I Love to Read!

Apparently the water spout is fascinating!

Shall we give Isis her ball back?

Alegria loves purses...just like Mommy!

She also loves to read!

And I guess some TV every now and then is fun and relaxing, too! :)

Sleep well everyone!!! :)

She'll Be a Wonderful Big Sister!

Alegria loves to go to playgroup, but I find that on days when she is more tired, she seems to keep to herself more than others...

How cute is she?! Alegria saw that Mollie's socks had fallen off, so she tried to put them back on!



She's going to be a great big sister! :)

...or a heavy second baby to carry around! Will she get jealous of Odette getting to ride around in the baby car seat or swinging in the baby swing? We'll see soon enough!

Back home, Alegria is intrigued by the neighbor's dogs, so Daddy takes an interest as well:

At dinner, Alegria ate her dinner all up!

That'll be fun to clean up! Well, I guess we'd better get started!!!

Good night!!!

Cars Rock!

On our way to the grocery store this morning, Alegria got a hold of my eyelash curler and proceeded to show me what a big girl she is and how she knows how to use it:

Back home and after a nap, Alegria and I were on our way to go play outside and she put her hand in her pocket! Precious!!! :)

In the evening, Daddy was getting stuff together for work and he had his toy cars out that he uses to represent his tanks on his training models. Well, Alegria apparently loves cars!

Maybe we should get her some of her own...!

22 Weeks Pregnant!

I am 22 weeks pregnant today. With Alegria, I started taking belly pictures at 19 weeks, but I've been putting it off...until today. I look bigger than I did with Alegria at this stage...and I attribute it to the fact that I didn't ever lose all the weight I gained when I was pregnant with Alegria. I can tell this is NOT going to be a pretty sight when I'm 8 and 9 months along! Can you say BELUGA?! :oP

In the evening, we had a fun family excursion! Abilehi treated me to a trip to Victoria's Secret to get me a perfume (Very Sexy) that I love and that I had run out of a few months ago! They had a lot of new fragrances there as well, so I bought myself a mist of a new one called Sexy Little Things. Alegria loved the bottle and played with it all the way home!

Thank you for the birthday gift, Abilehi! I love it!!! :)

Sesame Street Squeal!

Alegria has started expressing her emotions so much more! Can you tell she loves Sesame Street?



Later on in the day, Alegria had fun pretending to ride a horse as she wore her Great Grandpa Marlow's hat:

That was pretty much it for today. :)

One Year Older and Wiser Too!

Older, most definitely...wiser...now that I don't know! ;)

Being that it's my birthday today, I had put off making my own birthday cake, knowing that it wasn't such a big deal and I could even just whip up a simple chocolate cake with no problem and I would be fine with it.

Lucky for me, though, yesterday Andrea surprised me and showed up unexpectedly at our door on our way in from dinner (Abilehi graciously babysat and Cameron took me to Olive Garden for my birthday...YUM!!!)...and she had this cake in tow!

Don't be deceived...it isn't just any chocolate cake...it's sinfully chocolate!!! There were layers upon layers upon layers of chocolate cake and chocolate/raspberry ganache! SOOO good!!! Plus the fact that for the first time in a long time, I hadn't had to make my own birthday cake...THAT was spectacular!!! Thanks again for the awesome cake, Andrea!!! We loved it...especially me!!!

Andrea also surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of red roses...my favorite flower! :)

And here's a picture of all of the birthday cards I got:

Other than celebrating my birthday, this morning we played outside before heading to Church:

And in the evening after having some birthday cake, we relaxed and Alegria put Big Bear to "bed" in the entertainment center. I just love how now she "shushes" you to get you to be quiet if anyone is "asleep!" :)



All in all, it was a great day to be turning 31!!! YIKES!!! ;)

Rake it Up!

When Daddy got home from working out this morning, he took Alegria on a magic blanket ride:

When she woke up from her nap, we looked at pictures of family:

And in the evening, Daddy surrounded our poor little trees with a mesh wire fence system. Isis dug up the chicken wire that Grandpa Marlow had laid down back in March during their stay, so we needed something that she couldn't get into. This looks like it will work!

