Just checking in.

I wish I was a good Blogger like Jennie who every time she posts you have to read 2 pages worth of posts or like Paula who always has something to say. I haven't been taking as many pictures as I used to and I do the same thing every week, so I feel like I'm just going to bore everybody to death if I post too often... But here I am with a little "I'm still alive" kind of post :)

Dane: He started a diet and exercise routine and he lost over 14 Lbs and then he just started a competition with Justin and he has lost other 5 Lbs since Monday. Yes, I am jealous. I could never loose 5 pounds in 4 days. He is doing all this preparing to the trip to Hawaii on May 2012. I am very proud of him and I can see a big difference not just on his body but in his attitude as well. He brought here yesterday a bag full of "sticky buns" that he got from work, and he didn't even have one. And I must say they were spectacular and I can't belive he was strong enough to resist. He is doing well at work as well, and he's still waiting to start nursing school.

Annie: I am 35 weeks and one day into my pregnancy. I had some tests done yesterday and another ultrasound. Aria is doing well. As I get closer to the D-day, I cannot help thinking "what on earth did I get myself into?" I am excited, don't get me wrong, but I am scared to death of being the mom of 4 little girls.
Other than being a mom, I don't do much. my days are getting up at 7am, get Leah ready for school, and then doing all the things the other 2 girls need, then getting them ready for their gymnastics or swimming lessons, and then get back, give them dinner, get them in bed, go get Dane from the train, get home, watch "Bones" with Dane and go to bed. So that's why I don't blog very often, I do that over and over again. I love it, but since it's always the same, I don't talk about it much :)

Leah: She keeps going to Kindergarten and she is doing great. She is also doing great in her gymnastics where she will start in competition level 3 after her preformance next Friday. The difference between regular level 3 and competition level 3 is, well, that they go to state and national competitions. but you can only get to those levels by invitation only, so we are very proud of her. Regular gymnasts don't start competing until level 5. She also loves her swimming lessons and has learned so much. The other day when we were leaving the pool after class she said to me "mom, you know how you are not very good at swimming? well, I think it is because you have to do this and that..." and she started giving me instructions on how to swim... I guess I do need the instructions since when I swimm I do it so wrong that somehow I start going backwards. I'll have to take lessons after the baby is born.

Bella: She loves gymnastics and swimming as well. When we go to the pool she looks like a little fish, she's just natural in the water! And then she tells me (very loudly BTW) how much she LOOOOOOVES swimming underwater and stuff. In gymnastics she looks like a little monkey. They can only go to level 1 when they turn 5, so Bella has been in Totts and then advanced Totts for over a year now, and not only she knows her stuff well, she's starting to get a little bored and invent her own stuff, to the dismay of her new coach, since the other kids in her class think it's way more fun to do things the way Bella does them than the normal way. Her former coach wants to get her into "mini cubs" wich is a competition level for Toddlers, but now she has a new coach, so we'll se what happens.

Giada: She's such a happy little girl. She talks a LOT and I just LOVE to be able to communicate with her. She understands to a point the fact that I have a baby in my tummy and she gives her baby sister kisses all the time. She wants to see when my tummy moves and she puts her little hand to feel her as well. She sings all day and never goes anywhere walking, she has to run. She wakes up happy and goes to bed happy. Hardly ever cries. She's very outgoing and waves "hello" to everybody outside who happens to look her way. (sometimes even if they don't, she'll wave and say hi just the same) She adores her daddy and she gets upset every time I take him to the train, and starts saying that she wants her daddy to come back "RIGHT NOW!".

I could actually talk about my girls all day, they are my life and my joy. I think I will instead show some pictures i took this past month. Not many, I'll try to do better...

This is the day we took my mom to the airport to go to Italy. In this picture are (other than Dane and the girls) My brother Daniel with his wife Anna, and my brother Gabriel with his fiance Janel and her 3 daughters.

Then, this pictures are of Dane making cookies with the girls. That's a new little tradition we have on Sundays, that I make lunch and then Dane makes some kind of treat with the girls.

