Friday Fotos: lots and lots of them

Just thought I'd post some of the random photos we've taken recently that give you a glimpse into the latest and greatest in Rigg-ville.

These two are so cute, it actually hurts. ; ) This was taken one Sunday before church eating their favorite snack, bread with butter, no crust.

How can you not love this pic? The goofy googles, Brinley's chub-a-licious arms, pure summer bliss.

Teya and some of her playgroup pals. Love the lazy summer days feeling of this one.

Taber's been getting up super early every morning to run. The guy is on fire! But as a result, instead of my handsome husband, this is what I wake up to in the mornings:

Teya loves taking pics with my phone. Here's a cute one she took of us together.

She also just had her 4 year old well child check (half a year late but at least we did it ; ) She's healthy as a whistle but the poor little shrimp has her mama's genes, 12th percentile for height.

This one is obsessed with books lately. Most mornings at 7am on the dot, she comes in my room, climbs in the bed with a book and says, "You read me mom?"

She's also obssessed with Monty. She is constantly hugging and loving on the poor guy. She also demands I take pictures of her when they're cuddling. I have MANY, but here are two of my favs.

He's so patient with her : )

Threw this one in because it's embodies my girls right now. Best friends and dress up queens. Brinley especially is rarely seen without wings, a necklace, or some sort of accessory.

After 7 months we finally got our New Hampshire plates. Live Free or Die! Coolest state motto ever!

And since we are officially New Englanders with our plates, gotta start teaching the kids some sports team loyalty. Go Celtics!

Peach Farm

On Saturday we took the family to a local farm for some peach picking. Parlee farms is only 15 minutes from our house and they offer seasonal picking of blueberries, strawberries, peaches, apples and pumpkins in the fall. We are huge fans of farms like these so we knew it would be a fun outing.

Only problem was when we pulled up, Brinley was sound asleep in her car seat. We pulled her out anyway but she kept right on sleeping. We walked all the down to the peach orchard and still she snoozed away.

So Teya started picking

And Brinley slept

And Teya and I kept picking. She was awesome at finding the most perfect peaches to add to our supply. Soon our box was getting full.

But Brinley kept sleeping.

We reached overflowing point and I was afraid that Brinley was going to miss the whole experience.

Finally she woke up. She looked a little dazed and confused but once she realized where we were and what we were doing she jumped right in.

She picked and picked.

And munched quite a few too!

In the end we had 2 happy little peach pickers and an excellent loot of sweet summer peaches.

Aren't they the cutest peach pickers you ever saw? I thought so too.

When we were done in the orchard we headed back up to the main barn and bought some homemade blueberry donuts fresh off the cooker.

You can almost taste the awesomeness. Mmmm... so good.

After our munchies we visited the goats and the sheep

And then we went back to the barn for ice cream.

(with extra sprinkles, of course.)

The next day Taber grilled up some of the peaches for dessert. He filled the centers with brown sugar and got them all piping hot.

Then I added a little crumble topping and whipped cream. Mmm... peachy perfection.

Scary News, Good News, and Exciting News

About 4 weeks ago I got a call from my OBGYN at 8 o'clock at night. As soon as I heard who it was my heart sank. Doctor's don't call your house after hours just to say hi. Sure enough she had some scary news. One of my screening tests had come back positive indicating that our baby had some kind of chromosomal defect such as trisomy 13, 18, or down syndrome. She wanted to send me to the top perinatologist up in Manchester to have a CVS test done right away to determine for sure what was wrong.

I was scared and emotional but after listening to all the options I told her that I didn't want to do the CVS test because the risk of miscarriage was too great and no matter what we learned I would continue the pregnancy. She was very supportive of that and said that our next option then would be to wait until I was 16 weeks along and then go to a genetic counselor and another specialist for a detailed ultrasound to get a closer look at everything and assess the risks from there. If the ultrasound was abnormal we would have the option to do an amnio at that point.

In the meantime we had a whole month to think about everything that could happen. I tried not to worry too much because a lot of times these early screening tests show false positives. At the same time though I think it's hard not to worry just a little. I knew I'd love my baby no matter what, but how would other people respond to my child? And what kinds of health challenges would we be up against?

4 long weeks of waiting and not knowing and worrying finally ended last Friday. Taber took work off and we went together to the appointment. First we met with the genetic counselor who did a detailed family history with us and talked us through outcomes, risks, etc... Then we went in for the ultrasound.

Baby was wiggly and active and it was so wonderful just watching our little one move all around. The technician took lots of pics and measurements for the test.

Baby seemed to be having a great time and even waved hello!

After the technician was done the Specialist came in to talk to us about the ultrasound. He's looked at a million of these and is one of the best of the best at detecting abnormalities in ultrasounds. From what he saw everything looked normal and he thought our risks of miscarriage from an amnio were greater than our risks of actually having any kind of defect. We were so happy and relieved to hear such good news.

