Time flies when...

...you have a baby! I think just about every spare moment I have is either spent washing bottles or folding laundry or trying to fit some time in with my girls. And any other sparest of spare moments find me lying on the couch trying to catch a few winks! Tyson will be 8 weeks old tomorrow, oh my! Here are a few highlights from the past 2 months....

School started! Here is my beautiful 1st grader all ready to go!

Mallory was sad to see Syd go BUT I think she really loves having the rule of the house again! ;)

Took a few pics for Tyson's birth announcement, this one was my favorite. I know it's not great, I'm certainly not a fantastic photographer, but I just think he looks so sweet!

We had lots of family in town last weekend for Tyson's baby blessing at Church. It was so amazing to see our Dads and most of our brothers surround him to bless him...definitely a choice moment in my life!


Our little bitty family!

Our big huge family! My cousin and his family came over from Mesquite and then we had family up from Austin and here from Utah and of course the far reaches of Keller and Watauga! Thank you so much, everyone, for being part of T's special day!

All the boys!!!

All the girls!! The way we were holding Tyson is a long story, you'd have to see wedding pics from all of the Breinholt family weddings! ;)

Ha ha, notice the spit-up all over Baca's shoulder...awesome! Tyson got him good! ;)

We went to the Stockyard's with everyone...it was a perfect day! The weather was beautiful! These Utah folk really lucked out, it was about the only below 100 degree day we had seen in months!

Sydney and Baca did the maze...they got lost a few times but had fun anyway!

We sure love when Grandma is here! She is always so good at cuddling! (and keeping us warm when we are in a really cold restaurant!)

I'm very accustomed to my girls adoring my sister, they always love Auntie! But this trip they attached themselves to Aunt Kiss and would not leave her alone! She only thought she was going to have a kid-free weekend! ;)

Baca & Grandma and Aunt Kiss & Uncle Kent were sad to go back to Utah after their visit. Wish it could have been longer...thank you for coming!!! (and for bringing the awesome weather with you!!!)

Welcome Tyson!

Our main man is finally here! We welcomed Tyson into our family last Monday, the 18th, at 10:59a.m. He is a big boy - he was 8 pds 7 oz! A whole pound heavier than both the girls! My first impression of him was how much he reminded me of Mallory but as the days have gone on, I see a lot of Sydney in him too so I think he is just a good little mix of the girls. Up to this point he's been a really good baby; had kindof a rough day yesterday but hopefully that was just a fluke! ;) I can't tell you how grateful I am that he is here finally and that he is healthy and beautiful and perfect. It's been a long journey to get him here and I'm so thankful that he is! We love you Tyson!!!

The girls watching him get cleaned up in the nursery. One of the nurses came to our room later and was joking how she thought that Sydney was about to try and jump right through that window to get to him! He has two adoring big sisters!!!

Sydney could not wait to hold him. When they came back in the afternoon she quickly said hi to me and then requested I hand over her little brother! She has been so excited for this moment!

Most of my family - my brother was at home sick so we were sad he wasn't there but so grateful my sister and parents were here to help with the girls. They both had a great time having slumber parties and playing lots! They got spoiled a LOT last week!

Me and my kids! I have three now...so weird!

My angel. We waited a long time for you precious baby, so glad you are here now!

All ready to go home! His shirt says "Beary Cute" and has a little teddy bear on it. ;)

Ha ha, this has been one of my favorite moments since we came home. Sydney was holding the baby and Mallory went to cuddle up by them and fell asleep. Few minutes down the road we hear Syd say something super grown up like "Um, a little help here! The kids are sleeping!" Couldn't resist the Kodak moment, so cute!

Mallory loves to hold him too and help with feeding him. Every time he fusses she panics and runs to get Ben or I so we know he's crying - since we likely didn't hear it! ;) Love this picture of her, she's just so darn cute!

And here is my awake boy! This was the other morning while everyone was at Church, we were just chillin and he was staring out the window at the sunshine. What a little cutie pie! Feeling so blessed!!!!

It's the final countdown...

