Helllooooo Molly!

I'll let Natalie do a frilly post but I wanted to get some pictures up so everyone could meet Our new little girl Molly Dalpias.
Born: 1:07AM Dec 28, 2009
Weight: 6 lb 12.5 oz
Height: 19 inch
Mom and Baby are doing great!

Good Golly, Miss Molly

We are now 17 days away from Molly's due date and I think we are pretty much ready for her to come! A friend of mine asked me what kind of things I have done and made to get ready for her, so I thought I would post some of those...

By the way, I am WAY excited to have a girl! It's been fun picking out frilly things for her!

Here are her hairbows and her bow holder that I made.

This is her blessing dress. It's actually the same one I wore when I was blessed. My mom found matching shoes and a hair band for it.
Here is Benson being a cheese ball. I really like him!


I made this carseat cover for her to keep out the cold and the strangers hands.
The outside of the carseat cover.

I think I've posted these before, but here's Benson's picture frames. Those blocks are going to have the letters of his name on them, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Benson's chinese lanterns.

The saying on his wall says "Planes... Trains... Trucks and Toys, There's nothing quite like little boys." So true!

Molly's picture frames. No pictures yet!

Molly's chinese lanterns.

The saying on her wall says "Dresses, Dolls, Ribbons and Curls, there's nothing quite like little girls."

P.S. I got the paper lanterns after Halloween for 25 cents each and painted them to match the colors of the kids' room.

Molly's crib. Thanks to Grandma Gayle for the supplies to make her quilt. I love it!

And thanks to Tami for making the quilt on the end of the crib. It is SUPER CUTE!

These are binky holders. Not sure if she'll be a binky girl, but she'll be a stylish one!

Benson's side of the room.

Molly's side of the room.

We are really excited for Molly to be here. I am progressing slowly, but I'm hoping to go to her due date or at least past Christmas. It will be a lot of fun to have a baby girl in our house. I'm very excited for her to come, but nervous about having another little one around. We are ready!

We love to see the temple...

Quite often, our daily travels take us past the Ogden LDS Temple. Every time we drive by the temple, this is what I hear from the back seat...

Benson: There's the TEMPLE!!!! Jesus lives there. Jesus shoots guns!

I guess if you were 2 years old and saw this.....

on top of the temple, you might think it was Jesus shooting guns too!

Halloween

We had a really fun Halloween this year. Benson was a golfer, Casey was his caddie, Molly was a golf ball, and I was the flag stick. Benson actually understood halloween this year, which made it a lot more fun!

Here we are at the Dalpias Family breakfast carnival. It was a blast!

How we feel everyday....

Benson:

"Bennon sad. Bennon miss Daddy. Daddy workin"

What's been going on?

Well, last weekend was the deer hunt. Here are my mighty hunting men.

Our latest obsession around the Haws and Dalpias households is.... you guessed it, GOLF!!!

Benson has his own set of clubs (thanks, Cory!) that he won't let out of his sight, but the other day we went to the golf store and they had a REAL set of tiny baby clubs.

Here is Casey getting Benson set up to hit the ball

Here's Benson wacking it. Look at that ball go!

On a side note, Benson was VERY sad that we couldn't take these golf clubs home with us, so we had to tell him the magic of asking Santa Claus for things. Now he says that Santa is going to bring him "golf club presents".... we'll see about that!

Originally Benson wanted to be a "doggy" for halloween, but after being given many other options, he has since changed his mind. Here he is talking about... what else? Golf.


And here is Benson singing a song for us.

How could you NOT laugh at this?

Dear Hevly Fadder,

Thank you pick'n nose

Thank you boogers

Amen

Ready.... Set....

I guess you could say that I am in the "nesting stage" of pregnancy. I feel really motivated to get ready for the baby to come. Here are some things we have done:

On Tuesday we had our targeted ultrasound appointment. It was a lot of fun to see more of the baby and how she is growing. We usually take Benson with us when we go and he is always really good and LOVES to see Molly on the movie. She is right on for her due date of January 3rd, which is wonderful, and everything looks really good with her. Here are a couple of the pictures we got. Sorry if they are hard to see, they are a picture of the picture.


