Third Trimester Trouble!

See this picture? The gorgeous woman in the green dress...Angelina Jolie, pregnant with TWINS shortly before she gave birth. See the panda in the background? That's me pregnant with one baby at 7 1/2 months along. Seriously. Okay, well, actually, the only difference between me and the panda is the panda's preggo boobs aren't three cup sizes bigger than they were 7 1/2 months ago! And I can't do kung fu....

It's been really hard to watch my body change this past month. New stretch marks are appearing alongside the previous two sets of stretchmarks. Spider veins are showing up on my tree trunk legs (crossing my fingers that they don't turn into varicose veins by the end of this pregnancy). As previously mentioned...my boobs no longer fit in the NURSING bras from when Aaron was born...and if anyone remembers how humongous they were then...yeah...and I haven't even started nursing yet! Aaaaaaah!!! I don't even recognize my own rear end with these wide hips! My hips feel like they are breaking, my sciatic nerve is on the fritz, Kate keeps kicking my bladder, my shoes don't fit, and my maternity shirts are getting too short!

I saw some pictures of me from a few weeks ago and I couldn't believe what I saw! My face is huuuuuge! (Yet again, resembling Po the panda...) I always seem to forget how hard the third trimester is....the swelling, the not being able to breath, the not being able to roll over in bed, the heartburn and it seems like every week drags on forrrrever!

So, the reason for this post is to ask for all your help and advice on how you got through your third trimester. How did you keep from getting depressed? How did you pass the time? What did you do to keep yourself excited about the pregnancy instead of having panic attacks that the baby would never come?

R.I.P Little Fishy!

Remember about a year ago when I posted about how Whitney saved up her money to buy a fish? Well, yesterday we got home from dropping Michael off at work and a "quick" stop at Target to find our little Coral belly up. We had known it was coming for a while because the poor thing was having a hard time swimming and would just lay on the bottom of the bowl on it's side...but I didn't know what to do about it and I didn't want to kill it...so we just patiently waited. Poor little Whitney, though! She was just heartbroken! It was the first time she's ever had a real emotional meltdown like that, and it was just so sad to watch. She wanted to call Mike at work to tell him and she just sobbed on the phone. We've never had a pet die before, so I wasn't sure how you're supposed to handle it, so my first method was to throw a Coral party. We had cake and ice cream and celebrated that she was now in animal heaven with Ginger (who was my family's dog growing up) and Guido (who was Michael's parent's evil cat) and of course Nemo's mommy and she was so happy there! I think Whitney felt a little better after the sugar high. Then we made a little box to bury Coral in and Whitney decorated it with stickers and wrote "I'll miss you, Coral!" on it. It was really cute and I wish I would have taken a picture of it- I tried but the camera died. We buried it this morning in the backyard (should have done it yesterday because it was already starting to...nevermind). Anyway, I just love my little tenderhearted Whitney. This has been a hard time for her, but it has given us a good chance to talk about death and life and how families are forever! And Coral will always have a special little place in our hearts. :)

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day! I hope you all had a wonderful one! Ours was pretty great. I set up the table the night before so that when the kids woke up and came down the stairs they would see special valentine gifts for each of them. I LOVE the sound of their excitement first thing in the morning! Whitney shouted, "Oh....my....GOSH!" (totally sounded like a teenager) and it was just soooo cute! It's so fun to do special little things for them to let them know how much I love them and to bring their lives some joy. (Speaking of joy, the kids are playing outside right now and keep running back in with handfuls of clovers and dandelions for me...). Michael was pretty excited about the new drill he got this year (yes, that's a drill in the red gift bag, not lingere.) After they were done reading their cards and eating their chocolates, I made pink heart shaped pancakes with strawberry topping and whipped cream for breakfast. It was so fun!

I can remember waking up on Valentines Day when I was little and my mom always did something like this for us. She would make the cutest little heart shaped cakes and leave them on the piano for us to find in the morning, and every year for as long as I can remember she would give us those little heart shaped boxes of Russel Stover chocolates. She still sends a Valentines Day package for us every year with treats and chocolates. I'm so happy to have Valentines Day, and get to celebrate that wonderful thing called LOVE!

