Grandparents Galore!

We blessed Natalie in church last week, so that occasion brought my parents and Jessica's Dad out for a visit.

Fun with Grandpa Smith. If you keep making those faces, your face will stick that way for ever.

Every time Makayla sees this picture she says "Natalie pulling my hair!"
Makayla "reading" to Natalie. Jessica has a very similar picture of herself reading to her sister Carly at approximately the same ages.

Love these Arizona sunsets!

Riding in the car with Grandpa Pace. Acting cool.

The whole crew pre-church photo.

Makayla hanging with Grandpa Smith. Still takes her a few hours to get used to him for some reason.

Natalie LOVES sitting on her changing table for some reason. It's her happy place. She is always calm when in the changing table. Sometimes if she won't stop screaming we'll just put her there and she'll be content as can be for at least a half hour.

Family shot.

Another family shot - we don't have a lot of these actually.

Grandma and Grandpa succeed in getting a Natalie smile on camera.

Makayla liked to wake up my parents each morning around 5:45 AM. I'm just glad she didn't include Jess and me in this ritual.

We went bowling. The place had automatic bumpers that came up when it was Makayla's turn. Maybe I just haven't been bowling for a long time, but I must say it's about time someone figured that one out. Much better than having to use the bumpers for everyone.

That's it for now. Thanks parents for coming to visit during the hot Arizona summer.

Makayla's Surgery

Forgot to mention - mostly cause we don't have pictures - but Makayla had to have her shunt replaced at the beginning of June. She was acting like she wasn't feeling well - throwing up, generally lathargic, and we took her in to the emergency room. The doctors ran a bunch of tests, including an MRI to check on how the fluid in her brain was looking. Results were inconclusive. Given the way she was acting, our neurosurgeon decided it'd be best to perform surgery and just make sure everything was ok. He ended up replacing the entire shunt system.
He told us that the pressure in Makayla's head was so high that her shunt actually shot out when they opened it up. Although it sounds serious, the surgery was a fairly minor, routine brain operation. It's seems weird, even as I write that, but it's true. We were released the next day. And later that afternoon, Makayla was acting like this:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Pretty amazing if you ask me. She literally perked up the second the drugs wore off. She learned probably 20 new words in the next two days. Amazing (and a bit scary) given how much the shunt can really affect her if it's not working properly.

Catching Up

Wow - we have a lot of catching up to do on the blog. Many things have happened over the past few months. Lets get to it (chronologically, not in order of importance).

First up - new furniture. In anticipation of having two girls eventually sharing a room, we found a good deal on bunk beds and purchased them. Right now Makayla's room looks small with both beds like this, but eventually we'll stack them.

We also upgraded our kitchen table. Now we can fit guests at the table.
In April we drove to Utah for the Salt Lake City Marathon. I trained from mid January for the half marathon and April 17th was race day. Before the race I had to carbo load so we went to Settebello pizzeria behind the Salt Palace. It's a Naples style pizzeria - and I must say their pizza sent us back to our time in Italy last year. Good stuff.

Look how excited I am. The pizza was as big as that plate - obviously I ate most of it before this picture was taken.

We also stopped by and spent a day with my Grandma who lives in American Fork. She was kind enough to let me stay the night before my race.

Here's the photographic proof of me coming into the finish line. I finished in my goal time of under 2 hours at 1:55. I will eventually do another one. A few days before the race I discovered that one of my cousins was also running the half marathon so it was nice to meet up with him at the race.

In May I turned 28. We celebrated at Macaroni Grill sans Makayla.

Also in May we travelled to Denver for Jessica's sister's wedding. This is a very pregnant Jessica with her sister Taylor and her Mom.

The happy couple. Congrats Carly and Kevin.

Their wedding was 5 years and one week from our wedding day. No snow for them though.

Over Memorial Day I finally got working on the yard again. Two good buddies came and helped me dig trenches and lay pipe. Everything worked and no leaks!

More of the sprinkler project.

On June 11th around 3 PM I got a call at work from Jessica saying that her water broke. We headed to the hospital. Jessica made it through a few strong contractions before asking for drugs. She got her epidural around 9:30 PM and felt much better. We actually were both able to sleep a bit as she progressed. Around 3:30 AM she started to push - and it only took about 4 pushes before we welcomed Natalie Jean Pace into the world around 3:50 AM. She was 7 lbs 5 oz. and 21 inches long.

Makayla was sort of excited to be a big sister - although she pretty much ignored Natalie for the first two weeks.

Family shot.

Natalie was born with lots of dark hair - just like her Dad.

She has blue eyes right now, but Makayla did too when she was born and they eventually turned brown.

Natalie's hair is pretty poofy too. Can't keep it down very well.

See? This was taken about a week and a half ago - you can see she's already started to lose much of the hair she was born with.

Makayla turned 3 two weeks ago. She had an M&M cake made by her talented mother. Here she is blowing out the candles.

Admiring Jessica's handiwork.

So excited!

Well that nearly gets us caught up. I'm sure I'll post more a bit later. Hopefully people still read this blog.

It's about time...

Well it's been a good three months since I updated the blog. I guess it's about time for me to catch up a bit. The quick summary is pretty simple. Jessica's getting bigger, the baby is healthy, Makayla continues to grow and learn new words. On to the more fun stuff.

This is my brother Ryan and his family. They came for a visit in mid-March from Philadelphia. They liked the sun.

Makayla and her cousin Mia watching a movie.

We went to the zoo together.
Played with cousins Calvin and Mia on the air mattress. Makayla did a very good job remembering everyone's names from Christmas.

Jess and Aunt Stephanie took the kiddos to Snepf Farms while Ryan and I were otherwise occupied.

Makayla's first carousel ride.

Feeding the goats.

Ryan and I were enjoying Arizona's natural beauty on the golf course. This is Superstition Mountain golf course up near Gold Canyon.

Typical Ryan face. He played well. Really.

Another hole from Superstition Mountain.

Back at the zoo. This was the preferred mode of transportation for the girls. Best idea ever.

First family shot in a while. Makayla is thrilled.

More recently we went to feed some ducks. This is a nice belly shot of Jessica.

Makayla feeding the ducks.

Jessica likes this shot better because she thinks she doesn't look pregnant.

Not sure what this is all about. She continues to perfect her "teacher stare" over her glasses.

Finally, my latest home improvement project. A 10 x 14 paver patio extension. Next, grass and trees and a sprinkler system that I haven't started yet.

Well that brings you up to speed. Sorry it took so long. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of taking pictures and updating this blog before baby #2 arrives in June.