Reeve Family Reunion 2016

If you are reading this, you are in the right place.  This is the place for information and updates pertaining to the 2016 Reunion.

Both the information document and calendar will be managed by Lori.  Please send updates directly to her. Contact information will be provided in the document.

Information Document
Lori has created a document with reunion information, tasks, and family head count.
link to document

Calendar
Lori will enter main reunion activities on this calendar.
(The calendar should automatically show the week of the reunion)

Makeup and Photo Shoot

So.... Hattie is already into makeup and wanting to look more beautiful, and not matter what I tell her - you don't need it, you are too young, you are beautiful without it, etc., etc.- she still wants to wear it.  She has gotten into my makeup and instead of fore biding her from it and the like, I decided that I will approach this by teaching her about makeup, when to use it and for what, etc.  Well, I don't know too much about it myself and I was at the library a couple of days ago browsing and killing time when I found some books about makeup.  I checked a few out, and learned some things.  So far the book I really like it by Kevyn Aucoin called MAKING FACES.  It has different looks in it, as well as his philosophy on doing makeup etc.  I really liked it.  Anywho, Hattie had fun going through it with me.

So on Mother's Day I decided to try some new things with my makeup.  I was too chicken to do a really dramatic look like I was wanting to try, and went with something that was more toned down.  Still a little more than I  normally do, but it was fun. This is it.  I guess you can't really tell very well, but it was different, so there.

After church I told Hattie we would do her makeup and have a photo shoot.  She choose what is called a 'wash'.  Basically you just put one color on your eyelids clear up to your eyebrows.  So we did a blue eyeshadow on her with light pink blush and lip gloss and a little bit of mascara.  Kevin was kind enough to take pictures.  You can't really tell that Hattie is wearing anything because it is so light, but it is there.

Kevin took some good pictures that I will now post.  We have some cute kids.

This is the look she gives Kevin when she doesn't like his teasing.

He was trying to get a close up of just her lazer beam blue eyes, but they were not turning out.  This is the best picture we got, and the best of the whole "shoot".

And then there is Jack.  He is such a happy boy.  He is just starting to be shy, but if you smile at him long enough he will give you a great big grin back.

We didn't get a really good one of them together. But oh well.

This was our 'serious model' pose.  Hattie is being really serious.

And of course Hattie wanted to take a picture of us.

Container Gardening

Ever since Kevin and I were married I had dabbled in container gardening because we had always been renting a place to live or living in someone else's house.  When we did have a house I only had one year to try my hand at a real garden, which didn't go very well.  My attempts at herbs and other vegetables have had varying degrees of success and failure. I thought that I would just give it up, but then spring hit, and I got the growing bug again.

So this is my attempt at container gardening for this year.  I have decided to grow just what we will eat, and not too much of it.  Thank you to my Dad and Mom, for their help.  My Dad let me use money from his account at Ballard's Nursery buy things to get me started.

Here are the tomato starts that I got from my Dad.  One cherry tomato plant and two different varieties of tomatos.  As you can see below the cherry tomato plant already has some fruit on it.  That was exciting to see that happen.  Hattie has fun finding the fruit that comes on after the flower.  I was over watering them I think, but hopefully I have fixed that this week by not watering them as much.  They looked better today when I went out, so we shall see.

This is my pride and joy.  I am referring to my strawberry pot and plants this time.  I guess I should say, two of my pride and joys.  Every time I look at it I smile and get happy.  Hattie and I have had fun finding the strawberries and then watching them get red, and redder until they are ready to pick.  The first two we got a little excited and picked a little early, but they still tasted great.  This is really doing well.  There are a lot of flowers and fruit popping up all over this.

This is a bay tree in the pot.  I got a start from my dad a year ago and thought that I had killed it.  So I was very happy when I saw is sprout new growth.  In the box is chives and oregano. I haven't tried them yet, but I am excited to.

This is the awesome shelf that I found in my Dad's pile of 'junk'.  It sure looks like junk until he pulls something like this out when I need it. Thanks again dad.  It has been working wonderfully.  I love it.

Hattie wanted to plant flowers and carrots.  This is her little pot of flowers.  We repotted them and her and a friend destroyed them.  I am not too keen to plant them again.

