Halloween Pictures

It's a go!

So we had our first work out today. Good times. We also did measurements and weigh ins. Not good times for me =). Our goal is to go to July and reward ourselves along the way. I can't wait for my rewards! Each Tuesday is our weigh in day, so I guess that'll be my day to record what I've lost. We're doing really reasonable goals of 1-2 lbs a week and hoping that slow and steady wins the race. Wish us luck!

The Biggest Loser Beginning

So I was really inspired by the Biggest Loser last night, as I am each season. This time, I felt the need to start a group. So what I want to do is get everyone together (even through email or skype) and we can go through what motivates us and think of incentives and things that will keep us going. I have a million exercise videos, some equipment, and I'm willing to invest and get more things too. I'm also willing to have whomever wants to come to my house to work out, come and we'll let the kids play, while we sweat off the pounds. We're also close to finishing the basement, so if there's enough people, then we'll get that done sooner than later so we can workout in the basement, where it's nice and cool. I have rooms upstairs that the kids can destroy while we work out, or if people prefer we can work out later when husbands are home and kids are in bed (8:30 pm for us). I want to put together recipes, menus, because I have a ton, and charts that are easy to make sure we're getting the foods we need (i.e. check off servings of fruit, veggies, etc that we've had). Whatever you want, I'm willing to put in the time! I want to make this easy and keep everyone motivated.
Some ideas for incentives that I have (please give me your input):
Everyone put money into the pot and after so many months, whoever loses the most (based on percentage weight lost, of course) gets the pot.
Or we could do milestones, where once a person gets to certain milestones they will win prizes...
I was thinking of weekly weigh ins. I also have my tv hooked to a computer so we can do several different exercises, anything to spice things up!
Please give me input and ideas and we can get this thing off the ground!

Madelyn is 2

My Madelyn monster is 2 already! A week ago today, she turned 2. I can't believe it! The day after her birthday we got to see the doctor for her 2 yr. appt. and her are her stats...
Weight 28 pounds (68th percentile), height 36 1/4 inches (96th percentile).
A story to share about Madelyn...
We went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house with Nick's family and once you get to the sealing rooms, a couple took us in the sealing room and talked about the significance of being a forever family and as they were talking Madelyn ran round and round in circles around the alter, taunting the other kids to chase her. We tried to take her out of the room, so we wouldn't ruin the experience for the others there, but the couple talking told us to let her stay. Anytime we'd try to catch her or ask her to stop, she would scream. It's pretty hard to embarrass me, but I was thoroughly embarrassed!
What she's up to...
She's talking like crazy and saying 4 word sentences for the most part. She's always surprising us with the words she knows too. Right now we're learning colors and starting to work on our ABC's. Currently the two colors she gets right every time are pink and orange. She now loves being an older sister and adores Luke. Everything he does is SO funny to her. She is always saying "please", "thank you", and "you're welcome." She and Andrew are taking advantage of the lasting warm weather and jump on the trampoline every chance they get. It's so nice for me to be able to have them outside so I can get stuff done around here. I love how they play together and most of the time get along. We love our Madelyn and couldn't imagine life without her!
Here are some pictures from this summer. Enjoy.

Andrew's stats...

Here are my little man's stats: Weight 43 lbs. (91st percentile), Length 42 1/2 inches (90th percentile), the doctor couldn't believe he just turned 4 because of his knowledge (props to his preschool teachers). I wanted to share a little story about Andrew and how awesome he is. Last week I had to give Madelyn a bath because she made a mess while eating. I put her in the bathtub and went out to finish doing the dishes. I know this is not normally a safe thing to do, but Madelyn is so loud constantly, I know she's okay. Anyway, I asked Andrew to go in the bathroom to keep an eye on her, so he did. I could hear them giggling like crazy and thought once I was done with the dishes I was going to find a huge mess in my bathroom. I went into the bathroom and this is the scene: the tub drained and rinsed and Andrew in my closet with Madelyn picking out clothes for her and saying "Okay Madelyn lets go get your diaper on now." I couldn't believe it! He actually put her diaper on and tried getting Madelyn dressed too, but she would only let him do the diaper.I gave him the biggest hug and sang praises to him the rest of the day. He has started to even get Madelyn and himself breakfast in the morning. He gets bowls and spoons and pours the cereal and milk, too. What a kid! I love my Andrew.

Andrew is 4!!!

