Deck the Halls!

IT'S DECEMBER!!!!! Enter my absolute FAVORITE time of the year! The thing that's really neat about this year, is that we're hosting Christmas at our house. Since I'm only going to be 3-4 weeks away from Caleb joining the fam, the Dr. said a BIG no to me traveling anywhere for the holidays. Luckily, my in-laws were very wonderful and said that they would come to us! So, now I'm just trying to get our house ready for the season, and for our big celebration! I pulled out some Christmas tunes, all of our decorations, and went to town! We don't have a ton, but I think it turned out pretty cute with the stuff we do have :) So here's the tour!

I'm not gonna lie... I'm pretty proud of this wreath. It's the first time I've ever attempted to do fabric rosettes, and I think they turned out pretty dang cute for a first attempt! So, there's our Christmas cheer on the front door!


When you walk in the front door, you are greeted by our "fireplace" where the stockings are hung with care. Being in Arizona, I might have had to improvise the whole fireplace thing... but it turned out pretty cute!

My FAVORITE addition to our Christmas decorations. I have been longing to get the whole Willow Tree set for FOREVER, and I finally got the first 6 pieces. So this is a work in progress, but some day, some year, I will have the whole set and it will be gorgeous!

This was a new addition to our Christmas decorations as well. I found the candle holder at Michael's for 80% off and got it for a steal. Then I just jazzed up some super cheap candles with fun holiday ribbon and put a garland around the base. Easy, affordable, and cute! Oh! And my sweet countdown to Christmas calendar that I made at Super Saturday a few years back.... so stinking cute!

Uhh... so just ignore all of those dishes in the dish strainer... maybe should have thought about cleaning up a bit before snapping some pics. But, I put a few decorations over in our kitchen to make it more cheery. LOVE this cute nativity set that the Jones family gave us last year. The Bubs always looks at it when he's eating and tries to offer his food to the "little sheep." He can't get enough of it!

Finally, the family room. We've got our cute little BYU tree (all decked out in blue and white) which I hadn't finished decorating by the time I took this picture.... plus the Ho ho ho blocks that we made at our Duke reunion last year (woah... was that really just last year? Hmm.... maybe two years ago....)

So, there's the tour of our little casa all decked out :) We are SOOO excited about Christmas, we can barely stand it! Not to mention, it's been pretty "cold" here (I mean, in the 50's!!!) so it's starting to feel a little more like Christmas too!

I started an ABC's of Christmas with the Bubs last week, and yesterday was "Elf" day. So, I made some cookies and we went around as Santa's Elves and delivered them to some of our friends. Note that in this picture, the red card thing hanging from his coat is his "Elf ID Badge" I found it online for free, and they even let me upload a picture-- how cute is that? This is right before we made the rounds as Santa's Elves. Because it was so cold, we decked the Bubs out with a beanie and mittens. He was fascinated by the mittens... and left them on his hands! It was a miracle!

One last thing... we took the Bubs to the mall yesterday to go visit Santa. We figured it probably was not going to be the most successful endeavor, but we were not prepared for how bad it really was going to be. Let's just say that Daddy got to take his picture with Santa too, because the Bubs had a death grip on his neck and refused to go anywhere NEAR Santa. I think it has something to do with Santa's white facial hair.... facial hair in general freaks the Bubs out, but something about having facial hair that was WHITE... well, that just put him over the edge! Needless to say, we would not fork out the billions of dollars it would have cost to print out the picture of Daddy with Santa, and they wouldn't let me take pictures with our own camera... so the pictures of this glorious occasion will just have to live in my memory forever :)

Because this month is so crazy/hectic... I'm going to say this will probably be my last post of 2011. So, Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family! We weren't able to do Christmas cards this year, but we'll work on it for next year. We are all well and excited for our little Caleb to arrive! We wish you the happiest of holidays, and that you may feel the spirit of the season and remember our Savior!!

Love,

The Waite Clan

The Terrible Twos are Upon Us!!

