Chase's Blessing & Haircut

Chase's blessing was the past Sunday (the 19th). Landon did such an amazing job. I love our sweet little family.

Also, we cut Chase's hair because it was falling out and started to look like a tupee' (sp?). He looks so much more like Landon now. It freaks me out sometimes! Here's the before and after!

Milestones

Watching my precious little baby grow is the most intruiging experience i've ever had. It's seriously amazing the progression babies make every week & even every day. They are truly the Lord's little angels sent here to remind us of what this life is all about. Being a mom has totally changed the way I think about the world. Nothing else matters but taking care of this little guy & doing my best to be a teacher & example to him. He makes me so happy. His bashful little smile lights up my day in an instant. His attempt to laugh puts a huge grin on my face. This life is all about the people we love & doing all we can to show them that. Landon & I are so grateful to be Chase's parents & will always try our hardest to give him the best life we can possibly provide. He's truly the light of our life. We feel so incredibly blessed to know him & to have the opportunity to be there every step of his development.

Chase smiles a lot now. He gets all shy & cute when he does it too. He tries to laugh but doesn't quite know how yet. It's so cute to hear though. It's so fun to smile at him & he'll smile back. He is very attentive to the things around him. He stares at bright colors now. He also loves to stare at the temple picture in our living room. Yesterday he finally figured out how to hit the little dangly toys on the floor gym. And he also took his first 20 minute nap in his own crib. (trying to get him to eventually sleep there at night...). He loves taking baths-probably because the water is warm. He looks at books when I read them to him. He rarely ever cries-he's just perfect! He's a big boy cause he eats a lot & he's tall for his age too. But he's a happy healthy baby. Love him so much.

That's our baby update. :)

We're excited for the Holidays!

Our New Life

We just love our little guy! Here's the lastest pics...

Professionally taken by Gates (top & bottom)

3rd Cousins! Only 5 days apart in age!
Nap & snuggle time

I could post a million more pics but...most of you see my facebook go check there!

Chase is a growing boy! He's about 9 1/2 lbs now and seems to never wanna stop eating. I can't fit my hand around his thighs anymore. He's gonna be a chunker. Landon encourages that. lol. He's getting really strong & holds his head up pretty good with a little support. He has the cutest cry EVER & he lets me sleep 3 hours at a time at night! (This is very nice compared to his first two weeks). We just love him to death & can't get enough of him.

Other news in our life-

Landon is getting knee surgery AGAIN but on his right knee this time. He tore is ACL playing basketball a couple weeks ago. This will be his 3rd knee surgery in 2 years! I swear he's going to be crippled after this. So I get to take care of TWO babies this weekend! Woo Hoo! His recovery time will be longer than his other surgeries since its his ACL and not his miniscus. Not too cool for our bank account... we're still trying to breathe from his last surgery & from the baby! That's alright though, we'll make it through.

Uhmmm... I don't really think there's more news actually. Lol. I just stay at home all day & play with Chase & when Landon comes home we all party together.

Oh-I get to finally go to the gym this weekend. This is a big deal for me. I love the gym & hiking & being active & I haven't been able to for the past 10 months! I'm soo ready to get back into it & lose 25 lbs! YEAH! I'm gonna do it. I'm so determined. I just want to wear my jeans... that's all I want. I don't want anything for Christmas I just wanna wear my clothes :) Welp I think that's it!

Too-da-loo!

Sweet Angel Baby

As most of you know, our sweet little baby boy Chase was born on September 21st, 2010. Me and Landon both feel so complete with him here & have never been happier. He's such an innocent little angel straight from heaven. I cannot believe we are PARENTS! It feels so natural for us though.

My labor was sort of what I expected. We were called into the hospital late Monday night (the 20th) around 10:30pm. They hooked me up to my IV and began the petosin (sp?). Around 4:30 am I was only dialated 2-3 cms and a doctor came in and broke my water. Up until this point the contractions were bearable but let me tell you that was the only point I cried (other than seeing my baby for the first time) because it hurt so bad for the doctor to break my water. It was disgusting. Around 5 am I couldn't take it so I was ready for my epidural. Landon watched me get it and wanted to barf. haha. After that I felt great. Just wanted to sleep. So around 7am I was dialted almost 4cms and my doctor told me I should only dialate 1cm/hr. That put us around 2pm for my expected time to push. Well whattaya know at 9am my doctor came to check on me and I was completely dialted! This was the time to push. Landon & I looked at each other in shock but we were ready. So i pushed for about 45 mins (along with barfing) and at 9:52am Chase was born. He was 8lbs, 2 oz, 21 inches long! Which is HUGE for a 36 week pregnancy! (Im thinking I might have gotten my due date wrong??). It was so joyous to see him & hear his cry. It made me cry. I couldn't believe he was finally here and i've been attached to him ever since. I feel like a psycho overprotective mom about everything. lol. Other than getting sealed to Landon, his birth was the happiest day of our life. We are so excited to raise him.

