Introducing Logan

This morning we woke up at the insane hour of 4:45, dropped Afton off at the Stevens, (Thanks, Kim and Dave) and drive to inova Fair Oaks, where Tracy was hooked up to an IV and eventually decided to push out this guy:

Can it make 200000?

I took this about two months ago; the check engine light has turned off since then.

Merry Christmas!

Pregnancy Fun

So yesterday, I got asked if I was having twins. Wow, I love being pregnant. Hopefully, only a week left, maybe a week and a half. Who knows, I might still look like I'm having twins. :)

Insomnia Posting

So, its 12:47 am and just got off work. It was pretty busy so now I need some time to wind down. Hopefully this post makes some sense, but what else are you supposed to do at 12:49 am. Unfortunately, I have to wake up early tomorrow for church, not that I sleep super well now anyways. I must say YAHOO!!! Its my last day at the Outback, at least until Marchish I think. I'm very excited. Its especially good since I don't think my uniform will fit for much longer. Well, at least I'm blogging and it hasn't even been a month or so since my last post! :)

So, I thought I'd post Afton's halloween pics. I figured I should put them up before Thanksgiving. :)




Here are just some random pics of Afton.

Afton dressing herself. Yes, those are shorts over her dress.

We found Afton one morning sleeping in her rocking chair. Apparently, it is more fun than her bed.

33 weeks and counting

Ok, here are the requested profile shots.Man, look at that stomach! Its huge!

Afton's new hat!

Since we're going to be traveling to the cold great white north for Thanksgiving, we bought Afton 'a cunning hat' today. I think she likes it.




Afton and I also went to the battlefield last weekend. Tracy had a baby shower and I didn't want to just stay home with Afton and let us be bored, so we went out. I think she had fun.

Chef Afton

While i made vegetable stir-fry, Afton prepared for battle in kitchen stadium.

Thanksgiving Pie Plan:

For the uninitiated, I believe there is a perfect ratio of people to pies for Thanksgiving. It's the point where there's enough pie for Thanksgiving, seconds that night, and leftovers Friday after, but no more. This is the "Perfect Pie Ratio", or PPR, for short.

That ratio is 1 person per pie.

Some (including my wife) believe this is excessive, and wildly out of touch, but she's not familiar with the Scoresby habit of eating pie whenever possible through the next days. It's important to get enough, because if you run out on Thursday, it's terrible. You'll have to make more sweets just the day after Thanksgiving, and really, who's going to cook the day after? If you have too much, though, it lasts until after everyone has gone home, and the pies just go bad because you can't finish them in time, and that's just a waste. Thus, a PPR of 1:1.

I have calculated the PPR for this Thanksgiving for my parents house and the number of attendees, so we will need 13 pies. Yes, 13. Yes, I know, there will be 14 people there, but I don't think Lauren is going to be having any pie, unless we can manage to make Milk (or formula) Pie. If we do, I don't want any.

I have also thoughtfully provided a possible distribution of pies for the event:

3 apple pies
3 pumpkin pies
2 pineapple pies
1 cherry pie
2 pecan pies
1 chocolate creme pie
1 banana creme pie

I know Tracy has volunteered to make the pineapple pie, since she has a special recipe for it.
I would also be willing to make the pumpkin pies, and possibly a coconut creme pie to replace the cherry pie.

Blah. Who likes cherry pies, anyway?

"Sharing" Afton

So Afton had a couple of friends over yesterday. She had a hard time sharing her toys. Afton was trying to take a toy from Aaron and I asked, "Afton, can you share your toy? " Instantly she responds, "Yeah!" and proceeds to take the toy from him and say "thank you" as she walks away with the much sought after toy.

Not quite what I had in mind....

G.I. Joe

Happy Joe...
















Mean Joe....















