Picking Pumpkins

This is video we took at the pumpkin patch we went to while Grandma Robin was in town. We got to ride on a hay ride to get to the patch where Brady picked out four pumpkins for us. We later carved them.

22 weeks with Mackenzie

Me and Mackenzie.

Grandma's visit

Here are some pictures from Grandma Robin's visit.

We carved pumpkins. Mine is on the left, a pirate ship. Brady's goblin guy is next to it, then grandma's bat and daddy's witch.

Daddy transferring his design onto his pumpkin.

Grandma working hard.

I carved Brady's for him. He was taking a nap.

Brady loves playing with Holly. He really wants to ride her like a horse, but we won't let him.

We made a ball pit for Brady out of a rubbermaid container and all his rubber balls.

We went to the Deanna Rose Farmstead in Overland Park to see the animals and go to the pumpkin patch. Brady loved that he could get so close to the animals and even pet them!

To get to the pumpkin patch we had to ride on a hay ride. Brady loved the horses that were pulling the wagon.

There was a corn maze there too. Brady led the way. He stopped a few times to feel the hay and make sure we were going in the right direction!

There was a little fishing hole too!

This is a good one!!

Swinging on a really cool swing with Grandma.

Hey! There's a goat in there!!!

Petting the goats!

Petting a cow.

Riding around with Daddy.

Such a big boy.

Wearing his Daytona race outfit! Future driver???
Coloring a picture for Grandma.

Coloring is fun!

Clapping for the bull riders at the PBR. We went on Saturday when Grandma was here. Brady had fun watching all the action.

Snuggling with Grandma. It was cold in there!

It's a GIRL!!!!!!!!

We had a sonogram today and found out it's a girl! Mackenzie Olivia Waters is due on February 22 according to the tech! Mackenzie had quite an audience today...besides me, Jeremiah and Brady, Grandma Robin came and so did Grandma Joyce and Logan. It was a packed house. When I called Stacey to tell her the news I told her to start packing up all her baby girl clothes and send them my way!

Here are some pictures from the sonogram. They all have descriptions on them of what is what so it makes it a little easier to understand what you're looking at!

Brady is really excited to have a baby sister! He liked watching her squirm around on the TV screen! Afterwards we went to McDonalds for lunch with everyone and then shopping for girl stuff! We got a couple of pink outfits, a jeans jumper, a cute towel blanket thingy with a matching wash cloth guy and some barrets that have "Mackenzie" on them! Cute!!! We went to the second-hand store so we got lots of bargains!

Well, we're all tuckered out from such an exciting day. I didn't sleep at all last night because I was thinking about the sonogram all night. We're going to get Brady-boy a bath and try to get him to bed early since he only got one nap today.

Jeremiah is out at the range. He had firearms stuff tonight to do for work. Hopefully he is not freezing. It's only in the 40's and it's damp and windy. Robin and I sent him with a thermos full of hot chocolate and he dressed in plenty of layers so he should be doing good. We plan on taking a nap before he gets home so we can play cards and beat him again like we have the past two nights. So far it's me with two wins, Robin with one and Jeremiah with none. He blames it on his eye blurriness...did I mention that yet? He was weed whacking Saturday and something flew up in his eye and gave him a cut on his eyeball...not a really bad one, but one that needed attention. We went to the ER and got some ointment for it. They also prescribed some Vicadin for him even though he told them repeatedly it didn't hurt, just kind of annoyed him. We didn't fill it but thought how dumb it was that they were so eager to prescribe level 4 narcotics to just anyone...especially someone not even in pain! So we went to the regular doctor today for a checkup on it and he said it looks like it is healing great. The blurriness has gone away and so has the burning sensation. All that's left now is a little redness and itchiness. Two more days of ointment and he'll be back to normal!

That's all for now...we went to see some bull riding the other night and to a pumpkin patch on Sunday so I'll have pictures of that on here sometime soon. For now the best pictures are of Mackenzie! Enjoy!

Getting dressed

My vacation officially started today - hooray, a nice rainy and storm day. Brady and I got to sleep in which was nice. He got up around 9:15 when I went in and woke him! He can be a snoozer sometimes! After breakfast I was cleaning up the kitchen and doing dishes while Brady played between the living room and dining room. The next thing I know he comes walking in with a pair of shorts in his hand. My first thought was, oh, no, all the clothes I folded and put on the couch are now on the floor. So while I finished loading the dishwasher he sat behind me with his shorts. The next thing I know I turn around and he's sitting there smiling at me with both legs in the shorts! He's been trying for months to figure out how to put on his own clothes! It was funny. He couldn't figure out how to get them past his knees so he was just sitting there happy as a clam. I stood him up and pulled them up to his waist. For the rest of the morning he ran around with his shorts over his pj pants. He still hasn't figured out how to get socks on his feet. He tries almost every day, and one of these days he'll get it!