Well, I guess this post really SHOULD be titled: Happy 2nd Birthday to the Bubs, but I think the terrible twos being upon us is pretty accurate too! This kid's been in the "terrible twos" phase for about 6 months already... so does that mean I only have six more months and then he'll be an angel again?

So, after downloading the pictures from his party, I realized that we didn't really take that many! We were very video camera oriented this year, so we got A LOT of sweet video... including a classic Bubster tantrum (SO using it for blackmail in the future), so we didn't get a ton of pictures. Therefore, to make up for it, I have put a "Bubster through the years" montage (minus the slideshow and music... ok, ok, so it's 3 pictures.... some montage, eh?) to make up for our appalling lack of documentation. Enjoy!

Our Sweet Bubster-- November 3, 2009

Amazing what a year can do! The Bubs, November 2010

Our crazy 2 year old! Man, we love this kid!

The "Happy Birthday" table. Uhh.... do you SEE that huge pile of presents? He is WAY spoiled...

Another shot of the serious loot he was getting....

His "Cars" birthday cake made by yours truly. Not my favorite cake I've made... but he's 2, so he won't notice, right?

Enter the THREE pictures we got of him. We stripped him down to partake of his cake. Silly us. We should have known that he would be a dainty little lady while eating his cake. He proceeded to eat the icing off of the cake one fingertip at a time. He didn't touch the actual cake. And the one mess he made? Spilling a tiny bit of ice cream on his chest and freaking out about it for about 5 minutes....

Frosting is ESPECIALLY tasty when eaten daintily.

Eating and skyping with Mama Rae and Papi. And yup, that's it. Those are all the pictures we got. Gold star for us as parents.

It was a fun day, and the biggest present he got was a Big Boy Bed. He slept in it for the first time on Saturday. I was expecting to be up ALL night, and miraculously, he went down very easily and slept the ENTIRE night, and has done so every night since....knock on wood. He won't nap in it yet, but I'm working on that and hopefully by the time Caleb gets here, he'll be a Big Boy Bed pro!

We are so grateful to have our sweet Bubs. He brings so much joy to our lives. We can't even begin to imagine what our lives would be like without him.... Happy Birthday, little man!

Halloween 2011

I will not be getting on my soapbox of why I despise this holiday so much on this blog post, but let it be known that, really, Halloween is a lame holiday... except for when you have a really cute little kid who gets to dress up like his idol, Curious George. Then, Halloween is fun, it's cute, and while it might not be worth it to pay $20 for an outfit he will only wear once, you do... because it's cute, and fun, and makes everyone smile... even the grumpy pregnant woman who usually despises this holiday. Now if only teenagers would stop coming to my door stealing all of my candy... but that's a soapbox for another day....

This year, my awesome mother in law picked out the Bub's outfit and did an exceptional job! WE LOVED IT!! And while the Bubster didn't love the hood, we are happy to report that he left it on the ENTIRE time when he was trick or treating. A Halloween miracle, for sure! We started off the festivities on the Friday before Halloween. Our ward had the classic Trunk or Treat/Chili Cook off activity. The Bubs enjoyed running amuck and having us chase him the whole time, which led to me being in massive pain and going home early while Brett took charge of the carnival booth that I was supposed to be in charge of. As I was sitting in the car waiting for Brett to bring our crock pot back, he informed me that he had just accepted the gift for the 1st place chili prize! Woot! I had made a brand new recipe and was afraid that no one was going to like it, and I took home first place :) It made the night totally worth it! A quick side note about our costume choice: I was supposed to be Brett's nerd date, but found out the night before the event that my big belly would not allow me to wear the costume that I had planned on. This resulted in a crazed, "find the pregnant lady something to wear!" search that ended with a pair of scrubs and my husband's stethoscope. Not super creative, but at least we found something, right??

A monkey, a nerd, and a PA... if only Brett and I had reversed our costumes, it would be a pretty accurate portrayal of our family :)
Brett and the Bubs

My crazy little monkey...