LOVE - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker. ~Author Unknown

No Fear of Flying

Today we decided to take a little family trip out to Galveston to the Lone Star Flight Museum. It was a gorgeous mostly sunny day, 77 degrees...perfect! It was really interesting to drive through Galveston and see all the damage. It was just crazy! There were so many parts of it that were just completely trashed and abandoned, it was really sad. I wish I would have taken some pictures...

The museum we went to had been damaged, but was able to fly out the planes that were in flying condition before the hurricane. The ones who couldn't fly had to stay behind and get flooded. So, half of the museum was still closed so they could fix the planes. We got to see some pretty cool planes anyway. Aaron LOVES airplanes, he's pretty much obsessed with them so it was really neat to see his face when he woke up from his little nap in the van, looked out the window and saw an F-100 Super Sabre!

You can't really see it very well, but seriously, just look at that big smile! It was like being in a candy store. Here they are in front of one of that actual Navy Blue Angels F8F Bearcat! These were designed to defend against the Japanese airborn kamikaze attacks in the 1940's. It was a pretty sweet little plane!

This is us in front of a B-17 Flying Fortress. These are one of my favorite planes. Can you imagine the rumble of the formations of these beasts flying overhead with their 4 engines? Sooooo cool!!! These bombers were amazing. They were used in WWII to bomb Germany and during the Pacific war to bomb Japanese ships. They dropped more bombs during WWII than any other bomber. They could defend themselves and they could get back home even after being all shot up. Seriously, these planes were AWESOME!!! Ever see "Memphis Belle"? And, if you look reeeally closely, you can see me in all my pregnant glory. haha. Yes, I am standing next to the B-17 to make me look smaller.

Here's us with a B-25 Mitchell. This plane was actually a very humbling experience to get to see. This is the plane that they used in the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo in April of 1948. Don't know what I'm talking about? If you saw "Pearl Harbor" (the one that came out a few years ago with Kate Beckinsdale and Ben Affleck), remember at the end they had to fly those planes off of the back of the battle ship with an insanely short takeoff? They launched 16 of them and 15 of them crash landed somewhere around eastern China. The men who flew these knew it was most likely a suicide mission, yet they still went and defended their country. Thankfully, of the 80 men on the planes, 69 of them eventually made it back to U.S. lines.

Well, there is your history lesson for the day. It was so nice to be able too get away for a day and do something as a family! It's something I think we'll do a lot more often. :)

Oh my gosh, I'm soooo sorry! It's been a month since I last posted!!! I don't know where the time went. Things are going okay. The main goings on in life have been that our lease on the house we're renting expired and I was reeeeeally hoping to find another house to rent so we can get away from our noisy neighbors. I can't remember if I've told you about our noisy neighbors...well, more like neighborhood. I don't know how to tell you about it without sounding like a racist...but I'll try. Okay, there is our nice new neighborhood which was built in 2006. We live on the last street of our neighborhood. Behind our neighborhood is a neighborhood in an area where the Mexicans live. Most of the houses are trailer houses. There is a pack of dogs that runs around the neighborhood barking and chasing the poor girl dogs around. They drive big noisy trucks with annoying horns (seriously, their horns play entire SONGS!!!) There are roosters which crow all the time (I hope they're not used in cock fights...). We occasionally hear gunshots at night (scary) And they ride their 4 wheelers and dirt bikes right by our back fence and speed through our neighborhood all the time (totally illegal and they're going to run over a little kid one of these days). Those parts I can deal with (though shooting the pack of dogs with the bb gun at 3 a.m. when they've been barking for 2 hours straight right next to our fence doesn't sound so crazy sometimes). It's the parties and the music that are sooooo loud on the weekends that send me into the Incredible Hulk mode. I swear, I turn into some sort of monster with no sense of reason. Usually there is more than one party going, and the music is SO loud!!! I don't know how they stand it! It's that Mexican polka sounding stuff with the accordions and the heavy base and the yipping and yelping...oh I can't stand it! The drunker they get, the louder the music gets. And it seriously starts before sundown and doesn't end until 4 a.m. or later. No matter how hard I try to lay in bed and pretend I'm on a vacation in Acapulco, I still lose it. There's no way to drown out the music, I've tried. Sometimes it's so loud it buzzes our windows. I have been so tempted to get up on the roof and build a catapult and launch things at them....but that's not very Christlike, now is it. On Christmas Eve they had a HUGE neighborhood party with a DJ that went on until about 5 a.m. and Michael had to give me a blessing to calm me down because I was so distraught. So, I just wanted to get away from all that. Anyways, our lease finally ended and I was counting down the months until we could get out of here. We looked at some houses and there just wasn't anything that would work, and we just sort of felt like it was a bad choice so we decided to stay here. With the economy the way it is, and people starting to do layoffs (Mike's work just laid off 40 people from another department) AND we would have to pay about $3,000 for another deposit and first months rent (hello, can you say down payment on a house??? Why are we still RENTING!?! Okay, no more side notes in parentheses, I promise) It was a big bummer, but I know that if it was supposed to work out then it would have. But I hope Heavenly Father blesses me with the patience and tolerance that I'll need to get through the next year with a new baby, no sleep, and noisy neighbors up partying and drinking all night.

