Some funny pictures...

What Silly kids I have...

Bella

Here's a quick little update on Bella. She continues to gain weight, but the spitting up is the same if not worse. So, Garrett took her to her appointment at the pediatric gastrointernologist last week. He said, since she is gaining weight, then she doesn't have acid reflux. He says, she's just fine, she just spits up a bit more than normal. Actually he said that the spitting up peaks at 4 months of age--which explains why she spits up more than ever these days. But, hopefully it will only get better from now on. The doctor did say that there could be a small chance that there was something wrong with the connection of the esophogus to the stomach. So, they scheduled an upper GI test for a few days later at St. Vincent's Hospital. He didn't think that anything was wrong, he just wanted to double check, just in case. So last Tuesday, her appointment was scheduled at 9am and we were supposed to check in at 8:45. We weren't supposed to feed her for 3 hours prior to the test. So, she was up at 4 am and I fed her then, but she didn't have anything else to eat until after the test. I was so worried that she would freak out from hunger--she usually does. I was praying all morning that she would be okay and not be so hungry that she would scream uncontrollably. She woke up at seven and she was totally fine until about 8:50 or so. She started getting a little fussy, so I rocked her to sleep until they called us back. What an angel, I tell you...she was amazing!

The first thing they did was get her undressed so that they could x-ray her stomach before the test. Then she put on this little hospital gown and when the doctor finally got there, we could start the test. So, they had her lay on this table and I was standing at the end of the table near her head so that I could feed her. I fed her a bottle of something called barium, which fills and coats her esophogus and stomach. Barium is a non-toxic, non-nutritional contrast liquid that highlights organs to be studied. So as she drank this, they had an x-ray machine above her that showed on a tv screen the barium going down her esophogus and into her stomach. It was kind of neat to see actually. After drinking most of the bottle, the doctor was looking for two things. The first was to see how much reflux there was when her stomach was distended. It did show some reflux, but not enough to cause any concern. A little reflux in normal--and this was in the normal range. The second thing that he was looking for was any tear or weird connection of the esophogus to the stomach. As she was drinking, he would have the nurse and I, turn her slowly from side to side. I guess in doing this it would show if there was a problem with the connection. I'm sure there's a more in depth explanation to it, but I don't know what it is. He said there wasn't any problem, so that's all I cared about. So, there is nothing wrong with this kid...she just likes to spit up! It's just something that we have to deal with. We've done everything we can to make sure she's okay...so now we just hope it goes away or lessens as she gets older!

Other than that problem, she is a good baby. She's almost five months old. She started cereal a few weeks ago and she really likes eating that. In a week or two I'm going to start giving her vegetables. We'll see how she likes those.

She's also started rolling over last month and rolls really well from her back to her belly. So she just sleeps on her belly now. She likes to pull her legs up underneath her when she's on her belly, so I'm thinking she might be an early crawler.

No sign of any teeth yet, though she's drooling like crazy.

She just recently got a cold and has been having a hard time sleeping with her stuffy nose. Hence, I haven't been sleeping either. We actually stayed home from church today and slept the three hours. It was nice.

Bella's first time in the exersaucer.

She doesn't like to sit in her carseat anymore. She tries to roll over in it and gets stuck.

Bella rolling over.

First Days...

Before I start writing about the first days of school and dance, I just wanted to write about one thing. After we put our backyard in at the beginning of the summer, Maggie had gotten some seeds from school. She didn't know what they were, but wanted to plant them around our patio to make a flower garden. So, she planted them all by herself and every day she watered them. They had started growing kind of tall, but there weren't any blossoms on them yet, so I just thought they were a bean plant or something. Then we left for England and we forgot about them. The night we got back, Garrett was looking out at the backyard to see how dead our grass was and got a big surprise. These are the flowers that Maggie grew:

















They are such beautiful sunflowers and they go all around the patio. It was a nice surprise to come home to.

