Caitlin

Everyone is doing fine!  Ashley & Emily are adjusting very well and things are going great.  Caitlin is a healthy nurser and has already gained two pounds!!!

Thanks to everyone for the happy wishes.  I'll write and visit as time allows.  It may be kind of sporadic right now, but will get better.

Hope your 2006 is a good one so far!

~Rebecca

Just wanted to write and wish all of you Happy Holidays!  I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas with your friends & family.

My in-laws arrive on 12/12, and I am scheduled to deliver by c-section on 12/15.  We are busily trying to prepare for Christmas as well.  All is going smoothly though, and things should go just fine! 

Again, Happy Holidays and I will post again once I am recovered.

Best Wishes,

I hope that you have a wonderful day with many blessings for you and your family!

Rebecca

Yes...I am still here!  Baby is doing fine, family is fine, I am fine.  Thanks to all who have stopped by.  I have just really been busy between the girls and appointments and getting ready for Christmas that I really haven't had much time to get on line.  I apologize.  I do have to say that I probably won't have a very dependable blog for awhile.  We are getting really close to delivery time and I want to spend as much time with family as possible.

Life is going pretty well right now.  I am involved in a parent's group for the school district up here and have also been quite busy with them.  I built them a website and have been doing a lot of P.R. for the group.  All of that is pretty well set up now, so that is one less thing to have to worry about.  It will be an on going thing, but the initial set up was pretty time consuming.

Ashley has started basketball with the middle school and is doing well.  She made high honor roll and received great reports for her 1st quarter of school.  She seems to be balancing the social and school aspects pretty well.  She is really enjoying school, which is great.  Emily is doing very well and is just being so sweet lately.  I can tell that she is much closer to 2 1/2 now and really is communicating well so is much less frustrated most of the time.  She really loves playing out in the snow.  She practices making snow angels inside the house on the living room floor.  She seems to be excited about the baby coming.  She lifts my shirt up and reads her books and gives her lots of cuddles.

I am feeling well and cruising through the last few weeks.  We have our last ultrasound tomorrow.  I am looking forward to seeing her.  Since we are having a planned c-section, I already have an "appointment" at the hospital on Dec 15.  Just a few more weeks now.  We are going to spend Thanksgiving weekend getting Emily's baby things out of storage to get set up and organized.  Paul's parents will be here in a few weeks.

I am nearly done with Christmas shopping.  I finished up quite a bit of it online yesterday.  Just a few more things to get and that should be it!  I am excited to put up our tree.  We have white lights up outside but will add more Christmas decorations after Thanksgiving.

Thanks for your patience in dealing with my bad bloggin'! 

TTFN,

Hello all.  Sorry I have been absent for over a week now.  Emily has not been feeling well and has been a little challenging to deal with.  She has been up for hours in the middle of the night for 8 nights straight.  I gave up and just slept in her bed last night, so she is still sleeping and I have a chance to write.  She is starting to get back to herself.  She has had a viral infection in her throat and ears, really affecting her nose too, so has been a little pitiful.  There has been nothing we could give her except regular cold meds & tylenol, so it has just had to wear itself out.  (And wear me out in the process I must say!)

We had snow on Monday and 70 mph winds.  It is warmer now, but predicting more snow for Saturday.  The moon & stars have been very pretty when peeking out from behind the clouds, but the northern lights haven't been visible for the past week.  Ashley had Monday off, so she had a friend stay over Sunday night.  Paul got the telescope out for them so they could look at the harvest moon.  Very pretty I'm told.

I have been feeling pretty well.  I have a doc appt tomorrow morning and am looking forward to my lab results to see how I have been doing with lowering my glucose levels.  I have a home meter, but will feel better getting official results from the lab that my doc can go over with me.  I feel very well in the afternoon & evening, but have a tough time in the morning as my sugar stays quite high through lunch time--even though I stick very carefully to my meal plan.  Baby seems to be doing fine though and if her kicks and pokes are any indication--she is very strong! :)

Not too much else for news.  Hopefully I can get around to do a little visiting this morning before Emi wakes.

TTFN,

Today is a happy day for Alaska residents.  It is the day that we get our permanent fund dividends.  Simply put, the PFD is the share that each Alaskan gets from the interest received on our revenues from the natural resources & oil used from our state.  This amount varies due to how the stock market performs as it is only paid from the interest earned on a 5 year average, not from the principle amount.  It is meant to last for generations so all Alaskans will benefit.  This year's payout is 845.67 for every man, woman and child resident.  It is the lowest payout in 20 years, but I am still happy with it!  (Our dividend took a hit from Enron and other stock market failings over the last 5 years).  Ashley gets to spend the 45.67, but the rest of the girls' always goes in their college accounts.  I am going to get an auto start put on my truck next week and the rest of mine will go towards Christmas & baby shopping.  Paul's will go in our savings.  Many people go out and just blow theirs, and some even let their kids do whatever they want with the entire amount that they receive!!  Anyways, dividend day is usually an exciting day for most people, almost like a pre-holiday season up here.

Everything else is going fine.  I am feeling much better and getting used to the new menu.  Thanks for all of the encouragement!  The initial feeling was overwhelming, but I am doing fine now.  I feel myself getting stressed so easily about little things, and just need to knock it off.

There is snow in the forecast, so we will see.  The forecast keeps changing, so not too sure how dependable it will be.  It is getting down into the 20's, although it has been mostly clear.  One thing I know is that it won't be too much longer!

I hope to get around to do some visiting online.  Enjoy your day!

