Easter

Happy Easter

We at the Rasmussen household had a great Easter. Emma loved wearing her "Easter bunny dress" to church as she calls it. This was the first year that Emma really understood Easter and had a lots of fun going to many Easter egg hunts. We went to an Easter egg hunt with a friend on that Saturday and got a total of four eggs. It was crazy! I have been the very seen an Easter egg hunt go by so fast. The Easter bunny did come though so that made it a little worthwhile. Later that day we decorated Easter eggs with chance's sister Summer. Emma loved that. Then later that night grandma and grandpa watched our kids and we were able to go to the Easter program in Saratoga springs celebrating the life of the Savior. Kara my sister in law was there and did a great job. :-) it was such a great reminder for me up about what easter is really about and I needed that spiritual high. Then Sunday we had our own little Easter egg hunt as a family. CD loved her new bubble guppy pajamas and made me put them on her right away. Emma's first words were "Oh my goodness! The Easter bunny brought us dresses!" I think all Sadie cared about were her pajamas and the candy. I have never seen someone get so excited over candy.  she shoves it in her mouth until it is full. It is pretty funny to watch. Then we had in Easter egg hunt with the Rasmussen side of the family and her grandma and grandpa bought her a new swimsuit for her to wear this summer. My girls are spoiled and so excited to go swimming. I cannot wait until it gets warm! Hope your Easter was as great as ours!

Update

So my mom challenged all of her children to update our blogs at least once month. She faithfully checks all of her children's blogs everyday and I guess she was getting frusttated when no one was updating. For me the last time I wrote in here was for Sadie's birth story and now she is already 19 months old. Crazy how time flies!!  So I imagine it is time for an update....
We have done so much in the last 19 months that it would be hard to write about everything but I will give an update on each of our family members.
Chance- Chance is still in school and working hard. After this semester he will only have 2 more semesters to go and then he will graduate a year from April. After all the many years of school it is nice to know the end is in sight. We will actually be done by the timer mama starts kindergarten which is the goal that we had. He is still working for Okland construction but will hopefully graduate from manual labor when he is done with school. A he is also serving as the Elders Quorum President in our ward so he is pretty busy most of the time which makes for some very long days sometimes. :) I love him so much and I'm so grateful for all the hard work that he does for our family.

Emma- what can I say about our little "loo loo"? She is just growing up too fast! She is soo sweet and friendly to everyone, sometimes even a little too friendly. She just had her first talk in sharing time yesterday and it made me realize what a big girl she is. I can't believe she will be 4 in June. She is going to preschool three days a week and she loves it!  Her teacher says that she is one of the smartest kids in her class. She knows all of her numbers and letters and can write her name really well.  She gets along with everyone but her favorite kid in her class is probably her friend Morgan. We are grateful to be in a great neighborhood. Emma is such a fun loving person and is saying the funniest things lately. I need to start writing a journal of just the funny things she says and does. I love her so much and I'm so grateful for the spice and flavor she adds to our family.

Sadie-  Oh Sadie! She definitely has her own unique personality. When she was born I was hoping for a calm easy going baby and boy did I get the opposite! She is a defiantly a momma's girl which probably everyone knows cuz she mostly just attached to my hip.  She is so much more determined then Emma ever was which is might benefit her in the long run but is difficult to handle right now especially when she wants to do something that is not safe or I don't want her to do like draw in all if her books or open every single one of my tampons or climb up that darn kitchen table. She gets upset and stays that way while Emma gets over things really fast. In other words I have my hands full! She is so stinking cute though which helps her case out a lot. She is very independent and doesn't want ANY help doing certain things. So I just have to take a deep breath and let her get food all over her face and clothes. :) she really is a lot of fun. She is talking more everyday even if only I know what she is saying. I love her spunk and her excitement.

As for me I'm still working as a nurse two nights a week. It's doable but not ideal. I'm changing positions in April and hoping to work a little bit less. I'm still going to be working in the same departments just my position will now be the first to get canceled instead of the last. I'm excited for that because i love being with my kids.  I love my job but I love my kids more.

I will never be able to fully catch you up on everything that has happened in the last 19 months but here is a start. Hopefully I will be turning a new leaf.

Sadie Mae

I'm finally getting around to sharing my birth story with the world. :)  This labor was definately different than my last one with Emma.  With Emma I went into labor on my own, and although she did have some complications I was able to deliver her the "normal" way.  The second go around I was sure that I would go into labor on my own, and I was hoping Sadie Mae would come even a little bit before my due date. I had scheduled an induction date the day after my due date just in case.  Well, nothing happened and it left me a little frustrated.  Had I known what was going to happen I would have opted to get induced at 39 weeks, but I guess we can't change the past....