I mentioned earlier that we got Benson a new bed. It's really nice because it has a bookshelf for all of his books and drawers underneath for his clothes. I LOVE IT!!! and I'm sure Benson does too.
I have been trying to girl-ify Benson's room (or Molly's half anyway). I made these super easy frames for both of them. I got the idea from a frame my sister-in-law, Shawnee gave me when I was preggo with Benson, I just adapted the idea to fit my space.

For my birthday, Casey built me quilt frames. I didn't even know that I wanted quilt frames, But Casey knew and he crafted them with his own genius. I got to use them today for the first time when I made a quilt for Molly.

Casey's mom got me all of the things I needed to go with my quilt frames, like tacks and scissors and needles. She also got me the stuff to make Molly this quilt. I LOVE IT!!! and I'm sure Molly will too.

Casey forgot to get me clamps to go with my frames, so I got to pick out my own. I got these really nice ones, which you can tighten with only one hand!!!! They are very convinient. And the best part is that the guy at the Home Depot gave me 4 for the price of 2!

After Molly's quilt was done, Casey and Benson made a fort out of the quilt frames. Silly boys!

This is them "chill-axin"

This picture...

Makes me giggle.

I had an early meeting at church and they showed up like this.

22 weeks....

AND STILL TRUCKIN'

(this post is REALLY long and most of it's just so I can remember what's going on, so don't feel obligated to read unless you want to.)

Things are going really great around here. I am past my half-way mark with this pregnancy which seems REALLY weird since I hardly feel pregnant at all. So far, Molly is a very active baby and I feel like she's doing flips all day (and night) long. Our doctor does an ultrasound every month and so far everything has been great. Next week we get to have a 4-D ultrasound, which will be exciting to see how she looks. We're almost ready for her to come. I've gotten a lot of clothes on sales and we are stocked up on diapers and wipes. I've made a million hairbows for her and I've got a few quilts in the works. It will be really fun to have a little girl around the house and to have all of the little girl things. I'm nervous about having a baby again, but I'm really excited too.

Benson is doing great. He is such a smart little boy. People always come up to us in the store and try to talk to him and he's usually really good about carrying on a conversation with them. He knows his name, his age, his favorite color, he can point out and make the noises of lots of animals, he can point out and say 4 different colors, he can count to 3, he jumps off of pretty much anything he sees including his bed and our coffee table. The other day I was in the shower and he was eating breakfast and I hear, "mom, MOM, nat, NAT, NATA-LEEEEE" I guess I deserve it after many years of calling my parents by their first names. Benson's favorite thing right now is books and he won't go to sleep until we read a few of them, and even after that, he keeps trying to get them into his bed. One of his favorite books is about when Jesus was born, and he always tells me, "Jesus ride a donkey" and "Jesus lives Temple". He is starting to be REALLY good about saying his prayers. Last night it went like this...

Dear Hevly Fadder

Tank you day

Tank you mac-a-roni

Tank you book

Tank you Jesus

Tank you Buff-a-low

Tank you Wadder

Amen

Benson seems to be excited for Molly. He's been sleeping on a big boy bed for over a year, but we got him a new bed frame with drawers underneath it and a bookshelf headboard so that Molly can use his dresser. He keeps calling the crib, "Molly's crib" and we keep telling him that it's Benson AND Molly's room. He loves to kiss my belly and has started pretending like he gets kicked everytime he touches it. He is such a good helper and usually does everything I ask him to do. He has his own mind, though, and will sometimes do things he knows he isn't supposed to do just to see what will happen. He likes to make messes and be noisy sometimes. He likes to push my buttons. The other day, he was bugging me so bad and when Casey called from work, I was almost in tears because Benson kept trying to put his feet all over me and he thought it was sooooo funny. He loves his grandpas best of all and gets really excited when we go to see them. He's still a mama's boy, though and won't let anyone else change his diapers or put him to bed. We really love Benson and could sit and watch him and laugh at him all day. He has such a funny personality and we love having him at our house.