So about a month ago, I gave Joe a haircut, a first for me. I did ok until I had to trim around the ears. Lets just say the best way to fix it was to shave his whole head with a number 1. Luckily his hair grows back pretty fast and it doesn't look quite as bad now. Don't worry Margaret, I won't be the one cutting his hair before the family pics..or maybe I should so at least someone would look worse than me. :)

Afton the foodie

Afton's new bed:

Sunday night, we had to make a few changes to Afton's bed, and this should show you why:

Camping at Shenandoah

We had 8-10 families from our ward camp out this weekend up at Mathews Arm in the Shenandoah Park. It was a lot of fun. We just stayed one night; which was very restorative. It feels so long since we've been camping, although we went camping at the beach last month. Its different when your surrounded by tents and mountains and trees instead of the ocean. When we went to the beach, there were ton of RV's and such- it didn't make it feel like we were out in nature. The beach was a little warmer- but overall I think I like mountain camping more. It could be because that's what I'm used to. We saw lots of deer, but no bears which have been an issue this year. A couple of families saw bears and one heard one but that was all of the excitement.

Sleeping well and camping pregnant don't really go hand and hand, but overall it wasn't too bad. I definitely like camping non pregnant better! :) Good thing it was cold out! Anyways, Afton did not sleep well at all in her pack and play which was really surprising. She did sleep while we were able to play games and toilet paper Brother Hayward's truck, which was nice. Just to clarify, Imelda Done would have been fine getting toilet papered. I asked! (For those not in the ward, the Done's are in the ward and Brother Done is in the bishopric so by tradition standards he would have been the one toilet papered if we weren't so afraid Imelda would never want to come camping again. :) Anyways, Afton woke up around 11 pm, screaming and we couldn't get her back to sleep in the pack in play. She pretty much stayed up until 2:30 am, being cute between Joe and me. She would plop her head on my chest and say things like "hi" and "mom, mom mom" in her cute, high baby voice. She finally fell asleep and Joe put her back in the pack and play. She woke up again around 3:30 when I left to go to the bathroom. Oh, the joys of pregnancy. We got her to sleep between us until about 7am until she was ready to roll. Needless to say Joe and I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. We still had a great time, though.

Afton loves the Done kids. These are some of the pics with them. The pic on top is Afton with Timothy Done and the pic on the bottom is of Afton and Audrey.





The Haywards had a lot of leftover bacon and breakfast items from a past campout so breakfast of bacon, pancakes and juice were awesome. I think Afton enjoyed mountain camping a lot. She was able to run around more. She had a fun time leaving presents for everyone- when she would see an empty camp chair, she would leave a pile of rocks in the middle of the chair for someone to enjoy when they sat back down. On the way back, we did a short hike to some cliffs that overlook the mountain with a whole bunch of other little kids. Joe thought it was a lot like herding cats. It was pretty fun. We mostly carried Afton. She walked about 20 feet. She seemed to enjoy the scenery. At the top were some cliffs that overlooked the Shenandoah Valley. It was really pretty. Joe couldn't handle the cliffs and kids, pictures of falling kids kept running through his mind so we didn't stay on the top very long. Overall, we had a great time and can't wait to do it again next year. The two hour nap when we got back went a long way! :)

P.S. I stole the pics from Imelda from Facebook. Thanks Imelda!!

It's a boy!

So we had the ultra sound on Monday. We took Afton with us, which by the way is a big mistake. She screamed the entire time while I was getting the ultrasound done. She didn't like me laying on the table and just wanted me to hold her, which doesn't work very well. Plus, the technicians were taking forever. I then proceeded to pass out, which really freaked out the techs. I am fine, was just on my back to long I think. I do what I can to add adventure to the techs lives. I didn't even get any pics. Oh well! On a good note, Joe and I placed a bet on what the sex would be; the loser had to buy the other ice cream. I won, of course. The due date is January 6th. I'm, of course, hoping it comes a couple of weeks early, like Afton. I think Afton spoiled things for me. She was 2 weeks early and the labor was pretty easy. Watch this one be 1 week over due and 24 hours of labor. :)
Hopefully not, but I'm trying to lower the expectations. Figuring out names should be fun; Joe doesn't like any of the good ones. Maybe, we'll call him Bob for now.

