Pumpkins and Ladybugs

 We invited my Mom and Yajing (aka Angie: She's staying with my Mom for 1 year while she teaches Chinese Immersion to elem. kids) over to carve pumpkins.

 

 Pac just got home from work, so he's eating his dinner. Chicken Enchiladas... yummmm.

 

 I love carving pumpkins. The pictures are worth the experience alone.

 

 Ahhhh....

 

 Pac's, Evie's and my pumpkins. Pac did the Hello Kitty freehand by looking off a piece of paper.  I sure am glad he did it, cause I would've killed that Kitty. I HAVE to trace it. I'm sort of a loser when it comes to anything drawing or physically artistic. Unless I can do it with a camera, I get lost. Really fast.

 

Yajing and I.

 

And then came Halloween! We love Halloween in our house. Just the cutsie parts of it though. Pac and I are not into the really scary stuff. I went into a Halloween store to try and find a red bandana for my costume, and was uncomfortable with the amount of scary death ridden things around me. I saw a little girl, maybe 4 or 5 who was holding her mom's hand and looking TERRIFIED. The Mother just kept walking and didn't acknowledge her daughter's discomfort at all. That too made me really uncomfortable. Oh wells. Like I said, the cute parts of Halloween are a Blast!

 

 Our little ladybug. Pac ended up not doing the biker thing, but diid put on his Jets jersey.

 

 Rosie the Riveter with her little bug.

 

 :)

 

 Grandma Donna came over. Wooo!

 Is it ovbious she was getting tired?

 

And here is a small video of Evie sucking on some fruit.



October in a nutshell...

So, we took a trip with Pac's side of the fam to Nebraska to watch our cute little Molly get baptized. How much fun was this trip!?!  We went to this CRAZY "Pumpkin Patch."  I put in in quotes, because it was basically an amusement park (without roller coasters, but there was a train ride...) centered around anything and everything fall. It was crazy fun. These pics are a little out of order, but whatever, you get the idea. :)

Pac got his Homer on. 

 Family outings are different with a baby!

My little Pumpkin.

 

Such a happy girl!

 

 Travelling 15 hours in an RV. Oh yeah,  this is the way to travel. This is on our way out to Nebraska.

 

 Grandma Kathy bought Evie this adorable little hat to keep her little ears warm.

 

 A little Daddy-Daughter time while travelling.

 

"Mom, I'm tired now."

 

Paxton has been out of town practically all month long.

After our trip to Nebreaska, Paxton left for a work trip out to Chicago. He was there for 4 days, and was able to come back one day before he had to leave again for Canada for a week. Me and the little one have really been missing Daddy. So glad he's home again!

 

In between Paxton's trips, on the ONLY day we had him in town before Halloween, we were able to take our yearly and very traditional trip to our local pumpkin patch in Farmington.  It was windy as all get out, so although a short trip, it was still fun to have Evie take her first trip to the Pumpkin Patch with us.

 

 It was SOOOO windy!!! She would gasp because it would take her breath away.

 

 

 Next item of business, Pumpkin Carving and Halloween!!!! Yeah! Pac will be a rough ridin' biker with tatoo's, I'm going to be the "We Can Do It" lady from WWII ads, and Evie will be a ladybug. Pics coming soon!



Yay! She's doing it!

 

Evie has shown a strong neck since right after we brought her home.  However, when it's tummy time, she typically just likes to lay there and suck on her fist. After a few minutes, she gets mad. She's finally holding her head up for a little bit! I'm so excited for her.

 

Peek-a-boo is quickly becoming a favorite.  As is Patty Cake, and singing "Good Morning" from Singing In The Rain every morning when she wakes up. She's a cutie. :) And she's mine. :)

This and That...

 

So, a few weeks back, we took our little family on a picnic. Mommy and baby needed some fresh air, and it was Paxton's day off! So, we went and picked up some delicious KFC, and headed to the park.  It was such a good little picnic! Everleigh LOVES to be outside.  

 

 

Boom-Dog. In all his glory.

 

Meant to be.

 

Here are a few more tid bits from the past 2 months...

 

Evie went to church for the first time!

 

 

Whenever Pac is around, and we're going somewhere, he always carries her. I love it.

 

Yes, this is the same shirt I wore on our little picnic, but in all fairness, this day actually came first, and it was the only "nice" shirt I had that I could actually wear and look "nice." So there.

 

 College football started.  Pac is in heaven. He found this little outfit for her online.

 

 



Everleigh is here!!!

We are sooooo happy and very proud to announce the birth of our incredible little girl, Everleigh Klaire Jensen.  She was born June 23, 2012 at 2:32 in the afternoon. She weighed 8 lbs 7 oz, and was 21.5 inches long. She is doing great, and slowly getting the hang of life outside Mommy's tummy.

My due date had ben June 28th throughout the pregnancy.  At my last Dr.'s appt, he said he would schedule me for an induction on the night of June 24th, and we'd have the baby on June 25th.  That whole week leading upt o that, I was determined to do anything I could to get Evie to come without coaxing.  Not that I care necessarily, but for some reason, I wanted my water to break naturally.

I started having intense contractions at about 4:30pm on June 22, but didn't want to make too much of it, seeing as how I didn't know how bad they could have gotten.  We went swimming at Pac's parent's home with the family that night the whole while I was having contractions.  By the time we got home and into bed, I was ready for it.  I got up at about 2:30am to use the restroom, and had a sign that things were definitely moving forward with labor, but not enough to take any rash action.  An hour later, at 3:30am, I had to get up again to use the restroom, only this time, my water broke!  I said to myself "Well, okay then."  I walked over to Pac who was still sleeping and said "Honey, I know this isn't the most convinient time, but we need to go to the hospital because I think my water just broke."  Pac THREW himself out of bed, and was in immediate action mode.  We got everything we needed together, and headed for the hospital.

