Happy Birthday Brynlee!!!

I can't believe that my sweet little munchkin has turned two! Time truly flies with these little kids. They grow so fast and you can never get that time back. Brynlee is my sweet little angel baby and I am truly grateful that I am blessed to be able to stay at home with her and her siblings because I would hate to miss out on any of these moments with them...ok, ok, there are SOME moments that I would love to miss out on (the throwing up at 2 am, the tantrums at the grocery store, etc. :-)
Luckily, I had everything prepared for her birthday before Wednesday, otherwise I would have been in serious trouble. The cake was ordered, the presents were ready, and I'm just glad that the hospital released me early in the morning so we could still celebrate her birthday. I know that Bryns would not have cared when or where we celebrated her birthday, but I did. She is a thorough momma's girl and she definitely has me wrapped around her little finger:-)
Thank-you to everyone who came and helped us to celebrate our little Bryn's birthday. It has been a crazy week and the party helped to make it Bryn's special day. Thanks again!

Brynlee picked out her own birthday cake with the Little Mermaid on it. She was so excited about it (though not so excited about getting her picture taken :-)

This was Brynlee's present from her parents. It was the one thing that was not ready before this crazy week and poor Sean was out in the garage putting it together just minutes before the party started. He has been such a good sport and has done everything possible to help out!

Just a cute picture of the girls on our fron porch with Grandpa and Grandma Kress! They were so sweet and left a seminar in Salt Lake early so that they could make it to Bryn's birthday party.

Surprise!!!

Paxton Randy Kress was born on May 20, 2009 at 5:36pm. He is 20.75 inches long and 7lbs 6 oz. For right now he has curly black hair and blue eyes.

And yes, the early date was quite the surprise for us. The c-section was scheduled for May 29th, but when I did a repeat ultrasound on Wednesday and they found out that my amniotic fluid dropped into a more dangerous zone, my doctor moved up the c-section to that afternoon. We rushed to get everything prepared and figure out babysitters for the other kids. I am so grateful for my mom and sisters who jumped right in and watched Taylee and Brynlee so that Sean could be with me. THANK-YOU!!!

We are so excited to have Paxton added into our family! He is such a sweet baby and has already won us all over. Taylee is such a good big sister and is already my little helper. Brynlee just points at him with a grin and says "Baby," though she becomes very upset when he cries and says "baby cwyin." They are both such good little girls and I feel so blessed to have all of my children.

Again, thanks to everyone who were able to help us out over the last couple days. Our family is doing great and Paxton and I are SOOO happy to be home again :-)

Girl vs. Tree...

The tree won. While kicking a soccer ball around with her cousins yesterday Taylee literally ran right into a tree. She was concentrating so hard on the ball that she forgot to watch where she was going :-)

Last Soccer Game

Today was Taylee's last soccer game for the season. She has had so much fun playing this year and I have loved watching her. I just can't help but be so proud of how grown-up she is getting. She made so many goals today that I lost track after the 5th one! But the part of the game that made me so proud to be her mom was when she helped all of her teammates make at least one goal.
Earlier this week Taylee and Sean worked out a plan to ensure that every team member got to score at least one goal during this game. Sean would help by bringing that player down by the goal and then Taylee would kick the ball all the way down the field and then pass it to that player so that they could kick it into the net. It was so much fun to not only see these other kids make their goals, but to see how excited Taylee was to help them. She is such a sweetheart and we can't wait til next season!

Practicing before the game. Taylee is wearing the shorts. Her cousin Aubree is also in a red shirt. Brynlee is in the picture with the pink shirt. She wants to play with the big girls so badly!

Poor Brynlee being forced to watch from the sidelines.

We brought silly string for all the parents. It was fun to be able to cover the kids with it after their final team cheer. Taylee loved it!