On Saturday, celebrations continued with the annual carving of the pumpkin. We had to do it right before Halloween, because with the heat, the pumpkin will only last about 2 days before it shrivels and dies... much like myself :) We thought it would be fun for the Bubster to be involved, so we stripped him down to his diaper and strapped him to his booster seat. After cutting into the pumpkin, we took some of the "guts" and put them in front of him, thinking that he would love to play with the slimy, gooey, mess. What were we thinking? He started crying hysterically and wanted NOTHING to do with the pumpkin guts. He wanted to get down and play with his ball popper. So off he went. Happy Halloween to him :)

This is me trying to coax him to come touch the pumpkin. As you can see... he was pretty hesitant. I love his little shoulder shrug that he does...

II'm not gonna touch the dang pumpkin, Mom and Dad!

Struggling to get AWAY from the scary pumpkin!

Well, maybe I'll take a peek... but just a little one.

Oh! The pumpkin is actually cute! I shall call him pumpkin and he shall be mine and he shall be my pumpkin!

Brett holding our sweet pumpkin!

Now the Bubs asks to see the pumpkin about 50 times a day... he is going to be one sad little boy when we have to throw it away!

On their way to go get some candy!

Happy Halloween!

Catch Up Time!!

Welp, let's see... we've lived in Gilbert for just over two months now, and I haven't blogged since we got here, basically. So, yet again, here we are playing serious Catch Up with the Waite Clan. Here are some highlights of our lives since being in Gilbert:

*No big deal or anything... but Brett started work at Page Family Practice in Tempe and is rockin' it. The hours are a bit longer than I was expecting, but he loves the people that he works with, and loves helping out his patients. I love the paycheck :), and the great stories he brings home!!

*Another no big deal thing... we found out we're having baby boy #2. He is healthy, and getting stronger every single day. The Bubster refuses to sleep on me anymore because he doesn't like getting kicked by his little brother. The power struggle over Mama has already begun! We're going to name him Caleb Duke Waite (after one of my favorite students, and of course, my sweet maiden name... can't lose that!) He's due on Jan. 30th, and I'm praying that I get to be induced a week earlier than that, we'll see....

*The Bubster has made a few new friends (and so has his Mama), so life is starting to feel a little more normal, and not so solitary anymore. We love to go on playdates and our ward does playgroups on Fridays, so we hit that too.

*Brett and I both got new callings in our ward. (This was after we had both already taught lessons in RS and Priesthood, and Brett has already given a talk-- this ward means involvement!!) I am now the Primary Chorister and have a new found respect for the calling, as it is HARD CORE. There is a lot of planning and a lot of time consuming things involved, but it is a blast! I've been doing it for 2 whole weeks now and am already starting to fall in love with the kids. Brett is the 1st counselor in the EQ, which means I get more alone time :)

Other than that, life's been pretty normal (HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!) So, now here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

The Bubs has started freaking out (HARD CORE) about getting his hair cut. He hears the clippers turn on, and he turns on the drama! For his first hair cut in Gilbert, he started screaming bloody murder and would barely let me touch him, the next thing we knew... he was out cold! Easiest haircut EVER, now if only he would fall asleep every time!
Looking at these pictures makes me realize we're going to have to cut his hair again soon.... maybe I should pull out the Benedryl for this one :)

He likes shoes. Especially if they are triple the size of his own feet....

1st day on the job! He's an official PA-C now! What a stud!

Throughout the month of October, a farm in Mesa was allowing people to come for hayrides, pony rides, pumpkin patches, etc. It sounded like a lot of fun, so we decided to go. We went on the 2nd Saturday in October and I lasted about an hour before I almost passed out from heat stroke. Have I mentioned that being pregnant in Arizona is the worst idea EVER?? Oh well, we still had fun and had a VERY happy little boy on our hands. He still talks about riding the pony and petting the animals...

Chillin' at the Pumpkin Patch. He is OBSESSED with pumpkins, and requests to look at our

jack-o-lantern out on our front porch at least 50 times a day.

He declared this pumpkin, the Michael Pumpkin. Too bad we are super lame-o parents who didn't want to pay 5 bucks for a tiny pumpkin. He was not pleased...

Hooray for Dad and pumpkins!