So then my plan was to be induced, have Sadie sometime in the afternoon, stay the minimum 24 hours in the hospital and be discharged from the hospital the next day.  Needless to say, that didn't work out as planned either. We showed up on the 22nd at 6:30 in the morning, and everything was going smoothly at first.  Got my IV, started the Pitocin, and then started the epidural a little bit later (contractions really hurt with Pitocin, hehe).  After a little while Sadie's heart rate dropped after a contraction, which is not a good sign. So they changed my position, the least invasive thing to do. That worked for maybe five minutes. :).   My blood pressure was low too which sometimes happens after the epidural, so they decided to give me some medication to bring my blood pressure up, hoping to help with the perfusion to the baby.  That worked for a little bit as well, but Sadie's heart rate kept going down and doing weird things.  So they started to worry a little bit.  The doctor and nurses were constantly in my room, I am grateful my doctor worked just right next door so he could come and check on me often.  They tried EVERYTHING to get me to go naturally.  They usually only give the blood pressure medication once after an epidural if its low, they ended up giving it to me five or six times.  They gave me alot of fluid through my IV and gave me an amniotic infusion, which basically is just fluid for the baby.  They gave me oxygen and they were constantly changing my position.  But poor Sadie's heart rate kept doing crazy things.  Every time they checked me and touched her head her heart rate would go all over the place. And her head wasn't coming down like it should.The other problem was that I wasn't dilating fast enough.  So they tried to increase my pitocin higher than what they normally give anyone, but that only made Sadie's heart rate do even more crazy stuff to where they eventually had to turn it off.  They had told me when they started to have problems that if they didn't resolve I would have to have a c-section so it was in the back of my mind, but I kept thinking it would just work itself out.  When they had to turn the pitocin off, meaning I wasn't going to have regular contractions, I knew I had reached the end of the line.  My doctor and nurse stood in my room for like ten minutes just looking at my screen.  We finally decided to do what was best for Sadie.  As soon as we made the decision, Sadie came into the world literally less than twenty minutes later, at 6:18 pm. She weighed 7lbs 12 ounces, and was 20.5 inches long.  I didn't even have time to really think about it.  I didn't say any crazy things that I recall but I know I was way out of it.  I remember they handed me Sadie once I was back in my room, and I remember thinking I had zero energy to even hold her let alone try and breastfeed her.  But I felt better as the medication wore off.  I know we did what was best, but it was still a little hard to deal with the change in events.  It all worked out though because Sadie is healthy and not to mention beautiful.  She sleeps great, eats great, and we are so happy to have her in our lives. 

Emma first had a little freak out in the hospital.  She wanted nothing to do with me, in fact she was scared of me.  I just don't think she liked seeing me in that condition in a hospital bed, she hated the hospital bed.  She didn't really know what to think about Sadie either.  She held her because we wanted her to, and she would kiss her because we asked her to.  All that pretty much changed too.  Now I'm constantly telling her all day long to leave the baby alone.  She is constatly trying to touch her, hold her, pick her up, poke her in the eye, etc.  The list goes on and on.  She does love her though which I guess is a good thing.  I do have to watch her like a hawk.

I actually recovered better with this one than I did with Emma surprisingly.  I feel great right now and am adjusting pretty good to two kids although it is a bit of an adjustment.  I am so lucky though to have two healthy beautiful daughters.  I love them both so much. Chance is a great little daddy and I'm so lucky to have him too. I am so very blessed to have such a great family.  Thanks to everyone who watched Emma while I was in the hospital and recovering.  That was a huge blessing!

Well, here are the pictures:

One of Sadie's first glamour shots..

They took a little picture before they shipped her off to the nursery

I don't think that picture describes how tired I was at that moment. :)  We couldn't get a family picture then because Emma refused to get near me, so this one had to do.

Mommy and daughter..

Emma with "baby sisters" as she calls her.  She kind of looks like she doesn't know exactly what to do with her.

We finally got a family picture the next day

Sadie when we finnally got to go home...

I love my daughters!

We went to Scolefield when Sadie was about a week and a half.  Here's our family right after church. 

Thanks Val for taking some awesome newborn pictures, she sure made Sadie look beautiful. 

My crazy two year old

I'm finally getting around to posting about my little Emma.  Can't believe two years have gone by since I held her in my arms for the first time.  Emma is at such a fun age and she keeps growing and learning so much every day.  Besides the attitude at times and her favorite word being "no", she is so much fun and the light of our lives.  Her energy is a little much at times, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm horrible with pictures but this is one of the pics I took on her birthday.

We went to Seven Peaks to celebrate the big day. Chance's mom, dad, sister and my brother Jeremy and his family came to celebrate with us!

Emma LOVES to try on multiple sets of clothing. She wants to put on her own  clothes and refuses help when I try to offer it.  She is so independent its almost not good sometimes....

This is her birthday present from Grandma Ras.  We call it "pinky".  She loves riding it all over the place.  it took her a while to get the steering down, but now she has mastered it.

Emma loves to ride horses, whether its this mini Jasper or riding with daddy.  But being as crazy as she is, she is really calm when you stick her on a horse. 

We got her a swimming pool for her birthday, its just her size and she loves it.  She has turned into quite the water girl.  At Seven Peaks she will dunk herself under the water over and over again you have to watch her and make sure she doesn't drown.  And she has no fear of the water slides, esspecially the little kid ones, she goes down them multiple times.

One of her favorite things is her cowgirl hat.  She wants to take it everywhere.  She truly is a little cowgirl.

Other things she loves:

She loves to color.  She knows most of her colors.