These are of gymnastics:

And these are some pictures Jennie took with her phone the day Julia sang the national Anthem for the bees game:

Proud parent moment :)

Last week they gave Leah's class homework. It was a weather chart and a page with pictures of snow, rain, wind and sun. The kids were supposed to observe the weather during the whole week, and cut and glue the respective picture on the chart twice a day, then bring it back to School today (Monday) and show the class their observations.

Well, Leah was the ONLY ONE in her ENTIRE class who did the homework and brought it back to School today. She even colored the pictures that she glued on her chart, and the Teacher asked her to let her keep it in her office :)

Swimming!

Today Leah and Bella started swimming lessons. From the time we mentioned the idea, they have been a little bit nervous about it, but also very excited. It scares them the thought of being in a swimming pool without a floating device, but the truth is that we don't want them to grow up to be like their mom. At least not in that aspect :) I arrived there a little early to make sure I had time to change them (since we had 14" of snow I had to dress them like Eskimos on top of their suimming suits) and to give them time to look at other lessons so they could see what it was like. When the time came, they did great and I couldn't be prouder. Had it been me, I would've been holding on to the teacher for dear life and screaming at the top of my lungs. Not them. They have always been terrified of getting their face under the water and 30 seconds into the lesson, they were both practicing that skill all by themselves. When the time came to leave they were non too happy. We bought a membership at Dimple Dell for a whole year to be able to go practice their swimming every Saturday and they don't stop talking about that. We went once already and they loved it, but this swimming without floaties was a whole new thing for them. They are busy little girls now, they have gymnastics on Mondays and Wednesdays and Swimming lessons on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. We have decided to get Bella into Challenger School for the year before she starts Kindergarten, so she will start going this Fall. (I am not looking forward to next Fall, but I sure am looking forward to Bella going to preeschool, she's so excited about it!) And Giada's wildest dreams will come true next year when she's finally going to join her sisters for gymnastics. It is so exciting to watch them grow and progress. Leah is a grown up in a little girl's body, but with a very sweet and tender heart. Bella has an unstopable imagination and is the best mom to all of her baby dolls. Giada is so sweet and happy and now that she's two, she's having a hard time with an internal dilemma: To make everybody happy or to do what she wants. Those are her two favorite things now, but she's found that they usually don't go together. I love my sweet little girls with all my heart and my life is a wonderful adventure thanks to them.
Here are some pictures of their first swimming lesson:

That's Leah, very concerned for her sister.

Yeah, tell me I'm not in trouble! but who can blame that boy for flirting with her?

Now, it was time for Leah's lesson:

They were just so happy! Ok, I started this post on Tuesday, and now it's Thursday when they had their second lesson, and I'm happy to report that they did even better than the last time and can't wait for Saturday :)

Of human stupidity?......