A cute little petting zoo, where the Bubs could have stayed for an eternity. He loved seeing and touching all of the different animals and would yell out what sound each animal made. It was pretty sweet.

While originally, he HATED being on the white horse, he did NOT want to get off by the time we were done. He's a natural on horseback, isn't he??

Well, that catches us all up until the next post... Halloween! And then, we'll have another entry soon after that for the Bubster's 2nd Birthday! (Is he REALLY that old already???) Stay tuned!

Pics of the New Digs!

Ok, so I think my computer ate some of the pictures I took of the house, or I'm completely incompetent. But, somehow, about half of my pictures were downloaded, and now I just can't find them. So, this post is the basic look of the new house... I don't even have a picture of the house from the outside because the computer ate it... so be patient, I'll work on it :) But, here are some pictures so you get an idea of what things look like!

So, when you walk into the front door, you enter in to the "Formal Dining Room" which I have turned into the "Library/Piano/Beautiful Room". It's also the only room in the entire house (minus my room) that has carpet.... one of the only things I don't LOVE about the house.

After the "Formal Dining Room" you walk down the hall to the "Great Room." This is where our kitchen, dining room, and living room is. So, here's the kitchen--- I'm in LOVE with it! We have a disposal, a dishwasher, a normal size oven, a normal size stove, and an ISLAND!! Talk about a serious upgrade from the kitchen we had before :)

Another favorite feature: Enough counter space that I have my spices in a place where the Bubster can't reach them... ahh, bliss!

Next stop in the "Great Room" is our dining room. Nothing too fancy, but here it is!

The final step in the "Great Room" our Living Room!!! (With our brand new couches/tables/rug) We got a great deal over Labor Day and are SUPER excited about our pretty new stuff!!

The backyard is right off of the Living Room... we LOVE it and can't wait until it's cool enough for us to actually enjoy it! Is it November yet??? We have a hot tub and a thing called a "barzebo" which is basically a wet bar with stools under a gazebo. We'll be using it to serve our "mocktails" and party food when it's nice weather!

We also have GRASS, a lemon, lime, and grapefruit tree, and a cactus in the backyard. The Bubs is scared of the cactus (thankfully), points to it and says, "Cactus, ouchie!!" We are blessed to have such a smart kid :)

So, if you leave the "Great Room" and go back into the "Formal Dining Room" there's a hallway to the left which leads to all of the rooms. This is where the computer eating my pictures starts to really stink. I had a picture of my laundry room (because this is the first laundry room I've had in my house since I left for college in 2003... I'm ECSTATIC about it!), and a picture of "new baby's" room, but they are no where to be found... So anyway, in the hall, the first room you come up to is the Bubster's. Again, nothing fancy, but it works!

Next would be "new baby's" room, but that picture has disappeared, along with my picture of the kids/guest bathroom. Our bedroom is at the end of the hall and it is seriously a master SUITE. We have a ridiculously large closet, a nice sized room, and a LOVELY bathroom all included. Again, the pictures of my closet are gone (so you won't be able to experience the ginormity of it... sorry!) But the rest of the room is present! There's even enough room for our desk/computer-- so I can blog while The Child is sleeping, amazing!!!

So, this is the only picture of my closet that made it. It's our food storage wall. Seriously, this is just ONE wall in my massive closet.... LOVE IT!

So, there is the basic tour of my beautiful new house. Maybe when Brett gets home, he'll be able to find my lost pictures... but if not, I guess you'll just have to come visit us to see the real thing!

Life is CRAZY... and GREAT!

Well, so much has happened in the past week (yes, it's only been a WEEK) that I can't even believe it! Here are the highlights:

* On Tuesday, Aug. 23, Brett got the call that he got the job at Page Family Practice in Tempe, AZ!!! We were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited to get the call, and even more excited to know what path we were taking!

*That same day, I called Jerry, our real-estate man, and he got us into our house after only 24 hours!! Pretty unbelievable!

