Update: One Month

I can't believe that Sienna is already a month old. Most of the time it feels like she's been here forever and sometimes I am amzed that it was only 30 days ago that she was in my belly. She is a pretty good little girl. She's still a little confused by the whole night and day thing and is trying to figure out how to get rid of all the gas that she accumulates. She loves bath time and sleeping like a big girl on daddy's pillow....

One of our favorite silly things that she does is lifting her arms up in the air while she's sleeping for no particular reason. Nick calls it her zombie arms.

We've been trying to make sure that she is having tummy time. As well gaining an appreciation for drum corp (notice the I touch next to her...)

We even went to church on Sunday for the Christmas program. She was very irreverent during sacrament meeting. She filled her diaper loudly during the sacrament and then got the hiccups during our friend's solo. :) She didn't ever cry though and slept through sunday school.


She is getting so big to me. I feel like she is looking less like a newborn everyday and we even tried on some 0-3 month clothes tonight...not just yet. We hope everyone has a good holiday and we will be sure to post more about Sienna's first Christmas.

First Photo Shoot

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Sienna is Here!

Early friday morning around 4:30 I woke up and thought that my water might have broken. I wasn't sure because it wasn't a gush, all of our baby classes made sure to tell us that only 10% of women actually have their water break before they go to the hospital and I still had 12 days until my due date. I called labor and delivery about an hour later and they told me that I was probably right but to call back in an hour and let them know how it was going. By the time I called back my contractions were about 7 minutes apart and the back labor was killing me. We got to the hospital about 7:30 and went into triage. Unfortunately by this time I was feeling faint, nauseous and like ripping my hips out. They checked me to find that I was already at 5cm. Afterward my blood pressure dropped really low, I was dehydrated, Nick was looking concerned and the smell from the oxygen mask was horrible so I threw up :) They decided to admit me and very quickly hooked me up to an IV and a blood pressure cuff which took my blood pressure about one billion times that day. By 10:15 I was blissfully epiduraled up and was feeling 100% percent better.

Mom, Nick and I all took bets as to when she would finally get here and unfortunately we were all a couple of hours off the target. Sienna was doing what she had done my whole pregnancy...whatever she wanted when she wanted to do it. She was facing up instead of down and kept trying to escape the heart moniter. When they checked me again I was at a 9 but Sienna was still not facing the right way so they had me lay on my side to convince her to roll over. She eventually did but no one is really sure when but it wasn't then. Around 4 I started " practice pushing" which eventually lead to real pushing. After two long hours and one crazy black lady yelling at me she finally arrived at 6:03 pm.

Sienna was a surprise to me in so many ways. I had convinced myself that she was going to be a big baby, over due and bald. However, Miss Sienna showed up 12 days early weighing in at a "whooping" 6 lbs 12 oz with a beautiful baby mullet of blond hair. Everyone is doing well besides some jaundice and lack of sleep. She's wonderfully cute, so here are some pictures to reward you for sticking through the story.

Sienna Kate Hudson
11/19/10 ~6lbs 12oz ~19inches

Baby Showers

Sienna and I are some seriously loved and lucky girls. We had two and a half baby showers. The half is the small reception that I had at work for any parents that wanted to wish me well on my last day of work...presents were not excepted but definitely came.

My good friends Erin and Stacy threw my first shower in October for all of my friends from the ward and work. Everything was wonderfully pink and brown. Erin and Stacy went ALL out with delicious food, tricky games, and a candy/dessert station. It was so much fun and I'm so grateful for all of the love that I felt that day.

My second shower was the weekend after and was put on by my sisters and cousin Rachel who has been adopted in recently. This shower was for my family members and friends in the Elk Grove area. It is always so much fun to see all of my family and it was extra fun to see some friends that I hadn't seen in a while. There were so many presents for Sienna that I seriously opened gifts for over an hour! My favorite part was all the awesome children's books that came with each gift. My sisters did a great job decorating, with the refreshments and the activities. I just love them and am so thankful for all of their hard work on mine and Sienna's behalf.

After a shopping trip today to Babies R Us and Target using our gift cards we now have everything that need! Thank you to everyone that came to the showers to help celebrate and spoil this crazy little girl as well as myself. A special thank you to Erin, Stacy, Andi, Katie, Tracy, Samsonite and Rachel who put so much hard work and love into the planning of the showers.

Annoying vs Awesome...

A little pregnancy update for you. President Monson wants me to be postive and full of gratitude so I'll do the annoying first and leave on a postive note so that the last thing you think about after reading this is awesomeness. I'm so nice huh?

