My Plastic Breakfast

For Christmas Haylee got a play kitchen and all the plastic utensils and food you could imagine. She loves it so much that she could not understand why we kept asking her to stop playing with it and open more presents. It's now up in her bedroom and its the first thing she plays with every morning when I wake her up. At 5 a.m. this morning I heard her outside our bedroom door yelling "Open please". When I opened the door, she was standing there with plates full of plastic hot dogs, hamburgers and potatoes. She was bringing me breakfast in bed, but the only thing I could think of to say is "No Haylee, it's night time". She let out the longest, loudest cry that woke up the whole house, maybe the whole neighborhood. I felt so bad. She had spent who knows how long slaving over that cold stove to make me breakfast and I didn't appreciate it. So I got down on the floor and ate my breakfast. The great thing about two year olds is that they forgive so quickly. After a minute I was able to convince her to come lay in her bed with me. I must have been forgiven because she sang be lullabys about Christmas trees and cheetahs. She never did go back to sleep but we were able to spend some much needed alone time together until I had to get up to go to work. I love her. I think I'll keep her.

Happy Halloween!

Our kids were so cute on Halloween. Haylee was a ballerina and Gage was a skeleton. We took them to XanGo to go trick-or-treating. We had lots of fun and Haylee got TONS of candy. She loved it!














Haylee thinks she's a ballerina every day so she was so excited to be able to look like a ballerina on Halloween. We bought her costume several weeks ago and eventually had to hide it from her because she wanted to wear it every day. She was so happy the morning of Halloween when I told her that she got to wear her ballerina shoes. It was so cute! Here she is doing her ballerina dance....adorable!












We had searched and searched for a cute costume for Gage but everything was just too big. Luckily Grandma Herbert found this cute skeleton costume and sent it to us just in time. Gage started smiling a couple weeks ago and I've been trying to get a picture of it....I almost got it in this picture. It's super cute! His hair is growing so fast, he's going to need a hair cut real soon.












Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Bundle of Joy

Robert Gage Herbert is here (we call him Gage)! Actually he's been here for a month but life with a newborn and a toddler is busy!! He was born on September 20th at 1:21 in the afternoon. He weighed 7 pounds and 5 ounces and was 19 inches long. He was the exact same weight and height as Haylee when she was born. The labor and delivery turned out to be very easy, it was a wonderful experience and we're so happy to have him here.

I had lots of help from family. My sister Robin was in Utah the day he was born so she came over to our house early in the morning to be with Haylee. My parents came down later that day and stayed with Haylee all weekend so Mike could spend some time with us in the hospital. Thanks to everyone for all of your help!

Gage is super cute. He has tons of dark hair and cute little chubby cheeks. I hope his hair doesn't fall out, it's too cute. It stands straight up no matter what we do with it, I love it. His eyes are dark gray, but I think they'll end up being brown.

Mike was able to take two weeks off work after Gage was born. It was so nice to have an extra pair of hands to help out. He was great, I wish we could have him around more often.
Gage had already gained a pound and a half at his two week appointment with the pediatrician. We knew he was growing fast but I couldn't believe how much he's grown. I think we're going to have a big boy! He's been lots of fun. He has quite the temper and absolutely NO patience. Good thing he's sooooo cute!

Summer Fun!

We've been spending a lot of time outside, Haylee is our outdoors girl. It's hard for me to be out in the heat for too long being pregnant, but we got an inflatable swimming pool for the back yard so I can sit and relax while she splashes around. Haylee loves the water, here is a picture of her right after we came inside after a couple hours out in the sun. She was beat and fell asleep on the couch almost immediately. It's a rare treat when Haylee naps these days, so I took advantage and got lots done around the house while she slept.





I've been trying to encourage Haylee to be independent and do things on her own lately. I figure it will make things easier when the baby comes if she doesn't insist on me doing everything for her. The other day she insisted on painting her finger and toe nails all by herself. So, I put her in my bathtub and let her try. She actually did a really good job. I was expecting a huge mess but she was very careful and sooooo proud of herself....I'm sure you can tell from the picture.






