Allie's First Field Trip

My Secretary in Primary decided to start a Preschool out of her home so we enrolled Allie in it for the school year. She loves going to Preschool and LOVES Mrs. Moss. Last Thursday they went on a field trip to a farm in Glendale. Allie had so much fun. She especially enjoyed having her Daddy go with her. Here are a few pictures from her trip. In the picture above she is playing in a corn box with her friend Abby.



Eating Lunch










Riding the train






These are all of the kids that attended.

It was cute. The farmer told them all about different fruits and vegetables and he even let them pick some and bring them home. Even Rich learned something on the field trip. He's been testing me all week on what is a fruit and what is a vegetable. Did you know that a banana is an herb? You learn something new every day.

2 weeks.....or a month

Wow! It's been quite the week and half. It has felt like an entire month. As you have seen posted, our little Jessica Gale arrived on Sunday. Thank you Stacy for taking pictures and updating the blog while we were in the hospital so everyone could see our beautiful little girl. As you will find out after this post, she waited until everything was right for her to come. Lets start at the beginning. Last Monday, I woke up to a phone call from my dad. I knew something wasn't right. He said that my mom had been in a car accident and thinks she broke her ankle. The next call was from my mom saying "Don't have that baby today!" Sure enough, she rear ended someone and was pushing hard on the brakes trying to stop and the impact broke the distal part of her fibula. No surgery, but she is down for 6 weeks. So, last week Richie, Allie, and I stayed with her since my dad was out of town. I'm grateful to have a job where I can work from home if something like this arises, and to have an understanding boss that knows that things like this happen and will let you. So, we finally went home and slept in our home on Friday. Saturday we moved Richie's brother to his new apartment. It was bitter sweet. It's nice to have our room back so we can make it into what we need it for, but now he is so far away and things are quiet around here. We love you Randy and miss you. Anyways, after moving we came home and watched the ASU football game. Great game, sad to see us lose, but when you're favored to lose by 2 or 3 touchdowns and the game is won in the last 2 seconds of the ballgame by a field goal against and SEC team, you can't complain. It was a great game to watch and we are proud of our sun devils. Anyways, that night as we got in to bed, I started having contractions. I wanted to be absolutely sure that this was it so I laid in bed timing them and trying to sleep. Well, at around 2:30, I decided to wake Rich up so he could time them. I haven't slept and they were pretty regular. At 4:00 I told Richie to grab our stuff. We got to the hospital at 5:40 (yes, it took us over an hour to get there because it is the furthest hospital from our house. That's where my doctor is). They checked me when I got in and watched me for an hour. My contractions were every 3 minutes and I was dilated to a one. The nurse was going to send us home because she said it didn't feel like labor. Then Rich said we live over an hour away so she called the doctor on call and he decided to admit us. Good thing because by the time I got admitted and they checked me I was at a 3. At around 11:00 I was at a four and they decided to put me on pitocin because my contractions were about every 3 to every 5 minutes. They started the pitocin and they went to every minute and a half. At around 1:30 I asked for an epidural. At 6:30 I was fully dilated so they called the doctor. My doctor was sick so the on call doc had to deliver. They got me all prepped and when he arrived he broke my water (yes my water had never broke). 2 contractions later our little Jessica was here. A side note that is funny, she came right during half time of the Cardinals football game. So, she waited until my mom was able to be there, she waited so we could help Uncle Randy move, and she even waited until half time of the football game. These last two weeks have felt like a month. I only stayed in the hospital for 24 hours and they let me go. We wanted to leave soon because Allie wasn't allowed to be in the hospital so she hadn't seen her sister yet. She was so excited ot see her and is going to be a great big sister. We are all doing well and enjoying being together as a family. Anyways, I will stop blabbing and get to what everyone wants to see. Here are pictures from the last 3 days here at home. 'Til next time.

beautiful baby

if you can't see, it says:
Jessica Gale
September 27th, 2009
7:09 pm
7lbs 5.1oz
20.5in long

more to come when the sisters meet

34 weeks and Cankles

Well, I am almost 34 weeks. I will officially be 34 weeks on Sunday. I had a Dr. Appointment this week and will have them every week from now on. My Dr., in a nutshell, said that this is it and what happens, happens. So, this is what I look like at 34 weeks. Ignore the face. I look like I got ran over. That's not the case though. I just got home from work.