These are one of my dad's experiments this year.  They are suppose to taste like celery.  I have not tried them yet, but they should come in useful for salad's and soups.

Here are some pictures of our family that we took on Sunday to help keep Hattie busy.  Jack is six months old and working on trying to crawl.  He is such a happy smiley boy.  We have been blessed with some great kids.

Hattie's Birthday

Hi, we are alive.  I was thinking about do catch up post since Jack was born, but I decided to just forget it and start from where we are now, and recent happenings.

So, Hattie had her 4th birthday at the end of March.  We invited friends over and had a princess tea party.  My sister Amanda helped a lot as well as my mom and dad.  They had just sent my little brother on his way to South America where he was called to serve the church for 2 years on his mission, that morning.  Amanda let me borrow one of her tea sets to serve our 'tea'.  Hot chocolate, marshmallows, and cream.

 These are her friends at their tea party.

This was her favorite present.  A package of four little plastic princesses that have clothes that you can put on and off.

This was her cake, and I made little ones that were actually kind of big for four year olds for all her friends.  So they all had their own cake.  For the boys that she invited I put knights on the cakes instead of crowns and wands.  But I didn't want to come up with a different decorating scheme, so they did have flowers on their cakes.  Oh well.

We played pin the hair on Rapunzel.  This is what it looked like after we were all done.  Again, thanks to Amanda, my sister.  Without here this poster would probably not have gotten colored so nicely on time.
It took the kids a while to want to play this game.  I thought they would love it, but I had to do it first to show them how to play and then a few of them played.  They were not to keen on the blindfolding part.  So some of them just closed their eyes.  It was kind of funny.

She had a great time and got way too many presents.  Thanks to her Aunt Melissa for the great clothes she gave her, and her Grandma and Grandpa Murset for the wonderful books, ballet DVD, and dolls.  She loves it all and plays with them all a lot.

Hattie is a very happy bouncy girls.  I think she takes after her father in a lot of her personality traits, but there are some of mine that I see in her as well.  She is very smart and loves to dance and sing.  She can write her name count to ten in spanish, english, and we are working on sign language.  She loves to be outside riding her bike, or swimming, and playing with friends.

We are very happy to have Hattie in our family.  She is a great helper and we love her a lot.

Jack

All right everyone.  Here is my story if you are interested.

Thursday the 29th of September was my Doctor appointment.  He said I was dilated to a 3 and 70 to 80% effaced.  He said he thought it would be coming soon, because 2nd babys usually come a little sooner than the first.  He was going out of town on Saturday.  So, I thought, 'well, this happened last time.' I keep dilating, and they thought it would come, and it didn't, do I believe him or not?  The effaced part had me scared though because that was a lot, and I dilate quickly I guess.  Anyway, it scared me enough to go home and pack my bag that day, put up Jack's crib, and do some laundry.  On Saturday Kevin fixed the changing table my dad picked up for us at DI.  So, I thought, ok this baby can come now, I'll be ok.  

So General Conference Sunday we were planning on going to our monthly Murset Family get together.  We were going to meet and have snacks then watch the 2nd session of conference.  We celebrate birthdays for the month at this time too.  I like to make cakes for the birthday people.  Anywho, on Saturday I had baked the cakes to make some mini princess cakes for the birthday girls.  So, about 1 in the morning I woke up and was having a contraction that kind of hurt.  So I went and slept on the recliner because that helped me in the past to sleep better at night.  Well, just as I was about to fall asleep another one would come.  I didn't time them or think anything about it, because I had never gone into labor before and didn't really know what to watch for or what my 'true' contractions felt like.  I had been having contractions before, but just a tightening of my muscles all over my belly, never accompanied with annoying pains in the back and inside.  Anyway, I guess after a while I suspected I might be in labor, but wasn't sure and they were like 15 to 20 minutes apart.  Too far apart to go into the hospital, I thought.  I was very scared of being sent home you see.  So come 6 in the morning and not having gotten much sleep and waking Kevin up to cry on his shoulder, I said screw it, I'm decorating some cakes to get my mind off of this.  So I spent maybe an hour decorating the cakes.  Now as I was working I couldn't really feel the contractions as much so I thought, there, see, I'm not in labor.  But I called my sister anyway to basically ask her if I was in labor.  Anyway, she helped a lot.  

