Sunday Morning

Here are some pictures of the girls this morning.
This is the first time that we have been able to get Briley anywhere near Shallon. Briley likes to admire her new baby sister from a distance, with cute little phrase like, "Shallon cute."
Avalyn on the other hand is Shallon's mini-mommy! She wants to constantly hold her and touch her and give her kisses.

I forgot to post Shallon's stats in the last post, so here we go:

Shallon McAllister Severts
was born Friday, September 21st 2007
at 8:13 am.
She weighed in at 7 lbs 8 ozs
and was 19 1/2 inches long.

Shallon McAllister Severts!

What a crazy day!!! So, I woke up at about 6am with pretty strong contractions. Greg and I are newbies when it comes to contractions (my water broke with our first 2). We were trying to decide if this was the real thing or just a false alarm. So the call was made to the doctor and she thought that we should come in. But, we still weren't convinced that we should make the hour drive into Las Vegas and have Greg miss school. The contractions were pretty bad, but it could be another false alarm. I decided to hop in the shower while we were deciding what to do. The contractions were really intense by now, so we decided to go. We think this is it! It's about 7am now. Greg gets the girls up and in the car and calls his brother Sean to meet us at the hospital. Of course, we are having our once a year rain storm here in the desert and we have an hour drive ahead of us. The contractions are getting more and more intense and little did I know... I'm a screamer! The pain was unbearable. The girls are in the back seat plugging their ears, Greg is driving like a crazy person and I'm convinced that we are going to have the baby in the car. When we are a few blocks from the hospital I can feel the baby's head and I am having intense urges to push. Greg pulls up to the front door and runs in to get help. The security guard brings a wheelchair and keeps telling Greg to just leave the car and come with us and Greg is trying to explain that our 2 other kids are in the car. We leave Greg and the guard runs me up to Labor and Delivery and apparently I was screaming still, but I don't remember. We get up to Labor and Delivery and the nurses get me in the bed and check me. I'm fully dilated, so there's no time for any drugs. The nurses call my doctor, but she doesn't think she'll make it. All the while I'm being told not to push. I totally ignore the nurses and push anyways. Greg has to wait in the lobby until Sean gets here to watch Avalyn and Briley. Finally, Greg steps in the room just in time, 1 push and the baby's head is out, 1 more push and Shallon was born at 8:13 am.

My sweet brother-in-law Sean left school illegally so that he could help out with the girls. Sean was at school when Greg called him to come meet us. His school has a closed campus, so he couldn't leave without permission. We couldn't get a hold of Jan to get permission for Sean, so he just left. The attendance secretary told him to stay put, but he took off anyways. What a life saver! Greg would have missed Shallon's birth, if Sean hadn't gotten to the hospital just in time (it didn't help that he went to the wrong hospital either, but it's not his fault, there are three hospitals within 5 miles of each other).

Mini-me Meter

Ok, so I finally rigged Briley's meter for the correct outcome. (All you have to do is pick the right pictures.) I'm still working on Avalyn's. As soon as I get it to say that she looks like Greg, I'll post it.

New belly shot

Here I am at almost 39 weeks. Yes, my shirt is stretched out as far as it can possibly go, as are all my maternity clothes. I can barely keep my stomach covered, if I were a celebrity that would be very trendy, but I'm not.

Future Drill Teamers

Tonight, I was working on transferring my high school Drill Team videos onto DVD. The girls heard the music and came in to watch. They started jumping around trying to imitate the moves. It was sooo cute, I had to snap a few shots.

Ballet

Avalyn also started ballet today. It's every Wednesday for a 1/2 an hour. She had soo much fun! She learned 1st position and how to curtsy. It's really nice that some of her preschool friends are in her ballet class. Here are some cute pictures of the girls in their leotards.

Makayla, Alexis, Avalyn and Alexa

1st Day

Today was Avalyn's first day back to preschool. And everything went soo smoothly. Avalyn woke-up all on her own 15 minutes before I was planning on waking her up. We got everything accomplished this morning that we wanted to, without any problems. I'm probably jinxing myself, but it was a perfect morning.

