California- Memorial Day Weekend

With my parents getting ready to move to Chile, my 2 siblings who live in Utah and I decided we should go to their house in CA for one last visit. Dan was quite busy with school, work, and internship, so he was unable to accompany us. :( However, because he didn't come, we only had to take one car. It was cozy, I sat between the two kids in the back, but it worked just great! It turned out to be a 13 hour car ride because we had to make so many stops for me to nurse Ben. I think the kids did pretty well, all things considered. However, not something I want to do with them every weekend. :) Some photos documenting our trip.

Sleeping babes in the car

Watching movies- portable DVD player=lifesaver!

(Oh, and binkies help too. ;) Yes, I know she's a little old to still be using one.)

McKenna has still not made the transition to a big girl bed. (Mostly because we haven't bought one yet.) So she slept in a pack 'n play while at my parent's house. You would think she might not like being so cramped. Oh well. Good thing she has all her sleeping buddies. :)

We took many walks down my parents long driveway to see the train tracks. Notice the rows of walnut trees behind us. Such a cool farm they live on!

Fun with Grandma Kelly and Grandpa Mike!

We took so many walks, and waited and waited until we finally got to see one cross up close!

Boy was it loud!

My dad took us to the plant where they do all the cracking and sorting of the walnuts. If the plant were running we would have had to wear hairnets as we walked around. We weren't required to this time around, but I still had to put one on Ben.

With my sister and brother.

Eating out at a delicious Chinese BBQ restaurant!

Memorial Day weekend also happened to be the weekend my parents were speaking in church. My mom wanted to add a Thompson family musical number to the meeting as well. Here we are practicing. My siblings are goobers sometimes. :)

Fun wrestling with Aunt "Pickle."

Some cute Ben faces!

His funny trick!

My mom's craftiness never ceases to amaze me. She made this hollyhock flower "doll."

McKenna kept asking if she could hold the princess. :)

It was a GREAT trip and so fun to be in their home one more time before they pack up and move to the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! Thanks for the fun visit!!

27th BD and Friends

My 27th birthday was on May 23rd.

It was fabulous! I stayed in my pajamas almost all day, skipped my normal Monday routine of laundry, had many cards, FB, and phone call birthday wishes, got a new super cute swim suit, and best of all, Dan surprised me with a trustworthy babysitter (s-i-l Lara) so we could leave BOTH kids home and go out to dinner. I chose a place I'd never been before, the Mandarin. Delish!

My visiting teacher also brought by these yummy treats! Thanks Jessica!

Later that week, one of Dan's college roommates, Scott (along with his wife Laura and two daughters), came over for dinner.

His two girls sandwich McKenna in age, Lindsey(1), McKenna (2), Katie (3).

They all got along pretty well in spite of Scott's girls being exhausted from traveling from Texas that day. Thanks for the fun visit!

And here's just a cute picture of our future missionary and his handsome daddy! xoxo

Fun with Firearms/Tea Party

Dan went shooting a couple weeks ago with a few guys in the ward out in the West Desert (Lone Rock-further west than Grantsville). Though we don't own a gun (something Dan would like to change) everybody else owned enough that he could try them all out. In fact, between the 9 guys that went there were 30+ guns including numerous pistols, black powder, assault rifles, .22, and probably every kind of shotgun. They took a lot of cans, water jugs and clay pigeons to shoot at. Naturally, I was worried about him getting hurt, but Dan reassured me that with a police officer and paramedic on hand everything would be fine :)

This was the assault rifle (AR 13), his favorite gun of the day. Doesn't he look manly?

12 gauge over-under shotgun (compliments of Josh H.) ...his next favorite

Taken a split second before the clay pigeon exploded...or so Dan says :)

The off-duty cop, Nate S.

Dan and Nate were competing to see who could hit a clay pigeon first...thankfully the police officer is a better shot than the social worker :)

This video isn't of Dan, but he thought this would be a better post if you all got to hear a shotgun go off.

He came home with a sore shoulder, perma-grin, lots of ammo and a promise to go again. It was really his first chance this semester to go have fun away from everything he has been doing, so I was glad he could go...and not get shot!

