Ellie's first Hockey game

Ellie is quite the sports fan, something I'm proud of.  The way I figure it, if I can get her to like the things I like (roasted meat, firearms, and sports) then she's more likely to like guys who like what I like.  If she likes guys that like what I like, then she's much less likely to bring home some vegan, metrosexual, liberal, hippy, environmentalist loser that I'd have to "make disappear".

The Tri-Cities has a hockey team the Tri-City Americans (kind of a AA type club), and a couple of months ago Nicolle won tickets for a game.  It was time for a momentous occasion, Ellie's first hockey game.  

Now football is my favorite sport, bar none; but hockey is my favorite sport to watch live, bar none.  Why?  The atmosphere at a hockey game HAS to be what it was like to be in the Roman Colosseum watching the gladiatorial games.  During the game a player took a slap shot puck (traveling at about 120 mph) right to the face, the crowd's reaction?  "BRUSH IT OFF YOU FREAKIN PANSY WE HAVE TO WIN THIS GAME!!!!!!!!!!"

The game was going great, and Ellie was really enjoying it.  We got to the third period, and I was worried that Ellie wouldn't get the full hockey experience.  What was missing?  WE HADN'T SEEN A FIGHT YET!  My worries were assuaged half way through the third when two players dropped gloves and went at it.  During the fight I kept whispering in Ellie's ear "Lets see some of those pansies from Twilight do THAT!  Sweetheart, those are REAL men."

 

When the game was over the Tri-City beat Everett 7-2.  The game was great, and it was a great family night.  Live hockey, ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

 

Easter: Take 2 - Preston

I know, I have fallen way behind on the blog updates.  I want to make sure I record the fun memories we had going to Preston on April 2nd through the 8th.  We headed out of Spokane Monday and drove to Preston where Grandma and Grandpa Bennett got the news about Ellie becoming a big sister.

Then on Tuesday we had beautiful weather so we headed to Logan to Willow Park where they have a great little zoo and park.  Ellie loved seeing all the animals.  She was so cute too, because she had to say "Hi!" to all the animals we looked at and chatter at them some before we could move on.

Taking a quick break from all the walking.  Ellie loves to climb on things and let you know she's sitting, but I won't say the word it sounds like she says each time she says sit.  Let's just say we need to work on our ssss instead of shhh.

Here she is totally fascinated by the "peeyock".

After the zoo Ellie had fun on the slides with Daddy and Papa, playing in the bark, and then we forced her to tolerate a swing for a few minutes.  Man that girl hates swings!

Wednesday Steve, Ellie, and I had the day mostly to ourselves.  Ellie enjoyed playing with the dogs, riding one of the horses that is housed at Ray and Reva's right now, and going for a four-wheeler ride.  

After taking this picture I climbed on too and held Ellie around Steve so that she was doubly secured.  We also didn't go very fast, but she loved having the wind blow over her the whole time.

This is what a similar four-wheeler ride looked like later on that week.

On Thursday we headed down and spent the day in Ogden with Steve's sister Kathy, her daughter Amanda, and Kathy's new fiance's son, Max.  We went to the Tree House Museum and out for lunch before heading back to visit Steve's sister Lori for a while and head back to Preston.

Here are pictures from the children's museum.  Ellie loved the drums in the music area, the colored blocks on the light table, and the play kitchen.  She had a blast!

This was Ellie PASSED OUT as we left Ogden.  She played so hard and hadn't napped at ALL!  I love that she fell asleep while she was eating - you can see the apples in her mouth still.  I was a little nervous and kept checking to make sure I could hear her breathing.  She woke up and finished eating her apple slice in her mouth and then went right back to sleep.

That night Kathy, Amanda, and Ryan came to Preston and stayed for the weekend with everyone else, so we had a nice lazy play day on Friday and Reva helped me with some domestic projects I couldn't have done with out her help.  We made a CUTE new blanket for Ellie when she gets her toddler bed and Reva told me what to do and I made her famous cinnamon rolls.  This is one of the trays before Reva frosted them.  They're pretty much amazing.  

Then Saturday we split up men and women.  The girls headed to our niece Erin's bridal shower, and the guys kept her fiance Jordin busy with brauts and shooting.  After everyone had reunited and Ellie had napped, we began our Easter festivities.  Amanda was a great help with Ellie dying her first Easter eggs.

And Ellie even enjoyed painting one.

Then both girls enjoyed an Easter egg hunt.  After already having experienced the joys of hunting eggs about a week earlier, Ellie knew just what to do and needed no assistance.  She especially loved opening up eggs that had jelly beans in them!

After the egg hunt the girls took turns riding the horse again.  Amanda is big enough she got to ride on her own.

But Ellie always had a few escorts.  Here's the whole gang from that weekend minus myself.

After all those festivities, it was just about bed time, so Ellie went and snuggled up with Kathy and Amanda for some bed time reading.

The next day we went to church with Steve's folks and then hit the road to get home so Steve and I could both get to work on Monday.  It wasn't the most relaxing Easter, but we got to enjoy so much fun the week previous it wasn't a big sacrifice.  We always have such a great time when we visit family, and it was doubly exciting this time to get to go down and share our big news with everyone!

