Blog address change!

We have changed to a wordpress blog so you can find us here:

http://robandestherparsons.com/

So update your google reader! :)

And come see the fun addition to our family I just blogged about...

Good times...

We are getting closer and closer to this baby coming and it is so exciting! :) I feel like it takes me forever to compose a blog post and to add pictures so it's been hard to keep updating this but I also don't want to forget the things that have been happening!

I was lucky enough to have a super fun baby shower - the girls decided to do a joint one for me and Liv and we had a great time. Thanks especially to Linds who hosted and put together an amazing time! :)

I had a birthday! I turned 29. Since my favorite thing to do is to go out to eat I figured I'd use my birthday as an excuse to go out twice! Once with my girls, then once with my family. So fun! It's just weird that I turned 24 before I had Robby - now five years later I'm the same amount pregnant pretty much...

Outback with the girls...

Cheesecake Factory with the fam...

Mini party at Taba's.... Robby was pretty disappointed we didn't have a PARTY at our house for my birthday but when it's my birthday I don't really want to do all the work for a party for myself. :) So we had cupcakes (Thanks Becca!) and blew out candles and opened presents at Taba's after the adults went to dinner! 

Love Robby's hand on my tummy... he and Annie are pretty possessive about this baby! Annie loves to touch my tummy and feel the baby kick! It's nice that Andrew and Becca have shared their kids for so long with us and now I get to share a little sister for Annie! :) Love it. 

I've been trying to stay busy and get the house as ready as possible for baby! Liv and I have been going to the gym and doing some good walks and lots of stretching and chatting. Trying to stay moving!

 35 weeks! Feels like my tummy has really *popped* in this picture!

Today I took Robby to go see Puss N Boots with Liv and her kiddos and that was a lot of fun! He loved it! The last movie in a theater he's been to was Toy Story 3 years ago with my mom... dollar theater is a great idea for kids! :)

Tonight got to go out with some ladies for chips and salsa which is always fun! Just trying to make the most of these last few weeks! Soon I won't be having any ladies night outs!

I've got a countdown for the rest of the weeks all the way through 42 weeks with things I have planned to do to keep me busy and looking forward to the time! It's hard because Robby came at 38 weeks so I'm trying to get everything ready and be prepared in case I am lucky enough to go early again but also trying to mentally be prepared to go late if needs be! (since I won't be getting induced or anything) I'm trying to do fun things with Robby while it's still just the two of us during the day. This time with him is so special and I know I'm going to miss it!

On that note - I'm trying to think of ways to make Robby feel special and ease the transition when little sister does come! He's super excited and I know he'll love the baby and be really helpful but it'll still be a huge adjustment for him to go from getting all of mommy's attention all the time to sharing me! If anyone has any suggestions on how to make this easier for him please feel free to share!! :)

Meanwhile I'm feeling pretty good, having tons of braxton hicks contractions, need a nap pretty much every day, but am just happy!!!!!! Can't wait to meet our little miracle baby! And no we do not have a name yet - hopefully it won't take us too long to decide once we meet her but we'll just have to wait and see!

Maternity pics

My awesome friend Tara offered to take some maternity pictures for us to document our little miracle baby! I couldn't have been more excited! She is such a talented photographer and I love all her pictures!!! Thank you so much Tara!!!

You can see the rest she put on her blog here.

My little man

I've just been thinking a lot about Robby lately and how things will change or affect him when the baby comes and wanted to write down some of his latest little things to remember...

After Robby had been in bed for half an hour he comes up to me and says, "Mom, what comes after 199?" OH... that's why you're not asleep... okayyy... it was cute though. He loves counting and does it all the time... today it was counting by tens... He wanted to put "teens" inbetween 10 and 20 (so like 10, teens, 20, 30...) and when I tried to explain why it didn't go like that he said that didn't make sense but that's ok. He'll get it.

