They grow up so fast!

This last week at Gabriel's pre-school he got to go dressed up in his costume for Halloween.

He had so much fun, and I think his costume is so appropriate for his personality.

Gabriel's class.


Gabriel with his teacher Miss Amy.


Gabriel with the teacher's assistant Miss Andrea.


I still can't believe my little boy is in school. He loves it so much.
He has so much fun learning and making new friends. It has just been so great for him!

Here is a picture of Noah too. He is almost 17 months!
How crazy is that??

This is of the two of them. They were sharing their fruit snacks and I thought it was so very cute.

An experiment in headbands

I've been feeling crafty lately, which lead to my adventuring with these. I've been seeing a lot of people doing cool things with leftover fabric. I was trying to make some sort of floral necklace, but ended up with these rope-like braided headbands. I actually think they turned out really cute for not being what I had originally planned them to be!

What do ya think?

So if you have some free time and some scraps of fabric, play around with it and see what you can make!

A Baby Story

I always love reading about everyone's different baby stories. I've been looking forward to when I have time to write down how our new little boy came, and now at almost 11 o'clock at night I have! So I hope nobody minds that this might be long, and I promise I will spare any gory details there may have been.

I was a week and a half overdue and they had finally given me a date that they would induce me. We were very excited. It fit in perfectly with Chris' schedule, which you know is just a invitation for trouble. He was supposed to graduate from sub school on Friday and had a test on Tuesday so we thought if we scheduled the induction for Wednesday we would be set... It was going to be perfect. Monday came and lucky for us Chris got to take his last test for sub school. I figured I had one more day to get stuff ready so I held off on packing bag for me and one for Gabriel ( BIG mistake!). I told myself I could just pack them the next day. At 3 am on Tuesday the contractions started and by 4 am they were every 3 to 5 minutes. I turn to Chris and said "Wake up I think I'm in labor!" To Chris' (as he must have heard this from me an innumerable amount of times before) he started to get up, get out of bed and get ready. At this point I'm frantically racing down the stairs to try and get things ready and as I pause on the steps to tell Chris something, I feel my water break! I knew at this point we were going to have to book it to the hospital. We drop Gabriel off at one of our friend's house (they had their baby a half hour after Noah was born, yes it was quite a day! :D) and when we get to the hospital at 5 am we found out I'm 4 cm and a half hour later I'm at a 5! At this point I'm asking every nurse in the hospital at what point I would be getting that oh so wonderful epidural... I thought I was being very casual about it, but looking back I can see I was approaching them with the utmost of desperation.
Luckily, it was only a half hour wait and although Chris nearly passed out from the size of the epidural needle, it was smooth sailing for the next few hours.
After pushing for about half hour we had a BIG, beautiful baby boy. All the nurses and doctors were making guesses as to how much he weighed. 10 lbs, 2.6 oz! and a cutey ta boot!

Meet Noah Christian Hall
Big Boy!

1 Month Old... can you believe it?

We love our new little man! He is absolutely amazing!

I'm taking pseudo bets...

since it probably wouldn't be good to make real ones :D

Here are all the factors:

No progress what-so-ever

My due date is in one week

I went 11 days over with Gabriel

Chris graduates on July 1 (Hopefully!)

My parents come on July 2 ( Yay!! :D)

Father's Day is on June 20th


Now the last couple I just put in if you want to take into account any ironic tendencies or "sassability" that our child may have :)

So everybody, any guesses as to when this little guy is going to come??

Something I swore I would never do...

Cloth Diapers.

I'm sure you've heard of them.

The hubby has been mentioning them for a while, but I quickly dismiss them because truthfully I find the thought of them....

Disgusting

Among other words.

Well folks, after the move me and the hubs sat down to do some budgeting. The truth is we have our heart set on a house in the near future, among other things we're saving for, and we thought it would be good to make a little road map to accomplish our goal.

I know... sounds so responsible right? ( Take a moment to be proud, go ahead :D)

Things were going dandy, until we came to the oh so dreaded "Diaper/Wipe" category.

EGADS.

The truth is Older Baby Boy is still sadly a few months away from potty training and when adding Younger Baby Boy's diapers to the mix... well, let's say the amount very nearly jawdropping.

We'd be spending more on diapers then we would be able to put towards a house... Yeah.

I was okay with it for a while, I thought I could handle that. So we don't get a house in the next 10 billion years, that's okay. If our car broke down and washer broke and the kids need new clothes... It's okay, Chris and I have two kidney's and I've heard you only need one.

Okay, so I might be exaggerating a bit :D, but you see where this is going.

Yep... cloth diapers it is.

Again, I have firmly said I would never, ever, ever do it. EVER. I then however ran into these online...
They just look so cute! One-size fits all with a fleecy inside liner and waterproof exterior. Big Boy seems to always get the worst diaper rash so maybe they will kind of help with that... maybe. They make it seem so easy (which I know it shall not be, it will be a big adjustment all the same). We got the Sage green for Little Boy and the Twilight Blue for Big Boy and surprisingly it cost the same as a month worth of diapers would have.

Still having my doubts... and lots of them, but I am willing to give it a go. We shall see if I'm going to become a firm believer.

Wish me luck! Sending a few prayers might not hurt either...

Among other things...

We have been insanely busy the past couple of months!

Since the last post we have had an almost graduation, then no graduation, family came to visit, then a job change, along with the latter came a move to Connecticut and through all of this our almost new addition has been taking up more space then my belly seems to allow!

We were so sad to leave Charleston and all our amazing friends that were there, but I feel that Connecticut is where Heavenly Father wants us to be and in the long run it will be better for our family. Anyone who knows me knows what a complete home-body I am, and though I like new places and adventures, I'm not one who enjoys having to move a home along with her. It's been hard to have faith that everything will be okay with each new move, but in each new adventure we are always blessed with a wonderful, outgoing ward, kind people and safety in our journey... and what more can you ask for then that?

Now if I could just get unpacked we would be set! :D

P.S. Yes I know... pictures pictures pictures. Hopefully I can get some up before Noah comes but we shall see :D

Pictures to come... I promise

Dear Readers (if you are in fact still out there)-

It has been a couple of crazy months!! Which is no real excuse but hopefully it sort of makes up for being very neglectful of this blog (except for changing the background about a thousand times!) The hubs found me an awesome camera for Christmas so we really do have TONS of pictures, just need to take the time to actually load them... which will hopefully be in a couple of days :D HOPEFULLY...

So I here are a couple of updates:

1. We are attempting some form of potty training... YAY! I think we're just going to see what the little boy wants to do for now. He's still not two, so I don't want to push it too much. He's actually managed to go a couple of times on the potty, but I do not think we will be wearing anything but diapers for a while. OHH how I dream about him not being in diapers before the next baby comes, but we shall see!

2. Our sailor is graduating in about a month and a half from the last school portion of his training. We are so ecstatic!!! To boot, we have family coming down... Could it get any better? I say it could not :D

Well, I'll get some pictures up in a couple days!