Got that song stuck in your head now, don't you?! You're welcome! ;) I've been singing it all day if that makes you feel any better!

We are down to just a few days before little man makes his grand entrance into this world! By Monday afternoon I will be holding my baby instead of wearing him! ;) To say I am excited would be the understatement of the day. There is a light at the end of the tunnel finally; I feel like I've been waiting for this for SO long. As silly as it sounds, I really am almost looking forward to the exhaustion and craziness that is having a newborn because at least I can start feeling better and I am SO ready for that!

I have done a lot of reflecting during this pregnancy because of the physical toll it has taken on me. Honestly I don't have many fond memories of this time. A lot of women are lucky and can say that they love being pregnant and how great they feel; I am most certainly not one of them! However, I have been so wrapped in arms of love that I am grateful to have gone through this - again. Going through this after I had Sydney was the epitome of misery (or so I thought) and I don't know that this past 9 or 10 months has been much better or worse than that, I've kindof blocked it out! But we have received so many kind words and favors and help that I can't help but be grateful for the blessing to have such amazing people around me. We have had friends and neighbors bring dinner by just to help out, not because anyone asked them to. People have come over to mow our yard when I haven't been able to and because Ben can't. I have people call me almost every day just to check on me and see how my day is going. Friends have helped watch my kids during some of my Dr's appointments. Sweet friends and neighbors helped take and pick up Sydney from school when I couldn't walk hardly. The list goes on and on and I am so grateful to live where we do and be surrounded by the friends and family we have here, they are all irreplaceable and priceless. Thank you, all of you, for the help you have been to us.

During these times when I feel so desperate for relief and there really isn't anything or anyone who can help me are the times when I am at my most humble. I think we're probably all like that. Ben hates it, he wants to fix it and can't. I know our families feel the same. But we went into this knowing that it was likely that I would flare (didn't know it would be as bad as it has been!) but that I would be okay. Truly the Lord has seen me through. There were so many days that I wondered how I would make it to bedtime but the Lord gave me strength. Knowing that He has felt all my pain brings me to a different place. He knows what we need, when we need it. Have you ever read that poem "Footprints"? This was another time in my life where I can look back and only see one set of footprints in the sand, because the Lord was carrying me when my load was too hard to carry by myself.

So now I find myself near the end of a long, long road and about to start a new adventure and I'm so excited at all the possibilities. Excited to hold this little guy that I have gone through so much to carry. Excited that Ben won't be quite so outnumbered at this house anymore! ;) Excited to see him with a baby, he is the sweetest Daddy ever. Excited to watch my girls cuddle and love their little brother, they can hardly wait! Excited for all the possibilities....there are so many!

Here are a couple pictures of his room. It's not done yet but here's what we have so far:

Hate that horse but it sure makes for a cute prop in a cowboy room!

Changing table / dresser...

This is the unfinished wall. Waiting on the vinyl lettering for his name and then I'll be hanging up those three potholder-looking things in the crib up on the wall around it.

Next post will have pictures of the babe, but I don't guarantee how quickly they will be put up here! ;)

CHAMPIONS!!!!

BIG night for our MAVS! WAHOO!!!!! My family came over tonight for a watching party because we just knew there was going to be reason to celebrate today - and there was! So proud of our guys and I'm so super excited that Dirk finally got his trophy!!!! GO MAVS!

Story of my life...

Can I just say how excited we continue to be about our MAVS!!!!! If we can just pull off a win in Miami on Sunday....crossing my fingers! ;)

Sydney is all done with school for the summer and we are having a good time. Her and Mallory play so well, I am a lucky Mom. Don't you love this picture she drew for me a few weeks ago? It's so my life right now! Not as much now I guess now that school is out...but I still do LOVE nap time! ;)
I ended up going to my Rheumatologist earlier this week, my back has been absolutely unbearable. I get to the point where I almost can't breathe because my back hurts so bad when I inhale, cough, sneeze, move, anything really! She is trying me on a low-dose steroid to help with the flare but it doesn't appear to be doing anything so it sounds like the next step is just putting me back on my Enbrel. Neither she nor my OB seem particularly worried about it because I am about 34 weeks along now and the baby is just growing for the most part so that makes me feel better. So I am almost eager to get back on my meds; at least I know they would help and I could get to feeling somewhat normal again. I would love to sleep and function without such awful pain, it's been really rough the past couple weeks especially. So we will see, hopefully there is relief in my near future....

