A Whole Lotta New Stuff

Well, it has been just a long while since we blogged about anything...and there has been a whole lot to blog about too!! So, where to start?

Well, kids is always good...not that they are the center of our lives or anything. Let me share just a few (okay, a lot) of adorable kiddy pics!!

Lets start with Audree. She has offically declared who her very 1st best friend. And the 1st best friend award goes to...FOOD! This girl doesn't say no to any food. Here she is with a roll from Sunday dinner chowing away. You name it, she eats it. At barely 6 months old, she has tried cereal, strawberries, bannana, peas, carrots, sweat potatoes, carrots, squash, zuccini, a gazillion different types of breads, and a gazillion types of more of crackers, cereal puffs, juice, apricots, apple sauce (which she seems to prefer just a bit more than the others), pears, and this just to name a few. The list could be quite a bit longer. I think most Dr.'s say to start these foods at 6 months. There was no way she was waiting until 6 months to start anything!

Audree with her Favorit Cousin Tricia at Salem Ponds. (In this new town of ours, if you don't know about Salem Ponds, you are just not cool! Well, you kind of have to know about the ponds because it's just about the only thing to do here!)

Every Mom needs naked bath pictures. Here are a few of Audree. We had to stop her from eating the bubbles a few times...but I can't say I blame her!! They were strawberry scented and as I said before, this girl will eat anything!

More cute pictures of her putting things in her mouth!!

This is her pacifier clip. Tasty!

tAsTy TOeS ToO!!

Next, is my favorite little boy Dalan! I am putting this in red because it is his favorite color and he will let you know. We have recently mastered the art of using the potty and it has been an adventure to say the least! We have throughly been shocked at some of the things coming out of his mouth! But, whatever may come out of this 3 year olds mouth about using the potty, none the less we are SO EXTATIC to be done with diapers!! YEAH!!!

Here we are at some friends in Provo who put on a huge neighborhood block party for the 4th. They had a pinatta and Dalan is showing off his stash!

As mentioned previous, Salem Ponds is just about the only recreational thing to do in Salem City's bounderies. It is acutally a fun place. There is a beach area where you can swim in the pond and Dalan thinks its a blast! I just wish this picture wasn't blurry! Where's Jillian (my cousin, the new, hip, fashionable and upcoming big professional photographer!) when you need her!

More pond pictures. I love the real smile I caught on camera! All his posed picture smiles are not true Dalan smiles.

Bath time is always fun!

Dalan is the best big brother there is! I'm sure the "I love my sister" faze will end some day, but for now, Dalan loves Audree and she loves him. They play very well together and Dalan shares his toys (that will probably end too). He calls her "my baby" and "sisty". Some other things he is really into is telling you what you want to do! Yeah, Mom's out there, please tell me you can teach them that not everyone wants to do what they tell them they have it! What a darling boy! With all the crazy things that Mom's do, it's all worth it for that cute face!

In honor of my favorite color, we are now in green. (another very touching thing about Dalan. He is very sensitive to what you like...huh...funny...he still tells me what I should like though.) Regardless, Dalan knows green is my favorite color and brings me all his green M&M's, Mike and Ike's and other things as well. Sweet huh!

This picture is going to be good black mail someday. I have made sure to get the moments that show they once liked eachother on film and camera. Dalan asked if Audree could watch his movie with him. Again, a sweet boy! And she does watch with him too.

I'm always behind the camera, so I don't have too many shots of myself with my kids. I'll need to work on that one.

Kalab and the kids during bath time! Dalan is showing us his "winkles" on his fingers.

Kalab at Salem Pond on the 4th. It took me several shots just to get a smile this good. He can be a B-R-A-T sometimes! And the worst part is he thinks it hilarious!

Audree's Blessing & General Update

We had Audree's blessing this past weekend. It was amazingly beautiful! Plus, we felt so much love and support from family and friends! Sharing some pictures with you...

Cute Kids of Mine!

The Dress - F.Y.I. I bought the basic dress for $8.00, then bought ribbon, pearls, sheer, etc to embelish the dress. It cost me a total of about $25.00! Betch ya you would never be able to tell!

Huh?..."what's the deal with all the pics?"

Full view of the dress

More dress...I love it! (Good thing, 'cause it would be my own fault if I didn't)

Flowers across the bodice

Isn't she a REALY CUTE girl? Okay, maybe i'm bias, but I am allowed to be!

Smile! This is the latest thing she has learned. It's the funnest when they start to react to you!

"Yes, I am cut and I know it. If I am cute enough, I bet I could get you to pick me up..."