And to top it all off, we also got to find out what we were having!! Even at just 16 weeks there's no question about the gender on this one!

And just in case we had any doubts we got one more shot.

Rigg number 3 is ALL BOY!!

We're so happy that everything turned out to be normal and are pretty excited to get some boy stuff in this house. Taber says his son will not be sitting in any pink bouncers or car seats, we get to go shopping for blue : )

Friday Foto: 16 weeks

Took this picture this morning at 16 weeks and 2 days along

Here's the pregnancy update:

Morning sickness GONE!!!

Energy on the rise

Cravings: Fruit and cheese, lots of cheese.

Funniest hormonal pregnancy moment so far: My sister said Celtics fans were losers and I started to cry.

Pounds gained: 5

Times I've actually done my hair this month: 2

I expect next months picture will show a lot more belly since I tend to pop out like a basketball overnight around month 5 : ) It's so nice not being sick all day anymore. Loving the extra energy and finally being able to clean, cook, exercise, play with my kids and go through the day like a normal person again.

Budget Hair-cut

The other day we were going through the budget and I realized that Monty has a bigger hair cut allowance then me! It costs 50 bucks to get that little fur-ball groomed. That's like a whole date night. So I took matters into my own hands and hacked his hair myself.

Before:

After:

It may not be the prettiest hair cut he's ever had but at least he gets a break from the heat and I get an extra $50 this month : )

p.s. Here's the impressive mound of fur I chopped off. I'm sure he feels much better without the winter coat.

Date night at Fenway Park

On Saturday Taber and I went down to Boston for our first Red Sox game. We left the girls behind for this one since their attention span at baseball games last about as long as the cotton candy. It was fun having a date night though and finally checking out the famous Fenway Park.

We have some friends who live in Boston who got some tickets through church for a discounted price. I guess they called it Mormon night with the Red Sox. Not sure how it all worked out but it was fun picking out our fellow Mormons in the crowd. There were lots of young couples with small children, a few BYU t-shirts, and conversations all around us with words like, "EFY, BYU, ward, mutual, temple, etc..." It was fun knowing we were in good company: )

The weather was perfect, sunny but not hot with a nice breeze coming through. The food was great too. I enjoy baseball just fine but I'd have to say that two of the biggest highlights for me were the Fenway Franks and the amazingly delicious blue cotton candy.

I guess the other big highlight was that the Red Sox won!! You can see in the pic with Taber and our buddy James the sign between their heads declaring Red Sox victory.

It was actually really awesome because we were down 0-4 for like the first 6 innings and then in the bottom of the 9th the Sox came through with one of those exciting movie-type finishes. Nothing like being in a stadium with 35,000 insanely happy people. ; )

The Learning Room

The other day I went to my friend's house for a play-date and was impressed to see that an entire section of her family room was dedicated to learning time for her two preschool aged kids. She had a little easel and a calendar, a weather wheel and all kinds of workbooks. I asked her what she did with it and she said that every morning for about an hour and a half she did "summer school" with her kids. The 2 year old worked on colors and shapes and basic letter stuff, the 5 year old worked on writing and math. They also did circle time, crafts, games, and snack.

I was inspired! I racked her brain for all her ideas then the next day I hit the teacher supply store and loaded up on posters, stickers, flashcards, workbooks, games, and our own little whiteboard/blackboard easel. It was so much fun! When I got home I started converting the useless living room (which literally almost never got used) into our new Learning Room. I totally got back into my old teacher mode and felt like I was setting up my classroom at the beginning of the school year.

Here's how it came out. The wall behind the the girls is where we do calendar, weather, and songs with shapes and colors. The girls use that little pointer in Brinley's hand to find the things I'm talking about on the posters.

This side of the room is where all the supplies are and where the girls get to display their finished projects. They also each have their own special folder for all their worksheets.

Here are some of the fun books I found for lesson ideas. They had them at Wal-mart and Sams. So far my favorite ones are the Mead books from Wal-mart.

Teya is working on her pre-writing skills. She was getting really frustrated trying to write her name. I talked to one of my friends who was a kindergarten teacher and said we should try to start more basic and work on shapes and lines first. She's doing great and is writing her name in all uppercase letters, now we just need to work on lowercase.

We've been doing learning time for a week now and so far they are loving it!

We usually do it for an hour and half, but the girls always end up back in the learning room through out the day to color, paint, do crafts or play-doh.

Here are some fun pics from yesterday when we did the color red.

They made red paintings.

And red ladybug headbands.

I cut out all the pieces and they glued them together. Teya glued her entire ladybug, spots, eyes, antennae and everything all by herself. It was great to see her so focused on something.

I'm hoping to do some cute themes with this board as we get further into it, but for now they love seeing their projects displayed on the wall.

It's been a lot of fun working on this little project and helped me get excited again about doing an important part of my job as a mom: teaching : )