Annie's first days at home

My little sweet heart



Whose bigger??



Right after a bath


The BIG sister



Oh I love my girls! It has been quite the transition going from having one child to two. I have decided that having two kids is more than just twice as hard as having one, but I am slowly getting the hang of it! Katie has been handling things pretty well, she loves to help me with the baby and is doing great at being the big sister. Annie is just precious and I am thankful everyday for my two beautiful daughters!

Annie coming home June 1st 2010

Obviously I have quite a bit to catch up on so here it goes. Annie and I came home from the hospital on June 1st. Stephen was able to help us into the house and then he immediately turned around and left for the airport and flew to Florida! Needless to say it was a little bit of a difficult time for our little family to have Stephen leave so soon after Annie being born but on the positive side I have my amazing family here helping me like crazy and I am so thankful for them. Here are some pictures of us leaving the hospital and coming home for the first time!

Here's to you!

Happy Fathers Day STEPHEN! We love you and are so lucky to have you as our daddy/husband. Stephen is an amazing dad! He is great at playing with Katie and running around with her. Stephen has gotten quite good at playing with baby dolls, twirling with Katie in her tu-tu, and playing in her kitchen as well as all of the other many games they play. He is such a great daddy to his little girls. He loves them unconditionally and is a great example to them in his testimony of the gospel as well! So this Fathers day I say here's to you honey!!



Happy Fathers Day DAD! I love my dad more than I can say! He is by far THE most caring, compassionate, and SELFLESS man I have ever known. He has always worked so hard to provide for me and my brothers and sister. He always puts others before himself....ALWAYS! He is loving to my mom and I always loved watching my dad surprise my mom with little things simply to make her day brighter. I have many happy memories of my dad! My dad is also one of the funniest men you could meet. He cracks jokes and teases others in a way that only he can. He is also a great teacher. Whether he is teaching gospel doctrine or inmates in the prison he has a special gift of being able to touch others through his words. He is an example to me and to my children in more ways than I can count. On top of all of this he is a great Grandpa and I don't know how Katie is going to get along without him around everyday! I am so very very thankful to have such an excellent father! So here's to you dad!




Happy Fathers day GRANDPA SMITH! Yet another great man! He is such an active man who is a great example of the importance of staying both physically and spiritually fit. I have a great father-in-law who has always made me feel like I am apart of the family. He did a great job raising his children and I am thankful to him for the great example that he is to my husband. Stephen truly looks up to his dad in many aspects. He is a great grandpa too! He gets down on the ground and really plays with the kids. I wish we lived closer so my girls could know him better! So Happy Fathers day Pat and here's to you!


My girls and I are very blessed to have such great men in our life not to mention both of my amazing brothers and my many brother-in-laws! Thank you for all you do! So to all the husbands, fathers, and grandpas I say Happy Fathers Day and Here's to You!!

Introducing Annie Michelle Smith!

My beautiful Girl!


One happy family...with one tired and drugged up mommy!


In the nursery making sure everything is ok


My little sweetie


Stephen and I in the hospital the day I delivered


Weight: 7 pounds 12 ounces
Length: 20 inches
TIme: 10:40 pm
Date: May 30th

Well it has almost been a week since our little Annie made her grand entrance into our life! She is such a sweet little girl and she has been such a welcome blessing in our family already! I have had very little time and this was the first real chance I have had to post anything on the blog. We decided on the name Annie (even though it has the lowest number of votes on the poll) because she is named after both her Daddy and Me! My middle name is Ann and Stephen's middle name is Michael so we changed michael into a girl version and came up with michelle (i know it is kind of a stretch) but at any rate she is named using both of our middle names which we thought was kind of special!

Birth Story
Disclaimer: This contains more information than anyone would ever want to know so read at your own risk! I am really writing this all out because I use this blog as a journal.

