The girls....

This is Darci yesterday. She's been smiling since birth, but she is really starting to smile more and more. She's a lot of fun.... Can you believe she slept 9 hours the other night (last night only 5)!!! She is getting really big and chunky!



Poor Paige, I think she lost weight last week when she was sick. She's always been skinny, but now her pants are falling down!! I might have to start getting her some milkshakes!!!

By the banks of the Rio Grande

The Rio Grande basically splits up the city of Albuquerque... you're either on the east or the west and then I-40 splits the town north and south. So whenever you see a NW, or NE on an address, you have a pretty good idea what area its in. We live in the NW. There's also only about 3 roads in the entire city that cross the Rio Grande, so it gets pretty congested on those roads at rush hour. Crazy, isn't it? And there are nature preserves all along the river throughout the city. Everywhere you look in this town, there are people riding their bikes or walking along all the trails. Our next major purchase will have to be some bikes for all of us. A few days ago, we met Tad after work at one of the nature preserves and walked around. I got a little carried away with the pictures... click to enlarge.






These were all the treasures they found during our hike.

This was Darci's first time in her carrier.




This is my favorite picture.







Land of the giants.... I loved all these scraggly looking tall trees.

Our long week...

Paige wasn't feeling well all week. As you know, she is usually very hyper, but this is what she was doing at home all week... just laying down with her blanket.

So finally on Thursday I took her to the urgent care. She had been pretty hot for a few days and that morning she was shaking and very lethargic. At the urgent care, her respirations were really fast and her oxygen sats were only 87% (should be 100%) and her temp was 105F. After a call to the childrens hospital, they said she needed to go to the ER by ambulance so she could get oxygen. Remember, I had Kevin and Darci with me too, so I was going to follow behind in the van. When Paige found out she was going by herself, she started getting really upset and the paramedics said that I really should go with her because if she gets too upset during the ride, her breathing would get worse. So, Paige, me, Kevin and Darci all got a ride in the ambulance. We were done at the ER after 2 hours where she got oxygen and gatorade. Then we had to wait in the ER waiting room until 5pm for Tad to get off of work and pick us up so we could go get our van. It was not a fun day. Luckily I was able to find someone in the ward that I haven't even met yet to pick Derek up from school. Our ward has been really great so far helping us out.



Darci luckily was very good at the hospital. She slept through most of it. I tried to keep her covered in her carseat as much as possible so she wouldn't get sick. While we were in the waiting room, I caught something and have felt like I've had the flu for the past few days. Thankfully Darci has been sleeping longer at night so I can get some rest. She slept 8 hrs once, but mostly 6-hr stretches at night.



Yesterday we took a drive to Madrid, NM. (pronounced Mad-drid) This is the little town where the movie Wild Hogs was filmed. I was pretty excited to see if it would be like the movie, because in the movie it was such a cute little town. Well, it wasn't quite the same. It's more of an artsy town with some antique shops and would've been ok to walk around, but it was Saturday and there was absolutely nowhere to park, so we just drove through.



So instead, we went to the Sandia Crest ski area and had lunch. There was a little bit of snow for the kids to play in and throw snowballs and stretch outside. It's about 30-40 minutes from our house to the top of the ski area.













We live in the hot-air balloon capital of the world it seems. Every morning, we see hot air balloons out in the air and got to see this one close up.
Almost every morning

Riding the Bus

This is Derek's first day riding the bus to school. He wasn't nervous at all, he just hopped right on and didn't even look back.

The big building in the middle is Derek's school looking at it from our apartment. We're so close, it's awesome that he gets to ride a bus. The steeple in the back is our church across the street.


This is Derek's school. It's hard to get a good picture of it because it is set down in a hill. He was so excited they had library day today and he came home with a huge dinosaur book.




Off the bus in the afternoon. I wasn't sure exactly what time it dropped them off, so we walked out there a bit early. The kids and I braved what seemed like 50mph winds in the cold waiting for him. Tomorrow we might wait in the van or just walk out there later.


This is my absolute favorite picture today! He was so excited to ride the bus!


OK, my friend Jacqui is inspiring me to be a little more creative with my pictures.... she always has such great pictures on her blog, so you might be seeing some weird or funky pictures of the kids here.....Click on the picture to make it bigger.

Random things

I love baby's feet and I think Darci has some pretty cute ones!


This is my crazy apartment life!


Check out this messy face!! Isn't this a mischevious look???


This is the Sandia tram - the world's longest. I did one of these in South Africa and it was pretty scary dangling out in the open, so I'm psyching myself up to do this one. It's less than 15 minutes from our apartment.

We love our boots!!!

So, we're here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a leap to move here without even really visiting here before. But I think we're gonna like it. Tad's job seems fine. I'll be looking for a part time job at one of the hospitals here in the next few weeks.

There's so much to do here, we'll be busy for the next few months on his day's off exploring everything. We went to the Museum of Natural history (dinosaur museum) yesterday and saw a bunch of really big skeletons that they found here in New Mexico. When we were leaving, it was snowing sideways outside it was so windy! I might be in for an awakening come next winter!

Our apartment itself is ok - it's plenty big and has a lot of storage space. But living in an apartment with 4 kids really stinks! I wish we were on the bottom floor, but hopefully our house in Gilbert will miraculously sell and we'll be able to look for a house here!

I'll post more later, but I still have so much to get caught up on!


This is everyone waiting for the Rio Grande train that runs between the zoo and the aquarium downtown.

Here is Darci at 1 month! She's doing pretty good. She definitely has her fussy moments though! She's the most fussy between 5pm and 9pm when I'm trying to get everyone and her to bed. But last night she slept from 10pm to 3:30! Yeah! I'm trying to wean her to formula. I've gotten mastitis now twice and whenever she nurses she spits it up everywhere and through her nose and it's just horrible.