Baby Update - 6 Months

This pregnancy has flown compared to my pregnancy with Alexa. I guess I have other things to be focused on this time around!! Anyways, things are going well. This past month was a busy one and a sick one for our household. In fact, Alexa seems to have just come down with yet another cold after JUST getting over a nasty one. Gotta love the winter!! I've been feeling pretty good though...gained a little too much over Christmas but hopefully that'll taper off over the next couple months. :-) I'm feeling Payton move ALL the time now. She's a mover and a shaker just like Alexa was, although I think she's sitting a lot lower as I only feel her moving from my belly button down, whereas Alexa was all over the place. I still am hungry 100% of the time and extremely exhausted 100% of the time. I thought I was supposed to get some spurt of energy in the 2nd trimester but no such luck. Oh well. I can't complain too much though, this pregnancy has been pretty easy.

A cute little tidbit...Alexa is very aware of where baby Payton is right now and what her name is. I don't even have to remind her...when I ask her what her baby sister's name is, she immediately says "Taypon". Apparently, she can't quite say Payton and so gets the "p" and "t" mixed up. But I think it's pretty cute...a nickname for this little one perhaps???? I guess we'll see.

24 weeks

Getting ready for baby...

While we were in Canada, my sister, Jenn, gave me some new clothes for the new baby. I brought them home and put them in Alexa's closet (soon to also be Payton's closet as well since they'll be sharing a room) to await the arrival of this little one. Well, the other day, Alexa found said clothes and insisted on wearing them. I tried and tried to convince her that they weren't for her, they were for the new baby...but she just kept saying "lessa try baby's clothes". And she wouldn't take no for an answer. So here she is, modeling Payton's clothes. A little snug...but I have a feeling in not so many years, I'll be putting out many fires about sisters borrowing each other's clothes!!!

Patience!

I know there are a lot of pictures and posts to look at...but I finally found the time to get this all done. You may want to scroll down to the first post "A fun surprise" and start there. Happy reading...or if you don't want to read, just look at the pics! Enjoy!

Merry Christmas 2008

Our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day came a day later than the rest of the world since we didn't get home until the morning of Christmas Day. Thankfully Alexa didn't know any different so she wasn't upset at all by it. After we finally arrived home on the morning of the 25th (thank you to our wonderful friends, the Wilkes, who turned on our heat the night before, bought us some groceries to get us through everything being closed on Christmas Day, and for picking us up from the airport), we got organized and had our own little Christmas Eve. We opened our Christmas jammies and Alexa was so cute...she kept saying "tane-too Santa".

Here's our little tree...a little Charlie Brownish but Alexa loved it! Kevin and I had fun putting Alexa's Dora Trike together that evening while watching 'White Christmas'. The trike is a gift from Alexa's Uncle David. He sent us a gift card since he had our name for Christmas and we bought the trike before heading to Canada.

It was a BIG hit with Alexa...eventually! She wasn't quite sure what to think at first! But it's her favorite thing now.

Despite our unexpected delay, we really enjoyed our own little family Christmas and the time we were able to spend together and to focus on the birth and life of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and wish you all the best in this New Year!

An unexpected delay...

We were scheduled to come home from Canada on December 23rd, with a layover in Chicago...however, the weather had different plans for us!! Due do bad weather in Chicago, our flight leaving Calgary was delayed by 4 hours. We overheard the United lady telling other passengers that if we didn't wait for this flight, there wasn't another available flight leaving Calgary for 2 weeks!! Yikes...we definitely wanted to get home before that, so we buckled down in the airport to wait it out...hoping, praying, wishing that our flight wouldn't be cancelled. And thankfully it wasn't. BUT, since we left Calgary late, we missed our connecting flight in Chicago, which also happened to be the last flight to Louisville that night from Chicago. Fabulous!

On a bright note...Kevin's brother, Duane, was in Chicago with his family visiting his inlaws for the holidays! It couldn't have worked out better for us. Instead of having to wait in a long line at the United Customer Service Desk, Duane and his father-in-law were able to reschedule our flight to Louisville, but not until the morning of the 25th. So we were stuck there for a couple days. Because of that though, Duane also booked us a hotel for those two nights so we didn't have to sleep at the airport!! We are sooooo grateful, more than we can say, for the generosity of family. What could have been a really stressful situation was not so bad. We even got to spend the majority of Christmas Eve with Duane and the Duncans. Here are a few pictures from our unexpected stay in Chicago!

Alexa and Ainsley had so much fun playing together!

And Kevin and Duane had so much fun playing together!! :-)

It was great to be able to see more family at this special time of year. Thank you again, Duane & Emily for helping us out!

My baby brother gets married!!

The day of Sammy's wedding, we got up bright and early to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Cardston. Jenn was gracious and offered to take Kevin, Alexa and myself which was a nice break from driving!! Here are 4 of us Baker girls (left to right: Katrina, Benita, Jenn and myself). Tausha was there somewhere and Shental wasn't able to make it due to bad weather. This was before the wedding actually took place, while we were all trying to stay warm in the Visitor's Center at the Temple.

And here comes the newly married couple....introducing Sam and Clarissa Baker.

It was so cold that day, so we all would run back inside to warm up for a few minutes and then run back outside to get a few pictures. I'm sad to say that my little family didn't get any pictures with the Bride & Groom all dressed up. We even forgot at the reception that night! But here is one with all the Baker siblings, minus Shental.

This following picture is one of the major reasons why I felt so strongly about going to Canada. My sweet Grandma is 93 years old and probably won't be around too much longer and I just would regret it so much if I didn't get a 4 generation picture with her. I had completely forgotten to do this on our last trip to Canada when Alexa was 9 months old so I am so extremely grateful that I was finally able to do this.

