Photo Shoot

Michael and I had an impromptu photo shoot with Caden yesterday. :) Such a cutie!

Decorating and Rearranging

So, the nursery is almost finished. The walls are painted, the furniture is setup, the curtains are hung, sheets, clothes and blankets are bought, the letters for her name are painted and waiting to be hung.....now all we're waiting for is our little girl to arrive. Today is the 16th which means she is due 2 months from now - 8.5 weeks to be exact. Pregnancy seems so much slower this time around....mostly because I'm like, "been there, done that" and I just want her to be here! I know I will have many sleepless nights and will be pushed beyond my limits with a 2-year old and a newborn at the same time...but I'm ready. Crazy, I know?!?! Also, I'd like to add that I passed my glucose test this time around with flying colors....praise the Lord! I know this isn't very exciting to whoever is reading this but I feel the need to document it :)

Just a few pictures of the nursery:

Picture frames, storage boxes, lamp and a blanket.

This is the teal wall with the tree decal before we put it up.


And here's the tree with the butterflies.


The crib with a blanket one of my co-workers made.

Here is a picture of Caden's new room with his big boy bed and his Thomas and Friends bedding.

Our house is in the process of getting rearranged....we moved the computer area into our room and are transforming the computer area into a kids/guest room. There's not a ton of space so we're trying to be creative!!!

2nd Birthday

Caden had his birthday at the beginning of April. We can't believe he's already 2!!! It's amazing how time goes by so much quicker when you have kids. We kept his birthday low-key this year...mostly just because the weather has been so awful and we weren't able to do anything outside. Boo to the rain!!! On his actual birthday we had spaghetti for dinner and cupcakes from St Cupcake (yummm!). He got Duplo Legos, Diego pictures for his viewer and a fire truck book.

Yum, peanut butter chocolate with banana!

We also had a small birthday party with Michael's family a few days after his birthday and he got a fun new Thomas Train set from Uncle Eric, a package of rubber balls from Uncle Gabe, a basketball hoop from Aunt Heather, Grandma and Grandpa and some coloring books, stickers and colored pencils from Mommy and Daddy. We had pizza and salad for dinner and ice cream sundaes w/ chocolate chip cupcakes for dessert.

Yay, Thomas!

Ohhh, a candle!

Here's Caden with his Thomas the train tattoo.

Caden,
We are so blessed to have you in our lives. You are such a sweet boy and we love watching you grow up. We can't wait to see what God has planned for your life and what kind of big brother you're going to be. We love it when you say, "Come back" and "Hi, I'm Caden" when we get you up in the morning and repeat everything we say :) We love your hugs, kisses and whispers...we love you sooo much and are excited for what the future holds!

Counting and ABC's and Nursery

Caden amazes me every day with how much he knows and how big he's getting.

Last night Michael, Caden and I were hanging out in the living room. Caden had taken all the pillows off the couch and was jumping into it from the couch. As he stood there he counted before he jumped off and said, "1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18!" and then leapt off the couch. Michael and I both stopped and asked him what he just said because up until this point we'd only heard him count to 10 and now he had added 3 more numbers. Now, granted 18 doesn't come after 12 and most of the time he skips #2 but STILL....counting that high at the age of 22 months. Crazy!!!! He is such a smart little boy. Occasionally he will say parts of the alphabet, "A, B, C, D....G, H, J...." and sing parts of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." It is so cute!

We've been thinking and looking on the internet a lot to try and figure out how we want to decorate the nursery for our baby girl and we think we've figured it out. We found a picture on etsy.com (see below) that has a turquoise wall w/ a cherry blossom tree wall vinyl that looks amazing!

In the picture the cherry blossom tree has red and white flowers but we are going to get it in fuschia and white. So our colors for the room will be turquoise, fuschia, white and dark brown. The brown will be incorporated into the tree trunk and all of our nursery furniture is chocolate brown. It's been hard finding bedding that's the right colors...for some reason all of the crib bedding is pastel pinks, purples, yellows and blues, so we're going to have to be creative but are up for the challenge. Once we start getting stuff we will post pictures.

2010 Holidays

This morning as I was laying in bed debating if I should get up or not I decided that I need to post about our holidays from 2010. So here goes!

For Thanksgiving we went down to my parent's house in Central Oregon and played in the snow. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner and a surprise guest showed up to hang out for the day -- my grandma! We don't get to her see that much because of where we both live and it had been several months since she had seen Caden last so it was a wonderful surprise. We stayed through Saturday and even managed to make it into Bend on Black Friday to do a little shopping, it was a little crazy but didn't seem as bad as the last couple years. Since it was snowing during the week it was a MESS on the way home. I think it took us almost 2 hours to go a 25-mile stretch on the top of Mt Hood. We figured there was an accident or something that had slowed traffic down so much but we never saw anything if it was...there were just a lot of cars. Thankfully we had plenty of things in the car to keep Caden occupied and we didn't have a screaming 18-month old that whole time.

