Christmas Morning

We had a very nice Christmas this year. It was our first away from my family, but it was neat to have our own time at home. Ty snapped this pic just before everyone started stirring.Santa brought some sweet gifts. This one was from Grandma and Grandpa.

Yay for toys and candy!

They got a wagon from Ty's parents, and didn't even have to go outside to enjoy it. They rocked it like a boat before Ty even got the wheels put on!
I love that the girls are getting old enough to really enjoy the holidays! Can't wait to see what this new year has to offer!

My Christmas Elves

Well, as we get ready for Christmas, I thought I'd share a few pics of my girls. First of all this is my life trying to take pictures of 2 squirmy girls in a living room with unfortunately low lighting... But all the pretty lights and decorations (and Christmas cookies) are really getting us into the Christmas spirit!

And because everyone else seems to be trying it...Merry Christmas from our crazy house to yours!

Workin' cows

*Sorry for the delay in posting. Our family was taken over by a nasty stomach bug. We're all alive, but it was iffy there for a while!*
Well, since it's almost Christmas, I thought I'd better hurry up and tell you what we did the day after Thanksgiving. Of course, by we I mean the guys. I just stood there and took pictures. With all the extra help around for the big day and the nice warm weather, it was a great day to work cattle. Just in case you're not familiar with that phrase (Who isn't?) that's what we do when we get a bunch of new cattle in, and we need to get them ready to join the herd. The cows are lined up in a shoot, and put one by one into a kind of holder like this.. It kinda squeezes them in the middle so they hold still. Then they get a shot, a lice bath, and a pretty little tattoo. After 150-200 cows, this is what you look like.

This is where the "animal poop" in my title comes in. You can see why I stood back taking pictures!

After they're all "worked", they get a nice snack. Let me tell you. Cows are like little kids. Every meal it's like they haven't eaten in 7 years. They gobble down lunch, and then it's off to a life of grazing, napping, and strolling along the country side. Tough life right?

Yay for brothers who still like to get dirty together!

Thanksgiving 2010

Well, I got out of order with my sono pics, so now we'll go back to Thanksgiving. I didn't snap a ton of pics, but I did want to share one of my pecan pie. I'm always a nervous wreck when I make pie because it is such a staple in the Feldkamp household, and the members of the household are not super shy about sharing their opinions on food. They were all very sweet, though, so either it turned out well, or they were too afraid of my pregnant hormones to criticize! Aunt Rachel brought some fun balloons that were a huge hit.

Feldkamp Thanksgivings mostly consist of stuffing yourself silly and then sitting around holding your tummy and groaning. I figured I'd skip those shots. Next, though, I'll tell you what we did the day AFTER Thanksgiving. I'm willing to bet it's not what most of you were doing!

Sono pics

Well, I was going to post about Thanksgiving, but then I figured that you're probably much more interested in the pics I got yesterday at my sono appointment. Well, fine. I guess my beautiful pie will have to wait. Here ya go: My OB was measuring and checking everything, so I got lots of "detail shots". Here's a pretty good profile though.

And here is baby looking at the camera.

He/she kept its hand up by its head the whole time, so here's a good one of him or her waving.

Thank you all for your help in formulating my "arguments", but unfortunately for us, Ty won out. Note to the ladies: be careful what you agree to when you're pregnant and desperate! So I guess we'll just start a guessing game for the next 20 weeks or so. Things are looking perfect, so thanks to everyone for your prayers and good wishes so far!

Sono pics

I realized I haven't really posted any updates on Feldkamp #3, who should be arriving at the end of April. Things appear to be going swimmingly, and I'm even feeling some sporadic movement already! Here are some sono pics. Not sure how clear they will be, but here we go.The first is a profile shot of baby's body, and the next is baby #3 waving to the camera.
Look at that tiny hand! These were from 13 weeks, and I'm about 17 now. I've got another appointment/sono next week, so I'll try to post some more then for comparison. By the way, if anyone has a compelling argument for finding out the gender of the baby, please pass it along. In the hormone induce insanity of my first pregnancy, I mistakenly agreed to not find out with any other kids if we could find out then. Now (for some unknown reason) my hubby is actually holding me to my word! Can you believe it?

Oh the luck!

So, the girls and I traveled to Manhattan (KS) for our good friend, Kristen's, baby shower last Saturday. On the way, we stopped at a Dairy Queen for a snack and a potty break. We get our food/drinks, and Anna immediately spills every drop of red fruit punch all over the table, bench seat, and floor. Accidents happen, so I thank my lucky starts nothing landed on anyone's clothes, clean up what I can, and inform the nice lady at the counter that she'll want to have a mop handy when we leave.

