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.

Hattie's First Dance Class

So I finally enrolled Hattie into a dance class.  She was very excited when I told her.  Then we took her to get new ballet shoes, tights, and a leotard.  When she saw the store from the outside she couldn't wait to get out of the car.  She was not happy that it looked like I was going in before her and without her.  She was in heaven looking at all the outfits.

So the day finally came for her first day of class.  It took me a while to put her hair up in a bun.  She doesn't let me do her hair without a fight.  This studio isn't too strict about somethings.  Hair is one of them.  They say as long as it is out of your face it is fine, but I figure if she is going to continue she might as well get use to having it in a bun.  We had her put on her ballet shoes for these pictures before we left.   Then I had her take them off and put her street shoes on, and she did not like that at all.  I saw another girl with crocks and thought that was a good idea.  She just slips her ballet shoes into and out of the crocks.  We will have to look for a pair, because that will be way less hassle than having her change shoes.  I just want this pair to last for a while, a $17 while.  I know I could have gotten them less online, but the first time I wanted to go in and get her fitted so that I would have a better idea of what to order online the next time. I'm not comfortable with shopping online and even it's wrong when I get it, it's too much of a hassle for me to send it back.  But I suppose I will have to get use to it someday.  Especially if I don't want to pay $17 for ballet shoes that she will grow out of my next year.

She was very excited to go, and danced and posed for her Dad before we left.

They don't normally let parents stay, but they make an exception for first time students and the first day of class.  I decided not to stick around so that Hattie would not get use to it.  I showed up for the last 10-5 minutes of class.  She looked like she was obeying well, and having fun.  I think she inherited the Reeve athletic ability, and the Murset ballet gene.  She loves to dance!  I know I am partial, but it looked like she had decent form for her age. Legs relatively straight and toe pointed and not sickle. But I am not a dancer, so there.  I did take some video, but I'm not sure exactly how to post it.  I will have Kevin help me with that later.

This is her teacher Ms. Shellie.  All the teachers go by Ms. even though two of them are married and they are called by their first name.  I don't know if that is normal for dance studio's but it was new to me. Anyway, when we left Hattie kept saying that she loved her dance class and that she was a good dancer.  She's pretty humble, another inherited trait?  I don't know, but she's pretty confident in most things. She will have two dance recitals.  They do a nutcracker and a spring recital.  On the paper they handed out there was a Halloween one as well, but when I talked with the owner she didn't mention that the little girls were in that one.  I will have to ask next time we are there.

I'm glad that she is enjoying it and having fun.  It's fun to see her grow.  I'll try to get the video up soon.

Jabba the Hut Cake

Ok so the pictures are backwards, but oh well. (You'll have to read from the bottom up for them.) So for the Murset family get together this month of August, we celebrated my brother-in-law Mark's and my nephew Nathan's birthday.  They are both Star Wars fans and so I was trying to think of a fun cake to make for them.  Kevin suggested doing a Jabba the Hut cake, and I thought really?  So I figured why not, it would be fun.  So I hopped online and sure enough found others that had done the same.  So from those pictures I produced my own with the help of my good friend Ashley.

This is the finished product in all his mucusy glory.

The next day was the party and I decided that I would cover the whole thing with gel because it made it look shiny and mucusy and gross. Hattie Had a lot of fun spreading it around with the paint brush.

This is eventually what we ended up with.  We used white fondant and colored it with brown to make a flesh colored base.  Then I took green Color Mist and sprayed Jabba down.  Since it was a spray can I used different ways of spraying to get the splatters and green circles.  Then I took green gel and put mucus all over the creases and in his nose and one his head.  The gel on the head I spread around with a paint brush.  We used red fondant for the eyes and I stuck them on with gum paste.  I also made eye lids with the flesh colored fondant, and then a mouth with black.  Oh, I also put arms on with gum paste.  He looked pretty gross.

I started with stacking the cakes together to form a rough shape of Jabba.  I used 2 cake mixes and three differently shaped cake pans. Then if you can see in the background of this picture there are 3 cans of frosting.  I used all three to frost this puppy, or slug.  I used that much because my friend Ashley, who I asked to help me with the fondant, said that I would want a thick layer so that when they peeled the fondant off there would still be some frosting for flavor on the cake. My friend showed up later to help me with the fondant.  I have never tried that before, so I asked her for help.

I had fun with this cake.  I had a hard time with trying to be gross.  But it was a fun new experience.  Thanks so much Ashley for your help.

Shameless Plug

I'm at the BYU organ workshop this week.  I will be posting a recapitulation at the end of each day.  Check it out at: http://dasmusikblog.blogspot.com/