So far he is a really good baby. His head is strong (he's already began to lift it) and his arms and legs are muscular. He doesn't cry much and i've finally gotten him on somewhat of a schedule of feeding every 3 hours. He makes the cutest sounds and facial expressions. Landon likes to kiss his face & Chase will try to fight him away. Anyway, enough with this i'll show you pictures.

Lowe Family Reunion

Here's just a few pics from the Lowe Family Reunion we just went to. It's a little unorganized since I don't know how to arrange pictures on here...so just deal with it! :) The reunion was up in Utah in Zion National Park on a Ranch Resort. It was definately a RESORT. There were a million activities you could do. Obviously I couldn't do much, so that's why Landons in most of the pics.

Whats up with the Lowes?

Here's just the latest on what's been going on. All I have to say is I hate AZ right now- the heat is killing me. I refuse to go outside unless I HAVE to! :) ok. There's my venting, on to the pictures.

We bought a TRUCK! I love it. Isn't it cute?...I mean...masculine?
The Sunday after we moved, Landon was searching for his church shoes...this is what happened...He finally found them in my sea of flip-flops.

Landon had knee surgery about 10 days ago... here's him before he got knocked out! He's doing well & is up and walking around. He'll start physical therapy soon.
No one really knows what Landon does for work- so here's a little glimpse

I am 6.5 months pregnant!

And last, here is our sweet little boy's crib & bedding that Landon set up. Funny thing is he set up the crib in the living room (this probably took about an hour & a half)... then when we tried to move it to the baby's room it DIDNT FIT THROUGH THE DOOR!! So..he had to take it apart, bring it into the babys room, & re-assemble.

Sorry i'm not as detailed as usual. Just not up for it this time! I can feel the heat coming through the window next to me & I can't handle it. So that's why this is short & sweet. I want to live in the pool all day or walk around naked. haha.

The Latest & Greatest

It freaks me out to see our families growing up so quickly. This has been a full year of fun so far & it's just going to continue! Jarom graduated from Centennial-the last Stringham in our family. Disgusting! Anyway we're proud & can't wait until he's a famous olympic pole-vaulter.

Also, Landon's brother Josh left for his mission (Mexico city west) - here's the last picture of the Lowe family before the baby comes...when Josh get's back Jeff will probably be on his mission & there may even be more little Lowe's running around!This memorial day weekend the Stringham side went to Christopher Creek for our family vacation this year. It was a lot of fun. Here are some of the highlights!

Celebrating Landon's 22nd Birthday with his fake birthday cake that he absolutely loved!

Tonto National Park rainbow bridge...coolest site ever!

Here's our humble little cabin we stayed in!

Uncle Landon playing with Rigdon at the lake!

At Tonto National Park

I would say our family vacation was a success & lots of fun. It was a nice getaway for a few days. Well we sold my car so that we could "upgrade" to something bigger. There is no way a stroller could fit in my tiny little cobalt.. so we're lookin for an SUV or truck. Nothing too fancy just something to fit our baby nicely. :)

Also, at the end of this month we will be moving back up to our parent's side of town (Peoria/Glendale). Our lease is up here so we decided we'd like to be in a two bedroom apartment & also be closer to our families for the baby (which is quite very alive & kicking these days). I think that's all the big stuff. Oh, & we're diggin' the name Chase for the baby.

It's a....

BOY!

Yay for May

April was a busy month and May will be too!

Landon went skydiving a couple weeks ago with his Mom, Sister & Brother outside of Casa Grande. This was his "early" birthday present, along with his brother Josh leaving for his mission with a bang! It was fun times. They all said it was awesome-accept for the motion sickness part. Josh was the only one who didn't get sick. I think someday for our 50th wedding anniversary I will try skydiving with Landon! Haha. That way it will be ok if I die :)

Here's a lovely gash Landon got from playing ball. It should have gotten stitches but I wasn't able to influence that decision until it was too late the next day. I was sleeping when he came home from playing that night so I didn't get to see it and freak out :) Lucky him. Lucky me too, I prob would have thrown up! Anyway, it's healed really nicely now but it looked nasty in the beginning.