She loves taking herself to the bathroom at random times, but doesn't want to do it consistently.  We tried potty training her for a month and then gave up for a little bit (mommy was exhuasted and frustrated), but she is so much better at communicating now hopefully we can get her potty trained soon.

She loves her cousins. She would rather be with them over me anyday.

She loves hot dogs, she would have one for every meal if I let her. 

She knows so many words, but she still loves to jabber.  I have to just pretend I know what she is talking about.  She is so cute.

She loves running away from her mother at all the wrong times. :)

She loves to pray.  She always says the prayer for breakfast and sometimes lunch.   One Sunday we were waiting for Chance to have an interview for his temple recommend and the chapel was empty.  She ran up to the pulpit and started saying "Heavenly Father, thank you for this day".  It was one of those moments that made you realize that maybe you are doing something right. 

Emma, we love you so much and are so grateful to have you in our lives!!!



Swazies

Its been ages since I have updated my blog, I don't even know if I remember everything I have done since March! For starters.. we went to the Swazie mountains in April.  This trip usually kicks off our summer and all its craziness.  The Swazies is pretty much in the middle of nowhere but thet whole point of the trip is to find where the wild horses are.  We camp and ride horses and go on four wheeler rides and play in the dirt (esspecially if you are Emma).  This year I didn't do much riding since I was pregnant and all so I mostly stayed back and watched the kids.  Emma LOVED the four wheeler and wanted to be on it constantly.  When it wasn't running she would just climb on it and pretend to ride it.  She also went on some short horse rides with daddy and she loved that as well.  She is so calm on the horse which is so nice cuz usually she can't contain her energy.  The weather was perfect.  Last year we might as well have camped in a river it rained so much but this year the sun was out every day and it was not too hot but not too cold. 

Emma at the start of our trip..

Emma and her cousin Hawkin.  They are best buds, they almost look like they could pass for twins....

Emma riding with daddy

Going for a short horsie ride...

All the grandkids crammed on the four wheeler with grandpa

Emma going for her own little stroll, its a good thing she didn't learn how to turn it on

Did I mention that Emma really was great at getting dirty...I couldn't wait for bath time every night. :)

For the most part we had a great time and we can't wait to go next year!

Moab

For Spring Break for UVU we got the chance to go to Moab with some of our great friends the Brandons and the Davies!  It was a ton of fun.  I had never been before so it was fun to see all of red rock and scenery.  Our only downfall was the weather was not the greatest.  When it said "windy" on the forecast we had no idea it would be WINDY, like,  up to 65 miles per hour kind of winds.  It really wasn't too cold and it didn't rain until we were on our way home.  But wind and sand from the desert do not make a good combo. :)  Esspecially when you are trying to cook outside.  It reminded me of the sand storms you get in Lake Powell, except it was all day long.  And the house trailer we slept in felt like it was giong to blow over at night, so we didn't sleep very well.  And poor Dustin and Becca Davies attempted the tent for one night but then got smart the next night and slept in a motel. :) But it was fun to spend with good friends and there was a ton of stuff to see! Here are some pics:

Chance's sister Summer let us borrow this backpack.  It was so nice to have! Emma for the most part enjoyed it until she had been it in a while and then she wanted out.  But she was a good sport through the whole trip.

The first day we went and saw the delicate arch.  It was pretty cool.  It was the nicest day by far it was pretty hot so the wind felt good. :)

This is us and the Brandons, some kind soul took a picture of all of us.

We went down and stood under the arch...

The second day we went to this place, called Dead Horse Point. I believe they call it Dead Horse Point because they use to herd these horses to the top of this place.  I guess some of them got really thirsty and saw the water at the bottom and jumped to go get it, at least that is what I understood from it. Its only half as deep as the Grand Canyon, but it was still so pretty and cool to see.

Emma wanted to pose for the camera too...

We took a break for lunch in the truck cuz it was so windy outside.  Dustin and Becca joined us for this day, and that is there little boy Porter, who apparently is Emma's boyfriend.  As soon as he sat down by him she grabbed his hand.  She didn't waste any time. :)

We went on a hike that afternoon to see the Landscape Arch, and Emma could not resist again, so cute. If they get married this will be on their wedding video. :)

This is the Landscape Arch, it was pretty cool to see and it was a really pretty hike.

 Emma loved the sand and loved when she could roam free.

Back at camp before the wind got too bad Emma was able to play with some sand toys, thanks Dustin and Becca for bringing them!

More craftiness...

So I have not been the best at my New Years Resolution.  I have not taken a picture every day ( although my camera broke and I just got a new one so hopefully that will give me a little more motivation) and I have not blogged 3 posts a month, although I have done alot this month so maybe it will make up for last month. :) But I have been pretty good at the craft stuff.  Here is what I did this month.

Us Rasmussen girls got together and made this...

  And this, sorry I should have taken it out of the glare from the blinds, but you get the point.

And Chance's sister helped me make this awesome jewlery holder.  It is so nice not to have all of my jewlery tangled and always losing one earing.  This sorts it out just nice and keeps everything organized.  Thanks Afton for your help! It turned out great.