2013 Year in Review

I am very behind in blogging so I figured I would give a quick review of 2013 before life gets hectic around here!


This little gal turned one! I can't believe how fast that went.

 

We were lucky to have my mom, sister and nephew come out to help us celebrate Quinn's birthday.

In March Dave graduated with a Masters in Military Operational Art and Science. I am SO happy he no longer is taking classes which take up all our weekends.             

We went to Denver to celebrate the upcoming birth of our niece, Braxton. I have no pictures of people from that trip (not really sure what I was doing..).                      

We experienced our first Utah winter. It was interesting to say the least. It was cold with a lot of snow and nothing closes down and the grocery stores don't empty with a forecast of snow. For real, my school got 10 inches of snow one night and NO delay. I am really a not a fan of driving in the snow! On the other hand, Charlie LOVES the snow. 

Quinn started doing lots of new things- including brushing her teeth! 

We went to Hawaii for Spring Break. It was so much fun to watch Quinn's love for the beach and we got to go back to the spot where we were married. 

 

Quinn and I flew back to Ohio in April to surprise my parents and attend the annual Patrick family Easter Egg hunt. It was great going back and getting to see everybody and Quinn was spoiled rotten! 

Dave finally got a new Jeep. He has been missing his since he traded his old one in for the family SUV.

 

Quinn got a water table for Easter and we spent countless hours outside letting her play. She loves water play. 

Dave and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary. We took the day to ourselves and took the Jeep for a scenic drive to Bear Lake. It has been a wild 3 years- one deployment, one baby, one move across the country and 2 new jobs. I wouldn't trade it for anything. 

Quinn also got a swimming pool- her and Charlie love to play in the water together. 

We took a family trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. It was a fantastic trip and we plan to go again before we move. 

Quinn and I spent 3 weeks in Ohio during the summer. It was a nice trip because I was super sick with baby #2 and having my mom to help out was AMAZING. We also found out that my sister was expecting baby #2 also! We will be having babies 3 weeks (or less) apart. 

My parents came out to visit and we did a lot of sight seeing and went to Vegas. It was a great trip, we love when they come out to visit! 

Our friends threw us a gender reveal party and we found out baby #2 is a BOY :). Quinn was not too excited about this news. 

She also became a little bit of a diva over the year and her hair grew! 

My belly grew also. 

Daddy taught Quinn very important lessons. Such as- don't let your mouth touch the whip cream when you eat it from the can! 

We went to Ohio again in October to celebrate Nolan's 2nd birthday. It is so fun to watch Quinn and Nolan grow together and enjoy each other's company (most of the time). 

We had a lot of fun doing Fall things such as carving pumpkins and trick or treating. We also visited a pumpkin patch and went on a scenic train ride. Quinn was a cat this year and she looked the cutest. 

We spent lots of time on Facetime with family and friends. Quinn loves to see who is going to pop up on the screen and she also enjoys "playing" with grandma. 

Quinn became a big fan of Minnie Mouse and playing with stuffed animals and baby dolls. 

We went to Park City for a "mini" baby moon #2 and took Quinn to see her first Disney on Ice. She loved it and we had a relaxing weekend away from normal life. 

We spent Thanksgiving in Denver with family and had so much fun shopping, eating, bowling and relaxing. (Again- I don't know what I do when we visit Denver but I never take pictures!). 

Dave spent a lot of time painting furniture for Quinn's new room and she graduated from a crib to a toddler bed. We also spent a lot of time getting the nursery switched from pink to blue. (I will post pictures of the new rooms soon). 

Because I was almost 35 weeks pregnant at Christmas we decided not to fly home. I was a little upset about spending my first Christmas away from family but we ended up having a great holiday and enjoyed our time as a family of 3. Quinn was so fun this year and she loved Santa (until she saw him in person and then she was not a fan!). 

 

Santa was good to this little gal this year. 