Robby has become so into BYU basketball - he loves going to the games with daddy when he can and watching them play on tv. He was sitting with Rob watching the game and cheering, "Come on, Davies! Come on, Carlino!" I asked Rob if he really knew what was going on and he does - cheering for the players who actually have the ball and he knows most of the main players names! It's kind of crazy. He is a fan. 

One of Robby's favorite things is to go the Fitness Center and play basketball. We've been going over there just the two of us, with his little basketball, and usually his Jimmer jersey, and he is happy as a clam for at least an hour and then I have to drag him off the court. They have two baskets that are lowered so he can actually make most of his shots! It's so fun for him! And since we have a membership there it's free. Today we went swimming first and THEN played basketball - basically a perfect activity for him.

Oh yeah, the swimming - I would think that since Robby is such a nervous nellie that he'd be super scared of jumping off diving boards but he loves it. I know he's done it lots of times but since we haven't swam since the end of August I thought today he'd just be getting used to the water today and figuring out swimming again but he did that for a few minutes and wanted to get right up on that board! He just surprises me! He was like, "oh I don't know.. it's scary..." and then got his determined face on and just walked to the edge and jumped right off!

He brought home a little picture with the Articles of Faith on the back and said, "we're supposed to memorize these." So he took it seriously and we've been working on them at night after we read scriptures. We spent about a week repeating #1 and he had it down and then in just one day he totally memorized #2. It's just been really sweet to see him working on this and caring about it.

At the beginning of the year when he first went to CTR4 he was pretty nervous and feeling anxious... he got in bed with me that morning and was telling me how nervous he was and he didn't want to go. I asked him if we should say a prayer to feel better about it and we did. Right after the prayer I remembered he'd been listening to his primary music CD and he likes the song about Nephi's Courage and so we talked about how he could be brave like Nephi and go to class. Also, when he got to class and saw the littler newer sunbeams he felt like a big kid and did better.

I'm just so proud of our little Robby and he is such a good boy. I feel so lucky to be his mom! I will miss the time we have just the two of us and I want him to know that he will always be so special to me and loved.

WE LOVE YOU ROBBY!!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas!

What a wonderful Christmas we had! Christmas with kids is the best!!! I have been so excited for Christmas to come and it did not disappoint.

This year I stole Becca's idea to keep Christmas simple: something to wear, something to read, something you want, something you need. We have wanted to keep Christmas simple and more about Christ and less about presents but I still wanted it to be exciting. It hit me that the "something you need" could be A NEW ROOM - we needed to get him a new bed so we could take the crib back for the baby (he's slept in it as a toddler bed) and I thought if we did it for Christmas it would be exciting and not like baby sister is taking his stuff. So for the last two months I've been planning and plotting his room out but not able to execute anything since I wanted it all to be a Christmas morning surprise! So it finally came and it was so great!

In case you're curious the something you want was Ninjago Legos, something to read was a Children's Encyclopedia from Usborne books, and something to wear was snow boots.

So to make this surprise for his room happen we had a few things that needed to get done... first we bought a new dresser for our room so we could give Robby ours. Putting that Ikea dresser together was a BEAST of a project that took us from 10 pm to about 3:30 am... we did it Wednesday night... but it got done! Then we needed to move the 2 bookshelves out of the office into our bedroom so we had a place to put the baby's dresser and crib! We also bought another bookshelf so on Friday we had bookshelf night which resulted in this in our room:

Ok then on Christmas eve we put him to sleep in our room and started to get to work! I felt like I was on one of those TLC shows like "while you were out."

Before pics:

(dresser we'll use for baby, see the collage there with all the black & white pics - I made that about 3 years ago)

crib we'd had turned into toddler bed... he was getting way too tall for this thing! and we'll need it for little sister... see the little bookshelf... and his animal heads were on this wall...

Cleared out and cleaned out the room!

