Birthday Fun!

(This post is obviously a little late, but I need to post about it.) My birthday happens to be on "International Speak Like A Pirate Day" so Justin goes all out to ensure that I have the best pirate-y birthday every year!   Each year I get an amazing, hand-made elaborate treasure map complete with a riddle or code to decipher to figure out what my gift will be, and this year was no different.  But there was a little twist to it this year.  My map was hand-delivered by the most adorable pirate ever!

Here is the treasure map.

His maps are getting more and more detailed and clever each year.  We live on North Pointe Dr so that's where the "North Pointe Island" comes from.  The "Gulf of People who wear pajama pants in public" is Albany because everyone here wears them all over the place.  The "Vegan Sea" is Corvallis of course.  (He's so clever!)  "Epic Isle" is a spa in Corvallis that Justin booked for me.  He was so amazing to take the day off work and agree to watch the kids for 4 hours while I got a massage, pedicure, and manicure with my friend Jessie.  It took longer than we thought, but it was so incredible.

The riddle I had to decipher, led us to Seattle where the rest of the birthday celebration took place.  We left later than planned so we hit awful traffic and ended up spending over 6 hours in the car to get to Tammy's house.  Justin had made a reservation for dinner at Elliot's (a nice seafood restaurant on the pier in Seattle,) but we were too late getting there so we had to grab dinner on the way.  There weren't many options right off the freeway when we stopped, so we chose KFC.  How bad could it be?  Ok it was the WORST place I have ever eaten in.  EVERYTHING was dirty…floors, tables, benches, bathroom.  Yuck!  The food was terrible too.  We just had to laugh the entire time because it was so awful.  Justin felt so badly that it wasn't the nice relaxing meal that I wanted for my birthed.  It definitely is a funny memory though.

We had a great time in Seattle with Tammy and her family.  Luke and Claire love them so it was fantastic.  Tammy's daughter's birthday is 2 days after mine, so we were able to be there for her birthday party.  It was crazy with a bunch of 8 year old girls, but we were definitely entertained.  

Tammy was nice enough to get a pie for my birthday so I did get to blow out candles.

We did get to go to Elliot's for dinner the day after my birthday.

They even gave us free dessert!

Tammy offered to watch the kids while we went out for dinner in Seattle.  I was so excited and we had a great time together, but it was kind of a bust night too.  We parked in a garage that ended up being a residential garage so it took us a long time to find a way back in after dinner.  Our dinner reservation was for 8:00.  We were seated at 8, but didn't get our food until after 9:00.  It was crazy and I was starving!!!  It took forever to order because I had to go through the menu with the waiter and find dairy-free options (because Claire still can't have dairy.)  I ordered a Salmon dish without the butter sauce they pour on top.  After waiting for an hour to get our food, I took a couple of bites and realized my salmon was still pretty raw.  I asked the waiter to have it cooked a little more.  He took it away and over 20 minutes later finally brought it back.  Unfortunately, when he brought it back we realized the chef had poured the butter sauce over the salmon so I couldn't eat it.  The waiter took it away before I could say "never mind."  He ended up placing a completely new order.  It didn't come for another 25 minutes.  By this time (almost 10:00) I wasn't hungry anymore and just wanted to leave.  The waiter tried to point out that I should be happy with getting two salmon dinners.  Unfortunately, I didn't want two salmon dinners.  One would have been just fine.  :)  We did get free dessert out of the deal and it was pretty delicious, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

By the time we got to our car, it was almost 10:30.  We headed back to Tammy's only to find the freeway closed for construction.  We couldn't believe it.  What a perfect ending to a silly night.  We eventually made it back and now can look back and laugh about it all.  I was so grateful for the effort that Justin put into it.  He really did try to make it a wonderful birthday.  It was in many ways.  I guess we have better stories now at least. 

A Super-Charged 7 Months with Claire

Now that I've touched on the big moments this year, I'm going to move on to what's happening now.  I've been taking pictures of Claire on the 18th of each month to document her growth.  Fortunately, I found these numbered month stickers (found some that I used for Luke too) to put on onesies so I don't have to guess which month is which.  When I look back on them, I realize that she is just getting cuter and cuter every month!  Here they are!

                         

She is so busy and fun.  She is on the verge of crawling…seriously any day!  She got her first tooth (actually it was two teeth) while we were in California at the beginning of August.  She's always been a drooler, but the weeks before that were exceptionally bad.  The drool subsided for a couple weeks, but has recently come back in full force.  She's been so miserable the past couple of days because she has three other teeth coming in, including the top central incisors.  

Claire also LOVES the water, especially bath time.  She would stay in there all night if I let her.  I'm tempted to not give her a nightly bath because they just get her more excited instead of calming her.  She really loves laying in the water and kicking around to splash the water.  She just laughs and laughs.