We had Christmas dinner with some friends that were in town and it was a great time. Quinn and Teagen enjoyed their time together. They are so cute! 

Our friends Liz and Chris came out to visit the day after Christmas and we were able to watch some Olympic Trials. It was so much fun having them out and I can't wait until they come back. 

Then we got to ring in the New Year with family and Quinn and her cousin Braxton got to play together. 

We are looking forward to what 2014 is going to bring- mostly the birth of our little man, Leo! 

Memories are good, life is good! 

Playtime with Q

Quinn has such a personality. She is in a good mood pretty much all the time and is super easy. It makes me a little nervous that Leo won't be so easy going and I won't know what to do! 

Every morning when I go in to get her up she has the biggest smile on her face and says "morning." It is the best part of the day (and also the worst because then we are running around like crazy to get to daycare and work on time and all I want to do is stay home and snuggle.....). 

She loves to facetime and always "plays" with my mom when we talk to her. The other day she wanted to take grandma and grandpa for a ride in her stroller. She is also a fan of bunny ears and likes to wear them around. Quinn would yell down to the phone and say "ready" and then push them across the room. It was cute and she did this for about 15 minutes. 

Right now Minnie Mouse and Quinn's build a bear, creatively known at our house as "bear" are the most popular toys. She carries them around and needs them to go everywhere with her. This day she was making sure they were getting a snack and a drink while I got breakfast ready. I love how she had to have bibs on them also. 

If there is anything happening with food, Sammy isn't too far away. This is probably why he has gotten extremely fat since we moved to Utah and Quinn started to eat table foods. 

She is very much like Dave in a lot of ways but one of them is her love for technology. She LOVES playing on our phones, the computer, Ipads, etc. There are times that I will drive the Jetta (which does not have a DVD player in it) and she refuses to get in the car in the morning because she wants to watch Mater in the Pilot. Her ability to navigate to Netflixs is scary! Tonight she grabbed my phone and Dave's phone and put them both on Netflix but on different shows, one on Mickey Mouse and one on Curious George. She also thinks everything is a touch screen and tries to "swipe" on my camera when she is ready to change to a new picture. I think she is going to be very good with technology! 

This is random (but it makes me smile and I just had to share..), every time she turns on a light switch and the light comes on she yells "ta-da." She is so fun and we love her to pieces. 

Playing is good, life is good. 

Snowy Saturday

Last Saturday we got a good amount of snow and spent the day getting Quinn's new room ready and watching football. Dave went out to shovel the driveway (I won't let him get a snowblower... manual labor is good for him! LOL)  and I took Quinn and Charlie out to join. Charlie LOVES the snow and he loves to chase after Dave when he is shoveling. Quinn kept taking her hat and mittens off and running away from me. I have no idea how she wasn't freezing! 

Dave spent most of Saturday painting Quinn's new furniture. We got a toddler bed from a friend and are using Dave's childhood dresser that has been painted before. It is looking super cute and I can't wait until it all gets done. I am hoping we will have it finished this weekend. Quinn likes to walk in the room and she says "pretty." I am hoping she still likes the room when we move her in there and the new toddler bed! Fingers crossed this goes smoothly. 

Lazy days are good, life is good. 

Fun Fall

I can't believe it is December and Christmas is 3 weeks away! Fall went super fast and we had a lot of fun. One of the highlights for me was a weekend when we went to Park City and then spent a day in Salt Lake going to the Zoo and seeing Disney on Ice. I wasn't sure how Quinn would do with Disney on Ice but she is obsessed with Mickey and Minnie right now so we thought we would give it a try. She loved it and I loved watching her enjoy herself. She stood on our laps and clapped. When Minnie went behind the curtain she said and signed "more, more." As the show went on she was getting super tired but stayed up the whole time! As we were leaving she said "bye- bye Minnie." In March Disney on Ice will be back and it is a Princess theme so we are already planning on going to that one. (The pictures aren't the best quality, they are from my phone and when I enlarge them they don't look great...). 