Taylee got her team pictures and trophy at the game and she already has it set up on her dresser:-)

Titanic Exhibit

Taylee, Brynlee, and I went to the Museum of Idaho today with my Mom and my Aunt Deann to see the Titanic Exhibit. We loved it! There were huge pictures of different parts of the Titanic, both in the ocean and before it sailed. Different artifacts were all over. Two of the things that I was impressed/amazed by were the replicas of the cabins (did you know that it was over $4000 for a first class cabin on the Titanic?!? The exhibit said that today that would be over $70,000! Crazy!) and the dinner menus that were posted. I would definitely be the most comfortable with the 3rd class food. It was the only menu that I recognized all of the food :-)

It was also interesting that when you enter into the exhibit you get a ticket that has information about a real person who was on the Titanic. It tells you what class they were in, their family, where they were going and why, and then at the end of the exhibit you get to check the list of passengers to see whether you survived or not. Both of my daughters and I survived, but sadly, neither my mother nor my aunt survived. The stories that were displayed of some of the passengers were really sad. One was about the lady that was on my aunt's ticket. Apparently she was on one of the lifeboats until she realized that her husband was not going to be allowed on it, so she got off to stay with him. Neither survived. Another lady gave up her seat on the last lifeboat so that a mother could be with her children.

I would recommend going to the exhibit, but perhaps not with kids. Taylee enjoyed parts of it and Bryns did pretty good through about half of it, but while it was fascinating to adults, it was not what I would call 'kid friendly.'

27

My birthday was yesterday and I am now 27! I am feeling pretty old right now, but I don't know if its really the age or from being 9 months pregnant :-).

I really thought I made it easy for Sean this year in regards to a birthday present for me. About a month ago I told him that I wanted a "nice watch." In my mind, he would be able to walk into a store, glance around at the watches, and pick whichever one he liked. I am not that picky and I completely trust his judgement when it comes to watches. But, I didn't realize how much stress I had put on him until he told me yesterday. Apparently, he went through about four stores, examining watches, comparing prices, and then went back through 2 of them again, only to end up ordering one from one of the jewelry stores. He did a fantastic job and I love the watch that he picked out, but I feel bad that it put so much pressure on him. Sorry again babe! Here is the beautiful watch that my husband picked out!



It was a great birthday, spent with the three people that I love the most. I did get to sneak away in the morning to be pampered to a spa pedicure. And then in the afternoon we went to Pocatello for Taylee's soccer practice and my doctor's appointment. I guess at my ultrasound last week my amniotic fluid was really low so now I have to have NSTs twice a week and another ultrasound next week to keep an eye on the baby. NST's aren't bad, just pretty boring. It was fun to hear the baby's heartbeat for so long and to see that the movements that I thought were him stretching are actually little contractions.

To end the day, Sean took me out to dinner while my mom watched Taylee and Brynlee. It was a great birthday. And even though I hate getting older, I wouldn't go back and change anything. I have the world's greatest guy for a husband and the two most adorable little girls for my daughters and I am so excited to add on the next little guy to our family (15 days!! Yea!!)

Mother's Day at Mesa Falls

I have had sick kids this last week. Bryns came down with an ear infection and sinus infection and now Taylee is coughing everywhere. With neither Sean or I teaching yesterday, we decided to keep both kids at home from church and to go have a picnic as a family.
So we packed the girls and some food and headed to Mesa Falls which is about an hour away from us. Sean had never been there before and I have not been there since I was a kid. It was so nice to just spend time together. The girls were a bit grumpy from being sick but handled the drive pretty well and Sean and I were able to just talk about things.
Taylee loved the waterfall! She was so excited and just stared at it. Bryns kept saying "Big water!" It was great to just spend time together as a family.

My family at Mesa Falls (gotta love the HUGE baby bump!)

Mesa Falls (Taylee's hand is in the corner where she is mesmerized by the water)

When I Miss a Game...

...my little girl gets hurt. I attended a bridal shower for my cousin instead of going to Taylee's soccer game today. I hated, hated, hated missing the game. Taylee is so much fun to watch and she loves it. But, this cousin has always been more like a sister to me than a cousin and I am so excited to see her get married next month. Congrats Brit!