I went in on May 30th at 6 am to be induced. I was induced because Stephen started classes for school on June 2nd in Florida. When I went in I was dilated to a three already but Annie was not down very far in the birth canal. It was a long day for all of us. By about 9:30 am I was hooked up to pitosin and was feeling the contractions. I really started to get into some serious pain by about 11:30 and I wanted the drugs! While I was laboring there were only three of us in labor at the hospital at the same time. The nurses had told me that all the other women had already received their epidurals so when I wanted mine the anesthesiologist would be there pretty darn quick! Silly me I believed them and so I waited to ask for the epidural until I was really ready for it and the anesthesiologist still took about 30-40 minutes or so to show up. Which may not sound very long but when you are in that kind of pain it is a VERY long time! Getting the epidural went well I had a great nurse who really helped me through the contractions so that I could sit still long enough to get the epidural into me. Almost immediately after getting the epidural I could feel the contractions dissipating however I started to lose my hearing and the room started to go white and spin and I broke out in a sweat. I told the nurses that I felt weird and tried to explain to them what was happening and as it turns out I was fainting. Which I guess is quite common after getting an epidural for some people to faint. so they gave me some kind of medication to get my blood pressure back up which had fallen really low. After that got all sorted out I felt great! No contractions and everything was going well. When I got checked after all of this I was dilated to an 8 and Stephen and I thought the baby would be here pretty soon. We were wrong! Throughout the rest of the day as I labored I could sometimes feel the contractions and sometimes I would feel no pain at all. My epidural always worked to some degree but especially toward the end of the delivery I could feel some degree of the contractions which made me quite a bit uncomfortable. By the time I was dilated to a 10 the baby was still very high in the birth canal. I had spoken to the doctor about my previous delivery with Katie and how nervous I was about having the same kind of situation. She had agreed with me that if she needed to use forceps or the vacuum to get the baby out that she would opt for a c-section for me instead. This was comforting because even though I didn't want a c-section I would have chosen one over the fear of hurting the baby. Once I was to a 10 I pushed for a little while but because the baby was so high in the birth canal my pushing wasn't doing a whole lot. She also discovered (to my great sadness) that Annie was posterior. She then tried to turn her around inside of me. This was really painful and I had an epidural that I know was taking away quite a bit of the pain and it still hurt like crazy. It was also pretty frightening and this was when Stephen had to sit down because he started to feel like he was going to faint. After a couple approaches of trying to turn Annie so she could come down the birth canal faster and easier the doctor decided that i should just relax and that we would wait for the baby to come down in the birth canal further and hopefully she would turn around by herself before I would try to push again. This took hours! In the mean time they kept a really close eye on the babies heart rate and at some point she started to show some distress. The doctor then placed a fetal monitor on her head so they could keep better track of her. :( They also decided to place some special liquid back into my uterus to try and ease the baby's stress. This worked really well and eventually they decided it was time to push again. Thankfully Annie had turned herself around into the correct position during that waiting period and because my epidural was only mostly working I was able to feel the contractions and the baby's progress so my pushing improved considerably. After a few pushes they could see her head and the doctor was called back into the room. I really felt like I had to push and they kept telling me to wait because once the baby's head was out they discovered why she was distressed the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. The doctor cut the cord off from her neck and Annie made one small sound telling all of us that she could still breathe. After she was born she had a difficult time breathing so they took her to the nursery for observation and to help clean out her lungs for about 2 hours after she was born. She rally wasn't that bad off they just wanted to make sure she was ok because she was under stress for awhile. She was finally born at 10:40 pm! Over all the delivery went really well and both Annie and I are doing great now!

Feeling Wicked?

Ever since my Sis in Law Andrea introduced me to the amazing music of Wicked (about 3-4 years ago) I have wanted to go. So for mothers day I told Stephen that all I wanted was a weekend away from being a mommy and a ticket to Wicked, not much to ask....right? Well being the great guy that he is I went to San Francisco with my mom, sister, and Sister in law Christa. The one rule for our trip was no kids allowed! We had a blast in San Francisco. We went to pier 39, China Town, Little Italy, and of course we did some shopping. Wicked was AMAZING and so much fun if you ever get the chance to go you should. I didn't bring my camera so I don't have pictures but here is one I stole from my sisters blog! It was a great last splurge before I am officially a mother of two!

A very happy Un-Birthday!

Because Stephen won't be here when Katie actually turns three next month we decided to have her big birthday party before the baby was born and before Stephen left. My mom and I spent HOURS making Katie's princess castle birthday cake which turned out pretty cute although, I have decided that cake decorating is also not a talent of mine so don't look to close! We had the party at the park and we played "pin the tale on the donkey" and we had a pinata. When we bought the pinata and brought it home I explained to Katie that the pretty pink and yellow flower (which she loved) was not going to be around forever. I explained the whole concept behind a pinata and she even helped me fill the pinata up with all the goodies. She seemed fine at home with the idea but once all the kids actually started to hit her beautiful flower she fell to pieces. I felt so bad! She was heart broken to think that her new flower was going to be destroyed. After some calming down and some reminding of all the candy on the inside of the pinata she finally came around and helped in the fun. Katie was such a lucky girl and got lots and lots of gifts from her family. She got some play makeup, a bowling set, a battery operated pet hamster, some awesome learning puzzles, a big ball that she can bounce on, a computer game and a few other things. I am so lucky to have the love and support of my family. Overall she had a great party. Our camera was acting up so we didn't get a lot of pictures of the event but here is what we have!

Hailey's Here

Talk about close in age this is my new niece Hailey. Hailey is my brother Russell's newest addition to his family! She is such a sweet happy little girl and I have happy visions of my little girl and this little girl being great friends and going to things like EFY together in the far future! I just had to post a little tribute to my new niece. I am so happy for Russell and Amber and Hailey's big brother Tyler!

We're Back!

