Josh, Ju, Aaron, Kylee & Hailey

Halloween Decor

2011-10-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

So my house is a mess. A real mess. Josh decided to take down the popcorn ceiling in our room so everythings in the living room. Anyway, these are the best pictures I can get right now of my Halloween decorations. I'll have to add on my new ones I made with Krista and Aranic later.

What makes me happy

2010-06-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

My boys riding bikes

and playing at the park

My sweet little girl

My adorable children

My Best Friend

I can't imagine what my life would be like without my family. They mean the world to me.

Aaron, looking back the past 4 years!

2010-03-22T16:33:00.001-07:00

1 month old

1 Year old

2 years old

3 years old

4 years old

Aaron turns 4!!!!

2010-03-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

So Aaron's b-day was this past weekend. Ever since Michael's b-day he's been asking me almost every day when his birthday was. So it was finally here, which he was so excited about. So he LOVES spiderman right now (so like his dad), so that was the theme he chose. He wanted a spiderman cake, and I went to Walmart to look and the one they had was $20. Well, being the chepo I am, I decided I would try and make one. For future reference, Josh told me to buy the icing and not make it, cause he said it was gross. Oh well, we aren't big cake eaters anyway.

So the night before, after Aaron was asleep, Josh and I sat up and blew up over a hundred balloons. It took forever....j/k. We cheated and used Josh's air compressor. Thank heavens for that!! He woke up the next morning and opened his door, and there they all were. He loved it! Only that they kept popping and scaring him, so Josh gave him one of those gun ear muffs, and after that he was jumping up and down in them.

So after breakfast, I started frosting his cake. It took me 3 hours, and it turned out looking better than I hoped, but I'm not sure if it was worth my time. But it looked way cooler than the one from Walmart.

His party started at 1, and we weren't sure who all was going to show up, but he had 2 friends from the ward and his two cousins come, along with other family.

So I tried to organize a couple games with the kids, but they were more interested in just playing in his room with the toys, then playing games. But we did play "pin the web on spiderman's enemies" (like pin the tail on the donkey), and hide-and-go-seek, easter egg hunt, and a scavenger hunt. They had fun, though it was hard to keep them focused. We had cake and ice cream and then he opened his presents. Overall he had alot of fun, and at the end of the day he said, ok mom now it's going to be your birthday. I can't believe he is 4 now. He's been so excited for his birthday to come, and he keeps saying that when he turns five he can go to school. I hope he stays that excited for school in years to come.

How time flies......

2010-01-14T19:36:00.001-08:00

So my mom called me the other day and reminded me that I still haven't given her a updated pix of Aaron and a pix of Kylee for her wall. So i was going through my pictures trying to come up with some. I have tons of Aaron, but not any that have good backgrounds and that i would like to see hanging on a wall. Except for a couple that Ben took I really liked but never got around to printing out. But I was looking at those and realized in six months he looks so different. So i pulled out the camera and had Aaron put on his church shirt (he was still in his pajama bottoms for the pix, lazy me). The pictures aren't anything fancy, but I loved both their smiles, so I thought I would share.

Introducing our new addition......Kylee Christine Nielsen

2009-10-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

We are so excited that she is finally here. Well she's been here about a month now, but I'm just now posting it. She is a beautiful little girl, and we love her so much. Just an recount for those that haven't heard how she's doing, and how everything went. Well, to start off, I woke up about 12:30 am, with some slightly strong contractions. I didn't want to show up too early at the hospital and I wasn't even sure if this was the real thing, so I took a bath, kind of tried to relax, but the contractions started getting stronger. I told Josh that we should probably get going, so at about 1:45 we left towards the hospital in chandler, which from our place is about 25 to 30 minutes. Come to find out, the 101 was closed so we had to take a bunch of detours and we finally got there at about 2:30. During this time, my contractions are getting way stronger and really painful. I had originally planned on doing a natural birth this time around but in the car I told Josh that I didn't think I could anymore. Anyway, we got to the hospital, I went in while Josh waited for his mom to get there to pick up Aaron, they checked me out and told me i was a 5. They took me back to the labor room, and within 15 minutes I was a 9 and my doctor wasn't there yet. The nurse told me I would have to try not to push so my doctor would get there. It was hard, but luckily 5 minutes later he showed up and I was ready and about 10 minutes later, she was born at 3:12 a.m. Needless to say, since everything was so fast, I wasn't able to get an epidural, which now i'm glad I didn't anyway. So from the time we actually got to the hospital till when she born, was less than an hour. Kylee Christine was 7lbs. 8 oz, 20 1/2 inches long and in perfect health. She was so cute and when I first saw her I thought she looked so much like Aaron did when he was a baby. Aaron unfortunately wasn't able to come to the hospital to meet Kylee, because they had it restricted to no one under the age of 12 was allowed, due to flu season. But the next day after we were discharged, we went and picked Aaron up from Josh's parents house. He was so excited to see her. He commented several times saying how beautiful she is.