Loving on Mickey and trying to stay awake. Of course she had to wear a Minnie shirt (thanks grandma!). 

Before the show we stopped at Build a Bear because Quinn had a gift card from her birthday. She LOVED making this princess bear and would not leave until bear had shoes. (Quinn is currently loving boots and wants to wear them all the time and comments when other people are wearing boots). The song she picked to put inside her bear is "Frosty the Snowman." She loves this bear and takes it everywhere, she also makes sure it is always wearing shoes. 

This was at the Park City Museum. I can't believe how big she looks here! I love those curls and her green eyes. 

Time is flying and we are now getting ready for Christmas. Thanksgiving was fun, we went to Denver and had a great time. I didn't take any pictures that trip so I am waiting for some pictures to be sent to me and I will do a post. Quinn loved playing with her cousins and we enjoyed spending time with family. It is nice that we have family we can drive to! 

Leo is growing and moving like crazy. We had our last visit with the specialist this week and we are all clear to no longer go back! In case you missed it, we had a little scare with this pregnancy. A child I see for speech therapy has a virus called CMV. This isn't a big deal at all and if you get it, you will not get sick or anything. A normal person will just build antibodies and that is all. However, if you have never had this and get it when you are pregnant, it can cause harm to the baby. I also learned during this that 1 in 4 children under the age of 3 in daycare currently are "shedding" the virus so I could have got exposed to it from Quinn also. 

 I had blood work done and it came back that I did have it but I also had antibodies to it so it was unclear if it was a new or old case. Many children with hearing loss have had or have CMV so I was sure I would have already been exposed to this and it would be no harm to Leo. However, we were sent to a specialist to make sure everything was okay. It was very hard waiting to get the ultrasound to see how he was developing. The specialist ordered a more complex blood test and then did an ultrasound. There was one part on the ultrasound that was borderline normal and could be caused by CMV so for a week we anxiously waited the results of the second blood test. It came back in the gray zone- the results could not tell if it was new or old (we wanted old because then I had it before pregnancy and Leo would be fine). Then we had to wait for another week to get into the doctor and do amniocentesis. Luckily the ultrasound that day looked completely normal and the procedure went very smooth. We got the results back a few days later that Leo did not have CMV. It was such a relief!! It was a very stressful month waiting for all the test and not knowing if Leo was healthy or not. I am so thankful for this healthy growing baby and I can't wait to meet him! Now in the future we know that I have had it so for future pregnancies this is not something we will need to worry about. 

I am almost 32 weeks and he is measuring a little big so we will see if he will be a January or February baby. My sister is due 3 weeks after me, so it is going to be a very exciting couple of weeks for our families. It is going to be hard to be far away from family and not having them here to help and also not being there to see my new niece or nephew. Thank goodness for Facetime! 

This last picture just makes me smile. She loves hats and makes sure she always has a hat when we leave, she also needs minnie mouse, mickey or bear to go in the car with us. We were going to get Charlie from the boarder after Thanksgiving and she stopped on the way to the car to give Minnie a ride. That horse I found at a thrift store for $6!! It is going to be repainted and made girly for Christmas. The good thing about this age is that she has seen a lot of her Christmas presents but she quickly forgets about them.  

That is a quick update on us. 

Kids are good, life is good! 

Daddy's boots

Quinn currently loves shoes. She is very picky about what shoes she wears and will throw a fit if she doesn't have on the ones she wants. Earlier this week I sent her to daycare in shoes that she doesn't typically wear to school and she spent the day throwing fits and taking them off. She even put them in the trash a few times. When I am getting ready in the morning she will bring me shoes from my closet and say "momma shoes." Today she was playing on the steps (I know, I know.. not the safest but she likes to turn the  landing light on and off and I was sitting right there) and when I looked over I found her in Dave's boots. It was the cutest so I had to grab my camera and take some pictures.

Lazy Sundays are good, Life is good.