Thanks Andrew for coming and putting the bed together with Rob! Went way more smoothly than the dresser we put together earlier that week! And I could work on re-doing the photo collage at the same time! 

The finished product:

he has our old dresser but it's new to him and he's excited about it! Moved toy organizer to this wall...

Close up of the collage I redid... I love doing stuff like this...

took this tall bookshelf from our room, gives us more room to put games and toys on shelves and helped us organize his closet better! Hung up cousins calender and this cork board - the cork board has already fallen off (it was a stick on the wall kind) and we need to figure out a better way to hang it! He was really excited about that part.

 He slept on our floor that night. He thought we were just having a sleepover for fun!

We put up a sign and lights so he couldn't go into the hallway without us! 

 

Surprise! He was so excited!!!!!!!!!

He loves climbing into his big boy bed! Up the ladder... and he came up with another way using his stool and the window sill. He was just so surprised!

I couldn't get the video to upload on here so I created a picasa web album and I think the video is the first thing! There's also a bunch of other pictures of our Christmas stuff that I may or may not get around to blogging about! You can watch it here if you're interested:

https://picasaweb.google.com/101513013890981584451/Christmas2011

I was so focused on this awesome Christmas present for him I didn't even think about what I was going to get! Rob still managed to surprise me and get me some fun stuff - including some coupons to get my car washed and detailed which I'm really excited about! I LOVE a clean car! 

Mostly this Christmas I'm just so grateful for my little family! And my big family (brothers, sisters, in-laws, best friends...). And for this baby!! Oh my goodness! She is growing so big inside of me and feels like she never stops moving and even though it's not the most comfortable thing in the world it's still the best feeling ever! We are so blessed! We are grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and for the Gospel! All these things bring us true happiness and I'm so grateful for that! 

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!! 

love, The Parsons

little update....

This was just cute and I wanted to remember it....
Robby asked Rob, "Dad, is Scott your best friend?"
Rob, "Scott? Scott Carter?"
Robby: "Yeah."
Rob: "No, he's a good friend but not my best friend."
Robby: "Who's your best friend?"
Rob: "Who do you think?" (I was thinking at that point Robby would say Will...)
Robby's eyes light up and he says with confidence, "ME!"
Pretty much the sweetest thing ever. :)

One night I was walking past Robby's room to the kitchen and I saw him lying beside his open door, asleep. This is very unusual for him! He thought it was so funny when I showed him the picture. :)
 

 First time ice skating! He was pretty nervous at first because it was super crowded but he can't wait to go back and do it again.

 

The 6 month belly... (Robby my photographer)

  

My attempt...

Proud big brother! :)

Happy Birthday Honey!

 Happy Birthday Rob! We are very lucky to have such a wonderful dad for our little family! We hope he had a good day! He got to sleep in, went to work for a few hours, had a little date and used his bday coupon at Tucanos for lunch, got a massage from my awesome Aunt Miriam, then came home and we had a little party with Andrew & Becca. Since we had a big lunch I was trying to think of something lighter for dinner and one of Rob's favorite things is yummy sandwiches so we had those and tried to copy the dessert from The Chocolate for a cake - warmed up cookie dough with ice cream! Yum! Robby wanted to get balloons for daddy and I even put up streamers - I'm not one to usually decorate really so I think Rob knows he must be pretty special! :)

 

 We had to do the candles BEFORE we cooked the cookie dough cause we weren't sure if it'd hold them up after it was cooked!

 The finished product.... mmm...

Andrew & Becca gave Rob a coupon for 5 FREE HUGS! (Modern Family anyone??) Ha ha... the kids were all giving hugs and Luke and Robby wanted to join in... 

Robby says what he loves about daddy is that he plays football with him and wrestles with him and he loves him really much.

I'm grateful for how hard he works for our family. I know he'll always take care of us and keep us safe (he is always armed you know! ha ha). We have so much fun together and I feel lucky to be married to my best friend.

LOVE YOU ROB!