Luau Time!!

This last weekend the Winston Salem 1st and 2nd wards held a combined Luau. Although the food wasn't traditional (Hawaiian Haystacks instead of Roast Pig and all the other sides commonly found at the state-side Luaus I've attended over the years), we did have a big program of traditional dances from various Islands. I decided to participate in a dance with other R.S. sisters and ended up having a lot of fun.

After everything was over, people kept coming up to me and saying things like, "I'm glad that baby didn't come out on stage!" and "I didn't think somebody in your condition would be able to move that way!" So I guess just being pregnant makes doing something like this so much more impressive. The really nice part was that most people didn't notice the mistakes I made, guess they were hypnotized by my giant belly!

I went in for a new ultrasound this morning. It was at a different Dr.'s office than I usually go to because of my Gestational Diabetes. I have to go to specialists and all sorts of extra appointments now. The one positive of going to this different O.B. is that they had 3D capabilities so we could see what little one looks like!

I also had a nutritionist appointment on Monday and found out that I have to start insulin shots. Dammit!!!! I was doing really well just following a diet, but last week my numbers went up and stayed there no matter what I did. So there ya go! Now I have to go get non-stress tests TWICE a week in addition to my regular appointments. Bleh. And there's an increased risk of the baby getting big, and too big for a natural birth. I'm not too thrilled with that news either. I don't want a C-section if at all possible. But what happens happens, as long as baby is healthy I'll be happy.

The pictures I'm posting are from the ultrasound this morning. It is late in the pregnancy, so the pictures are a little distorted because there is not much room in there anymore. The 3D ones you can see that her little cheek and nose are pressed up against the placenta. I still think you can really see how she looks. I think she will look a lot like her big brother. Big cheeks, little pointy chin and curvy lips! Soooooo Beautiful!!!!

Heyah everybody!!! I haven't written (again!) in a while, so I decided to do a recap of our summer. Around the 4th of July Ben's sister Amy came for a visit.

We spent some time in Winston Salem and then headed out to the coast for the holiday. Milo wasn't too sure about the ocean at first, but by the end of our stay he loved it!

On our way back to town we stopped by Roanoke Island and visited a few of the historic places. When we were there we had an opportunity to visit a replica 1700's Merchant Ship. It was very cool. For those of you who aren't familiar with Roanoke, it is the island that the first English Colony, Jamestown, was established. This is often referred to as the "Lost Colony", because after leaving the colonists and returning years later, there was no trace of the colonists. No bodies or indications of a violent demise, just a cryptic half written word in a tree trunk..... cool mystery, there are still only theories of what happened but no definitive answers.

In August I left my boys and flew out to Utah for my sister Blythe and her husband Jared's endowment and sealing. I was so excited for them, and their family. It was a lot of work with the endowment Friday night, the sealing on Saturday morning and the reception that evening. But it was well worth it. Despite the stresses of putting such a major event on, Blythe did a very good job. Everything turned out lovely. I was able to help escort her through the temple and sealing, and help put on a sweet reception. But by the end of the weekend, I was really missing my boys, so I was ready to come home and just be a Mom and Wife.

The Magalogo family, beautiful!

At Blythe's reception. Hawt girls for sure!!

** On a side note, as Blythe, Jared and I were leaving the temple on Saturday, we nearly ran into (literally) Donny Osmond and his wife **


Later that month we decided to have an adventure and head up to Pennsylvania for a wedding reception. Our friends John and Lu were sealed in the D.C. Temple and I sang at their subsequent ring ceremony. We encountered bad front tires that almost blew, "crashing" at the pool house of John's parents, a super cool reception, John's Dad's dancing, The town of Hershey (which by the way is torture to visit if you are diabetic, 'cause everything smells of chocolate!!!), Gettysburg, AND a bug in my salad at McDonalds...... enjoy the various pics.






On Labor Day we decided to stick close to home. We went to a local park and rode the paddle boats and swam at the cool pool. Milo loved the sprayers, and spent most of his time there.