TTFN,

Good Morning.  I hope everyone had a nice weekend.  We had a pretty productive one.  Our winterizing is complete.  Our re-organizing is just about complete.  I hope to get quite a bit more done this morning before Emily gets up.

My sister-in-law and her room mate are coming out from Anchorage this morning to visit for awhile.  Emily will be absolutely thrilled.  They should be here quite early, around 8:30.  I am not sure how long they are going to be staying for.  We also have a playdate with our neighbor girls later in the afternoon and then need to go to Wal-Mart to stock up on some things.  I dread going to Wal-Mart.  It is so busy all of the time.  Ashley wants to go too so we will wait until she gets home from school to go.

The diabetic menu is going well so far.  I have to be honest and tell you that I am not a huge veggie lover.  I usually include corn & potatoes in the veggie category and can't do that now as they are considered a starch.  I am eating a lot of baby carrots as I do like those.  Celery, radishes and lettuce don't even count towards anything, and those are other things that I can handle.  I'll do fine though.  I am already feeling better.  I didn't realize how bad I was feeling and how much I was "swinging" from high to low blood sugar, but now that I know what it was I sure do realize how unstable I was feeling throughout the day. 

Not too much else for news.  I hope to get around to do a little visiting later on today.

TTFN,

It is early Saturday morning, and I can't sleep.  I decided to come downstairs to poke around on the computer for a little while to see if I can get drowsy again.

Our trip to Anchorage yesterday was pretty good.  My labs at the OB appt were done and I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  My glucose level was quite high, and I was feeling quite miserable while waiting for the results.  I have to stick to a very strict diet and go in once a week for the rest of the pregnancy now.  It does explain how I feel a lot of the time, as I get to feeling very low blood sugar quite often and then feel pretty yucky awhile after eating.  I have already cut way down on the sweets as I just didn't feel good eating them, but really have to measure and be careful with what I eat now.  Hopefully I can do it just by controlling what I eat and not have to go on meds.  Baby is doing fine though, and that is what counts.

Emily really enjoyed tumblelena class on Thursday.  We will join and go every Thursday now.  I think it will be very good for her.

No snow yet, and it looks like we won't be getting any this weekend.  Next week is supposed to get pretty chilly, so we are going to try to do the remainder of our winterizing this weekend.  We did get all of the remaining leaves raked up yesterday afternoon.  They are still in piles as I want to go get some "pumpkin bags" from the store to fill and decorate our yard.  Not much else planned for the weekend, as we will just keep busy around the house.

Enjoy your weekend!

Good Morning All!  I just got Ashley off to school and am going to try to get some laundry done before Emily wakes this morning.  Today is her first "tumblelina" class.  It is a tumbling/gymnastics class for toddlers.  She loves to do somersaults and dangle on anything that she can hold on to.  She also can do the splits (which I can still do the splits both ways, even while 7 months pregnant, so she has apparently inherited my flexibility).  I figure this will give her something fun to do while getting the chance to meet other kids too!  I am looking forward to it.  It is only 1/2 hour class once a week, so I figure it is right about her attention span level. 

Tonight I have a meeting of the parent advisory board for the school district.  I was elected to the board as a representive for our area.  I will have meetings every Thursday this month.  Hopefully we will accomplish a lot more than we did the last meeting!  Paul will be home in time to stay with the girls, so my friend Moneak (who is president of the board) and I will get a little "mini-mommy" night out.  Probably just a little over an hour and a half.  We are going to elect chairs of the committees.  I am not running for anything as I figure I will be busy enough with a new baby and it will be enough for me to just make it to the meetings and be a good participant that way.

Tomorrow I will probably not get around to posting as I have an OB appointment in Anchorage at 8 AM.  UGH!  We will have to leave our house right after Ashley catches the bus at 6:30 in order to make it on time.  I have to be fasting for some blood tests, so glad that I can do it first thing in the morning.  Paul has the day off tomorrow so we will probably turn it into an errands around Anchorage/shopping at Costco day.  That is AFTER we eat!  

Not too much else for news.  Enjoy your day!

TTFN,

siggy by Elizabeth!

Today is our Anniversary!   We don't have anything really special planned as we went out this weekend and bought the dvd camera for our gift already.  I'll get Paul a card and attempt to cook his favorite dinner tonight.  I'll probably also have the girls "help" me make a cake or cupcakes too. 

Today is a very blustery day.  It has been really windy, with winds gusting around 50 mph since late yesterday afternoon.  The leaves are probably now officially off the trees, although it is too dark to really tell right now.  The good news is that Emily's sound machine apparently worked because she did not wake up to the wind noises this time!  Yeah! 

 Last night after voting we went to run a few errands in town.  It was really snowing in the mountains.  My 2 year old was upset because she wanted to go "up on the mountains to play in the snow like a penguin with a white tummy".  She cracks me up with the things that she comes up with.  She is very vocal and imaginitve for a 26 month old.  She also already has imaginary friends.  Her & her "friends" were playing in the bathroom hiding underneath the shower curtain yesterday as I was drying my hair.  My poor little punkin was twirling around when she hit right into the corner of the bathroom counter.  She has a scratch & bruise on her cheek and two cuts around her eye.  It was pretty pitiful.  She blamed it on one of her "friends" pushing her.  I am so glad that she is going to have a little sister for a playmate.  I get her together to play a lot with other kids, she just loves it.

Not too much else for news.  We have a playdate today and then some errands to run.  I have been cleaning out closets, so we are going to take some clothing & boots into the Salvation Army in town.

Have a great day!!

Elizabeth made my siggy!