Cheese!

We kind of think she is turning into a daddy's girl. Most often she seems to calm down more and like to cuddle more with daddy more than mommy...not so sure about that.

Mommy and me

Mission Reunion

There will be a mission Reunion for President and Sister Stoker Friday Night April 3rd from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm located at 308 W 7500 S Midvale UT. The stokers will speak to us for about 15 min each and then we will spend the rest of the time getting caught up with each other. Please bring a desert to share with others. Since we will be in the chapel we will need to use Sunday Dress. The Stokers haven't had a Reunion in several years. So please try to make it if you can. Please help get the word out by email or phone call to those who haven't found our group yet so that we can have a good turn out for this Reunion. If you have questions please let me know.

Kalab

My Kids

I haven't talked about my kids very much in the last while. Here are some pics I have recently taken of my kids...

Dalan is in the "CHEESE!!!!!!" stage when we take his picture (that is if you can get him to hold still long enough to get his face in the shot!). CHEESING for the camera obviously includes squinting his eyes...what a goof ball!

For those of you that know Dalan, know that he is the energizer bunny! This is not a kid that will fall asleep where ever he is... until a few days ago!! I walked into Dalan's room expecting to find him watching the latest craze at our house (Kung-Foo Panda!) to put him to bed, and this is what I found!! I was amazed!

I think every parent wonders if their first child will react to their new sibling. For us, we got lucky with Dalan! He loves Audree!

Kalab was trying to iron his shirt for work the other morning and couldn't hold Audree, so he laid her in Dalan's bed. Dalan thought it was the coolest thing that "sister in my bed! I lay with her daddy? I lay with sister?" Good thing Kalab thought to take a picture of the moment...we will need this picture for future use to show Dalan and Audree that they liked eachother at one point in time! (Again, we have the "CHEESE")

And last, we have been looking over the features of our two kids and deciding what features are the same. It is shocking to me their hair is so different! We never expected to have a dark hair infant because Kalab's hair was strawberry blond and mine was blond when we were born. But, we LOVE the dark hair! Both kids are about a month old in these pics.

What a CRAZY Sew-a-thon!!

Okay, I have sewing coming out my ears!! And heres way...I have a neice that just had twin boys this past week. Just so you know, it has been a little scary. The twins were born prematurly at 33 weeks, with one babies lungs underdeveloped. But on a positive note, both twins have been taken off the machines they had on and are doing well on their own. I'm not sure when they get to go home, but all is looking well.

Well, to the sewing part...since that's what this post is about! This neice lives in Idaho and I couldn't make it to her shower, so we never gave them a present. Since my in laws were here, I wanted to send a gift for the babies home with them to save on shipping (can we say expensive!!). I decided I wanted to make both babies car seat covers like the one I made for Audree a while back (I blogged about it and put pictures on an earlier post if you want to look at it). It was a ton of fun to pick out themed covers for boys since I have only done a girl one. So, the themes...they have two dogs they love and Josh played soccer and coaches soccer now.

Now for the "a-thon" part. I forgot how LONG these covers take me to complete. For someone who is an amazing sewer, i'm sure these wouldn't take that long, but I am for sure not! Each cover took me 3, 3 1/2 hours each (lets just say my seam ripper is my best friend when I sew!). Also, as anyone knows who have kids, I couldn't just sit down and sew either...oh no way! Between changes bottoms, feeding tummys, burping babies, feeding husbands (an absolute must if you want a happy marriage!) and all the other mom responsibilities, I was distracted. All though, my mother law loved the fact that I had to sew the whole time to get the covers done before she left, because she got to hold Audree non stop! And I wouldn't have been able to finish them in time if I wouldn't have had her there to hold Audree (she is a cuddly baby and thinks she needs to be help 95% of the day!).

All though the covers took my whole weekend, I enjoyed sewing them (now I have to hope they hold together...I wonder if they will withstand the washing machine??). Kalab thinks I could sell them. The supplies alone (not on sale) cost $25 to $30. To make it worth my time and cover the overhead costs, I would want to sell them for $45 to $55 each. Any one think people would buy them for that much?

As for now, I am planning on making more for fun for family and friends who are having babies (I have three coming up in the summer...yeah!)

Audree's Name

We here at our house are doing well with our new addition to our family. The adjustment of going from one kid to two has been a little bit of a roller coaster as many of you other parents know. With that being said, Dalan has been doing surprising well. These past three days have been the hardest...everyone went back to work and I was alone. Even though I call these "hard" days, overall I think they have actually been pretty good. I can tell Dalan is wanting more attention, but he hasn't been doing purposfully naugthy things or telling Audree to go away, etc.