About 3 bites into our food, Anna announces she needs to go potty. She proudly tells me she doesn't need me, and that she can do it all by herself. I had already been, and knew that it was just a 1 person room, so I walked her back to make sure it was open and let her go (reminding her to push the little button that locks the door so no one would walk in on her). I'm thinking to myself, "This is great! Pretty soon I'll have 1 less kiddo to accompany to the potty while we're out!" Meanwhile, a little time passes, and I go back to check on her, and she says (surprisingly calmly, "Mommy, I can't open the door." "What do you mean you can open the door?" I say. "Just turn the handle." She turns, I turn, nothing. No problem; I just tell Anna I'll go ask for the key. I go back to the counter to get a key, and the girl says she'll go get the manager. Then she walks around to where the bathroom is, and tells me rather nonchalantly that they don't have a key to the bathroom. I muster up all the politeness I can and tell her, "Well, we're going to have to find some way to open the door since I can't just leave my daughter in there." "Oh. Right," she says. Then the "Bathroom Door Whisperer" enters the scene. This little Mexican lady who has been quietly cleaning the booth right by the bathroom door and starts yelling, "Turn!" and yanking the knob with extraordinary force! Somehow, it all came together, and the door opened! Boy, was I relieved. I was picturing firemen with axes chopping down the door while CPS people questioned my sanity. Later, I found out she was trying to push the button AND turn the knob at the same time. Oh, boy! Well, at the least the DQ was yummy, and we had a great time at the shower!

Pumpkin Patch Part 1

So. If you'll allow me to go a little out of order, I'll show you some pics from out trip to the pumpkin patch a while back. Here are our little flowers...And my little pumpkin

There was a hay bale slide that was just big enough for a race.

Anna didn't win due to some trickery, but she had fun.

They also had pedal cars. We didn't find out until afterward that the seats were adjustable, so the kids had a hard time pedaling on their own. Anna quickly put the closest male (her friend from church, Killian) to work. Takes after her Mama.

I have a couple more that I actually want to edit, so I'll show you those in a bit. Fun Day!

Halloween

Wow! I really am going to try and be better about posting regularly. It seems I can do it for a little while, but then something gets in the way, and BAM it's been a whole week (or two). Anyway, here are some photos from Halloween.
Ok, this one is technically from before Halloween, but Ty and I couldn't stop giggling at Anna using our pumpkin as a pillow on the way home from church.Here she is in her costume for her Halloween party at school. Rawr!Class pictureAnd sweet Abby who had "fun" passing out candy and real fun eating candy while Anna went trick-or-treating. Isn't she a cutie?
Funny Story: We went by Anna's teacher's house, and Anna told her, "After we go to all the other houses, we'll go home to dump my bucket out. And then we'll come back and get the rest of your candy, ok?"

Cookie

Ok. While I don't normally use this blog to simply tout my own greatness (what?), I cannot go on without sharing this with you... I won't go so far as to call this the most beautiful cookie ever made, but it is without question the most beautiful cookie I have ever made! Look at the perfect circular form, the ratio of cookie to chocolate chip. It is a thing of beauty!

Can you tell I'm pregnant and craving chocolate?

P.S. I have 150 pieces of chocolate that are meant for small children in my house. I have 12 more days until Halloween. Anyone want to take a guess as to how many of those little sweeties will still be here by then?

School Girl

Just thought I'd back it up a little and show y'all a couple of pics of Anna going off to school. Unfortunately, I don't have any 1st Day of School pics because I was having my appendix removed that day (you may remember me mentioning that). She goes to preschool at the elementary school twice a week in the afternoons, and she loves it.This is actually the 3rd or 4th day of school, because that was the first day I was mobile enough to make it down to the end of the sidewalk to see her get on the bus.My little girl is a bus riding expert already, and I love that she's so confident and ready to take on the world!

Rejected

So yesterday we were at our weekly grocery outing to Dillon's, gathering up everything we'd need for the coming week. Ty and I split up to get a couple of things, and Anna decided to go with Daddy. When we met back up again, I turned to see them coming from several feet away. Anna shouted, "Mommy!" in a sweet voice and started running toward me. Thinking to myself how cute my little girl was, I started bending down a bit and opened up my arms wide to scoop her up when she got to me. Only, she never really got to me. She ran right past me and grabbed onto the cart yelling, "I wanna push the cart now"! There I was all bent down and alone. And did Ty help me out? Did he come to my rescue and save me from my hug rejection? No, he just laughed. I thought about punching him in the arm, but then decided against it since he was buying the groceries and had the car keys. What's a Mom to do?