Maggie and Lydia are going to a brand new school that's just 5 minutes away from us. Their school is called Free Orchards and thier mascot are the foxes. Maggie started 3rd grade on Sept. 2nd and Lydia started kindergarten on the 4th. Their school starts at 8 am and their bus comes at 7:30. This is so different from last year, when school started at 9. We're still trying to get used to getting up earlier!

We'll start with Maggie:

This is Maggie on her first day. Like I said, she's in 3rd grade this year and her teacher's name is Miss Harvey. She's a really nice teacher and already Maggie is one of her favorite students. She uses Maggie's work as an example and Maggie helps her in class. (We just had back to school night.)


Maggie did extremely well on the first day. It's usually pretty hard for her, but she was very brave and didn't cry when I left. She didn't know any kids in her class, but now she's got four or five friends. There's also a lot of kids from our church that go to her school, so she gets to play with them at recess. Her and Lydia get to ride the bus to school which they both love. I love it too! It is so nice to not have to take them and pick them up everyday! What a time saver. She usually sits with Lydia in the morning, but in the afternoons, she loves to sit by her friend Ashlee, who lives down the street from us and is in our ward. (The girl in front of Maggie is Kayla, Ashlee's sister.)

Also this year, Maggie was finally able to start acrobatics. She wanted to do it last year, but the classes were full by the time we got to register. So this year, Miss Patty, the teacher and owner of Forest Grove Dance Arts, opened another acrobatics class and Maggie got her chance. Maggie is loving it and is learning to do all sorts of fun things. Somersaults, backward rolls, cartwheels, hand stands, etc.

Here's a video of her doing straddle rolls.


Lydia's First Day of Kindergarten:




Lydia is absolutely loving kindergarten. She goes in the morning (starting at 8) and is done at 10:50. Her teacher is Mrs. Bayley who is really nice and according to Lydia, does funny things. Lydia is so funny--she didn't even have a problem on the first day of school. I dropped her off and was planning to stay awhile, just in case. But she didn't need me at all. She just sat there and colored; wasn't even worried about a thing. I kept saying, "I'm going to leave soon" trying to prepare her, but she'd just say, "Bye mom." I'm glad she's so confident! She has two little boys in her class from our church, and two kids from her preschool class, so she had friends to start with. Plus she's told me that she has some other friends now, too. She doesn't tell me a lot of what happens at school, but she does tell me that they read books, color and have a lot of fun in the gym. They got to ride around on scooters the other day. Does anyone else remember those things from gym when they were little? Garrett doesn't, but I really liked them. They're just square things with wheels that you sit or lay on and scoot around the gym. Okay, enough about that.
Here's a picture of Lydia on the bus:
Lydia this year, started to take tap dance lessons. Last year she was taking ballet and quit halfway through the year. I don't think she really liked her teacher--she wasn't as fun as the other teachers there. But, the tap teacher there is a great teacher. She's fun and energetic and a little silly, which Lydia just loves. They put her in a tap one class, even though she's never had pre-tap, but the teacher said she'd do just fine. Most of the other girls have had pre-tap and I can see a big difference. So, Lydia is a little behind, and gets frustrated easily, but she's doing great. It really is cute.



Here's a video from her first class:



Paige's First Day of Preschool:




Paige is going to Wonder World Preschool in Forest Grove. This is the preschool that Lydia went to. We really love it there and the teachers are wonderful! She started on September 11th. She did so great the first day. I was really worried that she'd be all clingy and not want to go in, but she walked in and did great. The teachers say that she's quiet and observant, but will talk to them and she does participate in stuff. She really likes it! Paige also started dance this fall. Technically it's called creative movement, but we call it ballet. She was very excited to start, and she jumped right in.