Casey's still going to Weber State. He just got his associate's degree last semester. He's actually farther along than 2 years, but has put off taking some of the dumb classes and has been taking classes that he really likes, like computer programing (sounds like fun to me!). He works full-time at Weber High doing their computers and seems to like it a lot. During the summer he worked as a District computer tech instead of a school tech and loved doing that. Hopefully the training and experience he got during the summer will help him a lot in the future.

We are still living in our duplex. Last month was our year mark from when we bought it. We really love the neighborhood and we love having a garden. It's nice to be able to sit in our backyard at night or to clean out our garage and feel like it's really ours. Being landlords isn't all that great, I worry a lot about the rental and wonder if we're going to have to do a lot of work on it again... hopefully not. But getting rent every month isn't so bad, so I guess it's ok.

We had a really fun summer and were gone every weekend besides 2. Our neighbors kept telling us that it was alright if we wanted to stay home some weekends. It was fun to have a lot of time to spend with Casey and Benson. We have a lot of fun together. I guess I never really knew it would be like this. Sometimes staying at home and being a wife and mother isn't all that exciting, but there are a lot of moments when I just couldn't imagine doing anything else besides scraping dried-up cereal off the floor and folding laundry over and over and over. Sometimes it doesn't really seem like I'm making that much of a difference, but when I hear my little boy repeating things I've said, like "no fussing!" and making animal noises that aren't probably the right noises, but it's all I could come up with at the moment, and when he wants to give me a million kisses on one cheek and then a million on the other and one on the nose..... it's all VERY worth it. I love that I get to be here with Benson for all of the wonderful times in his life. I couldn't imagine picking him up from daycare and getting a report of my son's life. I'm glad that Casey works so hard so that Benson and I could spend every day together. Sometimes I feel like Casey gets a little cheated out of this whole deal, but today Benson said "no love mommy, love DADDY"... so I'm sure Casey knows that he's pretty special too. Benson and I LOVE when Casey is home, it's always so much more fun when Casey is around. Our entire day is spent cleaning up for when Daddy comes home or making dinner for when Daddy comes home. The best part of our day is when Daddy comes home.

Anyway, I know this is a really long and BORING blog post, but if you've made it to the end, good job. I just wanted to write down everything that's going on so I remember it someday when those little hands aren't so little anymore and when the kisses don't come so often. I want to remember how much I love this little boy, how grateful I am for my husband, and how excited I am for my little girl to come. This is what life is about!

Our "Dedicated" Hunter

This year, Casey drew out to do the "dedicated hunter" program. Being a dedicated hunter means that you can hunt all 3 deer hunts, which is really nice since he's hunted since he was 14 and has only gotten one deer before. We assumed we would be hunting the bow hunt, the muzzle loader, and of course the rifle hunt which lasts until late October. But, we were wrong! Casey was VERY lucky and shot this deer with his on the morning of the opening day! What a wonderful hunter! Guess we won't be hunting for 3 months after all.

Here is our family with the deer. Benson keeps saying it's a "funny deer"

Here's Benson watching the guys skin the deer. It was pretty cold, it even SNOWED a little.
Notice his cousin, Addyson behind him, she was VERY disturbed by the whole thing. She kept wondering if the deer was ok... what a sweet girl!

Still watching. He wasn't very disturbed by it, which is nice because it's hanging in our garage right now.

Casey and his prized 2-point!

If you want to see a cute video of Benson, go here : http://sharing.theflip.com/session/d57f17f40d55c7697fb2e024da66fa50/video/5634198

best idea EVER!!!!