*On Wednesday, Aug. 24, we loaded up our U-Haul at 7:30am, drove down to Gilbert (where our beautiful house is...), and unpacked the U-Haul all by 12:00. Then we took our AMAZING friends who drove down to Gilbert with us to unpack out to lunch at In and Out... don't worry, it was only the hottest day of the entire summer that day. 115 degrees is ideal moving weather :)

*I went to my last "girl's night" and was surprised with an hour massage (HEAVEN!) and a house warming gift to buy something for our new house... we're getting new couches this weekend!!!!!!!

*On Thursday, Aug. 25, Brett had his Graduation Luncheon at this spiffy Country Club. Even though the sound system was having SERIOUS issues, the main speaker rambled on for an ETERNITY, and we were the last table (literally, the very last table) to be served our food, it was still a fun time where Brett got to see a lot of his classmates and brag about his new job :)

*On Friday, Aug. 26, Brett GRADUATED!!! Best graduation I've ever been to! The speeches were concise and to the point, the hooding was SUPER cool, and I was SO proud that of everything that he accomplished! He's such a stud!

*Then we finished packing up our apartment, said goodbye to our friends and to Midwestern, and drove down to Gilbert to stay! Super bitter sweet moment for all of us! We will miss Glendale SOOOOOOO much, but we are so excited to be starting this new chapter in our lives.

*The past few days have consisted of Brett studying like a mad man for Boards (he's taking them on Sept. 12th.) and me feverishly unpacking my house. I'm happy to report that I have succeeded! (Well, I haven't put up any pictures yet), but I have unloaded every other box in the house-- HUZZAH!

So, needless to say, this past week has been a complete WHIRLWIND. I have never been so tired in all of my life, but we are SOOOOOOO happy. We have seen the Lord's hand in everything that has happened in the past week, and are so grateful for the way that things have turned out. We feel like it really was the plan that was meant for us!! So, now we just need Brett to pass this test... he starts work on the 14th, and we'd love to see him stay there :)

Oh, and we have the BIG ultrasound on the 13th to see what our sweet baby #2 is! So excited!

---I'll post pictures of the house soon....it' SO cute!----

Life is Hard...

This past week has been a rough one in our house.

It started off SO well, with the return of my best friend, Sarah, to Arizona. They had gone to Utah for the summer, so I was THRILLED to have them come back. I've also been starting to feel a little bit better the past couple of weeks. This baby seems very determined to keep me feeling sick for eternity... but things were finally starting to look up in that department. Then it hit:

*We found out that there was fraudulent activity on our credit card. A dude in CA had been spending our money on clothes, gas, pet food, and STARBUCKS... really? I could use a cool Vanilla Bean Creme Frapp. right now....

*Brett's cousin, Tyler, passed away after a 4 year battle with brain cancer. So, this was hard, but good at the same time because we know that Tyler is WAY happier where he is now. We'll miss him, but we are SO grateful for the opportunity we had to visit him when we were up in Washington a few weeks ago.

*We found out today that we didn't get the job in Pasco. We had kind of figured things weren't looking too great when they didn't contact us for 2 weeks, but it was still a blow to get the rejection e-mail. We're hanging in there, but are very disappointed... we wanted that job really bad. So, now it's back to square one-- we just need to keep plugging away, and doing our part, and we know that Heavenly Father's got our backs.

We're now less than a month away from graduation. On one hand, that is the coolest news EVER! On the other hand, we are scared out of our minds... I'm not sure we're quite ready to be in the "real world".

So even though it's been a pretty tough week, things will start looking up, I'm sure. I've always liked the phrase, "When God shuts a door, he opens a window" (is that how the phrase goes? Welp, I'm gonna say that's it, 'cause I like it that way...) Now we just need to find that window and keep going. Thank you for all of the love and support that you've given us-- keep sending it our way, we're in need of it more now than ever! At least we're going to Harry Potter tonight... something to get us out of our slump... we can always count on Harry :)

Expecting....

Expecting the Bubs to be a sweet angel today :)....



Expecting it to be 113 degrees today...




Expecting the air conditioning in my car to get fixed tonight....



Expecting Brett to have a fantastic first day of his LAST rotation!!...