There was another cuter video, that showed more "stuff", but Maggie took the video and it's all over the place and you have to tilt your head to the side to see it, so I'll try to get a better one, next time.
Bella
Bella's not in school, but she has a first too! This is her first time eating rice cereal. She did pretty good for the first time. Once again, Maggie is behind the camera. (And I apologize for sounding like the Soup Nazi in it) :)

Updated: 11 Interesting things about our Trip

So, this will be my last entry about our trip--I promise!! I'm sure you are all sick of reading about the trip, but since this blog really is more for our family to remember our trip, I'm going to write down a few more things so that we can remember them! :)

1. Garrett's new lady. (She was such a lifesaver!) Before we left OR, Garrett thought it would come in handy to buy a GPS while we were over there. We used it for a bit here in OR and I thought it wasn't very handy because for one thing, it didn't even have our street on it's map and second of all, it would take us to places that we knew, in a different and longer way. So, I was skeptical. But, once we got over to England, she knew everything! So, my job as navigator was at an end. She was always calm in giving her directions and even when we would miss our turn/exit numerous times, she quickly came up with an alternative--without getting frustrated! She sure saved us from a lot of stress! We took her everywhere with us, even when we were walking around a city! She even talks with an English accent and we named her Emily.

2. Blue doors. I loved how colorful their front doors were over there. There were a lot of blue and red doors in England and we started taking pictures of them, towards the end of our trip. I was going to make a collage out of the pictures. They were so neat looking. In Ireland, they have all sorts of colors for their doors. There was blue, red, green, yellow, and purple. As we were driving down the street, Maggie said, "Wouldn't it be cool if someone had a pink door?" Sure enough about ten minutes later, we saw a pink door.

Here's just a few examples of the blue doors:

3. Some places over here in Britain and Ireland still have thatched roofs--like they did so long ago! We love the look of it! They must have something underneath the roof, so that rain doesn't drip into their houses all the time.


4. I knew England was known for it's little tiny roads, but 'Oh my gosh' are they tiny and narrow! We were really scared a few times driving down the road that we were going to hit the car going past us. On the left side of the road there is usually a bunch of plants and bushes or rock walls and then on the right side are the cars coming in the opposite direction. You either have to ride the wall or bushes or get hit by an oncoming car. There are even places in the road where it narrows down to one lane, especially if there's a small bridge coming up or a turn in the road. You really have to slow down and literally crawl and peek around the corner. One time we were going down one of these narrow country roads and came around a corner and there was this huge tractor thing coming right at us! It was truly scary!

5. To go with their tiny roads are their tiny cars. They are all so small. The biggest cars they have are about the size of my mini-van and they call them people movers. All their cars get great gas mileage--I guess because they use diesel fuel. I love all the mini coopers! Solviej--I thought of you every time I saw one! :)

6. Round-a-bouts. They are everywhere. I guess they are used because it is supposed to decrease congestion at intersections. Some of them get a little crazy and have 3 or 4 lanes going around this circle and you have to be in the correct lane depending which exit you take. There's one in Swindon, where Garrett worked, that is well-known and called "The Magical Round-a-bout". It has five smaller round-a-bouts inside one big one. Talk about confusing. Round-a-bouts are especially confusing for Americans because if you want to turn right, you have to go left into the round-a-bout to go right. They are helpful though if you missed your turn because you just drive up to the next round-a-bout and go all the way around and head back to where you missed your turn. I did get a chance to drive once or twice while I was there. It was pretty scary--and I only went through one or two little round-a-bouts. But just being on the wrong side of the car was weird, not to mention driving down the wrong side of the road. Even though I didn't drive much, I got used to riding on the wrong side. Just being in the car while Garrett drove, I'd try to help him to remember to stay on the left side if he forgot (which was just once or twice). But now that we're back here, I find myself thinking 'which side am I supposed to be on'? Garrett really got used to the driving over there. On the freeways, the right lane is the "over take" lane; which is the lane you are supposed to use to pass. Garrett swears that the right lane here in America is the fast lane. It took me a while to convince him that it's the left lane that is the fast lane.

7. Their shopping carts in the grocery stores are called 'trolleys'. And boy are they hard to control. I guess on ours the back wheels are locked so they don't turn every which direction. But on theirs, all the wheels are free rolling and you really have to work at keeping it going in the right direction.