And what comes along with being 34 weeks? Well, for me it's been since about 24 weeks. But that's right. CANKLES! I actually think they look better on camera. Some days are better than others, but now I can feel when I start to swell. Today was a doozy. This is what my ankles look like after I get home. I think it's a bath night tonight.

I know....I know....

I am probably the worst blogger in the world. So much has gone on, and I haven't posted anything about them. I kept telling myself that I need to sit down and catch up on everything. Then, as I begin to think about all the pictures I have to gather, and what I would have to write I would be lose motivation to do it. So, I decided that I am going to just give a brief synopsis of what has gone on, and then talk about now. Since February, we have gone to Disneyland, Allie loved the princesses, Allie turned 3, we celebrated our 5th Anniversay, it feels like our 10th, and we have found out the sex of our baby. Oh yeah, if you aren't in contact with any part of our grapevine we are having a baby and are due October 4th. I don't think I will make it to October. She is sitting low and keeps dropping. I was contracting regularly for when I went to my last visit and my doctor did a check but everything was shut and normal so I'm not in premature labor yet. So everyone knows, we are going to name her Jessica Gale. Gale is my middle name, and my mom's middle name. I am also the 2nd daughter and Jessica is our 2nd daughter so we thought it would fit to give her the middle name of Gale. We can't wait until her arrival. I have so much to do before then and I'm kind of stressing because I can't do certain things until other things take place, and who knows if they will EVER take place, but I figure all will be well no matter what. So, now you are pretty much caught up. I do know that those who live on the other side of town, or are out of state, would like to see how I'm growing with this one so I will attach a picture. This is me at 29 weeks. 'Til next time!

Loooooong Post

Okay, I have had enough people say that I haven't posted anything in months, so I have decided to sit down and actually update everyone on the last 3 months in the Pond home. Since my last post we have had Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and two birthdays. It was a crazy time and we have not quite settled down from all of the excitement. During that time we either forgot to take pictures or remembered our camera and left it at someone's house, so as for pictures I will post what I have which are mostly Christmas. Richie's parents came down to visit for an entire month over the Christmas season. The original plan was to stay three weeks, but they found a remodel job while they were down so they had to extend their time an extra week in order to finish the project. It was a fun time having them down. We had a full house and were bursting at the seams. Now the house seems so empty and makes me long for more company so that I can have everything full again. So, enough with the wishing and lets get to the pictures.We might as well start with the cute one. This wa Allie's Christmas dress. I put it on and she twirled and twirled and then had to go downstairs so Grandpa could take a picture. She's been into getting her picture taken lately. Now whenever she puts something on or is doing something cute she says, "Mommy you need to take a picture of this." She cracks me up.

Every year we go up to my grandparent's house in Prescott for their Christmas party. We have Mexican Food, do the nativity, and then Santa brings stockings for everyone. We don't know how much longer we will be doing that so this year my family decided to start our own and my parent's home. We all got together, had dinners, did a short nativity (with only 3 grandkids), and then all of the grandkids got stockings. My siblings and I also got together and gave our parents dinner and tickets to go see the Smothers Brothers. If you have no idea who I am talking about we seriously need to talk about what you think is comedy. It was a fun night and I look forward to doing it every year.

Now on to Christmas. As you can tell from the pictures below, we may have gone a little overboard with gifts this year. It was kind of hard to stop when we were playing Santa for more than just a two year old. Allie is the absolute best person to by presents for because she loves anything she gets, but being able to provide Christmas to other members of our family was great. After the one we had last year, this year made up for it.



There are many more images to share but I'm tired of uploading. As you can tell, we had tons of fun and a full house!

Next was my birthday. It was fun I got to eat Macayo's and spent time with family. I also got to work from home so I didn't have to go to the office that day. My sister-in-law and her family drove down that day to spend the week with all of us so it was fun to have them here a s well.


Last but not least, New Year's Eve. We spent it over at Robbie and Callie's playing games and eating until we were about to burst. It was a fun time of family and friends.

Needless to say, we had a great holiday season and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. There is nothing better than family!