Our Halloween

We had a fun Halloween at our house this year. It's so much more fun when Derek is home to enjoy it with us. :) When I asked the kids what they wanted to be this year they looked at me like I was dumb and Brian said, "Dinosuars!" Kind of like, Duh! Mom, we are dinosaurs everyear don't ya know! I guess I have trained them well since thats what they have been for the last two years. I explained to them that I thought they had grown enough that they wouldn't fit into their costumes anymore. Andrew could wear Brian's and Timothy could wear Andrew's but there wasn't one for Brian. Then Andrew looked at me very matter-of-factly and said, "Just, make another one!" Although I did make the first two I didn't think I would be able to make another one this year. So we had to find Brian something else. He fell in love with an Indiana Jones costume at the store so thus he was Indiana Jones and Andrew and Timothy were of course dinosaurs. Andrew later told us that he was Brian's side-kick. Who knew Indiana Jones had a blue dinosaur side kick? Apparently he does. They are both closely followed by a little green dinosaur shadow. I must have done fairly well when I made those dinosaur costumes. This is the third year they have been used and with the multiple functions each year they have been worn 8 times. That's pretty good for one costume.

The costumes:

Timothy

Andrew

Brian

Trunk-or-Treating:

Our ward had a Halloween party with Trunk-or-Treating.

Carving Pumpkins:

We had our annual Pumpkin Carving Family Home Eveing the Monday before Halloween. This is a big deal to us. Carving pumpkins was Derek and I's first date and we have carved pumkins every year we have been together since then. The boys had a great time. They weren't detered by the gooey "pumpkin guts" at all. They had planned for days of what the faces on their pumpkins would look like and were proud of how they turned out.

Trick-or-Treating:
We must live in a nice neighborhood-- the boys got full size candy bars at two houses and two houses were giving out refreshments to the parents. After a few houses we had to tell Brian to just let people put whatever candy they had in Andrew's bucket. He kept stopping everyone and tellng them that his brother couldn't have peanuts or milk. He is such a good brother to look out for Andrew like that but it was getting the people all confused and Andrew was ending up without any candy. I assured him we would just take care of it when we got home.
The weather was beautiful. I was worried about it being chilly so we wore jackets and we got too warm. I do love non-Idaho trick-or-treating. :)

24 Weeks!

24 weeks and counting! That means we have now made it to 6 months!! Of course we don’t want the babies to come for a couple more months but it is somewhat comforting to know that if they were born now they have an 85% chance of survival.

I am beginning to grow out of some of my maternity clothes. The main pair of jeans that I wore through Timothy's pregnancy is now too small. Soon enough I won't have any pants that I can wear. Guess it's time to go shopping! :)

The babies and I are doing well. I feel like a woman who is 9 months pregnant i.e. my body aches, I have little to no energy, I can barely walk up the stairs, my sciatic nerve is killing me, etc. But, overall, I am doing well. Some days I wonder though, how I will make it through 2-3 more months of this. But, then I think of two little babies screaming in unison and I tell myself I can make it a lot longer.

Everyone keeps asking us about names for these little ones. Here are some we have come up with:

Being Star Wars fans (mostly all the boys) of course we had to consider:

LUKE & LEIA.

It’s football season so we had to take that in to consideration too with:

TIKI & RHONDA
PEYTON & ELLIE

and of course: RAIDER & ALLIE
(You have to be a football fan to get any of those)

With all the political stuff going on and the possibility of the babies being born on inauguration day we also had to consider:

JOHN & SARAH

Actually, on a more serious note, it wasn’t too hard to pick the names. We have had a girl name picked out ever since we were first married and have never gotten to use it yet so that one wasn’t hard. When it came to a boy’s name we had discussed the possibility of having more boys someday before we were ever expecting and wondering what we would name another one. So we had already come up with that one too. So when they told us it was one of each, we just put the names together. Derek didn’t want names that rhymed anyway but I thought it might be nice to have names that at least went together. Ah well! Anyways-- the names are:

PHILIP CHAUNCEY
and
KYLIE JO

Derek’s middle name is Kyle so that’s where that comes from and the Jo obviously comes from my first name. So by putting our names together that’s what you get. I had to laugh when I realized that after having all these boys it’s the girl that gets named after her father.
All of our boys have middle names that are family names and we wanted to continue that tradition. Chauncey is a family name on the Loveland side—there are a few of them, one of them being a member of the first group to enter the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young. We have always liked the name and just never used it yet. We realized one day that each one of our boys has a name from the New Testament (Brian THOMAS, ANDREW, and TIMOTHY). So we had to decide if we would continue that unintended trend, or not. So as a Sunday evening activity one night we sat down and listed the 12 Apostles and then began crossing off the names we didn’t like, or that had already been used. At the end we were left with only a few names and both of us happened to say something to the effect of, “Well I like Philip. We could use that one.” Then we laughed when we realized we had “wasted” all that time for no apparent reason. But later as we thought about it we both knew that we would someday have a Philip, we just didn’t know when. I guess we do now.