Annoying things about being pregnant:

*Brick feet. more commonly known as plain old swollen feet...where your toes feel like they might shoot off of your feet...
*Congestion. I feel like I've had a cold for four months now...and I breathe really loud, just ask my husband
*Maternity pants...by themselves are awesome but mixed with the fact that they pull down my garmet top all the time, not cool.
*Alien baby making it hard to sleep and occasionally feels like she's trying to pry her way out of my stomach...Sienna mom does NOT like that.

Awesome things about being pregnant:

*I can get fat and people are okay with that
*Feeling Sienna kick and watching my stomach move...awesome and a little creepy
*My black maternity pants... I might wear them even when I'm not pregnant
*Getting to have parties and open presents when it's not my birthday or Christmas.
*Having an excuse to wear flip flops all the time (see swollen feet)
*Taking naps on Saturdays AND Sundays

There's more stuff for each catergory but those are what I got for now. Things are going well and I'm pretty sure that she is getting crazier by the day. I'll be sure to post more pictures after my shower on Saturday!

Happy Birthday Pretty!

Happy Birthday today to my favorite person EVER. He makes me super crazy sometimes but I'm sure that I return the favor frequently. This year Nicholas turns the big 3-0 so I wanted to do something a little more special than I have in the past. I decided to throw him a small party this past weekend at our friend's house complete with Buffalo Wild Wings (I'm so glad the new one opened in Citrus Heights because I was truly preparing to go to Reno to get them...they're the best wings EVER.) and rootbeer. I found some awesome beer mugs at the Dollar Store that I etched with the last intial of everyone that came and of course also scored a sweet pin the treasure on the map game.

We had a lot of fun stuffing ourselves with wings and just getting to spend time with our friends. We are so glad that everyone was able to come and celebrate with us.

Here are a few other pictures from the night including Nick opening presents and blowing out his candle. Oh and in case you were wondering what to do with about a 100 wing bones, you can spell out awesome messages with them. Gross? Yes. Awesome? A little bit.

Thanks again everyone and happy birthday babe.

Air Show!

One thing that we love about Rancho Cordova is that Air Show is so close to us. In years past we have just listened to the jets fly by our apartment and watch from right outside. This year Nick bought tickets so that we could actually go to Mather, check out all the airplanes, jets and helicopters as well as have front row seats to the show. Nick especially loves helicopters and I love Jelly Bellys so here are a couple of pictures reflecting our loves.

Besides seeing the cool displays we also enjoyed a Merlinos, the actual show and getting our own LiveCopter from the KCRA booth for Sienna. The guy handing them out must have really loved us because he was ONLY giving them out to actual children, but made an exception for us.

We loved that guy too, so we took our only picture together in front of the real LiveCopter 3...

We had a lot of fun checking everything out and talking to some cool people. We did however also learn somethings that we will definitely have to remember for next year: Bring an umbrella for shade, wear sunscreen and no matter how close you live paying the ten dollars to park is worth it over the long walk.

Crafty.

Nick got the chance to go to Shasta with his scouts this last weekend, leaving me at home by myself for four days. I'm glad that he ended up having a great time jumping off house boats, jet skiing, wakeboarding, seeing the sundial bridge, visiting the caverns and touring the dam but I was pretty bored without him. However, on Friday night I decided to go over to Erin's house, also husbandless, to see if she couldn't help me get in touch with my inner crafty-ness. I decided to buy some onesies for Sienna and spruce them up a little. Below are some pictures of the finished products.

I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm not going to lie, I had a lot of help from Erin who did all the sewing and cut out the stencils on her circut for me, but I did all the cutting, fabric choices and actual stenciling. Now to wait and see how cute Sienna will actually look in them :)

She's a Girl.

Nick and I had our ultrasound on the fifteenth and we're excited to find out that we are having a girl. At first Nick was much more excited than I was, but I'm warming up to the idea. We still don't have a place to put her but we do have some of the essentials and a name. Her name is going to be Sienna Kate Hudson. Kate, as in Katie my sister not the actress.

She is starting to become more active or just bigger so I can feel her more often. She does not like to be poked and is already proving to be a little stubborn like her mom.

We had a ton of fun with some of our friends this weekend up in Tahoe, and while my camera battery died, Erin was gracious enough to get a picture of Nick and I. Since she's so wonderful, as promised, here is the most recent picture of the belly and the shrinking husband (15 pounds in two weeks).