No good excuses to offer for my lack of blogging other than life has seemed to be flying by us. Stephen's acceptance into school has made us very busy dealing with moving, apartment finding, financing, planning and basically trying to figure out how we are going to move across the country and have a baby and go to school all at the same time. It has been interesting because it seems like nothing has really happened in my small family for some time and now everything is happening at once! I am officially one week away from having this little girl join our family and we are very excited! Because I know I have a dead line I am going to be catching up the blog this week.

To catch up Katie, Stephen and I went camping about three weeks ago. We found the absolutely best camp ground. The camp ground had a nice grass area for the tent, the cleanest camp bathrooms I have ever been in, A great fire pit area, and nice hot showers...Okay due to our obvious circumstances we couldn't plan a good time to go so we improvised and went camping in the back yard! Honestly it was a ton of fun and one of the best camping trips that I have ever been on! We did everything you would want to do when you go camping. We played card games, told "scary" stories, made smores, and looked up at the stars. We spent two nights sleeping in the tent and we all had a blast especially Katie who loved "camping" out. Below are the pictures from oue little adventure.

Update...again!

I am obviously not doing well at updating the blog so every time I go to update it I have a lot to say...sorry! First of all the big news is that STEPHEN GOT INTO SCHOOL!!! This means we will literally be moving across the country. Stephen could not be more excited. He is so happy to have been accepted and I am super proud of him. I am excited for a new part to our lives and this crazy journey we will be starting but I am also very nervous. I am nervous about a lot of things but mostly about my ability to care for a three year old and a new born in a place where the only person I know is my husband who will be incredibly busy! I am also not thrilled about all the debt we will be incurring. Stephen tells me (almost daily) that it will be worth it in the long run and that we will be financially better off.... I hope he is right! The program is 27 months long. We don't really know where in the country we will end up for the last 12 months of that 27 months because that is when he will be doing his residency and it could be in a number of locations. The big dilemma now is that classes for Stephen start the same week of my due date. So it is unclear weather or not Stephen will be present for the baby's birth but hopefully it will all work out! I am so worried about Katie making this adjustment. Her entire world is about to be turned upside down and then shaken! Not only will she move away from her house, room, grandma and grandpa, Ellie (her cousin/best friend), many other cousins that she loves, her routine (like library and story time), but she will also be adjusting to a new baby sister and a dad who has gone MIA! I hope and pray that she will do okay during this difficult adjustment! Overall we feel very blessed and lucky that Stephen got accepted and it will be a great opportunity for our little family. I am going to post some random recent pictures. Stephen's birthday was yesterday and I simply can't believe how old we are getting. Katie also enjoyed a great St. Patrick's day where a mischievous leprechaun left green footprints all over her room and messed it up while she was asleep! He also left her some of his special Cereal (the kind mom hardly ever lets her have) and some candy! It is such a blast to have a child who believes in the magic of these holidays! I am also going to post some pictures of Katie helping her Daddy out in the yard. My parents recently re-landscapped their front yard and Steve and Katie were big helpers! I think that about covers everything sorry for being so so wordy!

update!

Katie: She is doing very well. She now knows all of her upper and lower case letters and most of the letter sounds. She is constantly begging me to do preschool and to play with her learning toys. She is super excited about being a big sister and is always asking questions about the baby and telling me all the wonderful things she is going to do with her little sister. I know she is going to be such a BIG helper when this baby comes. Katie is really just such a wonderful child and everyday I am thankful for her laughter and smile in my life.

Stephen: He has applied to AA school and has had one interview so far. We are excited at the prospect of this new adventure. We should be hearing back soon to see if he has been accepted to that school as well as if he will get any more interviews at the other schools he applied to. He is also currently volunteering at the children's hospital here in town. He gets to help do fun activities with the sick children who are there for serious health concerns. He really enjoys it so far and it has really made him appreciate how blessed we are to have a healthy happy child.

Becky: I am feeling very pregnant. This pregnancy seems to just be flying by! We got to have our 4th ultra sound the other day and it was so neat to see how this little girl is growing. This little girl (we still don't know what to name her) reminds me very much of when I was pregnant with Katie. She is very active and seems to almost jump around and do flips and turns. I feel more tired with this pregnancy then I remember feeling with Katie but that might be because I am now chasing after a two year old all day long! We could not feel more excited about having another little girl in our family. I recently just had a birthday and am feeling old. I know that 25 is not super old but it sounds old! Half way through my twenties...wow time sure does fly!

Okay well I think that about sums up everything going on in our small world. Sorry I haven't been the best at updating the blog recently. Here are some pictures of Katie at a "children's museum" that we took her to the other week. I would hardly call this a museum because it was so poorly ran and most of the toys and experiments were outdated and run down but Katie had fun regardless. I have been trying to find less expensive and yet fun activities to take katie to and this was one of them that I found online. I was a little disappointed with it. So if anyone out there has some awesome places to take young kids to please let me know! Thanks!