Baby Bennett #2 Ultrasound #2

Today we had our second ultrasound with baby Bennett. I know, we just had one, but this is part of what they call an NT (a new screening to assess risk of down syndrome and other major health issues). Everything appeared normal, which is what we expected with no family history that would make us think anything else would happen. We were told that the doctor will keep our due date at the 29th of October officially, even though our ultrasounds show us about half a week ahead of that. However, that is fine with us as it gives us more time to try and have this baby before our due date comes and the doctor schedules a c-section (that's his policy). Really, not much else to say. Ellie came with us for this appointment where it was just a short ultrasound and that was easier than asking someone to watch her. She sat with Steve and was really focused on what the tech was doing to me and wanted me to hold her, but she did well. She kept pointing to the screen and saying "See! Baby!" Needless to say we were told numerous times how cute she is.

So far, this baby isn't nearly as active as Ellie was at ultrasounds. It lays there for the most part and occasionally waves hands and feet and does little hiccup motions. Ellie was always flopping around like crazy and super active. It is as stubborn though as it took the tech a while to get the pictures she wanted because just like big sister, this kid didn't ever want to look at the machine. And with that, enjoy the pictures.

Isn't it amazing to look at the last post and see how much the baby has grown and changed in just a couple weeks? The human body is a miracle that always testifies to me of a knowing Heavenly Father and Creator.

Oh, and I guess the one other piece of news is that they scheduled our 20 week ultrasound where we'll get to find out what we're having. So, unless baby doesn't cooperate or they move our date for some reason, we should find out whether Ellie is getting a little brother or sister on June 12th. Enjoy guessing along with Steve and I until that point in time!

Easter Weekend take 1: Spokane

Whenever Steve has a break from school, we try to get out of Dodge and go see family. Friday, March 30th, we headed to Spokane to see some of my family. Here are a few pictures from that trip.

This is Ellie's cousin Wyatt and her playing with his toy on Sunday. Not a great picture, I know, but I included it for my sisters who haven't seen them in a while purely so they could see how big they've both gotten. It's one of the only pictures of them both upright together.

The next pictures are from our pre-Easter celebrations with my Dad, Kerry, my sister Jennifer, and her son Wyatt. We had fun with the kids both opening baskets from Grandma and Grandpa, and then they opened what we brought for them. We also had a fantastic ham dinner - yum! This picture cracks me up because Kerry (Grandma "Sun" according to Ellie - love it!) put her Easter basket from the grandparents in front of her and then told her not to touch it for pictures. This was the happy and confused picture we got as a result. Gotta love the hands in the air as she isn't sure what to do with them.

Here is a picture of both the grandkids with their baskets from Dad and Kerry. Wyatt was way more interested in what Ellie was pulling out of her basket than in doing anything with his. And Ellie is old enough that she dug right through her basket looking at everything and then informed us "All done!" when it was empty.

Here is Ellie digging through her basket we brought. The girl definitely understands gifts for her now. One of my favorite parts was a little Tangled doll we got her because Ellie is in LOVE with Tangled and calls per Punzel. We were pretty boring though and filled it with a few fun things and lots of stuff she needed anyway, like sippy cups, silverware, a new toothbrush, and socks. I know, we're awesome. Only we would replace candy in an Easter basket with a new toothbrush.

Once the kids had dug through their loot, we headed outside for Ellie's first Easter egg hunt. It took her a minute to figure out what she was supposed to do, and I don't think she understood that there was a benefit to collecting the eggs, but once she realized what to do, she needed no assistance. The girl loved collecting eggs in her cute little bucket.

After the egg hunt was over, Ellie spent some quality time with Daddy over at Grandma and Grandpa's pond. Ellie loves the koi that are in the pond (she loves all fish, really) and wants to go over and look in the water for them all the time when we go see "Papa" and "Sun". I love this picture. The joy these two bring each other makes me happy. Steve is such a fantastic father.

So, that's how we spent our first weekend of Spring Break. The next day brought a Monday full of travelling in the car to Preston, where we had a great rest of our break. Thanks Dad and Kerry for lots of fun!

Bennett, Party of 4

Did you know that if you go back to our Valentine's Day family picture there are four of us in that photo? We were hoping that was the case, but didn't actually know till after. That's because this is what I found out on February 17th, 2012.

And when Steve got home from work, this is what he found waiting for him as a "late Valentine's gift". He wasn't nearly as much fun with this one as he was with Ellie though. He saw the Godiva chocolate cigars and went "We're pregnant." And that was that. Totally rain on my parade why don't you.....

We spent the next several weeks with me sick, having to take time off work because I couldn't function, sleeping a lot because the doctors gave me unisom to treat morning sickness (unisom is a sleep aid and I'm VERY easily influenced by medications), and waking up to find out whether Ellie had been good and played quietly or whether she had stuffed a comb all the way down the toilet... Fun times. But, things have definitely started looking up! And, on March 28th we went in for our early ultrasound.

Here's what I looked like at just shy of 10 weeks (according to our ultrasound).

Yeah, number 2 is definitely showing WAY earlier than Ellie did!

And here are the pictures we got to see of our little one. It was a big relief to see something in the ultrasound where I never feel pregnant till sometime in 2nd trimester and kind of wonder if it's all real. Then it was a relief to hear the heartbeat. Our final relief came when the baby moved a little after about 5 minutes, kind of waving its back hand back and forth and then hiccuping up into a scrunched position and then back down again. So fun! This picture isn't great, but it has our stats, so I included it.

This is the picture they printed off for us, so this is the one all the family got to see as they found out.

And this is how most of the family found out. Sorry, Ellie wasn't staying still for the picture, but you have to read the shirt. Best part is that grandparents understood and other people to a large degree either didn't read the shirt or thought it was a really weird hand me down to let her wear...

Ellie has been trying to feed and diaper her babies and stuffed animals a lot lately though, as well as any real babies she comes across. We think she'll be a fantastic big sister come late October!