8. I didn't know this before I went, but Great Britain and Ireland go by military time. It took me awhile, but I finally just memorized all the times, like: 21:00 was 9:00pm and 19:00 was 7:00 pm, etc instead of subtracting 12 every time I wanted to know the time.

9. I'm not sure if this is how it is all over England or just at the place we were, but we didn't have any screens on our windows. And of course they don't have air conditioning, so we'd keep the windows and doors open during the day to keep a breeze in. The bad thing was, was that this place was like Arachnaphobia. There were huge spiders all over, everywhere. Especially all over the outside of the house. So since we kept the windows open, we had spiders in the house all the time. They would especially come out at night, so I kept all the windows closed at night and the house would become really hot. Garrett didn't like me for that, so he went and bought some fans. But I really hate spiders and they were SO BIG! You can't blame me for closing the windows.

10. People smoke a lot more over there--it seems. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure seemed like everyone was lighting up everywhere we went. It was nasty.

Here are some fun pictures of the girls that I thought you'd like to see.

Bella before we left for England

Wow--look how she grew over 6 weeks! (Right before we came home)

Paige wearing Lydia's cowgirl boots--hasn't she gotten big?

Sleeping Bella

The girls being silly with daddy's Scottish hair.

There is a little smile behind that binky.

Watching movies

The girls went out and had a picnic one day in the back yard.

Bella coming in for a smooch

This is what Bella is best known for!!
She's so cute when she sleeps!
Being silly with wax from some cheese.
The instigator of the silliness
A water bottle was one of Bella's favorite toys.

So, I thought of one more thing that I found interesting in England.

11. In our place, the washer and dryer were combined in one machine. Odd, huh? It was really small, too. I was only able to wash like 3 loads of laundry, if I was lucky because it took like 3-4 hours to wash and dry a load. So, I'd have to do at least one load a day. After being home now for awhile and doing laundry--I've realized how quick a wash cycle is and how short it takes to dry a load. I love it--especially that I can put more than 3 pairs of jeans in at once!!

Our Last day in Ireland

On our last day in Ireland we didn't have much planned. Garrett wanted to drive up north to Belfast and try to find some of his Irish ancestors. He had done some research before we left Oregon and knew that his ancestors were from around Belfast, more specifically the town of Comber. It took us awhile to drive up there and to finally find the town. We found a church and Garrett got out to look around, but didn't find what he was looking for. Then he found another church and asked some people who were there if they knew where we could look and they pointed us to the town cemetary. We drove there and we all got out and started looking. I think we spent about an hour there searching the gravestones. We did find some McKibbens, but they had lived and died more recently and the people we were looking for were from the 1700's. It was pretty interesting walking around a cemetary. I've never really done that before. It was cool reading when they lived and the different inscriptions that were written. But, we didn't really find anything there.

I think we looked at one more cemetary and then were ready to start driving back to Dublin when Garrett saw a church steeple and thought he should look there. So, with this as our last stop we got out and started looking again. Within about 10 minutes, Garrett said that he had found one and sure enough, it was the person he was looking for. His name was John McKibben and he died in 1758 and was 48 years old. On the same headstone we found out who his wife was (Elizabeth Orr; died 10 days after her husband; also 48 years old). Next to that one we found a William McKibben from 1851 (60 years) (not sure how they are related) and then across from the first one was another John McKibben (spelled McKebin) who died in 1715 (62 yrs. old) along with his wife, Isabella who died in 1741 (age 72). Garrett was so excited to find these family names. He told us that he had been praying all day for direction and guidance to know where to go and look. What a testimony builder to know that Heavenly Father does hear our prayers and is there to help us out. As Garrett wrote down all the information from the headstones, Maggie and I searched the rest of the cemetary for any other McKibbens and sure enough at the very end, we found two more. Another John McKibben who died 1886 at the age of 38 and also on that same stone were his children, but not his wife. His kids were: Willie died 1882; William died 1884; Joseph died 1886; Hugh died 1887 and Agnes who died in 1898 (17 years). I'm not sure how old they all were when they died. I was thinking they died as infants since it happened about every two years. Makes you really want to research their story. Anyways...we were really happy that we had found all that information. The church there was being added on to...which explains all the debris. (in the pictures) I can't believe how close they were putting the church to the grave sites!

