The Moment we've all been waiting for... Announcing Sophia May Starkey!!

Here are some pix of our last couple days. We were scheduled to be induced Dec 18th and I had started having some serious contractions that morning at 3:30am so we're happy to announce that by 3:03pm we had our little Sophia May. She weighed 7 lb 5 oz at birth and was 20 3/4 " long. Not bad considering she was 10 days ahead of the due date we had. She came out looking for her hand to suck on and she's done great nursing so far. Look at all that hair! So cool! Her eyes are dark blue right now, we'll see if that changes. Katie and Taylor are excited to have her here with us and Katie keeps saying "Baby Sophia is my favorite sister". I keep telling her "That's wonderful, because she's your only sister!". I'm happy to have the pregnancy and labor all over. I'm impatient to have recovery over with, but luckily with the holiday, Craig has some time off and my Mom and Dad are coming in tomorrow so it'll be a good time to take it slow for a couple weeks. You can see in the pix, the birthday party that we had for Sophia at the hospital and then her coming home and our new family pix. We'll have to get one all together!

Look how cute my kid is!

Here are Taylor's preschool pix! So cute, huh? Well, he is pulling an Amy (see my winter formal pic from 1996 and you'll understand)in his class pic, but the pic of just him is super cute! Katie had pictures taken at school this year too and they turned out pretty good. We even tried to order them, but she didn't give her teacher the form, so they didn't get ordered! I guess we'll try again in the spring (apparently, they take "spring pictures" here. I wasn't aware of that, so last year, they were really funny!

Happy NEW YEAR! KNEE-HOW!

Craig, Taylor and I went into Katie's classroom today to teach the kids about Chinese New Year. Well, Craig did the teaching, Taylor and I were his lovely assistants. After talking about China and Chinese(the are studying how children around the world celebrate the holidays), we made dragons to have a parade in the classroom! We ended by giving them red envelopes with money (fake money) in them and fortune cookies. I thought it was really cool!

Happy Holidays!

We had a great weekend! Our stake puts on a fabulous Night at Bethlehem event every year. Last year when it was really warm they held it inside the gym, this year when it was in the 30's they had it outside! How funny! Anyhow, they put on a really nice program. They have people bring food for the food bank, then they give them little bags of "narble money" as Taylor says and they can go to the Headdress booth (as Taylor did) and the pottery booth and the bakery and visit the Women at the well (for living water). Mary even rode on a real donkey this year(I'm really happy that I didn't have to play her despite our due date). They have an Inn where they go to ask if they have room and lots of people dressed up as Wisemen, shepards, Roman Soldiers, priests. It's really cool! Casey Eichhorn wsa there dressed as a soldier (it was kinda chilly for shorts, if you ask me but maybe the chainmail was a good insulator). Katie and Taylor were pretty good posing as Mary at Joseph. Christina Eichhorn was the one who did up Taylor's headdress, not bad, huh? On a different note, we are scheduled to be induced on Thursday to have our baby. I'm dialated to a 2 already though, so I guess we could go earlier, we'll keep you posted! (ha! get it? posted?)

Did you know that John the Baptist was a wise man?

This is our nativity scene. Last year one of the wisemen's head's fell off and I glued it back on. Well, I guess it fell off again when Craig set it up for me this year. Anyhow, I set it on his box of frankensense or Murr or gold and then it reminded me of all those statues and pix of John the baptist holding his own head. I guess since John the Baptist wasn't much older than Jesus himself, it's impossible that he was a wiseman. You'll all be relieved to know that I fixed his head (with super glue this year, not the hot glue gun, hopefully it'll hold better). On a similar note, we awoke this morning to, not my water breaking, but a huge crash of our enormous Christmas tree falling down! Craig goes "what was that???" I said, "probably the Christmas tree". We had been trying to get it straightened out before bed. He had said he hoped it didn't fall over and I really didn't think it would, but it did! Good thing we switched to plastic ornaments this year! We still lost some glass globes, but we awoke to a freshly vacuumed house.

Where do ya think you're going to put a tree that big?

Every year as we search for the perfect Christmas tree, I'm reminded of the wonderful holiday movie, "National Lampoons Christmas Vacation". Getting the Christmas tree is always a highlight and we always wonder where we're going to put it.....now you don't have to wonder anymore!

Katie is getting so big! We went to look for our Christmas tree this weekend and had a lot of fun. Although we weren't able to cut one down, we had a lot of fun looking! We did eventually find a tree at a local tree lot down the road. After it's decorated, I'll post some pictures.