But, back to the story. Halfway through the the bridal shower I get a text from Sean asking me if he is allowed to tell Taylee to hit some of the players on the other team. Just from his text I could tell that the protective father-figure was coming out strong in him and he was ANGRY! Apparently, the other team was an all boy team and some of them were very rough throughout the game. Twice, Taylee was deliberately pushed to the ground because she had the ball, the second time she was on a breakaway run when one of the kids came behind her and pushed her in the back with both of his hands causing her to nose dive and slide across the grass. And then she got wacked in the face with the soccer goal, splitting her lip open. It might be a good thing that I wasn't there because Sean has a lot more control over himself when it comes to our kids getting hurt. I only see red and usually become pretty irrational...ok, ok,really irrational. It is something I am working on :-)

But Sean was AWESOME and got her back into the game (with a lot of bribing) and she did end up scoring her team's only goal. She still tells me that she loves soccer and I am so proud of her for not giving up despite getting hurt.

Weird, weird, weird pregnancy

My pregnancies are always so strange. Everything has been going well, but slowly I have been measuring a little bit smaller than I should every time I go into a doctor's appointment. This is a pretty normal trend for me and I have known that at one of these appointments I would have to get another ultrasound to check the baby's growth.

Then yesterday as my doctor is measuring the belly growth his eyes bug out a bit as he is looking at the measuring tape and then he repeats the measurement...and repeats the measurement. Apparently not only was I measuring WAY too small, but I was smaller than I was two weeks ago. So, I was off to an ultrasound. First, the baby is growing very well. In fact, the tech put his due date a week earlier because he is bigger than he should be. The "guestimated" weight of what he is right now is 6 lbs 9 oz, though she said that these guesses are usually on the large size and can vary up to a pound either way.

So, everything is going very well, other than that my poor big baby is stuffed into a too small uterus :-)

Mommy, Our Trampoline is Gone...

And it was :-). Apparently with all the wind yesterday our trampoline literally got picked up and thrown about 150 yards into the empty lot next to us. The good news is that it went over our new fence posts. The bad news is that the trampoline did not take the fall very well which has made both Taylee and Brynlee pretty upset (they LOVE the trampoline). Sean and I took it apart and luckily only one piece is wrecked. Hopefully we can either get it fixed or I can order a replacement piece :-). Since I can't change what happened to our poor trampoline I will just enjoy Taylee's stories of how it flew away (both girls were at the window watching the trees 'dance' and got to see it happen :-)

Following the Crowd

I hate to admit it, but I am going to follow the crowd and go private with my blog. It freaked me out a bit that despite marking "No" on allowing search engines to find my blog, my blogger profile still came up when I googled my name, which gave direct access to my blogs. I am too much of a mother-bear when it comes to my kids to let pictures and stories of them to be that public on the internet, especially with their full names, birthdays, etc. There are too many creeps out there and I know that I will feel a lot better if I go private:-) I will probably wait a week or so before I switch it over, so if you want to continue to read about the crazy Kress family please either leave a comment with your email address or email me at vinylaccentz@gmail.com.

Tag 5

5 Things I was doing 5 years ago
1-Living in Blackfoot across the street from my grandparents
2-Working as a collections manager for a surgeon
3-Going to ISU
4-Pregnant with my first baby
5-Preparing for girl's camp

5 Things on my To-Do List For Today
1-Laundry
2-Babysit my niece Aubree
3-Organize food storage items that we bought yesterday
4-Articulation worksheets with Taylee
5-Excercise

5 Things I would do with a Million Bucks
1-Take my family on a HUGE vacation
2-Hire someone to do our laundry!
3-Buy my parents a new house
4-Buy really nice vehicles
5- Let Sean buy a golf course (he would be one happy guy!)

5 Places I have Lived
1-Blackfoot, ID
2-Rexburg, ID
3-Pocatello, ID
4-Grand Junction, CO
5-Idaho Falls, ID

5 Jobs I have Held
1-Potato Picker
2-Kesler's Market Cashier
3- Medical Receptionist
4-Collections Manager
5-Mommy (BY FAR THE BEST JOB!!!)

5 Things I want to be doing in 5 Years
1- Have my degree finished
2-Be a published author
3-Spending all the time I can with my kids and husband
4-Be able to garden (I seriously kill everything right now:-)
5-Just be happy