It happened, my little Andrew turned 4 on Sunday. When he woke up I explained to him that he was no longer 3, but 4, and he jumped up and shouted "hooray"!!! I then showed him the cars cake I had made (I stayed up till about 1:45am making), he had to look at it twice he was so excited. He wanted to know if his friends were going to come over and play, but I told him we were going to have a friend party when he turns 5. When I took him to Sam's club on Saturday he got to pick out a present for himself. He ended up picking out a math/numbers work book. He loves it! He also gets a bike, but we're not giving it to him until we celebrate his birthday this weekend with my family. I can't believe he's 4 already, where did the time go? We haven't had his 4 yr appt yet, so I'm not sure of his stats, but I'll post them soon. He's really into drawing pictures and spelling words. His imagination is going crazy, we have Andrew's art everywhere, it's even spilling into Grandma and Grandpa Nielson's home.
Here are some pictures from the party at Grandma and Grandpa Nielson's...we have video too, but I don't have it on the computer yet.

Don't you love how Luke adores Andrew?
He was following his every movement.

He also adored the cake =).

Luke's Blessing

I just wanted to post that we are blessing Luke this Sunday, July 5th. The sacrament meeting starts at 1pm and after the meeting we will be having a little luncheon at our house. We wanted to invite friends and family to please come! The meeting house address is 3930 South 6000 West in West Valley City.

On another note, yesterday was our 5 year anniversary, so we took the kids to the place Nick proposed to me and took some cute pictures. Here are some of them for your viewing pleasure!

Madelyn's head meets a sharp corner

Today it was 12:55 PM and we were in a rush to get out the door. I (Nick) was packing stuff up in the kitchen and Madelyn comes cruising in at full speed with her new dress shoes on. They don't have any traction really, so she slipped and hit her head on the outside corner of our cabinets. I picked her up, and gave her a hug, then realized that her head was bleeding. The cabinet had cut her head pretty bad. My church shirt got a lot of blood on it, and so did her dress. The cut was about an inch long, and looked pretty deep. I dropped Sonja, Andrew, and baby Luke off at church, and I took her into the instacare. It seemed that 3/4 of the people there had the swine flu, as I saw a lot of masked faces. Madelyn got four staples and didn't cry (but they did give her local anesthetic gel before doing the staples). I am impressed with how tough she is! These pictures don't really do it justice because the blood has been cleaned up, but you can see the little staples at least.

Mom update #2

My mom had surgery yesterday to ablate the cells in her heart that were causing the ventricular tachycardia and atrial fibrillation. It looks like the surgery was successful and she is recovering well. We got to take the kids yesterday and visit her and she looks good. The doctor came in and said that as long as everything looks good, she can come home today. We're just waiting to hear from my parents today about what happens next. Thanks so much for all your prayers!

Mom update

I just wanted to write down what's going on so far. My mom wasn't feeling well (pain in her arm and chest) and so she made an appointment with her family prac. doctor and when she went in they hooked her up to have an EKG (I think) and found she was having a heart attack right then. The doctor called to the nurse to call 911 and he threw 2 asprin at her and gave her nitroglycerin. The hospital was only 1 block away from the doctors office but since she had driven herself to the appointment they had to wait for the ambulance to come and drive her the 1 block to the hospital. Last night they transferred her to the University of Utah Hospital because the American Fork Hospital isn't quite equiped with what they needed to test her. Once at the U, they found that her heart was not damaged from the attack-probably because of the speed in which she received treatment. This morning between 2 and 5 am she kept the nurses busy running into her room because her heart rhythm is all over the place. When I went to visit her at noon today they said the problem is probably being caused by the atrium and not the ventricles which is "better" scenerio wise. When I left her, she was being taken to have a treadmill test, which we weren't too happy about because she was having problems just laying in bed, with oxygen on and meds in her system. So that's the news for now. I'll update once we know more. Thanks everyone for your prayers and well wishes!

I survived...

So far I've survived the swine flu. We're still being careful with Luke and the kids so they aren't exposed. We were able to get Tamiflu for Nick, Andrew, and Madelyn but Luke isn't old enough to take it. I was flat out in bed for a good 3-4 days, but thankfully my mom and mother in law are absolute angels and came to our rescue. They ran the household in every way and I couldn't have done it without them. I am so lucky to have such amazing people in my life! It seems like it has taken me a good 2 weeks to recover from it though. Nick started coming down with symptoms, so we got him on the tamiflu and he was only down for part of a day-lucky guy! During all the craziness we found out my mom has had several strokes (she had a MRI because of migraines) and now they are testing her to see if she has a hole in her heart (PFO), like my sister, that is causing her the problems. The last week of my pregnancy I developed major headaches that haven't gone away, so now I have to go get tested for the same problem. We're praying that whatever is found will be easily fixed.

On to better news. Luke is growing like a weed and is such a great baby! He sleeps through all the fighting and screaming and actually prefers to sleep in the midst of everyone's noise versus sleeping in a quiet room by himself. We're thrilled to finally have a mild mannered, snuggly baby. Even though he has bad gas and stomach pains, he hardly ever cries. It's amazing! Andrew and Madelyn let us know about their EVERY discomfort as babies.

