Richard's cast

Richard has another cast on for 3 weeks. It'll come off right before we leave on our trip to Hawaii with Ben's parents, their treat! Very excited!

Las Vegas

I've finally been to Las Vegas! We drove through it at 3am in August of 2002 for our first anniversary on our way to Disneyland. Our car had no air conditioning, so we thought we'd 'beat the heat' by traveling at night. I vowed we would never, ever, travel at night with no air conditioning ever again. Well, we forgot. We had air conditioning this time, but Garrett was not happy about the long car trip to Las Vegas, so on the way back we decided to drive during the night....I have vowed again to never, ever, drive at night. It's miserable!!! The boys slept fine and Ben drove fine, but I was not too happy...could not sleep!

Here is a picture of the lions at the indoor lion habitat in the MGM casino and me and the boys at the Rainforest cafe where we had dinner before we left the city. We also went to the Bellagio (Yea Ocean's 11!) to see the water show. Very cool. We stayed with my sister and her husband in their beautiful new home in Las Vegas for the weekend just for fun. Went swimming and pretended we could live there. :) Too hot...no way!

Packing Peanuts

We had a birthday party at our house for Ben's sister this week. His parents have been here and several of his siblings and their families came too. One of the gifts his sister got was her guitar that was mailed to her in a huge box, with thousands of packing peanuts. We let all the little kids play in it and have since found packing peanuts in the couches, in the bathroom, even upstairs. They are everywhere! It was fun, and a huge mess.

Did you know?

So I am very excited to announce that we are expecting a new baby in January!!! The due date is the 20th, it's 5 days off of Richard's pregnancy, but this time we're shooting for a January baby, of course, not December...I'm 14 weeks and very excited and grateful for this little person. The other fun thing is that I am participating in a research study at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center to see if there are DNA 'markers' in women that can predict early births. Since Richard was 6 weeks early I qualify to be a guinea pig. They needed to do an ultrasound at 12 weeks to make sure everything is viable and healthy. So at 13 weeks I made the appointment and was surprised, yet pleased, that the ultrasound guy offered to locate the gender of the baby. We weren't expecting that at all. So we also already know that we're expecting our 3rd boy!!! Haha! So excited. :) I had tried to enroll in a different research study back in February before I was pregnant, about the affects of aspirin on miscarriage (which I've also had at 11 weeks), but one of the stipulations was to fill out all the paper work, have a urine and blood test to verify I was NOT pregnant and then have another period and THEN get pregnant. Still not sure exactly why they wanted to monitor that...but anyway, we got pregnant too soon...oops. So I called up the research lady and said "I can't participate in this study! But, are there any other studies I can help with now that I am pregnant?" So I got into this one where they wanted you to already BE pregnant. :) This study will be easier also. All they do is 3 times throughout the pregnancy they take some bodily fluids (we don't need to go into too many details) and study my DNA in those samples. Then they compare my samples with the other 999 women involved who have also had preemies and look for 'markers'. Then in the future when a pregnant woman goes to get her blood work done they can check for those markers and give some intervention to help the baby stay in longer. Helping with medical research is very cool....yea!

The ultrasound picture is tough to figure out, but the important part is where the little arrow is pointing. :)

Watermelon!

What little boy doesn't love watermelon?

Mine sure do!

It's been hot hot hot in the 90s and higher lately. So we let them get all sticky and play outside and then they love having a bath.