And on to the reason for this post. I have had several people ask where we got Audree's name and middle name. The name Audree has been picked for several years...within the first year of Kalab and my marriage. One evening we decided to go out to dinner (I remember it was a big deal because we were dirt poor!!). We decided to go to Ruby Tuesday (I could do a whole blog on our bad experiences we have had with eating at Ruby Tuesday!) and had a waitress named Audrey. Kalab asked out of the blue if I liked the name for a girl. I thought about it... and I did...a lot actually. There was no changing Kalab's mind after that point about our future baby girl's name (assuming at that point we would get a girl). When we became pregnant with Dalan, Kalab hoped for a girl at first just so we could use the name. Of course we were happy when we found out we were having a boy, but had no names what so ever! The only good thing that has ever come out of our dining experiencing at Ruby Tuesday's was our daughter's name...at least it was something!

Audree's middles name, Clair, is purely my decision. I'm not sure what triggered me to consider using it as a name for my daughter, but none the less, I LOVE it. Kalab is okay with the name, but has never loved it. Kalab's dad's name is Kelly and we thought about using that as her middle name. Although I like the name Kelly and it has family meaning, I was worried about not getting another girl down the road (assuming we even have more children...right now, the out look is dim! You'll have to ask me again in at least a year!). Plus, I would love to use the name Kelly for a boy middle name as well. I think Kalab eventually gave in when I pointed out that he picked and held FIRMLY to with both Dalan's first and middle name and Audree's first name. I'm guessing he firgured it was time for me to get the name I really, really wanted (I wanted to give Dalan the middle name of Carter...I was over ruled the last week of my pregnancy with Dalan).

Enjoy the pics!! I was inspired by a friend Katrina who just has a baby girl a week or so before us and had taken some ADORABLE pictures of their little girl and posted them on their blog (by the way Lund's, your daughter is beautiful!!!). I don't have a very good camera so my pics didn't turn out anything like my inspiration of Katrina, but at least I tried and I have some pictures.

NYNY North Mission Reunion with Stoker

Hey everyone, I wanted to let you know that I have been in contact with President Stoker and we are looking at doing a Reunion with him sometime between April and the first part of June. I proposed to have the reunion in two parts. The first part would be on Friday night as an adult only devotional with President and Sister Stoker as the speakers followed by a pot luck dessert social. The second part will be Saturday late morning and this will be for our families. I would like to have some fun activities that the kids and adults will enjoy. Things like three legged races, gunny sack races ect. It might be fun to have a big blow up slide or a jump house for the kids as well. I also had the thought of doing a BBQ on Saturday as well. I would like to know what every thinks about have it over two days or if you would prefer one day. I just know that catching up with each other isn't easy when we are chasing kids around. So if you know of other missionaries who have blogs please send them to my blog for details of the up coming reunion. Please help me by getting the word out about the Reunion and check back for the date, time and location. I am just waiting on President Stoker to let me know when he can come in from CA.

Kalab Stokes

Audree Clair Stokes

Audree Clair Stokes was born at 7:01 pm on January 12, 2009. She wieghed 7 lbs 7 oz and was 22.5 inches long.

The day started off by the hospital calling us at 8:00 AM and asking us to come to the hospital because they were ready to start the enduction. We arrived around 8:15 and spent the next 30 mins getting Emilee started with IV's. One of the reasons Emilee was in Labor almost 12 hours is that Emilee tested positive for Strep B so she had to be on antibiotics for 4 hours before we could have the baby. They started Emilee on the the anitbiotics around 9:00 and then about 9:30 they started her on pitocin. When we arrived to the hospital she was dialated to a 3 and didn't really change until after they broke her water then she went from a 3 to a 4 with in seconds. They broke Emilee's water at 1:30. Emilee got her Epideral around 1:45 and that was the best thing for her. We waited several more hours and Emilee only dialated to a 5 around 5:00 pm. Our doctor was a little worried because she wasn't progressing very fast. So they inserted an internal monitor to see how storng the contractions were. With in the next hour she went to a 6 and by 6:45 Em was a 10 and the baby was right there ready to come. Our doctor came rushing in and with in just a few minuets she was born. Emilee only had to push 4 times before Audree was born.

I went home last night and spent the night at home to be with Dalan and this morning when I got back to the hospital Emilee told me that Audree slept through the night. She only woke up when Emilee needed to feed her. We are doing great today and so is Audree. We are so excited and happy that Audree is finally here at last.