I was on top of a cabinet, very tall indeed, and I was smashed against the ceiling trying to feed this grizzly bear that was getting angrier by the minute, until it started attacking me. I couldn't run away because I couldn't simply jump off the cabinet, so off course my dream changed: I was outside of an apartment facing the beach, and my mom was running downstairs to give me something, but she was running towards the bear. I knew that if I called her the bear would hear me, but I HAD to call her, you know, so the bear wouldn't get HER. So I did, I started yelling for her and finally she heard me, at the same time that the bear did. The bear turned around and looked at me straight in the eye and started running FAST (I remember thinking at that moment it looked more like a lion than a bear) and when my mom got to the top of the stairs the bear was right behind her, but I could see that the bear was after me, not after her, so I yelled "get in the other apartment!!" and I got inside the one I was before and when I slammed the door closed, I could feel the weight of the bear against the door and I knew that if I didn't get the locks on fast, the bear would be able to get the door off. I started trying to get the locks but my hands were shaking and that's when I woke up, still feeling scared, but able to see how dumb my dream had been after all. I will get back to this point in a moment.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have nightmares almost every night. Sometimes those nightmares are blood-chilling nightmares that keep me scared the rest of the night and I'm scared to go back to sleep (it happens often that once I go back to sleep the nightmare either repeats itself or continues where I left), or sometimes when I wake up I realize I'm awake and I can calm down. But they are there, the nightmares almost every night since I have memory. To this problem I have a few questions, the first is, why? I don't mean "oh, why me? Sob, sob, why do I have to have these nightmares? Sob, sob" No, what I mean is, Why do people actually HAVE nightmares at all? I mean it’s our own FREAKING brain putting those nightmares there!! And the worst part of all is that "We don't know we are dreaming until we wake up". When I think of MYSELF as a person, as a whole, you know, I like to include my brain as part of that, but it looks like our brains are their own team.
When I woke up from the bear nightmare I was so scared I was breathing fast and was almost crying. My brain thought that a bear was really chasing me, but it was my brain in the first place who put that stupid bear there. !!! It's like standing in front of a mirror and yelling "BOO!" and actually getting scared because of that. But is more than just that. It's like standing in front of a mirror, yelling "BOO!" getting scared and then asking "what the heck was that?!" and only when you come out of the room do you realize it was just you scaring yourself. It doesn't make sense that we have the capacity to create a story in our minds, sometimes in ridiculous circumstances that should, by all means let you know that what's going on is not real, and getting so scared because we actually DON'T KNOW that it was not real despite the fact that we are the ones creating the story. The way it should work is, our brain creates the story, and either we watch it or we are part of it, but KNOWING that it's a dream, and even having control over what happens. Our brains should play for our team and give us a Caribbean vacation after a long day or an exciting adventure after a dull one, but NOT an incredibly scary story where we are always at the losing end. Whether we are being chased by a zombie or we are just trying to run to or from something and we can't move fast enough, whether we are seeing a loved one die or we are just in school where we forgot either our clothes or our homework, our brain should NOT do that to us because our brain is a part of us. It should work FOR us and not AGAINST us. There shouldn't be a part of us that was capable of working against us at all. Period.

The Princess and the Unicorn.

Leah has this white Unicorn that goes with her on her dream adventures. The other day, She went to bed and I told her I would be right there because I was feeding Giada, and when I went to her room I was too late, she was already asleep. Instead, I got to take this cute pictures of the Princess with her Unicorn.

An awesome weekend.

My friend Becky Clayton sent me an e-mail inviting me to go to St George for a "ladies only getaway". I forwarded to Dane but without any real hope that I would be able to go. I just didn't think he would agree to stay home with the girls and be the one in complete charge of them. But he answered the e-mail saying that he totaly thought I should go and I started getting SO excited! So we made all the preparations and on Friday at around 2:30pm, Becky picked me up and off we went. We had 2 cars going there. In Becky's car were Becky (duh!), Jami Nielsen, Laura Jones,Holly Hendrikson and me, and in the other car were Kammi Burnet, Amy Harmer, Deeana Smith, Emily Spens, Lisa Palmer and Terra Gerritsen with no kids and no husbands. On our way there we talked and the time went by so fast that next thing we knew we were already there. That night we went to the Pizza Factory and then we went to the house where Amy read questions from a book called something like "Ask yourself" and whoever wanted answered the questions and we had so much fun getting to know eachother better. There were funny stories as well as sad and we just opened our hearts and we shared things that I'm sure we thought we would never share. We went to bed sooo late and the next day we went shopping and had so much fun. We stopped for lunch (when a group of 11 ladies go out shopping, the only thing that could stop them is hunger) and after lunch we had a mission: we went to find the shoes that kammi wanted so badly. Unfortunately, we didn't. After that we went home to unload, buy Kammi's shoes online and sing happy birthday to her where to told her or super secret plan: we were taking her out to dinner for her birthday. So we went to Olive Garden, one of Kammi's favorites and we had a great dinner and again, a great time. After that, half of the group had to head back to SLC and the other half stayed another night playing games, eating some more snacks, lauging and lauging until it hurt. The next day we woke up early and we were all packed up and ready to go at 6:45am so we could be on time for church. Becky drove like a maniac (JK) and we were able to drop Jami at the blessing where she needed to be at 10:30am, and I got home before 11 in time to help poor desperate Dane find the church clothes for the girls. We had such and amazing time. We already started planning our next year's trip and we can hardly wait. When we got home all the kids were still alive and happy and the husbands were as well. Even though we missed them so much this getaway was much needed and greatelly appreciated. So I want to thank Becky for planning this amazing trip, for providing the house, and I want to thank all the ladies who came for making this such an amazing and unforgettable weekend. The memories that we made this weekend will last a lifetime.
At the pizza Factory.

