The Big Day came Early

Shannon has been having a really good experience being a surrogate for this lovely family.

Pregnancy has been going great and she has been feeling good. 

The last few weeks she has finally been feeling like she would like to be done.

Chasing Buddy has become impossible so he has been kind of having a hey day.

Shannon checks her Blood Pressure every so often when Brian checks his.

Her's was kind of high on Friday. If I remember some of the facts correctly,

Saturday morning her limbs began to feel tingly.

By Sunday her doctor said to go to the ER and be checked out.

She was admitted with Preeclampsia.

Brian brought the kids in Sunday night with chocolate cookies. 

Little Orphan Annie here.

I believe Monday Buddy had a little mishap at Preschool.

No one saw what happened, but he knocked out his front tooth.

Now he will be toothless on the upper and bottom in the exact same place.

He knocked out his baby tooth on the bottom when it was barely coming in. 

Shannon and baby Kiwi were closely monitored Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and both were doing good so Shannon enjoyed a few days of Hospital Spa treatment. Wednesday night her blood pressure spiked so it was time to deliver the baby.

Meet Baby Kiwi. 

Born Jan 27th at 10:02 PM

4 lbs 15 oz

Her Apgar number was 9

Her original scheduled C Section was Feb 26th. 

Shannon is feeling much better today - Friday. Thursday was rough with side affects from all the medications that were administered to bring down her blood pressure. She thinks she will be ready to go home on Sunday. She doesn't know yet when baby will go home with her family. 

Working on health

Fred and I are making changes in our lifestyle because we have had a health screening that came back with very unhappy numbers for both of us. We have decided together, that we need to make some changes and get ourselves in a better state of health. It just so happens that our medical insurance has a program where you can participate in health screenings and other online programs and earn points towards rewards.... It is a dollar per point value and these are the rewards that we have earned and now have at home. Plus we both got a fitbit for Christmas.

This is our stationary bike. Right now it is in the living room in front of the TV. Fred is using it more than I am. In fact, I've only really been on it once. I hate seats. This may be his.

We haven't inflated this yet. It came in a set I ordered. It had the step below, this ball and a DVD with exercises. I haven't looked at the DVD yet, but I will. 

 I ordered this digital food scale. I do weight my proteins most of the time for my salads. I have been using my scale from LA Weight Loss, but this is so much cooler.

At work I sit. A LOT. I figure, it can't hurt. I ordered this to take to work to put under my desk. I should be getting up out of my seat about every hour at east, but this will help with movement and increase my step count on my fitbit. I don't know if it will work out, but it's worth a try.

 I've had a Giselle Glider for over a year. At first, I didn't use it because it made the bottom of my feet feel weird. It was very annoying. My friend told me it takes time for your foot to get use to the motion and movement in your shoe. Well I have finally crossed over that weird feeling and I am using this a lot. I fit in at least 10 minutes before work and sometimes longer. I also use it at night when I want to watch TV. I'm starting the Friends series on Netflix again. 

I bought new walking shoes and a sweatshirt to bring to work so I can walk on my lunch hour. Sometimes I don't take an hour so walking does fit in the time, but sometimes I do and eat at my desk. It really depends on the weather. I don't walk in the summer and sometimes it is too cold.

I also use our weight bench about two mornings a week. Nothing heavy duty. There are only two movement I can do on the weight bench because I don't use the leg press thing - it's bad for your knees. Another move I can't reach the "paddles". I also use 5 lb hand weights for three movements on the floor. It's not much, but I know strength training is really important.

It is nice that we are in this together. I hope we can improve our numbers by the time we have our next screening  AND keep it up until we die. 

A really nice weekend

So I really enjoyed this last weekend. 

To start off every weekend, we go out to dinner.

We had a gift card and a certificate for a free appetizer at Texas Roadhouse so that's where we went.

We never order appetizers because it just fills you up, but since it was free we got sucked in.

We ordered their cheese fries so I ordered a side Caesar salad and two skewers of grilled shrimp.

I wasn't going to eat their rolls, but I caved and ate two. They really are not that fantastic except when you eat them as soon as they set them down nice & warm.

We've been working on cleaning up our eating and have been doing really well. Meaning not really any treats, chips and are adding lots of fish, veggies and smoothies made with spinach. So we splurged and went to Burger King (another gift card) and I got a carmel sundae and Fred ordered their snicker pie piece.

After Saturday chores and a certain amount of nesting, we headed to see Star Wars.

Surprisingly, we had not had any lunch yet... (hehehe) so we decided to split a Marv's burger & fries.

Still within better eating habits when you share.

Then since we were in the splurging mentality of the weekend we walked across the parking lot to Grandma Tobler's Bakery and bought these cookies.

 The best part of this moment really was the fact that we sat outside at a little table with mid weight jackets on in the beautiful sunshine. We have just finished a week that was Pacific Northwest weather. I can't handle gray skies anymore. 

 I think that Fred actually might love cookies more than I do. Or maybe it just seems that way because he eats more of them than I do. You know, I try to be "good" (HA)

 So after all the eating, we went to see the show.

I'm not a big Star Wars fan by any means, but this really was good.

Now I didn't care for the Finn actor or the Jet Pilot Ace actor, but the actress who played Rey, she was good. I hope they don't pursue anything between Finn and Rey. I'm not feeling it.