It is nice to have a baby the normal way. For the first time in my life, I actually took a pregnancy test that came back positive. I even bought a couple extra packs just so I can get thrills of it coming back positive. Who knows if it will ever happen again! :)

Tent Review:

Tracy and I wanted to have space when we went camping at Assateague Island, and while our old tent is still tops when it comes to blocking rain and being otherwise utterly bomber, it isn't big enough to hold a queen-sized air mattress and Afton's pack-and-play. In fact, it'd be a little cramped with the three of us, considering how much Afton thrashes around at night.
So, I bought a new tent: The Coleman Stockton 8. There's one problem. The only place that sells it is Walmart, and apparently, it comes from Coleman Canada, not Coleman USA. So, there is almost no information at all available about it, and just the few reviews on Walmart's website. We'll fix that problem right now.

Pre-camp summary:

Size: It's supposed to be able to fit "two queen air mattresses plus gear."

Strength: It uses 11mm fiberglass poles, so it won't be as strong as if they had used Aluminum poles, and the poles aren't all that thick, either. I'm iffy about how it'll take the wind.

Weather: Coleman touts it as having their WeatherTec system. We'll see.

Design: It's a dome tent with extra poles on the side stretching it into a tube. That's not a bad design, and in fact, is used in one style or another, by some pretty impressive tentmakers. One similar idea is this.

Review:

Okay, post-camp, I can give a few thoughts. First, although it is really big, it can't fit our Coleman air mattress in "portrait layout" in the tent. We had to rotate the mattress 90 degrees, and it stuck out into the center of the tent. Afton's pack and play fit it great in the other end.
Setup wasn't too difficult,although the pitch wasn't nearly as taut as I would have liked, and it looked (to me) like it was leaning to the front the entire time. Maybe if I had taken set up slower and paid more attention to it, it would have been okay. Or maybe not.
It held up to the wind just fine, and we had plenty of that. What it couldn't hold up to, though, was a long steady soaking rain. It rained from 11 pm until 8 am our last night, and the tent showed it. In a few places, the fabric was saturated and started soaking through, in a few places water spray was coming in around the rain fly through the mesh and onto the tent, and it was starting to puddle on the bathtub floor, but we were dry because we were on top of a tall air matress. 5 years ago, Tracy and I weathered a similar, but more intense, rainstorm in our smaller, also Coleman, dome tent without any problems at all. In that storm, we were the driest people in the campground. In this one, we weren't.

In summary, I could have just pitched it sloppily, but I don't think so. For large groups and mostly fair weather, with just a chance or two of short rain squalls, even fairly intense ones, this tent should do fine. If you really expect nasty weather, though, get something with more coverage on the fly, or higher sidewalls and less mesh.

Beach vacation

We went up to Assateague Island, which up a little past the Chesapeake Bay area to go camping for a couple of days. It was a lot of fun, minus the lack of shade. We were camping right on the beach and couldn't get the canopy up, so it was a little hot. Afton was terrified of the sand the first day. She refused to step in it or touch it. Anytime I tried, she would just pick up her feet. I tried running sand over her legs, and she would just cry. We were eating dinner, and she dropped her sippy cup in the sand and started bawling. It was pretty funny. Thankfully, she got used to it the next day and had fun on the beach. She didn't like the water at all. The only way we could get her in was to hold her and then she liked it when the waves splashed her. I was totall shocked because Afton usually loves the water and isn't scared of anything. I think she really enjoyed running up and down the beach, chasing her ball. She enjoyed the sea shells as well. The park also had a nice playground that Afton really enjoyed. She is in love with slides.


For dinner the next night, we were grilling a couple of steaks and a seagull came and grabbed the steak right of the grill. Who does that? So we went and grabbed a couple of burgers from a nearby restaurant.

Joe stubbed his toe on the picnic table and it turned a nasty purple and had swollen a pretty good size.


My feet and shins got horribly sunburned. I don't think I will be using the spray sun block again. I couldn't walk for like 2 days afterwards; Joe even had to take a couple more days off work to take care of Afton since I was a gimp. I did manage to read all 7 Harry Potter books from Wednesday night through Saturday morning so I guess not all was lost. :) Overall, the beach was a fun little vacay and is definitely worth a return trip.

For some reason, we didn't get a lot of good pics in. Oh well, maybe next time!