When we told the boys the names they caught right on to them and wouldn’t even consider any other options. (Although Andrew is really partial to the name Raider—he is who picked that one. Ha! Ha!). I actually got to look at the baby clothes at Wal-Mart the other day and was showing the boys the little baby clothes and we talked about how cute things would look on Baby Kylie or Baby Philip. A week or so later the boys and I ran to Wal-Mart to grab something. The boys were not happy about going, so after we had what we needed I asked the boys if I could look at the baby clothes. They were so nice and gave me permission. Actually, they gave me 4 minutes to look. Silly kids! Anyways, as soon as we got to the clothes Timothy pointed to the first pink thing he saw and said, “Kylie!” It was very cute. It is fun to look at all the pink stuff and it is very cute but I still find myself drawn to all the blue stuff instead. I guess it’s just habit. One that I will break soon enough I’m sure! :)

(For those of you who recognized the accompanying song as the theme song from the TV series "24," you might enjoy listening to the song at this link: http://savethesoldiers.com/audio/24/24.mp3 Derek, who is a big 24 fan, got quite the laugh from it.)

Fire Trucks

The boys all want to grow up and be fire fighters, especially Andrew. So when the fire station near our home had an open house we just had to go. The boys had a great time. They got to do several things like explore the fire trucks, tour the station, spray the fire hose, and watch one of the big fire trucks spray. It was hot and sunny so they were tired and hot by the time we left and Brian was broken hearted because he didn't get a balloon, they ran out. So on the drive home they forgot how much fun it was. I hate when that happens! Anyways, here are some pictures of the event. (It has taken me a little while to get them posted, the open house was a couple weeks ago, but better late than never). Who knew you could take so many pictures of boys in a fire trucks?!

Ultrasound Results

SURPRISE!!


We ended up getting our ultrasound early (it was rescheduled for Monday, it just took me a day to get the results posted-- just giving everyone ample time to get their vote in-- he! he!).


And now, for the news you've all been waiting for. . . .

It's a BOY!!

and

It's a GIRL!!

Thanks to everyone that was thinking "pink" for us, I guess it worked. I am still a little bit in awe knowing that we are really having a girl. The thought of buying pink things is exciting and yet weird. The boys are all excited-- they, especially Andrew, always knew it was one of each anyway so it was no surprise to them.

Our Ultrasound was a very indepth one done at a Perinatology clinic in a large hospital about 45 minutes away. They measured everything. Derek was quite amazed watching as they announced things like "Here's the kidney," and it was a little black dot that to him looked like all the other black dots next to it. The babies look great-- they are both healthy and growing well although they are short, especially the little girl. The doctor said considering the parents though she wasn't worried. Hmm. . . is she implying we are short! :)

The majority of the ultrasound was done in the traditional view that we are used to seeing but when they would zoom in on the faces they would switch it over to the 3D ultrasound. It was cool to see and looked great on the computer screen, but the printed pictures I don't think turned out as well.

Baby A, our little girl, was quite photogenic and let us see her face very well, so we have some good pictures of her. She was much more modest though and made us be more patient to see her gender. Here are some 3D shots of her. They are both her profile. In the first one she has her fists up by her face-- one at her forehead and one in front of her mouth. In the second her little fists are both down by her chest. Hope you can make it all out. (The longer you look at them the more they take shape-- at least to me).

Baby B, our little boy, on the other hand, was not so photogenic when it came to letting us see his face. He showed us his gender right off with no problems but liked to hide his face. Consequently, we didn't get as good of pictures of him. Once again, these are profile pictures. He also has his hands up by his face. In the first one he has a hand over the middle of his face and his arm at the side of his head with his hand over his ear. The black dot is the shadow of his eye. The second photo is the same only no black spot. His face is a little harder to see than hers.

We get to have an ultrasound like this every four weeks. So we have another one on November 5th.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our gender poll. It was fun to see what people were thinking (we couldn't see who voted what, we could just see the results). By the way, the final results were: 10 votes for two boys, 10 votes for two girls, and 13 votes for one of each. So the majority, barely, got it right. Good guessing everyone!

20 weeks-- Half Way!

Well, we've made it to the half-way point! Although, twin pregnancies are usually a few weeks shorter than regular ones so we actually already passed half way a few weeks ago. I'm sure the holidays will make the second half go by very quickly.

Eveyone around here keeps telling me I still look small for carrying twins. I think it's probably because they didn't know me before so they have never seen me when I wasn't pregnant. At this point I'm usually just starting to think about wearing maternity clothes. It's amazing how quickly I change-- one day I still could zip up my jacket fine, it wasn't even tight, and the next day it wouldn't even come together.

Derek's very excited because he got to feel one of the babies move the other day. They are quite active in there. One cooperated very well and kicked him as soon as he put his hand on my tummy. The other one wasn't as cooperative and kept missing him.

Our ultrasound is in one week (8 October) so if you haven't gotten your vote in on our poll located in the side bar then you better hurry. The results so far show that not many people have much hope for the girls. Ah well, Brian already informed me that we can't have any girl toys at our house anyway. I asked him if we had a girl what she would play with and he said, "Cars!" Andrew, at least, is more empathetic. He definitly thinks a baby girl would need some girl toys to play with. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.