Extra! Extra!

Well, if you're one of my loyal readers, then you may already know that we are officially expecting baby #3! I thought I'd take time here to share a few of the details of the last couple of weeks, so you can see how crazy it's been around here.

4 weeks ago, I started having major stomach pains. As you know from earlier posts, I ended up having my appendix removed. What we weren't talking about yet was that I was also pregnant. I should say we thought we were pregnant. I hadn't taken a test or anything, since it was so early on, but we were starting to think it might really be happening. Then the pain set in. I briefly wondered if I was loosing the baby, but the pain was really different from what I'd imagine that would be. That didn't really make it any better, 'cause I knew something was wrong.

When I finally went to the doctor, of course, I had to tell them I thought we might be pregnant. They confirmed it with bloodwork, but also decided I probably had appendicitis. Not exactly how I would have liked that moment to go, but what are ya gonna do? Things were slightly complicated because I couldn't do a scan due to radiation levels, so we went into the surgery without that confirmation. Fortunately, the doctors were right, and it needed to be done. The surgeon said that he was glad we caught things relatively early because my appendix was actually touching my uterus which could have been disastrous had it ruptured or created and abscess damaging the uterus.

All in all, things went as well as they could. The biggest concern was miscarriage due to the stress of the surgery, but now that we're 4 weeks away and I have a perfect sono pic, I'm feeling more and more confident that God has a perfect little addition to our family on the way.

You can bet I'll continue to keep things updated as we go along. Thanks for sharing this joyous time with us!

Pictures of my sweety

Just a couple of pics I took of my little Abby the other day. Isn't she cute?

Happy Saturday!

Still Alive

Wow! It's been awhile since I've posted. Most of you probably know about my appendix issues, and can guess that I haven't really been motivated to spend alot of time sitting up at the computer dreaming up fun things to tell you. Boy, do I have lots of fun things to tell, though! Since I've got a backlog of stuff from before I "went down", I'll go back and show you a cute little pic of my little Abby. The child is a neat freak! She's constantly straightening the chairs at the kitchen table, picking up crumbs/tiny pieces of grass/etc. and taking them to the trash, and yes, sweeping. She goes nuts when I get out the "tiny broom" as Anna calls it. She runs back and forth from the trash can "sweeping" up anything she can find. Now we all know this did not come from me, but I'm already dreaming of the days when she's old enough to take care of the cooking and the laundry too.

Duh.

I came across this seemingly needless sign today while dropping off school supplies. Anna is starting preschool in 2 days, and I'm super excited and dreading it at the same time. Glad this was there to give me a chuckle.
The end.

Ouick story

Just thought I'd share a little ditty that illustrates what it's like to be in my family:

Sunday night, we were having lots of fun playing with the hula hoop we'd randomly picked up at the grocery store since it was 75% off. Amid all the fun and laughter, Anna runs up to give me a hug, and tells me, "You're the best Mommy in the whole world!"

Me: "I am?"

Anna: "Yeah, and Daddy is the best Daddy in the whole world! And Abby's the best Abby in the whole world!"

Me: "And you're the best Anna in the whole world. And the best big sister, too!"

Anna: "Thank you, Mommy, and you're the biggest Mommy in the whole world too."

Thanks, Anna.

Here are some random pic from play time the other day:

Enjoy!

Fair Time

Here's a brief pictorial view of our time at the County Fair this weekend. We had tons of fun, and it was pretty neat to be able to just drive down the street to attend.

Spending time with Daddy is always fun. We checked out all the animals being shown at the fair. Anna liked the poultry/rabbit exhibits the best. She wasn't too fond of the bigger animals. Abby, on the other hand, checked every single animal out without even the slightest hesitation. It was wristband night, and we were a little unsure of how Anna would like all the rides. As you can see, she loved them, and I spent the night chasing her from ride to ride. It was so fun to see her enjoying herself. Of course, she loved the ones she could do all by herself!

Abby was too small for most of them, so she went with Ty to the hypnotist show, which apparently was hilarious.

We did not ride this one. I was somewhat relieved when the sign said Anna was too short even with an adult. That way, I didn't have to explain to her that we couldn't ride because Mommy is a scaredy-cat.

What a great weekend! You can check out my facebook page for more photos.