Katie's Birthday- Jan 2013

I turned 26! I was beautifully serenaded by my sweet little family, and my mom was here! And that means Kyle and I were able to go and celebrate on a real date before having the baby. There was birthday cake, dinner with a gift card and The Hobbit enjoyed by the birthday girl. It was a great birthday!

Next to come: a Baby Post! As if you couldn't tell by my "condition" in this video (meaning: I am obviously HUGE and sooo ready to have a baby!!)...

I was originally hoping to be caught up on the blog in time for baby boy's delivery, but alas (and obviously), that dream did not come to fruition. But at long last, the time has finally come for blog-world to find out that we actually had our baby!

Grandma Murphy is here! Jan 2013

At around 3 weeks before Baby Waits was due to come, my mom made a trip up to stay with us for a few weeks to be able to help out when it came time to go to the hospital and then to help out generally after we brought the baby home. Boy, do I look forward to having her here! We have very little family in the area (one sister who also happens to be a full-time college student athlete in the middle of her competition season), so when it comes time to leave for the hospital at possibly 2 am- I get a little nervous that we won't have anyone to watch our girls. Seriously, I had several bad dreams of having to bring them to the hospital with us- that sure would make for an interesting delivery experience!

Finally the day came for my mom to arrive, we would be picking her up from the airport that afternoon, and I wake up around 4 am after having not slept well due to experiencing super strong contractions all night, and when I decide to finally get up and start timing them, I realize that I am having contractions every 3-5 minutes. Having experienced false labor at the end of my pregnancy with Jovi, I was pretty sure that this was the case this time around, as well (which it was), but I just couldn't believe that I was having a false alarm the morning before my mom was getting here and- if my contractions started getting stronger and I really was in labor- that she would  have missed it!

Grandma got in town on a Saturday, and Saturday night is our family movie night (most weeks), and the girls were so excited to be able to watch a movie with Grandma!

 We pop a HUGE bowl of popcorn and let the girls go to town on it while watching (preferrably) a new movie (Isn't Kyle's facial expression awesome?!)

Haha, and this is on of the main reasons why we choose to do no more than one movie a week with our girls. We like it when they play instead of zone out in front of the TV for hours. Zombie, much?

Jovi decided that Kyle wasn't eating his popcorn fast enough and began hand feeding it to him, and would refill his cup for him when she noticed it was getting a little low. I know I am prompting her in the video- but she really had started to doing this all on her own. Kyle had no option but to be force-fed popcorn for almost the entire duration of the movie!



I think that Gramda was a little tired from traveling (And possibly my 4 am wake-up call panicked about false labor):

Check out our new Grandma loveseat:

And now it was Grandma's turn to be hand-fed popcorn:

The dog references: we were watching Lady and the Tramp for the first time- the girls loved it. The tiaras and wands: a gift from Grandma. The popcorn all over the floor: typical. And Minnette's reaction to the movie being over?? Every single time a movie ends at our house- it always ends in tears!

Stay warm little puppies! Dec 2012

The girls love to get out their blankets and other bedtime accessories and pretend to sleep. Do not ask me why. On some days/nights bed and nap times can be a struggle in our house (they just don't want to miss anything- so going to bed is so not an option!). So I'm always slighlty confused when they want to pretend to sleep for play! It was a cold, snowy day outside so they invited Kyle to snuggle up and stay warm with them while they pretended to be sleeping puppies:

 

As a general parenting philosophy, Kyle chooses not to pass up on any sleeping opportunities that the girls have to offer!

 

Sure do love my sleepy little 'puppies'- even when they don't want to sleep for real!

 

woof! woof!

Murphy Family Photo Shoot- Jan 1st 2013

In the last 5 years, my parents have lived in Slovakia for almost 2 years, my sister and her family lived in Florida while her husband was in law school for 3 years, and Kyle and I have relocated and been residing in Provo for almost 3 years (and counting!), so whenever all of the family is in town (Phoenix, that is) at the same time,  my parents don't miss an opportunity to get family pictures... for which I am extremely grateful. So many wonderful documented stages of our entire family! It is crazy to look back and see just how much our little families have grown. What started out as just my Mom and Dad over 30 years ago has grown to almost 20 members strong (now with grandbaby #11 on the way!), and is still growing.