 After the show, we went home and watched the original Star Wars. We own all of the DVDs. 

A couple other thoughts about the movie. Harrison Ford we have seen through the years as he has aged. He did look older, but you know it's him. Carrie Fisher on the other hand...if you didn't know it was her I would have never matched her to the original Leia. She didn't look old or frumpy at all, but she just didn't look anything like her former self. Maybe if she would have colored her hair dark...I don't know. It was just weird.

And then some random.....

On Friday sitting at my desk I looked out and see this tank driving down the road.

Today, I look out the window and see this hot air balloon. We have a lot of these around here and usually flying above and around our neighborhood. Today though this balloon was traveling really low to the ground way out here. He did shift course and go back up and continued south.

Oh and one more tidbit from the weekend. 

Colorado Christmas

This Christmas we went to see Shannon and her family in Englewood, Colorado. Scott and Jess were also thinking of spending their Christmas in Colorado so they could visit Jess's old stompin ground. She attended Johnson & Wales University in Denver. So we all decided to merge our Christmas together.  Here is what it looked like.

Our first morning started off good. Mima let me sit by her and color.

Two peas in a pod. 

Buddy has more than one train and track sets. You will see later on.

Whenever Buddy comes to visit, he loves to use our little vacuum. We happened to have a couple extra new ones that I thought I would use in our new house. They remained in their boxes so we decided it was time to let Buddy have one of his own. 

Mima loves Mini Mouse. She got this Minnie Mouse Dress, light up high heels, an Anna doll from Frozen and we gave her this little pink stroller. 

Buddy got this Hot Wheels track so he and Grandpa worked on setting it up together. 

Now that I'm looking at this, Buddy has one train track set and it's pretty huge.

It was so nice to have Scott and Jess with us. We all took turns cooking a meal. Scott and Jess also helped Fred and I set up our new fitbits and help me with my last frustrations with my phone and I Pad. I printed off this 25 Crock Pot Dinners for each of my girls. Sundays are always best when we come home to a home filled with the yummy aroma of food awaiting in the crock pot.

We found this Sheldon (on a shelf) at Barnes and Noble months ago and had to buy it for Scott.

I think this is one of our technology sessions.

Scott has been ogling the new Tesla cars for a couple of years now. He arranged for Brian, Fred to come along on a test drive for Saturday. This is Brian sharing the happy news.

In the afternoon we drove out to Shannon & Brian's house site. The house behind Brian is the same as the one they are building. We walked over and went inside to get a feel for their layout. 

Pretty Exciting!

Saturday night we went through a session in the Denver Temple. Jess brought family names for each of us. It's a pretty little temple. We went out for Mexican Food afterwards. 

On Sunday we went to church. Here we are in Relief Society together. 

After church, it was picture time. These all turned out so cute, that I'm posting them all.

We went upstairs to watch Inside Out. It was warmer upstairs. 

Monday we went to Wings over the Rockies Museum. We chose this activity because it was indoors and we could be warm. Not so. Their heating broke down the night before so it was really cold inside. We didn't spend a long time here even though there was so much to see and read about. 

Buddy the Pilot.

After naps, we took the light rail up to the Broncos Stadium. The kids really love riding the train.

The stadium is at the end of the line. We had to wait outside to catch the return train. It was cold. My skimpy little scarf actually helped keep me warm.

Jess and Scott were very content and happy travel companions. She very much appreciated being away from the heat and humidity of Texas.

I got to sit the kids in my lap and take a little video of them. 

Yep - it was a great time.

The Big Twelve

This last weekend we took a trip up to see Corinne's family.

We went to celebrate Richard's birthday

 (same as Grandpa Fred on the 17th)

and Spencer's birthday on January 1st.

The main attraction for the weekend was Richard receiving the Aaronic Priesthood and being ordained to the office of a Deacon.

Saturday was a hither and dither day and I didn't take any pictures.

I broke all the rules on Sunday and took pictures during Sacrament Meeting.

This is Margot, Ben's mom. I love her. She is the nurturing Grandma for the these boys.

I'm not so good at that. Never have been. Even with my own kids I probably lacked on displaying affection and not so good with words either. I always figured they knew from how we lived.

Probably not such a smart move. Both Fred and I were raised that way.

So back to the fun of the day.

Spencer - and his singing gyrations.

I was busy taking pictures and missed the moment when the Primary was done singing and Spencer threw his leg over the podium to climb over. Someone did stop him in time.

Corinne is the ward choir director. She is a skilled director from what I observed. I would be her pianist any day.

 Corinne also sang a duet with Heather Abbey (Joy & Howard's daughter in law)

She also accompanied a musical group. She was kind of a one woman show.

We were pretty doggone proud. All those years of music growing up prepared her for her life today.

I got Henry in my lap and we had some fun with my phone.

 Any with my tasty lip gloss that tastes like peppermint.

Spencer with the goofiness again.

While Richard stood on the stand next to the Bishop, he made the same awkward, self conscious faces as Scott did when he was the same age. It was heartwarming. 

There were a lot of members from Ben's family. 

Richard had two sets of grandparents, his aunt Sara and her new boyfriend Spencer, great uncle Rick, great aunt Terry and her husband Kent, uncle Paul and his wife Janae and their two little boys. 

It was a very nice day.