Another of her favorite things, is Luke.  She will sit and watch him all day.  He loves to get in her face and make funny sounds to make her laugh.  Whenever she wakes up from a nap, he runs to her room to open the door and then insists that he sit in her crib with her.  They roll around each other and "talk" to each other.  It's the cutest thing!

We love our Claire-Bear.  She is so cuddly and fun!  Wouldn't trade her for the world! 

Luke turns 2

I couldn't believe how fast it went, but this little ham turned two in May.  He's brought us so much happiness and we are so grateful to have him in our family.  He probably won't remember it, but we just had to have a birthday party for him to celebrate with his little buddies.

Piggy face on the glass

Luke's tough guy pose

  

Cutest face ever!


We weren't going to have a party for him this year, but our friends the Isaksens wanted to have one for their daughter, Parker, who was born 3 days before Luke.  We are in the same ward and have many of the same friends so we decided to have a joint party.  We chose to have a bubble theme because what 2 year old doesn't love bubbles.

Bubble Banner

 Chocolate Bubble Cupcakes

 Snacks

We were so fortunate to have incredible weather for the big day because we had planned for most of our bubble-themed activities to happen outside.  We had a bubble machine going most of the time, a kiddie pool filled with bubble solution for making giant bubbles, a bubble supply table, a painting-with-bubbles supply table

Bubble Supply Table 

Bubble Wrap Dance Floor

Painting with Bubbles

Birthday Buddies

Newborn pictures

Five days after Claire was born, we had some pictures taken at a studio in Corvallis.  I wanted to have them taken as soon as possible after she was born so she would stay asleep during the session.  Unfortunately, Justin and I didn't get much sleep at all the night before, so we really had a tough time with the photos.  We both had super dark circles under our eyes and I didn't have much time to get ready.  The photographer, Amanda Marie, warned us that her studio would be warm, but it was probably 90 degrees in there!  She was able to coerce Luke into taking a couple of pictures with his baby sister, which was quite a miracle.  Fortunately, my mom was there to help us with him and to give us advice about the pictures.  It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but we got a few good pictures.  Luckily, we got quite a few cute ones of our little baby girl!

This one really shows her cute little chubby cheeks!

After she was finished taking pictures of us, I begged her to take some pictures of Justin so she could put this together for him.  It has been a dream of his to have one!

New Addition to the Family

After Luke's first birthday, we felt like it was time to start thinking about another baby (even though emotionally I wasn't quite ready!)  Well, all we really had to do was think about it and I was pregnant. We hadn't officially made the decision to start trying again, so when I started feeling really sick all the time I was a little upset initially.  Then I realized that we were supposed to have this baby right now so my anxiety level dropped and I got excited.  This is how we announced that our family was going to grow.

A few months later, we found out we would be having a girl and then I really got excited.  Of course I was pressured into announcing that in some special way.  Since we found out in October, I thought it only fitting that pumpkins should be involved.

Other than being pretty sick the first 18 weeks, my pregnancy wasn't too bad.  My nausea was worse than with Luke, and I had terrible sciatic nerve pain for the last 12 weeks or so, but we made it through.  I even remembered to take pictures along the way…at least most of the time.

Our sweet little angel was born February 18, 2014 at 7:37 PM in the Albany Samaritan Hospital.  She weighed 8 lbs 3 oz (about a pound more than everyone guessed!) and was 20 inches long.

My labor and delivery were not as easy as with Luke.  My OB had major shoulder surgery 5 weeks before I was due,  but insisted that he be there for the delivery so we had to plan around him.  The hospital was super busy the week I was due, so my doctor and I decided to choose a day to start the induction.  We went in at 10 AM, got things started and then waited and waited in the labor room.  Fortunately, the Olympics were  happening in Russia so we got to watch some super exciting cross-country skiing and hockey all day!  Haha! I got an epidural around 5 PM, which didn't really work.  I had two anesthesiologists helping me, but it just didn't take very well.  I could still feel my legs, enough that I could still move myself around in the bed.  I had TERRIBLE back labor for the last two hours.  We ended up with two nurses, two anesthesiologists, and two OBs so we were very well taken care of. 

Amazing OBs - Dr Paul Daskalos (my OB) and Dr John Larsen (on-call OB)

We had already pretty much decided on the name Claire, but hadn't any idea what her middle name should be.  We were discussing it during my entire labor process.  We asked every nurse and doctor that came in the room for ideas.  Ultimately, we thought a French name would be great to go along with Claire.  There was an Olympic athlete from Utah who won a medal in the Skeleton during the Winter Olympics happening this year.  Her name was Noelle Pikus-Pace.  She was such a great competitor, but was also such a great example for the Church.  She was her wards' Young Women leader and wore her YW medallion during her races.  She even pulled it out and showed it off after her medal-winning run.  She left such an impression on our minds.  This as well as my love for all things Christmas and the fact that "Natalie" relates to Christmas in Italian, we felt like it was appropriate to name our daughter after the French meaning for Christmas - Noelle.  Claire Noelle Heintz, the perfect addition to our family.