4 weeks later she has already grown so much and is doing great. For the 1st week though she had pink eye, which I don't even now how she could of possibly caught that. And then Aaron got a bad cough, so we confined him to his room and he wasn't able to go near her for about a week. Lucky for us, he did pretty good, though we had to put a tv in his room so he could watch some movies. I felt so bad for him. I was so worried though that Kylee would get sick. But we are all happy and healthy now. I feel so blessed to have our little family.

4th of July weekend

2009-07-05T15:23:00.001-07:00

So for the 4th of July this year we went down to Tucson to celebrate with Jeremy, Nic, Michael & Sofia. We actually went down on Thursday to spend a couple days with them, since Jeremy had a week off we decided to take advantage of his break. Aaron is always asking to go play with Michael so it's always fun when they can get together. We spent the weekend in the pool, playing Rock Band, eating some GREAT steaks (thanks to Jeremy) and having fun just hanging out. So on the 4th we went and picked up some KFC and drove to "A" mountain where the fireworks would be. It took us a while to find a good place to stop but Jeremy found us a great spot with hardly anyone around, so we got out some blankets and chairs and waited for them to begin. The fireworks were awesome. Some of them were going off almost directly over us. Aaron was having fun telling us the colors of the fireworks and Josh took some great shots. To top it all off, Aranic and I had this fun craft idea we wanted to do, so at the end of the night while everyone went to bed, except for Sofia who decided she was wide awake (she is so adorable), we stayed up until 3:30 making it. It took longer than expected, but turned out WAY WAY cuter than I had imagined it would. We had spent the previous couple of days picking out the perfect colors/paper/ribbon/paint and brainstorming to figure out how it would all work. Even though we hadn't planned on staying up so late it was so worth it. Who needs sleep right? Anyways, thanks to Jeremy & Aranic for an awesome weekend!

Yes....it's a girl

2009-06-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

So for all those who don't know, yes it is a girl. I'm so excited. I'm due October 10th which seems so far away, but I know it will be here before I know it. I feel huge already and I know it is only going to get worse. But I can hardly wait to start buying baby girl stuff. Girls are so much more fun to dress up. We haven't decided on a name, but hopefully we will by the time she arrives. Aaron loves to come up to my belly, pat it and then say "Hi baby." He's going to be a great brother. He loves little kids even though he is a little ruff with them sometimes, but he'll get better.

My husband....the cowboy

2009-01-31T17:14:00.000-08:00

I love my husband to death...He is a cowboy at heart. He bought a cowboy hat in Disneyland and wears it all the time. He really wants cowboy boots and is trying to convince me that they are not out of style. He can pull off wearing anything but I think he looks silly when he tries them on in the store. He has now told me he wants a horse which today was the first time he has said that. He has been wanting to get a motorcyle for a while but I would prefer the horse. Maybe someday we'll get a horse or two, but the current house (condo) that we live in just wouldn't work. Anyway, we have talked about how much fun it would have been to have lived in the cowboy/western days. He has been watching alot of Clint Eastwood movies lately which I'm sure hasn't helped, but maybe someday we'll live on a ranch and get to live out our dreams. But for now I guess I should be more supportive in just letting him get those boots.

House Hunting....

2008-09-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

So I've been meaning to update this blog forever now, so just to update what is happening with us, we are in the middle of our house hunt. We have 2 houses picked out that we have offers on, its just a waiting game to see if they will accept. If so then we have to choose between the two. They just so happen to be within 3 miles of each other. We really like both, and can hardly wait to move. In our 6 years of marriage we've lived in 4 apartments and 1 condo. It will be nice to have a place to call our own, and one where we can paint the walls WHITE!!! The condo we are currently living in now, which my grandma owns, absolutely loves the cowboy wallpaper and very 70's chandeliers, so needless to say we would love just to have just white walls. I probably will end up painting the kitchen or accent some of the rooms with different colors, but that will wait. I never knew how hard it would be to find a house. Especially now, when it is a buyer's market, you have so many choices it seems, but you want to get the best deal, so it can be tuff. It will be nice when were done with that part and on to moving in and decorating. I'm so excited. Most people hate moving, but I love it. Don't get me wrong it's not something I would do everyday. But I'm so excited to have a place to call our own, and do whatever I want to it, we that is....

We got a new camera!

2008-07-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

So I am pleased to announce that Juleen & I are the proud new owners of a Canon Powershot SD950 IS Digital ELPH camera. I have been looking for a point and shoot (as opposed to an slr) to carry on all my trips to Washington, hiking, supai etc. I was having trouble finding just the right one and then Krista pointed me to this one. Thanks to Krista for recommending it! It is 12.1 megapixels and has some really neat features that should prove useful in improving my photography. Some of the more noteworthy are:

Titanium case
less than 1 inch thick
panoramic capability
the ability to pick any color in a shot and have that be the only color in the shot (all others go black and white.
A manual mode that allows for changing shutter speed.
Several automatic modes such as "fireworks mode", "snow mode", etc.

Anyway, New blog, New Camera. New day. Peace out.