And we can't leave my Grandpa out of the picture! Can you believe he's 95 and still has almost a full head of dark hair????? I so hope I've got his genes!!

Okay, so there is sort of a picture of us with the bride and groom....and all the rest of the families from both sides.

Jenn made their cake and did a spectacular job! It turned out beautiful!

What a fun day! Good luck Sam and Clarissa with this exciting new chapter of your lives! We love you and are so happy we were able to share in your day!

A fun surprise!!

Okay, so I've FINALLY found a few minutes and some energy to sit down and update our blog. Between Christmas, this pregnancy, a new calling at church, illnesses (Alexa, Kevin AND myself), and just every day life...it's taken me awhile to find some time to tackle this daunting task!! So get ready to sit tight, you may want some popcorn or something to snack on cuz it's gonna be a long one...bear with me!!

On December 17, 2008, we flew to Canada and surprised my family. My little brother, Sam, got married on Dec 19th and when he had first gotten engaged, the price of tickets to Canada were just way too expensive. But about a month later, I was checking prices again and lo and behold...they were almost 1/2 the price they had been. So we decided to bite the bullet but thought it would be fun to surprise everyone since they all thought we for sure wouldn't be able to make it. And boy was the month long of keeping it a secret well worth it...the reactions were great...lots of tears, hugs, screams, more tears, more hugs...you get the picture!

Here we are starting off on our journey! Alexa did so great on the plane. She had her very own seat this time (that we had to pay for anyways) and she loved the snacks provided, the portable DVD player (a must for any parent traveling with a toddler), and riding on the tram "choo-choo" at the Houston airport.

We went first to my sister, Jenn's house, where we planned on staying (even though she had no clue!!). Alexa immediately fell in love with her cousin Max (in a purely platonic way of course!!). She LOVES boys, just gets along better with them for some reason, and so I knew this would happen. It helped immensely to have someone to play so easily with her while we were there. Both Max and Norah became Alexa's new best friends!! They all played so well together!

As I mentioned before, the reason we went was for my little brother's wedding. I'll post on that next so as not to take away from his special day in this novel of a blog post!!

Here is Alexa giving Grandma and Grandpa Baker their Christmas present from us.

And us saying "Cheese" for the camera!

I absolutely LOVE this picture. You all know that Alexa loves shoes. Actually, "loves" might be an understatement to how she really feels about shoes...anyone's shoes. Here she had gotten a hold of my dad's slippers and obviously was having the time of her life!!

Another fun part of the trip was getting to see one of my best friends, Stacey Gibb, whom I hadn't seen in almost 3 years. She had been pregnant with her first the last time we saw each other and now she's expecting her third...wow, time flies when you're having fun!! Anyways, we enjoyed a fun afternoon with the Gibbs and it was so great to meet her two little ones, Lucas and Chloe and for her to meet Alexa. I think both our pregnancy brains got the best of us because we didn't think to take pictures of all of us. Oh well, maybe next time...in another 3 years! :-)

Just a few pics of our fun times. Alexa wanted to go to bed with Max and Norah every night instead of in her own bed. And Max loved his Uncle Kevin!!

On our second last night there, we had a family dinner at Jenn's and my little sister, Benita, brought Santa hats for us all. If you look closely, you'll notice Alexa is NOT in the picture...she apparently had an aversion to Santa hats that night and kept hiding behind the corner and trying to take everyone's hats off. Silly girl!

Me & Benita...good times, good times!!

I can't post a picture of our trip to Canada without commenting and displaying how freakishly cold it was. The temperatures plummeted right before our trip (how fabulous!!) and the snow continued to fall, and fall....and fall!!! Just take a gander at these pictures! The first is my sister's neighbors' yard. Kevin thought it was insane how much snow was piled on their patio table set!

And this is Jenn's backyard...again, Kevin found it crazy how much snow was on the car. As you can see...there's not a footprint to be found in said snow. It was too darn cold for anyone to go out and enjoy it!

And this is my favorite...Jenn's neighbor across the street had snowman, snowman, snowman, who once was tall, tall tall...but in the sun he melted, melted, melted...and very quickly came to an untimely death. Poor snowman!

On our last day prior to flying home, we went to my sister Katrina's house in Airdrie. We even coerced my newly married brother and his bride to come join us since we didn't know when we'd be seeing them again. (Actually, no coersion was necessary since I'm his favorite sister!!!). :-) Anyways, here is Alexa with Katrina's little Lenaia. Notice the shoes on both of them!

My sister Tausha also came out and here is Alexa playing with both her girls, Mikayla and Madison.

And finally we got some pictures with my little brother! Alexa also decided to make herself right at home in Trina's pantry!

And here's us with the new happy couple. Congratulations Sam & Clarissa!

Grandma Jenny couldn't get away without some one-on-one time with Miss Alexa. They would dance and dance all over the place and Alexa loved it!

Back at Jenn's that night, Alexa and Norah had so much fun playing peek-a-boo/hide-and-go-seek in the front closet.

I even got to spend some time with another one of my best friends, Nancy. She's fabulous...thanks for keeping our secret Nance!! We had a great time seeing you and thanks for spoiling us as well!

We had a great time in Canada, despite the frigid temperatures! :-) We enjoyed visiting with family and friends, 7-11 slurpees (trust me, they're just better in Canada) and most especially being there for Sam and Clarissa's wedding!

Phew...you made it!! Pat yourself on the back! :-)