Off to let the girls play at the Jump Zone! Have a great weekend and GO MAVS!

Mavs Mania!!!!

It's that time of year again...the NBA Playoffs. A time when our evenings and weekends suddenly revolve around the Mavericks playoff schedule. We have always loved the Mavs and every year we get super excited when they go to the Playoffs. Only, every time we get excited, we seem to get our hopes shattered and we walk away from the post-season with our heads hanging down. This year, however, has been AMAZING! A crazy series with the Blazers - which, incidentally was even more sweet because my Uncle lives in Portland and is a Blazers fan so we got bragging rights this year! Sweeping the Lakers right out of the Playoffs was probably the sweetest victory; there is nothing I love to see more than Kobe getting frustrated because he and his team are playing like crap and we are wiping the floor with them! ;) The series with the Thunder was awesome; two come-back wins to close out the series, never thought it would happen, this is a new and different team this year and I love it! And once again, the Mavs are the Western Conference Champions and will be going to the Finals - YAY!!! I'm not at all excited about going up against the Heat but it would be so sweet to take them down and close out our past history with them. So, here is a little team spirit for our boys in blue - GO MAVS!!!!!

I cannot tell you the amount of time I spent on the internet and telephone trying to find this shirt for Crysta! She is so tiny and NBA shirts are so huge! BUT, I finally found it and now she can root for her boy J.J. in style!!!! I would like to point out that it's pretty appropriate that I wear the huge 7-footer and she wears the short guy! ;) It's very...us!

Plugging along...

We are down to about 9 weeks! I'm in the single digits! I realize that's still two more months, but putting it in weeks makes it sound closer! ;) I have still been having a lot of pain pretty frequently and am feeling huge and tired, etc etc so I am definitely counting down the days to feeling more like myself again! We still haven't settled on a name, in case you are wondering!

The girls are growing up every day. Sydney only has about two weeks of school left, I am glad. And so is she! She is tired and ready to be out for the summer. We will sure miss her teacher and her classmates next year when she is in a new class. I really think we have been spoiled this year.

This is the girls' newest favorite thing to do after we put them in bed. One night we were out watching the Mavs game and about half hour after we'd put the girls to bed, we heard very quiet giggling. Muted the TV and realized that Sydney was reading something to Mallory and they were both cracking up. We peeked in and Malla had climbed up in Sydney's bed with a couple books and a flashlight and they were enjoying some sweet sister time together! It made me smile, they are so cute! So this is their new bedtime routine!

Sydney learned to ride her bike without training wheels a couple months back and her bike has been too small for her the whole time, we were just waiting until she could ride it before getting her a new one. So a couple weekends ago we headed to the store and found her a bigger bike. Mallory had been wanting a helmet in the worst way because the rest of the kids we play with after school all have helmets! So we found her a cute helmet and then Ben put the training wheels back on Syd's old bike and Mallory can actually work the thing! Go figure! It's still too big for her but pretty cute when she gives it a try!

Tell me that isn't the darn cutest 3-year-old!!!!

The proud owner of a new bike!

She was SO proud of herself!!!! And so excited to have a big girl bike to ride now too!

My big girls! I can't believe they are growing up so fast!

Happy Mother's Day!

Feeling blessed today to be the mommy of my beautiful girls (and half a boy!)! Happy Mother's Day to all the amazing ladies in my life, especially my Mom and Grandma and Grammy and Ben's Mom, they are all such blessings in my life. And so grateful for all the other Moms who impact our family - friends, aunts, neighbors, cousins, etc - some of you don't even have your own kids yet but you are mothers nonetheless. You help me with my kids and love them and mean the world to them. They say it takes a village, and it does! Thank you to all of you who do so much for our family and who love my girls with a Mother's love!!!