As we were checking in, I barely shifted in the chair I was sitting in, and BOOM, there went the rest of my water.  Kind of awkward. They got us up to labor and delivery super fast, where I only had to brave the contractions for about 3 hours until I was dilated to a 3. My epidural came super fast, and made my life heavenly. I progressed rather quickly (although I lost all track of time that morning, and am still working to get it back) and she came at 2:30 in the afternoon.

My doctor missed the delivery by one hour. His colleague had to deliver me.  He was out of town, but alas, when Evie decided to come, she was set in her way.

Recovery has been difficult, but I'm doing lots better.  Pac and I, along with Everleigh are doing great!  Thank you to all our friends who have brought us dinner, and stopped by to visit us. Here are some pictures, and an adorable video that my in-laws made for us.

Dr.'s Appointments Roller Coaster Ride

My past few prenatal Dr.'s appointments have been interesting.  A couple of weeks ago, when I went in for a check, the nurse came in my room and said "Your sugars look a LOT better today."  This took me by suprise so I asked, "Were they up?"  Apparently they had been.  Turns out even fiber rich cereal carries a lot of sugar.  Check your Raisin Bran people! 23 grams of sugar! That's just as much as Cap'n Crunch! So much for trying to be healthy huh...

Anywho, the next week I didn't really think much of it, cause I didn't get any specific instruction from my Dr. about it.  So I took a break that morning from the boring old Frosted Mini Wheats, and Raisin Bran and had me some good old fashioned Coco Puffs. Boo Kara. Boo. Bad call.  I went in, and my Dr. asked me to watch my sugar intake from then on because it was especially high that morning. We have a strong history of diabetes in my family, so this worried me a bit.  I was miserable that whole week, not eating hardly anything that had sugar in it, and being super cautious about my next appointment.  I ate the same thing that morning as I did the morning she said my glucose looked good.  Luckily, it worked, and all is well!  I was worried about my little chica for a minute, but this is probably why she measured at a good 7 1/2 pounds at that appointment! Luckily Pac was able to be there for that one.

Also, at all of these appointments, the Dr. kept saying "Nope, no dialation or thinning yet, but you're soft."  GREAT.  Nothing was happening. He said if I was effaced enough, he could start me a week early, so I was riding on that.  As long as my body made progress, I could meet my little girl sooner than later!  Luckily, I went in again this morning hoping that some contractions I had been having this past Sunday (which was Father's Day) would have done something.  And they did!  I'm officially dialated to 1 cm, and am 50% effaced! Thank you mother nature!

So with that good news, my Dr. went ahead and made an appointment for us to go into the Hospital on Sunday night (June 24th 2012) and get started on Cervadil (sp?).  We'll most likely have our little Everleigh here with on On June 25th!!! My original due date has been the 28th.

It just got real folks. Holy crap, Pac and Kara are going to have a baby.... COOL!  We'll post pictures of her as soon as we can. :) Yay for Babies!!!!

Memorial Day and stuff...

We had a really great Memorial Day! Pac and I of course wanted to BBQ, but we kind of wanted to do something different. So after getting the idea from some of his family members, we decided we'd like to give making pizzas on the "barbie" a try this year! It's so cool! I made some homemade Pizza Dough (which I LOVE because it also makes great scones, and Pinterest is my best friend) measured by eye, then rolled the dough into personal pizza sized balls and let them rise. 

Pac loves homemade rootbeer, and it's a very strong tradition on my Mother's side to have it at family gatherings or events.  Therefore, Pac put my Mom in charge of supplying it for our cute Pizza BBQ because he looooves it so.  When my mom came over, she hadn't yet added the dry ice, so we put the 5 gallon container with the mixture for the drink in our sink so we could add it.  She had crushed it up in really small pieces. Well, it seems as though that has something to do with the molecular structure of the dry ice, because when she dumped it in, we had an explosion! Root Beer everywhere!!!! It was even foaming at the very top on the container, something neither of us had ever seen before in making it.  The picture above is what my kitchen looked like until the dry ice figured out what the crap it was doing. :)

We haven't used this grill since before we moved into our house. So, a little over 2 years. It was so nice to get it hooked up and burning again! I love watching Pac BBQ. Mostly cause he's freaking amazing at doing so.

So, remember how I said I rolled the pizza dough into balls?  Well, I did, and we used a whole dough ball (as I sized it) for each pizza the first time around.  Turns out, my "guessing" on the measuring wasn't exactly right.  The dough got so huge on the grill, it couldn't cook in the middle. lol! So, needless to say, this was our first round to attempt pizza's on our grill.

Attempt #2: This went MUCH better.  We each used half of a dough ball this time, and then it was perfect.  I just have to remember, that when making these for individual size, a person only needs 1/8 of a batch of the dough I make, and not 1/4. Goodness!

Brother Pac (that's what his Sunday school kids call him) working the grill. :)

After our BBQ, we jumped up to Pac's parents for a little swim, and another BBQ later that night.  Who LOVES summer!?!?!  Here is Jocelyn and Joe's little boy Henry just enjoying the crap out of his swimming adventure.

Good to see he's finally playing and laughing with Gandpa!

 5 months. Worst, picture, ever.

6 Months

This is my 7 month picture.  I had some maternity pictures done as well. Man, was that a hot day.  If I look like I'm "trying" to smile in some of them it's cause I am. :)

We have decided to name our little girl Everleigh. That's what the E stands for in the last picture.

Everleigh Klaire Jensen