I have to go through his drawers while I'm off this week and get all his 12 month clothes out. They don't really fit anymore. Sunday when I got him ready I thought I put an 18 month shirt on him, but it must have really been a 12 month one because the sleeves were like 3/4 length! He didn't seem to mind.

Grandma Robin is coming to town tomorrow for a visit. Brady is excited to see her again. We pick her up at the airport around 11 a.m. Hopefully he'll sleep in a little tomorrow because that's prime nap time and we don't want him to be crabby when Grandma gets off the plane! We are hoping the weather holds off because it is supposed to be pretty windy and rainy tomorrow. It's been really stormy all day here. Right now the dogs are in the garage drying off. I was trying to wait for a break in the rain to let them out, but it never came so they got drenched. They'll survive.

Poor Jeremiah is in Hutchinson again, which is near Wichita, KS, where a lot of the really heavy storms have been. They have been out on the range all day getting soaked. He didn't have any rain gear so he called me at 11 this morning on his way back to his room to change into something dry. I just hope he doesn't get sick. That would stink.

Well, I'm going to go watch the news and sit on my tush for a while since Brady is napping again. After lunch I played cow and he played cowboy and rode me around the living room. Ugh. My back is killing me now! It was fun though. After a while I convinced him that riding Holly would be more fun. The only bad thing about that was I had to hold him on her so he wouldn't go flying. It was kind of crazy.

Oh, one last note: I've been feeling the baby kick lately! I started really feeling it good about a week ago. It's gotten to where I definately know they are kicks. I even had one whollop one that you could see, but no one else was around to see it! I like feeling kicks because it's just reassuring knowing it must be doing well in there! I'll be taking plenty of pictures over the week since we're all off work and going to get some good playing in so you can see how large my belly is getting. So far I've only gained about 12 pounds, which puts me on a much better pace than I was with Brady. I'm sure as time goes on though I'll pack them on like I did with him!

Big Grins

Well, my mouth is healing nicely...even though I have two gaping holes in the back of it! I was starting to get some dry sockets, but I went back to the dentist on Wednesday and they cleaned out the empty sockets and showed me how to get in there with a q-tip and get the junk out so I've been doing much better. It also helps that I can now use mouthwash. I had been swishing salt water around but that was just nasty and didn't really seem to help much. Scope is much tastier.

I was off today and Brady must be going through a growth spurt or something because he took an almost 4 hour nap and then a 2.5 hour nap tonight. I got to catch a couple z's so that was nice. I also applied for a couple more jobs. I think I've applied for probably 10 to 12 in the past couple weeks. So far I haven't heard back from any of them, but at least I'm getting my resume out there. At this point I am getting bigger and more obvioulsy pregnant every day so even though I can't be discriminated against because of it, I think most employers would like to hire someone who's not going to be off in a couple months. We'll see. I'll just keep trying. My job keeps getting more and more annoying. My jerk of a boss took my Tuesday day off away from me so now I have to work every Tuesday. That was the only day Jeremiah and I had off together so now we will really never see each other. That sucks. I guess for now my new day off is Thursday. Jeremiah has to sleep all day Thursday because he works Wednesday night so I am going to have to come up with things for Brady and me to do so that we don't keep J up all day. It's not going to be easy.

This week Robin is coming to town. Brady is really excited! She'll get here Thursday. Jeremiah is going to be in Hutchinson again for the whole week. He leaves Sunday and comes back Friday. I am taking my last vacation time of the year so I will be off Wednesday through Tuesday. Monday the 22nd we have a sono scheduled to find out what the baby is! I hope it cooperates like Brady did at this point! I had a dream last night that we were there and watching the monitor and we were like, oh, it's a girl. Then we were like, oh, wait, it's a boy. None of my dreams give me any real insite as to what it is. They are all wishy-washy. Hopefully we'll finally find out Monday morning. I keep thinking maybe it is a girl this time because the heartbeat is a little faster than Brady's was and I am carrying it a little higher this time, but all of those things could just be flukes. I am excited to find out so I can start planning how we are going to decorate the room. I pretty much already know for each because we got some new really cute bed sets at work that I can use for a template. The one thing that is for sure is if we have a girl her room will be more reds than pink. I don't like pink very much. I can handle it in small doses, but mainly I'm against it. We also think we are settled on names, but you know how that goes. A girl will be named Mackenzie Olivia Waters (MOW - ha ha ha), and a boy will be named Zachary Matthew Waters (ZMW). We thought about Blake because then we'd have another Beamer, but we thought that might be overdoing it a little.

