Pictures in February

Juliet turned 2 months on the 13th. Here are some pics from this month. The first 2 are from the 13th.

January 2012

We had a good month in January. Juliet came home from the hospital on the 1st and everyone was really excited about that. The kids got to see and hold Juliet for the first time.



My mom came to help us for a few weeks, and I am so glad she was able to come. This photo is from the 5th. Liz also came for a few days, so we spent those days playing with friends and staying up too late. It was a lot of fun and I'm happy she could be here too.




We blessed Juliet at home on the 10th of January. John's parents, my mom, and the Bishop were there for it.





Juliet having tummy time on the 20th.




Sleeping on the 25th.



Of course we also had 3 birthdays this month, but we haven't been going out much, so they were all low key.

Juliet in December 2011

It has been too long since we posted anything to the blog, so I decided I needed to do it. I can't get too wordy typing one handed, so I'll just keep it brief. Juliet Dorothy Massaglia was born on December 13, 2011. She was 7lbs 5oz., and 19" long. We had a traumatic birth where I had a placental abruption and Juliet inhaled and swallowed blood filled amniotic fluid. She was in the NICU until January 1st, 2012, where she was on antibiotics, and healed slowly. Blood apparently takes a long time for the body to break down, and the lungs are not a good place for blood to be.

These 3 photos were taken on 12-13-11





12-14-11 This day was the first for us to hold her. We could only hold her 2 times a day for about 30 minutes each time. Some nurses were more strict enforcing the time limit than others.



12-15-11 I love how she was holding my hand here.



These were taken on 12-20-11 Miriam and David's family were in town, so here we are celebrating Grandma Massaglia's birthday at the Bombay House in Provo.




12-23-11


These were taken Christmas day. We were very disappointed Juliet was still at the hospital at this point, but she was pretty weak and needed the extra time to get stronger and be able to eat on her own, not with a feeding tube.





These last 3 were taken on the 27th, 29th with Grandma Massaglia, and on December 31 almost ready to come home. We didn't know they would let her go the next day, but we knew it was coming up soon. I was so happy to not have to be at the hospital any more!

2011 Dance Festival

Last week our kids had their dance festival at the school. My parents were able to come watch it also. The kids all did great. The weather wasn't too bad either. Usually it's sweltering hot, but it's been kind of cold and rainy for May.

We used a new video camera for these. It's a little Xacti camera that records directly to an sdcard so it's tons easier to get the videos on the computer. It was pretty cheap on Woot a few weeks ago. Hopefully we will be able to upload more videos now that the process isn't so involved.

FHE at Trafalga

A week or so ago we saw a great deal at GroupOn for a year pass to Seven Peaks, the Trafalga parks, Orem Owlz baseball games, and Utah Flash basketball games. After a little deliberation, I ended up buying them and we picked our passes up at Seven Peaks yesterday. After we picked them up, we grabbed a cheap pizza and then went to Trafalga to ride the slick track go-karts and do some miniature golfing. The kids had a ball riding the go-karts. None of them had ridden them before. Valerie and Scarlett got to ride their own and the other two had to pair up with us. I got some fun pictures of Becky and the girls, but I didn't take any pictures of us boys since I was driving. We ended up playing golf in the indoor course because it was a little cold outside and our kids hadn't dressed for it. The indoor course is pretty cool since they have added all the black lights and neon paint.

Lost His First Tooth

Lost His First Tooth
Originally uploaded by mrklaw

Dante had a loose tooth yesterday and was completely beside himself with excitement. This morning he decided he couldn't wait for it to come out on its own and asked me to pull it out. It popped out pretty easily and he's been showing everyone.

Carving Pumpkins for Family Home Evening

We carved pumpkins for Family Home Evening this week. The kids each designed their own and I helped most of them scrape out the insides and I helped them carve when they needed it. They are (from left to right) a half happy half sad face (Ella), an eagle (Valerie), a kind of happy/scary face (Scarlett), and Luigi from the Nintendo games (Dante).

My latest project

I had been looking for chairs for the table we bought last October (from Ikea) ever since then. Well, I finally found some chairs. In July, we were yard sale shopping and I found a set of 4 chairs with an alder table all together. I didn't need the table, but thought I could refinish the top and maybe sell it or something (the top was really needing to be refinished, it was scratched, drawn on with permanent marker, etc...). I guess that the table grew on me, because now it is in our kitchen! First we sanded the top and re-stained it. Then I took a break from the table and painted the 4 chairs. We have been using the chairs for about a month. I finally decided to finish the table, so in the last 2 weeks, I have been priming, painting, and sealing the table legs. I finally finished, and now we have a fantastic new kitchen table! I'm so happy with how it turned out. The table is stained with a mahogany stain, and the chairs and legs of the table are painted green (obviously) with a glaze over to antique them. I love it. We forgot to take before pictures but the table top was only polyurethaned and the legs were red. The chairs had a natural wood seat, the rest painted red. They actually didn't look bad, but I liked the green better. It was a fun first refinishing project for me.