Madelyn seems to be doing better (not screaming her head off about everything) with her jealousy issues, but we still have to remind her not to punch or hurt Luke about every hour. Her most frequent phrase these days is "sorry Luke." She's talking like crazy and has actually been binky free for 5 weeks now. She's down to 1 nap a day, like Andrew, and melts our hearts with her hugs and kisses.

Andrew is doing really well and LOVES Luke. He misses pre school, so we bought him a "homework" book at Sams so he can work on some skills during the summer. We bought a trampoline from Walmart.com and he is super excited about it getting here. I think I'm more excited though =).

Nick is finishing his application for Graduate school and we're hoping that he's able to be officially accepted so he can continue taking classes this Fall and on.

Well, I hope that everyone is well and has a better month than we've had!

More pictures and happenings

Luke's BEFORE                        and            AFTER photos

I liked these shots of Andrew because they show how he really feels about having a brother, so HAPPY!!!

Nick and his parents

Andrew looking for something to watch at the hospital and Luke under the lights at home.

Andrew being my "big helper" and showing off his writing skills by writing Luke's name and drawing a picture of him. So cute!

Madelyn showing off her chocolate face and hair do from Grandma Reynolds.

We're loving life with our new baby and the kids are adjusting well, for the most part =). I can't wait to be healed enough to enjoy being outside with the kids and having fun again. 

And with this all going on Nick got straight A's in school this semester!!!! He is amazing!

We also wanted to say a huge thanks to everyone that has helped us out this last week. And especially for Jenn Tukuafu, Lianna Black, and Teresa Andrus for the amazing meals they brought after we came home from the hospital. You guys are the best!

It's a Boy!

Luke Timothy Nielson was born on 15 May 2009 at 8:30 AM via C-section.  He weighed in at 7 lbs. 10.3 oz. and 19 3/4 inches long.  He has dark blonde-reddish hair and is very mellow and snuggly.  Sonja says he looks just like his dad and has little freckles on his nose.  Andrew and Madelyn were very excited to see him.  Madelyn was the funniest...she made me pick her up to see him in his crib, at which point she said several times "ooooh!  baby!!!!".

Here are a few pictures of the new guy!  The boys outnumber the girls now :)

We're almost there

Well, we have less than 48 hours before the little guy's, big debut. I can't believe the time has come and we still don't have a name for him! Nick and I went to Park City this last weekend for a final getaway before the craziness begins and instead of settling on a name, we added to the list of names we like.
I thought it'd be fun for people to add a comment of what they think the baby will weigh and how tall he'll be. Whomever is the closest I'll send them a little treat, so let me know what you think!
Here are Andrew and Madelyn's stats if that matters or helps: 8 lbs 11oz, 21.5 inches and 7 lbs 10 oz, 20 inches. Andrew was 9 days early and Madelyn was 8 days early. This baby will be 9 days early...Good luck!

Funny coincidence...
We bought a crib from a guy on ksl.com and Nick was finally able to put it together, to find that it is broken! I had already bought a changing table from kid to kid that matched the crib, but I had saved the receipt and left on the tag, so if we needed to return it for some reason, we could. We decided to make the defective crib into a toddler bed for Madelyn and change her bed back into a crib for the new baby. Which has a changing table already attached to it. So we headed to kid to kid to return the changing table that we didn't need now, but they wouldn't take it back. Although they informed me they would buy it back at a 40% markdown. No thanks! So I listed it on ksl.com and sold it the next day, and actually made a $1.26 profit. That night Nick was putting Madelyn's new bed together and found that he needed some screws that the defective crib/toddler bed didn't come with, so he headed to Lowe's. After he got home, I jokingly asked him if he had spent my precious profit on the screws. He was downstairs and started laughing because he checked out the receipt and the screws cost $1.26 after tax. What are the odds? So I guess we came out even on everything and I don't feel so gypped any more!

Pictures, like promised

Well we finished the baby's quilt and Madelyn's dress, so here are the pictures I promised. Andrew quillow isn't done quite yet but hopefully we can finish it up this week. It is starting to look really cute and Andrew is super excited about it!
(Don't you love how Andrew is putting his arm over the baby bump?)

The dress cost a whole $3.90 to make!!! How many binkies can YOU see?
Talk about binkie overkill! (There are THREE!!!)


Here are some pictures of the family at Rachel's wedding


Reynolds Family Lafranceschina/Reynolds Family

My family with the kids in order of age. We were so happy that my brother, Jason, was able to come to the reception! The Reynolds Family

All the sisters in the family (including in laws)