These are by far my favorite professional pictures we have had taken of our family to date, and for that we can thank the marvelous Jamie Harper (If you are in the Phoenix area and need a great photographer, check out her photography blog here, and her facebook page here), the location was beautiful (LOVE all of the backrounds) and the colors turned out absolutely gorgeous. 

(By the way, I made this felt flower scarf myself! It was super easy, and if you interested in making one, too, you can find the tutorial to do so here.)

Due to the busyness of the holiday season and two brothers-in-law working, it was difficult to find a time that worked for everyone. So New Year's Day at 10 am it is! So let me tell you, after keeping the girls up all day the day before and up late for New Year's Eve festivities, and then waking them up at 6 am for wardrobe and hair before setting off across town for family pictures in (slightly) chilly weather did not make for happy, cooperative-picture-taking children! They decided very quickly that they wanted to hide behind mom and anywhere else brought about tears. Needless to say, I was simply astounded to see how great our pictures turned out- Jamie did such an amazing job- you can hardly tell the battle and devastation our little family went through in the process of this photo shoot! 

Our little family of five... soon to be SIX!!!

The original Murphy gang:

Sisters! I Love my sisters!!!

If you look, our little family's position in this picture should look very familiar to our individual family shot- everyone was relatively happy, so why ruin a good thing? Simply replace Daddy with Grandma and relocate him to the other side- add 10 more people and BOOM! You got a great large-family picture. ;)

This is a slightly more accurate representation of how much our girls enjoyed taking pictures. It's one of those things you are glad was documented because it is so funny to look back on and remember.

The girls. (The jackets on my girls were a some-what successful negotiation tool)

The boys. Next year we will have another member of our family in this picture- Kyle won't be empty handed ever again!

No Christmas pictures "slash" 33 Weeks and GINORMOUS! Dec 2012

We spent a marvelous two weeks in Phoenix with family for Christmas and New Year's this year... but unforunately have absolutely NO pictures to show for it or any of the amazing activities we participated in! I think there may actually be about 3 pictures, including this one, and one of Kyle's feet and Raquel in the backround opeing a Christmas present... we are just awesome at documenting memories, aren't we?

We did do a lot of fun things including but not limited to:

-Minivan Express (Which in our case was actually "Gigantic Van Express"!)

 -Graham cracker "gingerbread houses" and Sibling Christmas party with Kyle's family

-Two seperate nephew/cousin birthday parties

-Christmas Eve with the Murphys

-Christmas Day with the Willmans

-New Year's Eve party and festivities with Jenn and kiddos at Grandma and Grandpa Murphy's house (We WILL be doing this again next year- and I will take pictures because it was amazing and not to be forgotten!)

-New Year's Eve night at the Willman's

-Murphy Family photo shoot on New Year's Day (I do have pictures from that- but that is a seperate post!)

-Hill Billy Special (biscuits and gravy, breakfast potatoes, sausage, bacon....mmmmmm!) at my Aunt Gale and Uncle Tres' house (one of my favorite things!)

-Mining Camp restaurant with Grandma and Grandpa Murphy and the Tiemans

-Organ Stop Pizza and temple lights with Grandma and Grandpa Murphy

-aaaaaand, one of our favorite (NOT) traditions whenever we visit family: everyone getting the stomach flu! (at least it wasn't combined with pink eye like last year!)

...It was a good vacation! 

(Well, minus the whole stomach flu/kids-with-the-barfs-on-Grandma's-carpet part, which I, luckily, was the only person on both sides of our family to escape!)

And here marks 33 weeks of pregnancy with my little dude. I asked Kyle to take a picture because I had eaten a TON of food on this particular Sunday evening (all those Christmas goodies left lying around:) and felt absolutely gigantic at the time. Once I hit 38 weeks a month or so later, this didn't seem nearly as big as I remembered!