Expecting to hear good news (we hope) from Pasco by the end of the week....



Expecting the house I fell in love with to still be available in Pasco....



Expecting to feel more like myself after this week...



Expecting our second, sweet, baby on January 27, 2012!!!

Triathlon #2 and Some Other Gems...

I feel like I start every blog post with this statement.... "Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog!" Well, my feelings remain the same. I have the best intentions to be more constistent with blogging, and yet always falter in my achievement of it. So, let's play catch up, yet again, for the past couple of months.

April 30th, 2011

*First things first... some friends and I put together a little traithlon. We swam in our pool on campus, biked on the Skunk Creek Trail (which is practically our backyard), and ran a sweet route back to campus. There were several things that I loved about this race:

1. You could take it at your own pace. We had girls that just biked and ran, we had girls that biked for 8 miles and some that biked for 12, etc. So there wasn't really any pressure, and it was just FUN.

2. There were only 4 people in the pool at the same time :) As opposed to the 12 people in one lane at a time during my 1st Tri. I was able to have my fastest swim time EVER (up until that point) at 9:56. (Because I'm the best swimmer ever now [tee hee], and actually like to swim, I've cut that time down to 8:26 and am trying to get even faster!!!)

3. Amanda and Chris set up a rotation station that had gatorade and fresh fruit for us. They timed us, figured out our splits, made a sweet poster for us, and took pictures of us throughout the entire event. It wouldn't have been NEARLY as awesome without them-- they were the stars of the day!

Needless to say, it was a really good day and I was so proud of the girls that went through with it. We all trained together, and it was awesome to see everyone crossing that finish line. What an accomplishment! I felt really good about the race personally. My goals were to beat my first Tri time (2 hrs. and 4 minutes), and to run the whole 5k. In my first Tri, I got a serious cramp in my quad and had to walk a majority of the 5k, so I really wanted to run the whole thing this time. Happy to report that I accomplished both goals. I finished the race at 1 hr. 33 minutes!! I was also able to run the whole 5k. My only disappointment was that I felt I should have pushed myself a little harder in the 5k. But, I was so worried about pushing too hard at the beginning and then not being able to finish strong, that I just took things slowly all around. Next time, I think I'll push just a little harder :)

Here are some pics from the event!

Me racing towards the finish line. Did I mention that it was SOOOOOO windy the day of the race? We were going against the wind for most of the bike and most of the run, so that made things pretty hard core.... what a challenge!

Woot Woot!! I did it!

My sweet support team! Love my boys!

All the lovely ladies involved: Maria, Rayna, Sarah, Me, Camille, Anslin's MIL, Flo, and Linsey... and that's Amanda's hand (nice photography, Brett :))

Whew! Ok, onto other gems:

Uhh... struggling to remember ANYTHING exciting that happened last month. Maybe this is why I don't update the blog very often....

So, here's a fun picture just for kicks. Brett and I went to PF Changs for our anniversary and got the delicious Mongolian Beef. We had leftovers for lunch the next day and innocently threw the container in the recycle bin. Little did we know that our little scavenger (aka The Bubs) had gotten into the recycling bin, until this sweet little face greeted us:

No, that's not leprosy, folks... it's the Mongolian Beef sauce remnants. He had gotten the old container out and was sampling some of it for himself-- rude that we didn't offer any to him, huh? You gotta do, what you gotta do... I mean, it was MONGOLIAN BEEF!

Last but not least, we are still in limbo waiting for a miracle-- a job offer :) Brett got a call last week from Pasco, WA which is looking promising (MAYBE... and now I'm knocking on wood, frantically.) We should know by the end of the week if we get to go for a personal interview. Other than that, there have been no takers, but we have not hit complete panic mode yet (other than the mental break downs that I have almost every other day) and are hopeful that things will work out, and work out in our best interest. Keep those prayers coming, peeps! Welp, someday, when I get around to it, I'll post pictures from our trip to Prescott. Kind of a disaster of a trip, but some silly pictures and memories to ease the throbbing pain of one night in a hotel room with my son...so stay tuned for that :)