Then, a few weeks later Michael started having some health problems and the medical bills are adding up and it's SUCH a good thing we didn't spend all that money to move to a new place! It's interesting how things work out in life. When you think YOU know the best decision and are sure things will work out. Then, you don't get the answer you want during your prayers and you're like "WHAT!?! Why not!?! Seriously, how could this be a bad choice?". But, you do what Heavenly Father tells you to and then something happens in life and the light comes on and you realize, "Oh! I get it now. Thanks for watching out for us-that could have been bad!". It just makes me realize how much Heavenly Father really is in the details. He is the Master Architect in our lives and he really does know what's best for us and when we trust Him everything will work out for our good.

it's a......

Today was ultrasound day! Yaaaaay! And, drumroll please, it's a girl! (Maybe I should have put the pink footprints AFTER the post to play up the suspense...or been really mean and put up blue footprints...hahahaha!) I was getting pretty worried because Whitney would just not accept the fact that it could be a boy. When I asked her if she would still love the baby if it were a boy she was pretty sure she wouldn't. Her excuse was, "But Heavenly Father really wants me to have a little sister!". Who knows, maybe it's big sister's intuition. After all, she named the baby Kate the day we found out we had another one on the way. I really think these two girls are going to have a special connection.

We've decided to name her Kate Rebecca Brimhall. I have just had the darnest time finding a middle name that sounded good and felt right. I was half way tempted to bribe Whitney to let me re-name her so I could find a name that was easier to find a middle name for. But, when we were at the temple doing baptisms with the youth I had been praying to find a middle name that would be meaningful and beautiful. I was actually praying about a name of one of Michael's converts in Mexico with whom he is very close to and just got that stupor of thought after the prayer. It sounded pretty together...but it just felt empty. Then, right in the middle of the stupor I heard the name "Rebecca" being read from the font. My eyes shot open and suddenly the light went "ding!" and I knew that was the name she should have. I was even more in awe because that is Rachel's middle name and I really had wanted to name her after Rachel somehow. (But, to name her Rachel would just be confusing and McKayla has the middle name Rachel....so....yeah) And it feels so good to have a name for this baby! It's a wonderful name and I just can't wait to hear her name when she is blessed. : )

ultrasound drama

Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you about the ultrasound drama. So, two weeks ago the OB said the ultrasound clinic would call me to set up an appointment for the next week or so. Two weeks later, still no call. So, I called the OB and they said my records never got faxed. Then, after spending all morning on the phone calling between the OB and the clinic and finally getting my records faxed, the lady at the clinic tells me she doesn't have any openings for the next 6 weeks!!! I about died! Thankfully, she was merciful and squeezed me in on the 30th. So, I'm trying to be patient and just consider it the best late Christmas present ever! I can't wait!!!