Last week we got to watch our friend's little boy Charlie. He is so cute and was so fun to have around. It was like having a babysitter for Haylee. She usually insists on being in my lap or in the middle of whatever I'm trying to get done, but when Charlie was here she was just happy to have a buddy to play with. And I was happy to have some space to get a few things done. They played together really well. Haylee was much more excited about holding hands and posing for pictures than Charlie was, but he was a good sport. We hope he comes over to play again soon.



Haylee loves to help out in the kitchen! Here she is "helping" me make oatmeal cookies. She always wants to help me measure the ingredients and pour them in the bowl, her favorite part is the eggs. She's actually really good and it, and she hardly ever drops any shell in.
We usually end up with a big mess afterwards, but we have so much fun, it's worth it!







Haylee loves to play in my makeup, I usually am able to wake up and get ready before Haylee wakes up so she doesn't get into it, but on this particular morning she was up extra early and so she wanted to get ready right next to me. It didn't occur to me that she was putting on my lip gloss that is supposed to last all day....until I tried to wash it off. It doesn't wash off! I thought she was going to have to where it like this all day, I tried everything. Finally I used my eye makeup remover and luckily it worked. She didn't have to look like the Bride of Chucky all day.

New Haylee Pictures

Here are some new pictures of Haylee. She is loving the warm weather, she always wants to be outside. I took her to the swimming pool the other day. She had a great time. She was a little nervous at first and just wanted to watch the other kids play but as soon as she saw how much fun they were having, she wanted to be a part of it. She's pretty brave in the water so I have to keep a close eye on her. I'll take the camera with us next time. The weather has been great, it's supposed to be almost 100 degrees on Saturday. It feels a lot hotter being pregnant, but we'll stay inside, or in the water this weekend. We're getting excited for our upcoming trip to Bear Lake. I always get excited to spend time with family, we don't get to see them as often as I'd like. We're slowly making progress on the baby's room. It's pretty much cleaned out now (it has been serving as our storage room), so now I need to get started with paint and furniture. I'm so excited for our little guy to be here.

Crusin'

We don't have very many pictures of our cruise, but here are a few that we do have. We had a great time. We visited Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel, Mexico. In Jamaica we went on a river tube float. It was fun. In Grand Cayman we went to Sting Ray City. It's a sandbar a few miles off the coast where there are hundreds of Sting Rays that you can swim with and feed. They're surprisingly friendly. It was the highlight of our vacation. Then in Cozumel we planned on doing a zip line and snorkel excursion. They wouldn't let me do the zip line since I'm pregnant, but Mike was able to. It actually looked like a lot of work. He had to rock climb up several towers before he could do a short zip line ride. I think he was exhausted but had fun. Then we got to snorkel. We saw lots of colorful fish and the water was very comfortable. We had a fun week, made some good friends and ate way too much. We were pretty tired by the end of the week and were very excited to come home and see Haylee. We missed her so much, but she was in good hands with Janae. I think our next vacation will be with the whole family to Disneyland, but that will have to wait until the new baby is a little older.

Our New Addition

It's been so long since I've blogged. I'm so embarrassed! I was talking to Dad on the phone today and he reminded me that I need to update my blog. I've got so much to catch up on but the biggest announcement is that we're expecting our second child in September!!! We found out that I'm pregnant in January but I wanted to keep it a secret until I could announce it to our families in person. I wasn't sure how long we'd have to wait because we didn't have any plans to visit Idaho in the near future but I thought it would be fun for it to be our little secret. As it turns out, Mike isn't capable of keeping a secret so he told his family shortly after we found out. I was still determined to wait and tell my family in person, but we didn't end up making the trip to Idaho until April when I was already 16 weeks and starting to look pregnant. But it was fun to finally share our news. We had our ultra sound on May 9th and were very excited to find out that it is a boy. We were both really hoping for a boy this time. He looked healthy and everything is going fine. It's been an easier pregnancy than it was with Haylee, my morning sickness wasn't nearly as bad, foods and smells didn't make me too queasy and so far I haven't had any back problems. I am starting to have some pain in my hips, but the doctor said it's fairly common and nothing to worry about as long as it doesn't get any worse. I think boy names are harder for me. Mike decided that he wanted to name him Gage. I really like it. I was planning on having a few names on our list and we would decide when he's born which is the best fit but so far I haven't been able to come up with anything I like as much. So, for now we are calling him Gage. We have so much to do in preparation for his arrival, but we've still got about three months to go. Time to get busy!