So I finished with the cakes and thought I'd better sit down and start timing these things to see if they are true contractions and how far apart they are. But then I thought well, I'll take a bath first and see if they go away.  When I got out Kevin helped me time them.  They were true contractions, about a minute long and about 5 minutes apart.  So we decided we had better get to the hospital.  So we took Hattie to Kevin's sister's and made arrangements for her, then we headed to the hospital.

That was a weird drive.  I think, well, I am not in too much pain and discomfort, and we aren't stressed out too badly.  It was a pretty pleasant drive, except that Kevin kept making me laugh and that would hurt.  So we got the the hospital, got our bag out and walked up to the phone to talk with someone about letting us in.  I said, "I think I'm in labor" and the nurse said, "well you had better come in then."  So we proceeded to the waiting room, I changed, she hooked me up to all the monitors and then said, I'm going to check you and see where we are at.  Well, I was fully effaced and at an 8.  

That got things jumping and moving fast.  The problem was that I had tested positive for the GBS (group beta strep) which meant that they needed to pump some antibiotics into me.  2 doses 4 hours apart.  I also said that I had wanted an epidural.  They got all the iv's in me and an epidural  and then we waited, and waited.  They decided not to break my water and see how long I would last to see if they could get the second dose of medicine into me before giving birth.  Well I lasted long enough and the doctor walked in right as my water broke, and at 4:17 Jack was born.  6 lbs 5 oz and 19.5 inches long.

We had lots of visitors. Hattie was excited to see him.  She has been a good helper and loves to hold him.

Getting ready to leave the hospital.

We had to do the billi light thing with Jack.  He looked to funny with the eye patches on.

Hattie slept with me in the living room on the coach to watch Jack that night.

His eye things kept slipping all over his little head.

This was after he was born.  He had the saddest faces.

He his doing great and eating well, and is starting to get a fast belly.  We will go in for his 2 week appointment next week.

One Month Left and a Name

Well, I was looking at some of our old posts and found one were we had taken a picture of my belly when I was pregnant with Hattie with one month left to go.  So I thought I'd do the same here.  I'd put up the other picture too, but frankly, I'm too lazy right now, even to add the link to that post.  If you really want to see it look up our Feb. 2008 posts.  So here I am one month left with Hattie in tow.  And we have finally, officially, definitely, for sure, decided on a name.  Isn't that exciting?  I guess you would like to know what it is.  Ok, ok, we have decided on Jack, no middle name yet.  We have a few we are tossing around, but for now it is Jack Murset that will be here in a month.

I just wanted a picture of my belly, but it turned into an impromptu photo shoot of Hattie.  Because she is so cute and a little vain, and because Kevin was really not wanting to do homework, and it was such a nice day outside. I guess most kids are pretty self centered at this age, I hope.

She is such a cheese ball.  She practices funny faces in the mirror already.

She loves to pick flowers and give them to you.  In this case she wanted Kevin to take a close up picture of the flower, but not with her in it.  She liked the picture anyway.

Our cute Hattie.  We love her a lot.

First Day of Preschool

So the first or second week we moved to this neighborhood I was talking with one of the neighbor moms.  She informed me that they had a joy school group that was going to start in September and I could join if I was interested.  I was thrilled.  I was going to start something on my own with Hattie, but would rather her be in a group.  So we all take turns teaching.  It started out as a small group, but is going to have 6 or 7 girls and 1 boy.  I'm not sure, but right now I teach about once a month.  There are two months that I have off.  Because of the nature of this neighborhood, people are moving in and out often, so in January the numbers will change again.  But, she is making friends and I have 2 hours all to myself, until the baby comes, to do whatever I want to.  This has been the first week, and Hattie has loved it.  On the days we don't have preschool, I still work with her on the letter, number, shape, and color of the week.  Anyway, these are the pictures I took of her first day!

She has been watching The Wizard of Oz and insisted on bringing her buffalo which she was pretending was Toto.

I got her to put it down for a picture, but I didn't get her bangs out of her face.  She has great hair, but those dang bangs are at the annoying stage of growth right now.  They are too long to pull back into the braid, or ponytail, and too short to stay put behind her ear.  She doesn't care, but it bugs me.