For Christmas we made a trip down to Texas to visit my family. My mom was able to come with us, which is always such a huge help with Caden. I still wasn't feeling all that great on this trip so I took any help I could get. We had a wonderful time hanging out at C&E's and Caden had an awesome time with his cousins. Of course, being the youngest, he was the one always following behind but for the most part the kids did a great job playing and including him when they could. Carolyn was able to drive down from Dallas and hang out for a little while too, so that was fun! We flew home early on Christmas day -- Caden was awesome on the plane and even took a nap, I might add. He is such a trooper and a great traveler!!! Once we got home, we all took naps since we had been up so early and then headed over to Uncle Eric's house for Christmas dinner with Michael's family. We were glad to be able to spend time with both our families over Christmas.

Here's a picture of Caden with Nana before we left for Texas.

Caden had so much fun playing on the Power Wheels Jeep.
He was good at pushing on the gas pedal but not so good with steering! :)

Michael had fun dressing up as Santa Clause...

Me, Joey and Jacob liked him but Caden and Kate not soo much!
Here's a picture of Erin, Kate and Nana.
We're so excited for Cam and Erin, they're having another boy and are due a couple weeks before us!
One of the nights we were there we had an "Iron Chef" cooking competition.
Here is a picture of the Roasted Red Pepper Chopped Salad and Naan bread (in the background) that the girl team made. Soooo yummy and soooo fun!
Here's Caden playing with Aunt Annie and Uncle AJ and his new puzzle.
And here is a family picture from Christmas Day that we spent at Eric's house with Michael's family.
We hope that you and your families had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas with friends and families.

Thank you Lord for another great year and we're looking forward to another one in 2011!

The Balance of Power Has Been Restored in the Pierce Household

Geesh, it's been awhile since I (Mollie) posted last...

So, 6 months later...Caden is running around everywhere, talking up a storm, and LOVES cars, trucks, trains, planes and tractors. He is such a cutie and such a blessing! He gets to be more and more fun the older he gets.....we're thinking about starting to potty train soon and getting him a big boy bed. He's growing up so fast!!! Thank you God for such a wonderful, healthy, loving little boy who brings so much joy to our lives!

He's also going to be a big brother!!! We found out yesterday afternoon that our baby, who is due on June 15th, is a GIRL! After having a boy, I wanted a girl so that we had 1 of each....some people thought it was a girl, others were adamant that it was a boy. I on the other hand, had a "feeling" that it was a girl but didn't want to get my hopes up too high because I didn't want to be disappointed. To some people that may sound awful but I really did want a girl this time and thankfully, the Lord has blessed us with one. During the ultrasound yesterday, the baby was wiggling and bouncing around everywhere so it was hard for the ultrasound tech to get some of her measurements and she had to try multiple times before she got everything she needed. The baby had her legs crossed most of the time so the tech tried from all different angles to make sure that it was a girl and that there was "nothing there". I told my mom the story after and she wanted to know if we asked the Tech if she'd ever been wrong because her answer to us was that she was "confident" it was a girl. Especially since most of the time with a boy it's pretty obvious....

I had a feeling it was a girl because my pregnancy has been different this time around. With Caden I didn't feel as sick during the first couple months and stopped feeling sick altogether at 16 weeks. This time I felt awful, awful, awful for a couple months and I still feel sick at just over 18 weeks! :( Toward the beginning, it was constant nausea and I ate a TON of tums and not much else and now it's kind of hit and miss and I still feel nauseous from time to time. Oh well, it's all worth it and I know other women who have been through much worse. So I really can't complain! Thank you Lord for giving us a baby girl, who's healthy and beautiful! It's so amazing to me how detailed and informative ultrasounds are, I loved being able to see her this early and sooo little.

Through all of this, Michael has been amazing. He really should win the "Husband of the Year" award. Those first few months I did absolutely NOTHING when I was at home. I only had enough energy/strength to make it through the work day and some days I wasn't even able to that.... He was so awesome and took care of everything for me and Caden....getting or making all our meals, going to the store for my cravings, taking care of Caden, changing all his diapers, taking care of the animals, and the list goes on and on. I know I am blessed beyond belief and know that some husbands wouldn't do any of those things. Thank you God for such a loving and selfless husband and father to our child!!! I am a lucky, lucky girl.

Some people have asked if we know what we're going to name her and I believe the answer is, "yes", BUT we're not going to tell until we get closer to her arrival. It is possible that we could change our minds and we really want to make sure that it's not going to be one of the top 50 popular girl names for 2011 like Caden ended up being for 2009! We thought we were picking a real unique name for him but apparently everyone else did too :)

More to come later, we're talking about how we want to decorate the nursery and will post pictures/ideas once we get it all figured out.

Caden is walking!

Here's a video of Caden walking...he still crawls every once in a while but is very mobile. He really likes his basketball too! :)

Caden Walking from Michael Pierce on Vimeo.