Thanks to my cousin-in-law, Marcia, I got this BRILLIANT idea to make Benson a sticker chart. Marcia made hers for potty training, but since we sort of gave up on that for a while, I made Bensey-boy a sticker chart for things he should be doing everyday. He is TRILLED to do things that he never wanted to do before, like brush his teeth. All I say is that he can put a sticker on his chart and he does whatever I tell him to!

Benson really is a good helper and he's such a good boy. I hardly ever have to get after him for anything and when I do, he gets really sad and it makes me feel like a jerk. Even for being such a good boy, he is still a very MESSY child. Hopefully our sticker chart will help him to want to help out a little bit more and keep his teeth brushed, prayers said, bed made, and room clean and help his mommy out a little during the day.

P.S. Notice the summer "Buzz Cut"... OOPS! It wasn't supposed to be that short.

Harvesting

Our garden is growing very well thanks to all of Casey's hard work and no thanks to my non-hard work. Here are some pictures of today's harvest...

It's a.......

GIRL!!!!

The doctor says "100 percent girl", so we are VERY excited.

Benson has been saying "baby goal" for a couple of weeks now, Casey said he thought boy, and I have been off and on between boy and girl, but I've had a girl's name picked out for a while. We still have 6 months until Baby Molly comes, but it's exciting to finally know that it's a girl!

Two in Diapers? Let's hope not!!!

We are POTTY TRAINING!!!!!!

I let Benson choose which "undies" he wanted. As hard as I tried to get him to choose dinosaurs or "cars" or anything remotely boy-ish and cool, he chose ELMO!!!! Luckily a few of the Elmo undies have soccer balls and boyish stuff on them, so they aren't too bad.

Here is Benson showing us "elmo bum"

And... as I was taking pictures, this happened. Benson said "Benson pee pee floor"!!!
At least he knew what he was doing!
Any advice for potty training? I'd LOVE to hear it!

Baby Update

I am now 13 weeks along and into the second trimester with our mystery baby. I am feeling great, mostly. Just like when I was pregnant with Benson, I started having headaches really bad at the 11th week, but I'm trying to drink lots of water and it seems to help. I feel really lucky to have easy pregnancies, and I'm aiming for ZERO throwing up with this one! I can feel that my belly is getting bigger and I can't wait until I actually look pregnant instead of just fat.

Benson seems to be excited for the baby. He knows there is a baby in my belly and he always tries to lift up my shirt and kiss my belly. He is INFATUATED with babies, and anytime we see one, he makes a HUGE deal about it.

We still don't know if it's a boy or a girl. The doctor took a guess at 11 weeks, but I'm not sticking by that at all. We will find out at our next appointment if it's a boy or a girl. We would like a girl because we don't have one, but it would be a lot easier and cheaper if we had a boy since we have a lot of boy stuff already. Plus Casey says he wouldn't know what to do with a girl baby.

Anyway, I'm putting up a poll, so take a guess if it's a boy or a girl. We will find out around the 15th of July, so be sure to guess before then!

Our Ride on the Open Road

We left on Friday afternoon for our early anniversary away. Benson stayed with McKenzie on Friday afternoon and then spent the rest of the weekend at my parents' house. He had lots of fun and didn't want to come home with us when we picked him up.

We drove to Logan and stayed Friday night there. We actually got to go see a movie in the theater, which we haven't done for a REALLY LONG TIME. On Saturday, we drove to Bear Lake and that night we went to an amazing play at the Pickleville Playhouse. Then we left early on Sunday morning, trying to beat the rain home. We drove through Randolph and over Monte Cristo home. Unfortunately we didn't beat the rain and ended up driving over Monte Cristo in a HUGE storm. Luckily we had ponchos with us, even though we looked like Dorks, we stayed mostly dry. Here are some pictures from our trip.

This was my view the whole drive. Notice the rain clouds in the distance.


Us in Bear Lake. This is as close as we got to that FREEZING cold Lake.



Us and the Bike

On top of Monte Cristo. Casey's poncho tore because of the wind.

Me sportin' the Poncho.

Benson talking about the bike.