Tahoe 2010/Week 21

YW Sleepover

This past weekend my YW class was in charge of the Young Women combined activity and decided to have a sleepover at Sister Harlow's house. (Thanks!) It was a very eventful, fun night. We went to the park, played games as well as did girly things like painting toenails and facials. We had one mishap in the shape of a bedroom door that was accidently closed while it was still locked. Unfortunately even after youtubing how to pick a lock and a little bit of our own ideas the door still had to be opened by a locksmith the next day. It was so much fun getting a chance to ge to know not only the girls better but also the women that I work with in the YW program. Here's a few picture highlights from the party.

Stay tuned later this week for not only a recent pregnancy picture but to find out if this crazy baby is a boy or a girl. We find out on Thursday!

Things I Heard at Work Part 2

This first one needs a short preface. Three year old boy in my class is SUPPOSED to be transfering small plastic penguins from a bowl with water in it to a dry bowl. I see that he is taking the penguins out of the water one at a time, dabbing them with a sponge and placing them on the table. I walk over to check out the situation a little...

Boy: (to penguins) Don't worry...Don't worry...I got it.
Me: Hey....how come you're cleaning the penguins?
B: They have gross, sticky black stuff all over them.
Me: Oh! Are you saving the penguins?
B: ...Somebody has to!


Four year old boy: I saw a really, really big, huge, tall guy when I went to San Francisco. Don't worry I'll show you when it's bring a tall man to school day.

And now for the best one...

*Retold to me by her mother...

Three year old girl: Mom, I spy something that is black and can turn into a boy.
Mom: Ummm....
Girl: LUCIFER! (At this point mom is very concerned)...you know Cinderella's cat.

I love my job....

Memorial Day Weekend

For Memorial Day weekend we went down to Santa Cruz for our mostly annual Busath Camping Trip. It rained a little bit on the way down so we decided to wait a couple of days before braving the beach, but that didn't stop us from visiting the tide pools with sweatshirts. It's probably my favorite thing to do when we are down there and while we didn't see too much variety as far as the ocean life it was still fun to go and check them out. Katie found the one starfish, Lucas found a crab while the mussells and sea anemones were hard to miss.

On Saturday we headed down to the beach and had the best beach day that I can remember. The wind wasn't too bad, it was sunny and about 70 degrees...perfect.

Sunday was our last day there and we took the hike down through the redwoods, including Sam walking boot and all! This is the best hike ever because there's ice cream at the bottom, it's mostly downhill and we don't hike back, we drive. The ice cream was even from the shop that has my name so of course it was especially delicious. We even got to see what we decided was the first tree EVER...planted by Adam and everything.

The rest of the pictures are just some fun ones from around the camp site including Nick's homemade donuts and roasted bananas with peanut butter and chocolate chips.

We had so much fun camping and then continued our fun by having a BBQ at the Esslinger house on Memorial Day. We were excited to get in our Esslinger fix since they weren't able to come camping with us this year. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures but if you know Andi you can check some out on her blog. Hopefully everyone else had a great weekend too!

Mother's Day

Nick surpassed my expectations this year for Mother's Day. I told him that all I wanted was a card, so I guess it didn't take much. However, I was impressed with his thoughtfulness. He did in fact get me a really cute card as well as a Precious Moment and a really cute box that he put the gift in. She's cute huh?

In case your missing it or somehow have not been told by someone in my family...I'm pregnant. I was going to put an exclaimation point there but since I'm just 11 weeks and feeling a little sick the excitement just hasn't hit me in full force yet. I'm beyond happy, just trying to get through this first part. However, Nick is probably excited enough for the both of us. My due date as of right now is December 1st.
Today I feel like I'm starting to show, but tomorrow I might not. Until I'm starting to show consistantly I probably won't post pictures of me but here's one of the baby we are affectionately calling El Diablo.

A Good Reason to Walk.

The tradition continued this year for all the girls to walk in the Annual Race for the Cure. This year we were lucky enough to add Momma Alice to the list of participants and even one silly baby Thomas. The race itself was just as cool to be in as always and I'm so thankful to Katie who takes on the roll of ring leader for our share of the group. We started a little behind everyone, which was kind of nice because it meant less crowds but it also meant all the treats and snacks were gone by the time we crossed the finish line. It's always such a great experience and I'm so glad that I get to share in this special tradition with the women of my family every year.

I'm already excited for next year...
*For inquiring minds: Sam fractured her foot, she's okay and she'll probably explain more in her next blog post.

Work.

Silly things I heard at work recently....

* One of the teachers: "You know, sometimes a child just needs to get slammed in the door."

* Three year old boy talking to a teacher: "Did you know that aliens harvest people's brains?"