Raking is almost like sweeping!

Daddy making a final inspection of his work:

Now it's off to bed! Gute Nacht! :)

Cleaning Baby for Hire!

Since Alegria enjoyed playing with the decorations so much yesterday, I left them up for her to enjoy a bit longer. And I was right. First thing this morning, she pulled out all of the pink pacifiers from the centerpiece, sucked on one while she played with the others and also played with the curling ribbon:

After breakfast, Alegria helped me sweep the floor:

Alegria is so good at sharing her drinks and food with Big Bear! Hopefully she'll be great at sharing with Odette, too! :)

We had a Hail and Farewell to go to this evening, so we went to meet Daddy at work at the end of the day so we could go to the Hail and Farewell together...and lo and behold, what did Alegria want to do when we got there? Sweep! :) Since she loves it so much, I should have her go out and clean houses to bring in some extra spending cash!!! :)




At the Hail and Farewell:

Back home, Alegria decided Big Bear needed a "bath:"

That's all folks! Good night! :)

It's a...

...GIRL!!!!!

We looked and looked...and looked some more...and saw nothing to imply we'd be having a boy...so Odette Marie Marlow it is!!!

This is a view if you're looking from under her chin, up to her lips and on towards her nose (on the right):

(The same picture from above, labeled):

The next two pictures are of her face, looking straight at it...you can see the area where the eye sockets are...Skeletor anyone?! We got a similar picture of Alegria when we had Alegria's ultrasound!

And here's our darling Odette, lying pretty for us to get a profile picture of her! She has the same nice, round shape of a head that Alegria did!!! :)

This second shot the ultrasound technician took of her profile is a little blurry...

Of course, I HAD to add a bow! (I took a snapshot of just one of these shots for the first picture in this blog post!)

Here's a picture of one of Odette's dainty little feet!

(Labeled)

And here's one of both of her feet, except Odette kept moving so much that the technician had trouble getting a clear shot of them! :(

(Labeled)

And I have NO IDEA what the next two are pictures of! If any of you are experts and can tell, please let me know! :)

And those are your first view of our youngest little one!

When Kerri found out the day I was going to get my ultrasound done, she suggested I not tell any of them in our playgroup and just host a gender reveal party...everyone would come dressed wearing either blue or pink, depending on what they thought I was having...and as soon as they walked in the door, they would know!!! :) So that's what I did!!!

It was difficult, though, to not put up on my Facebook page the fact that we've known we're having a girl for almost a week now! (We did let our immediate family know on the 16th when we found out, of course, and luckily they didn't post any incriminating posts on our Facebook pages!) I also made Cameron take a vow of silence so that he wouldn't spill the beans to Justin at work and Justin accidentally spill the beans to Kerri! I didn't want Kerri to find out!

Here's a picture of the cake I made:

Yes, those booties are all cake! :)

The kids had fun playing...Alegria had fun taking any decorations off that she could get her hands on!

Here are how the odds stacked up: Kerri and Amanda thought girl, and Shelly, Tasha, and Allie thought boy!

Allie brought some delicious brownies that she had decorated...mmm! I LOVE chocolate!!! :)

The party was tons of fun, but Alegria and I were sure tired when it was all said and done! We were very happy to have a nice nap in anticipation of Daddy coming home that afternoon...

Daddy sporting his protective eye gear (Eye Pro):

I decorated with pink for today's party, but forgot to get pictures beforehand...but here they are now...pink candles in lieu of my usual red, a pink butterfly, and yellow ribbon:

Pink curling ribbon everywhere (which Ammon helped me with!)!

And a centerpiece with pink gems and pink pacifiers:

So Alegria will be having a little baby sister!!! We're so very excited for the two of them to be the best of friends!!! :) YAY!!! We love you already, Odette, and we can't wait to meet you!!! :)