So that's what's going on around here. The weather has turned colder all of a sudden. The temperature in the house has gone from a steady 74 to about 68. It got pretty chilly this morning because we still had some ceiling fans on, so we quickly turned them off rather than turning the heat on...we're going to wait until absolutely necessary for that! Our winter temperature that we set it on is 67 or 68 anyway so we're good for now...we just have to bundle up a little bit. Good thing Aunt Jenn gave us a bunch of warm 18 month clothes.

Other than that there isn't much news. I'll try to get on here and put a few pictures on over the next week, and then of course after the sono on the 22nd I'll put updates! Hooray! I can't wait!

Oh my aching teeth...

Oh my, what a week...and it's only Thursday. All this started months ago when I went to the dentist. I hadn't been in a couple years so naturally I didn't know which one to go to. I found one that was close to home and figured it was worth a try. During a routine cleaning half of one of my very back molars came off. They said there was decay under the filling in that tooth that caused it to break. Naturally I wanted them to fix it right away, but they said they couldn't get me in for a month. Then of course I had to work that day and had to reschedule so it was going to be another three weeks. By that time we had found out I was pregnant again so I didn't want to go since I didn't know if it was safe. The tooth wasn't bothering me, no pain or anything. The only annoying thing was that food would get lodged in there and drive me nuts. As time went on more and more of the tooth started chipping away and by this week it had become sharp and had begun to cut my cheek. Monday after work it was unbearable so I called a new dentist and made an appointment for Tuesday morning. They covered me with a big lead drape thing so the baby wouldn't be harmed and took a couple x-rays. When the doctor came in he told me he had bad news...the tooth was decayed at least half-way through and very likely even more than that. It's the tooth on the bottom on the very back left side. Then he tells me the one above it is in the same shape. He said the one in front of the one on the bottom was getting that way. He said it's due to the silver/mercury fillings I had in them. I guess they expand and contract and eventually over time they crack the teeth and allow crud to get under them and cause decay. I know those fillings are at least 15 to 20 years old so it's no wonder. So he tells me for about $4000 he can try to do root canals and crowns on all three teeth, but there was a good chance the two far back ones were too far decayed and would have to come out. Great. The other option was taking out the back ones and crowning the third. Since we don't have tons of money laying around to toss in my mouth we opted for taking them out.

The top one took only a couple of minutes to get out. I couldn't believe it when they showed it to me...the root was about an inch long! Yikes. The doctor said he couldn't believe the roots were "so big for such a little girl...they're the size of roots that men 6 feet 5 inches tall have." The bottom one had equally giant roots, but was a completely different story. It took about 20 minutes of tugging and pulling and the dentist just about standing on my head to yank it out. It broke into a bunch of pieces and then the roots were stuck together or something so they had to seperate them to get them out...and as it turns out that tooth had three roots. The dentist was pretty amazed by that, he said it's not very common at all...of course nothing about my medical history can be normal right? The third and final root took the longest to get out because it was curved at a 90 degree angle and wedged under the bone. Yipee! Ugh. Afterwards I was pretty swollen, but not in too much pain. Ok, that didn't last. My face is all tingly now since the final part of the anesthetic is wearing off now. I called my OB and she said she would call some Tylenol with codene into the pharmacy. I have to go pick that up soon or I think I might die. I seriously don't know what's worse, the recovery from my Betty surgery or this. I know my recovery from my c-section with Brady didn't hurt like this...maybe I'm choosing to forget that pain though!! At any rate this stinks. I have to pack gauze back in there until the bleeding stops which will hopefully be soon. Then I have to hope and pray that I don't get dry sockets. I'm supposed to work tomorrow...we'll see how long that lasts. I have some stuff that I really do need to get done in the morning, but then after that I may just have to split. We're supposed to have staff meeting where our dumb boss is going to go off on all of us for no reason because he's mad that we don't like him so it may be more painful sitting through that then getting another 10 teeth pulled! Maybe I'll just take some of my pain meds and sleep through it!

Well, I'm off to Kmart to get my drugs. In other news, really quickly, I applied for four or five jobs last night and I have a few more I am going to get to tonight. Hopefully something positive will come from it! For now all I really care about it my face feeling better!