Also, a couple weeks ago, me and my cousins got together for our annual Tea Party book club. (I know. How much more opposite could these two events be?) This year's theme was masquerade. Most everyone dressed in fancy dresses (compliments of DI) and we all had pretty, glittery masks. There were delicious desserts accompanied by some decadent mac and cheese. Yes, you heard me right. :) These pictures were taken by my 11 year old cousin, so... not as close up as I would have liked. Still- good times!

Hair Cut and Kangaroo Zoo

Here are some little goings on with McKenna lately.

She was in need of a trim so I took her to Dan's cousin Allie (Thanks!). Allie was also nice enough to style it with curls all over.

Yes, I took four pictures in an attempt to get a good one. I had to post them all b/c her face is just so cute in all of them. :)

This was pre-haircut, after she took a good long nap. Sweet little face!

I was trying to catch her doing this.

Lately, whenever she watches any movie, she has this concerned look face.

We had an outing the other day to Kangaroo Zoo with cousins from the Stewart and Winegar families (Dan's sisters). Kangaroo Zoo is a fun indoor bounce house/bounce obstacle course mecca. :)

Blurry, cause she's bouncing.

She was a little uneasy, but had lots of fun!

I helped a little too.

Cute baby boys Truman and Oliver!

Ben- Four Months

(I'm quite behind on blogging. Ben will be 5 months old in 4 days.)

FOUR MONTH STATS

Height: 25.5 in (1.7 in increase in 2 months) 75th percentile

Weight: 12.1 lb (.8 lb increase in 2 months) 10th percentile

*(He dropped from the 60th to the 10th percentile. :( More on this later... )*

Head Circ: 16.2 in (.8 in increase in 2 months) 25th percentile

Other development in the past two months:

• Had his baby blessing day
• I started a night time routine with him: change diaper/into pjs, read a few books, swaddle, sing a few songs, put in crib while still awake. He would of course fuss for quite a while at first. But it only took about 5 days before he wouldn't fuss at all and put himself to sleep!
• Started to laugh!
• Went to a movie theater with mom and dad.
• Great tracking and following moving objects across the room with his eyes.
• Getting so strong! I've already found him in his crib turned 90* (on his back) from where I put him down.
• On April 3rd, he slept THROUGH THE NIGHT! From 11:15pm-7:45am!! I know. I couldn't believe it myself. He's pretty much done that ever since.
• Started to bat at things with his hands.
• Celebrated his first Easter.
• Found his toes.
• Had his first non-family babysitter (my visiting teacher) while mom was at the dentist.
• Second bum yeast infections from mom being on antibiotics- again!
• Started drinking from a bottle. But I'm still nursing. :)

*So, the pediatrician wasn't too worried about his weight percentile drop. He said, "We'll just scratch our heads at it, and you go ahead and start solids." So we tried some good old rice cereal...

Can't you tell he loves it?

*However, I was a little concerned about the weight percentile drop. Ben had been really fussy after his last two feedings for the day for about a month. I didn't think much of it because I could always get him to calm down and then he was happy and smiley. My sister-in-law suggested I pump and see how much I was producing for those feedings so I could see if the fussiness had to do with my milk supply (don't know why I never thought to do this myself!). Turns out, I was only getting out about 2 ounces!! Poor little dude was starving! I spoke with a lactation consultant and she thinks that between my breast infection when he was 6 weeks old, and him starting to sleep through the night so early, that both negatively effected my breast milk supply. So for the past month, I've been supplimenting with formula for those last two feedings, pumping for extra stimulation once he's done nursing, and taking some herbs to help build up my milk supply. I think it's getting better, but I need to be more consistent about the pumping. It's pretty difficult to do though when Dan's not around much (and I'm not blaming him btw). It's so hard NOT to be stressed about this too, which also doesn't help. I absolutely LOVE nursing and really wish my body would work the way it's supposed to and satisfy his needs! *sigh*

Other recent pictures

Hey, it was cold and McKenna wasn't using it. :)

"Get it off me mom! I look like a girl."

With my mom's step-mom. Gma Pat Condie.