As most of our friends and family know, we are having another baby. This time around it should be a girl (it's never 100% for sure with girls), and she is due at the 1st of November. In preparation for her arrival we bought a big boy bed for Milo. I wanted something that had some storage underneath for his clothes and shelves for his stuffed animals. We are in a two Bedroom apartment so we have little storage space for all of the awesome clothes and stuff this little girl is going to have.



So that's a most basic re-cap of our summer. There is a lot coming up for the Burrells this fall and winter. I'm working on our Halloween costumes now, so that no matter what happens, my boys will still have an awesome Halloween. The baby should come around the end of Oct. or beginning of Nov. and my Mother will hopefully come out for a visit near the middle or end of November. Around Thanksgiving time is my birthday, and I'm looking forward to going to the Twilight premiere for a birthday present!! In December Ben's brother, Aaron is getting hitched! So we might be heading back out West, AGAIN! This time we will have a newborn and a two year old to contend with......so much to look forward to!!!

I haven't thought to update my blog for awhile, but here we go. We traveled out of town to CO for a big Squires Family Reunion. That's my Mom's side of the family, she has 4 sisters, they have 25 children between them, and I don't know how many grandkids.....





Fast-forward to last weekend and Milo's 2nd Birthday...... Thursday night we went to the circus, Friday I had his hair cut for the first time, and Saturday we had a Luau Pool Party! Sunday was Fathers Day, so Mom was busy busy busy taking care of everybody.

Easter doesn't feel as Eastery so far away from family, but we did get to have two egg hunts for Milo to have fun at! He learned a new word this week "Candy", well he only says "Can", but we know what he means.

Yesterday: Toilet training, pee on the floor, poop in the pants, clogged toilets and the discovery of lipstick!

I've taught Milo how to get in and out of his crib safely with a step-stool chair, so that I don't have to worry about him falling and breaking something. It has been going really well, and he even gets into bed when it's time for a nap or bedtime all by himself!

The only problem? He has just started getting out after we close the door. At nap time, I usually check in and put him back. But at night I haven't been as diligent, and when we checked in on him the other night, this is what we found. *Note that he is laying on top of one of his stuffed animals!*

Ok, so it's been a little while since last I posted. Well, O.K., almost 2 whole years! So I got a little caught up doing Myspace and Facebook and playgroups and girls night out and being a wife and being a mother, so SUE me!

I originally started a blog to help me start writing on a regular basis, but if I don't want to do something, I won't do it. Plus it's really hard to type with a toddler hanging off one of your elbows.....

Speaking of Toddlers..... my baby boy will turn 2 this June and he didn't wait to act like a two year old. Oh no, he's been throwing tantrums, drawing on walls, getting into anything and everything that could kill him while all the while saying No, No, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! to his dear Mama when she gently tries to redirect his attention, since he was about 16 mos. old. It's been super fun!

Well, my elbow's about to go out so I'll have to post more later........

I just put baby down for a nap and really should be cleaning right now.......

But you know how that goes.