Just talking and reading questions from the book.

Kammi reading her birthday card.

Kammi after she discovered her birthday present from all of us.

Kammi's "Chocolate smile"

Getting ready to go to dinner.

At Olive Garden.

Playing games. We played "Settlers of Catan" where Jami was crowned with victory, and then we played what Becky called "the food storage game" and then a question game.

Becky loves her thumb. Here she wanted to find out what it would look like with ears.

Getting ready for bed, I just started taking random pictures.
This is where Becky and Jami slept.

Here is Becky showing Jami how funny one of her random pictures was.

Here is where Lisa slept. Cute Jammies! :)

Teeth brushing time. Judging by Becky's face, there was a very stubborn something stuck in there. Get it hard Becky!

In the car on our way back. I only took this picture because it was still dark outside and I blinded everyone with the flash...

Little baby girl.

One thing is for sure: this baby girl is in TROUBLE!!!!! Not even born yet and she has caused so much trouble already, she's going to be grounded until she's 50.
Many of you might know what's going on, (many of you might not but not be interested anyway) but since this blog is also a way to keep record for our family, here it is anyway.
Ok, on my first ultrasound, I had the 25th of May as my due date, making me today 18 weeks and 3 days, and my ultrasound yesterday showed that I was 19 weeks. The Doctor said we'll still go with the 25th, so Jennie, the calendar still has it right :)
On Tuesday the 30th of November I started spotting a little bit, but after talking to the nurse, she told me not to worry that it was normal. On Friday of that same week, however, I woke up to have a heavier bleeding, so we called the doctor and they ordered me an ultrasound, in which showed that I have a tear between the wall of the uterus and the sac. The good news is that the tear was away from the placenta, the bad news is that the tear could get bigger, so they told me to take it very easy, lay down as much as possible, which means that I have to lay down most of the day, if I have to get up and do something light, then do it, but then go back to bed. I did, I came back and I spent the rest of the day on the couch, but still that night when I woke up at 3am to use the bathroom, I was soaked in blood and the bed and just imagine a lot of blood so I don't have to keep describing. Dane took me to the E.R. right away and after several exams, and since they were unable to compare the results from both ultrasounds, it was determined that baby and I were Ok, so I was sent home with a double order to take it easy, which I've been trying, but this 3 little girls make it very hard. Then on Sunday night I woke up again in the middle of the night bleeding again, and this time also with a horrible pain, which ended up being contractions, and then the doctor was not concerned just for the tear getting bigger, but also for me going on labor, because that early in pregnancy, there is nothing it could be done. Sooooo, days have passed, and I have had some bleeding on and off, and pain on and off as well, and severe pain and bleeding if I try to even do any moderate effort. Yesterday I had another ultrasound in which we received some good news and some bad news. Good news, baby is alive and ok. Bad news, I'm not just not healing, the tear is still there, I have hematoma all over the place and the placenta is also bleeding and starting to detach. So, as little as I feel like I've been doing, apparently I'm still doing too much. It's tough to balance, especially with the girls. And to be honest, the emotional part is just as hard as the physical, e.g. Today Dane was working, and my mom had to go out, so I left the girls downstairs watching a movie while I lay down, because I started having one of those episodes of severe pain, but when the worst part of the pain was over I got up again, and I heard Giada yelling "Mom, arriba!!" (That’s what she says when she wants to be picked up) and my heart was shattered in tiny little pieces knowing that I couldn't go get her and that I was alone to ask for help. So she had to sit on the swing for 4 long hours until my mom came back, that whole time feeling desperate to just be able to have her in my arms. I miss my little Giada so much and I know it's been tough on her as well, because at least I know why I'm doing it, but as much as I explain it to her, I know she doesn't understand why I don't hold her anymore as I used to. So on top of everything, I'm also an emotional wreck, so please forgive me.
Anyway, so this is what's happening with this little baby and all the mess she's causing without even knowing. But she's more than worth it, my sweet little angel.