Katie had a blast taking this picture! I'm sure she'll appreciate much more when we show her what she was doing! Ha!

Taylor is getting big too! If he keeps growing a foot for every year of his life, he'll be six foot in 3 more years!

Our little Rockstar!

Katie had to do a rock project last week. We had to invent something with rocks. We made "Rock Star Sunglasses". Katie was really excited to wear them to school. They came home with alot fewer rocks on them, but they still looked great!

Good times had by all!

We had a great Thanksgiving! The highlights were having Casey and Christina (and baby Stella) over, the sweet potato casserole (Thanks to Mommo and Paula Dean) and being all done cooking for a little bit! Craig and Alton Brown helped with the Turkey this year. We didn't brine it, but we rubbed it down with salt and pepper and shoved butter under and all over the skin and put a bundle of fresh herbs and a sliced onion in the cavity. Then we started it in the oven at 500 for the first half hour. We took it out and put a double layer of foil over the breast, lowered the cooking temp to 350 and then inserted a thermometer timer into it to tell us when it reached 161. It came out browned nicely on the outside with juicy white and dark meat! I think we'll do that every year from now on! I think next year I'll do vegetable oil on the skin instead of butter though. I think it'll crisp up better that way. After eating we went for a walk and Casey got to try out Katie's princess scooter (she's great at sharing). Anyhow, the only downer of the day was the berry pie I made. I usually buy one, but couldn't find the Marie Calendar's Razzleberry pie that I love this year. I got a recipe from a friend and it had to have been copied down wrong. It was a solid gelatinous mess! We all tasted it and had a good laugh over how horrible it was. Thankfully the other pies were good so it wasn't a total loss. At the end of the evening I got out the "Pin the hat on the turkey" game that I bought at the dollar section of Target(where all good things come from). It was a fun way to end the evening along with a viewing of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving and a second round of Thanksgiving dinner for me! We have a lot to be Thankful for this year, a nice warm house, Craig's good job, no urping for a while, a healthy family the list goes on and on!

Gobble gobble gobble!

Taylor seemed to be doing better yesterday so we may be out of the woods (we've thought this a number of times in the past couple weeks, so I'm not going to count on it). Yesterday we made this cute little turkey cookies for Katie's class. I got the idea from Family Fun mag. Pretty cool follow up to last years' pilgrim hats, huh? Taylor and I will deliver them today at lunch. Katie got her haircut this weekend. Cute, huh? I love that she went short again. She also found that funny wrist band that I bought for when I mow the lawn(and sweat all over myself, in the summer time)anyhow, she thinks it's a bracelet and even wore it to church yesterday! AWESOME!! She thinks the check on it(the nike emblem) is like the checks her teacher puts on her papers at school when she does the paper correctly(don't ask why her teacher checks things done right). We may decide to keep the kids afterall.

What's up with us...

Here's a little update on our past week. It's been alot like the week before. Taylor is still "sick", but not running a fever or having any other symptoms other than crying about everything and not doing anything but sleeping on the couch. It's really fun. Atleast he hasn't thrown up this week (not since Sunday). Katie did however throw up in her bed two nights and ago and never say anything to anyone. She was up and dressed when I got up at 6:45am so I didn't have to go up to wake her and we didn't find out about anything until last night when Craig put her to bed. GROSS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR CHILDREN AND WHY ARE WE HAVING ANOTHER??????? Taylor peed the bed last night. I'm really ready to give them all away and do something else with my life for a bit. I guess I'm not cut out for motherhood(not the puking part of it anyhow). Craig took that pic of me. He came home from work and thought it was really funny that I had spilled all that pancake batter all over my belly. Ha ha. I have 3 shirts that fit, I'd been wearing that one for AN HOUR and that's funny...hmmm... I've been begging him to swap jobs with me. PLEASE LET ME OUT!! On the up side, my new haircut is cute. Something else has got to be good, but I'm buried under the same laundry I did last week (all the duvets and comforters and sheets)so tomorrow I'll be IRONING again. Whoo hoo.

Fariy Tales can come true...it can happen to you!