Labor Day Weekend

We spent our holiday weekend with our good friends, the Leavitt's, at their home in Arizona. We have known Brad and Corina since our Utah days. They have 2 girls, Vanessa and Daniela, that are close to Avalyn and Briley's age. Our girls had a blast with their "new" friends. And it was really nice to catch-up with Brad and Corina, we hadn't seen them in a while.

These are some pictures of Greg and Brad helping the girls cool off.

More AZ Fun...

Near the Leavitt's home is this cute park with mini-amusement rides. The girls had soo much fun. There was a little train ride that went around the park, a miniature ferris wheel and a few other rides especially for the kids.

This is my favorite picture, the girls faces are priceless!

Preschool

Avalyn and I had our preschool opening social, this morning, at the park. We have 8 kids/students and 8 moms/teachers this year. Here is a picture of all the students (I know, there are 9 kids in the picture, Emily on the end is a younger sister). The first day of school is September 5th and Avalyn is sooo excited. And I don't teach until the end of the year, so I am equally as excited.

For anyone who doesn't know, Avie and I did this preschool last year. It is similar to Joy School, but we use a different curriculum. The moms/teachers take turns teaching at their homes and helping-out at another mom's home. Since there are 8 of us this year we each only teach 1 month and help-out 1 month. We have class 2 days a week for 2 and 1/2 hours a day.

Last year worked out really good, I'm sure that this year will go just as smoothly.

the belly

Since I haven't had the baby yet, here are some shots of how huge I'm getting. And with 5 more weeks to go, this isn't going to be pretty.

8/28

So the 28th has come and gone and I'm still pregnant. I guess third times not a charm. Just kidding, I still have 5 weeks to go. But, it was slightly disappointing not to go into labor on the 28th, since all 2 pregnancies before this one, I have gone on the 28th.

Well, since we were not at the hospital having a baby, we had a small family party for the girls. Grammy and Granddad and Uncle Sean made the drive to Pahrump. We watched some home movies of Avalyn during her first year. We ate soup (A & B's favorite food) and opened presents and had some peach pie. It was just a nice, low-key celebration.

Briley received some new "prince-a-less" movies and, of course, had to watch one immediately. And she snuggled with Granddad the whole time.

Birthday P"art"y

We celebrated the girls' birthday today with some of our friends here in town. We held it at the park and we decided to go with an art theme.

During the party we had a couple of art projects for the kids to work on like finger painting, play-dough and coloring. The girls got super spoiled with tons of fun toys and really cute clothes.

The cakes (grammy's idea to put actual crayons on the cake, I think it turned out pretty darn cute).

The invitations (I got the idea for these cute invites from http://busybeetle.blogspot.com) and the gift tote bags (that I actually made, for 20 kids, remind me never to take on a project like that again).

After 2 hours of "organized" chaos, all 4 of us went home and took a much needed nap. I think that everyone had a good time and I'm just glad that the girls had fun at their party.

Dance, Dance.

So every Tuesday night, we head over to Skate Zone for Greg's hockey games. Avalyn and Briley like to play the arcade games. The girls favorite game is Dance Revolution. Here are a couple of shots of them "dancing." I took the pictures on my phone, so they are a little blurry, sorry.

My Tote Bag

I made this reversible tote. I want to be a crafty person and I always find these little projects that I think I might be able to make, but I don't make them. Well, I finally did, I saw these cute tote bags online and I thought to myself "I could make that." And I rummaged through my fabric and I started sewing and I did it, I made something crafty. I'm so happy. I think it turned out pretty good. Now I just can't wait to use it.

Kiddie Kandids

We took the girls to Kiddie Kandids today, for their birthday photos. Avalyn, "Little Miss Photogenic," of course did great, almost all of her shots were usable. Briley, on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with getting her picture taken.

Here are the good shots that we decided to use.

And here are the goofy shots.

Avalyn couldn't help playing with her hair in between shots.

And Briley, very sternly, kept telling me that she didn't want to sit down, as I tried to persuade her to do so.