Memorial Day Fishing

Memorial day was pretty fun. The morning began with some homemade cinnamon rolls, then I took the kids fishing in Provo canyon (Valerie caught a trout), followed by grilling burgers and then some Carcassonne after the kids went to bed. Becky had fun with her mom who visited with us for a few days.

Cherry Hill Competes at Amateur DanceSport Competition

Haircut at Home

Becky's mom gave Dante a haircut while we were at New Beginnings with Valerie.

Sledding

I got home early yesterday afternoon so we all decided to go sledding. I took some videos of the kids sledding with my phone and uploaded them to YouTube. Here they are!

Grandpa's 90th

I haven't posted for a while, and some things have happened that we haven't posted about like our trip to Oceanside in August. I'll post some stuff about those things later when I have access to our iPhoto library at home.

This weekend I got to go back to California to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday. My parents and my sisters were all able to be there. It was cool to see everyone together. We haven't been all together for years.

We arrived at LAX on Friday and after a quick meal at In and Out we decided to visit Redondo Beach and see the old house and the neighborhood. The house was under some heavy renovation and remodeling. The park was much different that what I remembered also.



After looking at the house, we went down by the Pier. There weren't many people on the beach since it wasn't very hot and it was a school day. The beach seemed much smaller and steeper than I remember. Our family has fond memories of riding bikes or roller skating on the strand along the beach for Family Night.





That evening, we had dinner with my grandparents and prepared some stuff for the party.

On Saturday, we had the party. It was fun to see cousins, friends and family and hear their stories. I got to hear a few WWII stories. We took a ton of pictures too.









That night we went to a Mexican restaurant and tried playing a game, but everyone was too tired. We ended up playing "Bohnanza" and "Hit The Deck" on Sunday night. We also got to go to church with my grandparents and visit Aunt Bertie and her daughter Nancy.

It was a fun trip. I'm glad I could go.

4th of July Balloon Festival

To view the whole set, click here.

On the 4th of July, we got up way too early and went to the Hot Air Balloon Festival in Provo. I overslept a little more than I wanted so we didn't see the balloons take off, but it was still a lot of fun. The balloons would go up or down to catch breezes in different directions and they would try to come back to the field where they started so that they could drop bean bags onto targets or pop helium balloons that were tied to long strings. Once in a while they would fly right over our heads and they came close enough that we could easily see the people in the baskets and hear the roar of the flames as they heated up the air in their balloons.

On the way home we stopped by Macey's grocery store to get some supplies and they were giving away free french toast and doing demonstrations with mentos and diet coke.

During the day I dismantled our gazebo that had been severely damaged by the snow. It took a while, but it's mostly completely in little pieces now. All I needed was a screwdriver. Hopefully next week I can take all the aluminum from it to the recycling center and get a few dollars.

That night we all drove down to Provo High's soccer field and watched the Stadium of Fire fireworks. We had to wait a little while, but we had brought some books to read and glow sticks for the kids. A bunch of other people there had brought store-bought fireworks and it was fun to watch them light them off. The fireworks finally started and we had a good view of them from where we sat. There was a long gap in the middle where everyone was confused about whether the show was over or not. My friends later told me that they were retiring an old flag in the middle of the fireworks show. It was a nice show and when it was over, it was really easy to get home. We had barely any traffic at all. MUCH better than trying to drive home from over by the Provo temple.

We Made Flubber!

Wow, we haven't posted for a while. I'll try to post a few this weekend to catch up.

I had the day off on July 3rd and I decided to do a craft or something with the kids since I don't get a chance every day. I'm usually so busy on weekends that we never get the chance.

I remembered that when we were Cub Scout den leaders, we did an activity where we made some kind of slime with white glue and borax. I did a Google search for white glue and borax and found a bunch of recipes online for GAK or Slime or Play Putty or Flubber. I picked one out and it went something like this:

GAK

Ingredients:
8oz white glue
Warm water
Borax
Food coloring (optional)

1. pour the white glue into a platic bowl. If you poured out the entire bottle, put some warm water in there and shake it around to loosen up the remaining glue and pour it into the bowl also.
2. Add some food coloring to the glue if desired.
3. Mix 1/2 cup of warm water and a teaspoon of borax in a disposable cup. Stir it until it is as dissolved as you can.
4. Start stirring the glue mixture and slowly pour in the borax and water mixture a little at a time. Keep stirring and adding the borax mixture until it is the desired consistency or the glue has soaked up as much of the borax as it can.
5. Pull the mixture out and start kneading it. It's ready to be played with!

When we made Dante's slime, we accidentally only added half a teaspoon of borax. His slime was much looser and stickier. It was fun to play with, but it stuck to your hands a little. We then added more borax water and it hardened up like the others.









Click here if you want to see the entire set of pictures.

Jousting!

The kids' school had a medieval fair today and the Knights of Mayhem came and did a jousting show for us. They threw spears from horseback, sliced cabbages in half with a sword from horseback, and then did a proper joust with solid lances. I'm glad I took today off.