We had our second anniversary a couple of weeks ago and I bought my husband a new bike. He had left an old rusty one locked up (we didn't have the key to the lock anymore) at our old cruddy apartment in Englewood. I told him that it wasn't worth the effort to get the lock off. It was an old rusted out piece of junk with a bent pedal that squeaked everytime he pushed. It was also way too small for him, he's 6'5", and his back hurt him whenever he rode. He was sad and told me that it had been a good bike to him these many years, but I felt that it was a good way for us to de-junk and move on. Well, a year later I suprise him with a new one, nothing special - just a Schwinn that I got at Target, not as expensive as my old one, just your basic mountain bike. He finally took it out for a spin this last weekend and came in beaming! He said that he loved it, and kept saying how nice it was, which made me very happy. But then he said something that made me pause, he said "I'm not used to having such nice things." You see when we got married he had an awful car; rusted out, smoking oil, thrashed interior, etc. etc. And when I got some money from an accident settlement we bought a used Volvo. Now he has a new bike and we are going to be moving into a nicer apartment. He grew up poor (I did too), and his parents have apparently never had a nice car, or things like that. But the thing is that we didn't spend a ton of money on these things, and believe me we are still living poor, and we have used cars, don't buy a lot of things all the time and try to live within our means. I guess the idea that has been going through my mind is that sometimes I think that we don't allow ourselves to have nicer things if we grew up without money. I think that this kind of feeling that " I don't deserve better" or " This is all I can get" can really limit people. We could have spent the same amount of money on a junky car believing that that was all we could get, instead of looking at other options and finding the deal that we did.
It makes me think of the relationships that I have had in the past. I used to think that I only attracted certain types of men because that was all I deserved. I dated men very similar to my father, carless and or reckless with money, arrogant, demeaning to me and manipulative. I would let these men, one in particular, take over my life and wreak havoc. Then one day while bemoaning my fate I realised that perhaps the reason that I seemed to only attract these jerks and not the good guys was because I thought that was all I could get, or all that I deserved, because I wasn't perfect. I decided to change my attitude about what I deserved, and started trying to convince myself that I deserved a nice man because I was a nice woman. And wouldn't you know it, within a month really decent guys began to ask me out. I don't know what changed, was it how I carried myself, or did my whole aura change? I had some nice boyfriends and was even engaged to someone for a while, and though it didn't work out(painfully so), he never treated me badly.
A few years later I met my husband who is one of the most decent, talented and hard working men I have ever known. And though I constantly fight the urge to self-loath, I remind myself that even though I grew up poor(bad example of a father), and am not rich now ( my imperfections ) I can still find a good deal If I am willing to look in new places and open my self to new possibilities.

I want to be someone who says interesting, funny or insightfull things on my blog, but I'm not sure that's gonna happen. By the time I get Mr. Man to sleep or sit in his bouncy seat long enough to accomplish anything - all of my clever and whitty life observations have been long vacated from this noggin of mine. Right now he is in his snugli and I am writing as quickly and quietly as I can. It's harder than I thought, to type with a baby hanging in a contraption on your front ( as though I was pregnant but could access the baby alot easier ).

I went to Utah for our baby's blessing this last week and the traveling was disasterous........every thing that could go wrong, did - well nearly everything, we didn't crash. I had decided to try to fly stand by on JetBlue, but got stranded in the JFK airport overnight. Normaly this would have been bad but do-able, but with an infant it was horrible. My husband got us a room at a nearby hotel, but when I got there the room was dirty. So I called down to the front office, a man answered and told me he was sending housekeeping. Half an hour later with a screaming baby and no housekeeping, I called again. This time a woman answered and told me that she would just get me another room (figures that a woman would get the job done and a man would try to send someone else....), but when we went to the other room it was dirty as well. Well at about 1:30 am I finally got into a clean room, and was able to calm the baby down. Then every hour I got a call from orbitz for my husband's flight to "update" him. I didn't sleep more than 45 min. incriments that night and then had to be up at 7am. The next day I flew to L.A. trying to get on a flight from there to SLC...JetBlue only flies into SLC from two places, JFK and Long Beach. But by the time I got to L.A. the Long Beach flight was full, so my husband (who had left our home after I had, and gotten there before I did) bought me a ticket to SLC. It took me two days to fly there, and I was exauhsted. Of course the whole time we were out there we wanted to see people and friends and family.....so no time for real rest yet. The blessing was great, ton's of people came, 36 just from my family and my mom's twin's fam. but not all of my siblings or aunties kids came...I come from a pretty big family. I stayed a day longer than my husband and my in-laws, bless them, decided just to buy me a ticket home instead of me trying to do stand-by again. So I flew all day that tuesday and got to the airport looking forward to getting home, even though I still had a two hour drive to get home, and the airline had lost a piece of my luggage. I lost it, I just started to cry. I called my hubby and blubbered to him while I was waiting in line to talk to baggage claim customer service (20 min.). There were 3 people ahead of me in line and they heard me, and were kind enough to let me go first. I finally got home around 11pm that night, and the only thing that made everything feel better was that I missed all of the airport mess because of the british terror alerts by one day. Can you believe it? And this is the abbreviated version!!!!

ok....

this is it, my first blog.

My Husband wanted me to do one now that I'm home with our baby, but I'm fairly certain that I won't write often. Our son is colicky and very time-consuming, so most of the day is spent trying to keep him from crying. Who said motherhood would be easy? No one!