Church of Ireland Parish
We think the church was built in 1774.
Church of Ireland Parish
The Cemetary
The McKibben plots
Garrett and his ancestors
The new addition to the church right next to the McKibben plots.
John McKibben; d. 1758
William McKibben; d. 1851
John McKebin; d. 1715

John McKibben and his kids
The last McKibben grave site. I can't remember who is on this one.
Looking out from the church to the end of the cemetary.
Looking up towards the church.
Bella, after her snack.
Beautiful Irish countryside on a beautiful day...driving back to Dublin.




We had to hurry and rush back to Dublin because when we first got to Ireland we bought tickets to Riverdance on our last night. What better place to see Riverdance than in Ireland!!! We left Comber a little after 5 pm and the show was starting at 8pm. So we drove like crazy and got a little lost in downtown Dublin trying to find the theater. We finally found it, but were 15 minutes late. So we missed the first little bit. Garrett dropped us off so we could go in and get our seats while he found some place to park. By the time he got in, we were still waiting for a break in the dances to get up to our seats. So when he got there he took the girls to their seats, and I had to go and change Bella who had a big blowout--Yuck--so I missed a little more. I have to say how glad I was that we were able to go and see it. It was absolutely fabulous. What talented people! It was such a great show--the music was amazing. They had a woman playing the fiddle, one playing a flute/saxophone, one playing a guitar and a guy doing all the percussion. He was my favorite. They all had a chance to perform solos and the percussionist played a really neat little drum-- I think it was called a bodhran --I'm sure it was native to Ireland, but it was so cool!! They had quite a variety of dances as well. They had songs and dances about nature--the sun, the river, thunderstorms, etc. Then songs and dances about Irish farmers, Irish people emmigrating to America, other peoples and cultures becoming part of Ireland, etc. They had guest performers from Spain, Russia, the US and Great Britain. The Spanish lady did a couple of flamenco dances, the Russian dancers did a really cool one with some amazing "stunts" and dance moves and my favorite one was two American guys doing some pretty cool tap dancing and then the riverdance guys would come out and show off some of their steps and they would go back and forth having a "dance war". It was pretty funny when the tappers broke out into riverdance moves. It was very entertaining. If any of you have a chance to see a show of theirs, I would highly recommend it. It was a great night of entertainment.
This is inside the beautiful theatre.
Us during the intermission.

After such a late night and not getting home til about 10 and then not getting to bed till around 11 or so, we had to wake up at 4 am to get to the airport to make our 6:30 flight. Garrett dropped me and the girls off with the luggage to go get in line to check in while he dropped off the rental car. After waiting in line for about 15 minutes the guy at the desk said that he was about to close the flight and said we were the last people allowed to check in. When I told him that my husband would be back in 5 minutes, he told me that I could check in now and me and the girls get on the flight without him or none of us get on the flight. (We still had 30 minutes before our flight left, by the way). I tried to tell him that he'd be right back, but he wasn't budging. So we waited for Garrett, who came 5 minutes later and missed our flight. So we had to go buy 5 more tickets @ 75 euros each which is double what we paid for our tickets in the first place. As if that wasn't bad enough, there weren't any more flights open to Bristol that day. So we got a flight to Birmingham, but that wasn't until 12pm and here it was 6 am. We couldn't check in until 9 am. We were all exhausted and had to wait in the airport for half the day. Then we had to get another rental car in Birmingham to drive to Bristol to pick up our other "official" rental car. The drive from Birmingham to Bristol was two hours. Then from Bristol to Cirencester (where our house was) was another hour. So, we didn't back home again until like 7 or 8 that night. What a day!!! All because we were 5 minutes late in getting to the Dublin airport. Ugh!! But, we made it and all was well.