* Same three year old boy talking to me: "I don't remember what a purple nurple is, but when I do I'm going to give you one." (Said in the sweetest tone, like a purple nurple is a bunch of flowers....)

* Two four year old girls eating snack:
-Girl #1: "Oh my gosh, I LOVE Justin Beiber." (Starts singing some Beiber song)
-Girl #2: "Um...he's alright....I just really like Usher the most."

Hoppy Easter!

Easter was pretty laid back for Nick and I this year seeing as how we didn't have church to go to. We woke up, exchanged Easter baskets, made breakfast and watched the morning session of conference. My basket is the one with the giant bag of chocolate covered pretzels and the cutest chocolate bunny that I've ever seen and Nick's is the other one. We tried to watch the second session at home too but cable hated us and conference disappeared half way through. Instead we headed off to my parents to catch the end of conference and watch the kids do an egg hunt.


Unfortunately, it was raining outside so we had to hunt for the eggs inside. We couped up all the kids in Grandpa's room, hid the eggs and then let them go crazy. There were SO many eggs... an entire copy paper box full of plastic eggs. Katie is a champ for filling all of those up. The kids had a great time and now have enough candy to last them until Halloween or next weekend.


Here's the other whooping four pictures that I took at Easter...

I hope everyone else had a great, happy easter.

Not Embarrassed Yet...

I'm dedicating this post to Stefani, because she inspired it by posting pictures of her fabulous choir dresses.
At my sister's birthday dinner this last weekend I brought up the pictures and it got us talking not just about choir dresses but prom dresses too. Andi thought it would be fun to see every ones, so here are mine in all their glory:

(Left to Right: Junior Prom, Junior Prom as a Senior and Senior Ball)

Unfortunately, the picture of my choir dress from high school wouldn't upload right but I'll try and paint a visual. All black, floor length, short sleeves, with a sweetheart neckline and just a plain old zipper up the back, no fancy giant bow or anything. I don't think that enough time has past yet for me to be embarrassed by the dresses. However, looking back now I probably should have rethought the dates. I hope you enjoy and that this inspires you to post your own.

The Many Faces of Nick...

I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile but never got around to it. Truth be told Nick probably wouldn't be mad if I just forgot about it, but where's the fun in that? A couple of weeks ago I was married to a mountain man...true story. Nick had been letting not only his hair grow but also the beard. Luckily, after awhile he decided it was time to stop looking like a crazy person. Exhibit A:

Before

One of the reasons that I love Nick so much is because he can be wonderfully silly. He decided that he would document the process and try out some new facial hair styles along the way. He's done this before but we didn't take pictures so I was excited to share not only the silly side of my husband but show off the awesome styles he tried out this time around.

My personal favorite is the Irish fighter picture in the middle....I love my crazy husband...

Valentine's Day

Nick and I had a great low key Valentine's weekend. We started early due to the fact that Valentine's day was on Sunday this year. On Friday after work Nick surprised me with dinner and a movie. Dinner was a little bit of a disappointment for the both of us because Chili's changed their menu and took my favorite meal off of it but the movie was pretty cute. We saw Valentine's Day and I think that Taylor Swift was my favorite part because she was just so ridiculous in the best way possible.

On Saturday I watched all the kids with Megan while the rest of the family helped Andi's in laws move. It was so nice that the weather cooperated so that we could spend most of the day outside. On Sunday we invited Bubba and Megan over for dinner, chocolate fondue, romantic comedies and the wii. We had a lot of fun and hope that everyone else had a great day too.

Fondue and the best candy EVER (given to me by a friend at work ♥)

The boys playing Mario Kart

And since it was Valentine's Day the very first picture Nick and I ever took together...♥

Happy Belated New Year

Our New Year's Eve was low key but a lot of fun. Nick and I went over to our friend's Stacy and Wayne's house for games, really delicious food and a soda tasting. Chad and Brianna came as well but we were really sad that Erin and Miranda had to stay home because of an ear infection. We played mormon bridge, kings gone wild and my favorite Clue, The Office Edition. I'm still confused how Jim killed Tobey with a ream of paper. I brought over my fondue pot and Stacy and Wayne brought a bunch of different sodas and had us taste them and try and guess what flavor they were. I learned that chocolate soda is gross and sangria taste like grapes gone bad even when it is non-alcoholic. Surprising, we all made it to midnight and watched the ball drop. We had so much fun and are so grateful that Stacy and Wayne let us come over and play. I didn't take many pictures and by the time I did nobody was really at their best anymore but here are the pictures I took anyway.


Wayne, Stacy and new baby Hayden


Nicholas and Chad

We hope everyone else had a great start to the New Year as well.