More on my lovely man- He did the Pat Tillman run in Tempe a couple weeks ago. I'm so proud of him. It was a 5k and he didn't stop. He said toward the end he was struggling but he finished strong and finished 1,200 out of 20,000 runners. Pretty dang good! I love doing runs but I obviously couldn't this time. Maybe i'll do the family runs soon and walk in the back with a stroller :)

Other stuff not requiring pictures :

So Landon's correctional officer application fell through so now we're starting to look at other options. Problem is not very many doors are open for us so...we're kind of looking at the air force. It's hard to find something that doesn't require schooling that we can make a good living off of. So we'll see what we end up doing but pray for doors to be shown to us please!!

Work is going good for me, just 3 weeks left and I can finally relax and be a bum all day. Not really, i'm going to try to be productive this summer but I'm excited to have my own schedule everyday. School is over for me this week. I have one final left. I'll probably end up with 2 b's and an A. I'm so proud of myself considering i've had the combination of a full time job, school, and being sick/pregnant this whole semester. It's a big accomplishment for me.

As far as the pregnancy goes I'm getting bigger- a nice and plump baby bump! I'm glad it doesn't just look like i'm gaining weight anymore to people and you can actually tell there's something in there. I dont like that in-between stage. We will find out the gender of our baby (hopefully it's not in a position that we can't see) on May 24th. So two more weeks. We can't wait. We want to start buying stuff but we can't until we find out. As far as "how i'm feeling" goes, it's getting better. I'm not feeling as nauseas and I can go a couple days now without taking Zofran (the nausea pill). And i'm starting to get a little more energy to do things around the house. Bless my poor husband-he's been doing everything around here. I appreciate him so much. He doesn't complain either. He just sees that I don't feel good and helps out with the dishes without me even asking him. I'll come home from work and all the cleaning will be done for me. I have the best husband in the world! I really do. I feel bad that I haven't been able to do my normal work around the apartment but I feel lucky to have such an awesome husband that just does it for me! :)

That's it for now, and by the way, Happy Mother's Day!

Not Myself!

I just cant seem to break my habit of only blogging once a month. So this is probably going to be all you get from now on. Expect once a month!! Especially because since being pregnant-I am behind on EVERYTHING I need to get done. My room is a mess. Dishes are piled up like the leaning tower of piza. The fridge has no food in it. THIS IS NOT LIKE ME. I'm usually a crazy organized OCD freak. So being like this is frustrating for me...especially because I can barely do anything about it! I'm sorry but I come home from work just exhausted and feeling like crap! I just want to lay around! haha. Landon has been great though. He's been taking on most of my duties :) Good news is i'm 14 weeks now and starting to feel better. So hopefully it's all uphill from here and I can be my crazy self that I love again. Here is a picture of me TODAY at 14 weeks. People are telling me i'm HUGE for my 1st pregnancy and that I have twins! Please don't freak me out! I've only gained 6 lbs total...and there's been no sign of twins. So stop it!

Here is our 1st ultrasound at 8 weeks...we'll get another one in a month AND find out the gender! We're excited to get whatever we're given, no preferences. I've been having crazy dreams a lot though about the baby's gender. I've had 2 dreams that im having a boy born with teeth. Another one with boy/girl twins like my sister that came out talking to me. And one last night with a baby girl who had long brown hair in piggy tails with dimples on each side of her cheek. My mind is just a freak of nature right now. For real. Oh, by the way, our due date is October 15th. haha.

Anyone seen the show Pawn Stars on the History channel? No, not porn stars, PAWN STARS. It's about a Pawn shop in Las Vegas. They always have crazy items come in. We're addicted. Well we went up to St. George Utah a few weeks ago and stopped in Vegas on the way up. We decided to check out that pawn shop. It was so cool! So here's Landon and his brothers lovin' Pawn Stars.

Well Landon went and took the physical test for the Department of Corrections. His background check is pending so we'll find out in about a month if he can pursue becoming a correctional officer. After this, we're not sure what we're going to do! We have a couple options in mind but nothing that we're 100% on for our plan B. Pray for him please!

OK my mind is blanking really bad so Im gonna post what I have so far and i'm sure Landon will read this later and tell me about 50 more things to add. So..check back later! It's been real.