sleeping so i'm up enjoying the news and blog by myself. Today I have to get some homework done. Unfortunatly. I am soooo over these stupid classes. Every instructor I have grades my papers differently when it comes to apa format. Our school has an online resource that gives you purdues online writing lab's examples and instructions to follow. So that is what I use. I guess it's not what the teachers use to grade. So I'm not totally complaining cause I got a 95% and 100 on my two papers that i have turned in with this instructor. It's just her comments that bother me. " sarah, the academic world uses apa 6th edition and so does this university. I don't know why you would think your title page is correct. " and " this is your last class, you need to get apa format down" So of course it rubbed me the wrong way and i wrote back and said I used the one your school puts out there which happens to say it is 6th edition 2 copy and it's disappointing that the teachers don't grade according to what the school says is the way to write it. It's in the schools writing lab section... then I copied and pasted exactly what it said for me to do that i did do and where it got it's info. So i stillhave no idea where she is getting her info but it's enough to drive me crazy and I have another paper i need to get done today.
Anyway, I also have a doctor apt today . we don't get an ultrasound just a regular apt but we do get to find out when our ultrasound is and that means we get to find out what the baby is. I'm thinking it will be on christmas week. well sometime around then.
We also have to get all packed up today for our texas trip. I got our christmas presents mailed out to everyone that lives far away already since we will be gone for quite a few days. I haven't packed a single piece of clothing though. yikes. lol.. So i need to do some laundry and get to packing between papers. I think that lilly may go visit lala today so that I can get some things done and she will have fun. Allan needs to get a haircut today. poor guy came back all shaggy from being gone for a month. it's the longest i have ever seen his hair. i'm not sure what else he has planned though.
Well i better get to it. happy holidays everyone!