Just another bump in the road....

I had my monthly baby appt this morning and when the Dr. was measuring me he asked his nurse to go ahead and order a sonogram. That's generally not a good thing when you know you only 'get' one sono and now he is ordering another! He said he was worried about my size, I was measuring three weeks ahead of where I should be. I was a little over at my last appt, only by a centimeter though and this time I was 3 cm bigger than I should be. I should have just left it at that and gone for the sono but instead I made the mistake of asking WHY? I, of all people, know not to ask a Dr. why unless you REALLY want to know! So he said he just wanted to rule out this possible birth defect and that possible birth defect and didn't want to let it go another month because he would need to send me to someone down town if it was one of these problems...oh ya, and it could very well be nothing too, just ruling things out!

I was kindof panicked when I left - I think you hear "birth defect" and your mind starts going crazy. Luckily Crysta got me calmed down, said this happens to her sister with every pregnancy and she just for some reason makes extra fluid and the babies are fine, they just come a couple weeks early and all is well. That made me feel a little better...then I started thinking again!

Anyway, had the sonogram, she was very thorough and very nice. I didn't think she would give us much info about what she was looking at but I told her what the Dr. was worried about and she walked us through each of his concerns on a broad basis, nothing super specific but enough to calm my fears. What we came away with is that the baby is for sure still a boy!, he is measuring a week bigger than he 'should' be, and my amniotic fluid level is higher than normal but would be even higher probably if there was a major problem. She basically said that I am measuring big BUT the baby looked good so she felt like we could rule out any of the major problems my Dr. was worried about hopefully. He will get the full report tomorrow and call me but I think things are probably okay. Maybe I just have a big boy! Or he had a growth spurt and will even out next month. Who knows...

It was fun to see him more. The last sono was super fast and this was a lot more in-depth. We got to see his face for a bit, saw him yawn and swallow and move and wave. And then he showed us his little baby guns...
You can see his face on the right, he is looking at us, and his arm is up at the top so he could show us his big boy muscles!!! ;) We got a good laugh out of it! It made him seems more real to watch him move around. The big yawn was right before he did this muscle picture so we were laughing pretty good...he was just done with the whole thing I guess! ;) Today was a long day but it sounds like hopefully everything is okay, I just may not have to wait quite so long for this little one to get here if he keeps growing like this!

Mallory's Roundup

Happy Birthday to my sweet Mallory! She is 3 years old, I can hardly believe it! She wanted a "Jessie" party this year so we did our best to accommodate...it's hard to find Toy Story stuff with just Jessie on it so we had some Buzz and Woody too and it turned out super cute and super fun! Here are some pictures!

We let her open her gifts from Ben's parents this morning and they found her a Jessie nightgown - perfect! Exactly what she asked for! She ran around in this all morning until we made her get dressed! ;)

We wanted to take her to do something fun so we headed over to Chuck E. Cheese after lunch to play for a little while. Both girls had a blast!

Sorry picture is so blurry, but thought it was so fun! They were doing a little Dance game...

Mallory wanted to dress up like Jessie so this is what we came up with. Not really Jessie, but cowgirl just the same and it was so cute!

Ha ha, if you know Malla well, you know that she LOVES gum! It's the first thing she digs for when my sister comes to lunch so of course she got lots of gum for her birthday! ;)

We found her this Jessie doll at the Disney Store a few weeks ago - you pull her string and she says a few of Jessie's classic phrases. So fun, she was carrying her around all evening!

This is what we ended up with for her cake. I let her pick it out so it was chocolate and she wanted purple frosting...I did my best but it looked more pink I think. Oh well. My Grammy made those cute cookies - boots, Jessie hats, and #3! YUM!

Pippin came in her western wear too and looked great! I think this picture is so great!

Grandpa loves squeezes from the birthday girl...they are his favorite!

Uncle Pooh and Aunt JaeLyn came in their hats too!

We had a pretty fun day! Both girls went right to sleep tonight so I think we wore them out! Happy birthday, Malla! We love you and are so grateful you are part of our little bitty family!!!!