Well, it was a crazy week leading up to Craig's reward night at the Biltmore House. Taylor was fighting off the never-ending virus and we had stuff every night and nothing was going the way we'd hoped it would go. Luckily, we did make it Friday to the Biltmore. It was so beautiful! Our room was super nice and the view from our window was awesome. Dinner was wonderful, but I think we liked breakfast the next day better. It was so cool to get away for an overnight. The drive up was gorgeous. All the fall leaves had changed and driving through the mountains and the fog and little bit of rain made the leaves really stand out, and made the Inn feel really cozy! I still can't believe we got to go! Friday night we got up to the Inn at about 4:30 and checked in and had dinner at 5:45. Then we took the shuttle to the Biltmore house and just looked around the shops. We took the shuttle back to the Inn and got some hot cocoa. Saturday morning we loved the breakfast, then we went over the Biltmore house for our tour. The tour was really interesting and it was fun to see more of the grounds. After our tour we grabbed a wrap and some croissants to take home with us, then we hiked around and took pictures of the house. It was the most perfect fall day. Cool, sunny and windy. We got home just in time for Craig to change clothes and make it to the Priesthood session of Stake conference and I went up afterwards to trade kids and stay for the Saturday session. Sunday morning I was sick in bed. Thanks Taylor for sharing. So far this year, my flu shot has really helped, this is the second time this month I've had the flu! Luckily, I'm on the mend today. Pregnant women, shouldn't have to get sick. It's like having the flu and getting kicked in the stomach the whole time. Well, we're back to real life here, but I still feel like Cinderella!

Happy Fall!

The colors were at peak last week down here and it isn't lasting long enough. Around every corner are fabulous scenes of red, yellows and orange leaves. They are all blowing off way to fast though. Here is one picture of our walk down to the park last week. It got up to 80 a couple days so we were outside as much as possible. I would have taken more pix but after taking the one pic, the battery died on the camera so I had to wait and charge it when we got home. The next pic is one of Taylor's creative dressing days. I really liked this look. Often he wears basketball shorts (mesh nike like shorts)with cowboy boots and the hat. The goggles and mittens(that he can put on by himself, HURRAY) are new additions. I guess they got into the swimming stuff for their bath the other night so that's what inspired the goggles. I like it.
The last pic is of our Turkey that mommo gifted me(the wooden parts just stuck in our $1 post-halloween Lowe's pumpkin). The kids were excited to show it off!

Look how cute!

Since most of you who check the blog don't live close enough to visit our house, I had to include this pic of the mantel decorated for Halloween. Thanks to the cute little Halloween decorations that Mommo has given me, I was able to come up with something cute to put up! Hurray!I've changed them out for Turkeys and pilgrims now though. The kids really get excited about the decorations. After I put out the Halloween stuff katie said "you are so nice, thank you so much for hanging the pumpkins!". Funny girl. Taylor does think that everyday is Thanksgiving now that we put out Turkeys.

Trick or Treats!

Here's our Halloween week in pictures! (Start at the bottom and work up)The first pic is of the kids at the ward Trunk or Treat on Wednesday. Then Taylor all dressed for his preschool class Halloween party on Thursday. The next pic is of Katie dressed for Halloween Day at school. They don't let them come in costume at her school (BOO!)so they had "spirit Beach day" and let them by Lei's from the school for $1.00. Since we already had a lei and since Craig is convinced that somebody is lining their pockets with spirit day money that is supposed to put grass in the school yard (or they're buying the wrong sort of "grass")we sent her with the lei she's wearing. I missed seeing her at a Halloween party at school like I remember having with a costume parade and dry-ice rootbeer. Anyhow, the last pic is of the kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood last night. It was 58 degrees. Pretty darn perfect. Katie made it through almost the whole upper part of our neighborhood in her "glass slippers" before she had a huge blister. Lucky for me (and her), Craig was back from his business trip and he piggy-backed her home. The video is us enjoying the spoils! Craig and I sorted it all and handed out another half of it last night! Hurray! Another perfect Halloween in Greenville. I'm sure gonna miss this neighborhood if we have to leave before the kids are done trick or treating!

Happy Halloween!

Friday was supposed to be our Ward Trunk-or-treat, but they canceled it just liked Katie's field trip, because it "looked like it might rain". It did rain a little bit in the afternoon. I couldn't believe that's what they were canceling for. In Kentucky at least it was snow. We're in a DROUGHT! Rain is a good thing! Anyhow they rescheduled the Truck or treat for this Wednesday when Craig's out of town so he won't get to wear his Coach Craig costume and I'm not going solo as a cheerleader (it's really only funny as a couple at this point). Katie decided to be Cinderella (thanks for the costume Yaya) and I'm pretty sure Taylor is still decided on Spiderman like at the Boo at the Zoo. Oh, Sunday we carved pumpkins and you can see the kids showing off the results(thanks for the Alaska T's mommo!).